Tag: MoscowMitch

Week 180 in Trump

Posted on July 9, 2020 in Politics, Trump

Flattening the curve?

The muddled and inconsistent information we got (and still get) from the government and public health experts about lockdowns and masks is a big reason people don’t trust it. But a recent review of 172 studies finds that wearing masks drastically reduces the risk of infection. The mask mandates that were implemented might have reduced infections by at least 230,000 in the U.S. Countries with early mask requirements had shorter outbreaks and fewer deaths. The point of a mask is not to filter out viruses. It’s 1) to stop the viral particles from traveling very far (which is why we wear them to protect others) and 2) to block the larger droplets in which the virus travels. Masks, in combination with social distancing (and shutting down when needed), are the key to slowing the pandemic.

OK. Off my soapbox. Here’s what happened in politics for the week ending July 5…

Missed From Previous Weeks:

  1. Research shows that the surge in coronavirus cases across the U.S. started before any cases caused by the George Floyd protests could have incubated, so the uptick likely started with Memorial Day celebrations. In at least 14 states, numbers were on the rise.
  2. The World Health Organization (WHO) expresses support for the George Floyd protests despite the pandemic, saying the agency rejects every kind of discrimination. At the same time, the WHO recommends protestors comply with safety guidelines as much as possible.
  3. A federal judge orders the Department of Education to cancel student loan debt for over 7,200 students in Massachusetts alone. They had attended a branch of Corinthian College, which is no longer in existence.
  4. A co-founder of Reopen Maryland, a lockdown protest group, tests positive for coronavirus and refuses to cooperate with contact tracers. He’s had a cough for months and only recently worsened.

Shootings This Week:

  1. There were THIRTY-EIGHT mass shootings in the U.S. this week (defined as killing and/or injuring four or more people). Shooters kill TWENTY-SEVEN people and injure ONE HUNDRED AND SIXTY more. Gun violence is at an extremely high level since the lockdowns started easing—it’s the worst since I started following it.
  2. Some of the worst:
    • A gang-related shooting at the Lavish Lounge in Greenville, SC, leaves two people dead and eight injured.
    • An argument after a car hits a pedestrian in Atlanta escalates into a shooting and leaves two dead and 12 injured. Atlanta had six shootings resulting in four deaths and 22 people injured over the Fourth of July weekend, leading the governor to declare a state of emergency.
    • In Chicago, four men walk up to a group of people and begin shooting, killing four and injuring four. Three of the victims were children, including one who was killed.

Russia:

  1. Remember how we found out last week that Russia placed a bounty on U.S. service members’ lives in Afghanistan? Well, it turns out that Trump received a written briefing on this in February and has continued to meet with Putin and hasn’t mentioned a word of dismay or disapproval about it.
    • In fact, Trump called Putin six times in just two months. How many other leaders does he speak with that often?
    • White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany continues to deny Trump was briefed, saying that it hasn’t been confirmed that Russia placed the bounties.
    • At the moment she’s saying this, administration officials brief House Republicans on the intelligence.
    • Taliban leaders confirm that Russia did, indeed, offer bounties on American troops’ lives.
  1. Russians vote overwhelmingly in favor of changing the rules for Putin, allowing him to stay in power until 2036 should he continue to win the presidential elections.
  2. Higher than normal radiation levels register in northern Europe, leading to speculation that Russia has had another leak. Putin denies it.

Fallout, Legal and Otherwise:

  1. The Southern District of New York U.S. Attorney’s office charges Ghislaine Maxwell for recruiting and grooming underage girls for Jeffrey Epstein to abuse. Maxwell was Epstein’s former girlfriend and is now on suicide watch in jail.
  2. According to reporting by Carl Woodward, several of Trump’s former top deputies think he’s often delusional in his dealings with foreign leaders and almost always unprepared for conversations with them.
    • They say strongman leaders outplay Trump all the time, and Trump is abusive to our allies.
    • They also say Trump never became any more skillful at dealing with leaders.
    • In his conversations with leaders like bin Salman and Kim Jong Un, Trump bragged about his own wealth and “genius” while trashing former U.S. presidents.
  1. Senator Tammy Duckworth threatens to hold up the promotions of 1,123 senior military officers until she gets confirmation from Defense Secretary Mark Esper that he hasn’t blocked and won’t block Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman’s promotion to full colonel. There’s suspicion that the delay in getting the promotions list from the DOD is because Trump won’t approve it with Vindman’s name on it.
  2. The Commerce Department blocks the release of a report on whether the department pressured the head of NOAA to support Trump’s false claim that Hurricane Dorian would hit Alabama.
  3. Former national security advisor Michael Flynn posts a bizarre video of him including the QAnon slogan “Where we go one, we go all” in a bizarre fireside oath on the Fourth of July. He tags the video with a QAnon hashtag. You might remember he was deep into conspiracy theories by the time he joined Trump’s campaign.

Courts/Justice:

  1. The Supreme Court rules that Trump can fire the head of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau even though it is supposed to be a non-political post confirmed by the Senate.
  2. Mitch McConnell, who held up a record number of Barack Obama’s federal court confirmations, brags that there isn’t a single circuit court vacancy for the first time in at least 40 years. Most of these conservative judges are in their 30s and 40s and will shape the judicial system for decades to come. 70% of them are white and male.
  3. Adding to the shakeup in U.S. Attorney offices, Rickard Donoghue, the U.S. Attorney in Brooklyn, steps down to take a higher position at the Department of Justice.

Coronavirus:

  1. Some interesting and geeky COVID info found from autopsies:
    • COVID-19 and dengue fever affect similar cells. Dengue fever destroys platelet-producing cells, which causes uncontrolled bleeding. The coronavirus amplifies those cells, producing dangerous clotting.
    • The virus attacks the lungs the most ferociously.
    • Medical examiners found the virus in the lungs, brain, kidneys, liver, gastrointestinal tract, spleen, and blood vessel lining.
    • They found blood clots in the heart, brain, kidney, liver, and especially the lungs.
  1. Dr. Anthony Fauci expresses concern that we’ll start seeing 100,000 new coronavirus cases per day unless we take drastic action.
  2. As Fauci testifies again before the Senate, Rand Paul asks him why we should listen to experts. Paul says the experts keep getting it wrong and that they should stop pretending they know it all and embrace a little humility. It shocks me that this man studied any kind of science.
    • Experts have been very clear that they’re working with the best knowledge they have and that it’s rapidly evolving.
    • Experts have also given us guidelines, which some states have embraced and some have not. So it’s not like the experts are giving any ultimatums.
  1. Having clear and consistent guidance on wearing masks, social distancing, and staying home is what some scientists credit for the success of some countries and states at controlling the pandemic.
  2. Mike Pence extends federal support for testing in Texas for two weeks due to the high rate of infections there. Meanwhile, the federal government has provided little testing support to Arizona, which is having a major outbreak as well.
  3. At long last, Pence says that Americans should all wear masks in public to prevent the spread of the coronavirus. Even Republican Senators Lamar Alexander, Mitt Romney, and Mitch McConnell, as well as House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-CA), start to recommend masks.
  4. Sweden’s Prime Minister orders an investigation into their lax lockdown policy. The country has the fifth-highest death rate per capita.
  5. Former Republican presidential candidate Herman Cain is hospitalized with COVID-19. Cane recently traveled to Arizona and Tulsa, OK, for Trump’s rally. It doesn’t appear they’re doing any contact tracing as people he was in close contact with at the rally were never notified.
  6. The new messaging from the White House is that we need to learn to live with the coronavirus. Unless it kills us, I guess. Amid the rapidly rising number of cases, Trump again says the pandemic will just disappear.
  7. A new prediction model from the University of Washington’s Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME) shows that if most everyone wears masks, we could prevent 20,000 to 30,000 deaths by October.
  8. Scientists urge the WHO to take the airborne spread of the coronavirus more seriously.
  9. More than 800 Georgia professors protest plans to reopen the Georgia Institute of Technology without requiring masks.
  10. Jim Yong Kim led the WHO’s HIV response under George W. Bush and led the World Bank for parts of the Obama and Trump administrations.
    • On a conference call in May about infection containment strategies (like testing, contact tracing, and isolation), he was incredulous that the U.S. is so lacking in a coordinated strategy to deal with the pandemic.
    • He says the planned standard response to an outbreak is apparently “something that we’re just not going to do” He asks why we’ve given up on any attempts at containing the pandemic, and points out that we’re world’s richest nation and couldn’t stop the virus from paralyzing us as other countries have.
  1. The Global Health Security Index, which rates countries’ readiness to handle an outbreak, rated the U.S. as the best-prepared country overall in 2019. But they didn’t take into account political inaction and political ineptitude. Experts criticize the U.S. for not having the political will to meet the moment.
  2. San Quentin State Prison in California is having one of the largest coronavirus outbreaks, and a group of COVID-positive inmates starts a hunger strike in protest of the conditions there.
  3. The WHO says the pandemic is speeding up and that the worst is yet to come.
  4. Scammers advertise fraudulent COVID-19 testing as a way to get personal information. Go to an official site for testing!
  5. The people who are testing positive for coronavirus now are largely younger. People in the 18 to 49 age group make up 35% of the hospitalized population, up from 27% before. More than half of known cases in California are now in this age group.
  6. The CDC says that the coronavirus is spreading too rapidly and too broadly for us to contain it in the U.S. I guess that’s why the administration has given up and says we just need to learn to live with it. Good strategy.

Shortages:

  1. Facing a scarcity of resources, some Arizona hospitals request approval to use “crisis standards” to determine who gets treated when they are overwhelmed with patients. This includes things like allocating resources to patients with the best chances of survival or the best outcome. These standards are rarely invoked. Medical facilities are delaying nonessential procedures to free up beds and personnel. ICU beds are nearly 90% full across the state.
  2. The Strategic National Stockpile had more ventilators than it ended up distributing to medical facilities so far during the pandemic. They started with 16,660 ventilators and loaned out 10,640.
  3. The U.S. has bought up nearly the entire world’s supply of the anti-viral drug remdesivir, which makes experts wonder what will happen when a vaccine becomes available. There won’t be more available until after September, except 10% of the production in August and September.

Exposures:

  1. Pence changes his travel plans to Florida and Arizona because eight Secret Service agents who were there preparing for his trip test positive.
    • At least 15 agents tested positive a few weeks ago while preparing for Trump’s campaign rally in Yuma, AZ. They ended up having to drive back to DC.
    • Some agents complain that Trump and Pence trying to keep up a normal travel schedule is unnecessarily putting them at risk. According to the agents, it’s one thing to take a bullet to protect them; it’s another to get sick for no good reason.
  1. Don Jr. has to miss the Fourth of July rally at Mount Rushmore because his girlfriend, Kimberly Guilfoyle, tests positive after arriving.
  2. Scientists find a new mutation of the coronavirus that came from Europe to the U.S. The new version is more infectious but doesn’t seem to be any deadlier or cause worse sickness. This is the form that is mostly infecting Americans right now.
  3. Studies suggest that super-spreader events have been a large driver of coronavirus infections. They estimate that 10% of the people are causing around 80% of the infections.

Closures:

  1. At least 14 states slow down their reopening or backtrack on them.
  2. Florida Governor Ron DeSantis says Florida will not go back to any of the lockdown orders, even as Texas Governor Greg Abbot and Arizona Governor Doug Ducey put reopening on pause and even backtrack a little on opening. Florida did stop allowing people to consume alcohol at bars.
  3. Abbot issues an executive order requiring Texans to wear face coverings in public, but only in counties with 20 more COVID-19 cases. A group of conservatives files a lawsuit to stop the order.
  4. Some states start closing businesses back down, and those businesses lay off workers again.
  5. Crowds pack beaches and parks to celebrate the Fourth of July, despite growing coronavirus cases. In some states, officials close beaches and parks and cancel fireworks displays.
  6. And congratulations, Americans! You can’t travel to Canada, parts of Mexico, or the European Union now that the EU confirms it will block travel from America when it reopens.
  7. Residents of Puerto Peñasco, a beach town in Mexico, block all southbound traffic from Arizona with their cars. The town’s mayor doesn’t want Americans visiting Mexico right now.

Numbers:

  1. Daily new coronavirus cases in the U.S. surpass 50,000 for the first time. Daily cases have increased by 80% in two weeks.
  2. Cases worldwide surpass 10,000,000 and deaths surpass 500,000.
  3. Eight states post record single-day highs: Alaska, Arkansas, California, Florida, Georgia, Montana, South Carolina, and Tennessee. Previously stable states like Ohio, Kansas, and Louisiana also see some of their highest daily numbers.
  4. Here are the numbers by the end of the week:
    • 2,839,542 people in the U.S. are infected so far (up from 2,510,323 last week), with 129,676 deaths (up from 125,539 last week).
    • 11,240,740 people worldwide have been infected (up from 9,953,229 last week), with 530,581 deaths (up from 498,550 last week).

Healthcare:

  1. Health scientists are monitoring a new H1N1 flu strain, which is popping up in people working on pig farms in China. It hasn’t yet made anyone ill, but scientists are concerned about another pandemic. In one year, H1N1 killed between 151,700 and 575,400 people worldwide (compared to COVID-19’s over 530,581 in half a year).
  2. Oklahoma voters pass Medicare expansion, which would extend health benefits to nearly 200,000 low-income adults. This makes Oklahoma the fifth state where the voters overrode their Republican officials who have refused to expand Medicare under the Affordable Care Act. Why do voters keep electing people who go against their wishes?
  3. The Supreme Court strikes down Louisiana’s restrictive abortion law requiring abortion providers to have admitting privileges at a nearby hospital because it puts a severe burden on access to legal abortion.
    • Chief Justice Roberts was the deciding vote. He ruled this way because of a precedent set in a Texas abortion case even though he thinks that the case was wrongly decided.

International:

  1. Iran issues an arrest warrant for Trump for murder and terrorism charges over the killing of General Qasem Soleimani.
  2. At the UN Security Council’s virtual meeting, the U.S. is the only country that refuses to express support for the Iran nuclear deal (JCPOA). Secretary of State Mike Pompeo calls it “flawed.” Most diplomats on the call criticize the U.S. for leaving the agreement and criticize Iran for the moves it’s taken in violation of the agreement since.

Legislation/Congress:

  1. House Republicans have skipped every House Intelligence Committee meetings since March.
  2. Senate Republicans force changes to the National Defense Authorization Act, removing the requirement presidential campaigns report offers of foreign assistance in an election.
    • Trump, in turn, threatens to veto the act if it includes requirements to change the names of military bases currently named after Confederate soldiers.

Travel Ban/Immigration/Discrimination:

  1. Racial justice protests continue, though they’re quieter and the media isn’t as interested in them anymore. Sigh.
  2. Cities around the country continue to amend their use-of-force policies, and they create unarmed response teams for certain types of 911 calls.
  3. Mississippi will take down all their flags and create a task force to design a new one without the cross of the Confederate battle flag. The new design will be on the ballot in November.
  4. With the recent toppling of statues honoring the Confederacy and slave ownership, the Department of Homeland Security creates the Protecting American Communities Task Force to protect historic landmarks from anarchists and rioters. How does this fall under their jurisdiction?
  5. The Department of Housing and Urban Development under Ben Carson announces a plan to roll back protections for transgender people in need of HUD programs, including homeless shelters. At a time when people are experiencing economic pain and health concerns, HUD prioritizes putting people who are already in the most danger in even more danger. Got it.
  6. The CEO of Reddit bans over 2,000 of their communities for promoting hate speech, and that includes the largest pro-Trump community, r/The_Donald. Reddit has long resisted moderating posts.
  7. Twitch temporarily suspends the Trump campaign‘s channel for hateful conduct.
  8. The mayor of Seattle disbands the Capitol Hill Organized Protest area, which had been set aside for protestors in a police-free zone.
  9. At least 70 people have died in police custody after saying, “I can’t breathe.” Most were stopped for nonviolent infractions, and more than half were black. It’s a varied group of people who died, including a chemical engineer, a nurse, a doctor, an Iraqi war vet, and others.
  10. A federal judge strikes down a Trump administration rule that would require asylum seekers who pass through multiple countries to reach the U.S. to apply for asylum in one of those countries first in order to be eligible for consideration here.

Climate/Environment:

  1. The House Select Committee on Climate Crisis releases its vision for solving the problem of climate change. It calls for 100% clean energy by 2040, similar to what several states have enacted. The legislation is unlikely to pass this year.
  2. The dust cloud from the Sahara that blanketed many of the Gulf states has largely moved on, but some haze remains and a second plume is on its way.
  3. Energy companies have long been fighting for the Atlantic Coast Pipeline, but abandon their efforts this week. The tunnel would’ve gone from West Virginia through Virginia and ended in North Carolina. Environmental, religious, and property rights activists joined in opposing the pipeline. Even though the Supreme Court ruled in favor of the pipeline last month, other court rulings related to the Keystone XL pipeline make the project seem too risky.

Budget/Economy:

  1. The U.S. has added 7.5 million jobs back in since the shutdowns started lifting two months ago, 4.8 million of those in June. Twenty million jobs were lost due to the shutdowns. While this is positive news, more stimulus from the government might be needed. For now, Trump isn’t on the stimulus package bandwagon.
  2. The unemployment rate dropped from 13.3% in May to 11.1% in June, but those numbers still contain the pandemic discrepancy. I don’t know why BLS hasn’t been able to address that yet.
  3. 1.4 Million Americans applied for first-time unemployment insurance last week.
  4. The Congressional Budget Office predicts unemployment levels to stay above pre-pandemic levels for at least a decade. The office also predicts a federal deficit this year of $3.7 trillion.
  5. Senate Democrats successfully push Republicans to approve extending the Paycheck Protection Program for small businesses to August 8.
  6. Goldman Sachs estimates that a national mask mandate could save the U.S. economy $1 trillion. Wearing masks is hugely politicized, and I’m not sure if Republican leaders can turn that around with their late entry into embracing masks.
  7. The update to NAFTA (called the USMCA) goes into effect, changing some of the trade rules between the U.S., Canada, and Mexico in the areas of automotive manufacturing, agriculture, and intellectual property.
  8. Fed Chair Jerome Powell tells the House Financial Services Committee that the economy is “extraordinarily uncertain.”
  9. Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin, on the other hand, touts the 18% increase in retail sales after businesses start to reopen and says that nearly 80% of businesses are partially open. This is before businesses start closing back down due to the surge in coronavirus cases.

Elections:

  1. Several former George W. Bush officials form a new super PAC to rally disenchanted Republicans to help elect Joe Biden. This makes at least three high-profile Republican PACs that are working on getting Biden elected.
  2. Now that the RNC changed their national convention from North Caroline to Jacksonville, FL, to avoid distancing and mask requirements, Jacksonville institutes a mask requirement.
  3. Before Trump’s rally in Tulsa, the campaign removed the social distancing stickers placed on seats to keep people at a safe distance.
  4. Trump holds a Fourth of July re-election rally at Mount Rushmore in South Dakota. There’s no social distancing and masks are handed out but not required, but at least it’s outside so that’s safer.
    • Instead of a unifying speech celebrating the nation on the anniversary of its birth, Trump doubles down on the culture wars and gives a bleak speech about the state of America and the enemy within — people who don’t like Confederate statues and protestors fueling a “left-wing revolution. Except he calls them marauding bands of looters, angry mobs, and anarchists who threaten our heritage by tearing down our monuments to the side that lost the Civil War.
    • He paints a grim picture of the results of his 3-1/2 years in office, which is a weird way to run a re-election campaign.
    • He claims that 99% of coronavirus infections are harmless. In reality, 81% are mild but can still result in lasting damage to the lungs; 19% are serious, requiring hospitalization; and nearly 5% are critical.

Miscellaneous:

  1. Former Secretary of Defense William Perry joins the chorus of military leaders decrying Trump’s politicization of our armed forces and his threats to use them again U.S. citizens.
  2. I don’t mind a good conspiracy theory that doesn’t have any consequences, but the latest conspiracy theories connecting 5G with the coronavirus are causing real-world problems. People are harassing and threatening telecom engineers in real life and doxxing them online. Believers are also damaging 5G equipment and setting towers on fire.
    • How many more people will end up in jail because they believe a dumbass conspiracy theory?
    • Celebrities who were duped by these conspiracies include Woody Harrelson, John Cusack, M.I.A., and Wiz Khalifa.
  1. And my favorite story of the week, an online troll starts rumors that Antifa protestors will gather at Gettysburg on the Fourth of July to burn flags – they’ll even give kids little flags to throw into the fire.
    • Hundreds of homegrown militia members, skinheads, bikers, and far-right groups converge on Gettysburg armed to the teeth only to find there is no one there but themselves.
    • Rumors like this have been going around for weeks, mostly about Antifa busing in protestors to some small town. Armed vigilantes have lined the streets to protect towns from these non-existent boogeymen.
    • How many times do these conspiracy theories need to fall flat before people stop falling for them?

Polls:

  1. 87% of Americans are dissatisfied with the direction we’re headed.

Week 179 in Trump

Posted on July 3, 2020 in Politics, Trump

How is 2020 only halfway over?

What a week. Locusts, Saharan dust clouds, ongoing protests, more police brutality, an out-of-control pandemic, and bounties on U.S. soldiers. And really, what a year. Who can remember all the way back to January when Australia was on fire, the Senate was starting an impeachment trial, the U.S. assassinated an Iranian general, Iran accidentally shot down a Ukrainian passenger plane, Kobe freaking Bryant died, Puerto Rico got whacked by a 6.4 earthquake, and Brexit finally happened. All before the pandemic shut everything down and took all our focus away from the things that came before. You’d think that’d be enough for one year, but who knows what else 2020 is cooking up?

Here’s what happened in politics for the week ending June 28…

Shootings This Week:

  1. There were 23 mass shootings in the U.S. this week (defined as killing and/or injuring 4 or more people). Shooters kill 15 people and injure 94 more.
  2. One of the worst shootings this week happened in Charlotte, NC, where nearly 200 rounds were fired into a crowd of about 400 at a block party, killing 4 and injuring at least 5 people.

Russia:

  1. A federal appeals court panel rules two-to-one that Michael Flynn’s case should be dismissed since the Justice Department no longer wants to prosecute. The full court of appeals could decide to take it up, though.
  2. Russia holds a WWII victory parade despite the pandemic. The parade had been postponed but was rescheduled to the day before the Russian people vote on whether to let Putin essentially be president for life. OK. Not for life, but at least until 2036.
  3. According to U.S. intelligence, a Russian military intelligence unit has been offering bounties to Taliban militants for killing U.S. forces and their allies in Afghanistan.
    • Twenty American troops were killed there in 2019, though it’s not clear which killings received a bounty payout.
    • Trump continued to meet with Putin after being briefed on this, and even tried to get Russia re-admitted back into the G7.
  1. Four Russian reconnaissance aircraft enter the Alaskan Air Defense Identification Zone and are intercepted by U.S. fighter jets.
  2. A federal judge denies Roger Stone’s request for a delay in serving his prison sentence and orders Stone to report to prison on July 14. The delay was requested in consideration of the coronavirus pandemic.

Courts/Justice:

  1. House Judiciary Committee chair Jerry Nadler says he’ll subpoena Attorney General Bill Barr for testimony about the DOJ’s role in overriding prosecutors in the Roger Stone case, the DOJ’s dealings with Rudy Giuliani, and the removal of U.S. attorneys. Nadler also invites former SDNY U.S. Attorney Geoffrey Berman to testify.
  2. Federal prosecutor Aaron Zelinsky testifies about the politicization of the DOJ. He says:
    • Prosecutors in the Roger Stone case were heavily pressured by the highest levels of the DOJ to give Stone a break.
    • Bill Barr poses a threat to the rule of law.
  1. John Elias, who works in the DOJ’s antitrust division, also testifies to Congress. He says:
    • Barr ordered them to investigate mergers between marijuana companies because he doesn’t like the industry.
    • The investigation into the pact between California and automakers on emission limits did not appear to be initiated in good faith.
  1. Former U.S. Attorney General Michael B. Mukasey and former deputy attorney general Donald Ayer also testify. Ayer says that Bill Barr has polarized the DOJ, but Mukasey says he hasn’t. But even Mukasey says that Trump maybe used politics to sway the DOJ and help his friends.
  2. A bipartisan group of professors and faculty at Barr’s old law school write a letter saying that Barr has “failed to fulfill his oath of office to ‘support and defend the Constitution of the United States.’” They also say he has “undermined the rule of law, breached constitutional norms, and damaged the integrity and traditional independence of his office and of the Department of Justice.”
  3. The House Judiciary Committee will subpoena Barr if he refuses to appear to testify.
  4. The Supreme Court rules that a Sri Lankan farmer seeking asylum can’t challenge his deportation order in federal court. It’s not clear what this means for future asylum cases, but it seems that once an asylum seeker is denied asylum by immigration officials, they don’t have the recourse of a hearing before a judge.
  5. Trump’s Solicitor General Noel Francisco announces his resignation as of the end of the court’s term this year. Francisco has defended Trump and the Trump administration in cases at the Supreme Court level. He argued for the Muslim Ban, to end the ACA, for extreme abortion restrictions, and to end DACA.
  6. The head of the DOJ’s civil division announces his resignation. Barr had offered this position to former SDNY U.S. Attorney Geoffrey Berman to entice him away from the SDNY office and its ongoing investigations.
  7. The head of the DOJ’s criminal division also announces his resignation.
  8. Trump says he had nothing to do with Berman’s firing, but the White House later admits he signed off on it (only the president could fire Berman).
  9. The Senate confirms Trump’s 200th lifetime federal judge.

