Tag: Trump Administration

As Virus Spreads, China and Russia See Openings for Disinformation

New York Times logoThe two powers amplify discredited conspiracy theories and sow division as they look to undermine the United States.

WASHINGTON — China and Russia have both seized on the novel coronavirus to wage disinformation campaigns that seek to sow doubts about the United States’ handling of the crisis and deflect attention from their own struggles with the pandemic, according to American intelligence officials and diplomats.

Kremlin-aligned websites aimed at Western audiences have trafficked in conspiracy theories to spread fear in Europe and political division in the United States, the officials said, noting that Russia’s diplomats and state-run news media have arguably been more restrained.

China has been more overtly aggressive. It has used a network of government-linked social media accounts to spread discredited, and sometimes contradictory, theories. And China has adopted Russia’s playbook for more covert operations, mimicking Kremlin disinformation campaigns and even using and amplifying some of the same conspiracy sites. Continue reading.

Job Vacancies and Inexperience Mar Federal Response to Coronavirus

New York Times logoUnfilled jobs and high turnover mean the government is ill equipped for a public health crisis, said many former and current federal officials and disaster experts.

WASHINGTON — Of the 75 senior positions at the Department of Homeland Security, 20 are either vacant or filled by acting officials, including Chad F. Wolf, the acting secretary who recently was unable to tell a Senate committee how many respirators and protective face masks were available in the United States.

The National Park Service, which like many federal agencies is full of vacancies in key posts, tried this week to fill the job of a director for the national capital region after hordes of visitors flocked to see the cherry blossoms near the National Mall, creating a potential public health hazard as the coronavirus continues to spread.

At the Department of Veterans Affairs, workers are scrambling to order medical supplies on Amazon after its leaders, lacking experience in disaster responses, failed to prepare for the onslaught of patients at its medical centers. Continue reading.

Walmart Was Almost Charged Criminally Over Opioids. Trump Appointees Killed the Indictment.

Even as company pharmacists protested, Walmart kept filling suspicious prescriptions, stoking the country’s opioid epidemic. A Republican U.S. Attorney in Texas thought the evidence was damning. Trump’s political appointees? Not so much

On a Tuesday just before Halloween in 2018, a group of federal prosecutors and agents from Texas arrived in Washington. For almost two years, they’d been investigating the opioid dispensing practices of Walmart, the largest company in the world. They had amassed what they viewed as highly damning evidence only to face a major obstacle: top Trump appointees at the Department of Justice.

The prosecution team had come to Washington to try to save its case. Joe Brown, the U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of Texas, led the group, which included Heather Rattan, an over-20-year veteran of the office who had spent much of her career prosecuting members of drug cartels.

They first went to the Drug Enforcement Administration’s headquarters to meet the acting administrator, Uttam Dhillon. There Rattan laid out the evidence. Opioids dispensed by Walmart pharmacies in Texas had killed customers who had overdosed. The pharmacists who dispensed those opioids had told the company they didn’t want to fill the prescriptions because they were coming from doctors who were running pill mills. They pleaded for help and guidance from Walmart’s corporate office. Continue reading.

 

‘Gross negligence’: Trump administration cut CDC expert monitoring outbreaks in China months before coronavirus

AlterNet logoThe Trump administration eliminated a key public health office in Beijing that detected disease outbreaks in China in the months before the COVID-19 pandemic began, Reuters reports.

Dr. Linda Quick, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s resident adviser to the U.S. Field Epidemiology Training Program in China, left her position in July. The move came after she learned that her position would be eliminated in September, months before the new coronavirus began to slowly spread in November, according to the report.

“It was heartbreaking to watch,” Bao-Ping Zhu, one of Quick’s predecessors, told the outlet. “If someone had been there, public health officials and governments across the world could have moved much faster.” Continue reading.

He Was Wrong On ‘Contained’ Coronavirus, But Larry Kudlow Says Trust Him On Social Distance

Trump’s top economic adviser insists that keeping the “economy going” is the “important point” while COVID-19 cases rise.

President Donald Trump’s top economic adviser, Larry Kudlow, finally admitted Monday he was wrong about coronavirus being “contained” a month ago. But now he wants America to trust him on easing social distancing — for the good of the economy.

