Conservatives protest coronavirus restrictions; Florida beaches reopen to crowds and criticism

NEW YORK — On a rainy recent afternoon, a man in his late 60s with a noticeable limp stood in the middle of a normally busy intersection in downtown Manhattan holding a handwritten cardboard sign.

He had a simple request: He needed food. The usual services at the government-subsidized nonprofit facility where he lives had been cut off during coronavirus. And nothing of note had sprung up to take its place.

"The elderly and vulnerable have been forgotten about during the virus. Nobody cares,” said the sign. "Please help. We are hungry.”

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A federal judge in Kansas temporarily blocked the state from limiting the number of people at religious gatherings to 10 people after two churches filed a lawsuit this week arguing that the governor’s policy violates their religious freedom, paving the way for in-person church services Sunday.

U.S. District Judge John Broomes in Wichita ruled Saturday that the state cannot enforce a recent order issued by the state’s Democratic Gov. Laura Kelly, as long as churches observe social distancing. He will hear arguments from the churches Wednesday.

Kelly has tussled with the Republican majority in the state legislature about her stay-at-home order that’s now in place until May 3. The state’s Supreme Court struck down a Republican-led effort to block Kelly’s order limiting church gatherings and funerals to 10 people last Saturday.

The Justice Department has been carefully monitoring the restrictions posed on churches since the crisis began. Attorney General William P. Barr told Fox News recently that the Justice Department had “jawboned” some local governments who went too far with their directives — imposing burdens on churches that it did not on other businesses — and they ultimately backed down.

This week, the department filed a statement of interest seeming to side with a Mississippi church that sued after its parishioners were ticketed for attending a recent drive-in service. Authorities backed down and allowed the drive-in services to proceed.

Kelly said Friday that stay-at-home protection didn’t have anything to do with religious freedom, but it was about the “health and safety” of the state’s residents. Kansas has more than 1,800 confirmed coronavirus cases and 86 deaths, including at least five from religious services and conferences, according to health officials.

Timothy Evans, pastor of the 16 Mile Sabbath Keepers church of Garden City, Kan., is not party to the federal lawsuit, but he held in-person services as usual Saturday evening and has vowed to carry on regardless of the protracted legal wrangling.

“I do sincerely hope that each church prayerfully considers how this should affect their ministries going forward,” he said.

Aerial snapshots of people flocking to a reopened beach in Jacksonville, Fla., made waves on the Internet on Saturday, though the city’s mayor said officials saw no issues in the evening as more stay-at-home-weary souls gathered.

Local news aired photos and videos of Florida’s shoreline dotted with people, closer than six feet apart, spurring #FloridaMorons to trend on Twitter after Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) gave the go-ahead for local beachfront governments to decide whether to reopen their beaches during a news briefing Friday.

Duval and St. Johns counties reopened their beaches, while Miami-Dade County officials said they are considering following suit.

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The vanishing of jobs across the United States in an economy dented by the coronavirus pandemic is producing a ripple effect: In a nation in which most health coverage is hinged to employment, people are losing their health insurance.

No one has a count of exactly how many people have lost their health plans. But 22 million workers have filed unemployment claims in the past month, and the latest census data show that job-based coverage accounted for 55 percent of Americans’ health insurance. One consulting firm is forecasting that perhaps 12 million to 35 million people will lose health benefits from employers because of the pandemic.

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New York, New Jersey and Connecticut have agreed to reopen marinas and boatyards for personal use, even as the tri-state alliance maintains the necessity of shelter-at-home orders.

The three states’ governors announced Saturday that the maritime activities would be permitted as long as people adhere to “strict” social distancing and sanitization procedures. Watercraft rentals are still prohibited and restaurants near these sites must open only for takeout and delivery.

“We’ve committed to working with our regional partners throughout this crisis to align our policies when and where appropriate,” New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy (D) said in a statement. “A unified approach is the most effective way to alleviate confusion for the residents of our states during the ongoing public health emergency.”

