| | | | | |  | | By Jake Sherman, Anna Palmer, Garrett Ross and Eli Okun | Presented by |  | | | PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP'S REELECTION CAMPAIGN dropped a new minute-long ad on Twitter this morning that intimates JOE BIDEN was soft on China and clueless about its rise, and attempts to depict him as mentally unstable. The clip, which ends with Biden saying "I'm not going nuts" … The coming ad onslaught -- $10 million spend -- via Alex Isenstadt -- FROM ANDREW BATES, of the BIDEN campaign: "Joe Biden sounded the alarm about the coronavirus outbreak early, calling on Trump to lead and mobilize against it - while publicly warning him not to trust the Chinese government's word about containment. But Trump didn't listen. Instead, he echoed Chinese Communist Party propaganda and horrifically mismanaged the worst public health crisis in over 100 years. Now over 70,000 Americans have lost their lives and our economy is spiralling as we endure the worst job losses since the Great Depression." THE LONG VIEW … FORMER AUSTRALIAN PM KEVIN RUDD in FOREIGN AFFAIRS: "[D]espite the best efforts of ideological warriors in Beijing and Washington, the uncomfortable truth is that China and the United States are both likely to emerge from this crisis significantly diminished. Neither a new Pax Sinica nor a renewed Pax Americana will rise from the ruins. Rather, both powers will be weakened, at home and abroad. "And the result will be a continued slow but steady drift toward international anarchy across everything from international security to trade to pandemic management. With nobody directing traffic, various forms of rampant nationalism are taking the place of order and cooperation. The chaotic nature of national and global responses to the pandemic thus stands as a warning of what could come on an even broader scale." YIKES … COVID-19 IN THE WHITE HOUSE -- "One of Trump's personal valets has tested positive for coronavirus," by CNN's Kaitlan Collins and Peter Morris: "The valets are members of an elite military unit dedicated to the White House and often work very close to the president and first family. Trump was upset when he was informed Wednesday that the valet had tested positive, a source told CNN, and the president was subsequently tested again by the White House physician. … "A White House source said the valet, a man who has not been identified, exhibited 'symptoms' Wednesday morning, and said the news that someone close to Trump had tested positive for coronavirus was 'hitting the fan' in the West Wing." REMEMBER THIS? … RYAN HUTCHINS and JOSH GERSTEIN: "Supreme Court overturns 'Bridgegate' convictions as Christie slams 'political crusade'": "The U.S. Supreme Court on Thursday tossed the federal government's case in the infamous "Bridgegate" scandal, clearing the convictions of two allies of former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie. "In a unanimous ruling that further chips away at the nation's public corruption case law, the justices concluded that the two defendants — Bridget Ann Kelly and Bill Baroni — did not defraud the government of its 'property' by closing off two local access lanes to the George Washington Bridge over three days in September 2013. "The traffic-snarling political stunt was designed to punish a Democratic mayor who had refused to endorse Christie, a Republican, for re-election as New Jersey governor." THE NEW ECONOMY … 3.2 MILLION Americans filed jobless claims for the first time last week, bringing the total of unemployed to more than 33 million people. RED-LINE ALERT … SPEAKER NANCY PELOSI said the next coronavirus stimulus bill must have more money for SNAP -- the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program. … PELOSI said she hopes the House will come back next week. -- PELOSI said she wants an expansion of unemployment insurance in the next coronavirus bill. "Of course," she said, when asked. HOUSE MINORITY LEADER KEVIN MCCARTHY announced a "Republican-led China task force." He will, though, appoint lawmakers to PELOSI'S coronavirus spending oversight committee -- Reps. STEVE SCALISE (R-La.) and JIM JORDAN (R-Ohio) will be on the panel. The full list, via John Bresnahan -- SCALISE sent a packet to lawmakers this morning, saying his three priorities for the PELOSI panel are: "1) Hold the Chinese government accountable for hiding the truth from the world and allowing this deadly, destructive disease to spread throughout the world. 2) Help ensure the success of the largest relief eort in American history. 3) Provide clear and immediate guidance on how to safely reopen our economy." The packet Good Thursday afternoon. | | A message from Google: Free tools and resources for small businesses from Google. To help them navigate uncertainty in the wake of COVID-19, Google is providing free tools and resources for small and medium-sized businesses—from help with remote work to $340 million in Google Ads credits for existing customers. Learn more. | | | HAPPENING THIS AFTERNOON -- ANNA will host a Women Rule conversation with MELINDA GATES at 4 p.m. Watch COREY LEWANDOWSKI on TRUMP, via DAVID BRODY in "Just the News": "One overarching political question looms above the fall presidential race: Will the economy rebound in time to cement the president's reelection? "'I'm very concerned,' Corey Lewandowski, a Trump 2020 campaign senior advisor, tells Just The News. 