Tag: pandemic

Foot-dragging GOP governors are imperiling the whole country

Washington Post logoPRESIDENT TRUMP likens the struggle against the pandemic to a war that will yield a colossal toll in human lives, but refuses to urge states uniformly to issue stay-at-home orders. The president’s equivocations have produced an uncoordinated jumble of policy subverted by foot-dragging governors who treat the coronavirus less as a national emergency and more as a political annoyance. They are guilty of an abdication of leadership whose consequences will be measured in body bags.

Messaging is critical in this crisis. By telling people in the strongest terms to stay at home, even with certain exceptions, most governors have conveyed the gravity of the spreading threat; that is likely to save many lives. By failing to do that, and treating a plague as one interest to be balanced among many, other governors treat the peril with a nod and a wink. Their message, sotto voce, is: Let’s not all get our knickers in a twist.

The nod-and-a-wink governors — in the Dakotas, Missouri, Nebraska, Iowa, Arkansas and elsewhere — pose as powerless to order a lockdown, or note they have already closed schools, restaurants, gyms and other establishments, but won’t order blanket edicts to individuals. They point at other states’ exceptions that allow people to carry on with essential work, or get groceries and pharmaceuticals. In Missouri, Gov. Mike Parson says staying at home is a matter of “individual responsibilities”; in Arkansas, Gov. Asa Hutchinson scoffs there is nothing “magical” about stay-at-home directives; in Iowa, Gov. Kim Reynolds protests that “I can’t lock everybody in their home.” Continue reading.

Inside the ouster of Capt. Brett Crozier

Washington Post logoCivilian control of the military is part of the American bedrock. Acting Navy secretary Thomas Modly used that prerogative unwisely Thursday when he short-circuited a preliminary military investigation and fired an aircraft carrier captain who had pleaded for help against the coronavirus pandemic sweeping his crew.

The sudden firing of Capt. Brett Crozier, the commanding officer of the USS Theodore Roosevelt, has created another unsettling moment for a country traumatized by the worsening pandemic — and for a Navy already rocked by President Trump’s remarkable intervention last year in disciplinary cases involving the elite Navy SEALs. Crozier’s crew cheered him as a hero as he walked alone down the gangway, leaving what will almost surely be his last command. Former vice president Joe Biden tweeted his support for Crozier.

It isn’t clear what role Trump may have played in Crozier’s ouster. Modly told one colleague Wednesday, the day before he announced the move: “Breaking news: Trump wants him fired.” Defense Secretary Mark T. Esper apparently obtained White House approval for a preliminary investigation into Crozier’s conduct, a probe that Modly preempted with the firing. Esper appears to have left the final decision about how to handle the matter to Modly, who last month was passed over as Trump’s permanent choice for the job. Continue reading.

Pelosi eyes end of April to bring a fourth coronavirus relief bill to the floor

The Hill logoSpeaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) said in a letter to fellow House lawmakers on Saturday that she wants to bring a second stimulus package to the floor by the end of this month to further relieve the American public during the coronavirus pandemic.

“It is my hope that we will craft this legislation and bring it to the floor later this month,” Pelosi said in the letter, according to Bloomberg, adding that American communities “cannot afford to wait.”

Pelosi added that the next stimulus package “must go further in assisting small businesses including farmers, extending and strengthening unemployment benefits and giving families additional direct payments.” Continue reading.

How Trump’s attempts to win the daily news cycle feed a chaotic coronavirus response

Washington Post logoPresident Trump began the seven-day stretch threatening — and then reneging on — a quarantine of the New York region. He ended it by announcing recommendations for everyone to wear face masks but stressed he would opt against sporting one himself.

In the days in between, Trump announced a 30-day extension of stringent social distancing guidelines (March 29), called into a freewheeling “Fox & Friends” gripe-a-thon (Monday), presented a dire assessment of how many Americans are expected to die of the coronavirus (Tuesday), launched a military operation against drug cartels (Wednesday) and stoked a feud with a senior senator from hard-hit New York (Thursday).

The novel coronavirus has decimated the economy, turned hospitals into battlefields and upended the daily lives of every American. But in Trump’s White House, certain symptoms remain: a president who governs as if producing and starring in a reality television show, with each day a new episode and each news cycle his own creation, a successive installment to be conquered. Continue reading.