The East Coast states have followed Florida and Texas in permitting certain leisure activities in public spaces. In Florida, people have been allowed to return to some beaches, while Texas will reopen state parks Monday.

Although boaters in New Jersey will now have access to their vessels, the state remains under a stay-at-home mandate. Earlier Saturday, Murphy rebuffed calls to reopen the state, saying “there will be blood on our hands” if the stay-at-home is lifted before rapid testing and contact testing becomes available.

“I want to make sure folks understand this. This is literally life-and-death,” Murphy said. “What we need now is responsible leadership. We don’t need irresponsible leadership.”

President Trump made inaccurate claims about the United States’ coronavirus testing in comparison to other countries at a scattered Saturday White House briefing where he complained at length about media coverage and criticism of his administration.

Trump claimed that more than 4 million coronavirus tests have been performed in the United States, which has resulted in “testing more people per capita, by far, than Italy, Spain, Germany, France and the United Kingdom, and all other major countries.”

Trump’s per capita claim is contradicted by coronavirus testing data collected by Vox from the scientific online publication “Our World in Data.” Italy had performed more tests per 1,000 people than the U.S. as of April 17, according to Vox’s graphic. Data for Spain and Germany is not posted for recent days, but they had both reportedly performed far most tests per capita than the U.S. as of earlier in the week.

Other officials pointed Saturday to signs of progress. Deborah Birx, the White House coronavirus response coordinator, said that while fatalities in the U.S. will continue to lag behind hospitalizations, “the hospitalizations are declining.”

“This is really reassuring to us, the progress we are making,” Birx said.

Trump cut in as Birx discussed mortality rates for other countries, challenging China and Iran on data that has come into question. “Does anybody really believe that number?” he asked.

Trump has increasingly seized on China’s role in the spread of the coronavirus as he deflects criticism of his own handling of the pandemic.

“Could have been stopped in China before it started and it wasn’t,” Trump said Saturday. “And the whole world is suffering because of it.”

Trump said that if China was knowingly responsible for the outbreak, than “certainly” there should be consequences for the country. Questioning whether China deliberately tried to spread the virus, he said there was a “big difference” between “a mistake that got out of control or [something] done deliberately.”

In Florida, the beaches are crowded again and preliminary steps are being taken to reopen businesses. However, one institution of daily life remains shuttered by covid-19: schools.

On Saturday, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) announced that K-12 students will continue with distance learning while school buildings remain closed through the end of the academic year.

“We spoke with a lot of folks throughout the state. There were some differing opinions,” DeSantis said during a briefing. “Some parents were not interested in their kids going back. Some others — it’s been tough around the house — they would have liked to see them go back.”

The Sunshine State is not alone in laying out plans to recharge the economy and hasten the return of essential social activities while ending in-building education for the rest of the academic year.

According to Education Week, 30 states and the District of Columbia have “ordered or recommended” that classrooms stay closed until school is out, even as nearly half of those states have commenced plans to slowly reopen.

Some leaders, including DeSantis, have pointed to the upcoming end of the 2019-20 school year as a reason to stick with distance learning, even as officials fear that millions of students will fall behind.

“As we look at the clock and we look to see how it would look like,” DeSantis said Saturday, “it’s obviously not the ideal situation, but given where we are in the school year, we felt that that was the best decision to go forward.”

OKLAHOMA CITY — For nearly a quarter of a century, people have gathered here on what is hallowed ground in this city, the former site of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building, to remember the horror of April 19, 1995. On that bright Wednesday morning, at 9:02 a.m., a rented Ryder truck filled with thousands of pounds of fuel and ammonium nitrate fertilizer exploded along northwest Fifth Street in downtown, killing 168 people inside a day-care center and wounding hundreds more.

This year, on the 25th anniversary of the bombing, there will be no in-person mourning.

As organizers grappled with how to handle an annual tradition in the midst of a pandemic, a family member of one of those killed in the bombing called the executive director of Oklahoma City National Memorial and Museum with a dire observation. Enough people had died in the 1995 attack, the person said. They shouldn’t feel an obligation to hold a ceremony that might risk more death.

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