Summary
- Donald Trump made several false claims during today’s coronavirus briefing, including the outrageous assertion that the president has “total” authority in the US. Defending his administration’s response to the coronavirus crisis, Trump presented a video that looked suspiciously similar to his campaign ads. The video featured flattering clips from Fox News derided news outlets that have been critical of the president.
- A liberal judge prevailed in Wisconsin, but Democrats in the state continued to express concern that Republican legislators refused to postpone the election despite the pandemic. “Although we were successful in this race, the circumstances under which this election was conducted were simply unacceptable,” said judge Jill Karofsky in her victory statement. “Nobody in this state or in this country should have been forced to choose between their safety and participating in an election.”
- Democratic governors in the north-east and west coast on Monday announced separate pacts to coordinate efforts to begin reopening society amid the coronavirus pandemic. Andrew Cuomo of New York announced several north-east states would work together on determining when to reopen the economy. The governors of California, Oregon and Washington announced a similar project for the west coast.
- Bernie Sanders endorsed Joe Biden. But it’s unclear if Sanders’ campaign staff and supporters will switch their loyalty. Notably, Sanders’ former national press secretary said does not endorse Biden based on his current policy platforms. “I supported Bernie Sanders because he backed ideas like #MedicareForAll, canceling ALL student debt, & a wealth tax. Biden supports none of those,” she tweeted.
An update on the Wisconsin elections
Here’s some more context on the Wisconsin elections, from my colleagues Tom McCarthy and Sam Levine:
As former vice-president Joe Biden scored a widely expected win in the Wisconsin Democratic presidential primary, a liberal challenger for a state supreme court seat declared victory in an upset hailed by Democrats as boding well for the presidential election in November.
The state supreme court is expected to rule in numerous voting rights cases in the lead-up to the presidential election, including a case in which 200,000 voters could be purged from voter rolls. Wisconsin is a swing state that narrowly voted for Donald Trump in 2016.
With most precincts in the state reporting, Judge Jill Karofsky held what looked like an insurmountable lead over conservative state Supreme Court justice Daniel Kelly.
In a victory statement, Karofsky thanked supporters and blasted the Republican-led legislature for forcing voters to the polls a week earlier amid the coronavirus outbreak.
The state’s Democratic governor, Tony Evers, had attempted to postpone the election, but he was rebuffed by the Republican-led legislature and the conservative-controlled state supreme court.
“Although we were successful in this race, the circumstances under which this election was conducted were simply unacceptable, and raise serious concerns for the future of our democracy,” Karofsky said in a statement. “Nobody in this state or in this country should have been forced to choose between their safety and participating in an election.”
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How Covid-19 is exposing inequalities in digital access
The coronavirus crisis is “exposing how the cracks in the US’s creaking digital infrastructure are potentially putting lives at risk”, my colleague Amanda Holpuch reports:
With most of the country on lockdown and millions relying on the internet for work, healthcare, education and shopping, research by M-Lab, an open source project which monitors global internet performance, showed that internet service slowed across the country after the lockdowns.
“This is going to kill people,” said Sascha Meinrath, co-founder of M-Lab.
In late March, most people in 62% of counties across the US did not have the government’s minimum download speed for broadband internet, according to M-Lab.
Between February and mid March, when the pandemic was only just beginning to hit the US, there was a 10% increase in how many counties saw download speeds fall below the government standard, representing about one in 10 US counties, M-Lab found.
“Now that people’s livelihoods, schools and lives, are literally on the line, we can’t survive,” Meinrath said. “These communities that are underserved are not going to be able to transition to an online workplace or school environment.”
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A liberal judge prevails in Wisconsin
Jill Karofsky, a liberal judge in Wisconsin, won a stunning victory Monday over Daniel Kelly, a conservative justice who had been endorsed by Donald Trump, the Guardian’s Sam Levine reports.
Karofsky, a circuit court judge in liberal Dane County, won even after Wisconsin Republicans refused a last-minute request to delay the election forced Wisconsin voters to go to the polls in the middle of a pandemic. Many saw the decision as a blatant effort to try and keep turnout low, which would have benefitted Kelly. Karofsky’s victory narrows the conservative majority on the Wisconsin supreme court to 4-3. The body is expected to take up a number of high profile cases in the near future, such as a dispute over whether more than 200,000 voters should be removed from the rolls and partisan gerrymandering.
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The briefing has ended — here are a few closing thoughts
Dr Fauci admitted that the coronavirus “was much worse what I had thought it was going to be”, he said. “Maybe I should have been able to realize that earlier and said ‘Whoah,’ this is really worse than we could have imagined.”
Mike Pence said he and the team are going to now “lean into the effort” to ramp up testing and get hospitals the supplies to treat the sick and keep health workers safe.
