U.S. President Donald Trump has called his predecessor Barack Obama an “incompetent president” following Obama’s criticism of the U.S. response to the coronavirus pandemic.  Obama told college graduates in a live-streamed speech on Saturday that “this pandemic has fully, finally torn back the curtain on the idea that so many of the folks in charge know what they’re doing.” He did not mention anyone by name.    Asked about the remark on Sunday, Trump said:  “Look, he was an incompetent president, that’s all I can say. Grossly incompetent.”  The United States has become the global epicenter of the coronavirus pandemic, with about 1.5 million confirmed cases and 90,000 deaths. Critics have accused the administration of exacerbating the situation by ignoring the gravity of the outbreak in the crucial early weeks.  Earlier Sunday, the top U.S. health official rejected the charge that the government had failed its people.   “It could have been vastly, vastly worse,” Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar told CNN. He said the United States over the last two months was “able to flatten the curve” of the number of coronavirus cases in order to give health care workers a chance to deal with the onslaught of patients needing care.  Trump said on Twitter, “Doing REALLY well, medically, on solving the CoronaVirus situation (Plague!). It will happen!”   Doing REALLY well, medically, on solving the CoronaVirus situation (Plague!). It will happen!— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) A youngster approaches a team of New York City police officers as they walk with face masks to hand out to anyone who needs or asks for one during the current coronavirus outbreak, Sunday, May 17, 2020, in Brooklyn Bridge Park in New York.The president has scheduled more discussions with governors and industry leaders for Monday on conditions to reopen the country and ensure a steady supply of food and other goods and services, despite projections that the U.S. coronavirus death toll would reach 147,000 by August.  The shutdowns threaten to push the U.S. economy into recession and unemployment has reached historically high levels, with one-quarter of the country’s work force losing jobs.  Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell said Sunday that additional job losses are likely through June.  In an interview with CBS’s “60 Minutes” news program, Powell said the economic recovery will take a long time and U.S. businesses and families will need three to six more months of government financial support.  He also emphasized the importance of preventing another outbreak for the economic recovery.  “If we are thoughtful and careful about how we reopen the economy so that people take these social distancing measures forward and try to do what we can not to have another outbreak…then the recovery can begin fairly soon,” Powell said. He urged Americans to help each other by respecting social distancing, washing their hands and wearing masks.    Most of the country’s 50 states are beginning to relax restrictions on businesses, while urging residents to continue keeping a social distance of at least two meters between people, wearing masks in public, and avoiding large groups. 
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Iran is warning the United States against threatening its tankers carrying fuel to Venezuela, where gasoline and oil are in desperately short supply despite Venezuela being a major oil production center. As many as five Iranian ships loaded with gasoline are believed to be on their way to the South American country. U.S. sanctions forbid Iran from selling oil and the U.S. is also pressuring all countries against supplying fuel to Venezuela, as part of Washington’s efforts to drive President Nicolas Maduro from power. Iranian Foreign Minister Javad Zarif wrote a letter Sunday to United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres about Tehran’s concerns over whatever action the U.S. might take. Iran “reserves its right to take all appropriate and necessary measures and decisive action…to secure its legitimate rights and interests against such bullying policies and unlawful practices,” Zarif wrote. “This hegemonic gunboat diplomacy seriously threatens freedom of international commerce and navigation and the free flow of energy. Zarif said Iran would consider any “coercive measures” by the U.S. as a “dangerous escalation.”  Iranian officials delivered a similar message to the Swiss ambassador in Tehran who handles all U.S. interests in Iran.Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin brief reporters about additional sanctions placed on Iran, at the White House, Jan. 10, 2019, in Washington.U.S. officials have not yet said specifically how they plan to respond if Iran is sending gasoline to Venezuela. But the State Department, Treasury, and Coast Guard warned all global shipping companies and governments not to help Iran, or anyone else, dodge sanctions. U.S. President Donald Trump re-imposed sanctions on Iran when he pulled the U.S. out of the 2015 nuclear deal, leaving the Iranian economy in shambles. The U.S. has also imposed a variety of sanctions against Venezuela, whose economy was destroyed by a drop in global oil prices, corruption, and Maduro’s failed socialist policies. The sanctions have made it difficult for Venezuela to send crude oil to refineries. “We have to sell our oil and we have access to its paths,” Iranian cabinet spokesman Ali Rabiei says. “Iran and Venezuela are two independent nations that have had trade with each other, and they will.” 