Coronavirus:

  1. Trump clarifies that he doesn’t kid when asked if he was joking about slowing down coronavirus testing. So I guess he did try to slow it down.
  2. Joe Biden accuses Trump of slowing down testing because Trump thinks he’ll look bad if more Americans get sick. Biden also reminds us that if Trump gets his way with the ACA, lingering symptoms from COVID-19 will be considered pre-existing conditions that can prevent you from being insured.
  3. More than two dozen public health officials have resigned in recent weeks over threats against their lives, protests at their homes, and just plain resistance to their recommendations about stopping the spread of the coronavirus. So much of this is over whether or not we should wear masks.
    • During a pandemic, we need to hear from doctors and scientists; but this pandemic is super politicized, and people are viewing safety measures as political issues rather than health issues. Ugh.
    • Attacks against public health officials have been particularly bad in California (where one county has seen four officials resign), Colorado, Georgia, Ohio, and Pennsylvania. Public health officials spend their careers trying to help people, and they’re being demoralized and threatened by the minority of Americans who think they’re trying to take away their freedoms.
  1. Hospitalizations in seven states hit a new high — Arizona, Arkansas, California, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee, and Texas. Fatalities increased in the U.S. for the first time in over two weeks.
    • Texas, California, Arizona, Nevada, and Missouri all report one-day highs in new coronavirus cases, with TX and CA hitting more than 5,000 each in one day. The seven-day rolling average in TX is up 70% from the previous week.
    • In 33 states and territories, the rolling average for new cases is higher than last week.
    • At the beginning of the week, most states continue with their reopening plans, but by the end of the week, some states put those plans on pause and some states take a few steps back.
  1. Even countries that seemed to have a handle on the pandemic start seeing spikes in cases (Australia, Germany, Portugal, and South Korea).
  2. The USDA finds a toxic substance in hand sanitizer manufactured by Mexican company Eskbiochem.
  3. The Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority (BARDA), a division of the Department of Health and Human Services, halts funding for lung treatments for severe COVID-19 infections. BARDA is shifting funds to vaccine development.
  4. A judge in Brazil orders President Jair Bolsonaro to wear a mask in public. Bolsonaro has called COVID-19 “a little cold” and even joined protestors in a rally against lockdown restrictions. Oh, and Brazil has the second-highest number of coronavirus infections and deaths, right behind the U.S.
  5. Doctors Without Borders has been working with the Native American population in New Mexico to help with the pandemic. Now they’re also working in Florida assisting with migrant farmworkers. I never thought we’d need an international medical relief organization to help inside our borders.
  6. The White House will funding and support from 13 drive-thru testing sites despite the increase in cases. The administration tells states to take over their own testing.
    • I guess they think the pandemic is over because the white House also ends its COVID-19 screening tests for visitors. Eight staffers plus a few Secret Service agents tested positive just last week.
  1. Ringle, Wisconsin, will host the Herd Immunity Fest in July, with 15 bands playing the three-day concert. Performers are antsy to get back on stage, but most concerts across the country are still canceled.
  2. Follow-ups with COVID-19 patients find that many of them still have respiratory complaints one month after recovering. Their chest X-rays are still abnormal, and nearly half have measurable breathing abnormalities. Some also have kidney and neurological issues. PTSD, anxiety, and depression are common.
    • They still don’t know the effects of COVID-19 on the brain or on fetuses carried by infected mothers.
    • Some survivors of serious COVID-19 infections face massive medical bills despite the Trump administration’s promise to protect patients from pandemic expenses. This is partially because healthcare providers and insurers don’t associate lingering health symptoms with the virus in their billing classifications. Some insurers, like Cigna, waive these fees for patients as long as they’re billed correctly.
  1. German, British, Spanish, and French citizens say Trump has done a poor job managing the pandemic. They say Angela Merkel has done the best job. Italians say that China has been more helpful to them than Europe.
  2. There are currently 16 vaccines in human trials in around 200 vaccines in various stages of development.
  3. Some sheriffs in certain states (Washington and Arizona come to mind) not only refuse to enforce wearing masks, but they also encourage people to ignore mask-wearing rules. A few of them have tested positive.
  4. The coronavirus task force holds its first briefing in two months. Dr. Anthony Fauci appeals to the American people to take responsibility not to get infected and not to infect others, and he reminds us that every outbreak has a global effect.
    • He says he’s never seen a disease that is so inconsistent in whether certain groups of people sick or how severely they get sick.
    • He appeals to our altruism: “If we want to end this outbreak, really end it with a vaccine hopefully putting the nail in the coffin, everyone has to realize that we are part of the process. We can be either part of the solution, or part of the problem… We are all in it together and the only way we’re going to end it is by ending it together.”
    • During the briefing, Mike Pence refuses to recommend people wear masks.
  1. Dr. Fauci is cautiously optimistic about a vaccine, predicting we could have one by the end of the year or by early 2021.
  2. Despite Trump’s claims, Dr. Fauci says he’s never been told to slow down testing. On a call with governors, Dr. Deborah Birx encourages them to expand their testing.
  3. Dr. Fauci testifies before the House Energy and Commerce Committee. He says that the Trump administration told the National Institutes of Health to cut off funding to a long-running research project on bat coronaviruses like the one causing our current pandemic. Coincidentally, a reporter asked Trump about the research grant and the conspiracy theory that the current virus escaped from the lab. Two days later, NIH announced the end of funding. This was the only U.S. research group still working in China on the origins of COVID-19.
  4. Trump economic advisor Larry Kudlow says there’s no second wave coming—there are just hotspots. Thanks, Dr. Kudlow! Real health experts say the second wave will likely come in the fall. Kudlow also says we just have to live with the surges in infections and that there will be no more shutdowns… as some states are starting to shut things back down again.
  5. The CDC adds more demographic groups to the list of people who are most at risk for COVID-19, including younger people who are obese or who have other health problems, people with a BMI of over 30 (it was previously over 40), and being pregnant.
  6. The CDC is studying whether a mask can protect the wearer from other people. We already know that wearing a mask protects other people from the wearer.
  7. Departments of Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar says the window is closing for us to get this pandemic under control.

Shortages:

  1. Nursing homes, which are one of the hardest-hit institutions, see staffing shortages as their workers choose to take unemployment checks rather than come back to work. Some need to stay home to take care of their now stuck at home children, and some are concerned about the concentration of coronavirus infections in nursing homes.
  2. In both Florida and Texas, some hospital systems stop including information about ICU capacity. Several are reaching 100% capacity. Houston expects its ICUs to reach an unsustainable surge capacity by July 6. Arizona hospitals are also reaching capacity.

Exposures:

  1. More young people test positive for coronavirus across the southern states that were some of the first to reopen. Experts trace clusters of new cases in Mississippi to fraternity rush parties. In Texas, the majority of cases in several counties are people under 30. In Florida, the median age for new infections is 37, and more than 62% of them are under 45 years old.
  2. Health experts say they can trace back the spike in coronavirus in many states to around Memorial Day when states started loosening their lockdowns and people started to feel freer to gather and go out. They don’t see the same association with the racial justice protests.
    • They say that the clusters of cases that are popping up around the country can mostly be traced back to parties and other social gatherings where people don’t tend to wear masks. Which is why so many of the new cases involve people under 30.
    • Most of the protestors are wearing masks and are spread out outside, which experts say helps slow the spread.
  1. In Massachusetts, more than 17,000 people who protested took advantage of free testing sites last week. 2.5% of them tested positive, which is consistent with ongoing statewide testing. In Minnesota, 1.5% of protestors who were tested are positive, and in Seattle, fewer than 1% are. It’s possible that more infections will show up, though.
  2. All of the Trump campaign staffers who went to his Tulsa rally are quarantining since they all interacted with the eight staffers who tested positive for the virus. Several Secret Service agents were also told to quarantine after two agents who were at the rally tested positive.
  3. Dr. Robert Redfield, director of the CDC, suggests that the actual number of coronavirus cases in the U.S. could be 10 times the confirmed number of cases, making it more than 20 million people infected. This assessment comes from looking for antibodies in blood samples.
  4. Mike Pence cancels re-election events in Florida and Arizona because of the surge in cases. And he finally admits that wearing a mask is a good idea. But then he attends a church service where a 100-member choir sang without masks. 😱
  5. Tennis great Novak Djokovic and his wife test positive for coronavirus after he played a series of exhibition matches he organized. There was no social distancing enforced at the matches, and three other players also test positive afterward. In his apology, he says “Unfortunately, this virus is still present…” Um, duh.
  6. In 16 states that recommend, but don’t require wearing masks, cases are up 84% over the past two weeks. In 11 states that require masks, new cases have fallen by 25% over the same period.

Closures:

  1. Major League Baseball plans to open spring training camps on July 1 and to open the season on July 23 or 24. This is despite current coronavirus infections in league players.
  2. Some states make it a statewide mandate that people wear masks in public, taking the choice away from localities (which have been erring on the side of chance as opposed to science).
  3. The Kentucky Derby is rescheduled for September 4-5 and will have a live audience.
  4. Public health experts predicted a surge in coronavirus infections when states began opening back up in May, and we’re seeing that surge now.
  5. Governor Greg Abbott says Texas is experiencing a massive outbreak, and health officials there say their infrastructure is overwhelmed.
  6. Texas suspends reopening the state after hospitals in the state are inundated with COVID-19 cases. Texas Governor Greg Abbott urges all Texans to wear a mash, wash their hands, and social distance. This is a surprise coming from the governor who previously wouldn’t allow localities with high COVID-19 numbers to require the wearing of masks in public. Abbot expresses regret for allowing bars to reopen. He didn’t realize how fast the virus could spread.
  7. Abbot also postpones unnecessary medical procedures to free up more hospital beds, and he recommends that Texans stay home as much as possible.
  8. California closes bars again in some counties with the highest increases in new infections. Texas and Florida ban consuming alcohol on premises at bars as they hit record high numbers of new cases. Florida closes down some beaches as well.
  9. The European Union is reopening their borders after months of shutdowns, but say they’ll likely continue to block Americans because of the failure of the U.S. to contain the pandemic.
  10. New York, New Jersey, and Connecticut require travelers entering from states with high infection rates to quarantine for two weeks. Those states include Alabama, Arkansas, Arizona, Florida, North Carolina, South Carolina, Washington, Utah, and Texas. Massachusetts requires a 14-day quarantine no matter what state you come from.
  11. New Jersey’s governor says amusement and water parks can open starting July 2. Nope, nope, nope. Not going there.
  12. American Airlines and United Airlines end social distancing on all flights and will fully book them. Again, nope.

Numbers:

  1. The U.S. has its highest daily coronavirus infections since the beginning of the pandemic, with more than 40,000 cases in just one day. Coronavirus cases are up 30% from the beginning of June.
  2. Here are the numbers by the end of the week:
    • 2,510,323 people in the U.S. are infected so far (up from 2,255,119 last week), with 125,539 deaths (up from 119,719 last week).
    • 9,953,229 people worldwide have been infected (up from 8,796,835 last week), with 498,550 deaths (up from 464,292 last week).

Healthcare:

  1. The Trump administration tells the Supreme Court that the ACA must fall because the individual mandate was removed. AFAIK, there’s no plan to replace it should the court strike down the ACA. At the same time, Republican legislators, who’ve voted dozens of times to strike down the ACA, are encouraging constituents who’ve been affected by COVID-19 to take advantage of the ACA.

International:

  1. Trump backtracks on comments he made that indicated a possible meeting with Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro. The Trump administration previously took the side of Maduro’s opposition leader, Juan Guaidó, who claims to be the legitimate leader of the country. Even Trump’s allies in Congress took issue and restated their support for Guaidó.

Legislation/Congress:

  1. The House approves a bill establishing statehood for the District of Columbia. It’s doubtful it’ll get past the Senate.

Border Wall/Shutdown/National Emergency:

  1. A federal appeals court rules that the Trump administration can’t use military funding to pay for its border wall between the U.S. and Mexico.
  2. Environmental groups accuse the Trump administration of destroying hundreds of ancient saguaro cacti in the process of trying to build the border wall. This includes the path of destruction through the Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument, which is an international reserve. Saguaros are protected under Arizona law. Customs and Border Patrol say they’ve relocated 1,104 cacti. What a waste of resources…

Travel Ban/Immigration/Discrimination:

  1. Trump suspends certain immigration visas, including work visas used to hire skilled workers, due to the high level of unemployment in the U.S. from the pandemic. Tech companies and others worry that this will hold us back from economic recovery by pushing investment abroad and reducing job creation. The order also includes visas for dependent spouses, managers at multinational companies, exchange students, and non-farm seasonal workers.
  2. Protests against police brutality and for racial justice continue across the country. This is going on five weeks now. And yet, instances of excessive use of force by police against black people also continue, even with police in the spotlight and being filmed. It’s almost like they don’t care…
  3. Protestors attempt to remove the statue of Andrew Jackson in Lafayette Square.
  4. The police officer who killed Breonna Taylor in a no-knock warrant is fired, and the other officers involved are placed on leave.
  5. Democrats in the Senate block a police reform bill saying it doesn’t go far enough. The House passes their police reform bill. Last week’s blog lists several differences between the House and Senate bills. You can read more here.
  6. In arguing against statehood for the District of Columbia, Senator Tom Cotton (R-Ark.) claims that Wyoming deserves to be a state because it’s a “well-rounded working-class state” and D.C. doesn’t deserve to be a state because it’s just lobbyists and federal workers. He ignores the D.C. working class, including its large African American population.
  7. The Republican platform for 2020 continues to include banning same-sex marriage and banning transgender members of the military. It also includes support for conversion therapy. The platform is the same as the 2016 platform because the pandemic prevented them from gathering to rewrite it. So let’s just go with the same hate platform from last time.
  8. Several active-duty military members are also members of online networks that Boogaloo Bois frequent. Some members of the Boogaloo movement actually are active-duty military. No conflict of interest there.
  9. Trump retweets a video of Trump supporters trolling protestors and, in the first seconds of the video, you can hear one of his supporters yell, “White Power!” Trump thanks them for their enthusiasm. His spokespeople later say he didn’t hear the shout.
  10. In New York City, prosecutors file charges against an officer who put a man in a banned chokehold.
  11. Police officers killed Elijah McClain almost a year ago in Aurora, CO. Just this week, Colorado Governor Jared Polis appoints a special prosecutor to determine whether charges should be filed against the officers. McClain was unarmed, an introvert, and slight of build. He played his violin at an animal shelter because he wanted to soothe the animals. Real tough guy.
  12. In a protest against McClain’s killing, where people play their violins in remembrance, police arrive in riot gear with tear gas to disperse parts of the crowd.
  13. Three white men are finally formally indicted for the murder of Ahmaud Arbery.
  14. Three officers in North Carolina are fired for making violent, racist remarks about Black people.
  15. Cities continue to divert funds from their police departments to other assistive services.

Climate/Environment:

  1. West Asia and East Africa have been fighting a plague of locusts, and an estimated 450 billion locusts have been killed since January. The locusts start their migration again this week, which could lead to food shortages and starvation.
  2. A dust cloud out of Africa hits gulf states, covering several areas in a thick, dusty haze. This happens every year (except not usually the thick, dusty haze part), and is thought to bring nutrient-rich soil to the U.S. But this year is the biggest in 50 years. It’s thicker and lower than normal and can exacerbate respiratory issues.
  3. The EPA issues a rule that adds 172 perfluoroalkyl and polyfluoroalkyl chemicals (PFAs) to a list of pollutants businesses are required to report when releasing into waterways. But at the same time, they’re creating exemptions for polluters by playing around with the percentages.
  4. California passes the country’s first electric truck standard, which should help put more electric trucks on the road. The goal is to add 350,000 electric trucks by 2035 and phase out diesel trucks by 2045.
  5. The Vatican urges Catholics to divest their investments from weapons and fossil fuels because they have a duty to protect human rights and because of the dangers of climate change.

Budget/Economy:

  1. Economic advisor Kevin Hassett steps down again. Hassett was the chair of the White House Council of Economic Advisors for two years. He left in 2019 and returned to the administration to help with the response to the coronavirus pandemic. I guess his work here is done?
    • Hassett was pivotal to getting Trump to support economic stimulus and relief packages for those affected by the pandemic. Which is weird, because he’s also pretty cavalier about the seriousness of the pandemic.
    • In addition to losing Hassett in the middle of a recession, the administration is also losing Tomas Philipson, who took over at the CEA after Hassett left last year.
  1. The Trump administration is looking at another $3 billion in tariffs on products from Europe and on aluminum from Canada. European products that might fall under the tariffs include purses, leather, olives, and gin, with hikes on existing tariffs for aircraft and dairy products.
    • Stocks fell everywhere on the news and then fell again over fears of having to reinstate lockdown measures. Tariffs might not be the best tool to use on a pandemic economy.
  1. Cities and counties hit hard economically by the pandemic shutdowns put a halt to new and ongoing infrastructure projects.
  2. New home sales rose by 16.6% in May despite the unemployment rate and surge in coronavirus infections. Mortgage interest rates are historically low.
  3. New unemployment claims were over 1 million for the 14th week in a row. Continuing unemployment claims finally fell below 20 million for the first time in two months.

Elections:

  1. Voter turnout in Kentucky was off the charts between mail-in and in-person voting. Kentucky closes their polls down at 6:00 PM after opening significantly fewer polling places. So when a bunch of voters waiting in line to vote got locked out of their voting center at 6:00, Senate primary candidate Charles Booker steps in and gets a judge to order the doors back open so everyone can vote. People were waiting in hour-long lines just to park.
    • Booker’s race against Amy McGrath is still too close to call by the end of the week.
  1. Trump holds another re-election rally in Yuma, AZ, where he again calls COVID-19 the Kung flu and the China flu. He brags about his “big, beautiful wall”(about 220 miles have been completed, and about 215 of those miles just replaced existing wall) and then tells a group of students that the election could be stolen by fraud. He complains about the removal of Confederate statues.
  2. Then Trump holds another reelection rally at a shipyard in Wisconsin where he predicts a rosy economy.
  3. Trump claims that Joe Biden is trying to get out of debating him, but Biden has officially committed to participating in at least three debates and says he’s eager to debate Trump.
  4. The Democratic National Committee announces that they’ll conduct as much business remotely as possible during the nominating convention in Milwaukee this August. They’re calling it a “Convention Across America,” moving it to a smaller venue, and are waiting for public health officials to complete a pandemic assessment before finalizing their plans.

Miscellaneous:

  1. The Trump family sues to stop Trump’s niece Mary from publishing her tell-all book about the dysfunctions of the Trump family.
  2. Trump signs an executive order directing the Department of Health and Human Services to bolster partnerships among state and local foster care organizations to provide better service to foster children during the pandemic. In hindsight, the administration’s earlier decision to allow faith-based organizations to discriminate against gay parents probably wasn’t helpful during a pandemic.

Polls:

  1. Trump’s disapproval rating hits a high of 58%, with 49% strongly disapproving. That’s a record not just for him, but for any president polled before him.
  2. Joe Biden is ahead of Trump in presidential polling by 8 percentage points.
  3. 34% of women want to postpone pregnancy later or have fewer children than they had planned before the pandemic.
  4. 80% of voters have a positive view of people who wear masks.
  5. 89% of Americans say they wear a mask when out. Only 11% say they don’t. Most of that 11 % must live in my neighborhood.

Week 178 in Trump

Posted on June 30, 2020 in Politics, Trump

A review of records shows that black protestors arrested in New York City in recent weeks have been detained for longer than their white counterparts. Just like for other crimes. In general, black people are more likely to get stopped by the police. And then more likely to be detained. And then more likely to be arrested. And then more likely to go to trial. And then more likely to be found guilty. And then more likely to be sentenced. And then more likely to have longer sentences. Every single step of the justice system weeds out white perpetrators while punishing black perpetrators to the fullest extent of the law. It’s not hard to see why exponentially more black lives are ruined by the justice system than white lives. And that’s why #BlackLivesMatter.

Here’s what happened in politics during the week ending June 21…

Shootings This Week:

  1. There were 21 mass shootings in the U.S. this week (defined as killing and/or injuring 4 or more people). Shooters kill 8 people and injure 95 more.

Russia:

  1. A new report by research firm Graphika claims that Russia used fake accounts and blog posts on over 300 social medial platforms for their disinformation campaigns to undermine opponents. They’ve been running these campaigns for over six years, and have gone after Ukraine’s government, the World Anti-Doping Agency, Putin’s opposition leader Alexei Navalny, French President Emmanuel Macron, and Hillary Clinton.
  2. Trump’s fourth Russia director at the NSC steps down.

Legal Fallout:

  1. A federal judge refuses the Justice Department’s request to block the release of John Bolton’s book. The judge says there’s no point since the book has been leaked and is widely circulated already.
  2. According to the book:

    • Bolton would’ve testified in the impeachment hearing if the House would’ve subpoenaed him. He thinks the House should’ve waited for approval to go through the courts. Just a reminder, the House’s previous subpoena for former White House lawyer Dan McGahn is still going through the courts more than a year after it was issued.
    • The House should’ve investigated further because not only was Trump guilty of extorting Ukraine, there were several more instances of obstruction of justice and extortion to be found.
    • Trump asked China’s president to buy more agricultural products in 2018 to make him look better so more Republicans would get elected in the midterms.
    • North Korea has been playing Trump by sending him flattering letters and posing for photo ops while doing nothing to denuclearize.
  1. On Friday night (the standard news dump night for this administration), The Justice Department announces that the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York is stepping down from his post. Trump plans to put the U.S. Attorney in New Jersey in the position in an acting role until someone can be confirmed.
    • But U.S. Attorney Geoffrey Berman says he has no intention of stepping down. So the next day, Trump fires him because Bill Barr, as Attorney General, doesn’t have the authority.
    • This means that Berman’s deputy, Audrey Strauss, is acting U.S. Attorney until the Senate confirms a replacement, so the investigations go on.
    • Barr had earlier tried to entice Berman away from the U.S. Attorney position by offering him a job leading the civil division of the DOJ in Washington.
    • Trump plans to nominate Jay Clayton, who is currently the chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commissions and who has never tried a case.
    • This is the office that led the investigation into Michael Cohen and is currently investigating Rudy Giuliani, Lev Parnas, and Igor Fruman.
    • Trump thinks the investigations are an attempt to damage him, but Berman is a Trump administration appointee and a Trump donor.

Courts/Justice:

  1. The Supreme Court rules that Trump can’t carry out his plan to end the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program, so those youngsters avoid potential deportation for now.
    • As has been so common in court cases with this administration, Chief Justice Roberts labels Trump’s actions as arbitrary and capricious.
    • The administration can try again to do this in a legal way.
  1. The Supreme Court rules that LGBTQ workers cannot be discriminated against by their employers for their sexual orientation or gender identity. Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Neil Gorsuch join the more liberal members of the court in the majority.
  2. The Justice Department announces that the federal government will start up executions of criminals again. Three inmates are scheduled to be executed in July and one in August. There have only been three executions in just over three decades, one of which was Timothy McVeigh who bombed the Oklahoma City federal building.
  3. The Supreme Court declines to hear appeals of ten cases involving gun rights. The cases were brought by gun activists hoping to strike down ownership limits.
  4. The Supreme Court also declines to hear a case on qualified immunity for law enforcement.

Coronavirus:

  1. Only three out of 53 countries say the U.S. is handling the pandemic better than China. The electorate in Greece, Taiwan, Ireland, South Korea, Australia, and Denmark are happiest with how their government is handling it. Brazil, France, Italy, the U.K., and the U.S. get the lowest rating from their electorates. 33% of respondents say the U.S. response is good compared to the 60% who say China’s is.
  2. The FDA revokes its emergency authorization for the use of hydroxychloroquine for COVID-19 treatment. The agency thinks the few benefits don’t outweigh the risks. Tests are still ongoing for hydroxychloroquine treatment though.
  3. Initial reports from tests treating several COVID-19 patients with a cheap, easily available steroid indicate that use of the drug (dexamethasone) reduced deaths by a third. More testing is needed.
  4. The staff of the Centers for Disease Control was told not to talk to Voice of America reporters. VOA is a government-funded news agency and apparently their coverage wasn’t positive enough to Trump. Trump says the VOA is run by communists.
  5. Here are the states and territories where COVID-19 cases are having a surprise increase: Alabama, Alaska, Arizona, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Hawaii, Louisiana, Missouri, Montana, Nevada, North Carolina, Oklahoma, Oregon, Puerto Rico, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, Vermont, and Wyoming.
    • Deaths are increasing in those states and also in Idaho.
  1. A judge rules that Trump’s rally in Tulsa can go ahead as planned after two lawyers bring a suit on behalf of residents to stop it because of the increased risk of coronavirus spread.
    • Officials in Tulsa plead with the Trump campaign to either cancel his planned rally or to at least hold it outside due to the spike in coronavirus cases there.
    • The coronavirus task force recommends against holding the rally due to the health risks.
  1. Dr. Anthony Fauci says that the government originally held off on recommending the public wear masks because they were worried about shortages of supplies. He now unequivocally advocates wearing a mask and social distancing.
  2. Fauci expresses his frustration over our inability to stop the spread of the coronavirus and says it’s because Americans aren’t following the recommended guidelines. He says part of the problem stems from leadership, but not local leadership. So…. that leaves….??
  3. Fauci is also frustrated by the American public’s refusal to believe in science during this time.
  4. Mike Pence pens an oped about how there is no second wave and any panic about it is overblown. He even says no second wave is coming. According to public health experts, we’re still in the first wave. You can’t have a second wave until the first wave is over, and the second wave is expected in the fall.
    • A plateau is nothing to celebrate. While the states that were hit hardest early, like New York and New Jersey, are seeing declining numbers, the increasing numbers across other parts of the country are why our numbers still aren’t going down.
    • Pence blames the spike in coronavirus cases across the country on more testing, but that doesn’t account for the higher positive return rate nor the increase in hospitalizations and deaths.
    • Our positive test rate is much higher than in Europe as a whole.
    • Pence says our approach has been a success. The country with 4% of the world’s population has 26% of the world’s COVID-19 cases and deaths is a success. OK.
    • Pence doesn’t mention that we’ve lost over 120,000 people now from the pandemic.
  1. The U.S. National Stockpile is now stuck with 63 million doses of hydroxychloroquine they can’t use since the FDA revoked approval to use it for COVID-19 patients. Some infectious disease experts say there was never any evidence that the drug was effective for COVID-19 cases, but the U.S. put all their eggs in that one basket.
  2. At his Tulsa rally, Trump says that he told the coronavirus task force to slow down on testing because the number of cases was increasing too much.
  3. The Trump administration still hasn’t distributed $8 billion of the $25 billion designated to ramp up testing.
  4. Defense officials won’t reinstate Navy Captain Brett Crozier, commander of the USS Theodore Roosevelt after all. A new investigation reversed the findings of an earlier investigation that he was not at fault for trying to stop the spread of coronavirus on his ship.

Shortages:

  1. Some hospitals in Florida run out of ICU beds as their cases spike. Same with Arizona, and Texas is on its way.
  2. Mike Pence drastically overstates the amount of equipment distributed through Project Airbridge by combining the numbers of several projects. Pence claims the program has distributed:
    • More than 143 million N95 masks (it’s closer to 1.5 million)
    • 598 million surgical and procedural masks (it’s actually 113.4 million)
    • 20 million eye and face shields (it’s actually 2.5 million)
    • 256 million gowns and coveralls (it’s actually around 52 million)
    • 14 billion gloves (it’s actually 937 million).

Exposures:

  1. Representative Tom Rice (R-SC) tells us that he, his wife, and his son all had COVID-19. His entire family fell sick, but not to the point of hospitalization.
    • Two weeks ago, he refused to wear a mask on the House floor, so who knows how much he might have spread the virus.
    • Several members of Congress have tested positive so far during the pandemic.
    • In his statement, Rice calls it the Wuhan Flu. There’s your member of Congress, doing what he can to repair race relations 🙄
  1. An NPR survey finds that 37 U.S. states don’t have the contact tracers they need to reopen, even though the tracing workforce has tripled.
  2. Health officials in Oregon are working to contain an outbreak of 200 new cases related to the Lighthouse United Pentecostal Church.
  3. In Great Britain, as in the U.S., the areas seeing increases in coronavirus cases are more rural than the areas where the infections first broke out.
  4. As national sports teams get back to practice, some are having to shut down and quarantine for 14 days due to the number of infections. Five members of the Philadelphia Phillies test positive for the coronavirus. The team declines to comment on what that might mean for the season.
  5. Six members of Trump’s campaign working on his Tulsa rally test positive for the coronavirus. Two more who attend the rally later test positive.
  6. Two weeks after Nevada reopened its gyms, restaurants, churches, bars, and casinos, the state reports its largest one-day increase in coronavirus cases. Same for Las Vegas.
  7. Senior-care facilities continue to represent about 40% of the COVID-19 deaths so far.
  8. Initial data indicate that the protests aren’t causing spikes in coronavirus cases. There have been no significant differences in trends between counties with protests and counties without. Several of the states that had large protests aren’t seeing an uptick in cases.
    • Public health officials point to an increase in indoor gatherings as states reopen as a more likely cause.
    • They also say it’s possible that it’ll take a while for anyone infected at the protests to infect their communities.
    • As with the people protesting the lockdowns several weeks ago, those protesting George Floyd’s death are a small portion of the overall population.

Closures:

  1. Beijing raises emergency levels and tightens its lockdowns as its latest outbreak worsens. The outbreak is linked to a supermarket. Unessential travel is banned, hundreds of flights have been canceled, and screening is reinstated.
  2. Texas Governor Greg Abbott still won’t let localities require that people wear masks in public even though the state keeps setting new one-day highs for coronavirus cases. Nine mayors ask him to reverse his decision, including some of the biggest metropolitan areas in the state.
  3. Nebraska’s Republican governor warns local officials that if they mandate face coverings, they’ll lose federal coronavirus relief money.
  4. Some businesses in Florida close within one week of reopening due to the spike in cases in the state. That includes several bars that closed because patrons or staff tested positive. Officials shut down three restaurants in Miami for violating coronavirus safety regulations.
  5. Utah, Oregon, Miami, Baltimore, and Nashville all slow down on reopening over spikes in cases.

Numbers:

  1. Coronavirus cases are on the rise in 77 countries. Cases are declining in 43 countries.
  2. Here are the numbers by the end of the week:
    • 2,255,119 people in the U.S. are infected so far (up from 2,074,526 last week), with 119,719 deaths (up from 115,436 last week).
    • 8,796,835 people worldwide have been infected (up from 7,760,308 last week), with 464,292 deaths (up from 430,130 last week).

International:

  1. India says that a clash with Chinese forces along a disputed border left at least 20 Indian soldiers dead. These are the first deaths in 45 years between these two countries (which both have nuclear weapons).
  2. Former Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko, who has several cases pending against him, denies that Joe Biden ever approached him about the Ukrainian gas company Burisma Holdings. Hunter Biden joined Burisma’s board the same year Poroshenko became president.