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“When you have conversations with the president, sometimes they really have to be confidential,” Dr Fauci said when asked if he’s willing to publicly contradict Trump if he advocates for unsafe policies.
“I’ll have to think about that,” Fauci said, adding that he’s confident the president will defer to public health experts’ guidance.
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Dr Deborah Birx noted that the US has significantly ramped up testing in recent days. “In three weeks, we went from 300,000 tests to 3m tests,” she said. “We know that we have to further increase that.” A team is mapping the testing capacity is across the country, she added.
Trump has left the briefing room, leaving the public health experts to answer questions. We’ll have more on updates from Drs Birx and Fauci.
But first, let’s revisit that campaign-ad style video that Trump played earlier today. As ABC’s Will Steakin demonstrates – it’s almost identical to a campaign ad from a few weeks ago.
Trump at the WH briefing just played a video that's nearly identical to a campaign ad posted a few weeks ago.
— Will Steakin (@wsteaks) April 13, 2020
Trump campaign ad on the left, WH video on the right.
Both feature the same @maggieNYT audio, similar text/style https://t.co/AyyFLebwzM pic.twitter.com/39FHUFTt8K
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Fact Check: Even more, yet, on presidential authority
As we’ve noted several times today, Trump’s claims that he has “total” authority as president are false. And as we’ve already noted, these claims contradict not only constitutional scholars but also Trump himself. The president has repeatedly deferred responsibility to state leaders – directing governors to declare sheltering orders, acquire medical equipment and oversee the safety of their constituents.
“At the president’s direction, the White House Coronavirus task force will continue to take the posture that we will defer to state and local health authorities on any measures that they deem appropriate,” Mike Pence said during the briefing on 1 April.
During today’s coronavirus briefing, Trump said that making sure sick Americans have hospital beds and ventilators is “not even really our responsibility”, and noted that state can and should purchase their own medical equipment.
His claim to “total” authority is at odds with his claim that it’s not totally his job to oversee the coronavirus response.
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Fact check: Antibody tests
“It’s a test that’s been going along for many many years, except now we have very modern, very incredible versions of it,” Trump said about antibody test to check if a patient has contracted coronavirus and developed an immunity to it. The president’s comment doesn’t make much sense in this case.
The US, like many other countries, is developing and rolling out antibody tests.
“It’s really important to test for immunity,” Robert Siegel, a professor of microbiology and immunology at Stanford University, told the Guardian. People who are immune could return to work without endangering themselves or others. “They could more safely work as frontline healthcare providers,” Siegel said.
Although antibody tests for other diseases like malaria already exist, Covid-19 is a new disease that emerged just a few months ago — so the tests that are being developed to detect immunity to the new illness are, well, new. And the many versions of these new tests being developed around the world are still being vetted for their accuracy.
Fact check: Even more on presidential authorities
Trump said he was confident that states would follow his administration’s guidance on when to re-open businesses and ease back distancing measures. “They will cooperate perfectly. Watch,” he said.
But states have already made other ideas. Today, the governors of New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Delaware and Connecticut announced they had formed a regional advisory council. New York governor Andrew Cuomo said each state would name a public health official and an economic development official to serve on a working group alongside each governor’s chief of staff to design a “reopening plan” for their states. Shortly afterward, the states of California, Washington and Oregon announced a similar plan.
Fact check: Hydroxychloroquine
Earlier in the briefing, Trump talked about a “friend” who treated himself with hydroxychloroquine and got better. We’ve noted this before, but at this point, hydroxychloroquine is not a proven treatment for Covid-19.
In the week beginning 30 March, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) provided hydroxychloroquine, an anti-malarial drug that is also used to treat autoimmune diseases like rheumatoid arthritis and lupus, with an “emergency use authorization” to use on coronavirus patients in some circumstances.
Clinical trials to test the drug’s effectiveness in treating coronavirus have begun across the world, and in the US. However, experts, including US public health officials, have warned that it is too early to know if hydroxychloroquine works.
So far, the evidence that it’s a cure for coronavirus is anecdotal and mixed. An initial French study that appeared to have launched the Trump administration’s obsession with the drug has since been discredited.
The drug is considered relatively safe for people without an underlying illness, but it’s unclear if it is safe for severely sick Covid-19 patients, who may have incurred organ damage due to the virus.
The surge in demand for the unproven hydroxychloroquine also risks shortages of the drug for those who need it most. It is used to help patients manage the chronic autoimmune disease lupus, but some are already complaining the drug is harder to come by.
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Does Mike Pence agree with Trump’s understanding of federalism and agree that the president has “total” authority?
He evaded the question.
“I support the president’s leadership under the National Emergency Declaration that he signed,” Pence said. “We’re standing before you today for the first time in American history when all 50 states have issued emergency declarations.”
The president said that he’ll decide by the end of the week whether the US will continue to fund the World Health Organization (WHO). The international body has been a frequent scapegoat for Trump, who blames WHO officials for the severity of the pandemic.
