Tuesday, May 26 coronavirus updates & top news briefs
Hello, welcome to The Daily Moth! It is Tuesday, May 26. Here are today’s coronavirus updates and top news briefs.
As of this afternoon, the U.S. has 98,500 deaths from Covid-19. President Donald Trump tweeted that he did his job well because we could have been facing up to 2 million deaths if he did not shut down entry from China early. He repeated his label of the coronavirus as the “China Virus” and patted himself on the back by saying he is getting great reviews on his handling with ventilators, testing, and medical supply distribution.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi tweeted that after all this time and all the deaths, President Trump still does not have a serious plan for increasing testing to stop the spread of the virus.
Yesterday Joe Biden appeared in public for the first time in over two months to visit a war memorial in Delaware with his wife, Jill to mark Memorial Day. The two were wearing black masks.
President Trump retweeted a mocking tweet of how Joe Biden looks with a mask. Mask-wearing has become a political topic. White House Press Sec. Kayleigh McEnany said it was peculiar that Biden wore a mask in public but didn’t wear a mask when he was at home with his wife. Here’s a reminder that the CDC said the purpose of masks is to prevent the spread of coronavirus from asymptotical carriers. The CDC also encourages mask-wearing in public, not at home with those who you live with.
Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer and her husband, Marc Malloy, is facing criticism for allegedly trying to use his position as the governor’s husband to pressure a marina in the northern lower peninsula where they have a boat — to place their boat in the water before the Memorial Day Weekend. In a phone call, the marina this was not possible because it was too last-minute and they were closed for a long time due to coronavirus. The husband asked if it would make a difference that he was the governor’s husband. This was viewed as putting pressure on the marina and being in conflict with Gov. Whitmer’s encouragement for people who live downstate to not visit the northern regions to stem the spread of the virus. Gov. Whitmer said today that her husband was trying to be funny but failed and that she was not laughing because she knew how it would be perceived and that the husband regrets it.
The New York Times reported that about 12 states and the District of Columbia are seeing increases in Covid-19 cases, affecting both states that reopened early and those who are still locked down.
News reports said that the New York Stock Exchange trading floor reopened this morning. The Dow Jones had a very good day, rising above 25,000 points for the first time since it plunged below 19,000 points in mid-March. News reports say this means investors are betting that the U.S. economy will start to rebound in the near future.
Japan is ending their state of emergency and will start to reopen. Italy will reopen all its airports next week.
The World Health Organization warned that if countries that have decreasing cases of Covid-19 relax their restrictions too soon, they may be hit with a second peak.
Now, top news briefs.
A black man named George Floyd died being detained and kneeled in the neck and head area on the street by police officers in Minneapolis for more than five minutes. This happened Monday night after police officers got a call about a suspected forgery. When officers arrived, they said they saw Floyd sitting on top of a car and that he resisted arrest in an altercation that ended with the kneeling. Viral videos showed Floyd saying “Please, please I can’t breathe.” Floyd passed out, but the officer continued to kneel on his neck and head, ignoring bystanders who tried to intervene. An ambulance arrived and transported him to a hospital, where he was pronounced dead. Today it was announced that the four police officers involved in Floyd’s arrest were fired. Minneapolis’ Mayor Jacob Frey said what happened was “messed up” and that the officer failed in the most basic human sense. The FBI and law enforcement in Minnesota will investigate.
I was contacted by a person from Costa Rica who said the country has now legalized same-sex / gay marriage. It is the first country in Central America and the sixth in Latin America to legalize same-sex marriage. News reports confirmed this, showing a lesbian couple as the first same-sex couple in Costa Rica to be married. There was a viral video of the ceremony as people celebrated.
In New York City, a white woman named Amy Cooper was seen on video calling the police to accuse a black man, Christian Cooper, of threatening her in Central Park while dragging her dog. What happened — Christian was birdwatching and asked Amy to put a leash on her dog per park policy. The two had a brief verbal argument and Christian started to record Amy — and that’s when Amy said she would call the police. Christian said please call the cops, and Amy did call the police and screamed that she was being threatened by an African American man. Christian later posted the video, which went viral. Amy was fired from her job at an investment firm. Christian said in media interviews that he doesn’t think that there is an African American person in America who hasn’t experience something like this at some point. He said that we live in the age of Ahmad Arbery where black men are shot because of presumptions that people make.
That’s all the coronavirus updates and top news briefs for today. Thank you for watching “The Daily Moth.” See you tomorrow and stay with the light!
https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/coronavirus-government-response-updates-trump-tweets-states-open/story?id=70880401&cid=clicksource_4380645_2_heads_hero_live_hero_hed
https://www.cnn.com/2020/05/25/politics/trump-threatens-charlotte-republican-convention/index.html
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/05/26/us/coronavirus-live-updates.html?action=click&module=Spotlight&pgtype=Homepage
https://www.axios.com/coronavirus-latest-developments-8b8990c4-6762-494a-8ee0-5091746bda9b.html
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/05/26/us/minneapolis-police-man-died.html
https://www.nbcnews.com/feature/nbc-out/lesbian-couple-become-costa-rica-s-first-same-sex-spouses-n1214761
https://www.npr.org/2020/05/26/862230724/white-woman-who-called-police-on-black-bird-watcher-in-central-park-placed-on-le