Employers Can Let Workers Change Health Plans Without Waiting

By BY MARGOT SANGER-KATZ AND RON LIEBER from NYT Business https://ift.tt/35SA158

Coronavirus Briefing: What Happened Today

By BY PATRICK J. LYONS from NYT U.S. https://ift.tt/3fPitvx

A Spaniel, a Mute Button and Profound Matters of State

By BY PETER BAKER from NYT U.S. https://ift.tt/2yQmLSx

Brazil's coronavirus cases pass Germany's as Bolsonaro fights to open gyms

Brazil's confirmed cases of the novel coronavirus passed Germany on Tuesday, as Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro fought states over his wish to reopen gyms and beauty parlors even as his country becomes a new global hotspot for the pandemic.

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South Korea's LG Chem sends delegation to India to probe deadly gas leak

South Korea's LG Chem said on Wednesday that it had sent a delegation to India to investigate the cause of a toxic gas leak at its chemical plant there that killed 11 people and forced 800 into hospital for treatment from poisoning.

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Thousands get sick as president encourages reopening

Even as President Trump urges getting people back to work and reopening the economy, an Associated Press analysis shows thousands of people are getting sick from COVID-19 on the job.

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Putin's spokesman becomes fifth senior Russian official to get coronavirus

Venezuela detains 40 suspects after failed Maduro 'kidnap attempt'

* Three captured west of Caracas are latest ‘terrorists’ arrested * Advisers to opposition leader Juan Guaidó linked to raid resign Nicolás Maduro’s security forces have continued their roundup of alleged participants in last week’s botched attempt to capture him, with the arrest of three Venezuelan men just west of the capital.The trio was reportedly seized in Carayaca, 35 miles from Caracas in the early hours of Monday, taking the number of detentions to more than 40. The official Twitter account of Venezuela’s Bolivarian national guard claimed the men were “terrorists who entered the country intending to provoke violence”.On Sunday the army chief, Remigio Ceballos, announced the capture of another eight “enemies of the fatherland” who were pictured kneeling down before a cluster of rifle-toting troops.Eight people were reportedly killed when a group of about 60 mercenaries, including two United States citizens, launched their botched sea raid on 2 May.One of the captured American attackers, Airan Berry, last week claimed, possibly under duress, that the group had been tasked with raiding Maduro’s presidential palace and seizing a local airport in order to spirit him out of the country. Many of the group are reportedly being held in El Helicoide, Venezuela’s most notorious political prison.The failed raid has proved a propaganda boon for Maduro, who has long claimed he was the subject of an imperialist, US-sponsored assassination plot.Maduro has spent the last 16 months fighting off a challenge from the young opposition leader Juan Guaidó, who more than 50 foreign governments recognize as Venezuela’s legitimate interim leader.For Guaidó, who for a time last year looked poised to topple Maduro, recent events threaten to permanently derail his push for political change.Guaidó has denied any involvement in the failed mission to capture Maduro. But two of his advisers, the Miami-based strategist Juan José Rendón and the opposition lawmaker Sergio Vergara, are alleged to have signed a $212m contract with Jordan Goudreau, the former Green Beret behind the raid.Vergara and Rendón – who has admitted meeting Goudreau last year and paying him $50,000 in expenses – resigned from Guaidó’s team on Monday.In his first interview since the incident, Guaidó tried to put on a brave face, insisting his campaign continued. “What happened last weekend,” Guaidó said, “was regrettable.”But some suspect the opposition leader, from whom support has been gradually draining away, is running out of steam.“I’m sure Maduro and his people are quite thrilled about the way this turned out. This really works for them,” said David Smilde, a Venezuela specialist at the Washington Office on Latin America.“It just adds into this continual erosion of people’s perception of Guaidó as an effective leader, and they are thinking: ‘Well, maybe Maduro is not actually as much of a rube as we thought.’”

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Column: Is William Barr right that history is written by winners? Not anymore

If you believe Trump is a great president, you'll probably be able to find a history book that supports your view one day.

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Angola billionaire Isobel dos Santos wants assets unfrozen

The Angolan billionaire says documents included a forged passport using the late film star's signature.

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Germany's coronavirus reproduction rate dips below critical threshold

The reproduction rate for the coronavirus pandemic in Germany fell below the critical threshold of 1 to an estimated 0.94 on Tuesday after a 1.07 reading on Monday, the Robert Koch Institute for public health and disease control said. "So far, we do not expect a renewed rising trend," the RKI said in its daily report, adding the overall number of cases in Germany was diminishing, meaning local outbreaks had a greater impact on 'R' than with higher case numbers. Confirmed coronavirus cases in Germany increased over the latest 24-hour period by 933 to 170,508, RKI data showed.