Read more here on why WHO’s responsibility far outweighs its power and capacity:
Fact check: Presidential powers, again
A president’s “authority is total”, Trump said. State and local officials “can’t do anything without the approval of the president of the United States”.
This is false. Federal power is divided between three branches of government – the legislative, the judicial and the executive. The president is part of the latter. Moreover, the US is a federal system – where state officials have significant authority.
Read the White House’s own explainer on how the government here. The section on state governments reads:
Under the Tenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, all powers not granted to the Federal Government are reserved for the States and the people. All State Governments are modeled after the Federal Government and consist of three branches: executive, legislative, and judicial. The U.S. Constitution mandates that all states uphold a “republican form” of government, although the three-branch structure is not required.
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Fact check: Testing
“We inherited broken testing,” Trump said. It’s unclear from whom Trump is saying the US inherited faulty tests. Covid-19 did not emerge until recently, so there’s no way the previous administration could have overseen the development of a test.
The testing template that the World Health Organization (WHO) provided was sound. And in fact, some of the initial coronavirus tests developed and administered in US were seriously flawed. Part of the problem came from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention shunned the WHO template and insisted on developing a more complicated version that correctly identified Covid-19, but also flagged other viruses —resulting in false positives.
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Donald Trump will decide whether he wants to ease back distancing and reopen businesses by 1 May, “later this week”, Mnuchin said. “Of course there’s economic risks in both directions,” the Treasury secretary noted.
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Asked again what authority he has to compel states to reopen businesses and reverse stay-at-home orders, Trump said, “numerous provisions”. Again, constitutional scholars disagree.
Even Trump – from earlier this month – disagrees. He refused to institute a national sheltering order, saying it should be up to the states.
But if local officials attempt to resist his wishes to reopen the economy, Trump said their political careers would suffer. “I’d like to see that person run for election,” the president said.
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Steven Mnuchin, the treasury secretary, said that Americans should be receiving their stimulus checks this week. More than 80 million Americans will get their payments by Wednesday, via direct deposit, he noted. “We want to do as much of this electronically as we can.”
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Fact check: presidential powers
“I have the ultimate authority” to re-open the country and scale back distancing measures, Trump claimed. He was wrong.
That is not correct. University of Texas law professor Steve Vladeck has countered that: “The president has no formal legal authority to categorically override local or state shelter-in-place orders or to reopen schools and small businesses. No statute delegates to him such power; no constitutional provision invests him with such authority.”
Trump himself has said that state governors are – and should be – ultimately responsible for managing state shelter-in-place orders.
When previously asked about whether he would issue a national stay-at-home order, the president repeatedly deferred to the governors.
Today, the governors of New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Delaware and Connecticut announced they had formed a regional advisory council. Andrew Cuomo, the New York governor, said each state would name a public health official and an economic development official to serve on a working group alongside each governor’s chief of staff to design a “reopening plan” for their states.
Shortly afterward, the states of California, Washington and Oregon announced a similar plan.
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Fact check: national stockpile
“We inherited a stockpile where the cupboards were bare,” Trump said, seeking to blame the Obama administration for a lack of adequate resources tackle the coronavirus pandemic.
In fact, it seems that the stockpile was plenty stocked before Trump took office. Although the National Strategic Stockpile is a bit mysterious – it’s unclear where exactly the government has stashed supplies, and the stockpile’s contents aren’t generally public disclosed – an NPR reporter was able to visit one warehouse facility in June 2016, just a few months before Trump was inaugurated. “Shelves packed with stuff stand so tall that looking up makes me dizzy,” NPR’s Nell Greenfieldboyce observed at the time.
“There are rows upon rows of ventilators that could keep sick or injured people breathing...Everything here has to be inventoried once a year, and expiration dates have to be checked. Just tending to this vast stash costs a bundle – the stockpile program’s budget is more than half a billion dollars a year.”
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Making sure sick Americans have hospital beds and ventilators is “not even really our responsibility”, Trump said. The federal government has helped out regardless, he added – “even though we’re plateauing” and the US won’t end up needing all the ventilators, beds and other resources the US has stockpiled.
These claims are not true. Stay tuned for more fact checks.
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Over and over again, Trump is touting his travel restrictions, which he’s referring to as a “ban on China” as evidence that he acted early, and saved lives. We’ve already fact-checked this claim, below — there’s no evidence that the travel restrictions would have made a difference because they were enacted after the virus was already spreading within the US.
Moreover, the administration’s travel policy did not “ban” travel to and from China. Although non-US citizens were prohibited from entering the country if they had traveled to China within the previous two weeks, American citizens, permanent residents and their immediate family members were exempt.