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For some of the 2,000 or so year-round residents of Deer Isle, Maine, the fraying American flag outside the post office this spring was a reminder of the nation’s mood.The flag was in tatters. It twisted in the wind from a single hook. But it was stuck in the up position, so the postmistress hadn’t been able to replace it.”I was thinking what a metaphor it is for our country right now,” community health director René Colson Hudson said. “It was really important that the flag be replaced, as a symbol of hope.”Colson Hudson, a former New Jersey pastor who moved to coastal Maine a few years ago, posted an online plea on April 23 that sparked a community thread. Should someone scale the flagpole? Could the local tree-trimmer help? Did they need a bucket truck?By week’s end, a secret helper had gotten the flag down. Postmistress Stephanie Black soon had the new one flying high.Colson Hudson, 54, had rarely visited her post office when she lived in suburban New Jersey. But in Deer Isle, people exchange small talk in the lobby, announce school events on the bulletin board and pick up medications and mail-in ballots — while postal workers keep an eye on everyone’s well-being.”Here,” she said, “it is the center of community.”A STRUGGLE TO FLOURISHMany of the nation’s 630,000 postal employees are facing new risks during the COVID-19 outbreak, as they sort mail or make daily rounds to reach people in far-flung locales. More than 2,000 of them have tested positive for the virus, and a union spokesman says 61 workers have died.For most Americans, mail deliveries to homes or post boxes are their only routine contact with the federal government. It’s a service they seem to appreciate: The agency consistently earns “favorability” marks that top 90%.Yet it’s not popular with one influential American: President Donald Trump, who has threatened to block the U.S. Postal Service from COVID-19 relief funding unless it quadruples the package rates it charges large customers like Amazon, owned by Jeff Bezos. Bezos also owns The Washington Post, whose coverage rankles Trump.”He is willing to sacrifice the U.S. Postal Service and its 630,000 employees because of petty vindictiveness and personal retaliation against Jeff Bezos,” Rep. Gerry Connolly, D-Va., said last week. “That would be a tragic outcome.”Postal Service officials, bracing for steep losses given the nationwide coronavirus shutdown, warn they’ll run out of money by September without help. They reported a $4.5 billion loss for the quarter ending March 31 — on $17.8 billion in revenue — before the full effects of the shutdown sank in.  Some in Congress want to set aside $25 billion from the nearly $3 trillion relief program to keep the mail flowing. But with Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin pushing Trump’s priorities, the Postal Service has so far landed just a $10 billion loan.”The Postal Service is a joke,” President Donald Trump told reporters in the Oval Office on April 24. “They’re handing out packages for Amazon and other internet companies and every time they bring a package, they lose money on it.”  Historically, the Postal Service has operated without public funds, even since a crushing 2006 law required it to pre-fund 75 years of retiree benefits. It’s been around longer than the nation itself, with a rich history that includes Benjamin Franklin’s tenure as the first postmaster general.  This month, the USPS Board of Directors appointed Republican fundraiser Louis DeJoy to the post. He succeeds Megan Brennan, a career postal worker who is retiring.The president insists higher package rates could ease the Postal Service’s financial troubles. But most financial analysts disagree. They say customers would turn to UPS or FedEx.Packages typically account for 5 percent of the Postal Service’s volume but 30 percent of its revenue. And package revenue has actually gone up during the shutdown. Still, it hasn’t been enough to restore profitability, battered during the internet age by the decline of first-class mail.Mark Dimondstein, president of the American Postal Workers Union, with 200,000 members, fears the Trump administration wants to destabilize the agency and then sell it off.With more than 30 million Americans suddenly out of work, he wonders why anyone would put “600,000 good, living-wage jobs” at risk. Those Postal Service jobs have moved generations of Americans, especially blacks and minorities, firmly into the middle class.Yet the president, Dimondstein said, wants to privatize the operation when “here you have the post office serving the people of this country in maybe a deeper way than we ever have.”A 55-CENT JOURNEY TO ISLE AU HAUTOn Henrietta Dixon’s mail route in North Philadelphia, every house has a story. Dixon seems to know them all.  