There was a brief period (it may have lasted for as long as 48 hours) when Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer went from insisting that Donald Trump posed an existential threat to the United States of America to insisting that he must assume unilateral authority over the whole of the United States in order to save us from an actual existential threat: the coronavirus pandemic. Those of us looking for any little bit of good news these days should take comfort from the fact that this brief era in American politics has already run its course, and Democratic politicians are now looking ahead to the peace and plenty of opposition. Once again Trump is the bad guy, and the number-one priority of the legislative branch is to undermine his administration during this ostensible period of unprecedented crisis.

This at any rate is the only conclusion I can draw from the recent announcement that Democrats will be creating a panel to oversee the Trump’s administration’s handling of coronavirus relief. The idea behind the oversight group, which will be led by Rep. Jim Clyburn of South Carolina (whose turn-out efforts on behalf of Joe Biden in his home state now seem like ancient history), is to “root out waste, fraud, and abuse.”