3.8 million people filed for unemployment last week, the Labor Department announced Thursday.
Why it matters: While the pace of unemployment filings has slowed since its peak in late March, the number of workers who have lost their jobs in recent weeks — as efforts to contain the coronavirus pandemic slammed the labor market — tops 30 million.
Between the lines: State labor departments have been overwhelmed by the rush of people seeking unemployment benefits. Continue reading.
White House officials are taking an optimistic view of the country’s progress in the fight against the coronavirus pandemic, a risky bet that could backfire if cases flare up again as more states begin lifting social distancing measures.
Top administration officials in recent days have started laying out specific timetables for when they believe the pandemic will be in the rearview mirror. The sunny declarations come as the White House pushes to revive the economy that has been central to President Trump’s reelection bid.
Senior White House adviser Jared Kushner told “Fox & Friends” on Wednesday that “a lot of the country should be back to normal” by June and “really rocking again” by July, calling the federal response to the virus a “great success story.” Continue reading.
Legal fights over who sets public health standards to protect workers and communities are likelyAn executive order designed to keep meatpacking and poultry plants up and running during the COVID-19 pandemic is likely to produce legal fights over who sets public health standards to protect workers and communities.
Lawrence Gostin, director of Georgetown University’s global health law center, said President Donald Trump’s order on Tuesday could launch “a clash between the powers of the president and the powers of the states.”
Gostin said the executive order is unclear about the role that state and local governments will play in monitoring the facilities, which have become so-called hot spots as hundreds of workers test positive for the virus that causes COVID-19. Continue reading.
As the video above explains, the Trump administration bungled its initial effort to get a broad-based testing regime in place for the new coronavirus and has been playing catch-up ever since. But now the United States has conducted more than 5 million tests, more than any other country.
That would seem to be a good talking point for President Trump. But it also lacks important context, because what really matters is how many tests are performed per million people. Moreover, Trump keeps exaggerating the statistics or making claims that turned out to be incorrect. “Anyone who wants a test can get a test,” he declared March 6, a statement so false it needed to be corrected the next day by Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar.
Here’s a tour through Trump’s recent rhetoric on testing. Continue reading.
CNN — Sen. David Perdue, a Georgia Republican up for reelection and a close Trump confidant, issued a blunt warning to GOP activists during an off-the-record conference call this week: Democrats are in position to turn his state blue and take the Senate.
“Here’s the reality: The state of Georgia is in play,” Perdue said Monday, according to an audio recording of a call with “Women for Trump” obtained by CNN. “The Democrats have made it that way.”
The stark warning from a GOP senator — who is not considered among the most vulnerable Republicans this election cycle — illustrates the fear among Republicans that Democrats’ chances of taking back the Senate continue to grow.
The U.S. economy shrank by an annualized 4.8% in the first quarter, the government said on Wednesday.
Why it matters: It’s the biggest quarterly drop in over a decade and shows the beginning of an economic slowdown that’s expected to get worse as the coronavirus roils the economy. Economists are bracing for current quarter figures, with some projecting a record annualized decline of about 40%.
What they’re saying: The coronavirus led to “rapid changes in demand, as businesses and schools switched to remote work or canceled operations, and consumers canceled, restricted or redirected their spending,” the Commerce Department said in a release. Continue reading.
Since mid-March, President Trump has adjusted his tone about the threat of the coronavirus — but only so much. Trump has continued to optimistically suggest that the virus might disappear sooner than experts say it could, and has played down the potential death toll and the severity of the situation, all in the service of praising the federal (and his own) response.
On Tuesday, his approach seemed to bleed over in a way that prompted one of the country’s top hospitals to rebuke the White House.
Vice President Pence visited the Mayo Clinic in Minnesota on Tuesday. But conspicuously absent from his visit was a mask. While pictures and video show plenty of people around Pence all using masks, he wasn’t wearing one. Continue reading.
As November nears Trump will continue to bombard us with a dizzying array of statistics that he hopes will demonstrate how great a job he and his administration are doing. We do the most testing in the world. We’re making the most ventilators. We build the most hospital beds. And we will soon again have the best economy in the history of the world.
But there are two numbers Trump can’t explain away: total deaths and job loss. He and his handlers had hoped that the final toll would follow from the University of Washington’s Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation model which now predicts 74,073 deaths by August 1. But as of April 28th, we have already suffered more than 56,000 deaths. Unfortunately, in less than a month, the body count is likely to surpass the updated IHME prediction.
What is likely to be the final tally? No one knows, of course. Maybe there will soon be a medicinal treatment. Maybe an effective vaccine will rapidly appear. Maybe summer and sunlight (even without injecting Clorox and chloroquine) will help more than expected. Continue reading.
Sen. Mitt Romney (R-Utah) offered a critical assessment of the federal government’s readiness for the novel coronavirus, describing it as not a “great moment in American leadership.”
Romney mostly kept his criticisms broad, avoiding attacking President Trump directly, though he took a few swipes at the president’s management style during an event with Georgetown University students via video chat on Tuesday night.
“The speed of our response looked slow compared to other people. That first phase will not stand out as a great moment in American leadership,” Romney said, referring to the onset of the coronavirus outbreak, adding, “We didn’t look real strong, and that’s kind of an understatement.” Continue reading.