'We've got 30 million Americans out of work right now, we've got an unemployment rate north of 19%. If you're a political guy, that's a devastating number, so you have to be concerned about it.' "Of course, reopening the economy brings with it its own risks -- first and foremost to life and health and, incidentally, to prospects for a second Trump term. Lewandowski, Trump's campaign manager for the bulk of the 2016 historic presidential campaign, has a reputation for blunt talk, and he doesn't hide his anxiety about the risk of re-opening too soon. "'It's a huge gamble,' Lewandowski admits in a podcast interview for The Pod's Honest Truth with David Brody. … 'If there is a resurgence … not just in the next four weeks or six weeks, but as the weather turns again, if come the fall in September, in October, we see an uptick again in the COVID-19 pandemic coming back because we didn't handle it right the first time — we still don't have testing and we don't have a solution — that is devastating as an incumbent president of the United States.'" MORE SMALL BIZ WOES -- "SBA slashes disaster-loan limit from $2 million to $150,000, shuts out nearly all new applicants," by WaPo's Aaron Gregg and Erica Werner: "Congress gave the disaster loan program more than $50 billion in new funding in recent relief bills to offer quick-turnaround loans to businesses slammed by the coronavirus pandemic. But by many accounts, it is failing spectacularly. "After initially telling businesses that individual disaster loans could be as high as $2 million, SBA has now imposed a $150,000 limit without publicly announcing the change, said people familiar with the situation who were not authorized to speak publicly. … Additionally, the agency has faced a backlog of millions of applications for the disaster loan program for the past several weeks, several SBA officials have said. The SBA has been so overwhelmed by demand that it is now allowing only agricultural interests to submit applications, as it works through an enormous backlog." WaPo THE LATEST NUMBERS -- "Daily Coronavirus-Case Count Surges," by WSJ's Phred Dvorak, Jennifer Calfas and Georgi Kantchev: "The world recorded its highest daily number of new coronavirus cases in almost two weeks, even as the U.S. and a host of other nations relax restrictions that kept businesses closed and people off the streets. "New confirmed infections on Wednesday topped 92,700, the most since April 24 and the fourth-highest daily total ever, according to data compiled by Johns Hopkins University. The U.S. accounted for more than a quarter of them, around 24,300—an elevated number but much lower than the 36,000 one-day peak it logged in April. Other countries reporting daily totals of more than 10,000 included Russia and Brazil, whose outbreaks had seemed mild at first but where the spread of the virus has accelerated sharply." WSJ THE REOPENING REALITY -- "Smartphone data shows out-of-state visitors flocked to Georgia as restaurants and other businesses reopened," by WaPo's Katherine Shaver: "One week after Georgia allowed dine-in restaurants, hair salons and other businesses to reopen, an additional 62,440 visitors arrived there daily, most from surrounding states where such businesses remained shuttered, according to an analysis of smartphone location data. "Researchers at the University of Maryland say the data provides some of the first hard evidence that reopening some state economies ahead of others could potentially worsen and prolong the spread of the novel coronavirus." WaPo | | | | POLITICO Magazine Justice Reform: The Decarceration Issue, presented by Verizon: Over the past decade, the long-standing challenge of criminal-justice reform has emerged under the spotlight with a new twist: Both Republicans and Democrats are on board. But if both parties want to lower the incarceration rate, why are our jail and prison populations still so high? The latest series from POLITICO Magazine works to answer this important question and take a deeper look into what it will take to make progress in the policy and politics of justice reform. READ THE FULL ISSUE. | | | | | THE IMPACT -- "Neiman Marcus, the Retailer to the Rich, Stumbles Into Bankruptcy," by WSJ's Suzanne Kapner and Soma Biswas: "Neiman Marcus Group Inc. filed for chapter 11 bankruptcy protection on Thursday in Texas, becoming the latest large retailer to seek a court restructuring during the pandemic that has closed much of the U.S. economy." WSJ HOW WE GOT HERE -- "Travel From New York City Seeded Wave of U.S. Outbreaks," by NYT's Benedict Carey and James Glanz: "New York City's coronavirus outbreak grew so large by early March that the city became the primary source of new infections in the United States, new research reveals, as thousands of infected people traveled from the city and seeded outbreaks around the country. "The research indicates that a wave of infections swept from New York City through much of the country before the city began setting social distancing limits to stop the growth. That helped to fuel outbreaks in Louisiana, Texas, Arizona and as far away as the West Coast." NYT MORE SCOTUS -- "Supreme Court punts on immigration-law case," by Josh Gerstein: "The Supreme Court has effectively balked at deciding whether a federal law violates the First Amendment by making it a crime to encourage a foreigner to remain in the U.S. illegally. "In a unanimous ruling, the justices said the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals should not have issued a ruling declaring that law overbroad because the lawyer for the criminal defendant in the case failed to do so until the appeals court brought it up. Writing for the court, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg faulted the appeals court for raising the issue and requesting friend-of-the-court briefs on it, rather than simply responding to the arguments from the parties." POLITICO AFTERNOON READ … NYT'S LISA LERER: "His Day Job: Cory Booker's Top Aide. His Night One: E.M.S. Volunteer": "For the past few weeks, Matt Klapper has spent his days as Senator Cory Booker's chief of staff wrangling with congressional aides over