Travel Ban/Immigration/Discrimination:

  1. After Michael Brown’s shooting in 2014, Obama put together a task force that recommended 59 changes for better policing. Several departments have implemented these, but not all, and even those that have are finding progress to be slow.
  2. The Fulton County Medical Examiner’s office rules that Rayshard Brooks’ death was a homicide. Brooks was shot by a police officer during a DUI stop. The Fulton County DA charges the Atlanta police officer who shot Rayshard Brooke with 11 counts, including felony murder. The officer with him is charged with aggravated assault.
  3. The UN Human Rights Council agrees to investigate “systemic racism, police brutality, and violence against peaceful protests” in the U.S. and other countries on behalf of African countries that requested it.
  4. A senior State Department official resigns over Trump’s mishandling of the current racial tensions. She is the first black woman to have served as assistant secretary of state for legislative affairs.
  5. A member of the right-wing Boogaloo movement is charged with murdering a Santa Cruz police officer and injuring four others with pipe bombs. He planned the attacks to coincide with protests to use them as cover.
  6. A bipartisan group of national security leaders says military forces shouldn’t have been used against civilians. They also say protestors should not be called “terrorists.”
  7. The New York State Legislature bans chokeholds by police and removes a roadblock to holding police accountable for their actions.
  8. New York State plans to dismantle its plainclothes police units with high numbers of shootings.
  9. Trump signs an executive order creating a database to track officers with misconduct complaints and encourages police departments to work with mental health professionals when dealing with people who have addiction, homelessness, or mental health issues. It also encourages following standards for use of force. It doesn’t address racial discrimination or stereotyping.
  10. The North Carolina Supreme Court rules that anyone who sought relief under the Racial Justice Act before it was repealed can still proceed with their claim. This means they have a chance to prove that their death sentences were based on racial discrimination.
  11. The display of the Confederate flag is banned from all Army installations in South Korea.
  12. People get a little bent out of shape as Uncle Ben, Aunt Jemima, and Mrs. Butterworth remove their racial stereotypical representations of black people.
  13. Trump claims credit for making Juneteenth very famous. There have been Juneteenth celebrations in the U.S. since the final slaves were freed in 1865.
  14. Even though around 75% of Americans approve of granting permanent legal status to DACA-eligible immigrants, Trump says his administration will try to end the Dreamers program again after the Supreme Court shot down the most recent attempt.
  15. Facebook removes ads put out by the Trump campaign that use a red triangle similar to the symbol used by Nazis to classify political prisoners in WWII. The campaign claims it’s a symbol used by Antifa. It isn’t.
  16. Facebook and Twitter remove a doctored video shared by Trump trying to show that the media tries to paint Trump supporters as racist.
  17. The Trump administration continues to point the finger at Antifa for violence during the protests.
    • A review of footage showed that Antifa mostly stood back at protests and didn’t engage at all, much less in violent ways.
    • Most of the violence that occurred during the protests was opportunistic, according to the Department of Homeland Security.
    • Antifa sympathizers are drawn to events where white supremacists show up.
  1. The FBI is actively investigating the hanging deaths of two black men in Southern California. They were both previously thought to be suicides. Another black man was found hanged in a park in New York City. Another black teenager and a Latino man were found hanged in a public area in Houston.
  2. The Air Force inspector general launches an investigation into whether using drones to monitor protests violates the civil rights of protestors. Military drones were used in Washington and Minneapolis.
  3. A federal judge orders Treasury Secretary Mnuchin to distribute nearly $670 million in emergency COVID-10 funds to Native American tribes that have been waiting months for the aid. The government has been missing deadlines for paying out the funds for months now, while small businesses (and even some large ones) are getting relief loans.
  4. The Supreme Court declines to hear a Trump administration challenge to so-called sanctuary laws in California. This leaves in place rules that limit local law enforcement participation in immigration issues.
  5. The Supreme Court prohibits employers from discriminating against LGBTQ employees, ruling that “sex” in the Civil Rights Act applies to gender identity and sexual orientation.
  6. Republicans in the Senate and Democrats in the House have been busy writing their own police reform bills. Though they both aim roughly at the same areas, there’s enough disagreement to doubt whether we’ll get anything this time around. Here’s what’s in them.
Senate Version House Version
Encourages agencies to stop using chokeholds or lose federal funds. Requires the use of body cams. Bans the use of chokeholds and requires the use of body cams.
Requires law enforcement to be better about compiling “use of force” reports. Creates a national registry for instances of police misconduct.
Provides funds for de-escalation training and establishing “duty to intervene” protocols. Incentivizes racial bias training and teaching a “duty to intervene.”
Tracks the use of no-knock warrants. Bans no-knock warrants for federal drug cases.
Makes lynching a federal hate crime. Includes anti-lynching legislation (which Rand Paul has been holding up in the Senate).
Launches a study into the social status of black men and boys. Launches studies into police actions and practices.
Suggests a decertification process instead of changing qualified immunity. Reforms qualified immunity for officers.

Climate/Environment:

  1. A small town in Siberia hits 100.4 degrees Fahrenheit, the highest temperature on record north of the Arctic Circle.
  2. The EPA announces it won’t regulate or limit perchlorate in drinking water. The chemical is linked to brain damage in infants. The EPA says the level has already been reduced enough. What could go wrong?
  3. The Senate approves a $3 billion bill for conservation projects, outdoor recreation, and national park and public land maintenance.
  4. A federal appeals court keeps in place a ruling that suspended the last two oil and gas leases near Glacier National Park, MT.
  5. Greenhouse gas emissions are increasing sharply as the world reopens after the pandemic shutdowns.

Budget/Economy:

  1. Two years ago, the U.S. topped the list of the world’s most competitive economies according to the International Institute for Management Development (IMD) in Switzerland. For three decades, the U.S. was in the top five on the list. This year, the U.S. falls to 10th, right behind the United Arab Emirates.
  2. In violation of the CARES Act, the Department of Education reveals that it seized over $2.2 billion in tax refunds from people who still owe on their student loans.
  3. Some members of Congress received small business benefits from the coronavirus relief package they helped create.
  4. The Trump administration continues to block oversight and transparency into the payments made to businesses as part of the package.
  5. The Trump administration plans to end the $600 unemployment benefit supplement in July saying it’s more than people would make by working (in the jobs that are still non-existent).

Elections:

  1. According to John Bolton’s book, Trump asked China for help with his re-election. He asked Chinese President Xi Jinping to buy American agricultural products so he could win farm states in November. Trump stressed the importance of farmers in the election to President Xi.
  2. On the day of Trump’s Tulsa rally, Tulsa County reports its highest daily record for new coronavirus cases. Trump campaign officials say they picked Tulsa because Oklahoma is well into reopening and they view it as a celebration that the worst of the pandemic is over. WTF? Have they literally never cracked a book?
    • People start lining up for the rally midweek. The night before the rally, Trump supporters and protestors start to gather in downtown Tulsa, business board up their windows, and the mayor issues a curfew.
    • The rally is held the day after Juneteenth, so celebrations are happening as well. Also on Juneteenth, Trump issues a very thinly veiled threat against protestors saying they won’t be treated as nicely as they are in New York, Seattle, or Minneapolis.
    • The attendance for the rally is low, around half what was expected. It only filled around a third of the arena. Attendance is so low, they cancel a planned second speech.
    • The campaign blames the low attendance on protestors and on the media—“radical” protestors that tried to scare off Trump supporters. Weird. His supporters are such tough guys…
    • Officers on site say that no one who wanted in was turned away.
  1. Trump misspoke a bit at his rally when he wasn’t busy showing off how he can drink water with one hand and describing in excruciating detail his walk down the ramp at West Point.
    • He says he passed the largest tax cut in history. It’s the fourth largest.
    • He says he accomplished Veterans Choice (in healthcare providers). The program started under Obama in 2015 (though Trump did expand it).
    • He pretends not to understand the policy changes requested by the Defund The Police movement.
    • He calls the coronavirus the Chinese virus and the Kung flu, illustrating exactly how seriously he takes the pandemic.
    • He says he’s spent over $2 trillion to completely rebuild the strength and power of our military. We’ve spent less than a quarter of that (roughly $419 billion).
    • The best line of the night… when you do more testing for COVID-10, you’re gonna find more cases. Everyone knows by now it’s the positive rate, not the testing rate, that indicates whether we’re headed the right direction.
  1. His 2020 campaign promises so far are the same old stories as in 2016—he’ll root out MS-13 gang violence, he’ll ban abortion, he’ll bring back economic prosperity, and he’ll create a conservative court. What has he been doing for 3 ½ years?
  2. Trump says that mail-in voting is the biggest risk to his re-election.

Miscellaneous:

  1. Senator Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) blocks two Trump nominations on the condition that the White House explain all the recent firings of inspector generals. Some of these firings are under investigation by House Democrats.
  2. Trump’s new head of the U.S. Agency for Global Media, the agency that produces Voice of America around the world, fired the senior leadership for the agency’s foreign networks, including in Europe, Asia, Cuba, and Middle East outlets. The two top VOA officials had already resigned.
    • Michael Pack dissolved several advisory boards and placed his own aides above them. The advisory boards are there because they understand the unique situation in each location.
    • Even though Pack is under investigation for improperly funneling funds from non-profit to for-profit companies he runs, the Senate still confirmed him two weeks ago.
    • Staffers say that VOA is effectively shut down.
    • The VOA has been a target of the Trump administration since 2018 when Bannon called it a rotten fish from top to bottom.

Polls:

  1. Americans are the most unhappy they’ve been in half a century. A mere 14% of Americans say they’re very happy.
  2. 80% of Americans worry about a second wave of coronavirus. About as many say they’ll abide by any new social distancing measures that are put into place.

Week 177 in Trump

Posted on June 23, 2020 in Politics, Trump

One bad apple does ruin the whole bunch, girl.

What the past few weeks have shown me is that there are indeed good protestors and bad protestors, good cops and bad cops, good people and bad people. But none of that changes the systemic racism holding this country back from its potential. We can get all the racists out of positions of authority and power, but that won’t fix the problem. The problem is that racism is baked into our institutions, our systems, our infrastructure, and our financial systems. Nothing will truly change until we root it all out and rebuild something new and better. If you’re wondering why some people are good with burning it all down, that’s why.

Here’s what happened in politics for the week ending June 14…

Missing From Last Week:

  1. The U.S. Department of Justice files a brief with the Supreme Court arguing against requiring adoption agencies to place children in LGBTQ homes based on the agencies’ religious beliefs.
  2. Former Secretary of State Colin Powell endorses Joe Biden for president while calling Trump’s actions dangerous for democracy and our country.
  3. Russia declares a state of emergency after an accident at a power plant spills around 23,000 tons of diesel fuel in a remote Arctic region.
  4. Confederate statues started coming down last week, some taken down by city officials and some by protestors.
  5. People come together across the country to help clean up after protests, vandalism, and looting.
  6. Biden brings Julián Castro onto his campaign team to help tackle the issue of police reform.
  7. Alexis Ohanian, a co-founder of Reddit, resigns from Reddit’s board of directors and urges the company to replace him with a POC.
  8. A Tennessee judge rules that the state most allow all of its registered voters to vote by mail during the pandemic.

Shootings This Week:

  1. There were 33 mass shootings in the U.S. this week (defined as killing and/or injuring 4 or more people). Shooters kill 29 people and injure 152 more. This was a violent week.

Russia:

  1. In response to Russia’s meddling in our 2016 elections, the Senate Intelligence Committee approves a measure that would require campaigns to report any offers of foreign assistance.
  2. Trump promises that Roger Stone won’t serve any of the prison time to which he was sentenced.
  3. The former judged tasked with analyzing a path forward in the Michael Flynn case calls the Justice Department’s handling of the case a “gross abuse of prosecutorial power.” He says the DOJ engaged in irregular conduct to help one of Trump‘s allies.
  4. The Senate Judiciary Committee votes along party lines to authorize subpoenas for former Obama administration officials, including James Comey, James Clapper, and John Brennan. This is for the investigation into the handling of the Russia investigations.

Legal Fallout:

  1. While the White House is still fighting to stop John Bolton’s new book from being published, bits start leaking out this week. Bolton doesn’t think the House went far enough in its impeachment investigations because Trump’s malfeasance spread throughout his foreign policy and dealings with foreign leaders.
    • The White House is still working to block the release of the book, saying that there’s classified information in it.

Coronavirus:

  1. Health officials warn governors to be on the lookout for a spike in coronavirus infections due to the racial justice protests.
  2. A previously healthy woman in her 20s undergoes a double lung transplant after being infected with the coronavirus and being on a ventilator and ECMO for six weeks. Doctors say it was the only way to save her life.
  3. A study out of Cambridge and Greenwich Universities finds that if everyone wears masks in public, it could prevent the coming waves of the pandemic and could keep transmission of the coronavirus down to controllable levels.
  4. Beijing closes down a wholesale food market after more than 50 new coronavirus cases are linked to it. China orders people who visited the market to self-quarantine. Beijing hadn’t had any new cases for the previous two months.
  5. 70 countries are seeing recent increases in the number of new cases.
  6. The Los Angeles Times reports that in mid-March, a passenger traveling from New York to Los Angeles was infected with the coronavirus and spread the virus among people he came into contact with. He was headed to a longterm care facility, where he continued to spread the virus. No one from public health informed any of the passengers or crew on the flight. So much for contact tracing.
    • On an even earlier flight, March 8, a woman flew to Los Angeles from Seoul, went into cardiac arrest the next day, and became the first confirmed death in Los Angeles County. No one on her flight was alerted either.
  1. The Orange County, CA, health officer who mandated face coverings while out in public resigns after receiving death threats and anti-mask protests at her home. Health officials across the country are facing the same kinds of threats and resistance.
  2. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo proposes centralizing public health staff and operations under the State Department. This would distance them from the CDC, NIH, and USAID.
  3. Dr. Anthony Fauci says that COVID-19 is his worst nightmare come to life, and that we’re still at the beginning of it.
  4. The coronavirus task force hasn’t had a daily briefing in over a month, despite cases and hospitalizations being on the rise. The virus is still killing nearly 1,000 Americans per day.
  5. The WHO walks back its previous statement that people who are carriers but are asymptomatic aren’t very infectious. They are still infectious.

Exposures:

  1. Rates of coronavirus infections in some of the states hit early by the pandemic, like New York, New Jersey, and Illinois, see their numbers of new infections dropping daily. But other parts of the country that thought they missed the first wave are getting hit now. Fourteen states and Puerto Rico see their highest seven-day averages of new cases.
  2. At least 19 states are still seeing a rise in cases and hospitalizations, and 24 states are trending downward. Seven are holding steady.
    • It’s largely hitting counties that are less populated.
    • It’s largely hitting states that have been more lax about reopening.
    • Experts think part of this is from Memorial Day festivities, but not all.
    • Los Angeles County, which had early stay-at-home orders and is gradually reopening, is still seeing high numbers of infections.
  1. Trump says the rise in numbers is from an increase in testing, but the number of hospitalizations is rising as is the positive test rate, which is a better measure of whether we have a handle on it.

Closures:

  1. As Los Angeles county slowly reopens and allows indoor dining at restaurants, health officials find that around half of the 2,000 restaurants they checked are not in compliance with mandatory protocols to slow the spread of the coronavirus.
  2. New studies estimate that the shutdowns prevented around 60 million cases in the U.S. and around 285 million in China. Worldwide, around 3.1 million lives were saved.

Numbers:

  1. Around 600 U.S. healthcare workers have died from COVID-19.
  2. The U.S. surpasses 2,000,000 cases, prompting some to speculate that we’re hitting the second wave. Experts say we’re not. We have not yet been able to get out of the first wave.
  3. Here are the numbers by the end of the week:
    • 2,074,526 people in the U.S. are infected so far (up from 1,920,061 last week), with 115,436 deaths (up from 109,802 last week).
    • 7,760,308 people worldwide have been infected (up from 6,863,012 last week), with 430,130 deaths (up from 399,532 las week).

Healthcare:

  1. An appeals court upholds a lower court’s ruling that struck down a Kentucky law banning D&E abortions.

International:

  1. Iran sentences an Iranian to death for spying on General Qassem Soleimani for the U.S. and Israel.
  2. North Korea cuts off all communication with South Korea over leaflets dropped by South Korean activists. The country then demolishes an inter-Korean liaison office that was set up to improve relations between the two countries.
  3. Several U.S. agencies have reinterpreted an arms treaty in order to allow the U.S. to sell armed drones to previously banned countries.

Legislation/Congress:

  1. Rand Paul continues to hold up the bill that would make lynching a federal crime.

Travel Ban/Immigration/Discrimination:

  1. George Floyd’s body is laid to rest in Houston, with thousands of people paying their respects and Al Sharpton giving another eulogy.
  2. A self-admitted KKK leader drives his truck into a peaceful, family-centered protest in Virginia, injuring one cyclist and reminding everyone of Heather Heyer’s killing in Charlottesville.
  3. Families of black men killed by police, along with civil rights organizations, demand the UN Human Rights Council convene a special session to look into police violence in the U.S. They also ask the council to investigate repression of the recent protests.
  4. A super-majority of the Minneapolis City Council announces their approval of disbanding the Minneapolis police department and rethinking the structure.
  5. The Broward County, FL, Fraternal Order of Police offers to hire officers in Buffalo who were fired or resigned over police misconduct (shoving an older protestor backward—he’s still in the hospital). Trump says with no proof that the protestor is Antifa.
  6. An officer in Oregon is caught on video telling a group of armed white men protecting a store, “We’re going to really enforce the citywide curfew shutdown so we can arrest anybody walking around. My command wanted me to come talk to you guys and request that you guys secrete people inside the businesses or in your vehicles somewhere where it’s not a violation … so we don’t look like we’re playing favorites.”
  7. Public opinion about police violence and racial injustice is shifting, but the police unions are only digging in deeper to support officers accused of brutality in recent weeks. Police unions have gained in power over the years and have formed PACs to donate to local races like district attorney, state attorney, and state senate and representative races.
  8. Attorney General Bill Barr contradicts Trump’s excuse for going to the bunker a few weeks ago by insisting that Trump was in potential danger and the Secret Service recommended he go there.
  9. So far, Federal records don’t show any links to Antifa in cases brought by the Justice Department over the demonstrations. The only extremist group mentioned in the documents is the right-wing Boogaloo movement.
  10. Vigilantes have been showing up at protests, dressed in military-style clothing and carrying rifles. They say they’re just keeping the peace and guarding protestors, but they’re also responding to widespread and unfounded rumors that Antifa is bussing in troublemakers.
  11. Some organizers have canceled planned protests because of the presence of armed civilians.
  12. Trump rejects a proposal to rename U.S. military bases in the South that are currently named after Confederate officers who fought against the U.S.
  13. More on the Lafayette Park incident from last week:
    • Despite denials, then admissions, and then more denials of the use of tear gas in Lafayette Park last week, it turns out that officers were alerted over their radios that CS gas, a form of tear gas, might be deployed, which is how they knew to put on their masks beforehand. The warning occurred shortly after Bill Barr and General Milley were seen in the blocked off sections of Lafayette Park. Video shows officers from the Prison Bureau carrying pepper canister launchers.
    • It turns out the Australian cameraman who was filming at the time and got knocked down was knocked down when an officer rammed him with his shield and then grabbed his camera. Then police used batons to hit the journalist who helped the cameraman flee. The two officers involved have been placed on leave.
    • Officers started detaining protestors even before curfew.
    • Five civilians were injured and some officers also reported minor injuries. 54 arrests were made within two hours in the vicinity.
    • Arlington County police say they were told to move the crowd in order to erect new barriers. Nothing was said about the photo op at St. John’s.
  1. Chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Mark Milley apologizes for taking part in Trump’s walk across Lafayette Park for a photo op after police used tear gas and forcible measures make way for them. He apologizes for allowing the perception that the military is involved in domestic politics.
  2. More than 1,250 former Justice Department employees call for the inspector general to open an investigation into Barr’s use of force to disperse protestors.
  3. National Guard troops express discomfort at how they were used to handle the protests across the country, and they especially feel used for their role in clearing Lafayette Park. Some think the protestors’ civil rights were being violated.
  4. Seattle’s mayor allows protestors to declare an autonomous zone in front of a boarded-up police station and even has portable toilets installed. Protestors make speeches, hold meetings, and share food in the zone. Trump tells Governor Jay Inslee that if he doesn’t take back his city, Trump will do it himself.
  5. Local officials continue to order the removal of Confederate statues and protestors are toppling and vandalizing them as well. This is even spreading to Europe.
  6. The Pentagon launches a review of the response of the National Guard to the protests.
  7. Louisville, KY, bans no-knock warrants after demonstrators continue to protest the killing of Breonna Taylor. The measure is called Breonna’s Law.
  8. In a meeting in Dallas with police union leaders and church leaders, Trump strongly defends police forces while saying there are a few bad apples. He does not meet with the city’s top three law enforcement officers, all of whom are black.
  9. Video surfaces of an Oklahoma City police officer arresting Derrick Scott, a black man. In the video, Scott can be heard saying “I can’t breathe” after the officer puts a knee on his back just like Floyd. Scott later died, though it does appear that the officers followed protocol, turning him over as soon as he was handcuffed so he could breathe. Still, he had a collapsed lung.
  10. Boston Mayor Marty Walsh declares racism to be a public health emergency.
  11. As more videos and news come out about police brutality against black Americans and against the protestors, public sentiment moves toward support of Black Lives Matter. Most Americans now support sweeping policing reforms. The ideas behind defunding the police are being seriously considered and even enacted in cities across the country.
  12. Police kill another black man, Rayshard Brooks, during a DUI call. Brooks falls asleep in his car and blocks a drive-thru. Police respond, talk to him for more than 20 minutes and perform a sobriety test and breathalyzer; but when they try to arrest him, there’s a struggle and Brooks grabs one of the officers’ taser. One of the officers shoots Brooks as he’s running away, pointing the taser behind him and appearing to fire it.
  13. In the middle of Pride month and on the four-year anniversary of the Pulse nightclub shooting, Trump moves to eliminate protections that prohibit healthcare discrimination against transgender patients
  14. A Republican legislator in the Ohio state Senate asks on the Senate floor whether coronavirus is hitting communities of color harder because they don’t wash their hands as well as other groups.
  15. The Navy plans to ban the Confederate flag from all of their installations.
  16. The Senate unanimously confirms General Charles Brown Jr. as Air Force chief of staff. He’s a four-star general and the first black man to hold the post.

Climate/Environment:

  1. A federal court blocks the EPA’s approval of dicamba-based pesticides, which are used on genetically modified soybean and cotton crops. The court says the EPA strayed too far from its duty to assess environmental dangers.
  2. The Department of the Interior announces that they’ll push for offshore drilling off the coast of Florida next year.

Budget/Economy:

  1. Some of our largest hospital chains are sitting on tens of billions in rainy-day funds while laying off and furloughing medical staff and employees, as well as freezing and cutting wages. They’ve received more than $15 billion in bailout funds on the taxpayers’ dime. During the most recent year for which we have numbers, just FIVE of the industry’s executives received $874 million. Oh,
  2. Job openings fell in April to 5.0 million and hires fell to a low of 3.5 million. The number of separations was the second-highest level in the series history at 9.9 million.
  3. Current forecasts suggest that as many as 25,000 retail stores could close in 2020, and more than half of those stores are in malls.
  4. The Dow Jones drops 1,800 in one day but gains 500 the next day. Volatility is super exciting!
  5. Despite the transparency rules written into the coronavirus relief packages, the Trump administration isn’t saying who received $511 billion in the relief loans backed by taxpayers.

Elections:

  1. Joe Biden officially gains enough delegates to win the Democratic nomination for the presidential race.
  2. The Trump campaign asks CNN to retract a poll conducted the previous week that showed Biden leading Trump by 14 points. The campaign demands that CNN publish a “full, fair, and conspicuous retraction, apology, and clarification to correct its misleading conclusions.”
  3. Trump plans to hold a re-election rally in Tulsa, OK, on Juneteenth, the holiday commemorating the date that the final slaves learned of their emancipation. Tulsa was the site of the Tulsa race massacre in 1921, where a thriving black community was attacked by white mobs, leaving the district burned down and mostly demolished. The massacre left dozens dead, and at least 800 injured. The area, known as Black Wall Street, was the wealthiest black neighborhood in the country at the time.
  4. Georgia’s elections are a fiasco, with concerns about COVID-19, equipment failures, a dramatic cut in the number of voting centers, not enough paper ballots, and nearly seven-hour waits in some places. Tens of thousands of voters who requested vote-by-mail ballots because of the pandemic did not receive them.
  5. The RNC tentatively moves its nominating convention to Jacksonville, FL, from Charlotte, NC, so they won’t have to abide by any social distancing or COVID-19 safety regulations. Coincidentally, or maybe just because they don’t know history, it will be held on the anniversary of a Ku Klux Klan attack on black civil rights activists in Jacksonville called Ax Handle Saturday.

Polls:

  • 81% of Americans think discrimination against African Americans still exists.
  • 82% of Americans support banning police from using chokeholds.
  • 83% support banning racial profiling.
  • 92% support requiring body cams for federal police.
  • 75% of Americans support letting people sue for damages over police misconduct.

Week 176 in Trump

Posted on June 18, 2020 in Politics, Trump

During what is shaping up to be the largest civil rights movement in history, Trump gasses peaceful protestors while saying he’ll protect protestors but also threatening to crack down using military force. Reverend Robert Hendrickson sums up what so many feel after this week:

This is an awful man, waving a book he hasn’t read, in front of a church he doesn’t attend, invoking laws he doesn’t understand, against fellow Americans he sees as enemies, wielding a military he dodged serving, to protect power he gained via accepting foreign interference, exploiting fear and anger he loves to stoke, after failing to address a pandemic he was warned about, and building it all on a bed of constant lies and childish inanity.”

Here’s what happened in politics during the week ending June 7. Sorry it’s so late, but it was a doozy.

Missed from Previous Weeks:

  1. Trump fires Dana Boente, the FBI’s top lawyer who’s been with the Justice Department for 38 years. He played a role in the Michael Flynn investigation and wrote a memo explaining how recently released documents don’t exonerate Flynn of wrongdoing.
  2. Trump vetoed a bill that would’ve forgiven federal student loans for students who are victims of schools that employed illegal or deceptive practices to encourage them to take on the debt. The bill was only necessary because Education Secretary Betsy DeVos has been trying, against court orders, to reverse Obama-era regulations on the matter.
  3. Betsy DeVos warns colleges that allow transgender athletes to compete that they’ll lose federal funding unless they end the practice.

Shootings This Week:

  1. There were 16 mass shootings in the U.S. this week (defined as killing and/or injuring 4 or more people). Shooters kill 14 people and injure 66 more.
  2. One of the worst shootings this week is in Valhermoso Springs, AL, where 7 people were found dead from gunshot wounds in a private home.
  3. Another is a drive-by shooting in Sikeston, MO, where 2 people were killed and 7 injured.

Russia:

  1. Rod Rosenstein is the first big witness in the Senate Judiciary Committee’s latest investigation into the FBI’s handling of the Russia investigation.
    • Rosenstein says that while he wouldn’t have signed off on the FISA warrants in hindsight, he also doesn’t think the Russia investigation was a hoax nor was it politically motivated.
    • He disagrees with Attorney General Bill Barr that the investigation was “utterly baseless” and a “corrupt criminal investigation.”
    • He also says it was not wrong of the FBI to investigate Michael Flynn.
    • He agrees that there seemed to be no conspiracy between Russia and the Trump campaign.
  1. Senator Lindsey Graham plans a series of hearings on the investigation in the lead up to the 2020 election. Just like they did with Benghazi. Just like they did with the emails.
  2. Ukrainian prosecutors complete their audit of Burisma Holdings and find no evidence of wrongdoing by Hunter Biden. So that means that Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky did open up Trump’s requested investigation into the Bidens after all. Interesting.
  3. Trump and Putin have another call, this time to discuss the pandemic, trade, and progress on pulling together the G7 summit. Remember that Russia was booted from the G7 for annexing Crimea.

Coronavirus:

  1. The Lancet and the New England Journal of Medicine retract their studies showing that hydroxychloroquine was making patients worse because they couldn’t verify the sources of the data. This is the study on which the WHO based their decision to cancel their studies, so the WHO subsequently resumes the trials.

