Category: 2020 Election

I’m a public health researcher, and I’m dismayed that the CDC’s missteps are causing people to lose trust in a great institution

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has been the premier U.S. public health agency since its founding on July 1, 1946. 

The CDC is responsible for assuring the health of all Americans and promoting evidence-based public health practice. It also is responsible for researching the causes of death and illness as well as working on ways to prevent them. Americans have come to trust it for accurate information. 

However, recent actions by the CDC have led many in public health to call into question the integrity of the CDC’s leadership as they ignore the science and bow to political pressure. Their actions have hurt public health efforts and led to confusion and mistrust by the public at large. Continue reading.

Here are 10 things Donald Trump has done that are at least as bad as calling veterans ‘losers’

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Donald Trump has turned the Gish gallop into the Trump torrent, spewing out both lies and scandal at a rate that seems to make the national media incapable of maintaining a thought for long enough to have an impact. At the moment, there’s a lot of focus on Trump’s calling military veterans “losers” and “suckers,” on his denigration of John McCain, and on how he turned up his nose at having veterans march in his dictator-style military parade because “nobody wants to see” the wounded and amputees.

But this too shall pass. Jared Kushner may have once advised Saudi prince Mohammed bin Salman to keep his head down until a little thing like a brutal international assassination of a journalist blows over, but Donald Trump has a different strategy—he’ll just find something worse to talk about. And if you think there can’t possibly be anything worse … you’ve clearly been asleep for the last four years.

So, before the current outrage is replaced by the newer, more disgusting outrage, here’s a quick reminder of what Trump has done, in order of most outrageous… Continue reading.

MN GOP Embarks on COVID Across Minnesota Bus Tour

Maskless, indoor campaign stops come despite rising COVID-19 levels in MN

St. Paul, MN – Today, the Minnesota Republican Party kicked off another bus tour featuring numerous maskless, indoor campaign stops. This tour comes despite the massive potential to spread COVID-19 at maskless, indoor events and despite the fact that Minnesota is seeing more new COVID-19 cases per day than at almost any other time during this pandemic.

The tour launched in Preston, Minnesota where attendees gathered indoors, in close proximity to one another, and without almost any masks:

Source: Twitter

Continue reading “MN GOP Embarks on COVID Across Minnesota Bus Tour”

New Data: Rich Got Richer, But Most Americans Fared Worse Under Trump

The first data showing how all Americans are faring under Donald Trump reveal the poor and working classes sinking slightly, the middle class treading water, the upper-middle class growing and the richest, well, luxuriating in rising rivers of greenbacks.

More than half of Americans had to make ends meet in 2018 on less money than in 2016, my analysis of new income and tax data shows.

The nearly 87 million taxpayers making less than $50,000 had to get by in 2018 on $307 less per household than in 2016, the year before Trump took office, I find. Continue reading.

Trump’s rush for a covid vaccine could make it less likely to work

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The president has spent years undermining the agencies working on ‘Operation Warp Speed.’

President Trump clearly sees the coronavirus pandemic as a threat to his reelection and wants to show that he is making progress against it. He promised at the Republican National Convention to “produce a vaccine before the end of the year, or maybe even sooner,” boasting: “Nobody thought it could be done this fast. Normally it would be years, and we did it in a matter of a few months. We are producing them in advance so hundreds of millions of doses can be quickly available. We have a safe and effective vaccine this year, and together we will crush the virus.” 

The Food and Drug Administration is considering whether to allow a vaccine against the coronavirus to be used on an emergency basis before its formal approval process is finished, and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has told states to be ready to distribute doses by Nov. 1 — two days before the election. 

But wanting a vaccine to be ready by the time the polls open and getting one that is safe, effective and accepted by the American people are two very different things. And the Trump administration’s attempts to make government agency leaders support the president’s political positions this year have undermined public trust in the very institutions needed to evaluate and distribute the immunizations. Now the same impulses that have led Trump to downplay the virus and latch onto imagined miracle cures could also get in the way of an effective vaccine.  Continue reading.

GOP uses debunked theory to downplay COVID-19 death toll

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Top Republicans are seeking to downplay the heavy toll of the coronavirus, in part by pointing to a conspiracy theory that the number of deaths is much lower.

