memeorandum: Shake Shack is returning its PPP Loan. Here's why: (Randy Garutti/LinkedIn)

1:20 PM ET, April 20, 2020

Top Items:

Jonathan O'Connell / Washington Post:

White House, GOP face heat after hotel and restaurant chains helped run small business program dry — With program out of money, backlash prompts executives at Shake Shack to return $10 million loan. — The federal government gave national hotel and restaurant chains millions of dollars …

Discussion: Wall Street Journal, CNN, Florida Politics, New York Post, Raw Story and HuffPost

NBC News:

Shake Shack returning $10 million government loan meant for small businesses — With the Paycheck Protection Program already out of money, the burger chain says other restaurateurs need its loan more than it does. — Shake Shack, one of several large restaurant chains that got federal loans through …

Discussion: The Week, Bloomberg and Quartz

Randy Garutti / LinkedIn:

Shake Shack is returning its PPP Loan. Here's why: — A letter from Danny Meyer and Randy Garutti — On March 27, when both branches of Congress and the White House came to an agreement to provide sweeping financial assistance via the $2.2 trillion CARES Act, many of us in the restaurant industry cheered with a big sigh of relief.

Discussion: Townhall, Talking Points Memo, Axios, NPR, Redstate, Breitbart, CNN, CBS Los Angeles, CNBC, New York Post, Associated Press, courthousenews.com and The Week

Judd Legum / Popular Information:
A raw deal — The pandemic has been devastating for small businesses …

Discussion: New York Daily News, Washington Post and CNBC

Derek Wallbank / Bloomberg: Shake Shack Will Return Its Entire $10 Million U.S. Government Loan

Alicia Wallace / CNN:
Shake Shack, Ruth's Chris and other chain restaurants got big PPP loans when small businesses couldn't

Discussion: New York Times

Zachary Warmbrodt / Politico:
Shake Shack to return small business loan after uproar

Discussion: Axios and Raw Story

Daniel W. Drezner / Washington Post:

Everyone is in denial about November — The 2016 hangover — Over the weekend, the hard-working staff here at Spoiler Alerts read a lot of analysis about what the Trump administration was thinking and doing about reelection. What all of this analysis had in common was a refusal to acknowledge some brute facts.

Discussion: Fox News, NBC News, The Nation and The National Interest

Aaron Blake / Washington Post:

The one poll number that could haunt Trump on coronavirus — On one level, polls of President Trump's handling of the coronavirus look just like his handling of just about everything else. Despite a slight early bump, his approval on the matter is now in the mid-40s …

Discussion: The Hill, The American Independent and Blue Virginia

Washington Post:

Pro-gun activists using Facebook groups to push anti-quarantine protests — A trio of far-right, pro-gun provocateurs is behind some of the largest Facebook groups calling for anti-quarantine protests around the country, offering the latest illustration that some seemingly organic demonstrations …

Discussion: The Bulwark, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, Fox News, VICE, The Smoke Eater, Raw Story, The Gateway Pundit, No More Mister Nice Blog and The Verge, more at Techmeme »

Charles M. Blow / New York Times:

Stop Airing Trump's Briefings! — The media is allowing disinformation to appear as news. — Around this time four years ago, the media world was all abuzz over an analysis by mediaQuant, a company that tracks what is known as “earned media” coverage of political candidates. Earned media is free media.

Discussion: The Root, HuffPost, Raw Story, Mediaite, POLITICUSUSA, Mother Jones and The Daily Caller

Beth LeBlanc / Detroit News:

Poll: Michiganians favor Whitmer's COVID-19 handling over Trump's — Michigan residents favor Gov. Gretchen Whitmer's handling of the coronavirus over that of President Donald Trump, according to a poll done for the Detroit Regional Chamber that was released Monday.

James Arkin / Politico:

Democrats' momentum puts Senate majority in play — Republicans started this election cycle as heavy favorites to keep their Senate majority, with a lineup of elections mostly in red-tinted states and GOP incumbents favored over a slate of relatively unknown and untested challengers.

Discussion: The Hill and Raw Story

Bloomberg:

Oil in New York Plunges Below $15 as Storage Sites Fill — Texan buyers offering as little as $2 a barrel for some crudes — WTI plummets as much as 22%, though futures expire on Tuesday — Oil plunged below $15 a barrel in New York, a fresh 21-year low, as inventories soar …

Washington Post: U.S. stocks tumble amid steep drop in crude prices

Michael Kranish / Washington Post:

Brett Giroir, Trump's testing czar, was forced out of a job developing vaccine projects. Now he's on the hot seat. — Brett Giroir, the federal official overseeing coronavirus testing efforts, says that his experience working on vaccine development projects at Texas A&M University helped prepare him for this historic moment.

Discussion: CNN, The Week and Raw Story

Hayley Peterson / Business Insider:

Amazon-owned Whole Foods is quietly tracking its employees with a heat map tool that ranks which stores are most at risk of unionizing — Amazon-owned Whole Foods is tracking and scoring stores it deems at risk of unionizing, according to five people with knowledge of the effort and internal documents viewed by Business Insider.

