Tag: Trump mishandling pandemic crisis

Presidential historian: Trump is ‘the worst president you can imagine’ for the COVID-19 crisis

AlterNet logoA presidential historian on Thursday said he couldn’t imagine any other president responding to the COVID-19 pandemic as poorly as President Donald Trump has so far.

Appearing on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe,” Rice University history professor Douglas Brinkley said that the United States has been getting hit hard by the coronavirus in part because Trump completely distrusts scientists.

“With Donald Trump, we’ve had a president who has been denouncing scientific experts since day one,” he said. “Total climate denial, saying 99 percent of the scientists are wrong about climate change, treating it as if it is some kind of hoax. So this is a president that’s been having a war against science his entire administration. He gutted CDC, got rid of the experts in the White House, so he was caught deeply flat-footed.” Continue reading.

We’ve never backed a Democrat for president. But Trump must be defeated.

Washington Post logoThis November, Americans will cast their most consequential votes since Abraham Lincoln’s reelection in 1864. We confront a constellation of crises: a public health emergency not seen in a century, an economic collapse set to rival the Great Depression, and a world where American leadership is absent and dangers rise in the vacuum.

Today, the United States is beset with a president who was unprepared for the burden of the presidency and who has made plain his deficits in leadership, management, intelligence and morality.

When we founded the Lincoln Project, we did so with a clear mission: to defeat President Trump in November. Publicly supporting a Democratic nominee for president is a first for all of us. We are in extraordinary times, and we have chosen to put country over party — and former vice president Joe Biden is the candidate who we believe will do the same. Continue reading.

Covid-19 is rapidly becoming America’s leading cause of death

Washington Post logoHow does the coronavirus compare to other major causes of death in an average week?

In just weeks, covid-19 deaths have snowballed from a few isolated cases to thousands across the country each day.

as he attempted to create context for the threat — but it turned out that more than five times as many Americans died from covid-19 last week than were killed in the World War II raid.

You can grasp the scale when you compare a single week’s pandemic deaths with how many people die of major causes in a typical week. Continue reading.

Congressional task force to advise White House on post-pandemic economy has wide swath of party rosters

Group includes members of leadership in both chambers

A bipartisan group of lawmakers has joined a task force to provide counsel to President Donald Trump and the White House on when to loosen public health restrictions and how to get the economy moving after the COVID-19 pandemic.

Trump and some of his allies have pushed for a faster lifting of restrictions, stressing that the economic ramifications of job losses and business closures could be worse than the loss of lives from the coronavirus. Public health officials have urged a more gradual approach to loosening social distancing guidelines and sending people back to work, school and daily life. They see a dramatic expansion of testing for the virus as a prerequisite to reopening businesses.

“My highest priority on this task force will be to ensure the federal government’s efforts to reopen our economy are bipartisan, data-driven, and based on the expertise of public health professionals,” Democratic Sen. Mark Warner of Virginia said in a statement. Continue reading.

Glitches prevent $1,200 stimulus checks from reaching millions of Americans

Washington Post logoSeveral million people who filed their taxes via H&R Block, TurboTax and other popular services were unable to get their payments. Some parents reported they didn’t get the $500 promised for their dependent children.

Many Americans woke up Wednesday expecting to find a payment of $1,200 or more from the U.S. government in their bank account, but instead they realized nothing had arrived yet — or the wrong amount was deposited. Parents of young children complained they did not receive the promised $500 check for their dependent children.

U.S. Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin has instructed the Internal Revenue Service to get payments out as fast as possible to help offset the pain of losing jobs and shutting down businesses, but numerous glitches — affecting filers who used tax preparers, parents of dependent children and people with 2019 tax returns still to be processed — are delaying payments and causing confusion.

Several million people who filed their taxes via H&R Block, TurboTax and other services were unable to get their payments because the IRS did not have their direct deposit information on file, according to the Treasury, companies and experts. Continue reading.