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Russia now has the 2nd most coronavirus cases in the world

Russia now has the second most confirmed coronavirus infections in the world, though its 232,000-plus confirmed cases is still far fewer than the United States.The country's cases continue to rise significantly day-to-day, although the rate is mostly stable. BBC News notes that there have now been 10 consecutive days with new infections above 10,000, most of which are in Moscow, which is home to around 12 million people.Despite the high number of cases, Russia has reported only 2,116 COVID-19 fatalities, giving the country a low death rate. The Kremlin attributes that success to a mass testing program, but many people are skeptical of the figure, believing the true total to be much higher, BBC reports.There are some high profile cases within the government, including President Vladimir Putin's spokesman Dmitry Peskov, who is hospitalized with the virus.None of this news has deterred Putin from beginning to ease lockdown measures, however — factory and construction workers were allowed back on the job Tuesday, although the president granted regions the authority to set their own restrictions depending on their status. Read more at BBC News.More stories from theweek.com How Trump lost his Electoral College edge to Biden 1 of these 7 women will likely be Joe Biden's running mate Progressives may block Democrats' coronavirus bill after it leaves out payroll funding for small businesses

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Biggest US solar project approved in Nevada despite critics

The Trump administration announced final approval Monday of the largest solar energy project in the U.S. and one of the biggest in the world despite objections from conservationists who say it will destroy thousands of acres of habitat critical to the survival of the threatened Mojave desert tortoise in Nevada. The $1 billion Gemini solar and battery storage project about 30 miles (48 kilometers) northeast of Las Vegas is expected to produce 690 megawatts of electricity — enough to power 260,000 households — and annually offset greenhouse emissions of about 83,000 cars. It will create about 2,000 direct and indirect jobs and inject an estimated $712.5 million in the economy as the nation tries to recover from the downturn brought on by the coronavirus outbreak, Interior Secretary David Bernhardt said.

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Suspect arrested in 30 year old apparent homophobic cold case death of American man in Sydney

An arrest has been made in a cold case killing of a gay man in Australia, more than 30 years after it occurred.American Mathematician Scott Johnson, 27, died in Sydney, Australia, in 1988 after falling off a cliff in what was categorised at the time as a suicide.

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The Supreme Court Can’t Help Trump Now Without Hurting Itself