Alvin Fields moved back to his block of two-story row homes after 40 years working for Verizon. Jason Saal, 40, lives in an abandoned factory he bought for an art studio, but now hopes to make industrial-grade masks there.Sharae Cunningham is also making masks, but the hand-sewn kind, some with African prints she sells for $6.  All said they would miss the Postal Service if it collapsed.”It’s nice to have mail delivered by a letter carrier,” said Saal, who mailed out two boxes of masks through Dixon one recent morning and gave her several free ones. “It’s the person that you see, a government worker, every day, Monday to Sunday.”They agreed the neighborhood, one of Philadelphia’s poorest, would benefit from the kind of expanded services — such as low-fee check cashing and wifi — that’s the norm in Europe and might help U.S. post offices survive.  “That’d be a great service. A lot of people need to cash checks,” said Cunningham, 40, who helps care for chronically ill parents, four children and a grandchild.Dixon, who lives nearby, has been with the post office for nearly 30 years, the last nine on her current route. Fields called her “absolutely wonderful.”Her route, in a dense city neighborhood, might be attractive to private companies itching to compete with the Postal Service. But the same 55-cent stamp that takes a letter across town can also get one to the Pacific Northwest, rural Appalachia or islands off the coasts of Alaska, California and Maine. That’s because of the USPS pledge to offer “universal service” to everyone in the United States, no matter what it takes.”For the American psyche, it’s one of the last places where we are all equal. We all have the right to a 55-cent letter and mail delivery six days a week,” said Evan Kalish, 30, of Queens, New York, a postal enthusiast who’s documented thousands of post office visits on his blog, Postlandia.A few miles south of Deer Isle, Postmistress Donna DeWitt walks down to a boat dock each morning to retrieve her plastic bins from the 7 a.m. mail boat and carts it up to the tiny Isle au Haut Post Office a few hundred feet away.  With no bridge to the mainland and wifi and cell phone service on the island spotty, mail service is essential to the 70 or so year-round residents, who mostly work in the fishing and lobstering trades.”I don’t think you’d find most of the old-timers, for instance, paying their bills online. They depend on the mail for all of their business transactions,” said George Cole, the volunteer president of Isle au Haut Boat Services, a nonprofit that brings the mail over on the 45-minute trip from Stonington.The ferry service gets most of its revenue from summer tourists, but the small USPS contract helps.”If we lost it, it would be very painful,” Cole said. “We’ve carried the mail for 50 years.”DEATH NOTICES, PLANTS AND PUMPKIN ROLLSFilmmaker Tom Quinn set out to make a movie about a town that lost its zip code — and its place on the map — in a round of USPS closures in 2011. The film became a study in loneliness.”I started to understand what this is about,” said Quinn, speaking of his 2019 film “Colewell,” set in a fictional small town on the New York-Pennsylvania border.In places like those, he said, the post office serves as the town’s living room — a gathering spot for conversation, for human contact, for community.”When this hub is there, you run into people by accident,” said Quinn, who teaches film at Drexel University in Philadelphia. “It’s the same thing about Zoom and teaching. None of those accidental interactions happen anymore.”In rural Fayette County, West Virginia, Susan Williams fondly recalls postmistresses who left homemade pumpkin roll out for customers, posted a note in the lobby when someone died and kept her mail-order geraniums alive.”If I thought these plants were going to arrive while we were away, she would just open the boxes and water them for us,” said Williams, a retired journalist and teacher who lives in Falls View, about 35 miles east of Charleston.  With no home delivery there, she treks two miles to Charlton Heights to get her mail, trying to arrive after it gets put up at 10:30 a.m. and before the post office closes at noon. On a recent day in late April, her box held her mail-in ballot for the presidential primary. She planned to return it the next day.”It means everything,” Williams said of the Postal Service.Back in Maine, Colson Hudson likes to take the mail boat over to Eagle Island in the summer (year-round population 2; seasonal, perhaps 40) to visit friends. She once took a picture of the mail bag, musing about who its contents would connect.”All these people come flocking down at the time the boat comes with the mail,” she said. “There’s something in that bag that they’re waiting for, that they’re hoping for.” 
