Unsightly Mental Blemishes

I’ve certainly dissed Governor Noem (R-SD) before, but I see she’s descending to a new low:

What does an leader of an ensemble dance group do during Covid-19?

Except moving. More here, including material Whitley’s edited rather than created.

… or maybe it’s a permanent resident.

As good as my smartphone gets, I think. I’d need a real camera to get a look at the eye patches.

Concerning the report of certain corporate dividends continuing unabated during this downturn in business activity a reader writes:

I work at Caterpillar. I was there the day they announced the layoffs. I was there the day they announced that everyone’s merit increase had been rescinded . . . 1 day before they were to go into effect due to the business slowdown caused by COVID-19 and other business conditions. And then the very next day our CEO announced that the stock dividend for the quarter would remain the same as it was the previous quarter. And I remember thinking at that time, uh oh, this is not going to look good. In fact, it looks like our salary increases and the salaries of those let go went to pay for the quarterly dividend. That is the executive board’s decision to make, but it strikes me as a clear message that shareholders are valued over employees. As an employee, I understand the need at this time to cut costs, but it seems to me that shareholders also need to have some skin in the game. But what really irritated me was when the CEO released a video talking about the quarterly results and when explaining why the dividend was not reduced, he actually used the proverbial “We have many investors who rely on that dividend income in their retirement.” And those people that were laid off didn’t rely on that income, I suppose? Very tired of corporate America always trying to con us into thinking Grandma and Grandpa are the investors counting on stock dividends and prices when it’s so obvious that the shareholders who have the majority of the stock are investment firms and other companies, not Joe and Mary from down the street.

Corporate execs often hold immense numbers of shares as well, which is generally seen as a good thing, right up until we realize those execs are married to the quarterly numbers.

And, sadly, for titans like CAT, it’s not as if they have competitors biting at their heels. Maybe I’ll decide to build a house next year, but I won’t be able to specify that the builders not use CAT-supplied gear, now will I? Thus topples one of the pillars of free market capitalism.

Even the posters have an accent. Attention to detail!

Little Shop of Horrors (1960), a Roger Corman production, is an enlightening surprise. Opening with some interesting hand drawings of the locale of the story, southern California, as part of the credit sequence, we meet young man Seymour, chronic klutz and amateur horticulturist, his employer, the ethnic Mr. Mushnick, and his love interest, Audrey, as Mushnick’s skid row flower shop struggles along.

Seymour’s backroom project, if only he can survive himself, is a cross of a Venus fly trap with … something else. Teetering on the edge of unemployment, an accident leads to blood making its way onto his project’s leaves, jolting its growth rate, and the next day it’s vocally begging for more food, much to Seymour’s befuddlement.

When Seymour delivers flowers to the local sadistic dentist, he discovers a handy way to feed his plant – kill your dentist in mistaken self-defense and take the body home. This is also an opportunity for a soon-to-be famous actor to demonstrate his chops as the masochistic patient du jour with whom Seymour must put up a masquerade.

Audrey Jr, named after the lovely lady who works at the flower shop alongside him, is soon moved to the premises and is attracting phenomenal traffic, both alive and -ahem- dead. But when the cops come by, who appear to be modeled on Joe Friday and one of his sidekicks, to see just what’s going on at this nondescript flower shop, the action becomes frenetic, from the chase, the hooker, to the unfortunate denouement.

The neat part of this movie is that each scene appears to be well thought out and plumbed for the quirkiness which can be inserted, the sum of the parts being a certain sense of surrealism by the time we discover just how the food items consumed by Audrey, Jr., are remembered for us. The stylizations required by the script may be a trifle overdone, but only a bit, the plot seems organic, and I particularly enjoyed that virtually every character seems to have a life and vision at the heart of their beings, rather than little squares of cardboard. I particularly liked Seymour’s mother, played by the grandmother of the scriptwriter.

It’s not entirely satisfactory, of course, as the print we viewed is black and white, when color could have been more fun, and sometimes the audio was a little off, but it was a surprisingly entertaining and absorbing show. Plaudits!

Exhibiting their usual enthusiasm:

President Trump has definitely made his decision regarding the race between Republicans Tommy Tuberville and Jefferson Beauregard Sessions III of Alabama for Sessions’ old seat, currently held by the winner of the special election in 2018, Doug Jones (D-AL). As reported by CNN:

President Donald Trump on Friday once again tore into his fired attorney general, Jeff Sessions, saying he felt obligated to appoint him to the job and calling him “very weak and very sad.”