  2. A new study indicates that taking hydroxychloroquine didn’t prevent healthy people from getting COVID-19.
  3. On March 13 and April 27, Trump touted his plan to make drive-through testing available across the country and promised major pharmacies would roll out testing everywhere. Here’s what he’s got so far:
    • Overall, about 4% of major pharmacy store locations have testing.
    • Target has one testing site (out of 1,871 locations).
    • Walgreens has 28 (out of nearly 9,300 locations).
    • Kroger has 64 (out of 2,800 locations).
    • Rite Aid has 71 (out of 2,464 locations).
    • Walmart has 180 (out of 5,352 locations).
    • CVS has 991 (out of 9,900 locations).
  1. A couple of things we’ve learned from our coronavirus response:
    • Shutting down non-essential medical services might have been overkill.
    • It was a bad idea for hospitals to discharge recovering COVID-19 patients back into nursing homes.
  1. The ongoing protests over the murder of George Floyd could increase the spread of the virus and some health officials fear they could become super-spreader events. Marchers say it’s worth the risk, while mayors urge protestors to get tested.
    • Being outdoors is safer and wearing masks will help, but still, people are crowded in close and yelling (spreading droplets).
    • To add to that, tear gas and pepper spray make people cough, sneeze, and cry, all of which increase the likelihood of spread.
  2. Sweden’s top epidemiologist, Anders Tegnell, says that their coronavirus strategy resulted in too many deaths. The country had a lax approach to social distancing, and now has one of the highest death rates from COVID-19 in the world.
  3. Dr. Anthony Fauci says Trump’s meetings with the coronavirus task force have decreased dramatically in recent weeks. The task force isn’t even meeting with itself as frequently, even though we still have no solid strategy for testing, tracing, and safe reopening.
  4. A recent survey finds that some people actually are inhaling disinfectants, washing food in bleach, and using household cleaning products on their skin to fight the coronavirus. Some even gargled with or drank bleach or soapy water. None of these things work, and it’s resulted in an uptick in calls to poison control centers.
  5. Trump tours a factory in Maine that produces swabs used for coronavirus testing. All the swabs manufactured while he was there will be discarded. Trump doesn’t wear a mask on the tour.
  6. U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, which has postponed citizenship ceremonies for months, starts to schedule them again.
  7. Lockdown protests die down this week, or at least they get lost under the massive racial justice protests going on right now.

Exposures:

  1. GOP candidates held campaign events last week in Horry County, North Carolina, with no masks or social distancing. This week, the county sees a rise in coronavirus cases and deaths. I’m not saying the two are related other than that it doesn’t seem smart to be having those types of events while cases are still going up.
  2. The NYPD’s crackdown on protestors could increase the spread of coronavirus. Detainees were crammed into busses to be transported to police headquarters, where they were detained in crowded conditions for anywhere from several hours to three days. Detainees begged for their masks but police refuse to give them back.
  3. Fifteen out of the sixteen West Point cadets who returned to the academy before their graduation have tested positive for the coronavirus or antibodies. They were ordered back so Trump could give a commencement speech.
  4. Around the globe, countries in the Middle East, Africa, Latin America, and South Asia have surges in cases. These countries largely avoided the earlier outbreaks.
  5. The U.S. still has by far the most cases of any country, followed by Brazil with less than half the cases of the U.S. Russia has the third highest number of cases.

Closures:

  1. Florida continues reopening stores, businesses, and outdoor spaces even as the state has three consecutive days with over 1,000 new cases per day, including its biggest one-day increase.
  2. Arizona, which is also continuing to open, sees its highest number of new cases on Friday.
  3. North Carolina also sees a spike this week, with three straight days of record high new cases.

Numbers:

  1. Since May 21, worldwide cases of coronavirus have increased at an average of more than 100,000 cases per day. That’s higher than any single day in April. This is partially explained by an increase in testing.
  2. The U.S. reaches 100,000 known COVID-19 deaths on May 28.
  3. Here are the numbers by the end of the week:
    • 1,920,061 people in the U.S. are infected so far (up from 1,770,384 last week), with 109,802 deaths (up from 103,781 last week).
    • 6,863,012 people worldwide have been infected (up from 6,028,326 last week), with 399,532 deaths (up from 342,078 las week).

Healthcare:

  1. Trump says he’ll urge the Supreme Court to overturn the ACA entirely, despite even Bill Barr recommending that he soften his stance on the ACA at least during the pandemic. Ah, but Barr doesn’t think it’s a bad idea because getting rid fo the ACA will hurt Americans; he just think it would be bad for Trump’s re-election chances.

International:

  1. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s trial begins for charges of bribery, breach of trust, and fraud. He continues to serve in office during the trial
  2. When asked about Trump’s handling of the protests, Trudeau pauses for a full 21 seconds, and then groans. Trudeau speaks out against adding Russia back into the G7 and criticizes Trump for abandoning the WHO. But he’s not the only foreign leader down on Trump.
    • Our traditional allies in Europe say they aren’t looking to the U.S. for any kind of leadership.
    • The EU’s foreign policy chief criticizes Trump’s recent actions.
    • After Trump’s announcement that he wants to add countries to the G7, including adding Russia back in, Britain’s Prime Minister Boris Johnson says they’d veto that unless Russia stops their “aggressive and destabilizing” activities. Johnson also criticizes Trump for pulling out of the WHO.
    • German Chancellor Angela Merkel expresses opposition to adding Russia to the G7 and criticizes Trump for his anti-China rhetoric and for pulling out of the WHO. She says she won’t attend Trump’s G7 meeting, and that she doesn’t want to be in the room with Trump.
    • Norway’s Prime Minister Erna Solberg criticizes Trump for withdrawing from the WHO.
    • French President Emmanuel Macron expresses sadness and anger, and says that the U.S. is refusing to exercise leadership at a time of crisis and is instead creating divisions, which China is exploiting.
    • After Merkel says she won’t come to the G7, Trump postpones it to September and says he’ll invite Australia, India, Russia, and South Korea. He says the current G7 is a very outdated group of countries that doesn’t represent what’s going on in the world. I guess he forgot we already have the G20.
  1. Brexit negotiations are deadlocked still, but trade talks resume this week and the U.K. refuses to extend the deadline.
  2. China says Trump is a quitter, addicted to quitting groups and treaties. As a reminder, here are some of the international agreements Trump has pulled out of: the Paris Climate Agreement, the Iran nuclear deal, UNESCO, the UN Human Rights Council, the Open Skies Treaty, and the Intermediate-range Nuclear Forces Treaty.
  3. Trump says he’ll withdraw nearly one-third of our troops currently assigned to Germany. Even Republican leaders think this move is dangerous and misguided.
  4. At the same time, Russia sends more troops to its European borders, and Putin signs a decree giving him more flexibility with nuclear weapons.
  5. Iran releases Michael White, an American imprisoned there for nearly two years for insulting the supreme leader. He has symptoms of COVID-19. The U.S. had just released an Iranian scientist.

Legislation/Congress:

  1. Congress begins working on bipartisan legislation to end the transfer of used military weapons of our police forces.
  2. Democrats release their police reform bill, the Justice in Policing Act of 2020. The bill:
    • Makes it easier to prosecute misconduct by the police.
    • Expands the DOJ’s power to investigate and prosecute misconduct.
    • Lowers the requirements for being able to sue police in civil court for civil rights violations.
  1. Tone-deaf Senator Rand Paul continues to block a bill that would make lynching a federal crime. The bill was all but passed when the House moved to change the name, requiring Senate approval. Since previous approval was unanimous, no one expected any trouble passing it again.

Travel Ban/Immigration/Discrimination:

Governors’ Conference Call:

  1. In a conference call with governors, Trump threatens to deploy the military to states if governors don’t quash the protests themselves. He says they have to “dominate” rioters or they’ll look like “a bunch of jerks.” He says he’s “strongly looking for arrests” and wants them to respond aggressively.
    • He says he’s putting Barr in charge of the federal enforcement response.
    • He tells them he’s putting General Mark Milley, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, in charge of the protest response.
    • He calls the governors weak.
    • He tells the governors to seek retribution.
    • Trump praises Minnesota Governor Tim Walz for mobilizing the National Guard, and then he says Minnesota is “a laughingstock all over the world.”
  1. Illinois Governor J.B. Pritzker (D) calls out Trump: “Rhetoric coming out of the White House is making it worse, people are experiencing real pain. We’ve got to have national leadership calling for calm and legitimate concern for protestors.” Trump says he doesn’t like Pritzker’s rhetoric either.
  2. Massachusetts Governor Charlie Baker (R) calls Trump out afterward, saying “At so many times during these last several weeks, when the country needed compassion and leadership the most, it simply was nowhere to be found. Instead, we got bitterness, combativeness and self-interest.”

Clearing Lafayette Square:

This couldn’t have gone more wrong…

  1. Trump holds a short press briefing in the Rose Garden on Monday evening with short notice to the press. Here’s a bit of what he says:
    • He’ll take immediate action to mobilize all civilian and military resources to stop the rioting and looting and to protect your Second Amendment rights.
    • He’ll immediately end the riots and lawlessness.
    • He’ll order thousands of armed soldiers, military personnel, and law enforcement into DC to stop the unrest.
    • He’ll deploy the military to states if he doesn’t think they’re taking enough action (basically threatening to use the military against American citizens).
    • He only calls out Antifa by name as being responsible for the violence thought there’s no evidence yet that they are.
  1. As reporters wait for the briefing to start, they hear loud booms coming from Lafayette Park, where peaceful protestors were gathered. The booms turn out to be pepper bombs and flashbangs thrown by police to disperse the crowd to make way for Trump to take a surprise walk from the White House to St. John’s Episcopal Church. They also use rubber bullets. This starts a half-hour before curfew, and chaos ensues in the streets of D.C.
  2. Attorney General Bill Barr, Defense Secretary Mark Esper, Chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Milley (in combat dress), and national security advisor Robert O’Brien all accompany Trump on his walk to the church, among other aides.
  3. Once there, Trump holds up a Bible for photos. He offers no prayers, scripture reading, or words of unity. He takes no questions and then returns to the White House.
  4. Earlier in the day, all Homeland Security Investigation agents in the D.C. area receive a “high severity” alert telling them to prepare to help with demonstrations. So the FBI deploys its elite hostage rescue team and ICE deploys special response teams.
  5. Upon receiving criticism for the way the crowd was dispersed, the White House and law enforcement say they gave the crowd three warnings. Reporters on the scene couldn’t find anyone who heard them except CNN reporters on a rooftop who heard three orders just minutes apart.
  6. Officials insist they didn’t use tear gas (video footage shows that they did). Reporters following Trump also say they could smell it when they arrived at the church.
    • Fun Fact: Tear gas can cause damage to the lungs, which makes people more susceptible to respiratory illnesses like COVID-19.
    • The U.S. Park Police later denies using tear gas but admitted to using a chemical that the federal government classifies as tear gas. And then later a sergeant does admit they used tear gas. And then the park police chief denies it again.
  1. During the melee, police knock over cameramen and shove their cameras. Several journalists are hit with rubber bullets while live on air.
  2. Trump accuses the peaceful protestors removed from Lafayette Square for his photo op of starting a fire in St. John’s church. Prior to Trump’s visit, several media and social media accounts claimed that St. John’s was burning down, but firefighters managed to put out a small fire that was started in the basement.
  3. The White House says that Bill Barr personally ordered the use of force to clear the protestors away from Lafayette Park to make way for Trump’s walk to the church. Barr claims he didn’t. He also says there wasn’t a correlation between the dispersal of the protestors and the photo op.
  4. Kayleigh McEnany, who told us she’d never lie to us, says that protestors were throwing bricks and other objects and that police were afraid for their own safety. Not only is there no evidence of this, but witness accounts and videos contradict it.
  5. Esper claims he didn’t know where Trump was going when he followed him to the church and that he didn’t know about the protestors being dispersed.
    • James Miller, a principal deputy undersecretary of defense for policy, resigns and tells Esper that his last straw was when Esper visibly supported Trump when tear gas and rubber bullets were used to clear the way to a photo op. Miller accuses Esper of violating his oath of office.
  1. By the time of the photo op, the violence, looting, and vandalism from the previous weekend were largely over.
  2. Leaders of the church weren’t informed beforehand of the event, and express anger at being used this way.
    • Trump says, “The church leaders loved that I went there with the Bible.”
    • The Episcopal bishop of Washington who oversees St. John’s church says, “In no way do we support the President’s incendiary response to a wounded, grieving nation… The President did not come to pray; he did not lament the death of George Floyd or acknowledge the collective agony of people of color in our nation. He did not attempt to heal or bring calm to our troubled land.” And later she added, “He sanctioned the use of tear gas by police officers in riot gear to clear the churchyard. I am outraged.”
  1. When asked about it the next day, Republican legislators mostly claim to know nothing about it and not to have seen it. Senators Lisa Murkowski, Ben Sasse, and Mitt Romney all criticize Trump for it.
  2. After the photo up, new 8-foot fences were put up around Lafayette Park and at 17th Street and Pennsylvania Avenue. A few days later, tall fences were also installed near the White House.
  3. D.C. Mayor Bowser has “BLACK LIVES MATTER” painted in big, bright yellow letters on the road that leads to the White House. She renames that section of 16th Street Black Lives Matter Plaza.
  4. Afterward, the D.C. chapter of Black Lives Matter files a lawsuit against Barr and Trump saying their right to peaceful protest was violated.
  5. After all this, on the anniversary of the Tiananmen Square crackdown, Trump urges China to respect human rights.

Use of Military:

  1. Pentagon and Department of Defense personnel are increasingly anxious about the military playing a more prominent role in tamping down the protests. That was heightened when Mark Esper called cities experiencing looting “battle spaces.” It was further heightened when Trump said General Milley is in charge of the response and Milley appeared with Trump in combat fatigues.
  2. This isn’t the first time Trump has tried to use active-duty military on U.S. soil. He deployed them to the border as well.
  3. Barr is in charge of the federal response and a variety of agencies, including the Secret Service, U.S. Park Police, National Guard, Capitol Police, Marshal’s Service, ICE, CPB, Bureau of Prisons, and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives. No overkill there.
  4. The DOJ brings in its network of regional FBI Joint Terrorism Task Forces to ID looters, rioters, and instigators of violence during the protests. In announcing this, Bill Barr only calls out Antifa (which is unorganized) and leaves out organized groups that coordinated looting and violence.
  5. Military helicopters in D.C. perform a “show of force” maneuver in which they fly low, stirring up dirt and debris and even snapping tree branches. It’s a method of dispersing crowds and scaring people away.
  6. Several current and retired military leaders criticize Trump’s use of military troops to disperse the protestors to make way for his walk:
    • Former Secretary of Defense James Mattis says he’s angry and appalled by the events around Lafayette Park. He calls Trump the first president to not even try (or pretend to try) to unite the American people; instead, he tries to divide. Mattis also criticizes Esper for using the term “battle space” to describe our cities and streets.
    • Former Chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Admiral Mike Mullen says he was sickened to see security personnel use force and violence to clear the path for Trump’s walk.
    • Retired Army Col. Paul Yingling says General Milley betrayed his oath by participating in authoritarian theatrics.
    • Former undersecretary of defense James Miller says Esper and Trump violated their oaths of office.
    • Retired Air Force General Michael Hayden says he was appalled to see General Milley in battle dress during the event. Hayden formerly led the CIA and NSA.
    • Former White House chief of staff John Kelly also says Trump is dividing the country and adds that we need to look harder at who we elect.
    • Current and former U.S. intelligence agents express concern that the events we’re seeing in the U.S. resemble scenes from other countries showing signs of collapse. They say this is what autocrats do, and this is what nations in collapse look like.
  1. The soldiers of the 82nd Airborne Division, which is assisting with the protests in D.C., are armed with bayonets.
  2. Six states and 13 cities are under a state of emergency with 67,000 National Guard troops deployed.
  3. Washington, D.C. is full of unidentifiable officers who aren’t wearing any badges so people can tell which branch of law enforcement they’re from. They also won’t tell people who ask where they’re from. It turns out they’re from the Bureau of Prisons, and were called to D.C. by Bill Barr. So many issues with this…
  4. D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser demands that Trump withdraw the military presence from the city including the group of unidentifiable riot officers.
  5. Esper says he’ll order the removal of hundreds of troop from D.C. but then reverses that decision. Esper also speaks out against the use of military force to control protests.
    • But wait! By Wednesday night, Esper reverse course on that and says he’ll keep some forces in the town.
    • Two days after the photo op, the Pentagon disarms the National Guard in D.C. and sends active-duty forces home. They don’t consult Trump, who ordered a militarized presence in D.C.
  1. The House Armed Services Committee calls a hearing to look into the use of military force in the protests. Both Esper and Milley refuse to appear.

George Floyd Protests

  1. Protests continue in at least 140 cities across the country, mostly starting out peacefully, but there’s still some looting and vandalism after curfew hours. Several cities and counties extend their curfews, but by mid-week, even though the protests keep grow larger and larger, the rioting dissipates.
  2. The largest crowds of protestors yet gather in the U.S. and abroad on Saturday, the twelfth straight day of protests. Despite COVID-19 warnings, there were marches in the U.S., Australia, England, France, Germany, Kenya, Denmark, New Zealand, and more.
  3. Public health officials are worried about an increase in the spread of the coronavirus following days of crowded protests. Most protestors are wearing masks, but enough aren’t. Some protests are canceled for this reason.
  4. Twitter takes down an account linked to the white nationalist group Identity Evropa that claimed to be associated with Antifa and that pushed violent rhetoric about the protests and calls for violence.
  5. Facebook suspends several accounts associated with white nationalists after they advocate bringing weapons to protests. They also remove accounts that falsely claim allegiance to Antifa in order to discredit Antifa.
  6. The White House spreads videos that purport to show how Antifa planted piles of bricks and rocks along protest routes to inspire looting and vandalism. The bricks and rocks in the films were all parts of ongoing construction projects and nothing to do with Antifa.
  7. An incredible amount of disinformation is being spread about the protests, including that George Soros is funding them (he’s not), that Floyd isn’t dead (he most certainly is), that Antifa is bussing in protestors from other cities (they aren’t), that protestors started a residential building on fire and blocked firefighters from saving a child in that fire (the building was unoccupied, the origin of fire is unknown), and that protestors started a horse trailer on fire (they threw a smoke canister over the trailer).
  8. Officials have arrested more than 11,000 people so far during the protests. It’s not clear how many were for actual crimes and how many were protestors caught up in police sweeps.
  9. Federal and local law enforcement are collecting video footage to use as evidence in arrests of people who were looting or committing acts of violence and vandalism.
  10. In Los Angeles, of more than 2,700 arrests, the police say the vast majority are for failure to disperse, which is pretty incredible given the amount of looting there.
    • Same for Denver, where most were for violating curfew.
    • There’s no word yet on how many arrests were of people associated with extremist organizations or Antifa.
  1. A New York Supreme Court judge rules that protestors can be detained indefinitely, literally suspending habeas corpus. Over 160 New Yorkers have been detained for more than 24 hours.
  2. At least 15 people have died during the protests, some by police, some by people protecting their business from looting, some by “outside agitators,” and some by accident. The details are still being sorted out, but there’s no one group or ideology that appears to be responsible.
  3. Around 100 instances of reporters being harassed or injured by the police, even when displaying their press badge, have been reported. Journalists have been hit by rubber bullets, arrested on live TV while being compliant, shoved to the ground, tear-gassed, and threatened with guns. Law enforcement has slit their tires, broken their car windows with rubber bullets, and destroyed their cameras.
    • The U.S. is one of the most dangerous countries now to be a journalist according to Reporters Without Borders.
  1. A judge orders police to stop firing tear gas and rubber bullets at peaceful protestors.
  2. Prosecutors charge the other three police officers who were present when George Floyd was murdered. They also upgrade the charges against the officer who killed Floyd to second-degree murder.
  3. The state of Minnesota files civil rights charges against the Minneapolis Police Department in George Floyd’s death, which allows the state to launch a larger investigation into the department.
  4. Minneapolis bans the use of chokeholds by police, and will require police to not only report unauthorized use of force by other officers but to actively intervene.
  5. After several days of videos showing police using pepper spray and rubber bullets indiscriminately and without provocation, the House and Senate begin work to end a Pentagon program started after 9/11 that transfers old military weaponry to local police departments. Obama reduced the program, but Trump revived it.
  6. The DOJ under Obama created a task force and started reforms to stop discriminatory police practices and to root out racism. The DOJ under Trump has mostly abandoned this effort, and Trump himself encouraged police officers to be rougher in how they handle suspects.
    • During George W. Bush’s first term, there were 12 DOJ investigations into unconstitutional acts by police officers; during Obama’s, there were 15. During Trump’s, the DOJ has opened just one.
  1. Some police chiefs and forces continue to join and support protestors. In Santa Cruz, officers follow their chief’s lead and take a knee to recognize George Floyd’s murder for what it was.
  2. Multiple videos show police altering the truth during altercations with protestors and others. And by altering the truth, I mean lying.
  3. Six police in Atlanta are charged for using excessive force at protests. They yanked one college student out of a car and tased another. Atlanta’s mayor fired two of the officers last week.
  4. Atlanta’s police chief resigns after an officer kills another black man. The officer claims the man grabbed his taser. The mayor calls for the officer to be fired.
  5. At least 19 times, drivers have driven their vehicles into protestors.
  6. Three men associated with the Boogaloo movement are arrested in Nevada for their plan to infiltrate protests and incite violence. Organized crime rings are responsible for looting in some cities. The Proud Boys are trying to provoke an Antifa response. And Alex Jones tells his followers to take up arms and head to the protests. Yikes.
  7. An Orange County deputy appears in photos wearing symbols associated with right-wing extremists groups: an Oath Keepers/III Percenters patch and a “Don’t Tread On Me” patch. He’s now on leave.
  8. The Buffalo, NY, police department suspends two members of the Emergency Response Team for shoving a 74-year-old man who approached them during a protest. The man fell backward hitting his head and was lying in his own blood until medics came to help. The man is still in the hospital.
    • The entire Emergency Response Team resigns from that duty in support of those officers but will remain on the police force.
  1. An independent autopsy requested by George Floyd’s family finds that he died of asphyxiation, contradicting the official county medical examiner’s report. The autopsies found drugs in his system, but not enough to contribute to his death. Both autopsies find his death was a homicide.
  2. After more than 20 NFL players record videos calling on the NFL to take a stronger stance for racial justice, NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell says that the NFL was wrong for not listening to the NFL players before. He encourages them to protest. He does not mention Colin Kaepernick once.
  3. The U.S. Marines ban the Confederate flag and order it removed from bumper stickers, mugs, clothing, and so on.
  4. A member of Ohio’s National Guard is suspended for posting white supremacist remarks on social media.
  5. The right, egged on by Candace Owens, Glenn Beck, and Trump, start bringing up questions about George Floyd’s character. It doesn’t matter what his character was. Nothing in his background would’ve given him a death sentence.
  6. When Trump announces a better than expected unemployment rate, he says George Floyd is looking down right now and that “this is a great day for him, this is a great day for everybody.”
  7. Hundreds attend a memorial for George Floyd in Minneapolis, where Reverend Al Sharpton gives the eulogy. His message is, ‘Get your knee off our necks.’
  8. Floyd’s body is brought to Raeford, NC, near where he was born for another service. Finally, it’s flown to Houston for his funeral to be held next week
  9. Breonna Taylor’s birthday would’ve been this week. No one has been charged in her death yet.
  10. An investigator testifies that Ahmaud Arbery was hit by a truck before he was murdered and that the man who shot him used a racial slur afterward.

Climate/Environment:

  1. The 2020 hurricane season is having the quickest buildup on record, with three named storms in just two days.

Budget/Economy:

  1. The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) estimates that the coronavirus epidemic could knock down the GDP by $15.7 trillion over the next decade unless Congress takes steps to mitigate the damage. The agency says it might take a decade to recover from the pandemic economically.
  2. A third of Americans haven’t received the unemployment benefits owed to them, likely because agencies are struggling to keep up with the unprecedented demand.
  3. While the Bureau of Labor Statistics report shows the unemployment rate dropped in May to 13.3% from 14.7% and 2.5 million jobs were added, it comes to light that data has been misclassified since March because of the pandemic. The BLS estimates that unemployment more likely came down to 16.3% from 19.7%.
    • The Dow Jones and S&P jump at the news.
    • The gain in jobs is largely because states are beginning to reopen businesses.
    • Regardless of the error, Trump boasts of having a 13.3% unemployment rate.
  1. Economic advisor Kevin Hassett says the administration is working on yet another tax cut for businesses, this time a payroll tax cut. They’ll also be asking for more stimulus money.

Elections:

  1. No wonder Trump thinks vote-by-mail fraud is rampant. He registered to vote in Florida using the White House address, but later corrected it to a Florida address. He says absentee ballot voting isn’t the same as voting by mail (it is exactly the same).
  2. Trump’s press secretary, Kayleigh McEnany voted in 2018 using her parents’ Florida address even though she lived in Washington, D.C.
  3. Trump’s campaign shifts from promoting Trump’s calls for justice around George Floyd to promoting his calls for law and order around the protests.
  4. Joe Biden formally clinches the Democratic presidential nomination, reaching the 1,991 delegate limit.
  5. The Trump campaign pulls its “Make Space Great Again” ad because it appears to violate NASA regulations.
  6. One good bit of news this week: Iowa votes out Representative Steve King, most known for his wildly racist remarks. It’s not clear if he lost because he’s too much of a racist or because he lost all his committee seats because the House leadership thinks he’s too much of a racist.
  7. The Republican Attorney General of Kansas announces he’ll appeal a lower court’s ruling on state voting ID rules to the Supreme Court. The lower court ruled that Kansas’s law requiring people to provide citizenship papers when registering to vote is unconstitutional.
  8. Trump says he’ll move the Republican National Convention from North Carolina to… wherever else will let them have it with full-capacity crowds, no social distancing, no masks, and filled-to-capacity bars and restaurants. The RNC was in the midst of negotiations with Charlotte and NC when Trump blew it all up.
  9. Bill Barr says that one of his biggest worries is that foreign operatives will try to mail in fake ballots. Experts say that’s almost impossible to do without being detected.
  10. Columnist George Will writes an op-ed calling for not just Trump’s defeat but also flipping the Senate blue and routing Republicans. His view is that the party is beyond repair and needs to start from the ground up.
  11. States are seeing a record number of mail-in ballot requests because of COVID-19, but still, lines to vote in the primaries are long and some people never receive their mail-in ballots.
  12. Like Trump, Joe Biden this week had a photo op at a church. Unlike Trump, Biden sat on a folding chair inside a church listening to church leaders criticize his 1994 crime bill. Unlike Trump, Biden took notes, wore a mask, and listened.

Miscellaneous:

  1. A Twitter account reposts everything that Trump tweets and gets suspended within three days.
  2. After criticism of him cowering in the bunker during racial justice protests, Trump says he just went there to inspect it. He says he was just there for a “tiny, short little period of time” and he’s been there “two and a half times.”

Week 175 in Trump

Posted on June 7, 2020 in Politics, Trump

This week started with too much coronavirus exposure because people just couldn’t stay home over Memorial Day weekend, and this week ended with too much coronavirus exposure because another policeman killed another unarmed black man and brought thousands of Americans to the streets in protest. You decide who has a better reason to be out.

Here’s what happened in politics during the week ending May 31…

Shootings This Week:

  1. There were 21 (TWENTY-ONE!) mass shootings in the U.S. this week (defined as killing and/or injuring 4 or more people). Shooters kill 14 people and injure 90 more.
    • This is a huge number of shootings, and they were mostly NOT related to the protests against George Floyd’s murder.
    • One of the shootings is a drive-by with multiple gunmen shooting more than 100 rounds into a graduation celebration.
  1. Protests in Louisville, KY, against the killing of Breonna Taylor turn violent and seven people are shot. Louisville police killed Taylor earlier this year during a no-knock warrant. The shooters at the protest haven’t been found.

Russia:

  1. Attorney General William Barr opens a new investigation led by U.S. Attorney John Bash over the “unmasking” of American names around the Russia investigation into the 2016 election. This is presumably about Michael Flynn in an effort to prove he was being railroaded. Three things to know:
    • The people who requested the unmasking couldn’t know who’s name would be revealed.
    • The people actually making the requests were often not the person listed as doing so, but they might be staff who prepare briefings and in their research made the requests in the name of their bosses.
    • Intelligence agencies receive thousands of requests to unmask names every year. This isn’t out of the ordinary.
  1. The Bureau of Prisons orders Roger Stone to report to prison on June 30, though Stone says he’ll challenge that date.

