Tag: Trump mishandling pandemic crisis

Democrats, tort lawyers pan McConnell’s liability immunity idea

Protection against COVID-19 cases

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell’s call to make tort reform a condition for giving state and local governments aid for budgets depleted by COVID-19 have left Democrats and plaintiffs’ attorneys with a bitter taste in their mouths.

“Before we start sending additional money down to states and localities, I want to make sure that we protect the people we’ve already sent assistance to, who are going to be set up for an avalanche of lawsuits if we don’t act,” McConnell said Monday on Fox News Radio. “The lawyers, trial lawyers, are sharpening their pencils to come after health care providers and businesses, arguing that somehow the decision they made with regard to reopening adversely affected the health of someone else.”

McConnell didn’t detail what kind of change he would like to see in tort law, but the nature of the COVID-19 pandemic may affect the nature of any legislative and legal debate. Continue reading.

Nurses are trying to save us from the virus, and from ourselves

Washington Post logoFirst, arrive at work before dawn. Then put on a head cover, foot covers, surgical scrubs, and a yellow plastic gown. Next, if one is available, the N95 mask. Fitting it to your face will be the most important 10 seconds of your day. It will protect you, and it will make your head throb. Then, a surgical mask over the N95. A face shield and gloves. Cocooned, you’ll taste your own recycled breath and hear your own heartbeat; you’ll sweat along every slope and crevice of your body.

Now, the hard part. Maintain your empathy, efficiency and expertise for 12 or 18 hours, while going thirsty and never sitting down, in an environment that is under-resourced and overworked, because your latest duty — in a profession with limitless duties — is confronting the most frightening pandemic in 100 years while holding people’s hands through it, through two pairs of gloves and a feeling that tomorrow could be worse.

“The job’s hard,” says Angela Gatdula, 31, a nurse in Santa Monica, Calif. Continue reading.

‘HHS has been kicked in the teeth’

After 100 days of coronavirus, mixed signals from Trump and near-daily pounding by critics, the health department is at its wits’ end.

The coronavirus outbreak burning its way through the United States has taken a different kind of toll on staff at the center of the nation’s response.

Officials here, at the Health and Human Services department headquarters, have worked around the clock since mid-January to first prepare for the possible Covid-19 outbreak and then manage the pandemic it became. But the Trump administration’s repeated stumbles have provoked a daily deluge of attacks, watchdog probes and open speculation about the future of the department’s leader, Secretary Alex Azar, culminating in a spate of reports about how White House officials were discussing Azar’s potential replacements this past weekend.

While President Donald Trump swiftly rejected those reports and praised Azar, more than 15 current and former staff who spoke to POLITICO described an atmosphere of exhaustion and dysfunction — capped off by White House efforts to weaken the health secretary. Continue reading.

Despite widespread economic hardship, most Americans not ready to reopen, poll says

While a growing number of American households have lost jobs due to COVID-19, a majority of U.S. adults say they still are uncomfortable with reopening the country, according to the latest PBS NewsHour/NPR/Marist poll.

Since March, the nation’s economy has taken a major hit from stay-at-home orders and other measures taken to slow the spread of COVID-19. As a result, roughly 26 million Americans filed first-time unemployment claims over five consecutive weeks in late March and April, according to the latest Department of Labor figures, making this one of the worst economic periods in the nation’s history.

Americans are split in how they view President Donald Trump’s handling of the economy, the poll suggested, with 50 percent of U.S. adults saying they approved and 48 percent that they disapproved with relatively little change since March when businesses around the country began to shutter. When asked about how the president has handled the coronavirus pandemic, 55 percent of Americans said they do not think he is doing a good job, up slightly from 49 percent in March. Continue reading.

Trump Administration’s Message on Reopening Continues to Be Contradictory

New York Times logoThe president said the coronavirus wouldn’t come back while Dr. Anthony Fauci said it would be “a bad fall” and the attorney general threatened to sue states for enforcing restrictions.

WASHINGTON — A week ago, President Trump chastised Georgia for starting to reopen. “It’s too soon,” he said. But on Tuesday, he cheered Texas as it began resuming business. “Great job,” he said. And Florida may be next as the president welcomed its governor to the Oval Office.