Sessions first became a source of Trump’s public frustration when in early 2017 the then-attorney general recused himself from the Russia investigation. His recusal came after it was publicly revealed that he didn’t disclose at his Senate confirmation hearing two pre-election meetings with Russia’s then-ambassador to the US, Sergey Kislyak.

The President was asked during a Friday morning call to “Fox & Friends” if there would have been a Russia probe had Bill Barr, the current attorney general, been attorney general during the start of the Trump administration.

“No, there wouldn’t be. He would have stopped it immediately. … Jeff Sessions was a disaster. I made him — I didn’t want to make him attorney general but he was the first senator to endorse me so I felt a little bit of an obligation,” Trump said.

I particular liked this bit:

Trump added that Sessions “came to see me four times, just begging me to be attorney general. He wasn’t, you know, to me, equipped to be attorney general. But he wanted and wanted and wanted it.”

“He goes in — he was so bad in his nomination proceedings. I should have gotten rid of him there,” Trump said of Sessions, adding that he “knew less about Russia than I did.”

Admission of poor judgment and handing out important positions like candy, rather than only doing that with minor ambassadorships. Being easily swayed. It’s … embarrassing to be in Trump’s corner, frankly.

But this probably means Sessions’ demise in the July 14th runoff. The general consensus is that the winner is certain to beat Jones in the general election, but we shall see. I haven’t found any polls appertaining, and, in any case, events could easily render such polling irrelevant, more so than usual.

… but not at our house, but rather some random house in St. Paul. I couldn’t resist.

Chiral:

In chemistry, a molecule or ion is called chiral (/kaɪˈræl/) if it cannot be superposed on its mirror image by any combination of rotations and translations. This geometric property is called chirality. The terms are derived from Ancient Greek χείρ (cheir), meaning “hand”; which is the canonical example of an object with this property. [Wikipedia]

Noted in “Life’s other mystery: Why biology’s building blocks are so lop-sided,” Hayley Bennett, NewScientist (18 April 2020, paywall):

Indeed, most complex molecules have at least two possible “mirror” versions, known as left and right-handed “enantiomers”. This matters because the alternatives can have remarkably different properties or effects. The two opposite-handed versions of the chemical known as carvone, for instance, give the spearmint and caraway plants their distinctive aromas. Similarly, the enantiomers of limonene, both formed naturally, smell differently: one of lemon, the other of orange.

The phenomenon has implications in drug development too. In the pharmaceutical industry, enantiomers often have to be painstakingly separated because one version of a drug doesn’t work or isn’t safe. Thalidomide, for example, was a right-handed molecule that caused birth deformities in thousands of babies, whereas its left-handed form safely treats pregnancy sickness.

Erin Bromage discusses in great deal how the virus behind Covid-19 moves from person to person:

In order to get infected you need to get exposed to an infectious dose of the virus; the estimate is that you need about ~1000 SARS-CoV2 viral particles for an infection to take hold, but this still needs to be determined experimentally. That could be 1000 viral particles you receive in one breath or from one eye-rub, or 100 viral particles inhaled with each breath over 10 breaths, or 10 viral particles with 100 breaths. Each of these situations can lead to an infection.

How much Virus is released into the environment?

A Toilet flush: Without a seat to close, a single flush releases ~8000 droplets into the air. If the person using the restroom before you was infected, you have a chance of contracting the virus via breathing the air in the bathroom. While the paper in question did not look for live virus, it is clear that infected people are releasing, at a minimum, viral RNA, in bowel movements. Don’t use public bathrooms or wait a few minutes before entering so gravity can bring the droplets to the floor.

Lots more, well-written and comprehensible to those of us lacking degrees in the subject, like me.

On 38 North Joseph DeThomas analyzes the results of increasing sanctions on North Korea, and the Executive Summary is that “The DPRK [North Korea] Wins This Round“. But, for folks who particularly loathe North Korea, this may be of interest:

Exports of Coal

Perhaps even more important, the DPRK is exporting large quantities of coal. Coal exports were estimated to have reached 3.7 million tons from January to August 2019, with three-quarters of those exports taking place between May and August. The value of these shipments was estimated at $370 million—all of it contrary to UN sanctions and all of it off the official trade books. The Panel had satellite imagery indicating that coal shipments were continuing at the end of 2019. The DPRK’s techniques for evasion were diverse. Much of the coal was sent from Nampo or Songrim (Songnim) in North Korean vessels and then transferred ship-to-ship to Chinese local barges. But here, too, the DPRK and its foreign partners are becoming more efficient and less discrete. Coal is now being shipped from North Korea directly to several Chinese ports in large self-propelled barges of a type not known to be in the North Korean inventory but which are quite commonly used in China. The DPRK has also begun to ship directly to China in large bulk carriers, including a “ghost ship.” It appears to have purchased a ship destined to be scrapped. On the official books, the vessel has been dismantled, but it is continuing to ship coal.

