World News: The weekend the country starts to re-open

Friday, May 1

General manager Jay Norman, left, talks with Chad Steenwyk, center, and his wife Glenda, right, as the two dine outdoors on the patio at Costa Vida, a Mexican restaurant in Colleyville, Texas, Monday, April 27, 2020. The city of Colleyville relaxed rules in place due to COVID-19, allowing local restaurants to open up their patio to customers for dinning. (AP Photo/Tony Gutierrez)

The weekend the country starts to re-open

A beach trip? Cocktails on the patio? Heading to church? All in the cards for some Americans.

Are you heading out to eat this weekend, like at an actual sit-down restaurant?

For people in some parts of the country, that answer is yes.

This week (and weekend), states around the country begin rolling back some coronavirus-related social restrictions. That might mean going to the beach in some places or attending a religious service in person in others.

Trump, who announced guidelines April 16 for states to start opening their economies, has pushed to scale back the stay-at-home provisions by May 1 (today), but that plan hinges in part on more testing.

"Unless we get the virus under control, the real recovery, economically, is not going to happen," Dr. Anthony Fauci, the government's top authority on infectious diseases, has said.

As part of that hoped-for economic recovery, Trump on Tuesday ordered meat and poultry processing plants to stay open saying, "it is important that processors of beef, pork, and poultry ... continue operating and fulfilling orders to ensure a continued supply of protein for Americans."

Critics have said the forced openings in some plants that have seen outbreaks threatens the safety of workers who remain.

Coronavirus has also brought a new debate into the 2020 presidential election: Who has a better history with China? Trump and presumptive Democratic nominee Joe Biden have traded barbs and ads, each poking at what they believe are weaknesses the other has in dealing with the global superpower.

But even as coronavirus dominates headlines, Biden is set to address allegations that he sexually assaulted a Senate staffer in 1993.

Tara Reade has accused Biden of pinning her against a wall and digitally penetrating her without her consent in the basement of a Capitol Hill office when he was a senator.

Biden's campaign has denied the assault took place and encouraged the press to investigate, though the candidate has yet to react publicly to Reade's allegation. He is set to do so this morning on MSNBC's Morning Joe.

On Monday, Business Insider reported that a former neighbor of Reade's from the 1990s and a former coworker in a California state senator's office recalled Reade describing parts of her account.

Since then, Biden has seen support from many prominent Democratic women. On Thursday, Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi said , "I have great comfort level with the situation as I see it, with all the respect in the world for any woman who comes forward, but with all the highest regard for Joe Biden."