Per a New York Times analysis, “Since Chinese officials disclosed the outbreak of a mysterious pneumonialike illness to international health officials on New Year’s Eve, at least 430,000 people have arrived in the United States on direct flights from China, including nearly 40,000 in the two months after President Trump imposed restrictions on such travel, according to an analysis of data collected in both countries.”
“I don’t mind controversy,” Trump said. “I think controversy is a good thing.”
About half an hour into the White House briefing, he has yet to provide any updates on the crisis in the US. So far, the president has taken a combattive stance, defending his record.
Trump said he’s not planning on firing Dr Fauci. Though he retweeted a post about firing the public health advisor, “I’m not firing him,” Trump said “No I like him. I think he’s terrific.”
“Not everybody is happy with Anthony,” he added. “Not everybody is happy with everybody.”
The campaign ad-style video that Trump played during the briefing was produced by his social media director Dan Scavino and “a group in the office”. So, in other words, American taxpayers paid for his office to produce the presentation.
Fact check: Ventilators
“Nobody is asking for ventilators,” the president said.
It is true that some states, so far, have ended up with more ventilators than they originally projected they would need. California has loaned 500 ventilators to states like New York. California hospitals managed to increase their stock from 7,500 machines to more than 11,000, according to the state’s governor, Gavin Newsom. “That has put less strain and pressure on the state’s effort to procure additional ventilators,” Newsom said.
However, that doesn’t mean that there isn’t a national shortage. The US has roughly 173,000 ventilators, according to the Center for Health Security at Johns Hopkins University. Experts from Harvard Medical School predict that the US could end up needing 31 times that number to treat coronavirus patients.
An article in the New England Journal of Medicine published on Wednesday 25 March categorically concluded that the US does not have enough ventilators to treat patients with Covid-19 in the coming months.
The authors, American public health experts, wrote: “There is a broad range of estimates of the number of ventilators we will need to care for U.S. patients with Covid-19, from several hundred thousand to as many as a million. The estimates vary depending on the number, speed, and severity of infections, of course, but even the availability of testing affects the number of ventilators needed.... current estimates of the number of ventilators in the United States range from 60,000 to 160,000, depending on whether those that have only partial functionality are included. The national strategic reserve of ventilators is small and far from sufficient for the projected gap. No matter which estimate we use, there are not enough ventilators for patients with Covid-19 in the upcoming months.”
Read more:
Fact check: Did Trump act early?
The president’s highlight reel didn’t include any clips of the president playing down the severity of the virus. He repeatedly, inaccurately compared has coronavirus to the flu and told his supporters that growing worries about the coronavirus was a “hoax”.
By the time Trump announced travel restrictions from China on 31 January, most major airlines had already suspended flights, following the lead of several major international carriers that had stopped due to the outbreak.
In late February, the president said the spread of Covid-19 in the US was not inevitable and the danger to Americans “remains very low”. He predicted that the number of cases diagnosed in the country, just 15 that time, could fall to zero in “a few days”.
Trump was warned at the end of January by one of his top White House advisers that coronavirus had the potential to kill hundreds of thousands of Americans and derail the US economy, unless tough action were taken immediately, new memos have revealed.
The memos were written by Trump’s economic adviser, Peter Navarro, and circulated via the National Security Council widely around the White House and federal agencies. They show that even within the Trump administration alarm bells were ringing by late January, at a time when the president was consistently downplaying the threat of Covid-19.
Moreover, the US intelligence community, public health experts and officials in Trump’s own administration had warned for years that the country was at risk from a pandemic, including specific warnings about a coronavirus outbreak.
An October 2019 draft report by the Department of Health and Human Services, obtained by the New York Times: “drove home just how underfunded, underprepared and uncoordinated the federal government would be for a life-or-death battle with a virus for which no treatment existed,” the Times reported.
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Trump plays Fox News clips defending his coronavirus record
The video basically amounts to an extended campaign ad. Donald Trump is played clips from his preferred network from his favorite network, Fox News, as well as clips from other networks including CNN showing state leaders praising Trump’s record.
“We could give you hundreds of clips like that,” Trump said.
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Fact check: Travel restrictions
Donald Trump once again pointed to his travel restrictions as evidence that he’d acted early to stop the spread of disease.
Epidemiologists have told the Guardian that these policies likely had little impact, as they were enacted after the virus was already spreading within the US. “Unfortunately, travel bans sound good,” noted Bill Hanage, an epidemiologist at Harvard’s TH Chan School of Public Health, after Trump announced European restrictions. “But we’re way past the point where simply restricting travel is a reasonable response.”
The few studies so far that have investigated the impact of travel restrictions have found that such policies may have at best delayed the spread of disease by a few days or weeks. A recent article in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences found that travel restrictions and airport screenings in several countries “likely slowed the rate of exportation from mainland China to other countries, but are insufficient to contain the global spread of Covid-19”. And in China, where officials shut down travel both in and out of Wuhan, the city where the Covid-19 outbreak began, the travel ban barely slowed the spread of diseases, according to a report published in Science.