Legal Fallout:

  1. The Department of Justice drops its investigations into Senators Kelly Loeffler, Dianne Feinstein, and James Inhofe over stock trades they made in the early days of the pandemic. The investigation into Senator Richard Burr is still ongoing.

Courts/Justice:

  1. The Supreme Court upholds California Governor Gavin Newsom’s executive order limiting gatherings at places of worship to 100 people or 25% total occupancy. Several states are being sued for not creating exceptions for places of worship in their limits on crowd sizes.
  2. Senator Lindsey Graham urges older federal judges to step down so Trump can replace them with younger, conservative judges. This tells me he either thinks Trump will lose or that Republicans will lose the Senate this year. He specifically says the intent is “to make sure the judiciary is right of center.” The judiciary is supposed to be apolitical.

Coronavirus:

  1. Joe Biden attends a Memorial Day event wearing a mask and calls Trump a fool for refusing to wear one. Trump, in turn, implies that Biden is hypocritical for wearing a mask outside but not inside his home. Huh?
  2. The World Health Organization suspends testing of hydroxychloroquine after an observational study of 96,000 patients from 67 continents concluded that patients taking the drug had a significantly higher rate of death. Other groups have also suspended their tests or have suspended tests for certain at-risk patients. Others are continuing with their tests.
  3. Trump announces the termination of the U.S. funding agreement with the WHO, and Trump’s national security advisor, Robert O’Brien, calls the WHO corrupt. Corrupt. Here are a few things we work on together. Or should I say worked?
    • Combatting diseases like HIV, tuberculosis, malaria, and polio.
    • A global Ebola response.
    • The WASH-FIT (water, sanitation, hygiene, and facilities) program in low- and middle-income countries.
    • Food safety and the regulation of medicine.
    • The Global Hearts Initiative to prevent and treat cardiovascular disease.
  1. The EU urges Trump to reconsider defunding the WHO, with the EC president saying, “actions that weaken international results must be avoided” and “now is the time for enhanced cooperation and common solutions.” She also says that for global responses to pandemics to work, the support and participation of all are required.
  2. In 2016, the Obama administration and OSHA issued new health industry regulations that would ensure that they’d be prepared and ready for a pandemic or epidemic. The rules were to go into effect in 2017, but the Trump administration formally stripped those rules from the regulatory agenda.
  3. Scott Gottlieb, who was the FDA Commissioner under Obama, says we can’t stop the pandemic unless we address racial inequity. The pandemic is affecting communities of color at higher rates (both case rates and death rates).
    • Part of that is socioeconomic—lower incomes, crowded living arrangements, essential jobs, and crowded transportation. They also don’t have good PPE at those essential jobs.
    • Part of that is the healthcare system—they don’t trust it, doctors treat them differently, and they have poorer access to care.
  1. Conspiracy theories from the far-right could hamper efforts to contain the spread of the coronavirus. A recent poll found that 44% of Republican respondents think Bill Gates will use mass vaccinations to insert tracking chips into all of us. If only that were the only conspiracy theory going around about this…
  2. A new study indicates that COVID-19 patients have the highest amount of viral shedding during the first week of symptoms and that they’re not as infectious 11 days after getting sick. However, asymptomatic shedding does still occur.
  3. Preliminary findings in tests for the antiviral drug remdesivir indicate that the drug can shorten recovery from about 15 days to 11 days.
  4. Another clinical trial begins for a COVID-19 vaccine, this one developed by Novavax.
  5. A study in France indicates that even mild cases of COVID-19 produce antibodies.
  6. An inflammatory syndrome similar to Kawasaki disease has been reported in children with COVID-19. Now doctors see it in young adults in their 20s. These patients have inflammation in their blood vessel walls and in serious cases can sustain heart damage.
  7. Trump will extend the deployment of 40,000 National Guard troops helping with coronavirus relief efforts instead of terminating them one day before their benefits kick in as he had originally planned.

Exposures:

  1. A Republican Representative in Pennsylvania’s state House tested positive for the coronavirus more than a week ago, but when he told GOP leadership, they decided who they would tell or not. They only told GOP members of the House, while Democrats went back to their families unaware that they could be carrying the virus. The GOP leadership says they followed protocol, and that everyone who needed to know did.
  2. Arkansas traces a recent increase in coronavirus infections to a high school swim party, a church gathering, and meat processing plants.
  3. COVID-19 has killed 100 grocery workers that we know of so far.
  4. More than 62,000 healthcare workers have been infected with the coronavirus and nearly 300 have died from it.
  5. Vermont has no coronavirus hospitalizations for the first time since March.
  6. After the Memorial Day weekend shenanigans at Lake of the Ozarks, MO, neighboring counties issue travel advisories and urge self quarantines over fears of coronavirus spread.
  7. The latest iOS update allows you to participate in anonymous exposure notification and tracing through your iPhone. But for those of you who fear being tracked, you can disable it.

Closures:


  1. The health officer who was behind California’s early stay-at-home orders says the state is opening too quickly, specifically around allowing large gatherings (of up to 100 people). Southern California is still seeing increases in cases and deaths.
  2. Around half of the dozen or so states that see an uptick in new cases this week are states that opened early, in late April or early May. States seeing an increase this week include Alabama, Florida, Georgia, South Carolina, Tennessee, Arkansas, North Dakota, and Oklahoma.

Protests:

  1. Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro joins demonstrations protesting his Congress and Supreme Court. He doesn’t wear a mask, despite a government decree to do so. Also, Trump suspends travel from Brazil to the U.S. by non-citizens because of their coronavirus outbreak.

Numbers:

  1. New Zealand goes five days with no new COVID-19 cases and has no new COVID-19 hospitalizations following the discharge of its last coronavirus patient. The country only had 1,500 confirmed cases and 21 deaths.
  2. The U.S. reaches 100,000 known COVID-19 deaths on May 28.
  3. Here are the numbers by the end of the week:
    • 1,770,384 people in the U.S. are infected so far (up from 1,622,670 last week), with 103,781 deaths (up from 97, 087 last week).
    • 6,028,326 people worldwide have been infected (up from 5,276,942 last week), with 368,945 deaths (up from 342,078 las week).

Healthcare:

  1. A new Oklahoma law allows grandparents and would-be fathers to sue doctors who perform abortions for wrongful death. GOP legislators think that women are being coerced into abortions.
  2. In-person protests at abortion clinics have continued during stay-at-home orders, often without social distancing or masks. They’re still getting hands-on with the people they’re protesting and shouting in their faces. So great. Now getting an abortion really can kill you again. Workers have to hand out masks to patients as they arrive, and they try to whisk patients in before too much contact occurs.
  3. Members of the UN Working Group on Discrimination against Women and Girls issue a statement accusing certain U.S. states, like Oklahoma, Texas, Alabama, and Iowa, of manipulating the pandemic to restrict women’s reproductive rights.

International:

  1. China approves a proposal to impose security legislation over Hong Kong, giving the country broad power over the city. The resolution bans secession, terrorism, subversion, and foreign interference, and gives China’s security agencies the ability to operate in Hong Kong.
  2. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo says that the U.S. no longer sees Hong Kong as autonomous from China. Trump threatens to end Hong Kong’s favored trade status to punish China.
  3. The Trump administration is readying another arms deal with Saudi Arabia similar to the one Congress condemned last year that Pompeo approved. Trump fired the inspector general who was looking into the Trump administration’s actions around that.
  4. The Trump administration warns Russian, Chinese, and European companies that have waivers to work at Iranian nuclear sites that he’s ending those waivers and sanctions could apply.

Travel Ban/Immigration/Discrimination:

  1. A Minneapolis police officer kills a black man suspected of passing a counterfeit $20-bill by kneeling on his neck for EIGHT AND A HALF minutes.
    • Video shows the officer looking out dispassionately while George Floyd says “I can’t breathe,” while he calls out for his mother, and even after the life left Floyd’s body. Six years after Eric Garner, and still black men can’t breathe.
    • Onlookers try to get him to stop. Officers refuse to even check his pulse.
    • The officers claim Floyd tried to resist arrest, but onlookers disagree and home video and surveillance video don’t bear it out either.
  1. Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey is so upset he can barely keep it together during a press conference.
  2. All four officers are fired. The man who killed Floyd, Derek Chauvin, is arrested for third-degree murder and manslaughter.
  3. The Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension and the FBI begin independent investigations.
  4. Protests start as soon as the video is published. Authorities caution protestors to wear masks (most do) and continue social distancing (it’s too crowded to).
  5. The protests start out peacefully but later become violent after protestors march toward the 3rd Precinct. Some start vandalizing and spray-painting police cars. And then the police show up in riot gear throwing tear gas and riling up the protestors further. Protestors start the precinct building on fire.
  6. Protests against police brutality spread across the country. Even though the family warns off any instigators of violence, the protests in Minneapolis lead to looting, Molotov cocktails, tear gas, and fires. In Los Angeles, protestors shatter the windows of police cars and block freeways. In the words of one protestor:
    • The whole city can burn down. They should all be out here protesting, not just people who care about black lives. Everybody. Burn it down. Make them pay. Maybe then they’ll understand.”
  1. Always one to throw fuel on the fire, Trump threatens to bring Minneapolis “under control,” calls the protesters “thugs,” and says “when the looting starts, the shooting starts.”
  2. The officer who killed Floyd had a dozen conduct complaints against him but was never disciplined. This leads people to point to Amy Klobuchar, who was the county prosecutor at the time. It turns out that as is the norm, Klobuchar let a grand jury decide when to bring charges against a police officer.
  3. The University of Minnesota announces it won’t contract with the Minneapolis PD for large events and specialized services.
  4. Minnesota Governor Tim Walz mobilizes the National Guard to help quell the protests there. By the end of the week, thirteen states call in the National Guard. Twenty states and forty cities across the U.S. institute curfews, usually at 6 PM or 8 PM, but Santa Monica, CA, starts the curfew at 1 PM due to all the looting. Protestors defy the curfews.
  5. Even police chiefs across the country call the officer’s actions “undefendable.” A police chief in Tennessee tells his officers that if any of them don’t see the injustice in what Chauvin did, they should just turn in their badges now.
  6. Police respond to the protests forcefully in some cases, with tear gas, rubber bullets, and riot gear.
    • They even arrest news crews, one while they were reporting live. You can hear the reporter saying they would move to where the police tell them, and the next thing he’s being handcuffed for refusing to move.
    • One of their rubber bullets strikes a journalist near the eye, requiring surgery to save her vision.
    • A Louisville, KY, police officer is placed on administrative leave after he fires pepper balls at the media. It took a while to determine which officer it was because, like so many officers dealing with the protests and riots, he had turned off his body camera.
  1. Hundreds of businesses across the U.S. are damaged by looting and vandalism. Local to me, Santa Monica was a bizarre scene. While peaceful protestors marched the streets, organized looters arrived in luxury vehicles and executed coordinated hits on businesses there. While the police marshaled the protestors into tight groups using riot gear, tear gas, and rubber bullets, what were they doing to stop the looting? They did arrest 400 people, most of whom do not live in Santa Monica.
    • Across the country, much of the looting appeared to be planned and coordinated, complete with U-Hauls and SUVs.
    • We see videos of peaceful protestors trying to prevent looters from doing their thing.
  1. Attorney General Bill Barr blames the looting and violence on Antifa and left extremist groups, though there’s no evidence of that. He does say that some are coming from out of state.
  2. St. Paul’s Mayor, who previously said that every person arrested over the weekend was from out of state, recants that saying that his information was inaccurate. Most lived in Minneapolis and the surrounding area. Mayor Frey and Governor Walz also walk back their similar statements.
  3. The Department of Public Safety Commissioner says that white nationalist and hate groups are using social media to encourage looting and violence. Evidence is limited for this claim as well.
  4. Protestors gather near the White House, so Trump encourages his base to come to the White House in counter-protest. Talk about mixing a powder keg.
  5. His Secret Service whisks Trump off to his security bunker for about an hour as the protests grow around the White House. The bunker is designed for emergencies like terrorist attacks.
  6. Joe Biden visits the site of protests in Wilmington, DE, and speaks with protestors.
  7. Trump’s allies and advisors urge him to address the nation. Joe Biden releases his own statement about the killing and later gives a twenty-minute speech about it,
  8. Finally, during a speech at the SpaceX rocket launch, Trump acknowledges Floyd’s killing, says he spoke with Floyd’s family, and announces a federal civil rights investigation into the matter. He talks about the pain of the nation, but then he spends twice the time talking about the rioters and calling out Antifa and far-left extremists for the violence.
    • His advisors and Republican lawmakers ask him to tone down his rhetoric, especially on Twitter, calling it “unhelpful.” That’s the understatement of the year.
    • Trump blames the unrest on “radical-left anarchists,” leaving out the fact that radical right elements are encouraging violence and looting as well. He accuses the media of trying to foment hatred and anarchy. The fact is we won’t know who’s responsible for what for some time, and may never know some of it.
    • Trump tweets that he’s going to designate Antifa as a terrorist organization, indicating he doesn’t understand Antifa. First, it just means “anti-fascist.” Second, it’s not an organization that you can cut off funding for. Experts say it would be unconstitutional. It seems that whether you blame Antifa or white supremacists depends on which side of the political aisle you fall.
  9. An officer in Seattle arrests a man and uses the same “knee on the neck” maneuver that killed Floyd. Onlookers object and a fellow officer knocks his knee off the suspect’s neck.
  10. After police cruisers are seen apparently driving into a crowd of protestors, Mayor Bill de Blasio says he wouldn’t blame them if they did.
  11. In Los Angeles, police who stopped by the scenes of protests blocking the freeway sped off after protestors smashed their windows.
  12. In Dallas, a man charges at a group of protestors with a machete and they beat him. It appears he was trying to protect his business.
  13. Some of the protests have seen shootings and deaths, but it’s not clear where the bullets came from—vandals, protestors, or police.
  14. A tractor-trailer drives into a march on a Minneapolis freeway. Reminiscent of the Rodney King trial, protestors pull him from the truck but the police arrive and take him to the hospital. And arrest him.
  15. Two Atlanta officers are fired after they’re seen on video tasing two college kids out of a car and using excessive force on them.
  16. We see images of police officers in some cities joining in with the protestors by taking a knee, marching in the protests, and consoling protestors.
  17. Protestors say the threat of police brutality outweighs the fear of the coronavirus.
  18. A truck pulling a horse trailer drives into a group of protestors. When he can’t get through, he places a gun on his dashboard and protestors start throwing things at his trailer, including a smoke canister. So some media report that the protestors started the horses on fire (they didn’t). Media also report that the driver injured two protestors, driving over their legs. We’ll have to wait for the truth to shake out of this one.
  19. Richmond’s police chief says that protestors set fire to an occupied building and then blocked fire trucks from getting there to rescue a child stuck in the building. But the fire chief contradicts that story, saying that the fire extended from a burning car and burned the outside only. All occupants were safely out by the time firefighters arrived.
  20. This caps a series of high-profile discrimination and killings, including the police killing of Breonna Taylor, the chasing and killing of jogger Ahmaud Arbery, and video of a white woman calling the cops on a black birdwatcher because he asked her to leash her dog.
    • The white woman in the park calls the police to say “an African American” man was threatening her and brings up fake tears to make it sound convincing. She gets fired and loses her dog.

Climate/Environment:

  1. Washington and Oregon have designated salmon habitat as an official use of the Snake and Columbia Rivers. But now the EPA is claiming that because of climate change, it’s too hard to keep the waterways habitable for salmon, a problem that’s sure to get worse with the loosening of the Clean Water Act. So the EPA says that since the rules are too hard to follow, we should change the rules.
  2. Twenty-three states, four cities, and Washington, D.C. sue the EPA for the agency’s rollback of fuel efficiency standards.
  3. The National Park Service under Trump is finalizing a rule to allow hunters in Alaska to kill bear cubs and wolf pups in their dens. This is a reversal of rules put into place under Obama.
  4. In 2019, the U.S. consumed more renewable energy than it did coal. That’s the first time since 1885.
  5. A judge in Montana cancels energy leases on more than 470 square miles of land where he ruled that the Interior Department didn’t do enough to protect the greater sage grouse, a ground bird with declining numbers.

Budget/Economy:

  1. A top economic advisor to Trump, Kevin Hassett, calls American workers “human capital stock” when saying they’re ready to get back to work. Comparing people to property aside, over 2/3 of Americans are worried about going back to work during the pandemic.
  2. 2.1 million more Americans filed for unemployment benefits last week, bringing the total since mid-March to nearly 41 million.
  3. The floor of the New York Stock Exchange opens for the first time in two months.
  4. The Dow Jones rises 600 points in one day as more states take steps to ease the lockdown restrictions.
  5. Two months ago as part of their Families First relief package, Congress created an emergency child hunger program but it still hasn’t reached many of the 30 million children who need it.
  6. California was the first state to institute shutdown orders, and it’s paying the economic price for it. Unemployment is above 20% (the national rate is around 15%), and movie studios, tourist destinations, and large venues are all closed.
  7. Following coronavirus outbreaks of the coronavirus at meat processing plants in North Carolina, farmers there are forced to euthanize 1.5 million chickens.
  8. The Trump administration mails out postcards with social distancing guidelines and Trump’s signature, which cost the U.S. Postal Service $28 million. Trump has refused to provide aid to the Postal Service in the coronavirus relief packages.

Elections:

  1. Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden makes his first public appearance in the two months since the shutdowns started. He and his wife, Dr. Jill Biden, lay a wreath at veterans park in Delaware on Memorial Day. Trump, on the other hand, insists on going to Baltimore’s Fort McHenry National Monument and Historic Shrine, despite Baltimore’s mayor imploring him not to due to the pandemic and added cost of security.
  2. Trump threatens to move the Republican National Convention to a different state if North Caroline Governor Cooper forces them to maintain pandemic social distancing and capacity guidelines.
  3. The RNC sends Governor Cooper their proposed safety protocols that will allow them to go ahead with the convention while minimizing the spread of the coronavirus. Trump asks Cooper to allow a full convention without any mask requirements, so then the RNC says they want Cooper to allow full attendance as well, and they want bars and restaurants to be running at capacity. The state just had its biggest one-day spike in cases.
  4. South Carolina Republicans return to the campaign trail, pandemic be damned. No masks, no social distancing, shared microphones, handshakes, and hugs.
  5. White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany, who claims that voting by mail is rife with fraud, has been voting by mail since 2010.

Miscellaneous:

  1. Trump gets fact-checked by Twitter and threatens to shut down social media. Mark Zuckerberg, whose social media platform has been adding more and more fact-checking tools for three years, says that social media shouldn’t be fact-checking political speech.
    • So Trump signs an executive order that seeks to allow social medial companies to be held liable for what other people post. The EO merely encourages the FCC to rethink the scope of the existing law.
    • Twitter flags another of Trump’s tweets for inciting violence. This was his “when the looting starts, the shooting starts” tweet.
    • Trump thanks a supporter on Twitter for posting a video where he says, “The only good Democrat is a dead Democrat.”
  1. SpaceX launches its first manned mission to the International Space Station. This is the first time since 2011 NASA has used our own spacecraft to launch humans into space.
  2. Trump speaks after the launch, saying that when he took over, NASA wasn’t pretty; it was decrepit. Pence says it’s the culmination of three and a half years of renewed leadership in space.
    • In reality, the program was initiated under George W. Bush in 2006 and was carried through during Obama’s time in office. SpaceX was granted the contract in 2014. In 2015, they selected the astronauts who are flying the mission.
  1. The Defense Department’s principal deputy inspector general, Glenn Fine, resigns one month after Trump removed him from the oversight position for the pandemic relief packages. It also follows several firings of inspector generals by the Trump administration.

Polls:

  1. Trump’s approval rating continues to slip as Americans have a negative view of his handling of the pandemic. Joe Biden holds a double-digit lead over Trump in presidential election polling.

Week 170 in Trump

Posted on May 27, 2020 in Politics, Trump

In the early days of the pandemic, a doctor at a University of Washington lab, Dr. Helen Chu, was the first to find community spread of the coronavirus in the U.S. She was studying the flu and in late January she requested permission to test her samples for the coronavirus as well. She couldn’t get federal or state approval. A month later, her team began testing without approval and found a positive test in a local teenager. Once the state approved further testing, the FDA put a stop to it. Part of this was because of privacy and permission issues, but part of it was the inability of our government to see the value of testing. And because of that, we still don’t have a solid test nor a test strategy to help us move forward.

Here’s what happened in politics during the week ending April 26…

Shootings This Week:

  1. There were 6 mass shootings in the U.S. this week (defined as killing and/or injuring 4 or more people). Shooters kill 5 people and injure 24 more.
  2. For the first time in over six decades, Miami goes six weeks straight without a homicide.
  3. After last week’s mass murder in Nova Scotia, Canada Prime Minister Justin Trudeau promises gun safety legislation.

Russia:

  1. The Senate Intelligence Committee releases another report confirming the findings by our intelligence agencies that Russia interfered in our 2016 elections to help elect Trump. They confirm that Putin directed the efforts.
    • The committee is chaired by Republican Senator Richard Burr, who praised our intelligence community’s strong tradecraft and analytical reasoning.
    • This is the fourth of five reports to be released by the committee.
    • The bipartisan committee approved the report unanimously.
    • The report says that the officials who wrote the original intelligence community assessment of Russia’s meddling were not subject to political pressure.
    • This report contradicts the report issued by House Republicans in 2018, which claimed there were significant failings in the intelligence agencies and that they couldn’t conclude Putin favored Trump.
  1. After an appeals court ruled that the DOJ must hand over documents from the Mueller investigation to Congress, the DOJ asks for a stay while it takes the case to the Supreme Court.

Courts/Justice:

  1. Attorney General Bill Barr threatens to take legal action against governors who impose strict stay-at-home measures to help slow the spread of the coronavirus. States and the Trump administration are all struggling to define a safe approach to reopening. (Tip: The CDC has a plan.)

Coronavirus:

  1. Church leaders and televangelists encourage churches to continue holding religious gatherings despite the social distancing guidelines, and now at least 30 pastors across the Bible Belt have died from COVID-19. 
Church services and funerals have been the vector for several outbreaks across the U.S.
  2. The Navy recommends that Captain Brett Crozier be reinstated to his post as commander of the USS Theodore Roosevelt. Defense Secretary Mark Esper is holding it up.
  3. There are currently 26 Navy warships with confirmed coronavirus cases aboard.
  4. Trump suggests to a very uncomfortable Dr. Deborah Birx that we could treat COVID-19 with ultraviolet light, either through the skin or injection. He goes on to muse about injections or cleaning the lungs with disinfectant.
    • Heat and humidity studies are inconclusive and show no evidence that heat will slow it down the way it does the flu.
    • It turns out that the leader of Genesis II, a group peddling a bleach-based coronavirus cure, wrote to Trump to tell him about how it can kill 99% of the pathogens in the body. 30 supporters of the group wrote to Trump as well.
    • Just days before Trump suggested disinfectant as a cure, the FDA banned Genesis II from selling its bleach cure.
    • After this whole exchange, Trump says he has a very good “you know what,” pointing to his head and apparently forgetting the word for “brain.”
    • Dr. Deborah Birx defends Trump, saying that he just wanted to “talk that through.” Tip: When the president wants to just throw shit out to see what sticks, he should do it in private, not in public.
  1. Polling data comes out that shows Biden ahead of Trump as the presidential favorite. The data also shows that the American people generally don’t approve of Trump’s response to the pandemic. The campaign team shows the data to Trump to get him to stop his daily briefings.
  2. After the kerfuffle over UV light and disinfectant, Trump plans to stop appearing at daily press briefings and have fewer, shorter briefings instead. Trump has fought this, saying that the briefings get good ratings.
  3. The manufacturer of Lysol issues a statement warning not to use Lysol internally: “As a global leader in health and hygiene products, we must be clear that under no circumstance should our disinfectant products be administered into the human body (through injection, ingestion or any other route).”
  4. The Government Accountability Office (GAO) launches a series of audits on the administration’s coronavirus response. They’ll oversee the administration of relief packages as well as the overall response to the pandemic, including testing, medical supply distribution, and nursing home infections.
  5. Dr. Anthony Fauci says that we should be able to double the number of coronavirus tests completed in the next few weeks.
  6. The FDA approves a new at-home coronavirus test kit.
  7. There’s one cruise ship still out at sea with passengers, and the plan to dock it gets scuttled because of the weather. There are no infections on board. I don’t know why they wouldn’t just stay there.
  8. Hydroxychloroquine is linked to higher rates of death for VA patients hospitalized with COVID-19. VA researchers look at people who received HCQ, people who received HCQ plus an antibiotic, and people who didn’t receive HCQ. Death rates are nearly double for patients receiving HCQ alone or in combination with other drugs.
  9. The FDA issues a warning against using hydroxychloroquine unless specifically prescribed by your doctor.
  10. Dr. Rick Bright, director of the Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority (BARDA), claims he was removed from his position and demoted for resisting Trump’s efforts to push hydroxychloroquine as a treatment for COVID-19. He’ll file a whistleblower complaint. He says that science, not politics or cronyism, needs to lead the way in solving this crisis.
  11. Hospitals in New York are testing plasma treatments on their sickest patients. This involves transfusing them with blood plasma from patients who’ve recovered from the disease.
  12. Thousands of email addresses and passwords are stolen from the NIH, WHO, CDC, and Gates Foundation, all of which are targets of a conspiracy theory that alleges these groups are profiting off any vaccines or treatments for COVID-19 and that they’ll implant us with tracking devices through the vaccine.
    • Neo-Nazis and white supremacists publish the information extensively across the web, calling for a campaign to harass the exposed individuals.
    • The Gates Foundation is the target of a conspiracy theory that Bill Gates is trying to control the world through his response to the coronavirus. Meanwhile, the Gates Foundation has pledged $150 million to fight the virus, holds no patents for vaccines, and won’t be inserting microchips into any of us.
  1. New York Governor Andrew Cuomo says the curve in the state is “on its way down” and some hospitals can start performing elective procedures again. The state’s peak was pretty much as predicted.
  2. Missouri sues China for its role in the pandemic, saying the country’s communist regime covered up information about the pandemic and didn’t do enough to stop the spread.
  3. People are avoiding regular doctor visits due to fears around the pandemic, and that means that kids are falling behind on their vaccines. This puts them at risk for measles, whooping cough, and more.
  4. Even though Trump says one preventable death is too many, he pushes states to reopen. In reality, until there’s a vaccine or cure, reopening means trading some lives for economic gain. On the other hand, people will start dying from other things caused by the shutdown, so it’s a balancing act.
  5. A day after Mike Pence says that Veterans Affairs isn’t seeing an increase in coronavirus numbers, the department has its largest one-day increase and now has over 6,000 cases. The number of COVID-19 deaths in the VA has been rising steadily since March 22, and is at 391. There are 1,895 VA employees who’ve tested positive and 20 have died from COVID-19.
  6. The VA has been deploying teams of employees to help out with nursing homes on the East Coast.
  7. The State Department strips references to the World Health Organization from its coronavirus fact sheets, and Mike Pompeo tells department employees to cut the WHO out of initiatives the U.S. supports. The U.S. will try to reroute funds, but that might require congressional approval.
    • The Trump administration is delaying a UN Security Council resolution in response to the pandemic because it objects to language supportive of the WHO.
    • The White House is also imploring our allies to question the credibility of the WHO.
    • European officials complain that they can’t find common ground with the U.S. on this.
  1. Millions of people across the globe are more vulnerable to the coronavirus pandemic because of cuts to U.S. foreign aid under Trump. Those cuts have forced clinics to close and reduced available supplies for other clinics. Aid groups express concern about the absence of U.S. leadership.
  2. Doctors start to notice that COVID-19 causes strokes in some younger adults (in their 30s and 40s). Several die or are left debilitated by it. Doctors see rapid clotting in some of these patients (that is, they go in to fix one clot and can see others already forming).
  3. California is the first state to recommend testing for some people without symptoms or contact with people infected with the coronavirus.
  4. Despite conspiracy theories to the contrary, scientists say that all available evidence indicates that the coronavirus originated in animals and was not produced or modified in a lab. The Trump administration has asked intelligence agencies to find evidence that it was created in a lab or escaped from one.
  5. ER doctors worry because the number of visits to the ER is down drastically as people worry about catching the virus in an ER or taking a bed needed by a COVID-19 patient. Health officials change their warnings to remind people that ERs can still treat you safely.
  6. West Point’s graduation was postponed because of the pandemic, but Trump wants the graduates to all come back in June so he can give a commencement speech. To the surprise of everyone at West Point, he announces he’ll definitely do that.
  7. The day after a brief clash between CNN reporter Kaitlin Collins and Trump, the White House tries to force her to trade her front-row seat at the press briefings with someone in the back row. Both reporters refuse to move because the White House doesn’t determine the seating chart. Trump briefs the press for only 22 minutes after that and refuses to take any questions. It’s the shortest coronavirus briefing so far, during a week where we surpassed 50,000 deaths in the U.S. and are coming up on a million confirmed cases.
  8. After Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston started requiring all staff to wear masks in March, new coronavirus infection diagnoses dropped by more than half. In early April, they mandated that patients must wear masks as well.
  9. After CDC Director Robert Redfield says we could see an even more difficult second wave of COVID-19 in the fall that we need to prepare for, Trump expresses doubt that it’ll happen. That’s how every single pandemic in the past 100 years has played out, but looking at the news and social media, lots of folks believe him instead of history.
    • In a briefing, Trump says Redfield was totally misquoted by The Washington Post on that. When asked about it moments later, Redfield says, “I’m accurately quoted in The Washington Post.”
  1. Trump says the U.S. (which has tested around 4.2 million people) has tested more than the rest of the world put together (they’ve tested around 18.5 million people).
  2. Ben Carson has a council to focus on restoring black and Hispanic communities to full economic health following the pandemic.
  3. It’s likely that the numbers for COVID-19 infections and deaths will rise quite a bit, based on the high number of excess deaths we have over the typical number of deaths for the past 6 weeks plus COVID-19 deaths.
    • For example, there were 15,400 more deaths than typical for the period between March 1 and April 4. 8,128 were from COVID-19. Some of the remaining 7,000 plus were deaths also likely from COVID-19.