Washington Post:

Live updates: Trump defends U.S. protests against coronavirus restrictions as global lockdowns trigger unrest — The Washington Post is providing this story for free so that all readers have access to this important information about the coronavirus. For more free stories, sign up for our daily Coronavirus Updates newsletter.

Discussion: POLITICUSUSA and Raw Story

Washington Post:
‘Go to China if you want communism’: Anti-quarantine protester clashes with people in scrubs

Discussion: POLITICUSUSA, Breitbart, The Hill and Raw Story

George Packer / The Atlantic:

We Are Living in a Failed State — When the virus came here, it found a country with serious underlying conditions, and it exploited them ruthlessly. Chronic ills—a corrupt political class, a sclerotic bureaucracy, a heartless economy, a divided and distracted public—had gone untreated for years.

Discussion: Raw Story

Kyle Cheney / Politico:

A watchdog out of Trump's grasp unleashes wave of coronavirus audits — Lawmakers handed President Donald Trump $2 trillion in coronavirus relief — and then left town without activating any of the powerful new oversight tools meant to hold his administration accountable.

Discussion: Vanity Fair, Raw Story and The Daily Caller

Greg Sargent / Washington Post:

Trump's support for right-wing protests just got more ugly and dangerous — At bottom, President Trump's ongoing support for right-wing agitators who want to own the libs by throwing off the oppression of policies limiting their own exposure to a deadly pathogen should sound unsettlingly familiar.

Discussion: PRESS RUN, Vox and Common Dreams

Charlie Warzel / New York Times:
Protesting for the Right to Catch the Coronavirus

Discussion: The Philadelphia Inquirer

Maggie Haberman / New York Times:

Trump, Head of Government, Leans Into Antigovernment Message — With his poll numbers fading after a rally-around-the-leader bump, the president is stoking protests against stay-at-home orders. — First he was the self-described “wartime president.” Then he trumpeted the “total” authority of the federal government.

Discussion: Mediaite, Raw Story, Deadline, Daily Kos, Redstate, NBC News, Axios, Politico and ABC News

Tom Boggioni / Raw Story:

White House worried Trump-inspired protests will blow up in his face if attendees are stricken with COVID-19: NYT's Haberman — Appearing remotely on CNN's “New Day” New York Times White House correspondent Maggie Haberman claimed that senior officials in Donald Trump's administration …

Marilynn Marchione / Associated Press:

Reports suggest many have had coronavirus with no symptoms — file photo, amid coronavirus concerns, a healthcare worker takes the temperature of a visitor to Essentia Health who was crossing over a skywalk bridge from the adjoining parking deck, in Duluth, Minn. A flood of new research suggests …

Discussion: Associated Press

Helen Branswell / STAT:

The months of magical thinking: As the coronavirus swept over China, some experts were in denial — The response to the coronavirus pandemic in the United States and other countries has been hobbled by a host of factors, many involving political and regulatory officials.

Discussion: The Week

Jasmin Barmore / Detroit News:

5-year-old with rare complication becomes first Michigan child to die of COVID-19 — A month ago, 5-year-old Skylar Herbert complained to her parents that she had a bad headache. — On Sunday, after spending two weeks on a ventilator, the Detroit girl died.

Discussion: Daily Kos, TheGrio, Fox News and New York Post

BFI:

Misinformation During a Pandemic — We study the effects of news coverage of the novel coronavirus by the two most widely-viewed cable news shows in the United States - Hannity and Tucker Carlson Tonight, both on Fox News - on viewers' behavior and downstream health outcomes.

Houston Chronicle:

Across nation, masks are the latest political, cultural divide — Kevin Krannawitter won't wear a mask because he just doesn't think it's necessary, whatever the scientists say. Marilyn Singleton won't wear one either - and she's a physician - because she says it's un-American for the government to force people to cover their faces.

Nick Bilton / Vanity Fair:

In the Coronavirus Era, the Force Is Still With Jack Dorsey — Twitter's CEO, last of the Steve Jobs-like tech-founder demigods, was on the verge of being pushed out by private-equity investors. But his will, and wiles—and COVID-19—gave him new purpose. For now.

Discussion: Althouse

Reuters:

South Koreans return to work, crowd parks, malls as social distancing rules ease — Hyonhee Shin, Heekyong Yang — SEOUL (Reuters) - South Koreans are returning to work and crowding shopping malls, parks, golf courses and some restaurants as South Korea relaxes social distancing rules amid …

Justin Wise / The Hill:

Trump calls FBI investigators in Russia probe ‘human scum’ — President Trump on Sunday lashed out at FBI leadership over the origins of the investigation into Russian election interference, calling investigators who led the probe “human scum.” — Trump made the remarks during …

Discussion: Talking Points Memo and PJ Media Home

Fox News:

Australia joins US in seeking probe of China amid questions over coronavirus origin — Australia on Sunday called for an “independent international” investigation into China's management of the coronavirus outbreak and the origin of the pandemic, joining the U.S. in scrutinizing China's role.

Discussion: New York Post, American Greatness and Breitbart