If there’s one thing that’ll shut down illicit coal exports and the money that accompanies it, it’s lack of demand. Coal, one of the greatest polluting fossil fuels, a disaster during production as well as consumption, is on its way out as fracking has reduced the cost of natural gas, thus motivating the use of same for power in place of coal. Not attractive on the environmental or financial fronts, its potential to generate jobs for miners who take great pride in their jobs – it may be closer to religious fervor in some cases – is currently its last line.

Conservatives, who generally deeply dislike North Korea, should sit up, take note, and turn to the job of shutting down demand for coal. True, some consumers, such as China, are difficult to dissuade, but others may be less stubborn. This is a lever conservatives should be grasping and manipulating, not only as a way to give North Koreans another reason to boot out the autocrats in Pyongyang, but as one step on the way to regaining a healthy environment we critically need, and to conform to economic principles.

Rarely are there so many positives to a potential action in the international order.

The Lincoln Project (TLP) folks are kicking up their heels. Having suitably angered President Trump by suggesting vast incompetency, they’ve widened their focus to include the Arizona Senatorial race by producing and distributing this ad:

While their immediate aim is obvious, TLP will also become a new factor in the November race for two reasons: a reasonable locus for moderate Republicans to focus on, and, by their very existence, a provocation to base Republicans to either hate, or to think. I think they’re trying to split the vote not only on President Trump, but, very responsibly, for all the Republicans who’ve thrown themselves at his feet and declared their loyalty to him.

From WaPo:

It turns out that there are moves afoot to address the problems of software reliability from a legal viewpoint, as Dr. Trey Herr explains on Lawfare. For example:

Liability is the legal mechanism to hold a goods and services provider accountable for the quality, security and safety of those goods and services. Determining acceptable quality, security and safety requires clear standards. In the jargon of the legal class, this refers to a “duty of care”—the minimum obligation required of a provider whose products might harm their users. The duty of care becomes critically important in defining the standard of behavior expected of final goods assemblers. An effective standard might well create legal obligations to set “end-of-life” dates for software, remove copyright protections that inhibit security research, or block the use of certain software languages that have inherent flaws or make it difficult to produce code with few errors.

But as a 2016 National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) report noted, determining which errors are “‘sloppy and easily avoidable’ is not a trivial matter.” Even avoiding simple errors is not an affirmation of sterling quality. A handful of efforts, new and old, try to address this problem. Some look at specific high-impact sectors like power generation and distribution, and medical device manufacturing. Others are more holistic, such as Microsoft’s Security Development Lifecycle, a decade-plus-long effort from SAFE Code and their Fundamental Practices for Secure Software Development, and the still new Framework for Secure Software from BSA. NTIA’s Software Bill of Materials (SBOM) effort is complementary in addressing how organizations track what code they use rather than how it is developed or patched.

The article’s a bit of a slog, but if you ponder using more than murky economic tools to encourage better software, this may prove to be a good starting point.

I wish I’d been at the meeting where this was decided. Remember Rep Steven King (R-IA) and his ridiculous views?

The U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the largest business lobbying group in the country, is endorsing state Sen. Randy Feenstra for the Republican congressional primary nomination against U.S. Rep. Steve King.

Feenstra, of Hull, is one of four Republicans challenging King in Iowa’s June 2 primary. King, of Kiron, has represented northwest Iowa in Congress since 2002.

“In difficult times, we are reminded of the importance of having effective leaders that understand the genius of the American system of government. As the architect of Iowa’s largest income tax cut, Randy Feenstra has shown his willingness to tackle hard issues to help his fellow Iowans,” U.S. Chamber CEO Thomas J. Donohue said in a statement to the Des Moines Register. “As we take on this pandemic, we need strong advocates in Congress, like Randy, who will be a champion for all Americans, and especially those in Iowa’s agribusiness community. The U.S. Chamber is proud to lend its endorsement to Randy Feenstra and looks forward to partnering with him in the future.” [Des Moines Register]

But are they only worried that they have the wrong Representative in place – or about potentially worse results?