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Five Iranian tankers likely carrying at least $45.5 million worth of gasoline and similar products are now sailing to Venezuela, part of a wider deal between the two U.S.-sanctioned nations amid heightened tensions between Tehran and Washington.The tankers’ voyage come after Venezuela’s socialist leader Nicolás Maduro already turned to Iran for help in flying in chemicals needed at an aging refinery amid a gasoline shortage, a symptom of the wider economic and political chaos gripping Latin America’s one-time largest oil producer.For Iran, the tankers represent a way to bring money into its cash-starved Shiite theocracy and put its own pressure on the U.S., which under President Donald Trump has pursued maximalist campaigns against both nations.But the strategy invites the chance of a renewed confrontation between the Islamic Republic and America both in the Persian Gulf, which saw a series of escalating incidents often involving the oil industry last year, and wider afield.“This is like a new one for everyone,” said Capt. Ranjith Raja, an analyst who tracks oil shipments by sea at the data firm Refinitiv, of the gasoline shipments. “We haven’t seen anything like this before.”All the vessels involved belong to Iranian state-owned or state-linked companies, flying under the Iranian flag. Since a pressure campaign on Iranian vessels began, notably with the temporary seizure of an Iranian tanker last year by Gibraltar, the country’s ships have been unable to fly flags of convenience of other nations, a common practice in international shipping.The ships all appear to have been loaded from the Persian Gulf Star Refinery near Bandar Abbas, Iran, which makes gasoline, Raja said. The ships then traveled around the Arabian Peninsula and through the Suez Canal into the Mediterranean Sea, according to data collected from the ship’s Automatic Identification System, or AIS, which acts as a tracking beacon.One of the vessels, the Clavel, listed its AIS destination as Caracas beginning May 12, according to log data from ship-tracking website MarineTraffic.com. The vessel later changed its destination as “TO ORDER” two days later, though the ship remains on a route that will see it leave the Mediterranean Sea and be in position to sail onto Venezuela.Another tanker, the Forest, changed its AIS destination to “S. AMERICA TO ORDER” on May 14.Three others, the Faxon, the Fortune and the Petunia, all appear on routes that could take them to Venezuela. Given the crushing U.S. sanctions imposed on Iran, also-sanctioned Venezuela appears to be the country that would have nothing to lose from accepting the shipments. Raja said Refinitiv had no data on any Iranian gasoline shipment ever going to South America before.TankerTrackers.com, a website focused on the oil trade at sea, first reported the ships likely were heading to Venezuela.The capacity of the five ships is some 175,000 metric tons. On the open market, the gasoline and product carried within them would be worth at least $45.5 million, though Iran likely reached a discounted, non-cash deal with Caracas given the circumstances the two nations face, Raja said.As news about the tankers grew, an Iranian news agency called Nour, believed to have ties to the country’s Supreme National Security Council, published an item on its website early Saturday trying to link a U.S. military exercise in the Caribbean to the tankers. That council includes members of Iran’s civilian government, its military and its paramilitary, hard-line Revolutionary Guard.“If the United States, like pirates, intends to create insecurity on international highways, it will take a dangerous risk that will certainly not go unnoticed,” the agency warned in its brief report.The Nour item, later picked up by other semiofficial news agencies in Iran, follows a pattern by Tehran of issuing veiled threats through such reports even as officials don’t directly acknowledge them.Quoted by a website affiliated to Iranian state television, Cabinet spokesman Ali Rabiei on Saturday said he did not have any information on the ships.“We have to sell our oil and we have access to its paths,” Rabiei said. “Iran and Venezuela are two independent nations that have had trade with each other and they will” in the future.But that all changed late Sunday, when Iran’s Foreign Ministry issued a statement saying Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif wrote a letter to U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres saying the U.S. “piracy” threatened the “disruption of Iran’s fuel transmission to Venezuela.” Abbas Araghchi, Iran’s deputy foreign minister, issued a similar warning to the Swiss ambassador in Tehran, who looks out for American interests there.It remains unclear how the U.S. will respond to the tankers. On Thursday, the U.S. Treasury, State Department and Coast Guard issued an advisory warning the maritime industry of illegal shipping and sanctions-dodging tactics by countries including Iran.The advisory repeated an earlier promise of up to $15 million for information disrupting the Guard’s finances. It also warned anyone “knowingly engaged in a significant transaction for the purchase, acquisition, sale, transport or marketing of petroleum” faced U.S. sanctions.The U.S. State Department and the Pentagon did not immediately respond to a request for comment.Analysts already have been warning about the growing chance for a renewed confrontation between the U.S. and Iran, whose government downplayed and then struggled for weeks with the coronavirus pandemic.In April, the U.S. accused Iran of conducting “dangerous and harassing” maneuvers near American warships in the northern Persian Gulf. Iran also had been suspected of briefly seizing a Hong Kong-flagged oil tanker just before that.Iran seized ships last summer and the U.S. accuses it of attacking tankers in the region amid tensions over Trump unilaterally withdrawing America from Tehran’s nuclear deal with world powers in 2018.
