Confirmed U.S. covid-19 death toll reaches 20,000, highest in the world

The Justice Department will be “monitoring” regulations on religious services during the coronavirus outbreak, spokeswoman Kerri Kupec said in a tweet Saturday evening.

Kupec’s tweet came on the eve of Easter, and halfway through Passover.

“While social distancing policies are appropriate during this emergency, they must be applied evenhandedly & not single out religious [organizations]," Kupec tweeted. “Expect action from DOJ next week!”

Churches across the country are fighting restrictions on in-person services that officials say are necessary to prevent spread of the virus. A federal judge on Saturday blocked the mayor of Louisville from forbidding drive-in church services on Easter amid mounting debate.

Turning 12 amid home isolation orders is hardly any tween’s idea of an exciting birthday, but one Houston boy’s socially-distanced celebration is turning out to be more memorable than anyone could have expected.

Jody Smith was eager to find an alternative to help his son, Brandon, celebrate his April 11 birthday while still obeying stay-at-home orders, and turned to Twitter for a simple request: Reply to a picture of Brandon holding his hand-drawn map of the world and tell him where they are so the cartographically-inclined 12-year-old could mark it down.

On Thursday, Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer (D) extended a statewide “stay at home order” to April 30 while also enacting more restrictions to help limit the spread of covid-19 in a state with one of the highest case totals in the nation.

The decision quickly drew criticism from GOP lawmakers in the state, including Michigan Senate Majority Leader Mike Shirkey (R), who wants some businesses to reopen and on Facebook blasted Whitmer’s measures as “DESTROYING OUR HEALTH BY KILLING OUR LIVELIHOODS.” U.S. Rep. Justin Amash (Mich.), an independent, joined in the criticism Saturday in a lengthy Twitter thread.

It was supposed to be the spring that launched Sophia Kianni’s climate career.

She had eight speaking engagements lined up at big-name universities — Stanford, Princeton and Duke. She had a 35-minute presentation prepared, explaining how concern for family in polluted Iran inspired her climate activism. She even had outfits: a favorite was the knee-length white skirt, paired with a green sweater and matching white blazer.

Then came the virus: “Within a week, basically every single thing I had planned for got canceled,” said Kianni, 18. She is among thousands of teenagers who built a climate movement around the act of skipping school on Fridays and parading through streets in a highly visible show of rage — activities impossible in the era of coronavirus.

The coronavirus is killing about 1 in 10 hospitalized middle-aged patients and 4 in 10 older than 85 in the United States, and is particularly lethal to men even when taking into account common chronic disease that exacerbate risk, according to previously unpublished data from a company that aggregates real-time patient data from 1,000 hospitals and 180,000 health care providers.

Allscripts, through its subsidiary CarePort Health, released the data collected from multiple electronic health record companies across the nation.

The legal tug-of-war between Texas abortion providers and the state’s leaders who want to ban the procedure during the coronavirus pandemic landed at the U.S. Supreme Court on Saturday night.

Twice a Texas district judge has agreed with the providers, and twice a panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit has intervened. In its ruling Friday, the panel said on a 2-to-1 vote that only women who might not be able to receive an abortion by the state’s 22-week limit could get a waiver.

Abortion providers, represented by Planned Parenthood and the Center for Reproductive Rights, among others, said the Supreme Court’s intervention “is urgently needed.”

The novel coronavirus’s insuperable spread across the globe has caused seismic disruptions to everyday life. Daily activities now rarely extend beyond the confines of one’s home. Social distancing often feels more akin to social isolation.

But with fewer distractions and increased downtime, some have found space to start new projects or complete those long forgotten.

When The Washington Post asked readers how they’ve used their time under quarantine or stay-at-home orders, more than 250 people responded with stories about learning to play instruments, trying culinary techniques and tackling other creative endeavors.

A federal judge has blocked Louisville Mayor Greg Fischer from forbidding drive-in church services on Easter to slow the spread of the coronavirus, as the fates of Sunday gatherings become political flash points around the country.

“An American mayor criminalized the communal celebration of Easter,” U.S. District Judge Justin Walker wrote in a temporary restraining order issued Saturday. “That sentence is one that this Court never expected to see outside the pages of a dystopian novel, or perhaps the pages of The Onion. … The Mayor’s decision is stunning. And it is, ‘beyond all reason,’ unconstitutional.”