The U.S. was beset by denial and dysfunction as the coronavirus raged

Washington Post logoFrom the Oval Office to the CDC, political and institutional failures cascaded through the system and opportunities to mitigate the pandemic were lost.

By the time Donald Trump proclaimed himself a wartime president — and the coronavirus the enemy — the United States was already on course to see more of its people die than in the wars of Korea, Vietnam, Afghanistan and Iraq combined.

The country has adopted an array of wartime measures never employed collectively in U.S. history — banning incoming travelers from two continents, bringing commerce to a near-halt, enlisting industry to make emergency medical gear, and confining 230 million Americans to their homes in a desperate bid to survive an attack by an unseen adversary.

Despite these and other extreme steps, the United States will likely go down as the country that was supposedly best prepared to fight a pandemic but ended up catastrophically overmatched by the novel coronavirus, sustaining heavier casualties than any other nation. Continue reading.

Decentralized leadership raises questions about Trump coronavirus response

The Hill logoThe rotating cast of officials appearing behind President Trump to detail the government’s response to the coronavirus are leading to new criticisms that they reflect a scattered approach from the White House that too often leaves states fending for themselves.

Top Trump administration officials say the appearances by a broad range of administration officials shows the “all of government” undertaken to combat the coronavirus.

But some current and former government officials see a disconnected strategy where it can be unclear who’s in charge of what or whether there is a coordinated long-term plan. Continue reading.

Minnesota Legislature to convene Tuesday, April 7 to pass workers’ compensation legislation

SAINT PAUL, MINNESOTA — The Minnesota House of Representatives and the Minnesota Senate will reconvene on Tuesday, April 7, 2020. House Speaker Melissa Hortman, Senate Majority Leader Paul Gazelka, House Minority Leader Kurt Daudt, and Senate Minority Leader Susan Kent released the following statement:

“Legislative leaders have agreed to reconvene on Tuesday. We will be taking up legislation to address workers’ compensation claims for our first responders, police officers, firefighters, and health care workers, including home health care workers, who contract COVID-19.”

How Tea Party Budget Mania Left America Vulnerable To Pandemic

Dire shortages of vital medical equipment in the Strategic National Stockpile that are now hampering the coronavirus response trace back to the budget wars of the Obama years, when congressional Republicans elected on the Tea Party wave forced the White House to accept sweeping cuts to federal spending.

Among the victims of those partisan fights was the effort to keep adequate supplies of masks, ventilators, pharmaceuticals and other medical equipment on hand to respond to a public health crisis. Lawmakers in both parties raised the specter of shortchanging future disaster response even as they voted to approve the cuts.

“There are always more needs for financial support from our hardworking taxpayers than we have the ability to pay,” said Denny Rehberg, a retired Republican congressman from Montana who chaired the appropriations subcommittee responsible for overseeing the stockpile in 2011. Rehberg said it would have been impossible to predict a public health crisis requiring a more robust stockpile, just as it would have been to predict the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. Continue reading.

Testing struggles emerge as key hurdle to reopening country

The Hill logoThe U.S. needs to significantly increase its testing capability for the coronavirus in order to safely start reopening the country, experts say.

If the current approach of telling everyone to stay home is to be lifted, widespread and faster testing will be needed to identify infected people for isolation. Easing stay-at-home orders in the absence of sufficient testing would risk reigniting the outbreak.

Leading estimates have called for between 750,000 and 1 million tests per week. On the surface, the U.S. is getting closer to hitting those numbers, after an extremely slow rollout of tests in the initial weeks of the outbreak. Continue reading.

CDC Now Urges Masks — But Trump Says ‘You Don’t Have To Do It’

President Donald Trump announced on Friday that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is now advising Americans to wear cloth face masks in public to reduce the chance of spreading Covid-19. But he sharply undercut the urgency of this recommendation, stressing in the White House briefing room that it was “voluntary” and remarking in an aside that he’s unlikely to comply with the advice.

“From recent studies, we know that the transmission from individuals without symptoms is playing a more significant role in the spread of the virus than previously understood,” Trump said, reading from a script. “In light of these studies, the CDC is advising the use of non-medical cloth-based covering as an additional voluntary public health measure.”

Then Trump, clear speaking off-the-cuff, added: “So it’s voluntary! You don’t have to do it. They suggest it for a period of time. But … this is voluntary. I don’t think I’m going to be doing it.” Continue reading.