There is no evidence that travel restrictions ultimately stopped the spread of coronavirus, or significantly reduced the contagion’s death toll.
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Dr Fauci clarified that “the first and only time” that he and Dr Birx “formally made a recommendation to the president” to encourage distancing, “the president listened to the recommendation and went to the mitigation.”
He insisted he’d made a “poor choice of words” yesterday when he suggested that earlier mitigation measures, which the president did not endorse, would have saved lives.
Be bristled at a question about whether he was speaking voluntarily. “Don’t even imply that,” he said.
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“Even though we’ve had a really bad week last week,” said Dr Fauci, “we’re starting to see in some areas now, that kind of flattening.”
He also said that she’s spoken with the Congressional Black Caucus about the racial health disparities. “I made it very clear to them is what we have to do is get the resources to where the vulnerable are,” he said. The government is looking into improving testing and contact tracing in vulnerable “communities that are hurting” to stop the spread of disease.
The president has begun by expressing condolences to tornado victims in the south. It was a “tough grouping of tornadoes”, he said, noting it was a “bad deal”.
Read more about the storms:
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The White House coronavirus briefing has begun
Donald Trump is joined by Dr Anthony Fauci and Dr Deborah Birx.
Progressive groups ask Congress for $4bn to fund vote-by-mail efforts
More than 50 progressive advocacy groups, including Greenpeace USA, Planned Parenthood and Stand Up America have signed an open letter calling for $4bn in funding to boost mail-in voting efforts.
“None of us know how long this pandemic will last. Failing to provide states with this necessary funding puts the November election and the rights of every voter at risk,” the groups wrote. Congress has already allocated $400m in election assistance to states, but advocates say that’s not enough to make voting accessible to everyone.
Donald Trump, meanwhile, has repeatedly expressed disdain for expanding mail-in voting, having previously said that efforts to make it easier to vote would mean ‘you’d never have a Republican elected in this country again’
My colleague Sam Levin in Los Angeles chatted with Bernie Sanders supporters in California about how they feel about their candidate dropping out of the presidential race, and what’s next:
Ana Gonzalez, 33, representative for state Democratic party in Rialto
“I just started crying, I didn’t know what to think. I felt devastated and heartbroken. And I’m angry at the Democratic National Committee, I feel like they made it more difficult for Bernie to win.
“The Biden supporters are saying, ‘Now you better get on board.’ But they are missing why we voted for Bernie. He earned our vote. Joe Biden hasn’t done that. Of course we don’t want Trump to win. But why am I going to vote for someone I don’t believe in? As a party leader, I obviously have to fall in line. But it’s going to be really hard for me to encourage voters to support Biden.”
Andres Garcia, 28, former Amazon warehouse worker in San Bernardino
“I was emotional. I took a moment to despair about it. It underscores why my generation has no faith in electoral politics. I’m getting ready for another four years of Trump. I don’t have a breath of confidence in Joe Biden. He’s just a wreck, altogether. He has been problematic for decades. A lot of people are really going to have to put on some hardcore blinders to stomach voting for him.
“I’m just going to have to turn my back on electoral politics and reach back into my community. That is more rewarding than trying to pour my heart and soul into some really crusty candidate. I’m not going to vote for Joe Biden.”
Assal Rad, 37, research fellow at the National Iranian American Council Action in Orange county
“To have him step down at such an important moment is really difficult to take. The cracks we see in the system because of this pandemic, he’s been speaking about these cracks for decades. One of the pillars of what he stands for is the working class, the people who are now suffering the most. We don’t have safety nets in place.
“I understand the impetus to say, ‘Vote blue, no matter who.’ But if Biden wants to galvanize the youth vote and get Bernie Sanders supporters, he needs to appeal to them. He needs to have messaging that doesn’t look to the past, but looks to the future. You can’t just yell at people to vote against something. Give them something to vote for.”
The Trump administration is asking Congress to push back a critical deadline to give it more time to conduct the 2020 census amid the Covid-19 pandemic, the Guardian’s Sam Levine reports.
Census data is used to determine how many congressional seats each state gets and federal law requires the census bureau to report those numbers to congress by 31 December.
Because delays have made it very difficult for the Census Bureau to collect information from people, the Trump administration wants Congress to give it until 30 April 2021. The bureau also wants to move the final deadline to respond to 31 October 2020. That deadline was originally 31 July and then it was pushed back to 14 August.
The Census Bureau is charged with capturing a snapshot of where every American household is on 1 April – a date also set by federal law. The further away from that date that operations continue, the more difficult it will be for the bureau to collect accurate information about where Americans were on 1 April.
