Tag: Trump Administration

New Trump Appointee to Foreign Aid Agency Has Denounced Liberal Democracy and “Our Homo-Empire”

Merritt Corrigan, USAID’s new deputy White House liaison, has condemned the “tyrannical LGBT agenda” and celebrated Hungary’s right-wing prime minister as “the shining champion of Western civilization.”

A new Trump appointee to the United States’ foreign aid agency has a history of online posts denouncing liberal democracy and has said that the country is in the clutches of a “homo-empire” that pushes a “tyrannical LGBT agenda.”

In one post, Merritt Corrigan, who recently took up a position as deputy White House liaison at the U.S. Agency for International Development, wrote: “Liberal democracy is little more than a front for the war being waged against us by those who fundamentally despise not only our way of life, but life itself.”

Corrigan’s new position in the Trump administration, confirmed by two officials, has not been previously reported. Continue reading.

McConnell sets vote for Trump media agency pick, who has ties to Steve Bannon

Michael Pack is also under active investigation by D.C. attorney general for alleged self-dealing, self-enrichment

Corrected, 6:20 p.m. | The Senate on Thursday will consider the nomination of conservative filmmaker Michael Pack, who has collaborated with former Breitbart News head Steve Bannon and is being actively investigated by the attorney general for the District of Columbia for alleged self-dealing and self-enrichment.

Pack, whose nomination has been pending for several years, was tapped by President Donald Trump to lead the U.S. Agency for Global Media, formerly known as the Broadcasting Board of Governors. The agency has an annual budget of roughly $1 billion and includes U.S. taxpayer-funded news outlets Voice of America, Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, Radio Free Asia and the Middle East Broadcasting Networks.

The Senate Foreign Relations Committee, in a May party-line 12-10 vote, advanced Pack’s nomination after a heated exchange between the panel’s Republicans and Democrats about breaking committee tradition by considering a nominee who is under an active criminal investigation. Continue reading.

Senate confirms Miller to be pandemic inspector general

Miller comes from White House counsel’s office

Corrected, 8:46 p.m. | The Senate confirmed President Donald Trump’s controversial pick to oversee a $500 billion coronavirus economic bailout fund on Tuesday.

The chamber voted 51-40 to make Brian Miller the special inspector general for pandemic recovery.

Along with a budget of $25 million and a staff of more than 100, Miller will oversee how the Treasury Department and the Federal Reserve deploy $454 billion to create upwards of $4 trillion in lending facilities aimed at keeping financial markets operational and offering larger businesses enough bridge lending to make it through the sharp recession caused by COVID-19.

The inspector general will also track another $46 billion provided to the airline industry and companies considered “critical to maintaining national security.” Continue reading.

Reversing course, VA will start process to remove Nazi grave markings

Agency previously had wanted to preserve post-World War II gravestones, arguing instead for added “historical context”

The Department of Veterans Affairs will begin a legal process that could remove three headstones containing swastikas and messages honoring Adolf Hitler from the graves of German prisoners of war.

Monday’s announcement follows a week of tense back-and-forth between the VA and a bipartisan group of senior lawmakers, who released a letter one week ago calling on the department to remove the gravestones from veterans’ cemeteries in Texas and Utah.

“It is understandably upsetting to our Veterans and their families to see Nazi inscriptions near those who gave their lives for this nation. That’s why VA will initiate the process required to replace these POW headstones,” Veterans Affairs Secretary Robert Wilkie said in a statement Monday. Continue reading.

States brace for disasters as pandemic collides with hurricane season

Emergency management officials fear a terrible combination of natural disasters could lead to a fresh spread of the coronavirus.

Officials from Florida to Missouri are hurriedly rewriting their disaster plans, worried that crowding large groups of evacuees in shelters could spread coronavirus during what’s expected to be a busy hurricane and tornado season.

Firefighters in Colorado are working social distancing into their strategy for tackling long-duration wildfires. And New York City is spending $55 million on air conditioners for low-income seniors in public housing, to keep them away from cooling centers that draw hundreds during heat waves.

Though President Donald Trump sees the summer as a time of economic revival, emergency management officials fear a terrible combination of natural disasters could lead to a fresh spread of the coronavirus — and that the pandemic could, in turn, set back their work. Continue reading.

Hundreds Of Federal Coronavirus Contractors Were Hired Without Bids — Or Qualifications

A firm set up by a former telemarketer who once settled federal fraud charges for $2.7 million. A vodka distributor accused in a pending lawsuit of overstating its projected sales. An aspiring weapons dealer operating out of a single-family home.