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Joe Biden has longed to win the White House for more than three decades. If he finally makes it there after November’s election, he’s already talking about leaving.In an effort to ease concerns about his age, the 77-year-old presumptive Democratic nominee has said he wouldn’t seek reelection if his mental or physical health declined. He has also referred to himself as a “transition candidate,” acting as a bridge to a younger generation of leadership.Biden is rarely known for sticking to a script, and the comments are evidence of his candid style. But they’re also contributing to intense speculation about who is best positioned to lead the party after him.”We do have a longer bench as Democrats, a younger bench in terms of elected leadership all across the country,” said Democratic strategist L. Joy Williams, chairwoman of Higher Heights PAC, which is dedicated to electing more women to national and statewide offices.Biden has not ruled out running for a second term, in part because such an explicit pledge would immediately render him a lame duck in Washington, where political capital will be needed to manage the coronavirus recovery.But the question of his long-term prospects looms over his candidacy, especially as he considers his options for vice president.Biden Pressed to Choose a Black Woman as Running Mate Black voters and leaders say Biden needs to pick a black woman; they argue that his uccess — and that of the Democratic Party as a whole — depends on black people turning out to vote in NovemberWhile someone like Elizabeth Warren could broaden Biden’s appeal among progressives, the 70-year-old Massachusetts senator wouldn’t be the face of a new generation many in the party are seeking. That might be an advantage for younger contenders, such as California Sen. Kamala Harris, 55, or Minnesota Sen. Amy Klobuchar, 59.It’s an awkward dynamic for Biden, whose lead in the Democratic primary coincided with the onset of a pandemic, making it harder to establish himself as the party’s unquestioned leader. He can ill afford chatter about who might succeed him when he still faces a competitive race against President Donald Trump in the fall.There are few historic precedents for a president opting against reelection. None has passed up a chance at a second term after just four years in the White House since shortly after Reconstruction. President Lyndon B. Johnson declined to seek a second, full term in 1968, but was already in office five years by then because of John F. Kennedy’s assassination.There’s also no guarantee that Biden’s running mate will be the immediate president-in-waiting he envisions. Biden has pledged to pick a woman, but virtually no one under active consideration is likely to satisfy all Democrats. That raises the prospect of a primary battle in 2024 if he steps aside.Republican pollster Chris Wilson said Biden might elevate several younger Democrats to Cabinet positions to deliberately set up “almost a hand-picked primary pool rather than a single candidate he tries to hand things off to.”That, Wilson said, “would still be the kind of legacy-building move he seems to be interested in.”Biden might also change his mind and decide to run for reelection if he unseats Trump. That still might not insulate him from a progressive primary challenge, though.”Even if Biden wins and says he’s going to run in 2024, he’s absolutely going to be challenged from within the party,” said Eric Hauser, who was press secretary for Bill Bradley’s primary run in 2000 against Al Gore, who had been Bill Clinton’s vice president for eight years and was seen by many as his natural successor. “The left has felt like it got hoodwinked twice, in ’16 and now. They feel overlooked.”Gilberto Hinojosa, chairman of the Texas Democratic Party, said Biden’s choice of running mate will have to fill twin roles. That person would need to continue to move the country away from the Trump era “if something were to happen while he’s still in office” or later “if Biden decides to retire and pass the baton.””I think the stakes are already really high, no matter how you look at it,” Hinojosa said.Republicans could also face similar tumult. If Trump secures a second term, Vice President Mike Pence would seem to be a natural successor. But there are plenty of other Republicans with presidential ambitions who could be more attractive if Trump becomes unpopular at the end of a second term, which often happens to presidents after eight years in office.George H.W. Bush is the only sitting vice president in modern history to be elected president. The only other examples are Martin Van Buren in 1836, and Thomas Jefferson and John Adams before that.”Mike Pence would be inheriting eight years of a tsunami,” Hauser said of Trump’s legacy.For all the speculation, if Biden is elected, he could decide to seek another term in 2024 in part because the lure of the White House is one of the greatest forces in politics — especially for someone ambitious enough to be on his third presidential bid since 1988.”Once you’re president, it’s very tempting to keep power,” said Julian Zelizer, a history and public affairs professor at Princeton University who has written about single-term presidents. “It could very well be a genuine idea right now. But we just don’t see people relinquish power very easily.”
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