Shortages:

  1. People have criticized the Trump administration for delivering medical equipment to China in February, but it turns out that the shipment of nearly 18 tons of medical equipment from the U.S. to China came from charitable organizations. The State Department arranged transportation only.
  2. The last COVID-19 patient being treated on the USNS Comfort is discharged. The hospital ship arrived at the end of March and treated 182 people. The ship was set up for up to 500 COVID-91 patients, but the stay at home orders slowed down the spread enough that not all beds were needed.
  3. Medical employees at VA hospitals say they don’t have enough protective gear and that some of what they have is being diverted to the national stockpile.
  4. A New York nurses union sues the state for not providing enough protection for front-line workers from the coronavirus.

Exposures:

  1. Remember two weeks ago when the Supreme Court, Wisconsin GOP legislators, and the Wisconsin Supreme Court forced voters who hadn’t received a mail-in ballot to go vote in person? At least 40 of the people who either showed up to vote or worked the polls have tested positive for coronavirus
    • But still, GOP lawmakers in the state sue Governor Tony Evers to stop his stay-at-home orders, saying the orders have created immense frustration. Well, no shit. We’re all pretty frustrated.
  1. The Santa Clara County medical examiner discovers that one county resident died from COVID-19 on February 6 and another on February 17, much earlier than we thought the first death occurred in the U.S. The examiner sent tissue to the CDC at the time but the CDC’s strict testing rules prevented testing until calls were made to federal authorities.
    • Washington state health officials found two COVID-related deaths on February 26, three days earlier than we previously thought the first death in the U.S. occurred.
    • The CDC believes that as more tissue is tested, we’ll find more deaths earlier than we thought.
    • Genetic analyses suggest that early COVID-19 cases on the East Coast came from Europe and not China. They also suggest that it was spreading around Seattle weeks earlier than we thought.
    • Accurate epidemiology modeling relies on knowing the start date
  1. A man in Wuhan, China, tested positive for the coronavirus in February. Even though he doesn’t have any symptoms, he’s still testing positive. Several people appear to recover but continue to carry the virus. Some people have a lot of antibodies following their infections, but some have relatively few. In South Korea, there are reports of people becoming reinfected.
  2. The Trump administration says the U.S. won’t participate in a global initiative to develop, produce, and distribute drugs and vaccines against the coronavirus. In a more normal administration, the U.S. would be a global leader in this effort.
  3. There’s concern that the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas in January might have been a coronavirus spreader event. This could explain why certain areas around San Francisco saw early cases and deaths.
  4. Mike Pence says the coronavirus will ebb in the summer months and much of the pandemic will be behind us.
  5. Tyson Foods suspends operations at its largest pork processing plant in Waterloo, Iowa after a number of their employees test positive for coronavirus. They previously had to shut down a different hog slaughterhouse in Iowa for the same reason.
  6. Smithfield Foods has one of the country’s biggest outbreaks at a processing plant in South Dakota. A big issue is that their employees speak 40 different languages. However, the CDC provides information packets in most languages.
    • According to the CDC, in March workers were promised extra money if they showed up for work during the pandemic.
    • Smithfield Foods blames “living circumstances in certain cultures” for one of the largest COVID-19 clusters at one of its plants. South Dakota Governor Kristi Noem says that 99% of the spread was happening outside the plant.
  1. Nursing homes and jails continue to be trouble spots for COVID-19 outbreaks, but New York and New Jersey order nursing homes to accept COVID-19 patients who have been discharged from the hospital even though they’re still recovering. California had a similar directive, but ended it in late March. Some nursing homes reopen empty wings to serve COVID-19 patients.

Closures:

  1. As some states consider reopening, public health officials warn that that states shouldn’t open up unless they have the ability to test, to detect new outbreaks, and to quash them by contact tracing. States must also have hospital capacity to handle flare-ups.
  1. Tennessee plans to reopen by May 1.
  2. South Carolina also has plans to lift some restrictions this week. They don’t meet the guidelines either, but their rates are fairly low.
  3. New Jersey announces a blueprint to opening the state back up, but they have yet to see their peak.
  4. Georgia Governor Brian Kemp starts reopening businesses in the state. Mayors and health officials criticize the decision, and even Trump, who it could be argued egged Kemp on, says it’s too soon. #ThrewHimUnderTheBus
    • Kemp opens gyms, fitness centers, bowling alleys, body art studio, barbers, cosmetologists, hair designers, nail care artists and massage therapists.
    • Theaters, private clubs, and restaurant dine-in services can resume next week.
    • The state has an increase of around 4,000 cases this week, with over 140 deaths, and definitely doesn’t meet the federal guidelines for beginning to reopen.
    • Members of Kemp’s coronavirus tax force were taken by surprise with his announcement, including those tasked with informing the public.
    • Georgia ranks close to the bottom of states as far as testing rate.
    • It’s kind of amazing that Georgia is the home of the CDC.
  1. Six Republican governors in the Southeast form a coalition to plan their reopening, similar to others formed in the Northeast, Midwest, and West.
  2. South Carolina, Florida, Georgia, Texas, and Tennessee announce limited easing of restrictions of businesses, recreation, and social gatherings. None of these states have met the federal guidelines for beginning to open. Some even continue to have upward trends in COVID-19 cases and deaths.
  3. Some mayors in these states say they’ll keep their orders in place.
  4. Las Vegas Mayor Carolyn Goodman gives a wild interview with Katy Tur and says she wants to reopen the city’s casinos and assume that everyone is already a carrier. Her rationale is that competition will destroy any businesses that spread the virus. She says we’ll learn the facts afterward.
  5. Some countries, like Ghana are also opening back up, and Brazil’s President Jair Bolsonaro participated in anti-lockdown protests. Wait a minute! Is he protesting himself? Just like Trump.
  6. European countries begin to slowly reopen. Austria is already planning to open bars and restaurants in a few weeks, while Spain and Italy are taking it slower.
  7. With deaths in Italy decreasing over a few days, Italian Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte releases a plan to manage the outbreak there, including:
    • Continuing with social distancing, masks, and gloves until there’s a remedy or vaccine.
    • Girding up the healthcare system.
    • Creating hospitals specifically for COVID-19.
    • Antibody testing and contact tracing.
  1. On the other hand, Netherlands bans large events until at least September.
  2. New Zealand starts to lift its strict lockdown after a highly successful response by the government led by Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern. She has an 80% approval rating over her handling of the crisis.
  3. The U.K. Parliament votes unanimously to hold the rest of their sessions virtually over web conferences. The U.S. House, on the other hand, scraps a plan to just vote on handling their business remotely due to Republican opposition.
  4. The United Automobile Workers union issues a statement saying that May is too early to start reopening automobile plants because it’s not safe enough yet for workers.
  5. Air Canada suspends flights to the U.S. until May 22.
  6. Wimbledon is canceled for the first time since World War II.
  7. Some California counties open their beaches with social distancing guidelines still in place. A heatwave brings large crowds to the beaches, making it impossible to enforce social distancing.
  8. The never-ceases-to-amaze-me Lt. Governor of Texas, Dan Patrick, defends reopening by saying that “there are more important things than living.”
  9. After a phone call with the head of the company that owns luxury gyms like Equinox and SoulCycle, Trump proposes reopening gyms.

Protests:

  1. Kentucky has a spike in coronavirus cases the week after protests broke out against the state’s stay at home restrictions. Also in Kentucky, a pastor files a lawsuit against Kentucky Governor Andy Beshear, which asserts that not allowing religious gatherings on Easter Sunday violates the constitutional right to religious freedom.
  2. A mother in Idaho sparks a protest when she’s arrested for refusing to leave a playground with her children. Turns out it was a publicity stunt for her group, Idahoans for Vaccine Freedom (obvs an anti-vaxx group). Even Ammon Bundy got involved in the protest.
  3. The protests popping up across the country against social distancing restrictions aren’t spontaneous, grassroots protests. They’re being pushed by a group of conservative individuals and organizations largely funded by Republican large donors.
    • The Convention of States, which promoted the protests through Facebook ads, is funded by Robert Mercer’s family foundation (you might remember him as the guy who owned companies involved in the Russia investigation). Cabinet members Ken Cuccinelli and Ben Carson have both supported the group in the past. The Convention of States’ purpose is to reduce federal power.
    • A vast majority of Americans support the social distancing measures.
    • The Koch network, which funded or launched some of the conservative groups supporting the protests, declines to support or assist with the protests.
  1. An attorney pulls a knife on a news team covering an anti-lockdown protest in Huntington Beach, CA, and then forces them into their news van and orders them to erase any footage in which he appears. He’s now in jail for kidnapping and exhibiting a deadly weapon. He claims he wasn’t protesting, just watching. He didn’t want people to associate him with the protest.
  2. Healthcare workers in Denver block people protesting the lockdowns. While they silently block traffic, people in the cars yell at them and call the virus a hoax.
  3. 60% of Americans oppose these protests.

Numbers:

  1. There are more than 1,000 cases of coronavirus in the Navajo Nation, with more than 40 deaths.
  2. Here are the numbers by the end of the week:
    • 939,053 (up from 735,086 last week) people in the U.S. are infected so far (that we know of), with 52,189 (up from 32,922 last week) deaths.
    • 2,834,750 people worldwide have been infected, with 205,326 deaths.

Healthcare:

  1. So far, 12 states have tried to restrict abortion access using the pandemic as an excuse. They’ve had mixed results.
    • Texas authorities withdraw from their push to include abortion in the list of nonessential medical procedures to be suspended during the pandemic. As this has gone through the courts, chaos ensued with facilities unsure of whether to cancel procedures or allow them. Texas residents have traveled to nearby states to have the procedure.
    • A federal court rules that Arkansas can enforce its ban on surgical abortions during the pandemic. Medical abortions are still allowed.
    • A federal judge rules that all abortions can resume in Oklahoma, granting a preliminary injunction stopping the states abortion ban.

International:

  1. Where’s Kim Jong Un? No one really knows, but there are reports that he’s had heart surgery, which caused him to miss a major national event.
  2. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his opposition leader Benny Gantz agree to form a national emergency government. The deal is supposed to help them handle the coronavirus crisis, but could break the year-long political deadlock in Israel. I’ve lost count of the number of elections they’ve held over that year.
  3. Tehran launches its first military satellite, so Trump directs the Navy to “shoot down and destroy” any Iranian gunboats that harass our ships. He issues the directive in a morning tweet, so who know if it’s binding.

Travel Ban/Immigration/Discrimination:

  1. Trump suspends the issuance of new green cards while we deal with the pandemic, temporarily halting immigration to the U.S. He says it’s to protect U.S. jobs for U.S. workers.
    • White House adviser Stephen Miller says that this temporary ban will become permanent as part of a bigger strategy to reduce immigration.
    • Specifically Miller wants to stop family-based migration. Just another way this administration finds to separate families.
  1. Betsy DeVos orders higher education institutions to withhold emergency funds from DACA recipients.
  2. The CARES Act blocks relief aid not only to tax-paying immigrants with no legal status, but also to U.S. citizens who are married to a non-citizen and file joint tax returns using a TIN instead of an SSN.
    • California Governor Gavin Newsom establishes a relief fund for migrants and authorizes payments of up to $500 for workers denied aid by the administration due to their legal status.
    • A man sues Trump for discriminating against Americans who are married to immigrants.
  1. The Trump administration is rewriting parts of the ACA to get rid of protections for LGBTQ patients against discrimination by health workers and staff.
  2. A judge orders the swift release of migrant minors still being held in detention centers partly because the continued detention violates the Flores Agreement and partly because congregate living (like detention centers) are hotbeds of coronavirus outbreaks.

Climate/Environment:

  1. Oklahoma, Louisiana, and Texas get hit by flooding and a series of tornadoes that kill at least seven people, destroy several homes, and leave thousands without power.
  2. The Supreme Court rules against the Trump administration’s interpretation of the Clean Water Act, ruling that a wastewater treatment plant in Hawaii can’t pollute nearby waterways. The Trump administration had been arguing that there was a loophole in the act that allows them to get around the rule. The plant wanted to discharge the pollutants into groundwater.
  3. And by the way, Happy Earth Day.

Budget/Economy:

  1. The demand for food assistance from food banks has soared, but the USDA let tons of food rot instead of rapidly reconfiguring the supply chain to redirect the food to federal programs. Farmers lost their typical markets with the shutdown of restaurants and other institutions, but the USDA took more than a month to start buying up extra produce.
  2. Even though Europe lost jobs during their shutdowns, jobs haven’t disappeared. That’s because the governments are paying a percentage of lost wages. They also aren’t losing healthcare coverage because they have national health services.
  3. Another 4.4 million Americans filed jobless claims last week. Over the past five weeks, 26 million people have filed new claims.
  4. The Fed warns large companies not to apply for the Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) loans under the Small Business Administration. A few large companies were awarded those loans already, but some announce they’ll return the loans.
  5. The Senate passes another relief bill to provide $484 billion for things like expanding aid to small businesses and more money for hospitals and testing. This replenishes the PPP, which ran out of money last week.
  6. Some retailers and grocers increase worker pay by a few dollars an hour to make up for the risk they’re taking by being in public every day.
  7. Oil prices continue to tank after hitting $0.00 earlier in the week. Oil prices were still recovering following the oil glut caused by the Russia/Saudi pissing match.
  8. Workers in more than half of U.S. states will receive more in unemployment benefits under the CARES Act than they would through wages if they continued working. In only 15 states are wages the same or more than the relief amount.
  9. Trump signs a new $500 billion relief bill into law, but pushes back against funding the United States Postal Service unless it raises its shipping rates 4 times (so that package you’d normally send for $8 would be $32, if Trump has his way).
    • The USPS expects to run out of funds in September.
    • Congress approved a $10 billion line of credit for the USPS earlier this month.
  1. Global economist and Nobel prize winner Joseph Stiglitz says the U.S. handling of the coronavirus crisis makes us look like a third-world country.
  2. While governors are requesting federal aid with their economic shortfalls as a result of the pandemic closures, Senator Mitch McConnell says they should just declare bankruptcy. In doing so, he drops a dog-whistle to the pension trope, indicating that he’s referring to Democratic states like CA, IL, and NY.
    • States don’t currently have the ability to declare bankruptcy.
    • Republican Rep. Peter King responds:

To say that it is ‘free money’ to provide funds for cops, firefighters and healthcare workers makes McConnell the Marie Antoinette of the Senate.”

    • New York Governor Andrew Cuomo isn’t having any of that either:

New York state puts much more money into the federal pot than it takes out. Okay? At the end of the year, we put into that federal pot $116 billion more than we take out. Okay? His state, the state of Kentucky, takes out $148 billion more than they put in. Okay?… Senator McConnell, who’s getting bailed out here? It’s your state that is living on the money that we generate. Your state is getting bailed out. Not my state.”

  1. The Trump Organization requests rent release from the Trump administration for the Trump International Hotel.

Elections:

  1. Republicans believe that Trump’s erratic handling of the coronavirus pandemic along with his rambling press briefings are behind his low polling numbers. GOP Senators in Arizona, Colorado, North Carolina and Maine who tied their boat to Trump are also trailing in polls. His recent comments about disinfectant and UV light were a breaking point for many.
  2. Politico obtains a memo sent out by the National Republican Senatorial Committee to GOP campaigns. The memo urges candidates to blame their opponents for not being tough on China, to reject the notion that calling the coronavirus the “Chinese virus” is racist, and to blame the virus on China. You can read it in its entirety.
  3. Unsurprisingly, prominent scientists and climate experts endorse Joe Biden for president.

Miscellaneous:

  1. It’s now legal in New York to get married via Zoom.
  2. When a reporter reminds Trump that he held campaign rallies and February and March, Trump responds by saying he hasn’t left the White House in months. I’m not sure he fully understands public records.

Polls:

  1. Voters trust their own governors more than Trump to determine when and how to reopen businesses.
  2. 54% of Americans rate Trump’s response to the pandemic as poor.
  3. 61% of Americans support stay-at-home orders as well as other efforts to slow the spread.
  4. 70% say the top priority should be slowing the spread, even with the economic pain.
  5. 60% say Trump isn’t listening to the experts closely enough.

Week 169 in Trump

Posted on May 21, 2020 in Politics, Trump

(Photo: Cagle Cartoons)

This is the week that the president of the United States incited his base to get out and protest his own guidelines for social distancing. Who does that? Someone who says one thing and means another. “Be safe out there [wink, wink] but go gather in groups, get close, and don’t wear masks. And oh, yeah… bring your guns.” We’re more than a month into the shutdown, and the White House still has no clear, coherent strategy to contain the virus and reopen the economy and get us out of this in one piece.

Here’s what happened in politics during the week ending April 19…

Shootings This Week:

  1. There were 4 mass shootings in the U.S. this week (defined as killing and/or injuring 4 or more people). Shooters kill 5 people and injure 12 more.
  2. A gunman in a small town in Nova Scotia, Canada kills at least 22 people, including a Mountie. He also injures at least 3. The rampage started when the shooter got in a fight with his girlfriend.
  3. March was the first March since 2002 without a school shooting in the U.S.

Russia:

  1. The World Health Organization calls the massive amount of disinformation being spread about the coronavirus pandemic an “infodemic.” One big player in this, according to analysts, is Putin. For more than a decade, his agents have blamed outbreaks, epidemics, and pandemics on American scientists and have undermined trust in vaccines.
    • The State Department accuses Russia of spreading the infodemic using thousands of social media accounts.
    • Please make sure you’re getting your information from reliable sources. Your life—all our lives—depends on it.
  1. A federal judge denies Roger Stone’s request for a new trial.
  2. Michael Cohen might be released on house arrest due to the COVID-19 crisis in congregate living spaces like prisons.

Courts/Justice:

  1. The Supreme Court will hear all cases in May over teleconference. Finally we’ll have live audio of Supreme Court shenanigans.
  2. The Senate will pause confirmation of judicial appointments until the pandemic subsides.

Coronavirus:

  1. Trump puts a 90-day hold on U.S. payments to the World Health Organization pending review after he criticizes their response to the pandemic and accuses them of being too favorable to China. He accuses the WHO of pushing disinformation from China.
    • The U.S. is the WHO’s biggest funder.
    • The WHO says China has been transparent and open.
    • Experts warn that this will be devastating for worldwide polio eradication efforts. Even Trump’s own officials warn against cutting funding to the WHO.
    • The CDC’s Robert Redfield says the CDC will continue to work with the WHO.
    • House Democrats say that the pause in funding for the WHO is illegal just like stopping aid approved by Congress to Ukraine was.
    • Remember on February 24th when Trump said what a great job the WHO was doing? That was before he needed a scapegoat. Here’s a good timeline of events regarding Trump and the WHO.
    • More than a dozen U.S. health experts and researchers working at the WHO kept the Trump administration informed about the discovery and spread of the coronavirus as it was happening in Wuhan, China.
    • Ireland quadruples its contribution to the WHO after Trump’s announcement.
  1. The Trump administration shifts priorities from fighting the pandemic to reopening the economy.
  2. Trump continues to take advice on this from Fox News anchors, most notably Laura Ingraham. Ingraham also urged Trump to push hydroxychloroquine as a cure, against the advice of medical experts and the FDA.
    • A chloroquine trial in Brazil is halted after heart complications appear in patients.
    • The CIA felt it necessary to warn its employees against taking hydroxychloroquine unless prescribed by a doctor.
  1. The federal government pledges up to $483 million to Moderna to speed up the creation of a COVID-19 vaccine.
  2. Trump declared a national emergency one month ago and announced several public-private partnerships. Here are the promises fulfilled and unfulfilled:
    • Target didn’t partner with the government to open testing sites; Walmart opened two; Walgreens opened two; and CVS opened one.
    • The Google project to coordinate and direct screening and testing online wasn’t a Google project and only started up in a few California counties. Google’s sister company, Verily, has six testing sites coordinating with California’s state government.
    • Apple did release a screening tool in coordination with the CDC, but it doesn’t do what was promised.
    • The home testing promised through a partnership with LHC Group didn’t happen. The company is focused on obtaining personal protective equipment instead.
    • The government did waive interest on student loans from government agencies.
    • Trump waived health regulations to allow healthcare providers more flexibility to respond to the pandemic.
    • Trump promised to waive state medical licensing to allow medical personnel to work across state lines, but as it turns out he doesn’t have the authority.
    • Trump promised to purchase “at a very good price” large quantities of oil for storage in the strategic reserve. Congress didn’t fund it.
    • He promised an additional 1.4 million tests within a week and 5 million within a month, though he doubted we’d need that many. Roche and Thermo Fisher Scientific were able to distribute millions of tests. But these are the lab tests that analyze samples; the hold up was that we didn’t have enough kits to collect the samples.
    • Leaders of diagnostic testing labs, like Quest and LabCorp, requested three things from the government to get their testing up to speed: funds for facilities, prioritization of who to test, and supply chain support. They still haven’t received those.
  1. Dr. Birx says that several of our testing labs are still only operating at 10% of their capacity and that the government doesn’t know where all the labs and testing machines are located.
  2. Tump holds his longest coronavirus press briefing so far, at nearly two and a half hours. In the middle of it, he runs a campaign ad about his handling of the pandemic (which violates election rules).
  3. Taking a page from previous presidents facing a crisis, California Governor Gavin Newsom calls on the experience of the four living former CA governors: Pete Wilson, Gray Davis, Arnold Schwarzenegger, and Jerry Brown. They’re part of an 80-member task force to help bring the state back toward economic growth and recovery. The group brings a very mixed bag of backgrounds and political ideologies.
  4. The WHO warns that they haven’t seen any evidence yet that having antibodies to the coronavirus makes you immune to it. Antibody tests are still not that reliable.
  5. Here are a few predictions for how the pandemic will look over the next year:
    • States will end the lockdowns, but not at the same time and in a halting manner as we adjust for more or fewer cases.
    • We still don’t now how immunity will work or when there will be a vaccine.
    • We’re likely to have treatment before a vaccine, and keeping the virus in check will rely on testing and contact tracing. We need to triple our testing.
  1. An average of 146,000 people in the U.S. has been tested per day so far this month.
  2. Germany announces a goal of testing every resident for antibodies.
  3. Jobs traditionally held by women have been deemed the most essential during the pandemic.
  4. Coronavirus cases are starting to plateau in some big cities, but they’re just starting to pick up in more rural areas. Some are seeing increases of 53% (Oklahoma) to 205% (South Dakota).
  5. Clinical trials in Chicago for the anti-viral drug Remdesivir are showing promise, but nothing concrete yet.
  6. The FDA authorizes a saliva test out of Rutgers University to check for the coronavirus.

Shortages:


  1. Trump offers to donate ventilators to Russia, which they say they’ll accept if they need them. Russia previously loaned us equipment. The administration also offers help to Italy, Spain, and France.
  2. By waiting so long to stock up on protective and medical equipment, the Trump administration is paying a higher price for each item. N95 masks are now eight times more expensive than they were in January and February. They’ve also entered agreements with questionable companies, like Panthera Worldwide LLC, which hasn’t had an employee since May 2018 and has no history of procuring medical equipment.
  3. Hospitals begin to experience ventilator shortages. 70% of healthcare facilities report a shortage of drugs for treating coronavirus symptoms.
  4. Senior government officials say that when Jared Kushner was given the responsibility of acquiring medical equipment, he overlooked smaller companies that have a track record of meeting emergency needs. Instead, he tapped his friends to help out, favoring larger corporations and costing weeks in response time.
  5. Trump moves to assert more control over HHS Secretary Alex Azar by installing former Trump campaign aide Michael Caputo in a communication role in the department. Trump and Azar have clashed from the beginning over the pandemic.
  6. Trump might be discouraging mask use by the general public, but the NSC secures a personal stash of 3,600 masks for the White House staff to use.

Exposures:

  1. 

African Americans and Latinos are dying from COVID-19 at much higher rates than their white counterparts, and African Americans are coming down with the disease at roughly twice the rate of white Americans. There are many contributing factors, including lack of access to healthcare, working in essential jobs, living with multiple generations in one house, lack of paid sick leave, and lack of trust in the medical profession.
  2. One of the biggest outbreaks now in the U.S is in Sioux Falls, South Dakota, where workers at a Smithfield meat processing plant are testing positive. Many of the workers are immigrants or refugees and don’t advocate for themselves, and the story is only coming out now because of a grad student who is the child of a couple who works there.
    • Union representatives say that Smithfield ignored their requests for PPE and they encouraged sick workers to continue coming in. They implemented temperature testing for workers coming on to their shifts but allowed workers with a fever to work.
    • Workers are forced to make a choice between putting their health at risk by coming into work or not being able to pay their bills. They begin quarantining themselves from family to keep them safe and bringing in their own masks.
    • People who are here on visas can’t quit because they’re afraid to apply for unemployment under Trump’s new immigration rules about public assistance. And people who live with a non-citizen aren’t eligible for CARES Act relief.
    • Workers found out about the high number of cases from news reports, not from company management.
    • Smithfield finally closes the plant this week, with 644 confirmed cases related to the plant. At least one has died. They closed for three days last week.
    • Smithfield accounts for half the cases in South Dakota.
    • Instead of issuing a stay at home order, as requested by the Sioux Falls Mayor, Governor Kristi Noem approves tests for hydroxychloroquine in the state.
  1. A JBS meat processing plant in Minnesota just across the border from South Dakota has 19 confirmed cases so far.
  2. On top of meatpacking plants, workers in food warehouses and grocery stores are also getting sick. More than 40 grocery workers have died from COVID-19 so far.
  3. Nearly 7,000 COVID-19 deaths are traceable to nursing homes, either through people who live there or people who work there. Even with facilities locked down and visitors banned, it’s not controlled.

