Tag: Trump botched COVID-19 response

Nancy Pelosi owns Fox News’ Chris Wallace: ‘Clearly you don’t have an understanding of what is happening here’

AlterNet logoHouse Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) faced off against Fox News host Chris Wallace on Sunday over the failure to negotiate a COVID-19 financial relief bill.

In an interview on Fox News Sunday, Wallace suggested that there is an upside to executive actions taken by President Donald Trump in lieu of a financial relief bill because some people will get protections from evictions “rather than getting nothing at all.”

For her part, Pelosi quoted a Republican senator who said that the president’s executive action is “constitutional slop.” Continue reading.

Here’s what is actually in Trump’s four executive orders

Washington Post logoThe details on payroll taxes, unemployment and evictions are not as generous as he made them sound.

President Trump took the unusual — and highly controversial — step Saturday of attempting to provide additional economic relief to millions of Americans on his own, without the approval of Congress.

At his golf club in Bedminster, N.J., Trump announced he was postponing payroll taxes through the end of the year, extending the unemployment “bonus” at $400 a week (down from $600), helping people “stay in their homes” and waiving student debt payments through the end of 2020. The details, however, are not as generous as he made them sound.

He is ordering a payroll tax deferral, not a cut, meaning the taxes won’t be collected for a while but they will still be due at a later date. On housing, he instructs key officials to “consider” whether there should be a ban on evictions. He also insists that state governments pick up the tab for some of the unemployment aid. Continue reading.

Nine people test positive for the coronavirus at Georgia school where photos of packed hallways went viral

Washington Post logoA cluster of novel coronavirus cases has emerged at the Georgia high school that drew national attention last week after students posted pictures and videos of their peers walking without mask in tightly packed hallways, according to a letter sent to parents over the weekend.

Six students and three staff members at North Paulding High School have reported testing positive for the virus, Principal Gabe Carmona wrote in the letter, which was first reported by the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. He said the infected people were in school “for at least some time” last week.

The infections validate concerns in Georgia and around the country that crowded conditions in the nation’s K-12 schools could facilitate virus transmission as the new academic year begins. Young people develop severe infections at far lower rates than adults, but experts warn they could be vectors for infecting more vulnerable populations, such as older relatives in the same household. Continue reading.

Trump’s Go-It-Alone Stimulus Won’t Do Much to Lift the Recovery

New York Times logoA series of executive actions will provoke lawsuits but is unlikely to stoke faster growth in an economy that has cooled this summer.

The executive actions President Trump took on Saturday were pitched as a unilateral jolt for an ailing economy. But there is only one group of workers that seems guaranteed to benefit from them, at least right away: lawyers.

Mr. Trump’s measures include an eviction moratorium, a new benefit to supplement unemployment assistance for workers and a temporary delay in payroll tax liability for low- and middle-income workers. They could give renters a break and ease payments for some student loan borrowers. But they are likely to do little to deliver cash any time soon to Americans hit hard by the recession.

Even conservative groups have warned that suspending payroll tax collections is unlikely to translate into more money for workers. An executive action seeking to essentially create a new unemployment benefit out of thin air will almost certainly be challenged in court. And as Mr. Trump’s own aides concede, the orders will not provide any aid to small businesses, state and local governments or low- and middle-income workers. Continue reading.

Robert Reich dissects Trump’s dangerous lies about the COVID economy

AlterNet logo“The recovery has been very strong,” Donald Trump said last week. Then the Commerce Department reported the U.S. economy contracted between April and June at the fastest pace in nearly three-quarters of a century, which is as long as economists have been keeping track. The drop wiped out five years of economic growth.

But pesky facts have never stopped Trump. Having lied for five months about the coronavirus, he’s now filling social media and the airwaves with untruths about the economy so he can dupe his way to election day.

The comeback “won’t take very long,” he reassured Americans on Thursday. But every indicator shows that after a small uptick in June, the US economy is tanking again. Restaurant reservations are down, traffic at retail stores is dwindling, more small businesses are closing, the small rebound in air travel is reversing. Continue reading.

US surpasses 5 million coronavirus cases

The Hill logoThe U.S. has recorded more than 5 million coronavirus cases since the start of the outbreak in the country, according to data compiled by Johns Hopkins University.

More than 1.5 million people have recovered from COVID-19 in the country, while the U.S. has also reported more than 162,000 coronavirus-related deaths, according to Johns Hopkins.

The U.S. has reported the most confirmed COVID-19 cases and deaths of any country. The number of new infections across the U.S. has shown signs of easing recently, though the number of cases remains high compared with earlier in the pandemic. Continue reading.

White House ‘concocted a positive feedback loop’ to mislead Trump into thinking he’s doing an excellent job on coronavirus

AlterNet logoPresident Donald Trump’s chaotic White House resulted in “a lost summer” in the battle against coronavirus, according to a new in-depth report by The Washington Post.

The newspaper interviewed “41 senior administration officials and other people directly involved in or briefed on the response efforts” for the story, with multiple former officials offering anonymous quotes.

The report explains the skepticism of science and experts by White House chief of staff Mark Meadows. Continue reading.

Calling it a ‘peaceful protest,’ Trump flouts coronavirus guidelines with golf club gathering

Washington Post logoBEDMINSTER, N.J. — Just before 7 p.m. Friday evening, members of President Trump’s private golf club here began streaming into a gilded ballroom by the dozens. Some carried wineglasses — few wore masks.

The happy hour scene just steps from the golf course was orchestrated by Trump, who decided late Friday to hold an impromptu news conference and invite his club members to gather indoors in defiance of state restrictions aimed at slowing the spread of the novel coronavirus.

With coronavirus cases nearing 5 million in the United States and average daily deathstopping 1,000, Trump’s retreat to the confines of his private club offered him an opportunity to create a kind of alternate reality in which his presidency is not being beset by numerous crises. Continue reading.

The lost days of summer: How Trump fell short in containing the virus

Washington Post logoAs the White House chief of staff, Mark Meadows is responsible for coordinating the vast executive branch, including its coronavirus response. But in closed-door meetings, he has revealed his skepticism of the two physicians guiding the anti-pandemic effort, Deborah Birx and Anthony S. Fauci, routinely questioning their expertise, according to senior administration officials and other people briefed on the internal discussions.

Meadows no longer holds a daily 8 a.m. meeting that includes health professionals to discuss the raging pandemic. Instead, aides said, he huddles in the mornings with a half-dozen politically oriented aides — and when the virus comes up, their focus is more on how to convince the public that President Trump has the crisis under control, rather than on methodically planning ways to contain it.

During coronavirus meetings, Meadows has repeatedly questioned the scientific consensus that wearing masks helps contain the spread of the novel coronavirus, officials said. He has regularly raised with Fauci and others a range of issues on which he thinks Fauci has been wrong, and he personally monitors the infectious-disease expert’s media appearances. When he catches Fauci sounding out of sync with Trump, the chief of staff admonishes the doctor to “stay on message,” officials said — and he has impressed upon Fauci, Birx and other public health professionals that they should not opine on restrictions or make policy in the media. Continue reading.