"Illinois, New York, California … all big-city blue states hit hard by COVID, all states that have felt the failures of the Trump administration acutely, now singled out as states that do not deserve federal aid. COVID does not care who you voted for, but Trump does, and he seems happily willing to increase the nation's suffering while helping to expand the reach of the pandemic in order to settle some grudges and score points with his weirdly death-seeking base. And Senate Republicans led by Mitch McConnell, i.e. the ones who can put a stop to this by making common cause with House Democrats against the menace in the White House, say nothing. Well, that’s not entirely accurate. Mitch McConnell is saying plenty, and in doing so, he has given away the game. The Senate will be perfectly happy to allow a vote on an aid package for the states, but with one catch: Any legislation must contain liability protections for businesses and employers."

“Trump and McConnell know these states are reopening too soon, but they don’t care, because they need to make the money happy. To protect the money, McConnell wants to shoehorn in a provision to the states' aid package that prevents businesses from being sued by employees or customers because they got sick after businesses opened too soon. The blue states need that aid, and McConnell knows he has their congressional representatives over a barrel. The utter cruelty of these tactics, the nihilistic self-destruction of it in the face of more than 55,000 dead and thousands more to follow, has scarce precedent in the annals of U.S. politics. Instead of helping the entire country in this time of grievous crisis, Trump and McConnell are putting their boots to the neck of every state they deem ideologically unfit. It will be a damn miracle if the nation survives this, and them.”

“Trump has been treating the delivery of federal aid to the states like his own personal: rewarding loyalty, punishing critics, and demanding to be praised for doing his job whenever he actually does it, but especially when he doesn't. The issue has come to a head as governors from both parties are screaming for desperately needed federal aid for their respective states. Congress, particularly the Republican Senate, has been dragging its feet over passing a bill to provide states-specific aid, because doing so would be an example of government working to help the people, and such a thing is ideologically unsound on McConnell's side of the aisle.”

“Someday, if we survive the mess we’ve made of the planet, someone will compile a detailed sociological examination of how this constant torrent of mind bombs came to affect the population. For many, I fear, the ultimate result is inaction due to confusion, consternation and livid frustration.”

“States with large cities have taken the pandemic straight in the teeth, and are hurting badly. Many of these states did not support Trump in 2016, particularly New York and California. The leaders in these states will likely be willing to swallow any number of compromises to get the aid money flowing.”

“If you’re going to cause a constitutional crisis, you may as well make it fun, right?...When Trump unleashed a disorganized, rambling, snarling, sniff-riddled word cloud on China, Korea, Syria, missiles, Obama, wars, duct tape, “bob” wire, Democrats, singsong Beat poetry, caravans and the stock market while announcing his illegal emergency declaration, it wasn’t fun. It was surreal to the point of brown-acid psychedelia, and it was perfectly terrifying in the main, but it wasn’t fun...”

“Adding climate change to school curriculums. Geoengineering. Thorium fuel reactors. A Blue New Deal. The Syrian war was a climate war. Climate distress included in asylum petitions. Food deserts. Climate denial is a literal sin. “Democracy” is a verb. For the first time in the history of the country, these topics and others like them were discussed in detail by presidential candidates on live television”