Closures:

  1. Last week, the CDC and FEMA issued recommendations for a phased reopening of the economy, with instructions for schools, child-care, camps, parks, religious organizations, and restaurants. This week, Trump and Dr. Deborah Birx release the official guidelines, with much of the CDC’s recommendations ignored. Their recommendations are more vague than the CDC’s and include no testing strategy or requirements.
    • So far, the U.S. has tested about 3.3 million people or around 1% of our population.
    • Experts say we need to incorporate contact tracing with testing. South Korea and Singapore have been successful in mitigating the pandemic by finding and isolating infected people and who they’ve been in contact with. It requires a huge number of health workers to do contact tracing.
    • Trump isn’t enthusiastic about testing, calling it “interesting.” He also told governors to develop their own state contact tracing programs.
  1. The Trump administration guidelines to a phased approach to opening require a state to have a 14-day decrease in new cases and robust testing for healthcare workers and hospitals to have enough supplies to handle a crisis before moving to the first phase.
    • In phase one, states can open larger venues like theaters, churches, ballparks, and arenas, but smaller venues like schools and bars stay closed. Social distancing is still in place, and workers should come back to work in waves. People should continue to maintain physical distance and not gather in groups of more than 10 when they can’t be distant. People with compromised health should remain at home.
    • In phase two, nonessential travel resumes, but vulnerable individuals still stay home. Telework should continue where possible, and common areas in workplaces should stay closed. Schools and bars can open carefully.
    • In phase three, visits to nursing homes and hospitals can resume, vulnerable individuals can go out with precautions, and keep washing your hands! People should still minimize time spent in crowds.
  1. Trump says it’s the president’s decision whether or not to open the states back up, not the governors’. He says he has “total authority.” But the governors were the ones who instituted the stay at home orders, and Trump has also said he’s only playing backup to the governors.
    • The next day he reverses course and says he’s fine with them making their own decisions.
  1. Governors create regional coalitions to determine how best to re-open in each area. So far the Northeastern states have banded together, the Pacific states have a coalition, and seven Midwestern states are coordinating on reopening.
  2. Governors say they can’t start re-opening until they get more test swabs (health experts say we need to triple our testing before we can re-open). Trump defends our testing capacity but also promises to increase production by over 20 million per month (for context, if we produce 20 million swabs a month, we wouldn’t be able to test everyone in the U.S. until the end of summer 2021.
  3. These states still don’t have statewide stay at home orders: Arkansas, Iowa, Nebraska, North Dakota, South Dakota, Utah, and Wyoming. But to be clear, most do have some restrictions in place and schools are closed.
  4. Local officials in South Dakota urge Governor Kristi Noem to declare a public health emergency. The declaration would bring in federal funding set aside for coronavirus aid. Noem has left decisions completely up to cities and counties in the state, though she still won’t let Sioux Fall’s mayor implement a stay at home order.
  5. Florida opens its beaches, and within minutes of opening, they are crowded with beachgoers. Governor DeSantis urges people to stay six feet away from each other and to avoid gathering.
  6. A federal judge rules that Kansas can’t limit religious gatherings. I could understand this if the governor was ONLY limiting religious gatherings, but she’s limiting ALL gatherings. 80 cases and six deaths in Kansas trace back to religious gatherings.
  7. Dr. Fauci says that May 1 is overly optimistic for reopening, and that it will result in an increase in cases especially since we don’t have adequate testing and tracing in place. Several states have pushed their reopening date back to the middle of May.

Protests:

  1. Anti-lockdown protests erupt across the county. Protestors largely ignore social distancing guidelines and many don’t wear masks. In an apparent misunderstanding of how infectious disease spreads, they argue that you should quarantine sick people and let healthy people roam free.
  2. Trump goads the protestors on by tweeting and retweeting calls to “LIBERATE” certain states, openly encouraging the protests while at the same time issuing guidance that wouldn’t allow states to open up and calling for social distancing rules. He not only encourages protestors to liberate Virginia but to protect their Second Amendment rights.
    • Governors criticize Trump for encouraging illegal and dangerous acts that would worsen the spread of the coronavirus and reverse the results of the shutdowns.
    • Fox News not only urges the protestors on but highlights individual organizers on their shows. Looking at the timing of Trump’s tweets, they appear to align with Fox News segments.
    • It’s notable that more people died of COVID-19 on the day of the protests than actually showed up to protest. The vast majority of the American public thinks we should maintain social distancing practices.
  1. The protests turn out to be staged by far-right groups. They primarily protest Democratic governors, even though Republican governors have instituted the same kind of closures.
    • Three far-right, pro-gun activists from the Midwest are behind several of these protests. The purpose of the groups these guys run is to discredit groups like the NRA for being too compromising on gun safety. And they run groups based all across the country.
    • The protests draw militia groups, like the Three Percenters, and hate groups, like the Proud Boys. It’s a wild mix of hate groups, militia groups, anti-vaxxers, and religious fundamentalists, along with a few citizens who are just tired of the shutdown and were spurred on by these groups to join in.
    • Even some Republican state lawmakers participate in the protests.

Numbers:

  1. The Navajo Nation now has over 1,000 cases and 41 deaths. They make up a disproportionate number of deaths in their states.
  2. New York’s death toll passes 10,000 people. They adjust their numbers to start including presumed cases, which causes a spike in U.S. death numbers.
  3. Here are the numbers by the end of the week:
    • 735,086 people in the U.S. are infected so far (that we know of), with 32,922 deaths, up from 529,951 infections and 20,608 deaths last week.
    • 2,278,484 people worldwide have been infected, with 162,447 deaths, up from 1,734,868 infections and 109,916 deaths last week.

Healthcare:

  1. A federal appeals court allows medical abortions (those performed by ingesting pills) in Texas. State officials have been trying to ban the procedure during the pandemic by calling it non-essential.
  2. The same court rules that pregnant women who are near the cutoff for being able to have an abortion can get one.
  3. A federal judge blocks an Arkansas order to suspend surgical abortions during the pandemic. Same for Alabama’s attempt to halt abortions. In Alabama’s case, the judge says that choice is between a provider and a patient.

International:

  1. More than 2,000 protestors in Israel keep their social distance (6 feet apart) while protesting Benjamin Netanyahu and what they consider his eroding of democracy. Police and organizers mark off 6-feet distances so protestors know where to stand.
  2. Mark Green, the administrator of the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) resigns, and on his way out, he says that foreign assistance is important, especially in times of challenge, and we need those tools and that leadership. He adds that he’s aiming his message at all of us, but especially at the Republican Party, of which he is a member.
    • USAID strengthens health systems, farming systems, and democracy abroad.

Legislation/Congress:

  1. Trump threatens to adjourn the House and Senate if the Senate doesn’t confirm his nominees for various openings in his administration. No president has ever done this.

Border Wall/Shutdown/National Emergency:

  1. Last year, smugglers sawed through new sections of Trump’s border wall 18 times in one month.

Travel Ban/Immigration/Discrimination:

  1. Franklin Graham says he’s being harassed because he’s forcing workers at his New York field hospital to sign a pledge saying they’re Christian and they oppose same-sex marriage.
  2. Mt. Sinai Health Systems, which is teaming up with Graham, says they’ll then force the same workers to sign a pledge that they won’t discriminate against patients.

Climate:

  1. Fires have been burning inside the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone, raising radiation levels to 16 times normal. Russian authorities arrest a 27-year-old man for arson. The fires destroyed several tourist sites and abandoned villages.
  2. The South gets hit with violent storms, with tornadoes, flash floods, and hail. At least 34 people die and 16 states report power outages.
  3. A judge cancels a permit required for the Keystone XL oil pipeline, putting another wrench in its completion. The permit was halted for environmental review of the effects on endangered species.
  4. Virginia becomes the first southern state to enact a 100% clean energy law. The two utility companies must be 100% carbon-free by 2050, and nearly all coal-powered plants are to close by 2025.
  5. The EPA moves to weaken regulations on mercury and other pollutants put out by oil and coal plants.

Budget/Economy:

  1. Economists predict the U.S. debt will exceed the GDP this fiscal year for the first time since WWII.
  2. China’s economy shrank by 6.8% for the first quarter this year compared to the first quarter last year. This was their first decline since they started keeping records. They’ve reopened factories and people are getting back to work, but with closures continuing around the world, they should still see limited improvements this quarter.
  3. Employment dropped by over 700,000 jobs in March, and the unemployment rate rose to 4.4%. Retail sales dropped 8.7%, the biggest drop on record.
  4. Oil prices crash to below $0.00 a barrel. Even though Russia and OPEC agreed to a deal to temporarily halt their oil wars, the glut is too much to be quickly reabsorbed by demand.
  5. We’ve already gone through most of the stimulus package funds for small businesses.
  6. People start receiving their stimulus money. Most are spending it on food and gas.
  7. The lines for food banks in the U.S. continue to grow as people needing food assistance has more than doubled in places.
  8. The Trump administration is working on ways to cut wages for migrant workers who are here on guest-worker visas. At the same time, the administration is giving coronavirus relief aid to the farmers who employ them.
  9. Trump threatens to veto the $2 trillion relief package if it includes any funding for the United States Postal Service. Like Congress isn’t having enough trouble reconciling their differences in this bill. The USPS warns it’ll run out of cash in September.
  10. Republicans added a provision to the coronavirus relief package passed last month that removes the limit on how much a pass-through business owner can deduct against non-business income. This will cost taxpayers about $90 billion, but it’ll save millionaires billions, thank God.
  11. Trump announces the formation of the Great American Economic Revival Recovery Groups, coalitions of industry leaders to help plan a great economic recovery. Some members say they’ve been on one phone call so far, and otherwise it’s mostly been dormant and there’s no mechanism to send in ideas. Several of the people he listed haven’t confirmed they’ll participate and some are nervous about tying their names and companies to Trump.
    • After granting the WWE “essential business” status, Trump names the chair, Vince McMahon, to one of these advisory groups.
  1. The trade war with China hits home as new export restrictions hold up U.S. orders for PPE and other equipment.

Elections:

  1. Elizabeth Warren endorses Joe Biden for president, saying that empathy matters and that he can help restore Americans’ faith in good government.
  2. Bernie Sanders also endorses Biden and tells his supporters that refusing to back Biden is irresponsible.
  3. Biden announces a series of task forces on healthcare, education, the economy, climate change, criminal justice reform, and immigration to develop a party platform that can unify the left.
  4. After the GOP forced Wisconsin’s primaries to go ahead in the age of COVID-19, Jill Karofsky, a liberal challenger to a sitting conservative judge, wins a seat on the state’s Supreme Court.
  5. Top Republicans report that Trump’s campaign secretly pays his son’s significant others (Lara Trump and Kimberly Guilfoyle) $15,000 per month each through the campaign manager’s private company.
  6. Biden releases a healthcare policy that indicates he’s willing to move closer to Sanders on Medicare for All.
  7. The Treasury orders that Trump’s name be printed on all the stimulus checks going out to American citizens, marking the first time a president’s name appears on an IRS payment.
    • Why is this under Elections? Because it’s a blatant move to put Trump’s name on something good and improve his chances of re-election.
    • Trump originally wanted to sign each check. As it is, IRS officials say adding his name could delay the checks, but others dispute that.
    • The IRS refused to comply with a similar request giving George W. Bush credit for the economic rebates in 2001. They refused because they’re supposed to be non-partisan.
  1. Republicans think that blaming China for the pandemic is a winning strategy going into the elections, but they can’t keep Trump on message. It’s a double-edged sword since we’re also reliant on China for medical devices.
  2. A Texas judge rules that the state must allow any registered voter who’s worried about the coronavirus register to vote by mail.
  3. Maryland will send all voters ballots to vote by mail, complete with postage paid, for the June primary.

Miscellaneous:

  1. SNL Comedian Michael Che’s grandmother dies from COVID-19, and to honor her, he pays the rent for all 160 units in the housing authority apartment building where she once lived.
  2. Sean “Diddy” Combs holds a dance-a-thon fundraiser that brings in over $4 million for healthcare workers.
  3. Trump says he didn’t pick Mitt Romney to be part of a bipartisan task force to reopen the country because he still holds a grudge against him and he doesn’t really want his advice. All Senate Republicans except Romney are on the task force.
  4. Car crashes are down by 60% since the coronavirus lockdowns were implemented, and we’ve saved over $1 trillion in taxpayer dollars because of it.

Polls:

  1. 65% of Americans say Trump was too slow to take action to fight the coronavirus pandemic.
  2. 66% are worried that restrictions will be lifted too quickly.
  3. 73% think the worst is yet to come with the pandemic.
  4. 52% of Republicans think it’s not OK for elected officials to criticize Trump’s response.

Week 168 in Trump

Posted on May 8, 2020 in Politics, Trump

Around the beginning of March, while expressing understanding of the severity of the pandemic, Trump also downplayed it by tweeting, “So last year 37,000 Americans died from the common Flu. It averages between 27,000 and 70,000 per year. Nothing is shut down, life & the economy go on. At this moment there are 546 confirmed cases of CoronaVirus, with 22 deaths. Think about that!”

No. Think about this. Already we’re up to 20,608 deaths in less than two months, and that only includes confirmed COVID-19 cases. Those flu numbers are estimates based on post-season data (so confirmed PLUS estimated cases). We haven’t even hit the worst of it. This is not the flu.

Here’s what happened in politics during the week ending April 12…

Shootings This Week:

  1. There were 6 mass shootings in the U.S. this week (defined as killing and/or injuring 4 or more people). Shooters kill 2 people and injure 24 more.

Legal Fallout:

  1. After being criticized by members of both parties for firing Intelligence Community Inspector General Michael Atkinson, Trump says Atkinson did a terrible job and gave a fake report to Congress, referring to the whistleblower account of Trump’s phone call with Ukrainian President Zelensky.
  2. Both Democratic and Republican Senators request a more comprehensive explanation from the White House of Trump’s firing of Atkinson.
  3. Two weeks ago, Atkinson told Senator Chuck Schumer that the past six months have been “a searing time for whistleblowers.”
  4. The Trump family was hoping to move a lawsuit against them into arbitration after trying to get a racketeering claim dismissed. The lawsuit stems from the Trumps using their name to promote a multi-level marketing scheme.

Coronavirus:

  1. Remember how last week Acting Navy Secretary Thomas Modly reassigned Captain Brett Crozier of the USS Teddy Roosevelt for raising alarms about the coronavirus infections on board? Well, this week, Modly resigns amid calls from military and laypeople alike for Crozier’s reinstatement.
    • Trump blames Crozier for infecting his crew by making a port stop in Vietnam, even though that type of visit would’ve needed to be negotiated at a higher level than Crozier in the DOD.
    • Nearly 600 sailors from the ship test positive by the end of the week, the investigation is complete, and the Navy considers reinstating Crozier.
  1. The latest modeling suggests there will be just over 80,000 deaths in the U.S. in the first four months of the pandemic. That’s down from the previous modeling, but up from the numbers the White House has been quoting.
    • The modeling also predicts we won’t need so many hospital beds or so much medical equipment.
    • Dr. Fauci says the numbers are looking better because of the preventative measures we’ve taken. Attorney General William Barr says those measures are draconian.
  1. States request the ability to use their Medicaid funds more freely to expand medical services in response to the coronavirus. The federal government hasn’t acted on it yet.
  2. Doctors see significant heart problems on top of the lung issues associated with COVID-19. Patients are dying of cardiac arrest, some without having any of the expected breathing problems.
  3. Trump continues with the misleading and false statements in his coronavirus briefings, which are supposed to be making us a more informed public.
    • He disputes the findings of a Department of Health and Human Services Inspector General report outlining the supply and equipment shortages many of our hospitals are facing. Trump says the report is politically motivated, though it came out of his own administration. He calls it a “fake dossier.”
    • Trump blames the slow start of coronavirus testing on obsolete tests. The contaminated tests were created in early 2020, so they’re not obsolete.
    • He says that passengers are being tested before they get onto airplanes, but there’s no evidence of that kind of testing.
    • Trump criticizes what he calls Obama’s slow handling of the H1N1 pandemic, saying they didn’t even know about it and that 17,000 people died. The CDC estimates that 12,469 people died in the first year of H1N1, but the range does go up to 18,000. So 17,000 is possible but not likely.
    • Here’s a timeline of Obama’s response to H1N1:
      • Less than two weeks after the first case is confirmed, he declared a public health emergency.
      • Two days later, he requested $1.5 billion. Congress gave him $7.7 billion. The FDA approved the CDC’s test at that time as well.
      • Three days after that, the CDC distributes tests in the U.S. and abroad.
      • He declared a national emergency in October to prepare for the potential surge of H1N1 patients during the fall flu season.
      • There was a vaccine by October, but there were delays in distributing it.
    • Trump calls the pandemic a plague, but says there’s a light at the end of the tunnel… on a day when a record number in the U.S. die from COVID-19. And on a day that’s not even going to be the worst.
    • Trump says he never saw the memos written by top advisor Peter Navarro way back in January warning that the coronavirus outbreak was likely to become a full-blown pandemic, threatening the health of millions of Americans and threatening the U.S. economy. The memos are pretty spot-on and explicit about what could happen and what needed to be done.
  1. Trump criticizes the WHO for not having treated the pandemic aggressively enough and announces he’s putting a “very powerful hold” on U.S. funding to the WHO. But then he says he won’t do it.
    • The WHO directly responds to Trump’s criticisms. The Director-General asks Trump not to politicize the pandemic and to work together with the rest of the world to stop it. Trump hasn’t bothered to replace U.S. leadership positions at the WHO, so we don’t really even have a seat at that table anymore.
    • The Director-General has walked a fine line, complimenting both China and the U.S. probably because they’re the biggest funders of the agency.
    • The WHO says it activated its Incident Management Support Team on New Year’s Day, just a day after a cluster of cases was publicized in Wuhan, China. Five days later, it notified all member countries. Five days after that, it issued comprehensive guidance to all countries. It raised its highest level of alarm by late January.
  1. Massachusetts hospitals receive approval to launch the first U.S. tests for the anti-viral drug Favipiravir. The drug is used in Japan to treat the flu and other viral infections.
  2. Trade adviser Peter Navarro disagrees with Dr. Fauci on the use of hydroxychloroquine to treat COVID-19 patients and they have a heated disagreement in the Situation Room over it. He supports his qualifications by saying he’s a “social scientist.”
    • Trump and his family trusts hold shares in a company that produces Plaquenil, the brand-name version of hydroxychloroquine.
    • This kind of overconfident thinking is precisely why we’re in the position we’re in. We might think we know more than the experts, but we don’t. We just don’t.
    • But hey, Rudy Giuliani and Dr. Oz both think it works, so…
  1. A doctor at a nursing home in Texas gives hydroxychloroquine to dozens of his elderly COVID-19 patients. The FDA hasn’t approved this treatment.
  2. The CDC removes their dosing recommendations for hydroxychloroquine and replaces them with this: There are no drugs or other therapeutics approved by the US Food and Drug Administration to prevent or treat COVID-19.”
  3. Representative David Perdue (R-GA) joins the ranks of lawmakers who made suspicious trades after being briefed on the spread of the coronavirus.
  4. FoxNews spent a few weeks downplaying the seriousness of the coronavirus and saying Democrats were overhyping it to hurt Trump. They said closing down the economy would be worse than the disease. Then they said that there aren’t really that many people dying from it because people who are dying from other issues are being listed as COVID-19 deaths. (Aha! I’ve been wondering where that talking point came from.)
    • According to Dr. Deborah Birx, “So those individuals will have an underlying condition, but that underlying condition did not cause their acute death when it’s related to a COVID infection.”
    • Dr. Anthony Fauci warns against believing and spreading these “conspiracy theories.”
  1. Prisoners riot in the Lansing Correctional Facility in Kansas because they don’t feel like they’re getting the COVID-19 medical care they need.
  2. After refusing to allow top health officials to discuss the pandemic on CNN for several days, Pence allows the CDC’s Robert Redfield and Dr. Fauci to appear on news shows. It turns out that Pence was doing it to twist CNN’s arm so they would start airing Trump’s coronavirus briefings again.
    • CNN and a few other media outlets stopped airing the briefings because they were too long and too full of misinformation.
    • Even the Wall Street Journal editorial board, which has been supportive of Trump, criticizes his coronavirus briefings for becoming more about him and his war with the press than about educating the public about the national emergency.
  1. The Cathedral of St. John the Divine in New York is set up as a popup field hospital to handle overflow, but the latest projection shows that those beds might not be needed.
  2. Some ER doctors have their hours, pay, and benefits cut as hospitals have less revenue. Medical workers are even being furloughed.
    • Most elective surgeries have been suspended, and those tend to be more lucrative.
    • When the patients who come to the ER are in the hospital for longer stays with more intensive care, it cuts down on the number of patients they can accommodate.
    • Hospitals are redirecting resources to care for COVID-19 patients.
    • So it’s not that hospitals are empty, they just aren’t making as much money.
  1. People are afraid to get treated for COVID-19 because of concerns about the costs of care. Some people have even been getting charged for testing, which is supposed to be free.
  2. The FDA orders InfoWars’ Alex Jones to stop selling coronavirus remedies that don’t work. He’s been claiming that some of the products sponsored by his show—like toothpaste, mouthwash, and colloidal silver—can kill the virus. He later takes some of those products off his site.
  3. New York and New Jersey both hit one-day high numbers of deaths from coronavirus infections. They still predict their cases are plateauing in the two states. New York has more cases than Spain.
  4. Despite early travel restrictions, it took Trump six weeks from the time the first coronavirus case was identified in the U.S. to take aggressive action against the pandemic. Decisions were hampered by Trump’s mistrust of the experts, who he views as part of the Deep State, and by the administration trying to control the economic message.
    • In early January, the National Security Council office that tracks pandemics warned that the virus would spread through the U.S. and recommended school and work closures.
    • In the middle of February, public health experts again urged working from home and other social distancing measures. Unfortunately, that went public before it went to Trump, and the stock market dropped. So Trump replaced Alex Azar with Mike Pence to lead the coronavirus response. This caused health experts to avoid sending strong messages to Trump.
    • Trump avoided recommending social distancing until March.
    • At the end of January, trade adviser Peter Navarro warned of a potential half-million deaths and economic losses in the trillions.
    • When Alex Azar warned Trump on January 30 about the severity of the pandemic, Trump called him alarmist.
    • Trump did shut down travel from China at the end of January, though.
    • A plan to establish a surveillance system in five cities was delayed for weeks, as was effective testing.
    • One big hurdle is that the White House couldn’t agree on how to handle the response, with most advisers and cabinet members concerned over the economy.
  1. Four sources say that U.S. intelligence was warning of a contagion in Wuhan, China, back in November 2019 and issued a report on it. The Pentagon denies the existence of this report.
  2. Dr. Fauci confirms that Trump rebuffed health officials’ initial requests for social distancing and says that the slow response to the pandemic by the U.S. government cost lives. Afterward, Trump retweets a call to fire Fauci.
  3. Pence says that the CDC is going to loosen restrictions on self-isolation for people exposed to people with COVID-19 infections. If they are asymptomatic and have a normal temperature, they don’t have to self-isolate.

Shortages:

  1. After arguing that New York wouldn’t need anywhere close to the number of ventilators they requested, Trump says that the state might not have enough to treat all the patients who need them. Governor Cuomo says that if things keep going the way they are, they’ll run out next week.
  2. California Governor Gavin Newsom says he’s secured 200 million N95 respiratory and surgical masks per month, which California will share with other states. He doesn’t say where he’s getting them from.
  3. California lends 500 ventilators back to the national stockpile to be shared with four other states and two territories.
  4. The federal government ends support for coronavirus testing sites, leaving state and local governments to their own devices. Meanwhile, everyone who visits the White House gets a test that gives positive responses within 5 minutes and negative responses within 13 minutes.
  5. New York ramps up mass-grave burials for people who have no next of kin or whose families can’t afford a funeral.
  6. Several states, including Massachusetts, Kentucky, New York, and Colorado, accuse FEMA of commandeering their shipments of medical supplies and equipment. Just last week, Trump was pushing governors to obtain their own medical supplies and saying they were too slow.
  7. Hospitals and clinics also report that the Trump administration is seizing their orders for PPE and other equipment.
  8. Maryland Governor Larry Hogan (R) negotiated a deal with South Korea to obtain coronavirus tests with the help of his Korean American wife. They spent three weeks procuring 500,000 tests. Once he obtained the tests, he was so worried that the federal government would try to commandeer his shipment that he had the Maryland Army National Guard and state police officers escorting and guarding it.
  9. The Department of Health and Human Services placed its first order for N95 masks on March 12. More than seven weeks after our first known case and more than two weeks after our first known death. They ordered $4.8 million worth of masks.
  10. Private and public corporations partner with the White House and FEMA to secure the medical supplies of which we’re expecting shortages. They say that all the supplies they secure are going to the areas that need them, but it turns out that half of the supplies go to medical centers and the other half go to the corporations so they can turn around and sell them.
  11. Trump and Joe Biden have a phone conversation about the pandemic.

Exposures:

  1. Meatpacking plants across the country report employees with coronavirus infections. Some of the plants close temporarily, but others remain open.
    • In a Smithfield meat processing plant in Sioux Falls, SD, more than 190 employees have tested positive so far.
    • In a JBS SA beef facility in Colorado, up to 50 employees test positive with one death so far.
    • In a Cargill plant in Pennsylvania, there are 160 cases with one death so far.
  1. At least five grocery store employees have died from COVID-19, and several chains report positive tests among their employees. Some grocery companies are trying to get supermarket employees designated as first responders so they can qualify for priority testing and access to masks and gloves.
  2. Facilities that house groups of people, like prisons and nursing homes, become hotspots for coronavirus outbreaks. Nursing homes don’t have the facilities to handle all the bodies.
  3. The Navajo Nation sees a surge in cases, with 426 cases so far and 20 deaths. This is a reservation of 150,000 residents. They’re awaiting emergency funds from a $40 million relief package for Native Americans, none of which has been distributed yet.
  4. After being hospitalized over the weekend for COVID-19, U.K. Prime Minister Boris Johnson is moved to the ICU. He requires oxygen for breathing problems but is not on a ventilator. He’s released from ICU after three days, but he remains hospitalized until the end of the week.
  5. Folk Singer John Prine dies from complications from the coronavirus.
  6. Hundreds of American and Southwest airlines employees test positive for the coronavirus.
  7. Infection rates and deaths for African Americans are disproportionately higher than for white Americans, in part due to their mistrust of our medical system and to a medical system that treats black patients differently.
  8. Multiple cases of COVID-19 are traced back to a church conference in Kansas City.
  9. Several people in New York City are dying at home—up to 280 a day—making the number of COVID-19 deaths likely much higher than reported.
  10. Up to 150 members of Saudi Arabia’s royal family have been infected with the coronavirus.
  11. Several countries and New York see spikes in the daily death rates from COVID-19 this week. Spain has a few days of decreasing deaths, though.
  12. Doctors report a high number of false-negative results with the coronavirus tests.
  13. South Korea warns that people appear to be getting reinfected.

Closures:

  1. As Wuhan, China starts to loosen up its lockdown and reopen businesses and public transportation, locals worry that they’re not reporting the numbers correctly and it might be too soon.
  2. Cities and counties, following CDC guidelines, request that residents wear face coverings or masks when they go out in public, as an extra step to stop the spread of the coronavirus.
  3. South Carolina is the 42nd state to impose a stay-at-home order. And while they’re just beginning, other states extend their orders until the end of the month.
  4. Wyoming finally declares a state of emergency, the last state to do so.
  5. In Idaho, lawmakers and some law enforcement complain that the restrictions infringe on individual liberties.
  6. Jerry Falwell reopens his Liberty University and accuses two journalists who cover the opening with trespassing. He says there are warrants for the journalists’ arrest and that he’ll sue the New York Times and ProPublica.
  7. Trump pushes to reopen most of the country by May 1 to give the economy a chance to recover. Whether or not each state reopens and how they do it is up to the states, though Trump says it’s up to him. And then he says it’s up to governors.
  8. Trump says he’ll reopen the economy “based on a lot of facts and a lot of instincts.”
  9. Austria issues a plan to start reopening. The country had over 12,000 cases and 204 deaths.
  10. The WHO warns that lifting stay at home orders too early might spark a “deadly resurgence” of infections.
  11. At the same time, state and local governments start extending their “safer at home” orders as coronavirus cases continue to grow. Some also issue mandatory face mask requirements for workers and require employers to provide the masks.
  12. A plan to reopen the economy and continue to fight the pandemic emerges not from the federal government, but from a coalition of governors, former state officials, disease specialists, and nonprofits. The strategy is to ramp up testing, employ contact tracing to identify potential infections, and focus social restrictions on the infected and their contacts.
    • Experts also say states must have adequate resources at hospitals to treat COVID-19 patients, must be able to test everyone who’s symptomatic, and must see a 14-day decline in new cases.
  1. While most churches have moved services online, some continue to gather for worship services in defiance of social distancing orders. The courts have been mixed in supporting bans on religious gatherings. The DOJ indicates that they’ll take action against authorities who try to enforce bans on religious services.
  2. The GOP-led legislature in Kansas overturns the Democratic governor’s order that churches not hold gatherings.
  3. It’s not just churches in the U.S. defying limitations on public gatherings. Muslim clerics in Pakistan push their congregants to attend services at mosques.

