Good morning. 
Tuesday in Whitewater will be sunny with a high of fifty-nine. Sunrise is 5:33 AM and sunset 8:08 PM, for 14h 35m 12s of daytime. The moon is a waning gibbous with 70.6% of its visible disk illuminated.
Today is the one thousand two hundred eighty-first day.
Whitewater’s Public Works Committee meets at 6 PM via audiovisual conferencing.
On this day in 1949, the Soviet Union lifts its unsuccessful blockade of Berlin.
Recommended for reading in full —
Charlotte Butash writes Supreme Court Oral Argument Preview: Trump Financial Documents Cases:
On May 12, the Supreme Court will hear oral argument in Trump v. Mazars and Trump v. Deutsche Bank, the consolidated cases concerning whether President Trump’s business and personal financial records are subject to subpoenas from congressional committees. These cases were linked with a third, Trump v. Vance, which concerns whether a New York state grand jury can subpoena the president’s personal financial records and also is scheduled for oral argument on May 12. The outcome of these three cases could have significant implications for congressional power, the Trump family’s business dealings and the transparency of the president’s reelection campaign.
The court is livestreaming the audio of the arguments, under its new policy that governs arguments during the coronavirus pandemic. Argument in Mazars and Deutsche Bank will be divided among attorneys for the congressional committees, attorneys for the president and attorneys from the Justice Department. Argument in Vance will be divided among attorneys for the New York County District Attorney’s Office, attorneys for the president and attorneys from the Justice Department. You can listen here at 10 a.m.
Dr. Leana S. Wen writes of Six flaws in the arguments for reopening:
It’s worth the sacrifice if some people die so that the country has a functioning economy. This is a false choice; there are ways to safely reopen, and consumer confidence depends on the reassurance of public health protections.
Another flaw with this argument is that those making it are committing others to a sacrifice they did not choose. Covid-19 has disproportionately affected people of color, who are more likely to be essential workers, as well as to have chronic health conditions that make them more susceptible to severe illness. Minorities and working-class Americans of all ethnicities unable to shelter at home will continue to bear the brunt of infections, illness and death. Individual liberty cannot take precedence over the health and well-being of the less privileged.
We’ve been in lockdown for more than a month and cases aren’t declining; social distancing doesn’t work. Actually, social distancing has worked in places where measures were applied early and consistently. The two states with earliest known community transmission, California and Washington, avoided surges. New York was able to “flatten” its curve, and the number of cases at this epicenter is declining.
U.S. case numbers have not declined as much as case numbers in other countries because we have not applied the aggressive measures that some Asian and European countries have. At best, the United States has had a piecemeal approach. Some states never issued stay-at-home orders. Social distancing was intended to buy time to prepare hospitals and scale up capacity to test, trace and isolate coronavirus infections. Hospitals are better prepared than they were two months ago, but the country still lacks the resources for mass testing and contact tracing/isolation on the scale needed to tamp down infections.