King is not only a Congressional representative, but also a representative of the GOP brand, and as much as he may be popular in the northwestern quadrant of Iowa – and, having been through that part of Iowa during election season, I can testify that at least the cornfields love him – his unfortunate remarks in the vein of white supremacy may blemish the brand.

Worse yet, all four of the Congressional house seats in Iowa, after the Presidential election and the Iowa Senate seat, constitute the most important races in the Iowa. That means for many voters they’ll be looking at the top of the ballot and asking themselves if they really want to vote for Trump, Ernst, King – and then all the downballot Republicans as well, from the Iowa statehouse to the local races.

If King is on the ballot, those voters in IA-4 may decide to punish the GOP by voting against their candidates right down the ballot.

That may be the concern of the Chamber of Commerce and the Iowa GOP. Will the fields of IA-4 be blue or red in November?

Today’s missive from Erick Erickson is an illustration of why I wouldn’t consider subscribing to his paid newsletter (the one I receive is free and I am on it involuntarily):

I asked over the weekend if anyone knew any of the champions of “herd immunity” who’d gone out to get the virus. I actually really was curious. But my question was met with outrage as if I was insulting people. I actually really am curious. I hear so many conservatives advocate herd immunity, oblivious to what it would entail, I presumed some had. Thankfully, they have not.

I say that because the model for herd immunity has been Sweden, even as the Swedes deny they are pushing herd immunity. Well, things are not going well in Sweden. They have a 12% mortality rate and, per capita, have way more infections than the United States — in fact, the sixth worse on the planet right now. All the worst hit places on the planet are in Western Europe. Yay socialized medicine!

My point isn’t to gloat on any of this.

And, yet, you just did. Gloat, that is.

Second, the Covid-19 national strategy of any country is not driven by the economic form of medical service, although it may be constrained by it. To prove it, we could do – and why didn’t Erickson? – a side by side comparison from this Johns Hopkins site that provides data. For example, tonight (it’s updated on a daily basis, I believe) it shows Sweden’s case-fatality rate at 12.2%, the United States at 5.8% – and Norway at 2.7%. Finland 4.5%. Germany 4.2%. France 14+%! I believe, besides the United States, those are all socialized medical services. Wait, which medical economic system is best again?

But Erickson – and I – are wasting our breath. Dude, you know better than to trust these numbers! The uncertainties around virtually the entire Covid-19 phenomenon is what’s driving Trump’s terribly inappropriate economic optimism, his disbelief at the bad news that came our way and is still coming our way, and all the rest. So why are you being so quick to attack socialized medicine based on untrustworthy numbers?

This is really all about politics, from how Covid-19 national strategies are chosen, how much testing is performed, to why – especially! – Erickson shoots his mouth off, and it really makes him untrustworthy. Politics is Erickson’s prism, and I think it prevents him from presenting the best possible analyses of issues. Indeed, I wonder why he didn’t mention the pastors who claimed they’d not become ill, or would be cured by God … and are now dead of Covid-19. More of his political prism?

It’s too bad, because this is not far off the mark:

The fight that must be fought now is on reopening. We inarguably flattened the curve. The virus is inarguably going to be around. So how do we reopen?

Unfortunately, many of the very same people who demanded we shelter in place to flatten the curve are moving the goalposts. We have gone from flattening the curve to “crushing the curve” or eradicating the virus before going outside.

The virus is not going away. Flattening the curve was never about stopping people from dying. It was about avoiding an overwhelmed hospital infrastructure. We have had time to prepare resources and hospitals. It is time to reopen.

We at least must have a serious conversation of how to do it. I think some of the governors have done so, and are trying to implement some decisions; the protesters are getting in the way, though. But then Erickson gets all starry eyed:

This Sean Trende piece really captures my thinking and I regret I didn’t write it. He is spot on.

This seems to reflect a wider phenomenon of people being driven into “teams” regarding the shutdown. We’ve become polarized on the issue, and indeed this polarization is beginning to reflect our underlying politics. This is an unwelcome development. One of the dynamics about team sports is an inability to see the other side’s point of view; indeed, that is in many ways the point of teams. As this virus develops, flexibility will be crucial in determining how well we come out of it, and a willingness to listen to the viewpoints of those we don’t generally agree with is probably the most important trait we can have. But, as with so many other things, that seems to be one more fatality resulting from this virus.