The Supreme Court is about to hear cases about whether Congress and Manhattan’s district attorney can subpoena Donald Trump’s tax returns and other financial records. Trump has lost his challenges to the subpoenas repeatedly in the lower courts, and for good reason: his arguments against them are exceedingly weak.  But Trump, a profoundly transactional man who is desperate to keep his tax returns from seeing the light of day before the election, plainly expects the high court’s protection as a reward for packing the federal bench, including the Supreme Court itself, with young right-wing extremists. If Justice John Roberts and the court’s other right-wing jurists twist the law to do Trump this favor, they will deal a heavy blow to the court’s already compromised legitimacy, and potentially to their own power as well.This Decision Could Be Bigger Than ImpeachmentIf Trump loses in November, court packing might be his most enduring legacy (apart from mass death). Trump failed to pass any historic legislation during his first two years in office, while his party controlled both houses of Congress. Indeed, his only significant congressional achievement was signing a tax bill that so ostentatiously favored the very wealthy that it helped Democrats retake the House. But Trump, together with Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, has succeeded in remaking the federal judiciary, from the Supreme Court on down, by installing a huge number of extraordinarily ideological right-wingers, selected with the integral involvement of the Federalist Society. This has included filling slots McConnell held open during the Obama administration (not the least of them being the Supreme Court seat that opened up with the death of Antonin Scalia).McConnell reportedly views the court-packing scheme as his chief legacy, and for good reason. While conservatives publicly deride so-called “activist judges,” the Republican Party has relied since the Reagan years on “its” judges to void popular governmental policies, and, most importantly, to oppose democracy itself by selectively impairing voting rights. Of course, the Supreme Court overtly determined the outcome of one presidential election, in Bush v. Gore; but nearly as consequentially, the Roberts court voided the primary enforcement provisions of the Voting Rights Act in 2015, and in 2019, gave the green light to gerrymandering schemes the GOP has employed to entrench its control of numerous state legislatures, and until last year, the House of Representatives.  Last month, at the behest of the Wisconsin GOP, the Supreme Court forced many voters to choose between being disenfranchised and risking death by voting in person when it voided an order extending the time for the acceptance of absentee ballots, many of which were sent out late. It was all part of a gambit to save the seat of a right-wing judge on Wisconsin’s highest court. Angry Democratic voters showed up at polling places in droves and defeated the GOP incumbent, though some were needlessly infected in the process.The Supreme Court, and other federal courts dominated by GOP nominees, have also been bulwarks against popular governmental policies disfavored by Republicans and their allies, including by voiding gun safety laws and environmental regulations. During the last several years, as Trump has failed to enact his policies through legislation, the Supreme Court has stepped into the breach by affording the president wide latitude to unilaterally effectuate his radical agenda items unilaterally.Most notoriously, the court upheld Trump’s “Muslim ban,” expressly refusing to take into account Trump’s many admissions of his discriminatory purpose, starting with his announcement during the campaign that he would impose a “total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States.” The court has also repeatedly nullified emergency injunctions issued by lower courts against overreaching presidential actions even before ruling on the merits of challenges to Trump’s policies. For example, the court green-lighted Trump’s defiance of Congress’ refusal to fund his border wall by raiding funds appropriated for other purposes, and permitted Trump to implement rules allowing the government to label immigrants “public charges,” and deny them green cards, simply for accessing aid such as health care and other assistance during periods of extremis.McConnell and his GOP allies plainly have their sights set beyond Trump’s time in office, and expect that the huge cadre of extraordinarily ideological young judges they are installing to lifetime seats on the federal bench will continue to serve their interests, even if the GOP loses its grip on the government in the near future.Given that long view, it is unsurprising that McConnell insisted on bringing a Senate chock-full of vulnerable elderly legislators into session in the midst of a raging pandemic to confirm a 37-year-old former McConnell intern, Justin Walker —who recently wrote that the mayor of Louisville had criminalized Easter by applying a stay-at-home order to a “drive in” church service — to the powerful D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals.But Donald Trump is not one to care much about the future, let alone a future that might not include him. With the political walls closing in on him, Trump’s likely expectation is that “Trump justices,” and other right-leaning jurists, will do his bidding and protect him, the law be damned, is finally coming into open conflict with his party’s goal of maintaining a lasting judicial wall against Democratic policies. Trump is the only president since Lyndon Johnson whose tax returns have not been disclosed to the public, let alone Congress. He is plainly determined to ensure that it stays that way for as long as possible, and certainly until after the next election.SCOTUS Must Decide if Courts Will Condone Trump’s IllegalityBut the cost to the court of doing Trump’s bidding could be extremely high.In this regard, one of the few high-profile cases in which the Supreme Court ruled against Trump is notable. Last year, the court effectively prevented the administration’s attempt to add a citizenship question to the census because evidence established the government’s claimed purpose—to further the enforcement of the Voting Rights Act—was fraudulent (or in Roberts’ more diplomatic words, “contrived”).  The chief justice was unwilling to openly and notoriously further what amounted to misleading conduct by Trump’s cronies, likely recognizing the risk to the court’s legitimacy could be high.The cost of enlisting the court in Trump’s legally meritless effort to hide his personal financial records from Congress and law enforcement investigators could be much higher.As Trump’s most recent Supreme Court appointee, Brett Kavanaugh, observed, the “greatest moments in American judicial history” have been when courts “stood up to the other branches, were not cowed, and enforced the law”—including when the Supreme Court ordered Nixon to turn over the inculpatory tapes that drove him from office. If the Supreme Court is cowed when it faces the current test, it will be the tribunal’s most ignominious moment in decades, and will not soon be forgotten.This will be particularly true if, as seems increasingly likely, Joe Biden enters the White House next January. It is unlikely that a President Biden would readily accept a Supreme Court setting out to void his policies after the court had bent over backward to protect those of his predecessor. Furthermore, if as seems increasingly possible, Biden takes office with a Democratic majority in the Senate, the Court-packing scheme that Trump and McConnell have counted on as their legacy could be placed in immediate danger.The size of the Supreme Court, and indeed of the entire federal judiciary, is determined by statute, not by the Constitution. Hence, it is within the power of Congress to increase the size of any court, including the Supreme Court, and likewise within the power of the president and the Senate to confirm any nominee. The only thing that would stand in the way of a Democratic Congress and president undoing the GOP’s remaking of the courts, including by adding to the members of the Supreme Court, would be political will. FDR was unable to force Congress to take that step, and Biden has ruled it out himself to date. But in the wake of a Supreme Court decision to protect a desperate President Trump from embarrassment, and potential criminal liability, on the eve of an election, such will might be amply available.Therefore, even if Roberts and every other member of the Supreme Court’s current five-justice conservative majority lack compunctions about sacrificing legal principles to protect Donald Trump, one or more of them may well recognize that doing so could come at a heavy cost to their own power.Read more at The Daily Beast.Get our top stories in your inbox every day. Sign up now!Daily Beast Membership: Beast Inside goes deeper on the stories that matter to you. Learn more.