The bureau and the Department of Commerce also said in a Monday statement that it was proposing to deliver the data states use for redistricting no later than 31 July 2021. The bureau has already suspended all of its field operations as Americans around the country are instructed not to leave their homes. The bureau and the commerce department said Monday said it was preparing to reopen field offices beginning 1 June of this year.
Rep Carolyn Maloney, a Democrat who chairs the House oversight committee, said in a statement Congress would consider the administration’s request, but needed more information. “The director of the Census Bureau was not even on today’s call, and the administration has refused for weeks to allow him to brief members of our committee, despite repeated requests,” she said.
“The constitution charges Congress with determining how the Census is conducted, so we need the administration to cooperate with our requests so we can make informed decisions on behalf of the American people.”
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Hi, everyone it’s Maanvi Singh, blogging from the west Coast.
As we’ve covered, Bernie Sanders has endorsed Joe Biden. But that doesn’t necessarily mean that all of Sanders’ supporters will fall in line.
With the utmost respect for Bernie Sanders, who is an incredible human being & a genuine inspiration, I don't endorse Joe Biden.
— Briahna Joy Gray (@briebriejoy) April 13, 2020
I supported Bernie Sanders because he backed ideas like #MedicareForAll, cancelling ALL student debt, & a wealth tax. Biden supports none of those.
Briahna Joy Gray, Sanders’ former national press secretary, said she doesn’t endorse Biden. “I supported Bernie Sanders because he backed ideas like #MedicareForAll, canceling ALL student debt, & a wealth tax. Biden supports none of those,” Gray tweeted.
Alexandria Ocasio Cortez, who was a Sanders campaign surrogate, has similarly expressed apprehension toward Biden’s policies – which are far more centrist than Sanders’ platform. “What I hope does not happen in this process is that everyone just tries to shoo it along and brush real policies ... under the rug as an aesthetic difference of style,” the New York representative said in an interview with the New York Times.
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Today so far
That’s it from me today. My west coast colleague, Maanvi Singh, will take over the blog for the next few hours.
Here’s where the day stands so far:
- The New York governor, Andrew Cuomo, announced several north-east states would work together on determining when to reopen the economy. Cuomo said each of the six states would participate in a working group to make decisions on how and when stay-at-home orders can be relaxed without jeopardizing public health. The governors of California, Oregon and Washington announced a similar project for the west coast.
- Bernie Sanders endorsed Joe Biden’s bid for president. The announcement comes five days after Sanders withdrew from the Democratic primary, and the former candidate told his supporters today, “We’ve got to make Trump a one-term president.”
- The White House said Trump had no plans to fire Dr Anthony Fauci, even though the president reshared a tweet last night that suggested the infectious disease expert should be dismissed.
- New York’s coronavirus death toll has surpassed 10,000. An additional 671 New Yorkers died of the virus yesterday, bringing the state’s total death toll to 10,056. But Cuomo said today that a plateauing of hospitalizations suggests “the worst” is over in New York.
- Trump said he has the power to restart the economy at the federal level, a claim that was contradicted by constitutional experts. The power to force businesses to close (and thus allow them to reopen) amid a public health crisis lies with governors, and Trump himself has repeatedly voiced that interpretation of the Constitution in recent weeks.
Maanvi will have more coming up, so stay tuned.
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The Guardian’s Kari Paul reports:
Republican congressman Jim Jordan called on Democrats to stop using Zoom video conferencing service, citing ongoing privacy issues around its security.
“Given the concerns surrounding Zoom’s security, it is clear Zoom is not an appropriate platform for Committee business, which may be particularly sensitive during the COVID-19 pandemic”, Jordan, the top Republican on the House oversight committee, said in a letter on Monday.
He requested Democrats “immediately suspend” all use of Zoom and evaluate the committee’s internal cybersecurity preparedness to prevent hackers from accessing sensitive committee information.
Jordan’s request referenced a warning from the Senate sergeant at arms last week and other general security concerns. He also said House oversight Democrats had been “Zoom-bombed,” a common practice in which hackers infiltrate meetings shouting racial epithets and other offensive slurs, a claim Democrats denied.
Zoom has faced an onslaught of privacy concerns in recent weeks, including an inquiry from the New York state attorney general and warnings from the FBI over Zoom bombing. Zoom has promised to improve its security and implemented a number of immediate fixes, including automatically requiring passwords for calls.
House not expected to return until May 4
The House is not expected to return to session until May 4 at the earliest, majority leader Steny Hoyer confirmed in a new statement.
“Members are advised that absent an emergency, the House is not expected to meet prior to Monday, May 4, 2020,” Hoyer said in a statement.
“Members are further advised that if the House is required to take action on critical legislation related to the coronavirus response or other legislative priorities, Members will be given sufficient notice to return to Washington, DC.”
House appropriations committee chairwoman Nita Lowey said earlier today that she did not think it was possible to return by April 20, as previously planned.
