Report (from the Washington Post via the House Education and Labor Committee):

President Trump signed an executive order Tuesday evening compelling meat processors to remain open to head off shortages in the nation’s food supply chains, despite mounting reports of plant worker deaths due to covid-19.” . . .

Trump alluded to the plan Tuesday morning during an Oval Office meeting with Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R). “We’re going to sign an executive order today, I believe,” Trump said. “It was a very unique circumstance because of liability.” He did not elaborate. . . .

Response from John Tyson, Chairman Tyson Foods: “The food supply chain is breaking.”

Response from Iowa Governor Kim Reynolds: “The reality is that we cannot stop this virus. It will remain in our communities until a vaccine is available. Instead we must learn to live with coronavirus activity without letting it govern our lives.”

Furthermore:

“If you’re an employer and you offer to bring your employee back to work and they decide not to, that’s a voluntary quit. Reynolds said Friday. “Therefore, they would not be eligible for the unemployment money.”

Response from Kim Cordova, president of United Food and Commercial Workers Local 7, “If these meat plants can’t be held liable, there is no reason for them to take measures to ensure workers are safe. . . . If workers stop showing up, what are they going to do? Enact a draft? This is insane. If these workers are essential, protect them. They are treating workers like fungible widgets instead of human beings.”

Even a casual review of the videos and photographs on the Smithfield Foods and Tyson Foods websites reveals that men and women are working in close quarters. During a pandemic, that’s a risky business. But not for Donald Trump (or Mike Pence or Governor Reynolds).

The President, as Catherine Rampell observed last week (“Trump has almost nothing to lose. That’s why he wants to reopen the economy.”), has relied on a “But the economy” pitch for reelection. That’s gone now. But he’s willing to gamble with other people’s lives on the slim chance that he might get the economy back by November 3.

David Frum sums up this political calculation:

Propublica published a list of seven things that the experts recommended before America can open safely and up in have been done and none of those things will be done any time soon. There’s no contact tracing. And the United States cannot stay locked down indefinitely. That’s the one thing that the resident said is true. I don’t think the President and people like Governor Kemp are consciously planning this, but they’re removing all the alternatives to the only policy that is going to remain this time six weeks from now or eight weeks from now. Which is they’re moving toward the policy of what’s — “let’s take the punch.”

He’ll reopen and see what happens. Let’s accept that there may be hundreds of thousands, or some double hundreds of thousands, of Americans killed. They’re going to be mostly poor and minorities, mostly not going to be Trump voters. Let’s take that punch and push through and try to get to herd immunity as fast as possible.

I don’t think the President quite processes it quite that rationally, but maybe Governor Kemp does. I suspect Governor Desantis probably does. But that’s where with they’re going. When you don’t prepare any alternatives the only plan left available to you is the plan that you have and the plan that they’re working to is take the punch, let people take the casualties casualties. They’re mostly minorities and non-Trump voters.

Does anyone expect to see Vice President Mike Pence walk the assembly line at a meat packing plant — with or without a mask?

[Photo above headline: Smithfield Foods’ “Our COVID-19 Response” video.]

Update: “Nearly 900 employees, 40 percent of the workforce, at a Tyson Foods pork-processing plant in Indiana have tested positive for the coronavirus.”