News Round-Up: March 13, 2020

Some news items you might have missed: • Dekkoo: Matt Moran (above) stars as Billy, a smooth-talking media mogul by day/leather bar aficionado by night, who finds his life turned upside down when he’s faced with an unexpected health crisis in the new drama Stranger Hearts now streaming on the gay-centric platform. Read my review of the series here. • Axios: Louisiana is the first state to delay its primary in response to the novel coronavirus. The contest has been moved from April 4 to June 20. Arizona, Florida, Illinois and Ohio have announced their March 17 primaries will go on as scheduled. • KIT212: Don’t miss Kenneth’s weekly round-up of gay rags in the U.S. and abroad including Connor Jessup covering Attitude Magazine (below). • The Hill: Democratic Senate candidate Mark Kelly (D) has a 12-point lead over Sen. Martha McSally (R-Ariz.) in the Arizona Senate race, according to a Univision poll released Friday. Kelly garnered 48 percent support versus McSally’s 36 percent. • Snopes: At today’s press conference regarding the coronavirus, PBS Newshour’s Yamiche Alcindor asked Donald Trump about closing the National Security Council’s pandemics team in 2018. That group would have been on the ready to coordinate responses to any possible pandemics. Today, Trump denied knowing anything about the team’s dismissal.

WATCH: @Yamiche asked the president about a reorganization of the National Security Council that dismantled a key pandemics team in 2018. President Trump: “I just think it’s a nasty question… You say we did that, I don’t know anything about it.” pic.twitter.com/lWo0YKS1rl

— PBS NewsHour (@NewsHour) March 13, 2020

• Buzzfeed News: Donald Trump’s announcement that the US will suspend all travel from Europe to the US for 30 days sent Americans traveling in Europe into hysteria trying to get home when he failed to mention the ban wouldn’t affect U.S. citizens. • Washington Post: Donald Trump tried to blame the current coronavirus threat on former President Barack Obama. Folks weren’t having it.

…. Their response to H1N1 Swine Flu was a full scale disaster, with thousands dying, and nothing meaningful done to fix the testing problem, until now. The changes have been made and testing will soon happen on a very large scale basis. All Red Tape has been cut, ready to go!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) March 13, 2020

Facts: The Obama administration tested 1 million people for H1N1 in the first month after the first US diagnosed case.

The first US #coronavirus case was 50+ days ago. And we haven’t event tested 10,000 people yet. https://t.co/LxRH62NIDw — Ronald Klain (@RonaldKlain) March 13, 2020

Trump. Fired. The. Government’s. Pandemic. Response. Team. In. 2018. https://t.co/FUUxMiyf7i

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) March 13, 2020