 California this week declared its independence from the federal government's feeble efforts to fight Covid-19 — and perhaps from a bit more. The consequences for the fight against the pandemic are almost certainly positive. The implications for the brewing civil war between Trumpism and America's budding 21st-century majority, embodied by California's multiracial liberal electorate, are less clear. Speaking on MSNBC, Governor Gavin Newsom said that he would use the bulk purchasing power of California "as a nation-state" to acquire the hospital supplies that the federal government has failed to provide. If all goes according to plan, Newsom said, California might even "export some of those supplies to states in need." "Nation-state." "Export." Newsom is accomplishing a few things here, with what can only be a deliberate lack of subtlety. Read the whole thing. Taiwan's Viral Success Makes It Harder to Ignore — Tim Culpan Spain's Tragedy Was All Too Predictable — Ferdinando Giugliano Coronavirus Is Killing AMLO's Big Plans for Mexico — Shannon O'Neil Saudi Arabia's World Is Coming Undone — Liam Denning Coronavirus Pushes Higher Education to the Brink — Stephen Mihm Greece Shows How to Handle the Crisis — Ferdinando Giugliano When Plagues Pass, Labor Gets the Upper Hand — John Authers U.K. Government Wasn't Built for a Coronavirus Crisis — Therese Raphael It's Still Hard to Predict Who Will Die From Covid-19 — Arturo Casadevall and Liise-anne Pirofski This is the Weekend Edition of Bloomberg Opinion Today, a roundup of the 10 most popular stories Bloomberg Opinion published this week based on web readership, plus some other stuff sometimes thrown in. | 
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