President Trump, along with Sen. Joni Ernst (R-Iowa) and Rep. Roger Marshall(R-Kan.), who are both in competitive Senate races, have all pointed in recent days to the widely debunked theory that COVID-19 deaths in the United States total just 10,000 instead of the more than 180,000 recorded by health officials.

The speculative remarks come at a time when about 1,000 people a day are dying from the virus, providing a grim backdrop to the final sprint to Election Day. Trump, meanwhile, has been trying to project an optimistic message, frequently pointing to rapid progress toward a vaccine and saying he thinks the virus is “going away.” Continue reading.

Trump fixates on the promise of a vaccine — real or not — as key to reelection bid

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President Trump is so fixated on finding a vaccine for the novel coronavirus that in meetings about the U.S. pandemic response, little else captures his attention, according to administration officials.

Trump has pressed health officials to speed up the vaccine timeline and urged them to deliver one by the end of the year. He has peppered them with questions about the development status and mass-distribution plans. And, in recent days, he has told some advisers and aides that a vaccine may arrive by Nov. 1, which just happens to be two days before the presidential election.

Trump’s desire to deliver a vaccine — or at least convince the public that one is very near — by the time voters decide whether to elect him to a second term is in part a campaign gambit to improve his standing with an electorate that overwhelmingly disapproves of his management of the pandemic. Continue reading.

In new book, former Trump lawyer Michael Cohen describes alleged episodes of racism and says president likes how Putin runs Russia

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President Trump’s longtime lawyer and personal fixer, Michael Cohen, alleges in a new book that Trump made “overt and covert attempts to get Russia to interfere in the 2016 election” and that the future commander in chief was also well aware of Cohen’s hush-money payoff to adult-film star Stormy Daniels during that campaign.

In the book, “Disloyal: A Memoir,” which was obtained by The Washington Post ahead of its Tuesday publication date, Cohen lays out an alarming portrait of the constellation of characters orbiting around Trump, likening the arrangement to the mafia and calling himself “one of Trump’s bad guys.” He describes the president, meanwhile, as “a cheat, a liar, a fraud, a bully, a racist, a predator, a con man.”

The memoir also describes episodes of Trump’s alleged racism and his “hatred and contempt” of his predecessor, Barack Obama, the nation’s only African American president. Continue reading.

Jennifer Griffin defended by Fox News colleagues after Trump Twitter attack over confirmation of Atlantic reporting

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Jennifer Griffin caused an unexpected media firestorm Friday when she did something fairly routine for a reporter: A competitor had broken a story on her beat, so she set out to see whether she could match it.

In this case, it was the Atlantic’s blockbuster report that President Trump had made disparaging remarks about veterans. Griffin, a national security correspondent for Fox News, found individuals to validate key aspects of the story, sharing her reporting on Twitter and on anchor Bret Baier’s news show.

Other beat reporters had confirmed aspects of the Atlantic story, too. But the fact Griffin works for Fox, whose opinion hosts and corporate owners are seen as reliable supporters and defenders of the president, turned her revelations into a watershed development. It led to Trump’s call for her firing late Friday on Twitter — and an impassioned pushback from Fox News colleagues defending her journalistic honor. Continue reading.

How Trump Draws on Campaign Funds to Pay Legal Bills

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As he has done with other aspects of the presidency, Donald J. Trump has redefined the practice in ways that have unsettled even some Republicans.

WASHINGTON — President Trump was proudly litigious before his victory in 2016 and has remained so in the White House. But one big factor has changed: He has drawn on campaign donations as a piggy bank for his legal expenses to a degree far greater than any of his predecessors.

In New York, Mr. Trump dispatched a team of lawyers to seek damages of more than $1 million from a former campaign worker after she claimed she had been the target of sexual discrimination and harassment by another aide. The lawyers have been paid $1.5 million by the Trump campaign for work on the case and others related to the president.

In Washington, Mr. Trump and his campaign affiliates hired lawyers to assist members of his staff and family — including a onetime bodyguard, his oldest son and his son-in-law — as they were pulled into investigations related to Russia and Ukraine. The Republican National Committee has paid at least $2.5 million in legal bills to the firms that did this and other legal work.