Tag: coronavirus pandemic

Trump says he will move Republican convention out of North Carolina

The Hill logoPresident Trump on Tuesday night signaled he will move the Republican National Convention out of North Carolina after the state and the GOP clashed over potential restrictions due to the coronavirus.

“Had long planned to have the Republican National Convention in Charlotte, North Carolina, a place I love. Now, @NC_Governor Roy Cooper and his representatives refuse to guarantee that we can have use of the Spectrum Arena,” Trump tweeted.

“Governor Cooper is still in Shelter-In-Place Mode, and not allowing us to occupy the arena as originally anticipated and promised,” he continued, saying the party is “now forced to seek another State to host the 2020 Republican National Convention.” Continue reading.

Trump sets goal of hundreds of millions of coronavirus vaccine doses by January, but scientists doubt it

Washington Post logoSome warn it’s dangerous to set a timetable, given the scientific unknowns and the danger of rushing testing.

President Trump formally unveiled an initiative Friday afternoon aimed at making hundreds of millions of doses of a coronavirus vaccine broadly available by year’s end — a goal that many scientists say is unrealistic and could even backfire by shortchanging safety and undermining faith in vaccines more broadly.

The Rose Garden news conference added to a week of confusing and contradictory remarks about the prospects and timeline for a vaccine, which is seen as the key to returning to normal life. A day earlier, a former top U.S. vaccine official testified before Congress that he was doubtful about the 12-to-18-month time frame frequently touted as a goal. The head of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases testified Tuesday that 12 to 18 months was possible but there was no guarantee a vaccine would work at all.

But Trump and other officials projected certainty Friday that an effective vaccine would be widely available by year’s end from among 14 promising candidates that had been winnowed from a field of more than 100. The chief scientist of the new initiative, pharmaceutical industry veteran Moncef Slaoui, even teased that he had seen early clinical data from an unspecified vaccine trial that gave him hope. Continue reading.

Minnesota House approves COVID-19 public safety solutions, requirement to test and store rape kits

House DFL logoSAINT PAUL, MINNESOTA – On Saturday, the Minnesota House approved HF 3156, legislation addressing a variety of public safety and corrections solutions to address the COVID-19 pandemic. It also contains other important measures to protect public safety including a requirement that all unrestricted sexual assault examination kits be tested, investments in laboratory enhancements to combat violent crime, and funding for the Department of Corrections to ensure prisons remain safe.

“Public safety is a core component of our state government, and COVID-19 poses many unique challenges for our first responders and people within the corrections system,” said Rep. Carlos Mariani (DFL – Saint Paul), bill author and chair of the House Public Safety and Criminal Justice Reform Division. “The solutions in this bill reflect our shared commitment to addressing public safety broadly, even while much of our attention is directed toward the pandemic and saving lives. House DFLers are making these important investments – even when times are tough – and we hope the Senate Republican Majority can recognize Minnesotans are counting on these solutions as well.”

Solutions to address COVID-19 in the bill include expanded public access to correctional facility data, repeal of double-bunking requirements in prisons, and a direction to health care providers to return COVID-19 test results to public safety specialists as soon as possible. The legislation also gives temporary authority to the Department of Corrections to protect the health and welfare of state correctional employees and inmates – including the authority to release low-risk, nonviolent offenders who have 180 days or less in their term, and includes investments in community supervision. Continue reading “Minnesota House approves COVID-19 public safety solutions, requirement to test and store rape kits”

‘Trump has a fantasy of dominating these women’: Clinical psychiatrist explains why the president is ‘aroused’ by conflict with female reporters

AlterNet logoAs we all ought to know by now, Donald Trump is an authoritarian and a would-be mad king. The coronavirus pandemic has only encouraged his worst impulses and behavior. There is no bottom to Trump’s addiction to cruelty, mayhem, lying and overall evil.

Republican “moderates” — who in reality follow Trump’s dictates almost to the letter — and other naïve and delusional souls in the media and pundit classes have kept hoping that Donald Trump would “learn his lesson” from impeachment and change his behavior. The truth is exactly the opposite.

More than 80,000 Americans are now dead from the coronavirus pandemic and the economy has been reduced to rubble. Trump clearly does not care about the former and is only concerned with how the latter will affect his chances of re-election in November. Continue reading.

Top Trump Adviser’s Model Predicts Deaths At Zero By May 15

A Trump administration economic adviser with no experience in epidemiology created a coronavirus model that predicted deaths from the virus dropping to near zero by May 15, the Washington Post reported. The model offers an extremely optimistic prediction that no others have shown.

The adviser who created the model, Kevin Hassett, has denied it plays a role in decisions related to the virus. “I have never, ever said that that’s my projection of what the death count was going to be, and no administration policy has been influenced by my projections,” he told the Post.

However, according to a Post report, Trump and his aides used that model to justify plans to start reopening the economy. White House officials, like Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner, were reported to have relied on it because it “affirmed their own skepticism about the severity of the virus and bolstered their case to shift the focus to the economy, which they firmly believed would determine whether Trump wins a second term,” the Post reported. Continue reading.

US intelligence says it’s investigating COVID-19’s origins

The Hill logoU.S. intelligence agencies in a rare public statement Thursday said they agreed with “the widespread scientific consensus” that the COVID-19 virus was “not manmade or genetically modified” but also that they are investigating whether it emerged from a laboratory in Wuhan, China.

