Anti-lockdown protesters are twisting the idea of liberty.

When Attorney General William Barr this week directed U.S. prosecutors to safeguard civil liberties amid state-level pandemic orders, he signaled Justice Department support for lockdown protesters by highlighting religious and economic rights.

Protests against lockdown orders are spreading. Even as health officials say it is too soon to end stay-at-home orders, some residents see government overreach.

One side of East Broad Street looked like many downtown roads across COVID-19 America: empty sidewalks, locked restaurants, a handful of cars.

Madison Elmer got the offer shortly after she and some friends started organizing a protest to oppose Wisconsin's coronavirus stay-at-home order: An outside group wanted to chip in some money to help pay for the rally she plans this week.

Concerned about the strings that could be attached, Elmer turned it down.

"We felt like it had a political agenda behind it,” said the Wisconsin native, who declined to name the group. “We didn’t want to be pawns in somebody’s else’s game.”

Should states put more faith in their citizens to do the right thing, even amid a pandemic? It’s a question with enormous consequences. But many Americans say “yes.”

As the owner of Ken’s Greenhouses in Kalamazoo, Michigan, Mark Smit has a roomful of plants he worries will go unsold.

His anxiety isn’t really about the national all-hands-on-deck response to the coronavirus. It’s about why, in Michigan, those restrictions have veered into what appear to him to be solitary and responsible activities.

Protesters have taken to the streets in states across the US, demanding that governors reopen economies shut by the coronavirus pandemic.

Rallies in Arizona, Colorado, Montana and Washington state took place on Sunday, following earlier protests in half a dozen states.

Agitation for easing restrictions has grown, despite the risk of a Covid-19 resurgence posed by reopening too soon.

US President Donald Trump has signalled support for the protests.

The gatherings are ill-advised but understandable given the harms of government-enforced shutdowns.

In their desperation to get back to work, some Americans are taking to the streets to demand that the government end the quarantine. Comedian Patton Oswalt is unsympathetic.

"Anne Frank spent 2 years hiding in an attic and we've been home for just over a month with Netflix, food delivery & video games and there are people risking viral death by storming state capital buildings & screaming, 'Open Fuddruckers!'" he tweeted on Saturday.

An apparently coronavirus-free luxury cruise ship was ending its 15-week odyssey in a Spanish port Monday while at home the U.S. death toll rose by almost 2,000 and political leaders bickered over lockdowns, bailouts and protests.

In Washington, a deal appeared close to provide an additional $300 billion for small businesses crushed by the stay-at-home orders. The deal would also provide more funding for hospitals and for testing. In New York, public health officials planned to kick off the most extensive antibody testing campaign in the nation.