‘Progress’ but no deal as coronavirus talks head into next week

The Hill logoTrump administration officials and Democratic leaders negotiating a new coronavirus relief package said they made “progress” during a rare Saturday meeting but aren’t yet close to a deal.

“We’re not close yet, but it was a productive discussion. Now each side knows where they’re at,” Senate Minority Leader Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) told reporters after the meeting.

Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin added that the meeting, which at more than three hours was the longest yet for negotiators, was the “most productive we’ve had to date.” Continue reading.

After Fauci Touts Europe’s More Effective COVID-19 Tactics, Trump Says He’s ‘Wrong!’

President Donald Trump on Saturday further shared his own interpretation of the coronavirus crisis, lashing out at Anthony Fauci, the nation’s top infectious disease expert, for explaining how Europe has been more successful at containing COVID-19 than the U.S. has.

“Wrong!” Trump tweeted from his golf resort in Potomac Falls, Virginia. He again brought up the rate of testing in the U.S., which he has repeatedly claimed “creates” more cases, arguing that the situation only looks worse here because more data is gathered.

More than 154,000 people have died from COVID-19 in the U.S., which is the highest national death toll in the world and nearly 23% of global coronavirus fatalities in a country with just 4% of the world’s population. Continue reading.

Trump Says Schools Must Reopen To Serve Free Lunch — Which He Tried To Cut

Donald Trump and his administration have been demanding that schools reopen in the middle of the COVID-19 pandemic as it ravages large swaths of the country — often using the argument that millions of children rely on schools to provide them with the nutrition they otherwise do not get at home.

“Thirty million American students rely on schools for free and reduced meals,” Trump said at a July 23 news conference, listing off one of the reasons he wants kids to go back to school even as schools struggle with finding the space and the resources to safely reopen for full-time in-person learning.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention also listed nutritional needs as a reason for full school reopening in a document Trump demanded from the government health agency. Continue reading.

House hearing underscores U.S. failure to stop spread of coronavirus

Washington Post logoThe failure of the United States to stem the ferocious spread of the coronavirus was on stark display Friday as top administration health officials appearing before a House panel acknowledged lengthy testing delays and a hodgepodge of state policies that protected no more than half the country with restrictions aimed at stopping more infections.

Testimony before the House select subcommittee on the coronavirus crisis, which is looking into the Trump administration’s response to the pandemic, was highly partisan. Republican members defended the approach advanced by the White House, and Democrats tore into it, saying that there still is no national strategy and that the death toll is soaring as a result.

With about 4.5 million Americans infected with the novel coronavirus and about 150,000 dead — a toll that grows by 1,000 people or more every day — tempers flared as the health officials found themselves in the middle of heated debates over the efficacy of a controversial drug, the wisdom of reopening schools and ways to prevent the virus from racing through the country. Continue reading.

A School Reopens, and the Coronavirus Creeps In

New York Times logoAs more schools abandon plans for in-person classes, one that opened in Indiana this week had to quarantine students within hours.

One of the first school districts in the country to reopen its doors during the coronavirus pandemic did not even make it a day before being forced to grapple with the issue facing every system actively trying to get students into classrooms: What happens when someone comes to school infected?

Just hours into the first day of classes on Thursday, a call from the county health department notified Greenfield Central Junior High School in Indiana that a student who had walked the halls and sat in various classrooms had tested positive for the coronavirus.

Administrators began an emergency protocol, isolating the student and ordering everyone who had come into close contact with the person, including other students, to quarantine for 14 days. It is unclear whether the student infected anyone else. Continue reading.

A year of dark magical thinking: Trump’s petty revenge fantasies have killed thousands

AlterNet logoThere have been a lot of changes in Donald Trump’s campaign in the last couple of weeks, but they haven’t been able to change the candidate. He’s more Trumpy than ever.

