Day: March 18, 2020

As of Tuesday morning, Idaho Gov. Brad Little had declared a state of emergency in the state over the coronavirus outbreak. Some school districts have closed. But the state legislature hadn’t yet taken action to mitigate the effects of the pandemic.

It has, though, passed two anti-transgender bills.

Monday evening, the state Senate passed a bill banning gender changes on birth certificates issued in the state. The bill had already passed the state House of Representatives and will now head to Little’s desk for either a signature or a veto.

The bill is one of three anti-trans proposals under …

With Covid-19 cases reported in all 50 states on Wednesday, President Donald Trump announced that the government will require the private sector to produce more medical supplies and the US-Canada border will be closed, among other measures to help contain the virus.

The number of US coronavirus cases climbed to over 7,500 on March 18. Residents of the San Francisco area have been asked to “shelter in place,” and the Senate was poised to vote on a coronavirus relief bill that would, among other provisions, offer paid sick leave to certain American workers.

Trump — who repeatedly downplayed the risk …

As the coronavirus sweeps across the US, a term you’ve probably heard a lot is “social distancing”: a way to flatten the epidemic curve by asking people to stay home and limit their nonessential travel.

While social distancing is our best tool for slowing the spread of this virus, it’s also likely to create what my Vox colleague Ezra Klein has called a “loneliness epidemic.” In a fragmented society like ours, asking people to isolate themselves for an extended period will be hard on vulnerable populations, like older people and those with disabilities and existing medical conditions.

To reduce …

We may be living in a vastly different world than we were a week ago, but one constant remains: Joe Biden appears well on his way to being the presumptive Democratic nominee.

Right out of the gate on Tuesday night, Biden notched a nearly 40-point win in Florida, the state with the biggest cache of delegates. He followed it up soon after with another resounding win in Illinois and won Arizona shortly after polls closed there.

By the end of the night, Biden had vaulted over the 1,000-delegate threshold (he needs 1,991 to clinch the nomination). It’s a comfortable lead …

Former Vice President Joe Biden has won the Arizona Democratic primary, edging out Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders in a contest that proceeded Tuesday despite the ongoing coronavirus pandemic.

Despite Sanders’s generally strong support among Latino voters, Biden’s victory in Arizona is unsurprising. Ahead of the primary, Biden had netted victories in 16 other states and gave a strong performance in the latest debate, projecting “confidence and competence on the coronavirus pandemic” and landing “solid hits” on Sanders’s record, as my colleague Zack Beauchamp writes.

And though he had been trailing Sanders in Arizona polls as late as March 3, …

The Democratic presidential race is adjusting to a stark new reality: Candidates are campaigning and voters are heading to the polls in the middle of a coronavirus outbreak.

That isn’t stopping three out of the four states that had primaries scheduled March 17. Polls were (or are still) open in Florida, Illinois, and Arizona — though Ohio has delayed its own.

Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine announced he is moving to postpone that state’s primary until June 2 owing to the coronavirus outbreak. After a legal back-and-forth Monday night, the Ohio Supreme Court allowed the delay to proceed, the Columbus …