Senate Majority PAC announced its initial fall television buys.

The pro-Democratic group will place $69.2 million worth of reservations across five states: Arizona, Colorado, Iowa, Maine and North Carolina, Campaign Pro’s James Arkin reported (for Pros). Their buys largely mirror the buys of Senate Leadership Fund, the major GOP super PAC, that were placed last week.


https://www.politico.com/morningscore/

With 2020 race all but halted over coronavirus, Biden quietly widens lead over Trump

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Democratic presidential front-runner Joe Biden has quietly expanded his lead over President Donald Trump among registered voters, even as the rapidly spreading coronavirus has all but sidelined the former vice president’s campaign, according to a Reuters/Ipsos opinion poll released on Tuesday.

The poll conducted on Monday and Tuesday of more than 1,100 American adults found that 46% of registered voters said they would support Biden if he were running against Trump in the Nov. 3 election, while 40% said they would vote for Trump.

That advantage of 6 percentage points was up from a 1-point lead for Biden recorded in a similar poll that ran from March 6 to 9.

The result suggested that Biden had not been hurt politically from his lack of visibility while the Republican president is at the center of a government response to a pandemic that has infected more than 184,000 people in the United States and killed more than 3,700 people.



https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-election-poll/with-2020-race-all-but-halted-over-coronavirus-biden-quietly-widens-lead-over-trump-reuters-ipsos-poll-idUSKBN21I3K6

If this doesn't end Trump's career, nothing will.

Bonus Tweet of the Day

White House Economists Warned in 2019 a Pandemic Could Devastate America

WASHINGTON — White House economists published a study last September that warned a pandemic disease could kill a half million Americans and devastate the economy.

It went unheeded inside the administration.

In late February and early March, as the coronavirus pandemic began to spread from China to the rest of the world, President Trump’s top economic advisers played down the threat the virus posed to the U.S. economy and public health.

“I don’t think corona is as big a threat as people make it out to be,” the acting chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers, Tomas Philipson, told reporters during a Feb. 18 briefing, on the same day that more than a dozen American cruise ship passengers who had contracted the virus were evacuated home. Public health threats did not typically hurt the economy, Mr. Philipson said. He suggested the virus would not be nearly as bad as a normal flu season.

The 2019 study warned otherwise — specifically urging Americans not to conflate the risks of a typical flu and a pandemic. The existence of that warning undermines administration officials’ contentions in recent weeks that no one could have seen the virus damaging the economy as it has. The study was requested by the National Security Council, according to two people familiar with the matter.



https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/31/business/coronavirus-economy-trump.html

Governors plead for medical equipment from federal stockpile plagued by shortages and confusion

As states across the country have pleaded for critical medical equipment from a key national stockpile, Florida has promptly received 100 percent of its first two requests — with President Trump and Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis both touting their close relationship.

States including Oklahoma and Kentucky have received more of some equipment than they requested, while others such as Illinois, Massachusetts and Maine have secured only a fraction of their requests.

It’s a disparity that has caused frustration and confusion in governors’ offices across the country, with some officials questioning whether politics is playing a role in the response.

Governors are making increasingly frantic requests to the Federal Emergency Management Agency for materials. State and congressional leaders are flooding FEMA with letters and calls seeking clarity about how it is allocating suddenly in-demand resources such as masks, ventilators and medical gowns.



https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/governors-plead-for-medical-equipment-from-federal-stockpile-plagued-by-shortages-and-confusion/2020/03/31/18aadda0-728d-11ea-87da-77a8136c1a6d_story.html

New York City coronavirus death toll surpasses 1,000

New York City’s death toll from the coronavirus topped 1,000 on Tuesday, a grim milestone as the city grapples with a rising number of COVID-19 cases.

The New York City Department of Health announced in an update Tuesday that 1,096 people have died from the highly infectious virus. There are more than 41,000 people infected with the illness and over 8,500 people are hospitalized.

The new total is a jump of 932 from the morning’s tally. The vast majority of the deaths so far have occurred in patients aged 75 years and older.

New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio (D) said Tuesday that there will be a surge in first responders to battle the spread of the virus, including a boost of 500 paramedics and emergency medical technicians and 2,000 nurses, as well as 250 ambulances. The city is also converting large public areas such as the Billie Jean King National Tennis Center in Queens into emergency hospitals.



https://thehill.com/homenews/state-watch/490510-nyc-coronavirus-death-toll-surpasses-1000

White House internally projects 400,000 COVID-19 deaths in the U.S.