When the last round of terrible polls were released, showing Trump badly trailing Joe Biden both nationwide and in the key battleground states, Kellyanne Conway and others inexplicably suggested that the president should reignite the dumpster fire formerly known as the coronavirus briefings. That’s not going well. Have they been as bad as the White House coronavirus rallies in the spring, where Trump spent what seemed like hours every day insulting the press corps and generally making a fool of himself? Not yet. But that’s only because he has managed to stick to answering a few questions after droning on for 20 minutes as if he were reading someone else’s book report.

The substance of that book report is the same old happy talk and cheerleading, virtually always based on half-truths and outright lies. And the Q&A period is predictably a disaster. One day he wished his old friend Ghislaine Maxwell, the accused sex trafficker, well, spurring speculation that he was sending her the kind of signal he had earlier sent to his pal Roger Stone, whose sentence he commuted after Stone made clear he hadn’t ratted him out. (Perhaps that’s unfair, but since Trump commonly says things that sound like a slightly less erudite Tony Soprano, it’s only natural to wonder.) Continue reading.

U.S. deaths from coronavirus surpass 150,000

NOTE: This article is provided free of charge by The Washington Post.

Washington Post logoThe death toll in the United States from the novel coronavirus surpassed 150,000 on Friday, according to data gathered by The Washington Post, a milestone the country was never supposed to reach.

While the disease continues to kill the oldest among us with impunity, other disturbing trends have surfaced. In recent weeks, Hispanics and Native Americans have made up an increasing proportion of deaths from covid-19, the illness caused by the coronavirus.

Though the national fatality rate was on the decline for most of June, it began a steady rise in July, when the pandemic took a turn for the worse. States reported at least 24,833 coronavirus-related deaths in July, up more than 3,000 over the previous month, according to The Post’s tracking. The United States tallied 1,315 coronavirus deaths Friday, the fifth day in a row the country has reached a four-digit death toll. Continue reading.

Trump blames Democrats for cutting jobless benefits — but it’s GOP demanding cuts

Senate Republicans want to cut extra weekly unemployment payments from $600 per week to $200 per week.

Donald Trump on Wednesday attacked Democrats for not making relief payments to Americans impacted by the coronavirus high enough — even though it’s Republicans who have proposed massive cuts to unemployment insurance payments.

Senate Republicans have refused to take up a relief bill Democrats in the House passed in May.

“The Democrats aren’t taking care of the people. The payments aren’t enough. The payments aren’t enough, you understand that?” Trump said Wednesday morning as he left the White House en route to Texas, where he’s scheduled to host a fundraiser and tour an oil rig. “They’re not making the payments, they’re not making them high enough. The Democrats are not taking care of the people.” Continue reading.

U.S. deaths from coronavirus surpass 150,000

NOTE: This is an article provided free of charge by The Washington Post.

Washington Post logoThe death toll in the United States from the novel coronavirus surpassed 150,000 on Friday, according to data gathered by The Washington Post, a milestone the country was never supposed to reach.

While the disease continues to kill the oldest among us with impunity, other disturbing trends have surfaced. In recent weeks, Hispanics and Native Americans have made up an increasing proportion of deaths from covid-19, the illness caused by the coronavirus.

Though the national fatality rate was on the decline for most of June, it began a steady rise in July, when the pandemic took a turn for the worse. States reported at least 24,833 coronavirus-related deaths in July, up more than 3,000 over the previous month, according to The Post’s tracking. The United States tallied 1,315 coronavirus deaths Friday, the fifth day in a row the country has reached a four-digit death toll. Continue reading.

Unemployment benefits to expire as coronavirus talks deadlock

The Hill logoEnhanced unemployment benefits are set to expire as congressional negotiators are deadlocked over a coronavirus relief deal.

The additional $600 a week in unemployment insurance that Congress provided in late March will sunset on Friday at midnight, dealing a significant financial blow to millions of jobless Americans amid a weakening labor market.

Lawmakers had hoped the deadline, which was known for months, would result in the kind of eleventh-hour agreement that was once commonplace in Washington. But in a sign of how far apart negotiators are, the Senate left town for the week on Thursday, ensuring Congress will careen over the fast-approaching unemployment cliff. Continue reading.