Tag: Trump OK with Americans dying to better his re-election chances

Trump administration pushing to block new money for testing, tracing and CDC in upcoming coronavirus relief bill

Washington Post logoWhite House posture angers some GOP senators who are trying to include billions of dollars in the bill

The Trump administration is trying to block billions of dollars for states to conduct testing and contact tracing in the upcoming coronavirus relief bill, people involved in the talks said Saturday.

The administration is also trying to block billions of dollars that GOP senators want to allocate for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and billions more for the Pentagon and State Department to address the pandemic at home and abroad, the people said.

The administration’s posture has angered some GOP senators, the officials said, and some lawmakers are trying to push back and ensure that the money stays in the bill. The officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity to reveal confidential deliberations, cautioned that the talks were fluid and the numbers were in flux. Continue reading.

Rancor between scientists and Trump allies threatens pandemic response as cases surge

Washington Post logoThis week’s remarkable character assault by some top White House advisers on Anthony S. Fauci, the nation’s leading infectious-disease expert, signified President Trump’s hostility toward medical expertise and has produced a chilling effect among the government scientists and public health professionals laboring to end the pandemic, according to administration officials and health experts.

As novel coronavirus cases surge out of control coast to coast, the open rancor between the scientific community and a White House determined above all to resuscitate the economy and secure a second term for Trump threatens to further undermine the U.S. response, which already lags behind those of many other developed nations.

A chorus of voices — including Fauci; Robert R. Redfield, the director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention; and even Mick Mulvaney, the White House chief of staff during the start of the pandemic — has been speaking out publicly and with increasing urgency about the crisis in ways that contradict or undermine Trump. Some of them have sharply criticized testing capacities and efficiencies, suggested that everyone wear masks and warned of the virus spread worsening. Continue reading.

Who took down the CDC’s coronavirus data? The agency itself.

Alarm over the missing data, which was restored Thursday, became the latest source of tension between the CDC and administration officials.

After the Trump administration ordered hospitals to change how they report coronavirus data to the government, effectively bypassing the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, officials at the CDC made a decision of their own: Take our data and go home.

The sudden disappearance of the CDC’s coronavirus dashboards on Wednesday — which drew considerable scrutiny before the agency restored them on Thursday afternoon — has become the latest flashpoint in the extraordinary breakdown between the Washington, D.C.-based federal health department and the nation’s premier public health agency, located in Atlanta.

While Democrats and health care groups spent Thursday blasting the Trump administration over the missing dashboards, which tracked critical data on coronavirus hospitalizations, officials at the Department of Health and Human Services insisted that they were just as shocked when the CDC’s data disappeared from public view. Continue reading.