No, and no, and no. One of the dynamics of a failed team is the inability to see the other side’s point of view. Failed teams go away. Failed teams die.

Successful teams have insight into their opponents. Think of the tapes that NFL teams review prior to game day. That is insight, formalized.

No, what we’re seeing isn’t teams. It’s cults. Absolute belief, often in the irrational, automatic disdain for the other cults. Simultaneously often frightened of other cults. Ready to spread lies about other cults at the drop of a hat. Those are just some of the behaviors we see on both sides.

And it fits cults to a T. Look around and see all the cults, too. Such hermetically sealed cults actually do survive for a long time. Unlike similar teams.

That’s why I have a hard time taking Erickson seriously. He occasionally has something good to say. His dislike of the paranoia of the right goes in his plus column. But his fumbling of details in a non-linear system – and his automatic assign of blame to anywhere but his side of the column – is a whole lot of negative marks.

Seen in the neighborhood tonight.

No commentary needed.

In the past I’ve ruminated on whether or not investors are the most important part of the corporate program, and come down against it; I believe that there’s much evidence showing that customers and employees – no particular order – are as important as, if not moreso, than investors in the great corporate equation.

This position has been unpopular out in the corporate world, as I understand it. The link above is to a post concerning Megan McArdle’s negative reaction to an article in which corporate C-suite types are signing a statement to the effect that investors do not belong at the front of the cafeteria line.

But I think we’re about to get more evidence for my side of the teeter-totter. WaPo has this report on how some large companies are treating their employees – and their investors:

Since the coronavirus pandemic was declared, Caterpillar has suspended operations at two plants and a foundry, Levi Strauss has closed stores, and toolmaker Stanley Black & Decker has been planning layoffs and furloughs.

Steelcase, an office furniture manufacturer, and World Wrestling Entertainment have also shed employees.

If you haven’t heard of The Lincoln Project, here’s their latest political advertising.

The Lincoln Project advertises itself as a collection of Republican NeverTrumpers, including prominent Trump critic and lawyer George Conway, husband of President advisor Kellyanne Conway.

While Lincoln is an important name that associates with important American values held by most American, I think it’s not unfair to suggest that the name may be ineffectual. I might have gone with Rational Republicans, myself. Or maybe Responsible Republicans. Let the other side make the case that they’re the responsible ones, then stomp them into the ground.

And, make no mistake, this is not about the Trump base. He has to betray them in a big & public way before that rock will crack. This is all about appealing to independents to not vote for Trump. In a sense, The Lincoln Project has the same goal as Bruce Bartlett, who reportedly backed Trump to win the nomination way back in 2016. He did so in the belief that the resultant shellacking in the elections would destroy the corrupt heart of the GOP, which could then be reformed without the harmful elements. He had the right goal but the approach turned out to be flawed.

Will The Lincoln Project succeed? If they can reach the independents, then they have a chance. Pound on the facts AND the concept of Responsible Leadership, and, in the context of the facts, does the Trump Administration come anywhere close?

Often there’s an implicit analogy to buildings, the quintessential symbol of humanity, when talking about logic. Logic can, at least in my reality, be viewed as a set of operations which are used to make inferences based on assumptions (e.g., if A, then C) and assertions (A is true, B is false), we hope, the real world, with which we can make deductions that, once again, we hope mirror the real world.

If one or more of your assumptions are wrong, then your inferences, your arguments, may be entirely in accordance with your operations, i.e., your rules of argument, but your results are simply wrong.

In fact, the rules of argument are rarely at issue in logician’s circles; it’s all about the assumptions. Or so a logician once told a group of us on social media back in the early 1990s.

Why bring this up? Erick Erickson persists in sending his emails, and I am drawn to them like watching train accidents. Some of what he has to say is valid and even interesting, although I am not his target audience – in fact, that may be why I find it interesting. And then there’s yesterday’s mailing, entitled COVID-19 and the Mark of the Beast. This caught my attention:

If COVID-19 were wiping out children instead of grandparents, many of the same people now demanding we fully reopen and refusing a vaccine would be beating down the door to get one. A virus that takes children would be viewed far differently than one that kills an elderly person in a nursing home.

