memeorandum: Schools Are Open, but Many Families Remain Hesitant to Return (Dana Goldstein/New York Times)

2:40 PM ET, May 9, 2021

Top Items:

Mychael Schnell / The Hill:

Kinzinger compares Republican Party to the Titanic — Share to Facebook Share to Twitter — GOP Rep. Adam Kinzinger (Ill.) on Sunday compared the Republican Party to the Titanic amid an internal battle surrounding Rep. Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.) and the push to oust her from her GOP leadership position.

Discussion: Insider, Occupy Democrats, IJR, The Daily Caller and LifeZette

Alexander Bolton / The Hill:

McConnell safe in power, despite Trump's wrath — Share to Facebook Share to Twitter — Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) is safe in his job despite repeated attack from former President Trump, Republican aides and strategists say. — At the same time, GOP sources …

Discussion: CBS News, USA Today, Associated Press, Talking Points Memo, Political Irony, CNN, POLITICUSUSA, NBC News and Raw Story

Cameron Cawthorne / Fox News:
Rep. Jim Banks: Liz Cheney ‘failed’ in House GOP leadership role

Discussion: The Daily Beast, The Hill, Raw Story and Crooks and Liars

Chip Somodevilla / ABC News:
‘This Week’ Transcript 5-9-21: Dr. Anthony Fauci, Fatima Goss Graves, Diane Swonk & Lareina Yee

Discussion: NBC News, Washington Examiner, HotAir and Fox News

Sandra Tan / Buffalo News:

Free beer offer results in more vaccinations than all Erie County first-dose clinics last week — The idea of getting vaccinated had been rolling around in the back of Tyler Morsch's mind for weeks. As a 28-year-old, he didn't feel in any particular danger, but he finally decided …

Discussion: Balloon Juice

Dana Goldstein / New York Times:

Schools Are Open, but Many Families Remain Hesitant to Return — Even as fears of the coronavirus abate, many students are continuing to opt out of in-person learning. Some school leaders are trying to woo — or push — them back. — Pauline Rojas's high school in San Antonio is open.

Discussion: Washington Monthly and Twitchy

Stef W. Kight / Axios:

The next political battleground: school boards — The debate over coronavirus precautions and school reopening has fueled a surge of new candidates for school boards across the country. — Why it matters: What was traditionally a nonpartisan, hyper-local role is now at center of a swirling national political debate.

Wall Street Journal:

Melinda Gates Was Meeting With Divorce Lawyers Since 2019 to End Marriage With Bill Gates — Melinda Gates had discussions with divorce lawyers in October 2019 around when Bill Gates's ties to Jeffrey Epstein became public — The split between Bill and Melinda Gates, announced last week, has been in the works for a long time.

Discussion: LifeZette and New York Post

E.J. Dionne / Washington Post:

Tory lessons for Republicans — Opinion by — Local and regional election results across Britain last week hold lessons for American politicians. Not least is this: A Trumpist Republican Party that had taken the coronavirus pandemic more seriously and had delivered tangible benefits …

Discussion: BBC

Will Bunch / The Philadelphia Inquirer:

Police robbed these Black men of their lives, too, but we're not talking about this | Will Bunch — It was nearly 50 weeks ago that the Minneapolis murder of an unarmed Black man, George Floyd, under the knee of then-police officer Derek Chauvin, finally put the issue of police killings in America on the front burner.

The Philadelphia Inquirer:

Larry Krasner deserves a second term as Philly district attorney | Endorsement — The Democratic primary for Philadelphia district attorney has been drawing national attention, and understandably so. Aside from its colorful main characters — an incumbent DA who's a national icon in progressive circles …

Jesse Naranjo / Politico:

Fauci predicts ‘dramatic difference’ in pandemic outlook if more are vaccinated — Top Biden health adviser Anthony Fauci on Sunday predicted that the country's coronavirus situation will be dramatically different a year from now if larger proportions of the population are vaccinated.