White House guidelines urge states to retain coronavirus restrictions until they meet certain criteria, but Attorney General William P. Barr is now threatening to sue them if he deems those limits too strict. And even as the president talks about opening the country, he has ordered it closed to immigration, even suggesting on Tuesday that flights from Brazil be banned.

With more and more states ready to resume some semblance of normal life, the messages from Mr. Trump and his administration at times have sounded contradictory and confusing. The president is anxious to get the stalled economy running again as the election grows nearer, and he has encouraged protests against restrictions in some states even as parts of his own government counsel caution for fear of rushing into a second wave of the disease. Continue reading.

Trump Declares Meat Supply ‘Critical,’ Aiming to Reopen Plants

NOTE:  President Trump’s order removes liability from the plant owners for anyone in their operation who contracts COVID-19, and the Trump administration has mitigated the CDC’s review of what those plants need to do to recommendations that don’t need to be implemented.

New York Times logoThe executive order is meant to prevent shortages of pork, chicken and other products. But unions fear it will endanger workers in the plants, which have become coronavirus hot spots.

WASHINGTON — President Trump on Tuesday declared meat processing plants “critical infrastructure,” in an effort to ensure that facilities around the country remained open as the government tried to prevent looming shortages of pork, chicken and other products as a result of the coronavirus.

The action comes as meat plants around the country have turned into coronavirus hot spots, sickening thousands of workers, and after the head of Tyson Foods, one of the country’s largest processors, warned that millions of pounds of meat would simply disappear from the supply chain.

In an executive order issued late Tuesday, Mr. Trump said recent closures of meat processing facilities “threaten the continued functioning of the national meat and poultry supply chain, undermining critical infrastructure during the national emergency.” Continue reading.

Schumer calls for hearings on Trump’s ‘abject failure at implementing’ coronavirus relief

The Hill logoSenate Democratic Leader Charles Schumer (N.Y.) on Tuesday blasted the Trump administration for failing to properly implement the four coronavirus relief packages passed by Congress, saying he would call on the Senate to begin oversight hearings next week.

“This administration has been an abject failure at implementing most of these laws,” Schumer said on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” on Tuesday, asserting the administration doesn’t have the necessary qualified personnel and focus.

“All too often it seems the president’s ego is at stake,” he added. Continue reading.

US surpasses 1 million COVID-19 cases

The Hill logoMore than a million people in the United States have tested positive for the coronavirus, a sobering milestone that experts say represents only the beginning of a months-long battle to end the pandemic.

The United States has now registered about a third of all confirmed cases of COVID-19 around the globe, according to data compiled by the Center for Systems Science and Engineering at Johns Hopkins University. More than 57,000 people have died in the United States, about a quarter of the known COVID-19 deaths around the globe.

The United States has now registered more confirmed cases than the next five countries suffering the largest outbreaks — Spain, Italy, France, Germany and the United Kingdom — combined. Continue reading.

Trump to order meat plants to stay open in pandemic, person familiar with action says

Washington Post logoFacilities will be declared ‘critical infrastructure’ for their role in the nation’s food supply even as many become virus hot spots

President Trump is expected to sign an executive order Tuesday mandating that meat production plants remain open to head off a food supply shortage, according to one person familiar with the coming action, despite mounting reports of plant worker deaths due to covid-19.

Trump will invoke the Defense Production Act under the order, which will classify the meat plants as essential infrastructure that must remain open, said the person, who was not authorized to disclose details of the order. The government will provide additional protective gear for employees as well as guidance, according to the person. Trump is expected to sign the order, first reported by Bloomberg, as early as today.

Earlier Tuesday during an Oval Office meeting with Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R), Trump mentioned he would be making some kind of executive order but did not give details. Continue reading.

Trump made ‘America first’ in coronavirus deaths, charges Democratic super PAC ad

The Hill logoThe largest Democratic super PAC is releasing a new ad in key battleground states using President Trump’s campaign slogan to say he made “America first” in coronavirus deaths.

“Donald Trump said he would put America first, and now he has,” the narrator in the Priorities USA ad states over footage of Trump at his daily coronavirus briefings.

“The United States leads the world in coronavirus cases. More than 50,000 Americans dead, twice as many deaths as any other country. Over 26 million people have lost their jobs and it’s only getting worse. Downplaying the threats, ignoring the experts, refusing to prepare. Donald Trump is failing America,” it states. Continue reading.