Tag: Trump White House

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.

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.

Trump turns White House into backdrop for political events

The Hill logoPresident Trump walked onto the South Lawn of the White House on Thursday to applause from supporters as he prepared to tout his efforts to roll back regulations.

He was flanked on one side by a blue truck weighed down by “years of regulatory burden” and on the other by a red truck that had an empty bed to illustrate “regulatory freedom.” Overhead, an industrial sized crane had the words “Trump administration” printed in clear view.

The president proceeded to give a speech that offered no new policy announcements but was heavy on attacks on presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden and his platform. Continue reading.

Kayleigh McEnany tries to clean up Trump’s comment about police killing ‘more white people’

Washington Post logoEarlier this week, President Trump shrugged off questions about police killing black people by saying they killed more white people. This is very technically true, but it’s also wholly misleading given the fact that we have many more white people in this country. Per capita, there is no comparison. Data have shown black people are about 2.5 times as likely to die at the hands of police.

So White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany took another shot at it Thursday. It wasn’t much better.

At a White House briefing, McEnany explained Trump’s comments thusly: Continue reading.

Corporate Lobbyists Run Amok In Trump’s White House

The Donald is in a funk. He’s been outsmarted by an inert virus. His poll numbers are tanking, and even his demagogic pep rallies are falling flat.

So, who to turn to for political comfort? Why, of course, Trump’s true loyalists: his diehard cadre of Washington’s corporate lobbyists. I don’t merely mean those elites of K-Street and Wall Street who dominate his Cabinet, constituting the official Trump government of, by, and for corporate greed. He also has a “kitchen cabinet.” Operating out of public view, it’s an unofficial collection of highly paid influence peddlers who’re still practicing the dark art of bending government power to the wishes of selfish corporate interests. Each of them is paid hundreds of thousands of dollars a year by brand-name clients — from Amazon to Walgreens — to get favors from Trump. In turn, these little-known lobbyists have now adopted The Donald as their chief client, funneling millions of special-interest dollars into his reelection campaign with the understanding that he’ll keep channeling tax breaks, regulatory exemptions and public dollars to the corporate donors. It’s the Washington money-go-round, merrily corrupting our government.

Who are these no-name corrupters? David Urban is one, considered the best-connected corporate huckster in the Trump swamp. He’s an old college pal of both Pentagon chief Mark Esper and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo. Moreover, he’s become such a close buddy of Donald himself that he’s known as a “Trump Whisperer,” able to work around the furies that rage in that strange orange head. Continue reading.

Kayleigh McEnany lashes out at the press for accurately quoting her saying ‘science should not stand in the way’ of school openings

AlterNet logoWhite House Press Secretary Kayleigh McEnany lashed out at the media on Thursday after she garnered criticism for her remarks about science and decisions on school reopenings.

Speaking during the afternoon’s press briefing, McEnany stumbled into a gaffe when she urged schools across the country reopen despite the ongoing pandemic and said: “The science should not stand in the way of this.”

This sounded as though she thought schools should reopen regardless of what the science says. The slip-up clearly played into one of the consistent criticisms of the Trump administration — and the GOP more broadly — that it refuses to accept scientific conclusions it finds ideologically inconvenient. Continue reading.

Unpublished White House report recommends stricter coronavirus measures in hard-hit states

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

Washington Post logoAn unpublished report by the White House Coronavirus Task Force dated Tuesday suggests that at least 18 hard-hit states — including California, Florida, Georgia, Oklahoma and Texas — enact stricter measures such as mask requirements and increased testing. The report was first published by the Center for Public Integrity.

Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp (R) on Thursday sued to stop Atlanta from enforcing some of its coronavirus-related rules, including its recent mandate to wear a face covering in public.

The lawsuit alleges that Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms (D) lacked the authority to implement a mask requirement and that she must obey Kemp’s executive orders, including one signed Wednesday night that explicitly bans municipalities from enacting their own mask ordinances. Continue reading.

Vice President Pence defends Fauci as White House sends mixed messages on health expert

WASHINGTON – Vice President Mike Pence on Wednesday defended Dr. Anthony Fauci in public comments made soon after he tweeted out a photo of the two of them at the White House.

“Dr. Fauci is a valued member of the White House Coronavirus Task Force,” Pence said on a campaign call with reporters when asked about recent attacks on Fauci by others in the administration. “We just completed our latest meeting today and we couldn’t be more grateful for his steady counsel.”

The photo he tweeted showed Fauci sitting at Pence’s right hand during the meeting. Continue reading.

Live updates: ‘Let’s stop this nonsense,’ Fauci says of federal coronavirus response as he comes under fire

NOTE:  This article is provided free of charge by The Washington Post.
Washington Post logoSidelined by the White House and harshly criticized in an extraordinary op-ed from a top adviser to the Trump administration, Anthony S. Fauci — the nation’s top infectious-disease expert — said in an interview with the Atlantic published Wednesday that the country needs to focus on a surging virus “rather than these games people are playing.”

“We’ve got to almost reset this and say, ‘Okay, let’s stop this nonsense,’ ” he said after being asked to state “the truth about the federal response to the pandemic” in the United States. “We’ve got to figure out, How can we get our control over this now, and, looking forward, how can we make sure that next month, we don’t have another example of California, Texas, Florida, and Arizona?”

Meanwhile, support for mask mandates continued to grow a day after another of the country’s top health officials said universal face-covering could bring covid-19 “under control” in the United States. In Alabama, Kay Ivey (R) became the latest governor to change their tune after initial resistance and issue a statewide mask order, while Walmart, the world’s largest retailer, said it would require all shoppers to wear face masks.

The White House Called a News Conference. Trump Turned It Into a Meandering Monologue.

New York Times logoThe president spoke in the Rose Garden for 63 minutes. He spent only six of those minutes answering questions from reporters.

WASHINGTON — In theory, President Trump summoned television cameras to the heat-baked Rose Garden early Tuesday evening to announce new measures against China to punish it for its oppression of Hong Kong. But that did not last long.

What followed instead was an hour of presidential stream of consciousness as Mr. Trump drifted seemingly at random from one topic to another, often in the same run-on sentence. Even for a president who rarely sticks to the script and wanders from thought to thought, it was one of the most rambling performances of his presidency.

He weighed in on China and the coronavirus and the Paris climate change accord and crumbling highways. And then China again and military spending and then China again and then the coronavirus again. And the economy and energy taxes and trade with Europe and illegal immigration and his friendship with Mexico’s president. And the coronavirus again and then immigration again and crime in Chicago and the death penalty and back to climate change and education and historical statues. And more. Continue reading.