Tag: Trump White House

In coronavirus scramble for N95 masks, Trump administration pays premium to third-party vendors

Washington Post logoThe Trump administration has awarded bulk contracts to third-party vendors in recent weeks in a scramble to obtain N95 respirator masks, and the government has paid the companies more than $5 per unit, nearly eight times what it would have spent in January and February when U.S. intelligence agencies warned of a looming global pandemic, procurement records show.

The N95 masks are essential protective gear for health-care workers and others at elevated risk of coronavirus infection, and the government has recommended that people across the country wear masks and other face coverings when outside. Demand for the masks has created a frenzied, freewheeling global market that has pitted U.S. states against the federal government and rich nations against poorer ones.

Administration officials leaped into the fray late, then embarked on a voracious spending spree. Though U.S. federal agencies made a small number of relatively modest purchases before the second half of March, the government has ordered more than $600 million worth of masks since then. Continue reading.

Aides expect Schumer, Mnuchin to reach deal on coronavirus relief

The Hill logoTreasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin and Senate Democratic Leader Charles Schumer (N.Y.) are expected to reach a deal this week on an interim coronavirus relief bill that would provide money to businesses, hospitals and state governments.

The deal could lead to legislation being passed quickly through the Senate on Thursday, and through the House no later than early next week.

The House has said it will not return to Washington until at least the week of May 4 given the danger of the coronavirus, which has sent lawmakers in both chambers home. Continue reading.

The White House pushed FEMA to give its biggest coronavirus contract to a company that never even had to bid

AlterNet logoLast month, as a deadly new virus swept over the globe, one Canadian defense contractor predicted on an earnings call that it would lead to a big business opportunity in the U.S. Thanks to the White House, that bet paid off just a few weeks later in a $96 million no-bid deal.

In an unusual move, even in times of disaster, the White House stepped into the federal purchasing process, ordering the Federal Emergency Management Agency to award a contract to AirBoss of America. The Trump administration has rushed through hundreds of deals to address the pandemic without the usual oversight, more than $760 million reported as of this week, but the AirBoss transaction is the single largest no-bid purchase, a ProPublica analysis of federal purchasing data found.

While FEMA placed the order, it was directed to do so by the White House, ProPublica found. Continue reading.

He Could Have Seen What Was Coming: Behind Trump’s Failure on the Virus

New York Times logoAn examination reveals the president was warned about the potential for a pandemic but that internal divisions, lack of planning and his faith in his own instincts led to a halting response.

WASHINGTON — “Any way you cut it, this is going to be bad,” a senior medical adviser at the Department of Veterans Affairs, Dr. Carter Mecher, wrote on the night of Jan. 28, in an email to a group of public health experts scattered around the government and universities. “The projected size of the outbreak already seems hard to believe.”

A week after the first coronavirus case had been identified in the United States, and six long weeks before President Trump finally took aggressive action to confront the danger the nation was facing — a pandemic that is now forecast to take tens of thousands of American lives — Dr. Mecher was urging the upper ranks of the nation’s public health bureaucracy to wake up and prepare for the possibility of far more drastic action.

“You guys made fun of me screaming to close the schools,” he wrote to the group, which called itself “Red Dawn,” an inside joke based on the 1984 movie about a band of Americans trying to save the country after a foreign invasion. “Now I’m screaming, close the colleges and universities.” Continue reading.

A plan to defeat coronavirus finally emerges, but it’s not from the White House

Washington Post logoIn the absence of federal direction, states and America’s top experts forge the path ahead.

A national plan to fight the coronavirus pandemic in the United States and return Americans to jobs and classrooms is emerging — but not from the White House.

Instead, a collection of governors, former government officials, disease specialists and nonprofits are pursuing a strategy that relies on the three pillars of disease control: Ramp up testing to identify people who are infected. Find everyone they interact with by deploying contact tracing on a scale America has never attempted before. And focus restrictions more narrowly on the infected and their contacts so the rest of society doesn’t have to stay in permanent lockdown.

But there is no evidence yet the White House will pursue such a strategy.

At White House coronavirus briefings, rescue efforts are extensive but often aspirational

Washington Post logoBad news tends to build up on pandemic days right until prime time, when President Trump and the coronavirus task force gather in the White House briefing room to tamp it down.

There, from the podium, generous quantities of medical supplies are distributed. The innovative forces of American science and industry are marshaling to defeat the enemy and make testing widely available. The economy gets the intensive care it needs for America to quickly recover. The “medical war,” as Trump calls it, is being won.

These pronouncements and pledges have turned out, again and again, to be a description of the administration’s aspirational response to the pandemic, not the one doctors, nurses and stricken families are reporting from the front. Continue reading.

Warnings Began in Nov 2019, But Trump Administration Ignored

We now have even more evidence that Trump ignored warnings of the coronavirus threat. Our intelligence community issued a warning in November 2019 and Trump was briefed in early January.

WARNED IN NOVEMBER 2019 BY U.S. INTELLIGENCE COMMUNITY: Trump’s intelligence officials warned in November about the coronavirus sweeping through China.

ABC News: “As far back as late November, U.S. intelligence officials were warning that a contagion was sweeping through China’s Wuhan region, changing the patterns of life and business and posing a threat to the population, according to four sources briefed on the secret reporting. Concerns about what is now known to be the novel coronavirus pandemic were detailed in a November intelligence report by the military’s National Center for Medical Intelligence (NCMI), according to two officials familiar with the document’s contents.” Continue reading “Warnings Began in Nov 2019, But Trump Administration Ignored”

Mnuchin says he thinks US businesses could reopen in May

The Hill logoTreasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin said Thursday that he thought the United States could reopen the economy during the month of May. 

“I do,” Mnuchin told CNBC host Jim Cramer in a phone interview on Thursday morning in response to a direct question about whether the country could be “open for business” in the month of May.

“I think as soon as the president feels comfortable with the medical issues, we are making everything necessary that American companies and American workers can be open for business and that they have the liquidity to operate their business in the interim,” Mnuchin continued. Continue reading.

To protect Trump, White House among first to use rapid coronavirus tests sought by communities

Washington Post logoAs communities across the country desperately seek access to emerging rapid-turnaround covid-19 tests, one place already using them is the White House, where guests visiting President Trump and Vice President Pence have been required to undergo the exams since last week.

The procedure is the latest of new safeguards aimed at protecting the health of the nation’s top elected officials from the novel coronavirus, which has sickened some prominent global leaders. Among them is British Prime Minister Boris Johnson, a Trump ally, who was moved to intensive care this week in a London hospital due to complications of the illness.

White House visitors said they have been administered the test developed by Abbott Laboratories at the Eisenhower Executive Office Building, the complex across the street from the West Wing where Pence has an office and the staff of the National Security Council is based. Continue reading.

Trump’s new spokeswoman Kayleigh McEnany has a history of spouting absurdities on live TV. Here are her 5 most illustrious moments

AlterNet logoOn Tuesday the White House announced that press secretary Stephanie Grisham was being shifted back to the East Wing where she will once work for first Lady Melania Trump after having never held a press conference during her tenure. To take Grisham’s place, Donald Trump has selected Kayleigh McEnany who has an extensive history of appearances on the cable networks — many of them spiraling into contentious exchanges with hosts and fellow guests alike.

Prior to becoming the spokesperson for the president’s 2020 re-election campaign, the job she is leaving to join the president more closely in the White House, the graduate of Harvard law school was a recognizable face on CNN where she was a regular –and combative — contributor.

Below is a sampling of some of her appearances where she raged against the hosts, attempted to talk over her co-panelists and generally did everything she could to defend the president against any slight, real or imagined. Continue reading.