California, Oregon governors lay out framework to resume public life and business as coronavirus deaths soar

The Department of Transportation said earlier this month that it has been receiving “an increasing number of complaints” from passengers being denied refunds, despite airlines’ “long-standing obligation” to provide them when they cancel flights or make significant changes to schedules.

“The focus is not on whether the flight disruptions are within or outside the carrier's control, but rather on the fact that the cancellation is through no fault of the passenger,” the department said.

In a statement Tuesday, the Transportation Department said it will monitor airlines’ refund practices and might issue warning letters or fines “as necessary.” But for now, it said, it is using its discretion “to give airlines an opportunity to come into compliance.”

Read more here.

Major League Baseball employees will take part in a covid-19 antibody study by Stanford University, the University of Southern California and the Sports Medicine Research and Testing Laboratory, according to reports from ESPN and the Athletic.

The study will consist of 10,000 people affiliated with MLB teams, including players, coaches, team employees and stadium workers, and aims to give researchers a clearer understanding into how the virus spreads in major cities. According to ESPN, the test, which has already been sent out across the MLB markets, uses a pinprick of blood to detect the presence of antibodies.

According to one of the researchers, the antibody test will be the largest of its kind performed in the United States.

“This will be the first time we will be able to see how truly prevalent covid-19 has spread throughout the United States,” Jay Bhattacharya, professor of medicine at Stanford University, told the Athletic. “And instead of it taking years to pull together a study of this scope, especially with stay-at-home orders, MLB has helped us turn it around in a matter of weeks.”

The test will not hasten the start of the MLB season. On March 12, baseball made the initial announcement to cancel spring training games. Since then, much like every other sports league, MLB shelved Opening Day and all subsequent games. On March 15, an unnamed New York Yankees minor leaguer became the first person affiliated with MLB to test positive for the novel coronavirus.

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Strip clubs claim they are being discriminated against and face financial ruin after being blocked from the coronavirus small-business loan program, according to federal lawsuits.

The lawsuit at the forefront of the discussion was filed on April 8, by Jason Mohney, owner of more than two dozen strip clubs across the country, against the U.S. Small Business Association, SBA Administrator Jovita Carranza and Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin. Mohney filed the lawsuit on behalf of Little Darlings, his club in Flint, Mich.

The lawsuit says the regulations put in place by the Paycheck Protection Program through the Coronavirus Aid, Relief and Economic Security Act discriminate against businesses that provide services some might deem of a “prurient sexual nature.” However, there are many employees in such establishments, such as bartenders, dishwashers, security guards, waitresses, etc.

The lawsuit says the aid program violates the business’s and workers’ fundamental rights under the First and Fifth amendments.

The $2 trillion federal coronavirus relief package includes nearly $350 billion for the small-business loan program. The program is designed to get cash into the hands of suffering small businesses quickly, with less red tape and fewer guardrails than the SBA’s existing loan programs. However, with certain clauses in the SBA rules, the plan has now brought up questions of which businesses qualify and why.

“This is a nightmare,” Mohney told the Detroit News. Mohney employs fewer than 500 employees at more than two dozen clubs in Michigan, Nevada, Louisiana, Illinois, Florida, Oklahoma and California, including the Déjà Vu and Hustler chains.

“The emergency regulations promulgated by the Small Business Administration to implement narrower existing loan programs, improperly and unconstitutionally limit benefits to businesses and workers unquestionably engaged in First Amendment protected expression,” the lawsuit states.

An SBA spokesperson told The Post that the association doesn’t comment on pending litigation.

When he was appointed Boeing chief executive four months ago, David Calhoun’s mandate was to resurrect a company reeling from the 737 Max crisis. As the coronavirus pandemic grounds virtually all air travel, ravages the firm’s supply chain and upends the economy, the veteran corporate executive faces a situation far more dire: a catastrophe that threatens the survival of the 104-year-old aerospace and defense firm.

Since the novel coronavirus spread to the United States, virtually every day has brought a cascade of bad news for Boeing. It has been forced to shutter major manufacturing plants outside of Seattle, then Columbus, then Philadelphia, then Charleston, forcing the world’s largest aerospace company to temporarily halt all final assembly of commercial airplanes. There was a round of voluntary layoffs.

Read more here.

MEXICO CITY — Between 50 and 75 percent of all deportees from the United States to Guatemala have tested positive for the coronavirus, the Guatemalan Health Ministry reported Tuesday.

The startling statistic, which other Guatemalan officials were still trying to confirm, would lay bare the human cost of continued U.S. deportations during the global pandemic. Previously, the Guatemalan government had only reported that four deportees had tested positive for the virus.

The United States briefly paused deportations to Guatemala last month, when the country raised concern about deportees returning with the virus. But after U.S. officials pledged to add health checks before deportees boarded the planes, the flights were resumed. In March and April, more than 3,300 Guatemalans have been deported from the United States.

“The cases of those who were deported and then tested positive have greatly increased,” Hugo Monroy, the minister of health, said in a news conference.

Monroy said in many cases the deportees arrive with fevers.

“There’s one flight in particular with more than 75 percent of positive cases,” Monroy said, adding that when he considered “all the flights” of deportees, the range of positive cases was between 50 and 75 percent.

Officially, Guatemala has only 180 coronavirus cases, but Monroy’s comments seem to suggest the actual number could be much higher. Other Guatemalan officials, speaking privately, suggested that Monroy’s numbers could be inaccurate.

On Tuesday evening, Guatemala’s president, Alejandro Giammattei, delivered a national address where he gave an update on the total number of cases in the country but did not speak directly about deportees, or respond to Monroy’s comments.

U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) has said that 77 detainees have tested positive for coronavirus. ICE officials have said they assess the health of migrants, including checking their temperatures before the flights depart. But they do not test them for the virus.

The Treasury Department has ordered President Trump’s name be printed on stimulus checks the Internal Revenue Service is rushing to send to tens of millions of Americans, a process that is expected to slow their delivery by several days, senior agency officials said.

The unprecedented decision, finalized late Monday, means that when recipients open the $1,200 paper checks the IRS is scheduled to begin sending to 70 million Americans in coming days, “President Donald J. Trump” will appear on the left side of the payment.

It will be the first time a president’s signature appears on an IRS disbursement, whether a routine refund or one of the handful of checks the government has issued to taxpayers in recent decades either to stimulate a down economy or share the dividends of a strong one.

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Sandy Brown’s husband knew he was infected. The 59-year-old church elder had the trademark dry cough and fever of covid-19, but when she drove him to the emergency room gasping for air, the doctor’s advice was to go home and stay home.

Soon, their 20-year-old son was sick, and within 12 days, both had died.

The standard prescription from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention for the mildly ill to self-isolate at home is something doctors and nurses in coronavirus hot spots repeat hundreds of times each day. But there’s a devastating cost to the public policy decision: multiple families with multiple deaths.

Read more here.

President Trump holds daily briefings at the White House about his government’s coronavirus response. Here are a few things that the president spoke about on Tuesday:

• Trump is suspending U.S. funding for the World Health Organization
• Trumps backed down on his ‘absolute’ authority to open the economy
• The federal government is organizing a ventilator reserve

Read more about what was discussed in the briefing.