Numbers:

  1. The world now has nearly 2,000,000 confirmed COVID-19 cases, and more than 100,000 people have died.
  2. China has its first day with no deaths from the coronavirus.
  3. New York has more COVID-19 cases than any country.
  4. Here are the numbers by the end of the week:
    • 529,951 people in the U.S. are infected so far (that we know of), with 20,608 deaths, up from 312,237 infections and 8,501 deaths last week.
    • 1,734,868 people worldwide have been infected, with 109,916 deaths, up from 1,133,758 infections and 62,784 deaths last week.

International:

  1. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo praises a new report from the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons’ Investigation and Identification Team, which finds that Syrian government forces under Bashar al-Assad were the responsible party for the chemical attacks against Syrian citizens in 2017. Pompeo says the Syrian government committed war crimes. Chemical warfare is prohibited under the Geneva Protocol. 

Travel Ban/Immigration/Discrimination:

  1. The Trump administration starts releasing undocumented migrant detainees who could be at a high risk of contracting the coronavirus. At least 19 detainees have tested positive, as have guards and medical workers at detention facilities.

Climate:

  1. Low atmospheric temperatures cause a large hole to open up in the ozone layer above the Arctic. It’s expected to close back down on its own. The hole is not related to curbed emissions from the COVID-19 lockdowns around the world.
  2. The Trump administration proposes opening 2.3 million acres of public lands to hunters and fishers in wildlife refuges.

Budget/Economy:

  1. Trump replaces the acting DOD inspector general, who would’ve led the group overseeing the spending of trillions of dollars in the relief package. Glenn Fine held that position since before Trump took office.
  2. Larry Kudlow says the small business rescue program is off to a bad start after the Small Business Administration becomes overwhelmed with all the requests for relief.
  3. Another 6.6 million workers filed unemployment claims for the first time last week. The total number of new filers for the past three weeks is 16 million.
  4. Even though Congress passed a new law guaranteeing sick pay for most people affected by the coronavirus shutdowns, the Trump administration issues a rule that lets small businesses choose whether to do so.
  5. Senate Democrats propose a bill to give essential workers additional hazard pay.
  6. On a call with business leaders, Trump says Ivanka created 14 million jobs, so that would be just under 10% of the workforce. It’s not clear where he got that number.
    • An advisory board she’s on says they helped create 6.5 million training opportunities, but not necessarily jobs.
    • The U.S. economy hasn’t even added half that many jobs during Trump’s term, even before COVID-19 cost us nearly 8 million jobs.
    • However, Ivanka does help make sure the interest rate for loans to small businesses under the small business relief program increases from 0.5% to 1% after bankers appealed to her personally.
  1. Whole Foods workers protest for gloves and masks, paid sick leave, and hazard pay.
  2. The International Labour Organization predicts the pandemic will wipe out 6.7% of workers’ hours this year, or the equivalent of 195 million jobs. More than 80% of workers are already affected.
  3. Economists estimate the unemployment rate to be around 12% or 13%.
  4. The Labor Department, whose job is to protect workers, limits the scope of worker assistance programs and is not working to protect workers from the current health risks. Labor Secretary Eugene Scalia thinks that unemployment insurance is too generous, so he’s restricted qualifications for unemployment and made it easier for businesses to not pay family leave benefits.
  5. The White House continues to reject relief aid for the United States Postal Service, going as far as to threaten to veto the $2 trillion relief bill if it includes anything for the USPS. Trump says the USPS should charge more, apparently misunderstanding “the public good.” The USPS employs around 600,000 people.
  6. Senator Josh Haley (R-MO) proposes that the U.S. government pay 80% of workers wages, similar to how several European countries are handling the economic crisis.
  7. Trump creates a second coronavirus task force focused on getting the economy back up and running.
  8. Farmers dump eggs and milk, and plow under vegetable crops, destroying tens of millions of tons of perfectly good food that they can’t sell because the supply chain has changed. The increase in food eaten at home isn’t enough to offset the food served at schools, businesses, and restaurants.
    • Weird. You’d think we’d be eating about the same. My guess is we’re wasting less.
    • Many are donating what they can to food banks.

Elections:

  1. As a cautionary action to help prevent the spread of the coronavirus, Wisconsin’s governor Tony Evers issues an executive order suspending in-person voting for the following day’s primary elections and extending the due date for mail-in ballots to June. As is becoming the norm, Republican legislators sue to stop it.
    • This is after the GOP shot down Evers’ proposal to postpone the vote and after they sued to cancel the extension for mail-in ballots.
    • The Supreme Court blocks a lower court’s decision to allow the extension.
    • The Wisconsin Supreme Court overturns Ever’s executive order.
    • So the vote goes on, with voters waiting in lines for more than 2 hours with their masks and social distance, and despite the state’s “stay at home” orders.
    • Wisconsin’s Speaker Robin Vos (R) defends the decision to hold elections, saying it’s incredibly safe to go out. He says this while wearing gloves, a mask, and a protective gown to work at a polling site.
    • The number of polling sites was reduced due to the number of mail-in ballots that were requested and due to the number of volunteers who back out citing health concerns. This led to bigger crowds and longer lines.
    • Voters who were interviewed felt they had to choose between their health and their right to vote. Keep an eye out for increasing Wisconsin coronavirus infections in the coming weeks.
  1. 72% of Americans support mail-in ballots for November if coronavirus isn’t contained by then. 79% of Democrats do and 65% of Republicans do.
    • Trump himself said that if we let everyone vote, there will never be a Republican president again. He always says the quiet part out loud. But the fact is absentee voters vote for both Democrats and Republicans.
    • Trump continues to make inaccurate claims about fraud involved with mail-in ballots, saying that fraud is rampant. When asked about his own mail-in vote recently in Florida, Trump says it’s OK for him to vote by mail. He also repeats his claims of voter fraud in California from 2016, though none has been found (he says that a Judicial Watch case proved it, but it just found inactive voters in the database, not fraudulent voters).
    • Multiple studies, including several years of research under George W. Bush, have found no widespread voting fraud.
  1. And the biggest news of the week, Bernie Sanders suspends his presidential campaign, leaving only Joe Biden standing as the last Democratic presidential candidate. Bernie says that not only does he not see a path to enough delegates but that he wants to focus his energy on the pandemic and helping the economy recover.
  2. New York Governor Andrew Cuomo issues an executive order to allow voters to vote by mail in their upcoming primary election.

Miscellaneous:

  1. Kayleigh McEnany replaces Stephanie Grisham as White House press secretary. In her entire time as press secretary, Grisham never gave one press briefing but took plenty of time to send out super-snarky (and not often honest) tweets.
  2. Trump signs an executive order encouraging the U.S. to mine for minerals on the moon and objecting to any attempts to use international law to prevent it.

Polls:

  1. 55% of Americans think that the federal government is doing a bad job in preventing the spread of coronavirus. 80% think the worst is yet to come.

Week 167 in Trump

Posted on April 30, 2020 in Politics, Trump

Photo by Kena Betancur/Getty Images

It’s April, and the Coronavirus didn’t magically go away as promised. And it turns out it isn’t like the flu, and no matter how well we prepare, probably 100,000 people will die. In fact, we just hit 1,000,000 confirmed cases worldwide, and experts suggest that the death rate for COVID-19 in the U.S. for April might be 2,000 people per day. In case anybody missed the point of staying home, it’s not just to save our own butts. We’re giving our healthcare workers a chance to fight this. They’re our first line of defense and if they crumble, we all go down.

Here’s what happened in politics for the week ending April 5…

Shootings This Week:

  1. There were 9 mass shootings in the U.S. this week (defined as killing and/or injuring 4 or more people). Shooters kill 8 people and injure 31 more. Who has time to go around shooting people when we’re on lockdown???

Russia:

  1. It turns out that errors on FISA warrants weren’t unique to the Russia investigation. Inspector General Michael Horowitz examined surveillance requests from 2015 to 2019 and found errors on all of them.

Legal Fallout:

  1. The DOJ opens an inquiry into stock trades made by Senators who were briefed on the coronavirus and then made trades, specifically Senator Richard Burr. Burr says he welcomes the investigation. The probe might also include Senator Kelly Loeffler.
  2. Despite Mitch McConnell defending the Trump administration’s slow response to the coronavirus pandemic by saying that they were so tied up by impeachment that they couldn’t do anything else, the Senate Homeland Security Committee is continuing with their probe into Hunter Biden.
  3. Trump fires Michael Atkinson, the Intelligence Community Inspector General who alerted Congress of the whistleblower account of Trump’s actions with regard to Ukraine last year. While his job technically ends in 30 days, he is placed on administrative leave immediately. The whistleblower complaint led to Trump’s impeachment in the House.

Healthcare:

  1. An appeals court rules that Texas can implement a temporary ban on abortion in almost all cases, overturning a federal judge’s previous ruling.
  2. The American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists and the American Board of Obstetrics and Gynecology issue a statement saying that abortions should not be required to be delayed because of the pandemic.

Coronavirus:

  1. Dr. Deborah Birx, a top official on the coronavirus task force, says they haven’t received about half of the data from the coronavirus tests conducted so far.
  2. Dr. Birx predicts that even if we do everything right, the U.S. could see 100,000 to 200,000 deaths from COVID-19 by August, with around 2,000 deaths per day in April. The latest modeling suggests around 85,000 deaths by August.
  3. Trump says coronavirus cases could peak around Easter, and defends his extension of the social distancing guidelines, saying it could save millions.
  4. The White House says that 100,000 to 240,000 Americans could die from COVID-19, but the experts they cite don’t know where those numbers came from. Dr. Anthony Fauci says there are too many variables at play to make solid predictions.
  5. Dr. Fauci says that the coronavirus task force strongly advocated that Trump extend the social distancing measures for one more month. He says their data indicates that the spread of the virus isn’t slowing down yet.
    • Trump relents and announces an extension of the social distancing measures to the end of April. He had wanted to open things up for Easter Sunday.
  1. Even though we have Trump on video saying that he didn’t think governors needed the equipment they were requesting, he says he never said that. He also denies saying that if governors “don’t treat you right, I don’t call” at a press briefing, though that’s on video, too.
  2. After Trump tells Vice President Pence not to work with that “woman governor” of Michigan, Governor Gretchen Whitmer (she has a name) and Pence have a call to discuss working with FEMA and the White House to get the personal protective equipment the state needs.
  3. The CDC is reviewing whether we should all be wearing masks when we go out in public after originally saying they weren’t helpful in preventing the wearer from catching the disease. It is helpful in preventing the wearer from spreading the disease, though.
    • While the CDC mulls it over, Mayors and counties start recommending people wear masks or face coverings while out in public—not necessarily medical-grade, just enough to prevent droplet spread.
    • By the end of the week, the federal government issues a recommendation that people wear masks in public.
  1. The Mayor of New Orleans says she would’ve canceled Mardi Gras in February if the federal government had raised any red flags about the coronavirus. Louisiana has one of the highest death rates per capita in the nation.
  2. Trump has said nobody could’ve predicted a pandemic like this, while at the same time maintaining that he always knew it was a pandemic.
  3. States that refused Medicaid expansion under the ACA are likely to have the biggest problems opening stores and bringing back workers. Putting a group of uninsured workers back in public before the virus is contained puts them at risk which puts more pressure on medical staff.
    • The Trump administration refuses to reopen the open enrollment period for the ACA, which would get more people insured during the pandemic.
    • Several states that run their own healthcare marketplaces have reopened enrollment for their residents.
  1. A few weeks ago, Trump said Google was helping with a website to help coordinate and direct coronavirus testing. It turns out that Oscar Health, co-founded by Jared Kushner’s brother, was working on it instead.
    • The website ended up getting scrapped.
    • Fewer than 1% of Americans have been tested so far.
    • In response to governors’ complaints about testing kits not being available, Trump says he hasn’t heard about it being a problem.
  1. Scientists in Germany got out way ahead of the curve, starting to develop coronavirus tests last December. They had a test by mid-January and used it liberally. While they have around 71,000 cases, their death rate is very low and they have empty hospital beds. They estimate they can do 1/2 million tests per week.
  2. Mount Sinai Hospital in New York starts testing an experimental treatment for coronavirus patients using the blood plasma of people who have antibodies against the virus. A consortium of 40 of our top medical organizations are looking into this.
  3. Johnson & Johnson joins with the federal government to pledge a $1 billion investment to find a potential vaccine for the coronavirus.
  4. The New York Post reports that New York has issued a statewide order not to resuscitate COVID-19 patients without a pulse, and for EMTs to not bring flatlined patients to hospitals. Medical workers deny this order exists, and the next day the New York Post says the orders are rescinded. Hmmm… At any rate, many healthcare workers are not performing manual chest compressions on patients because of the risk of infection, but they are employing other life-saving measures.
  5. U.S. intelligence says that China concealed the extent of the outbreak and is underreporting infections and deaths. China has reported around 82,000 cases and 3,300 deaths. Even with China’s strict, authoritarian lockdown of the source of the infection, experts doubt it could’ve been that well contained.
    • China has adjusted the way they count cases and deaths a few times, adjusting the numbers accordingly.
    • Frankly, with the lack of extensive testing and awareness, the numbers being reported by most countries are probably inaccurate.
  1. Workers at Instacart, Whole Foods, and Amazon go on strike over concerns that the companies haven’t implemented sufficient safety measures to prevent coronavirus spread. They also want more pay, for what is now hazardous work.
  2. Nurses protest over a lack of personal protective equipment.
  3. Mike Pence freezes pandemic aid while the coronavirus task force reviews all USAID deliveries to countries requesting PPE. They also request that any equipment USAID is sending to other countries be redirected to the U.S. This change came from confusion over orders that were supposed to be coming to the U.S. that instead headed to China. There is still not any one point of contact to coordinate this.
  4. The government increases Dr. Fauci’s security after he receives threats to his personal safety. Americans are out of their minds.
  5. Mitch McConnell accidentally acknowledges that Trump wasn’t paying attention to the coronavirus in January when he excuses it by saying Trump was distracted by impeachment. Remember that Trump himself played no role in the impeachment process other than to criticize it. Senators urged Trump at the time for an increased mobilization against the virus.
    • McConnell himself didn’t speak about the virus until February 23, even though all Senators were briefed on it in January.
  1. The U.S. Coast Guard tells cruise ships with passengers who are infected with the coronavirus to stay away from U.S. ports. They say the ships have to care for their own patients or find other countries to help.
    • Cruise ships are still floating around in limbo, unable to dock anywhere because they have infected passengers and crew. At one point, there were 29 cruise ships hovering off Florida ports waiting for approval to dock. Some have only crew on board.

    • The Port of Miami no longer accepts MEDEVAC patients because they’re reaching hospital capacity.
    • Florida Governor Ron DeSantis allows Floridians aboard Holland America cruise ships to disembark.
  1. Speaker Nancy Pelosi forms a new select committee to oversee the government’s handling of the pandemic and the relief packages. Trump slams this as a partisan probe, but it’s their job.
  2. G20 leaders commit to a coordinated and robust response to the pandemic and to strengthening the WHO. Their joint statement is pretty mild in comparison to their response to the 2008 crisis and 2014 Ebola outbreak, showing what a difference it makes that the U.S. isn’t taking a leadership position anymore.
  3. During one of the White House’s daily coronavirus press briefings, Pence announces that Jared Kushner will oversee the distribution of medical supplies to the states, including those from the national stockpile. Kushner says that the supplies aren’t supposed to be state stockpiles, they’re supposed to be “our stockpiles” (meaning the federal government, I guess?). In reality, the mission of the stockpile is to “supplement state and local supplies during public health emergencies.”
  4. After Kushner’s statement, someone updates the Strategic National Stockpile webpage so that it no longer states that it is, indeed, intended for state, local, and tribal needs.

Text as of March 30: “Strategic National Stockpile is the nation’s largest supply of life-saving pharmaceuticals and medical supplies for use in a public health emergency severe enough to cause local supplies to run out. When state, local, tribal, and territorial responders request federal assistance to support their response efforts, the stockpile ensures that the right medicines and supplies get to those who need them most during an emergency. Organized for scalable response to a variety of public health threats, this repository contains enough supplies to respond to multiple large-scale emergencies simultaneously.”

Text today: “The Strategic National Stockpile’s role is to supplement state and local supplies during public health emergencies. Many states have products stockpiled, as well. The supplies, medicines, and devices for life-saving care contained in the stockpile can be used as a short-term stopgap buffer when the immediate supply of adequate amounts of these materials may not be immediately available.”

  1. At a time when statements from POTUS need to be clear, fact-based, and straightforward, his chaotic briefings confuse people over whether this pandemic is serious, whether we’re doing enough to slow it down, and how long it will last.
  2. Trump says there’s never been a crisis response as strong as his, but he also says he’s just playing backup to governors. Then he says governors are acting too slowly.
    • He says medical personnel and officials complain too much.
    • He says we’re winning the war against the virus as the number of both cases and deaths continue to rise.
    • He once compared the coronavirus to the flu, but now he says it’s nothing like the flu.
    • When asked, he takes no responsibility for the initial failures in testing.
  1. New York unites all hospitals under one statewide hospital system to plan and coordinate staff, medical supplies, ER and ICU beds, and the sharing of all these resources.
  2. Never one to give up, Representative Devin Nunes (R-CA) says that it’s overkill to close schools for the rest of the year. He also promotes hydroxychloroquine as a treatment for COVID-19 though it is still unproven.
  3. The FDA does approve hydroxychloroquine as an emergency COVID-19 treatment despite the lack of promising studies.
  4. Dr. Fauci expresses frustration that not all states are abiding by federal guidance on social distancing and stay-at-home orders.
    • Fun Fact: In a speech at Georgetown University in 2017, Dr. Fauci warned that there would be a surprise outbreak during Trump’s time in office and that we needed to do more to prepare.
  1. New York hospitals are getting slammed with coronavirus patients, and the state is expecting 85,000 healthcare volunteers.
  2. An engineer deliberately derails a train while trying to crash into the USNS Mercy hospital ship, docked in the Port of Los Angeles to help with any overflow. The engineer thinks the ship is suspicious and that officials are lying about its reason for being there.
  3. In September 2017, Trump dismantled the PREDICT initiative, an early warning program that trained scientists in other countries, including China, to detect pandemics.
  4. Trump brags about how great the ratings are for the coronavirus briefings. Like this is reality TV.

Shortages:

  1. While Trump assures us that there are 10,000 ventilators in reserve, ready to be distributed, the remaining stockpile are unmaintained and unusable. The government let the maintenance contract lapse last summer and it didn’t resume until January.
  2. We learn that Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar requested $2 billion to replenish the stockpile as early as February 5. The White House cut that back to $500 million, but Congress provided $16 billion.
  3. The Pentagon has 2,000 ventilators waiting to be sent out, but they still haven’t been told where to send them.
  4. The USNS Comfort hospital ship arrives in New York harbor to help with hospital overflow. The ship has 1,000 beds, operating rooms, a lab, and a pharmacy. 
New York City is also building a field hospital in Central Park to create additional hospital beds.
  5. Canadian firm Prescientx starts selling machines that can disinfect up to 500 N95 medical masks per hour using ultraviolet light, which will help alleviate the mask shortage.
  6. Governors across the county plead for medical equipment from the Strategic National Stockpile. Florida receives 100% of its request. Oklahoma and Kentucky receive a large share of their requests. Illinois, Massachusetts, and Maine receive much smaller shares of their request.
    • New York Governor Andrew Cuomo compares the process they’re going through right now to being on eBay. Just when you think you’ve secured an order, someone sweeps in and outbids you. And sometimes that someone is the federal government.
    • By the end of the week, Connecticut’s governor says that the stockpile is empty.
    • Trump claims he inherited an empty stockpile from the Obama administration. According to the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, the stockpile warehouses stored around $7 billion worth of supplies like vaccines, ventilators, PPE, and other medicines and equipment. However, Congress didn’t allocate any funds for Obama’s administration to replace everything used to fight the H1N1 pandemic in 2009 and 2010. I’m sure we all remember how the House that came into office in 2011 handled requests from Obama.
    • It turns out that not only is the U.S. government bidding against states for medical equipment, it’s also competing against other countries and causing tensions between us and our allies.
  1. Massachusetts designates the Boston Convention and Exhibition Center as a field hospital for homeless adults who test positive but don’t need full hospital care.
  2. New York City morgues are almost full, and the state requests 85 refrigerated trucks to help with the load.
  3. The Trump administration asks 3M to stop supplying N95 respirators to Canada. Tip: A human-defined border between countries can’t stop the spread of the virus.
  4. Trump blames medical facilities for the shortage in PPE and medical equipment, accusing them of hoarding them.
  5. The Pentagon is trying to secure 100,000 body bags in preparation for the coming wave of deaths.
  6. Massachusetts Governor Charlie Baker creates a backchannel to China in order to facilitate a shipment of 1.7 million masks. Patriots owner Robert Kraft and Patriots President Jonathan Kraft partner with Massachusetts to deliver 1.4 million of those masks to Massachusetts and another 300,000 to New York. They fly the PPE from China on the Patriots’ private plane.
  7. China and Oregon both donate ventilators to New York.
  8. Medical supply brokers say that millions of N95 masks have been available throughout the pandemic, but the high prices resulting from the bidding wars have overwhelmed buyers. Millions are being bought by buyers from other countries.
  9. At least 30 New York City hospitals are at or near capacity in their ICUs. Seven of those hospitals are near total capacity.

Exposures:

  1. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu self-quarantines after being exposed to the coronavirus.
  2. You can’t even make this story up. More than 150 Navy personnel aboard the USS Teddy Roosevelt contract coronavirus infections. After bringing it up through the chain of command to no avail, the ship’s commander, Captain Brett Crozier, writes a letter to dozens of people at the Pentagon pleading for assistance.
    • So no surprise, the letter gets leaked to the press.
    • So far, they’ve been told they can dock at Guam but must stay on board the boat.
    • Some of the sickest sailors have been removed from the ship.
    • Crozier says the conditions on board are ripe for the spread of the virus and requests that 90% of the crew be removed and isolated. He says there’s no reason to put these sailors’ lives at risk when it’s not wartime.
    • Acting Navy Secretary Thomas Modly removes Crozier from his post, saying that he didn’t use the proper security protocols to send his letter. He also calls Crozier an incredible man but says he got overwhelmed by the situation.
    • Crozier’s crew is pissed, and they cheer him as he walks off the ship.
    • Modly receives an enormous backlash for the firing.
    • In a speech to the ship’s crew, Modly calls Crozier naive and stupid.
    • Navy officials say Crozier will be reassigned and not fired.
    • And then Crozier tests positive for the coronavirus and is symptomatic.
  1. The Governor of New Mexico requests federal assistance after cases of coronavirus spike in the Navajo Nation.
  2. Representative Nydia Velazquez (D-NY) is diagnosed with “presumed” coronavirus infection based on her reported symptoms.
  3. COVID-19 takes the lives of jazz musician Ellis Marsalis, singers and songwriters Adam Schlesinger and Joe Diffie, and Hilda Churchill, who’s not famous but should be. She lived through both World Wars and the 1918 Spanish Flu pandemic. We’ve also lost doctors, nurses, first responders, diplomates, elected officials. There’s no position that guarantees you won’t get sick.

Closures:

  1. Surgeon General Jerome Adams asks governors who’ve held out on issuing stay-at-home orders to put them into place for at least a week. He says the coming week will be our hardest.
  2. Florida and Georgia finally issue stay at home orders, effective Friday. Georgia Government Brian Kemp says he just heard that people who are asymptomatic can spread the virus. He calls it a revelation and a game-changer. Where the fuck has he been for the past month? Florida’s order allows religious gatherings.
  3. Mississippi’s governor issues a stay at home order, also going into effect on Friday.
  4. Missouri finally puts a stay at home order in place, but it doesn’t go into effect until next week.
  5. Several counties in Pennsylvania were already under stay at home orders, and the governor expands it to the full state.
  6. Nevada issues a stay at home order and closes all non-essential businesses until the end of the month.
  7. Texas Governor Greg Abbott overrides city and county rules that would’ve prevented mass gatherings for religious services.
  8. Hobby Lobby re-opens stores in defiance of shutdown rules in several states. In some states, it prompts police action.
  9. The DNC delays its national presidential nominating convention from July to August.
  10. The Department of Defense isolates some of its senior military leaders and mission-critical personnel as a precautionary measure. They also warn of escalated military activity against Iran.
  11. The State Department urges all Americans traveling abroad to come home immediately because we don’t know how much longer flights will be available to bring them home.

Numbers:

  1. The world now has over 1,000,000 confirmed COVID-19 cases.
  2. Here are the numbers by the end of the week:
    • 312,237 people in the U.S. are infected so far (that we know of), with 8,501 deaths, up from 124,665 infections and 2,191 deaths as of last week.
    • 1,133,758 people worldwide have been infected, with 62,784 deaths, up from 691,867 infections and 32,988 deaths as of last week.

Travel Ban/Immigration/Discrimination:

  1. Trump sends 500 U.S. troops to the southern border to help stop people from crossing the border and potentially bringing in the coronavirus.
  2. The FBI warns of an uptick in violence and hate crimes against Asian Americans in the midst of the pandemic. Perhaps a little late, as attacks on Asian Americans surge to 100 per day.
  3. Farmworkers are designated as essential workers. They are largely undocumented immigrants.

Climate:

  1. The EPA releases new fuel-efficiency standards for cars and trucks, watering down one of our most aggressive efforts to fight climate change. This reverses the changes made under Obama, and states are already planning legal challenges.
    • The new rule mandates a 1.5% increase in fuel efficiency annually and sets a goal of an average of 40 MPG by 2026. The old rule mandated a 5% annual increase in efficiency and an average of 54 MPG by 2025.
    • Scientists expect that an extra 900 million more tons of CO2 will be released if the rule is allowed to go into effect.

Budget/Economy:

  1. Despite the shortage of medical supplies, White House trade advisor Peter Navarro says we have to buy those supplies from American producers. He’s not ready to let up on the trade war in order for us to get the equipment we need. Chinese manufacturers make 120 million masks a day, while the U.S. government asks volunteers at home to sew masks.
  2. The Treasury reverses its previous stance and says that if you receive social security benefits, you don’t have to file a tax return to qualify for the $1,200 relief check.
  3. The number of filings for unemployment benefits jumped to 6.65 million last week, a much sharper increase than during the Great Recession.
  4. The unemployment rate rose from 3.5% to 4.4% during March.
  5. The U.S. job market lost 701,000 jobs. The losses are largely in hospitality, entertainment, and manufacturing, none of which can be done remotely.
  6. The stock market continues to be volatile this week, but still improves a bit over last week.
  7. The Paycheck Protection Program, which offers almost $350 billion in loans to eligible businesses to retain staff and payroll, goes into effect. The loans will be 100% forgiven if businesses use the money according to the guidelines.

Elections:

  1. While Democrats push for countrywide vote-by-mail elections as a way to make sure everybody can vote safely, Trump says that if everyone were allowed to vote, a Republican would never win an election. Whoops! That guy’s always saying the quiet part out loud.
    • And Georgia’s House Speaker confirms it, saying that higher voter participation would “be extremely devastating to Republicans and conservatives in Georgia.”
  1. Several states postpone their Democratic primary elections until May or June.
  2. The Wisconsin Republican Party asks the Supreme Court to block extended voting for absentee ballots in Wisconsin’s presidential primary next week. Some voters have still not received their ballots. A district court refused to allow the primary to be delayed but did extend absentee voting.

Miscellaneous:

  1. Representative Mark Meadows (R-NC) officially resigns from Congress to become Trump’s new chief of staff.

Polls:

  1. Trump’s rally-around-the-president bump in approval seems to have peaked. 47% of Americans approve of his handling of the pandemic while 52% disapprove.