benefits for emergency medical technicians. At night, he strapped on his own mask and isolation gown — the same kind he's trying to secure in the millions for first responders." THE TRUMP ADMINISTRATION -- "Navy secretary nominee slams service's 'failure of leadership,'" by Connor O'Brien: "President Donald Trump's nominee to be the next Navy secretary Thursday criticized the service for a 'failure of leadership' and its many recent missteps, arguing to senators that he's prepared to help right the ship. Testifying before a Senate Armed Services confirmation hearing, Kenneth Braithwaite said the service has hit 'rough waters.' … "The retired rear admiral and ambassador to Norway named several recent debacles, including the service's handling of the spread of coronavirus aboard the aircraft carrier USS Theodore Roosevelt — which cost acting Navy Secretary Thomas Modly his job last month — as well as a pair of deadly ship collisions and the Fat Leonard scandal that has racked the Navy's upper ranks for years." POLITICO | | | | JOIN TODAY - A WOMEN RULE VIRTUAL INTERVIEW WITH MELINDA GATES: As the coronavirus pandemic continues to devastate communities around the world, women are disproportionately affected. Join Women Rule Editorial Director Anna Palmer today at 4 p.m. EDT for a virtual conversation with Melinda Gates, co-chair of The Gates Foundation, to discuss the ramifications of this global crisis on gender equality, her thoughts on the need to overhaul the caregiving system and how The Gates Foundation is applying the lessons learned over the past 20 years to tackle Covid-19. Have questions? Submit yours by tweeting it to @POLITICOLive using #AskPOLITICO. REGISTER HERE. | | | | | THE BRAVE NEW WORLD -- "China's Military Is Tied to Debilitating New Cyberattack Tool," by NYT's Ronen Bergman and Steven Lee Myers: "On the morning of Jan. 3, an email was sent from the Indonesian Embassy in Australia to a member of Prime Minister Scott Morrison's staff who worked on health and ecological issues. … The attachment contained an invisible cyberattack tool called Aria-body, which had never been detected before and had alarming new capabilities. "Hackers who used it to remotely take over a computer could copy, delete or create files and carry out extensive searches of the device's data, and the tool had new ways of covering its tracks to avoid detection. Now a cybersecurity company in Israel has identified Aria-body as a weapon wielded by a group of hackers, called Naikon, that has previously been traced to the Chinese military. … "In the preceding months, Naikon had also used it to hack government agencies and state-owned technology companies in Indonesia, the Philippines, Vietnam, Myanmar and Brunei, according to Check Point, which said the attacks underscored the breadth and sophistication of China's use of cyberespionage against its neighbors." NYT -- "China's WeChat Monitors Foreign Users to Refine Censorship at Home," by WSJ's Eva Xiao: "Like all social-media platforms in China, it is responsible for making sure all content passing through the app toes the Chinese government's line. It is well known that the domestic version of the app uses a combination of automated and human censorship to identify and scrub criticism of political figures and other content considered taboo in China. "In a report released Thursday, the University of Toronto's security research group Citizen Lab shows how WeChat also closely monitors the activity of its users outside the Chinese mainland. While international users aren't censored like their mainland Chinese counterparts, images and documents they send through WeChat are still analyzed for taboo content, Citizen Lab's researchers discovered. If content is found to be sensitive, the app adds it to its internal blacklist so it can censor it in real time for Chinese users, according to the report, released on Thursday." WSJ AJC: "Karen Handel backs Doug Collins' bid for U.S. Senate," by Greg Bluestein IN MEMORIAM -- "Gerald Slater, a public television pioneer, dies at 86 of coronavirus," by WaPo's Ian Duncan: "Before the Senate's Watergate hearings, public television was still mostly known as a venue for educational [programming]. Big Bird, not big news. But Gerald Slater, an executive at the fledgling Public Broadcasting Service and one of its four founding employees, took responsibility for offering up the 1974 hearings in prime time, shifting the system's image. "In two decades as an executive at PBS and then WETA, Slater played a key role in the development of public television, expanding its coverage of public affairs and the arts. Slater, 86, died at Sibley Hospital on April 24 of covid-19, the disease caused by the novel coronavirus. His case was complicated by multiple myeloma, a cancer of the bone marrow." WaPo MEDIAWATCH -- Dana Rubinstein will join the NYT as a Metro reporter. She currently is a senior reporter for POLITICO New York. The announcement -- Raul Aguila will be creative director at Variety. He currently is art director at Studio_A and freelances for the NYT Magazine and California Sunday Magazine/Pop-Up Magazine. Variety -- Facebook announced more than 200 news organizations that will receive $15.7 million through the Facebook Journalism Project's relief fund for local news amid the pandemic. The post TRANSITION -- Carter Coudriet is joining DOJ's antitrust division as a paralegal specialist. He previously was a wealth reporter at Forbes. WELCOME TO THE WORLD -- David Chalian, CNN political director, and Justin Tyler Bernstine, assistant dean for undergraduate academic services at American University's School of Communication, welcomed Olivia Bernstine Chalian on Monday. She came in at 9 lbs and 20 inches. 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