Kudlow was making the interview rounds apparently preparing the nation for Trump’s reported intention to lift social distancing restrictions in just days as the president desperately seeks a strategy that might boost the economy. Kudlow spoke as conservative British Prime Minister Boris Johnson took the opposite tack and for the first time enacted strict national “lockdown” requirements in a bid to stem the spread of the virus there.

Kudlow said on Feb. 25 that coronavirus in the U.S. was “contained pretty close to airtight.” Now, with at least 41,000 cases and more than 500 deaths from the virus, he told CNBC: “I’ve changed my view.” Continue reading.

Trump Taps Former Attorney Of Trophy Hunting Group For Key Wildlife Job

The Trump administration has hired Anna Seidman, formerly a longtime lawyer at the trophy hunting advocacy group Safari Club International, to lead the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service’s international affairs program.

A Fish and Wildlife Service spokesperson confirmed Seidman’s appointment in a statement to HuffPost on Friday, calling her “an effective, innovative leader with 20 years of legal and policy experience, including expertise in international environment and natural resource management.”

The Safari Club has close ties to the administration ― its political action committee donated $11,000 to President Donald Trump’s 2016 campaign ― and is one of several groups that successfully lobbied Trump’s Interior Department to roll back prohibitions on importing the trophies of lions and elephants killed for sport in certain African countries. Continue reading.

Pence, second lady test negative for coronavirus

The Hill logoNOTE:  We’re interested that people like the Pences, professional athletes and other famous people are able to be tested without needing hospitalization. This is concerning, and not what the Trump White House has told us for days now.  

Vice President Pence and his wife, Karen Pence, have tested negative for coronavirus, according to a statement tweeted by the vice president’s press secretary Katie Miller on Saturday evening. 

“Please to report that the COVID-19 test results came back negative for both Vice President @Mike_Pence and Second Lady @KarenPence,” Miller tweeted.

Pence said earlier Saturday that he and the second lady would be tested for the coronavirus after a member of the vice president’s staff tested positive for COVID-19. Continue reading.

‘This is a crisis in leadership’: MSNBC’s Mika drops bomb on Trump and Pence for avalanche of lies on pandemic

AlterNet logoWith co-host Joe Scarborough absent, MSNBC’s Mika Brzezinski rained hell on President Donald Trump and Vice President Mike Pence for an avalanche of lies about progress on the coronavirus pandemic front during their press conference on Thursday.

Focusing on the dearth of life-saving masks available to health providers and the public in general, the “Morning Joe” host shared clips of Pence and the president saying there was no problem with anyone needing supplies — and then called them out for it.

“They’re not — they’re absolutely not available now,” the MSNBC host explained. “What the vice president just said, and he is in charge of this coronavirus task force that the president has put together, standing next to the president of the United States the vice president said something that was not true.” Continue reading.

Acting counterterrorism center head fired, according to former U.S. officials

Washington Post logoThe acting director of the National Counterterrorism Center was removed Wednesday in what insiders fear is a purge by the Trump administration of career professionals at an organization set up after 9/11 to protect the nation from further attacks, according to two former U.S. officials.

Russell E. Travers, a highly regarded intelligence professional with more than 40 years of government service, told colleagues he was fired by acting director of national intelligence Richard Grenell, said the former officials, who like others interviewed spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss a sensitive matter.

Travers, who took up the acting position last August, had been resistant to pressure to make personnel cuts at the center, which has been undergoing a review of its mission and effectiveness. Continue reading.

States still waiting on coronavirus tests as Trump tells them to do more

They’re still waiting. And without knowing who’s ill and where, they can’t realistically slow down the pandemic.

It’s been nearly a month since governors first called on the federal government to help provide testing so states could monitor the spread of the novel coronavirus.

They’re still waiting. And without knowing who’s ill and where, they can’t realistically slow the pandemic.

While President Donald Trump is touting a dramatic uptick in testing across the country, governors and public health officials say they are still being forced to dramatically ration the tests, while labs are confronting daunting backlogs that delay the results. Continue reading.