These three privately held companies are part of the new medical supply chain, offered a total of almost $74 million by the federal government to find and rapidly deliver vital protective equipment and COVID-19 testing supplies across the U.S. While there’s no evidence that they obtained their deals through political connections, none of the three had to bid against competing firms. One has already lost its contract for lack of performance; it’s unclear if the other two can fulfill their orders on time, or at all.

They are among about 345 first-time federal contractors promised at least $1.8 billion in deals by the Trump administration since March, representing about 13 percent of total government spending on pandemic-related contracts of $13.8 billion, a ProPublica analysis of federal procurement data found. Like the three companies, many of the new contractors have no experience acquiring medical products. Continue reading.

Coronavirus, and Trump’s Failure to See a Crisis Coming

Like the coronavirus crisis, the riots following George Floyd’s death stemmed not from treacherous unknowns but from the Trump Administration’s failure to learn from even the most recent past.

There, yet again, were the flames. Before the furious conflagrations erupted in Minneapolis, the final weeks of May had already seemed like the answer to a grim math problem: What is the product of a crisis multiplied by a crisis? The official mortality count of the covid-19 outbreak in the United States swept toward a hundred thousand, while the economic toll had left forty million people out of work. It was difficult to countenance how so much misery could come about so quickly. But on Memorial Day we became video witnesses to the horrific death of George Floyd, at the hands of the Minneapolis Police Department. By Friday, the looted shops, the charred buildings and cars, the smoldering Third Precinct—these were evidence of what the world looks like when a crisis is cubed.

These seemingly disparate American trials are not unrelated; they’re bound by their predictability and by the ways in which the Trump Administration has exacerbated them since they began. In March, the President claimed that “nobody knew there would be a pandemic or epidemic of this proportion,” and he has echoed that sentiment throughout the course of the emergency. But virtually everyone paying attention to public health saw something like the novel coronavirus coming. In less than two decades, we have seen epidemics of the sars, mers, Ebola, and H1N1 viruses. The Obama Administration created a National Security Council Directorate to mitigate the impact of such events; the Trump Administration largely disbanded it. Continue reading.

CDC chief defends failure to spot early coronavirus spread in U.S.

Washington Post logoRobert R. Redfield says diagnostic testing would have made little difference, describing it like ‘looking for a needle in a haystack’

The director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on Friday defended the agency’s failure to find early spread of the coronavirus in the United States, noting that surveillance systems “kept eyes” on the disease.

“We were never really blind when it came to surveillance” for covid-19, the disease caused by the virus, CDC chief Robert R. Redfield said. Even if widespread diagnostic testing had been in place, it would have been like “looking for a needle in a haystack,” he said.

Redfield was among three CDC officials who spoke with reporters Friday about a comprehensive analysis by the agency that found the coronavirus began spreading in the United States as early as the second half of January, eluding detection by public health surveillance systems that help monitor for early signs of novel contagions. Continue reading.

Democrats press OSHA head over COVID-19 enforcement

Sweatt notes one citation issued so far after nearly 5,000 virus-related complaints

The partisan divide over how to ensure workplace safety surfaced repeatedly Thursday as Democrats on the House Education and Labor Committee questioned the head of the Occupational Safety and Health Administration about the agency’s response to the pandemic.

Rep. Suzanne Bonamici, D-Ore., put Labor Department Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary Loren E. Sweatt on the spot when she asked how many of the nearly 5,000 COVID-19 related complaints received so far by OSHA have ended in enforcement action.

“At this point, we’ve issued one citation under an existing standard, and I would note that we still have six months to complete any investigation or enforcement action,” Sweatt replied. “I think relying on looking at citations is maybe not the best parameter.” Continue reading.

Taxpayers paid to develop remdesivir but will have no say when Gilead sets the price

Washington Post logoCritics say government deserves more credit for tens of millions in public money spent to develop coronavirus treatment

The drug that buoyed expectations for a coronavirus treatment and drew international attention for Gilead Sciences, remdesivir, started as a reject, an also-ran in the search for antiviral drugs. Its path to relevance didn’t begin until Robert Jordan plucked it from mothballs.

A Gilead scientist at the time, Jordan convinced the company seven years ago to let him assemble a library of 1,000 castoff molecules in a search for medicines to treat emerging viruses. Many viral illnesses threaten human health but don’t attract commercial interest because they lack potential for huge drug sales.

“I kept asking them, ‘Is this okay?’ ” said Jordan, who is now a vice president at a pharmaceutical start-up. “These don’t represent a commercial opportunity but a public health opportunity. Gilead gave me their blessing to do this on the side.” Continue reading.