“The entire Intelligence Community has been consistently providing critical support to U.S. policymakers and those responding to the COVID-19 virus, which originated in China. The Intelligence Community also concurs with the wide scientific consensus that the COVID-19 virus was not manmade or genetically modified,” the statement from the Office of the Director of National Intelligence reads.

“As we do in all crises, the Community’s experts respond by surging resources and producing critical intelligence on issues vital to U.S. national security. The IC will continue to rigorously examine emerging information and intelligence to determine whether the outbreak began through contact with infected animals or if it was the result of an accident at a laboratory in Wuhan,” the statement concluded. Continue reading.

As Trump talks rebound, Fed’s Powell warns economy’s pain will last

The Fed chief’s comments suggest the U.S. economy could face a rocky path for at least the next year as it attempts to rebuild.

President Donald Trump is hoping the economy will bounce back rapidly from the coronavirus shutdown, but Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell warned Wednesday that it will take time for the country’s wounds to heal even after businesses begin to reopen.

After the Fed pledged to keep interest rates near zero until the economy has weathered the pandemic, Powell underscored the bleak reality, saying next week’s monthly jobs report is expected to show an unemployment rate somewhere in the double digits.

“We’re going to see economic data for the second quarter that’s worse than any data we’ve seen for the economy,” he said during a news conference. Continue reading.

Hope Hicks Is Apparently Behind Trump’s Rambling, Egotistical Press Conferences

NOTE: This article is provided free by Vanity Fair.

The “let Trump be Trump” strategy is flaming out, with the president’s poll numbers dropping amid criticism of his daily grievance fests.

As the number of coronavirus cases in the U.S. skyrockets, and the economy plummets, Donald Trump has continued to use the White House’s daily coronavirus press briefings to boast about how well he believes he’s handling the crisis, and take pot shots at his enemies. This “let Trump be Trump” strategy—the administration’s go-to, considering Trump has fired anyone who might preempt it—was applied to the pandemic just as one of the president’s most trusted aides officially returned to the fold. While Hope Hicks now holds a nebulous White House title, the communications strategy she has crafted for Trump’s emergency messaging is perfectly clear: let him address the nation in his own words while taking the briefing room’s centerstage on a near daily basis.

At first, this proved to be effective. Despite the president’s personal role in downplaying the dangers of the coronavirus, and the White House’s severely delayed mitigation efforts, Trump saw a sizable favorability boost in March. Forty-nine percent of Americans voiced their approval of his leadership at the time, which marked just the second time his presidency has enjoyed such ratings in Gallup’s national survey. But as the pandemic and its economic devastation have dragged on, the president has also used his position to brag about the ratings of his pressers beating out ABC’s The Bachelor and riff about his past sexual encounters with “models.” His approval bump has proved to be temporary, as an April 14 Gallup poll found a six-point drop. Continue reading “Hope Hicks Is Apparently Behind Trump’s Rambling, Egotistical Press Conferences”

The Memo: Bully pulpit may be backfiring for Trump

The Hill logoA mock ad for former Vice President Joe Biden’s 2020 campaign has gone viral on social media in recent days.

“Biden: He won’t inject you with bleach,” it reads.

The joke gets at a serious point: whether President Trump’s ardor for provocative and sometimes bizarre statements, as well as his general love of the spotlight, is backfiring as the coronavirus crisis deepens. Continue reading.

Studying Fascist Propaganda by Day, Watching Trump’s Coronavirus Updates by Night

In 2018, Jason Stanley, a philosophy professor at Yale, published “How Fascism Works.” Although it was a slim volume, it ranged broadly, citing experimental psychology, legal theory, and neo-Nazi blogs; although it was by an academic philosopher, it was a popular book that prioritized current events over syllogisms. Viktor Orbán is mentioned more times in the book than Hannah Arendt. Donald Trumpshows up dozens of times, and he is portrayed not as a distractible bozo but as a concerted aspiring strongman. “Fascist politics can dehumanize minority groups even when an explicitly fascist state does not arise,” Stanley writes. Elsewhere, in a chapter called “Sodom and Gomorrah,” he argues that Trump’s habit of extolling the heartland while decrying urban squalor “makes sense in the context of a more general fascist politics, in which cities are seen as centers of disease and pestilence.” Stanley couldn’t have known that many American cities were, in fact, about to become centers of disease, but he could have predicted that Trump would use such a development to his rhetorical advantage. “Some people would like to see New York quarantined because it’s a hot spot,” Trump said, late last month. “Heavily infected.”

Stanley isn’t, or isn’t mainly, a scholar of public policy; he is a philosopher of language. When he insinuates that Trump is a fascist—and you don’t have to be a philosopher of language to catch the insinuation—he means that Trump talks like a fascist, not necessarily that he governs like one. Still, many passages in Stanley’s book begin with a discussion of Germany in the nineteen-thirties, or Rwanda in the nineteen-nineties, before pivoting to a depiction of the contemporary United States. “Ever since my book came out, I’ve been fighting with critics who go, ‘You’re overreacting, you’re exaggerating, it’s irresponsible to call this fascism or that fascism,’ ” Stanley said. “I’ll point to a step Trump has taken—he’s using ice to round up children, he’s surrounding himself with loyalists and generals, he’s using the apparatus of government to dig up dirt on a political rival—and the response is always ‘Sure, that’s bad, but it’s not a big enough step to justify the F-word.’ I’m starting to feel like the it’s-not-a-big-enough-step people won’t be happy until they’re in concentration camps.” Continue reading “Studying Fascist Propaganda by Day, Watching Trump’s Coronavirus Updates by Night”