Tag: pandemic

George Conway calls for the government to reveal the classified coronavirus reports given to Trump and Congress

AlterNet logoNow that the coronavirus crisis has subsumed all other issues in American life and threatens to spiral out of control, Americans are rightfully left to wonder why their government didn’t do more to stop it and prepare for the outbreak.

George Conway, an adviser of an anti-Trump super PAC and husband to White House counselor Kellyanne Conway, wrote an op-ed Wednesday with lawyer Carrie Cordero calling for the release of information that was provided to the president and Congress before the pandemic spread across the country. With this information, we could gain better insight into how political leaders have handled the crisis and whether they should have done more.

“What did the president know about the coronavirus, and when did he know it?” they asked. “What did members of Congress know, and when did they know it?” Continue reading.

The Fox News whipsaw on coronavirus: In another swerve, hosts push Trump to abandon shutdown

Washington Post logoViewers following Fox News’s stars for the latest in the coronavirus story may have felt a bit of whiplash over the past several days — again.

For weeks, hosts scoffed at the looming coronavirus crisis, only to make an abrupt about-face last week when President Trump acknowledged the severity of the pandemic and declared a national emergency to fight it.

But now, Fox’s pundits have changed their minds once more — and Trump is listening. Continue reading.

Red vs. Blue on Coronavirus Concern: The Gap Is Still Big but Closing

New York Times logoIn early March, when the number of American coronavirus cases was still low and the president himself sounded unalarmed, Republicans generally told pollsters they were unworried, too. About 40 percent of them in a national tracking poll said they were not at all concerned about an outbreak in their communities. In that same moment, hardly any Democrats agreed.

That pattern, consistent across other surveys, seemed to suggest not long ago that Americans would view even a deadly infectious disease as they have come to see so many facets of life — refracted through pure partisanship.

But more recently this picture has begun to shift. Continue reading.

States reject Trump calls to reopen economy by Easter

The Hill logoDemocratic and Republican governors, as well as local officials, are pushing back against President Trump‘s signals that he wants to restart the economy by Easter, warning that ending strict social distancing practices could put millions of lives at risk.

Governors have ordered residents to practice those distancing procedures, to varying degrees. Many have ordered residents to stay at home, ordered nonessential businesses closed and banned gatherings of all but a few people.

And several say they will keep those orders in place even if Trump rolls back the few national restrictions he has put in place. Continue reading.

Provision in coronavirus stimulus bill would ban companies owned by Trump or his children from receiving bailout money

AlterNet logoA massive coronavirus stimulus plan that the Senate and White House agreed to in the early hours of Wednesday morning would bar any companies owned or controlled by President Donald Trump, the president’s children, Vice President Mike Pence, or members of Congress from receiving any taxpayer bailout money, according to a summary of the legislation circulated by Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer.

The sprawling $2 trillion bill, which has not yet been released in full, would “prohibit businesses controlled by the president, vice president, members of Congress, and heads of executive departments from receiving loans or investments from Treasury programs,” Schumer’s summary states.

“The children, spouses, and in-laws of the aforementioned principals are also included in this prohibition,” the document adds. Continue reading.

Trump hasn’t yet released disaster unemployment funds

President Donald Trump approved three states’ disaster declarations during the past week, but not the sought-after disaster unemployment assistance.

The three states that President Donald Trump has formally declared coronavirus disaster areas have not received the disaster unemployment assistance that they expected to follow that designation.

New York, California and Washington state all requested access to several aid programs provided under a disaster declaration, including disaster unemployment assistance.

Disaster unemployment assistance allows workers who aren’t eligible for traditional unemployment benefits, like Uber drivers and other gig economy workers, to receive 26 weeks’ unemployment benefits if their job loss is attributable to a disaster that eliminates their job or keeps them from reaching their job site. To receive disaster employment assistance, a state must be declared a disaster area by the president. Continue reading.

The House works from home

Lawmakers are scrambling to do their jobs remotely as the coronavirus outbreak threatens their constituents.

The shortage of supplies for front-line health workers is so severe in her district that Rep. Elissa Slotkin has started texting sewing patterns of DIY face masks to embroidery companies. In between, she’s calling nonstop the governor’s staff, hospitals and state leaders to seek help for her constituents from the coronavirus pandemic. And she’s doing it all from her family’s farm in Holly, Mich.

“The military would call this ‘discovery learning,’” said the freshman Democrat and former CIA analyst, who said she is spending as much as 13 or 14 hours a day on the phone. Slotkin has also held as many digital events as possible, including a virtual summit for 200 small-business owners, a conference call with 300 bankers and a teletown hall that drew 6,000 people.

As the outbreak threatens to overwhelm the nation, more than 400 House members are working to combat a mammoth crisis almost entirely from their living rooms — sometimes enduring the same daily indignities, like botched conference calls, that millions of other Americans are experiencing while working from home. Continue reading.

The Fox News moment that revealed a dangerously confused president

Trump wants Americans to flock to churches on Easter Sunday.

One moment during President Donald Trump’s Fox News appearance on Tuesday served as the starkest example yet of how much he does not understand the seriousness of the coronavirus pandemic: He urged Americans to flock to churches on Easter Sunday, just 19 days away.

Trump told Fox News anchor Bill Hemmer he selected Easter as the day he wants businesses to reopen, saying he’d like to see “packed churches all over our country” — the exact type of large gatherings that the CDC, the WHO, and Trump’s top health advisers have all urged suspended to help stop the spread of the virus.

“I would love to have it opened by Easter,” Trump said, speaking about when he sees the country returning to normal life. Continue reading.

Trump’s weekly Cabinet Bible study leader blames coronavirus on gay people and environmentalists

AlterNet logoThe minister who hosts a weekly bible study session for President Trump’s Cabinet has an opinion about the origins of the coronavirus. According to Ralph Drollinger, it’s just another form of God’s wrath in response to an increasingly progressive nation.

“Relative to the coronavirus pandemic crisis, this is not God’s abandonment wrath nor His cataclysmic wrath, rather it is sowing and reaping wrath,” Drollinger wrote in a series of posts. “A biblically astute evaluation of the situation strongly suggests that America and other countries of the world are reaping what China has sown due to their leaders’ recklessness and lack of candor and transparency.”

As The Intercept points out, Drollinger also railed against the “religion of environmentalism” and people who express a “proclivity toward lesbianism and homosexuality,” who he claims have  infiltrated “high positions in our government, our educational system, our media and our entertainment industry” and “are largely responsible for God’s consequential wrath on our nation.”  Continue reading.

Fauci says Trump’s Easter goal for lifting coronavirus restrictions should be ‘flexible’

The Hill logoDr. Anthony Fauci on Tuesday said President Trump’s stated timeline for the lifting of restrictions on parts of the country by Easter Sunday should be “flexible.”

Fauci, the head of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases and a prominent member of the White House’s coronavirus task force, added it is important for public health officials to gauge how widespread coronavirus is in parts of the country that haven’t reported significant numbers of cases.

“That’s really very flexible,” Fauci told reporters at the White House when asked about the president’s timeline, which Trump floated earlier Tuesday during a Fox News virtual town hall on the coronavirus pandemic.  Continue reading.