“Unless it’s safe, I think we are better off doing our work, as we have been doing, passing bills by unanimous consent,” Lowey told C-SPAN.
The Guardian’s Mario Koran reports on the latest from California:
Along with the west coast states of Oregon and Washington, California is starting the conversation about when to reopen state economies, governor Gavin Newsom announced at his daily press conference.
The three west coast states announced they would work together to determine when the states can start relaxing stay-at-home” orders.
States will base decisions on data on infections and hospitalizations, among other measures. It’s too early to provide a timeline for when restrictions should be lifted, Newsom said, but the governor’s details on a “bottom-up plan” should be released tomorrow.
Newsom said it was crucial for California to take a regional approach to lifting stay-at-home orders. “You can’t build walls around it and you can’t deny fundamental facts”, he said of the virus.
The talks to reopen come as the number of coronavirus cases appears to have slowed. Admissions to ICUs in California ticked up by 2.9% over the weekend, a modest rise compared to days past. By all accounts, stay-at-home orders appeared to have worked, Newsom said.
Meantime, one model has predicted that California will see its peak this week, on April 15. The forecast comes from just one model; earlier models suggested the state would reach its peak in late-May, before it falls off in June.
A public health expert said that while numbers appear to be stabilizing in the aggregate, it’s crucial to keep eyes on various parts of the state, which may experience sudden rises hidden within the state’s total numbers of infections.
Washington, Oregon and California said they would work together to establish a west coast plan to reopen the economy.
In a joint statement, Washington governor Jay Inslee, California governor Gavin Newsom and Oregon governor Kate Brown said they would prioritize residents’ health when deciding how to ease “stay at home” orders.
The West Coast is ahead of the curve on COVID-19. We’re going to make sure that stays true.
— Governor Jay Inslee (@GovInslee) April 13, 2020
WA, OR and CA will work together on a shared approach for reopening our economies. #WeGotThisWA
“We are announcing that California, Oregon and Washington have agreed to work together on a shared approach for reopening our economies – one that identifies clear indicators for communities to restart public life and business,” the statement said.
The governors also made clear that they would not allow politics to drive the decisions about reopening the economy, while Trump reportedly looks to open the economy by the end of the month, despite concerns from health experts.
The governors’ statement comes shortly after New York governor Andrew Cuomo announced several Northeast governors are forming a working group to determine when to reopen the economy.
Trump’s reelection campaign released a statement attacking Joe Biden after he was endorsed by his former primary rival Bernie Sanders.
“This is further proof that even though Bernie Sanders won’t be on the ballot in November, his issues will be,” Trump campaign manager Brad Parscale said in a statement.
“And while Biden is the Democrat establishment’s candidate, President Trump remains the disruptor candidate who has brought change to Washington.”
Democrats are looking to unify supporters around Biden now that Sanders has endorsed him, which could present a formidable threat to Trump in November.
Updated
Interesting news from Brazil, via the Associated Press and perhaps also of interest to Donald Trump and supporters who think US doctors should be prescribing hydroxychloroquine, an anti-malaria drug, as a treatment for Covid-19:
Scientists in Brazil have stopped part of a study of a malaria drug touted as a possible coronavirus treatment after heart rhythm problems developed in one-quarter of people given the higher of two doses being tested.
Here’s Julia Carrie Wong’s in-depth look at US support for the use of hydroxychloroquine:
Here’s an edited version of the rest of the AP report:
Chloroquine and a newer, similar drug called hydroxychloroquine, have been pushed by Trump after some very small, early tests suggested the drugs might curb the virus from entering cells. But the drugs have long been known to have potentially serious side effects, including altering the heartbeat in a way that could lead to sudden death.
The Brazilian study, in the Amazonian city of Manaus, planned to enroll 440 severely ill Covid-19 patients to test two doses of chloroquine, but researchers reported results after only 81 had been treated.
One-fourth of those assigned to get 600mg twice a day for 10 days developed heart rhythm problems, and trends suggested more deaths were occurring in that group, so scientists stopped that part of the study.
The other group was given 450mg twice a day on the first day then once a day for four more days. That is closer to what is being tried in some other studies including some in the US. It’s too soon to know whether that will prove safe or effective; the Brazil study had no comparison group that was getting no treatment.
Only one participant in the Brazil study had no signs of the virus in throat swabs after treatment, researchers noted.
The results from the Brazil study were posted on a research website and have not yet been reviewed by other scientists.
Complicating matters is that all patients in the study also received two antibiotics, ceftriaxone and azithromycin. The latter also can have side effects on the heart. Trump has touted the hydroxychloroquine-azithromycin combination.
Brazilian president Jair Bolsonaro has repeatedly touted the benefits of chloroquine and azithromycin, without evidence.
Tom Phillips has more from Rio de Janeiro on Bolsonaro and the Covid-19 crisis:
Martin Pengelly here again for a little bit, while Joanie takes a well-deserved break.