Small business loan fund from coronavirus stimulus runs out

Axios logoThe $349 billion cap for small business loans for the coronavirus stimulus was reached Thursday, taking less than two weeks to run out.

Why it matters: While it’s a sign that more than 1.6 million small businesses (and some larger ones) will eventually get desperately needed cash, it’s now officially a sign that more is needed.

  • Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) loans are forgivable if used for payroll and rent and similar expenses, and they’re designed to keep otherwise healthy businesses afloat during this crisis.

The big picture: In roughly a month, coronavirus lockdowns have…

  1. Caused more than 1 in 10 working-age Americans to file for unemployment.
  2. Put historic pressure on businesses not initially affected by the lockdown, with a second wave of layoffs hitting nationwide. (WSJ) Continue reading.

Pelosi Warns That Trump’s Lies Are Costing Lives

As Donald Trump spoke during his daily coronavirus briefing Tuesday, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi issued a stark warning for Americans to “ignore the lies” and “insist on the truth” while the U.S. assesses next steps in the crisis.

Pelosi’s scathing outline of Trump’s monthslong handling of the virus outbreak contrasted with his eagerness to reopen the economy.

“There are important decisions ahead,” Pelosi wrote to House Democrats. “But if we are not working from the truth, more lives will be lost, economic hardship and suffering will be extended unnecessarily.” Continue reading.

Trump denied he wanted his name on stimulus checks. Here’s how it happened.

Washington Post logoWhen President Trump publicly denied on April 3 that he wanted his signature on stimulus checks that would be sent to millions of Americans struggling amid a pandemic, officials in the Treasury Department were already secretly working on a plan to get the president’s name on the payments.

Trump, who was reportedly musing about placing his signature on the checks as early as late March, defended the unprecedented move Wednesday.

“I don’t know too much about it. But I understand my name is there,” Trump said. “I don’t know where they’re going, how they’re going. I do understand it’s not delaying anything, and I’m satisfied with that. I don’t imagine it’s a big deal. I’m sure people will be very happy to get a big, fat, beautiful check and my name is on it.” Continue reading.

Testing Falls Woefully Short as Trump Seeks an End to Stay-at-Home Orders

New York Times logoFlawed tests, scarce supplies and limited access to screening have hurt the U.S.’s ability to monitor Covid-19, governors and health officials warn.

As President Trump pushes to reopen the economy, most of the country is not conducting nearly enough testing to track the path and penetration of the coronavirus in a way that would allow Americans to safely return to work, public health officials and political leaders say.

Although capacity has improved in recent weeks, supply shortages remain crippling, and many regions are still restricting tests to people who meet specific criteria. Antibody tests, which reveal whether someone has ever been infected with the coronavirus, are just starting to be rolled out, and most have not been vetted by the Food and Drug Administration.

Concerns intensified on Wednesday as Senate Democrats released a $30 billion plan for building up what they called “fast, free testing in every community,” saying they would push to include it in the next pandemic relief package. Business leaders, who participated in the first conference call of Mr. Trump’s advisory council on restarting the economy, warned that it would not rebound until people felt safe to re-emerge, which would require more screening. Continue reading.

Many world leaders see spike in approvals over coronavirus response. Trump is not one of them.

AlterNet logoDonald Trump managed to squander the brief grace period he had to capitalize on getting a significant bump in approval ratings if Americans would have rallied around his coronavirus response. The several-point bump he got in the second half of March for striking a serious tone has almost dissipated, leaving him anywhere between about 42% and 45% in most polls and continuing to trend downward.

It’s pretty pathetic compared to the crisis-era approval bumps of previous presidents, such as the 40-point bump George W. Bush got following 9/11. But Trump’s performance is also getting bottom-of-the-barrel marks relative to those of other world leaders confronting the crisis.

MarketWatch highlighted the approval bumps of several of Trump’s peers on the global stage, including those who started out below Trump, even with Trump, and above Trump. Continue reading.