Wrapping up our live politics coverage for tonight. You can continue to follow our global coronavirus liveblog for updates around the world.
A summary of the key news from today:
Trump signed a historic $2.2tn emergency relief package into law.
After delays, the president finally invoked the Defense Production Act to require General Motors to start making ventilators.
At the daily White House coronavirus briefing, Trump said that in the next 100 days, the United States would try to produce or obtain 100,000 ventilators.
Trump said that the UK prime minister, Boris Johnson, told him today “We need ventilators,” and that if the US made more ventilators than it needed, it would share them with the UK, Italy and other allies.
Asked if every American who needed a ventilator would have one during this crisis, Trump lashed out against the reporter, calling him a “cutie pie” and “wise guy” and complained about the difficult situation he had inherited.
The conditions in US immigration detention centers sparked a condemnation from Iran’s foreign minister, who called on the US to release Iranians, including a doctor currently being held in an Ice detention center in Louisiana.
Hundreds of employees of Bird, a scooter startup based in California, were laid off on Friday as the company grapples with decreased demand amid the coronavirus epidemic.
My friend just got laid off along with 400 other employees by dialing into a pre-recorded Zoom message. Her manager never even called to say goodbye. The virus may be out of your control, but how humanely you handle it is not.
“The unprecedented Covid-19 crisis has forced our leadership team and the board of directors to make many extremely difficult and painful decisions relating to some of your teammates”, the Bird CEO, Travis VanderZanden, wrote to staffers in a memo obtained by the Guardian.
The layoffs represent about 30% of the workforce of the shared scooter company. Bird confirmed the layoffs and said former employees will receive four weeks of pay and three months of health coverage.
The company disputed reports that layoffs were carried out over a pre-recorded message on Zoom video conferencing. From Bird:
“Bird employees are currently all working from home and the impacted individuals received the news on a web-based call. We purposefully and intentionally did not have any video on to protect privacy as we delivered the news live to individuals. A live speaker delivered the news over the web-based call and a slide was projected outlining additional information including four weeks of pay, three months of medical coverage and an extended timeframe to exercise options. Each individual then received a call or email from Bird’s talent team as a follow up. We are eternally grateful to the impacted individuals and wish that the entire situation could have been avoided.”
Bird’s layoffs come as many shared transportation companies struggle in the face of a global pandemic. Lime scooters have suspended service in the Bay Area in light of health concerns and Gig car share took cars off the streets to clean them this week, before reinstating them on Friday.
Iranian minister calls for release of Iranian doctor in Ice custody
Sam Levin
The current situation in America’s immigration detention centers is sparking international condemnation.
Iran’s foreign minister, Mohammad Javad Zarif, has called on the US to release Iranians jailed on sanctions-related issues as concerns about the spread of coronavirus are dramatically escalating. Citing the Guardian’s reporting on one Iranian scientist’s ongoing detention in an Louisiana, Zarif accused the US of taking “several Iranian scientists hostage” and keeping “innocent men jailed in horrific facilities”:
US has taken several Iranian scientists hostage—without charge or on spurious sanctions charges—& not releasing them; even when its OWN courts reject the absurd charges
US even refuses medical furlough—amid #covid19—for innocent men jailed in horrific facilities
Dr Sirous Asgari, a materials science and engineering professor, was exonerated in a US sanctions trial last year, but remains jailed by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice). Speaking by phone from an Ice facility in Louisiana, he told the Guardian this week that the conditions inside were filthy and overcrowded, and officials were doing little to prevent a deadly Covid-19 outbreak:
What it's like right now in one Louisiana ICE detention facility, according to a jailed Iranian scientist inside:
-no hand sanitizer, no regular cleaning of bathrooms. He and other detainees are cleaning when they can, with minimal soap avail. (THREAD) https://t.co/LT9a6M6pYH
Dr. Sirous Asgari: “The way that they have been treating us is absolutely terrifying. I don’t think many people in the US know what is happening inside."
“They are downplaying it in this facility, that it is safe … But coronavirus is a viral bomb waiting to blow up here.” pic.twitter.com/rhVE8DSNuP
After Asgari was acquitted on charges of stealing trade secrets, he tried to “self deport” back to Iran, but Ice has kept him indefinitely detained. Asgari said detainees at his facility have no hand sanitizer and that Ice is not regularly cleaning the bathrooms. For two weeks, he said Ice also refused to let him use a mask he had brought with him even though he has a history of respiratory problems.
In his tweet today, Zarif said the US was jailing Iranians “without charge or on spurious sanctions charges” and refusing to release them even when its OWN courts reject the absurd charges”.
Authority. Experience. The ability to communicate.
Dr Anthony Fauci has become a trusted figure for many Americans overwhelmed by the coronavirus pandemic.
Today, at the end of another contentious and partially accurate White House coronavirus briefing, a reporter asked Fauci to take a step back and address a more philosophical question. In his years of responding to serious epidemics, had he experienced anything like the past month in the United States?
While the HIV/Aids epidemic was incredibly devastating, the suffering and deaths unfolded more slowly than what people around the world are experiencing now, Fauci said.
“What we’re seeing now, in actual real time, is something that’s unprecedented. This is something we have never seen before, at least in our generation. They’ve seen maybe something like this 100 years ago.”
“We’re really being challenged to not only learn in real time, to be able to respond in a way that’s helpful an effective, we’re also in uncharted waters. That is the thing that I find different...”
“It isn’t as if we have an example of how to do it.”
Los Angeles CCs 200 people on Covid-19 testing results email
It appears the city of Los Angeles inadvertently notified more than 200 people about their Covid-19 results in a mass email that included the names of all recipients, according to LA Times reporter Soumya Karlamangla:
apparently the city of LA notified people of their negative covid results in a mass email but didn’t bcc anyone, so all 200+ recipients could see the names of everyone else who got tested, which is a huge privacy violation
The mass email, which reportedly failed to blind copy the recipients, was informing them of negative results, according to a screenshot posted by Karlamangla, who noted this was a major privacy violation:
this was the email forwarded to me. not including the long list of recipients for obvious reasons pic.twitter.com/HIl21Cxc2B
The email came from someone listed as a contract specialist for the mayor’s office of public safety, writing on behalf of the health department’s Covid-19 response team. Spokespeople for the mayor’s office did not immediately respond to the Guardian’s request for comment this afternoon.
Update, 6:45pm local time in California: A spokesperson for the mayor has responded to the Guardian’s questions, saying staff “accidentally” emailed results to 216 recipients who tested negative without blind copying the addresses, adding: “We apologize for this error, have alerted the recipients of yesterday’s email and have revised the protocols associated with all notifications of this type to protect against any future disclosures.”
During briefing, Trump feuds with state governors, makes false claims
Two key moments from Trump’s coronavirus briefing today.
Trump tossed out barbs at state governors he said have been insufficiently gracious to him, and said he advised the vice-president, Mike Pence, just not to return their calls. (But added that Pence called them anyway.)
! Trump says he's told Vice President Mike Pence not to call the governors of Washington or Michigan.
"They don't treat you right, I don't call."
He says Pence is a different type of person and will call anyway.
And asked if his administration’s belated push to manufacture or obtain 100,000 ventilators meant that everyone who needed a ventilator will be able to get one, he lashed out at the reporter asking the question, calling him a “wise guy” and complaining about all the problems he had inherited.
Incredible moment.@jonkarl asks multiple times: Will everyone who needs a ventilator have one?
President Trump: “Don’t be a cutie pie. Everyone who needs one?"
Fact check: transition to online public school classes was not seamless
Besty DeVos, the education secretary, claimed in the White House briefing today that the transition to online classes had been “seamless”.
Fact: around 15% of households with school-age children don’t have internet at home, according to a Pew Research Center analysis of 2015 census data. In addition, 20% of teens told Pew researchers (in a separate survey) that they often or sometimes can’t complete homework assignments because they don’t have reliable access to the internet or a computer. Both reports found that affected students are more likely to be from low-income and minority families.
Angela Siefer, the executive director of the National Digital Inclusion Alliance, told City Lab: “The kids whose families do have internet connection are going to have at least some learning continuing during this period, and the kids who don’t won’t.”
Panera Bread partnering with the USDA to serve meals to kids
One of the country’s fast casual food chains announced a partnership with the department of agriculture and a children’s hunger group to serve fresh, healthy meals to kids across Ohio, and eventually across multiple states.
Fact check: has Trump always taken coronavirus seriously?
Trump today switched from saying that the coronavirus pandemic was unpredictable (see news coverage yesterday), to again claiming he’d always taken it seriously: ‘I was the first one to say to China, when they had the problem, not to come in and that was a long time ago.’
In fact, at the beginning of the coronavirus crisis, Trump repeatedly downplayed the threat, inaccurately comparing it to the flu and told his supporters that growing worry about the coronavirus was a “hoax..
By the time Trump announced travel restrictions from China on 31 January, most major airlines had already suspended flights, following the lead of several major international carriers that had stopped due to the coronavirus outbreak.
Trump's changing reactions to coronavirus: from calm to closing borders – video report
Advocates for students with disabilities are worried
As the education secretary, Besty DeVos, wraps up her briefing, worth reading this important story:
The new federal relief package gives Betsy Devos 30 days to waive additional provisions of the Individuals With Disabilities Education Act to provide schools with "limited flexibility."
The education secretary, Besty DeVos, is now at the podium at the White House briefing giving an update on efforts to support students even as schools are closed.
She also gave a salute to many teachers and other Americans who were doing inspiring things to keep kids learning and on track. In her list: the heroic volunteering efforts of....Karen Pence, the wife of the vice president, Mike Pence.
DeVos says 47 states have requested school testing waivers for 2019-20 academic year and 46 have been approved within 24 hours.