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WHO Says It Cannot Invite Taiwan to Annual Summit after China Says Participation Would ‘Severely Violate the One-China Principle’

The World Health Organization said it could not invite Taiwan to an upcoming international health summit, despite pleas from the U.S. and its allies, due to “divergent views,” after China said it "deplores and opposes" efforts to include Taipei in the gathering.WHO principal legal officer Steven Solomon explained to reporters on Monday that the WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom could not invite Taiwan — which is not a member of the WHO — to participate in the annual meeting of the World Health Assembly (WHA) if members of the international body disagreed."To put it crisply, director-generals only extend invitations when it's clear that member states support doing so, that director-generals have a mandate, a basis to do so," Solomon explained. "Today however, the situation is not the same. Instead of clear support, there are divergent views among member states and no basis there for — no mandate — for the DG to extend an invitation."Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said last week that Tedros should include Taiwan in the upcoming WHA meeting, saying “he has the power to do, and as his predecessors have done on multiple occasions.” The proposal was supported by New Zealand, Canada, Australia, and Germany, but China disparaged the claim, saying that those supporting it “severely violate the one-China principle.”Last month, Tedros himself accused Taiwan of racist “attacks” over his handling of the coronavirus pandemic, an allegation that Taiwan denied as “unprovoked and untrue.” Tedros’s claim came after Taiwan said in March that the organization had ignored its December warnings that human-to-human transmission of coronavirus was possible. The WHO tweeted on January 14 that “Preliminary investigations conducted by the Chinese authorities have found no clear evidence of human-to-human transmission.”

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Colombian airline Avianca files for bankruptcy in US court

The firm said its income has dropped 80% since grounding its fleet due to the coronavirus pandemic.

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Saudi Arabia to enforce nationwide 24-hour curfew for Eid holiday

Saudi Arabia will enforce a countrywide 24-hour curfew during the five-day Muslim Eid al-Fitr holiday later this month to help stem the spread of the coronavirus, the interior ministry said on Tuesday. The curfew will apply from May 23-May 27 following the end of the fasting month of Ramadan. Until then, commercial and business enterprises will remain open as they now are and people can move freely between 9 a.m. local time (0600 GMT) and 5 p.m., except in Mecca which remains under a full curfew, the statement published by state news agency SPA said.

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Dr. Fauci warns against triggering 'an outbreak that you may not be able to control' by reopening too soon

Dr. Anthony Fauci, head of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, on Tuesday warned the Senate about the dangers of states reopening too quickly amid the coronavirus pandemic, saying this could result in more "suffering and death."Fauci, a member of President Trump's coronavirus task force, remotely testified before the Senate on Tuesday and said that the "consequences could be really serious" if states reopen their economies too quickly without following the White House's guidelines, noting they must be capable to respond to an increase in infections. "There is a real risk that you will trigger an outbreak that you may not be able to control, which in fact, paradoxically, will set you back, not only leading to some suffering and death that could be avoided, but could even set you back on the road to try to get economic recovery," Fauci said. "It would almost turn the clock back rather than going forward."Many states have started to reopen their economies despite not meeting the White House's guidelines, which include that states should have a "downward trajectory of positive tests" or a "downward trajectory of documented cases" over two weeks. According to The New York Times, "in more than half of states easing restrictions, case counts are trending upward, positive test results are rising, or both."As of Tuesday, 80,000 deaths from COVID-19 have been reported in the United States, but Fauci also told lawmakers during the hearing that this is probably an undercount."The number is likely higher," Fauci said. "I don't know exactly what percent higher, but almost certainly it's higher." > Dr. Fauci warns that if states and cities disregard reopening checkpoints,"there is a real risk you will trigger an outbreak you might not be able to control ... leading to some suffering and death that could be avoided." pic.twitter.com/CsLmxfHEzQ> > -- NBC News (@NBCNews) May 12, 2020More stories from theweek.com How Trump lost his Electoral College edge to Biden 1 of these 7 women will likely be Joe Biden's running mate Progressives may block Democrats' coronavirus bill after it leaves out payroll funding for small businesses

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Hawaii is arresting tourists who break the state's mandatory 14-day quarantine to go to the beach

Tourists visiting Hawaii must quarantine for 14 days upon arrival to help prevent the spread of the coronavirus, but some aren't following the rules.

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Germany sees worrying COVID figures after weeks of relaxation

Scientists are watching closely as the "reproduction rate" of the virus behind COVID-19 has risen above a crucial threshold for 2 days in a row.

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'Classless': McConnell says Obama 'should have kept his mouth shut' on Trump's handling of coronavirus

"I think it's a little bit classless, frankly, to critique an administration that comes after you," McConnell said after Obama criticized Trump.

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New York City recorded 24,000 more deaths than normal over 2 months this spring. About 5,000 of those are still a mystery.

Some of the unexplained deaths could still be attributed to the coronavirus, but public-health experts say we may never know for sure.

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