Throughout history, there have been anti-Christs and marks of beasts. It is arguably not a one-time thing even if the precursors are just shadows of the real and final anti-Christ. I have a pastor friend who argues the rainbow flag is just the latest incarnation as increasingly a refusal to celebrate LGBT issues can ruin a person or small business. I know a guy who persuasively argued the hammer and sickle of communism is the mark.

I would argue that instead of obsessing about marks of beasts and whether a government might exercise long-established precedent to make sure you and I don’t spread viruses that can kill and overwhelm hospitals, we should instead focus on what we truly know is true. If we put our trust in Jesus, we are saved.

Anyone can be persuasive when arguing using invalid assumptions – such as that there is a God. So Erickson is half-persuaded by such an argument? Maybe rather than looking for holes in the logic, maybe it’s time to look at your assumptions.

Make no mistake, Erickson dismisses the entire Mark of the Beast silliness as a waste of time, if historically interesting in that it reflects the era. But rather than rebuffing his the friend obsessed with the hammer and sickle, he hides in a different bit of the mythology.

I suspect he’ll always be uncomfortable swimming about in his pea-soup of bad assumptions.

Readers may remember my post on economist and Discovery Institute co-founder George Gilder and his silly statement on the Covid-19 outbreak:

So let’s stop pretending that our policies have been rational and need to be phased out, as if they once had a purpose. They should be reversed summarily and acknowledged to be a mistake, perpetrated by statisticians with erroneous computer models.

Perhaps then we can learn from this experience with the flaws of expertise not to shut down the economy again for the totally bogus “crisis” of climate change. [RealClearMarkets]

WaPo rebuts, if not by name, with this article on how epidemics are evaluated, and a quite lovely graph:

Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter data was used to recreate the view Apollo 13 astronauts had on their journey:

… and that would be the late Stephen Hawking. Of course, that’s after a long and highly productive life, astrophysicist Dr. Stephen Hawking.

Sufferer of ALS since his early twenties, Dr. Stephen Hawking. Dr. Stephen Hawking, more famous for his wheelchair than for his numerous achievements.

I’m not speaking to my reader, of course, but to Ken Turnage II of Antioch, California, who had the half-wit to say this:

“[T]he World has been introduced to a new phrase Herd Immunity which is a good one,” he wrote. “In my opinion we need to adapt a Herd Mentality. A herd gathers it ranks, it allows the sick, the old, the injured to meet its natural course in nature.”

As NBC Bay Area reported, Turnage wrote that the pandemic also would address homeless people in that it would “fix what is a significant burden on our society and resources that can be used.” [WaPo]

While City Council members removed him from his position as chair of a planning commission for being “insensitive,” they really should have read him the riot act, pointing out that there’s no necessary connection between good health and intellectual excellence, that there are literally millions upon millions of ill people who have made significant, sometimes towering, contributions to human society, from science (Hawking), the literary scene (Proust), religion (pick your sect and you’ll find some sickly person who’s made significant contributions), and etc. If we extend this to the elderly, many folks do their best work in their senior years, drawing on a lifetime of experience and creativity in a huge variety of occupations, of which I might only exclude sports, and even some sports do not exclude excellence by the elderly.

This dude’s unwillingness to put himself out in order to help the physically weak suggests that he should be the first thrust off the lifeboat next time there’s an opportunity. The rationalization to do so need not be true; I merely answer the call of dramatic reality. But I suspect intellectual insufficiency would be an adequate explanation.

This leaves me feeling slightly incredulous:

President Donald Trump’s recent hostility toward independent federal watchdogs has jolted the very Senate Republicans who are among his most outspoken defenders.

Two months after acquitting Trump on charges of obstructing Congress, GOP senators are sounding subtle but unmistakable alarms about Trump’s efforts to brush back lawmakers’ oversight of the government’s behemoth, $3 trillion response to the coronavirus pandemic. And their warnings have grown more urgent as Trump mounts a concerted campaign against inspectors general, one of the last functional checks on his administration’s performance.

“We need to empower inspectors general to be able to do their work — especially when you’re dealing with trillions of dollars, you’ve got to have good, reasonable oversight over those things,” Sen. James Lankford (R-Okla.), who penned a letter to Trump last week on the topic, said in an interview.

That Lankford and other GOP senators like Chuck Grassley of Iowa have felt compelled to speak out publicly underscores the degree to which Trump has undermined routine congressional oversight — including the very mechanisms that Republicans themselves have crafted to rein in a rogue executive. [Politico]

This follows the replacement of an official at the Department of Health and Human Services: