President Trump held a rally in Phoenix on Wednesday night at the same time Democrats were debating in Las Vegas, and he was sure to get in several digs against the candidates.
He called Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) a "phony," referred to Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) as "crazy," and called former New York Mayor Mike Bloomberg "Mini Mike." Trump proclaimed that it doesn't matter who the Democratic nominee is, because "we're going to win," but seemed to hint that he thinks it will be a close race in Arizona in November. While he won the state in 2016, he only beat Hillary Clinton by 3.5 percentage points. "We'll be back a lot," he said.
Trump also told an oft-repeated story about a man who allegedly told Trump "my wife used to look at me like I'm a total loser," but because of how high his 401(k) is, "she loves me again. She thinks I'm a genius." The man's profession and his 401(k)'s rate of growth always changes when he tells the story, and Trump kept Wednesday's version of the man shrouded in mystery, simply referring to him as "Henry," USA Today reports. Catherine Garcia
A train engineer working at the Port of Los Angeles has been charged with stealing a locomotive and intentionally derailing it in an attempt to hit the USNS Mercy.
The Mercy arrived in Los Angeles last week to provide an additional 1,000 hospital beds to address the COVID-19 pandemic. Eduardo Moreno, an engineer at the port, told authorities he found the boat "suspicious" and drove a train toward the ship because "people don't know what's going on here," the Los Angeles Times reports.
Moreno steered the cargo train through barriers designed to stop its engine and a few fences, according to a court filing. The train still ground to a halt about 250 yards away from the Mercy, CNN reports. No one was injured in the crash, but it did cause a diesel fuel leak, which firefighters and hazmat crews quickly cleaned up.
Moreno tried to flee the scene after the crash, but was quickly apprehended, a court filing says. He allegedly took a video from inside the train, which shows him lighting a flare as he drove the train through the barriers. Moreno could end up in jail for up to 20 years upon conviction, per the Times. Kathryn Krawczyk
On Thursday, the Food and Drug Administration significantly rolled back restrictions on blood donations from men who have had sex with other men, citing an "urgent need for blood" caused by the coronavirus outbreak.
The FDA's decision marks a dramatic shift from federal rules that have been in place since 1983, the height of the AIDS crisis, when the government ordered a lifetime ban on blood donations from gay and bisexual men, NBC News reports. Those rules were slightly loosened in 2015, when it was changed to a year-long abstinence requirement. On Thursday, the FDA shortened the window of abstinence even further, to three months.
Peter Marks, the director of FDA's Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research, said in the announcement that "[blood] donor centers have experienced a dramatic reduction in donations due to the implementation of social distancing and the cancellation of blood drives" since the outbreak began, and that "the FDA has concluded that current policies regarding certain donor eligibility criteria can be modified without compromising the safety of the blood supply."
Activists, though, have long criticized restrictions on gay and bisexual men donating blood, BuzzFeed News notes, calling the rules scientifically unfounded and biased. Surgeon General Jerome Adams said Thursday that "these changes are based on the best science that we have today regarding the time that it takes to test positive for HIV" and that he encouraged all people to "do the right thing: donate blood." Jeva Lange
Say "oh, hello" to your latest quarantine binge.
Nick Kroll and John Mulaney have donned their turtlenecks once again to reprise their roles as Gil Faizon and George St. Geegland, two old men who first bemoaned today's world on The Kroll Show and eventually their own Broadway show turned Netflix special. Not that you'll see their constantly frowning faces on this latest Oh, Hello iteration, seeing as it's a podcast devoted to one of Faizon and St. Geegland's favorite subjects: Princess Diana.
Kroll and Mulaney shared a trailer for Oh, Hello: the P'dcast on Thursday, saying at least the first episode will come out Friday. The trailer doesn't even feature Faizon and St. Geegland's exaggerated New York accents; instead we hear from This American Life producer Line Misitzis who says she started working with the duo a year and a half ago. The project apparently fell apart, but Faizon and St. Geegland have since realized "what the world needs is a podcast" — and by releasing it, they're going to "win the quarantine." Kathryn Krawczyk
The Democratic National Convention has become the latest summer event to be postponed due to the COVID-19 coronavirus pandemic.
Organizers of the 2020 Democratic National Convention, which was originally scheduled to begin on July 13, announced Thursday it's officially being postponed to August.
"Ultimately, the health and safety of our convention attendees and the people of Milwaukee is our top priority," DNC Chair Tom Perez said.
Democratic National Convention Committee CEO Joe Solmonese also said Thursday that taking "additional time to monitor how this situation unfolds" is the "smartest approach," but "I'm confident our convention planning team and our partners will find a way to deliver a convention in Milwaukee this summer that places our Democratic nominee on the path to victory in November."
The Thursday announcement floats the possibility of significant changes to the event as a result of the coronavirus pandemic, saying the convention committee will "further explore all options to ensure nominating the next president of the United States is done without unnecessary risk to public health," with options including "everything from adjusting the convention's format to crowd size and schedule."
Former Vice President Joe Biden in recent days had been suggesting that delaying the convention would likely be necessary, saying Tuesday it's "hard to envision" keeping the July 13 date and later predicting it will move to August. The convention is now scheduled to begin on Aug. 17. The Republican National Convention had already been set for Aug. 24. Brendan Morrow
This might blow your mind, but indoor cats are technically in quarantine all the time. Anyway, Jennifer Garner and her three children were evidentially getting a little stir crazy earlier this week and decided to take their family cat for a walk. In a stroller.
"As someone who religiously checks Garner's Instagram feed for hilarious cooking adventures and fangirl ballet posts, I considered myself pretty in-the-know about Garner's pets, but this one got me," a baffled Marissa DeSantis wrote for The Evening Standard. Importantly, while they were out the family did not awkwardly run into the kids' dad (and Garner's ex) Ben Affleck, who lives in the same Los Angeles neighborhood and has been spending his time in quarantine taking daily PDA-filled walks with Ana de Armas.
Check out pictures of the family's fluffy friend out for a joyride at The Daily Mail. Jeva Lange
The governor of Georgia seems to have been unaware until this week that the novel coronavirus can be spread by people without symptoms, something that is by no means new information.
Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp (R) in a news conference on Wednesday, in which he announced a stay-at-home order for the state, pointed out that the COVID-19 coronavirus is "transmitting before people see signs" while wrongly suggesting this was not known until very recently.
"We've been telling people from directives from the CDC for weeks now that if you start feeling bad, stay home," Kemp said. "Those individuals could have been infecting people before they ever felt bad. Well, we didn't know that until the last 24 hours."
In fact, health officials have been warning about this for quite some time. The Washington Post notes, for example, that Dr. Anthony Fauci, the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, said as far back as Jan. 31 that it was at first "not clear whether an asymptomatic person could transmit it to someone while they were asymptomatic," but "now, we know from a recent report from Germany that that is absolutely the case." Brendan Morrow