Discussion: CNN and National Review

Davone Morales / ABC News:
Vaccinations are the ‘end game’ to the COVID-19 crisis in India: Fauci

Discussion: The Hill and Fox News

Tony Romm / Washington Post:

GOP governors slash jobless aid to try to force more Americans to return to work — Arkansas, Montana and South Carolina have acted in recent days to end extra $300 weekly payments to unemployed Americans, even as the Biden administration maintains generous benefits are not deterring people from seeking work

Discussion: CBS News, Insider, No More Mister Nice Blog, Lawyers, Guns & Money, BizPac Review and Zandar Versus The Stupid

Associated Press:

Former Delaware Governor Pierre ‘Pete’ Du Pont IV Dies — THE ASSOCIATED PRESS (The Associated Press) — Wilmington, Del. (AP) — Pierre S. “Pete” du Pont IV, a former Delaware governor and congressman who sought the Republican presidential nomination in 1988, has died. He was 86.

Discussion: The Hill, New York Times and USA Today

Ted Cruz / Wall Street Journal:

Your Woke Money Is No Good Here — Corporations have taken advantage of Republicans for too long. I won't take their PAC dollars anymore. — Georgia's new election law runs 98 generously spaced pages. A fast reader can get through it in one sitting. If you're the CEO of a major corporation …

Discussion: New York Magazine

Washington Post:

As convention ends, Virginia Republicans wait for governor nominee to emerge — Correction: A previous version of this article incorrectly labeled a list of candidates running for the Republican nomination for attorney general of Virginia as lieutenant governor candidates. The article has been corrected.

Discussion: Blue Virginia

Graham Moomaw / Virginia Mercury: ‘Tired of getting whupped’: GOP convention voters offer competing visions for a red Virginia

Jesus Jiménez / New York Times:

2 Oklahoma Boys Pulled From Class for ‘Black Lives Matter’ T-Shirts — In addition to the disciplinary action they have faced, the boys' mother said that at least one of her three sons has been bullied because of the shirts. — Two brothers, 8 and 5, were removed from their Oklahoma …

Discussion: The Hill

Washington Post:

South Carolina may bring back electric chair, once used to execute a 14-year-old boy later exonerated — Barely 5 feet tall and not yet 100 pounds, George Stinney Jr. sat so small in the electric chair that the straps were too big to contain him. — The 14-year-old had to sit on books for his head to reach the headpiece.

Hugo Lowell / The Guardian:

Democrats renew effort to get Donald Trump's financial records — House committee is arguing to federal judge that with Trump out of office, he no longer has a viable claim to withhold materials — A powerful Democrat-led House committee is pushing a federal judge to order Donald Trump …

Discussion: Raw Story

Ido Efrati / Haaretz:

Israel's Active COVID Cases Fall Below 1,000 for the First Time in Over a Year — On Saturday only 17 new coronavirus cases were identified - a tiny 0.2 percent out of 11,500 tests administered that day — The number of people with coronavirus infection in Israel dipped to 985 on Sunday - the lowest it's been in 14 months.

Emily Peck / New York Times:

How Child Care Went From ‘Girly’ Economics to Infrastructure — Experts who sounded the alarm about the care economy were often shunted to the side of policy discussions. Not anymore. — When the economist Nancy Folbre got a call from the MacArthur Foundation in 1998, she was expecting rejection …

Jonathan Turley / The Hill:

Free Speech Inc.: The Democratic Party finds a new but shaky faith in corporate free speech — Share to Facebook Share to Twitter — After Facebook's oversight board this week upheld the social media giant's continuing ban of former President Trump, the response of Rep. Ilhan Omar …

Discussion: Fox News

Nahal Toosi / Politico:

The one that gets away: Joe Biden's jaded romance with Iran — Nearly two decades ago, as Americans stunned by the 9/11 attacks were still sifting through rubble on the East Coast and in Afghanistan, then-Sen. Joe Biden seized the moment to call for a revival of U.S. ties with Iran.

NBC News:

Terry McAuliffe's popularity in Virginia dims some Democrats' hopes for first Black female governor … Virginia Democrats are less than a month away from picking a nominee in this year's race for governor, and two things are increasingly clear. — Terry McAuliffe, the former governor barred …

Mica Soellner / Washington Examiner:

GOP in Utah county moves to censure Romney, despite state party's vote against it — The Republican Party in a Utah county is moving forward with censuring Sen. Mitt Romney over his vote to impeach former President Donald Trump, defying a decision by the state's GOP to nix such a measure.

Discussion: Salt Lake Tribune, Crooks and Liars and The Gateway Pundit