We’re still expecting a White House briefing at 5pm ET, after two days without one over the Easter weekend.
Trump felt moved this morning to put out a statement, via spokesman Hogan Gidley, dampening speculation that he might be about to fire Dr Anthony Fauci, leading public health expert, coronavirus task force member and live contender for most trusted man in America.
Here’s why people were worried…
… followed by Daniel Strauss’s report from Washington today:
You’d also think the chances of a testy Trump gripping the podium and aiming barbs at CNN, the New York Times and anyone else within range might be increased by reaction in the Twittersphere to the president’s claim this morning to have the authority to reopen the US economy over the heads of state governors.
Here’s a representative tweet, from University of Texas law professor Steve Vladeck:
This tweet is just false. The President has no formal legal authority to categorically override local or state shelter-in-place orders or to reopen schools and small businesses.
— Steve Vladeck (@steve_vladeck) April 13, 2020
No statute delegates to him such power; no constitutional provision invests him with such authority. https://t.co/j1J7EVuAEx
Cuomo announces multi-state plan to reopen economy
New York governor Andrew Cuomo and several other governors of north-eastern states convened a conference call this afternoon, to discuss a regionally coordinated plan to reopen the economy.
Cuomo said the state governments’ decisions about how to reopen the economy would be “guided by experts, data and science” and would not be done “in a political way”.
The conference call comes as Trump has said he has the authority to reopen the economy on a federal level, a claim that has been contradicted by constitutional experts.
BREAKING: NJ, NY, CT, PA, DE, and RI have formed a regional advisory council to help guide our re-opening once the #COVID19 emergency has passed.
— Governor Phil Murphy (@GovMurphy) April 13, 2020
We cannot act on our own. We must be smart & tactical in how our region comes out of this, or else we’ll be right back to square one. pic.twitter.com/fZeOk3GBca
Cuomo said each state would name a public health official and an economic development official to serve on a working group alongside each governor’s chief of staff, and the group will design a reopening plan that considers both health and economic concerns.
“Let’s be smart, let’s be cooperative and let’s learn from each other,” Cuomo said.
Rhode Island governor Gina Raimondo added: “The reality is, this virus doesn’t care about state borders, and our response shouldn’t either.”
Updated
Bernie Sanders’ endorsment of Joe Biden comes three months earlier in the election cycle than Sanders’s eventual 2016 endorsement of Hillary Clinton.
Bernie endorses Biden: 4/13/20
— amy walter (@amyewalter) April 13, 2020
Bernie endorses Hillary: 7/12/16
Hillary endorses Obama: 6/27/08
Edwards endorses Kerry: 3/4/04
A number of Clinton’s supports criticized Sanders for not endorsing the nominee earlier, and some cited the late endorsement as one factor in Clinton’s eventual loss to Trump.
Bernie Sanders has endorsed rival Joe Biden, days after dropping out of the Democratic primary and effectively ensuring that Biden will be the party’s standard-bearer in November.
“Today I am asking all Americans, I’m asking every Democrat, I’m asking every Independent, I’m asking a lot of Republicans, to come together to support your candidacy, which I endorse,” Sanders said, appearing on a livestream with Biden.
Biden, appearing moved by the endorsement, thanked Sanders. “If I am the nominee, which it looks like you just made me...” Biden said, adding, “I’m going to need you. Not just to win the campaign, but to govern.”
Sanders said their campaigns have set up joint task forces to work together on progressive priorities including on issues related to healthcare, climate change and criminal justice reform.
“It’s no great secret out there, Joe, that you and I have our differences. And we’re not going to paper them over, that’s real,” Sanders said. “But I hope that these task forces will come together utilizing the best minds...to work out real solutions to these very, very important problems.”
The campaign billed the event as a livestream on the economic response to the coronavirus pandemic featuring a “special guest.” Moments into the broadcast from Biden’s Delaware home, Sanders beamed into the conversation from his home in Burlington.
Updated
Bernie Sanders announced his endorsement of Joe Biden during a virtual livestream on the country’s response to the coronavirus pandemic.
“So today, I am asking all Americans, I’m asking every Democrat, I’m asking every Independent, I’m asking a lot of Republicans, to come together in this campaign to support your candidacy, which I endorse,” Sanders said alongside Biden.
“We’ve got to make Trump a one-term president,” Sanders added. “I will do all that I can to make that happen.”
The presumptive Democratic nominee thanked Sanders for his support, saying his former rival doesn’t get “enough credit” for his accomplishments in the race.
“If I am the nominee — which it looks like now you just made me — I really need you, not just to win the campaign but to govern,” Biden told Sanders.
Sanders endorses Biden's presidential campaign
Bernie Sanders joined Joe Biden’s livestream today to announce he is endorsing his former rival’s campaign.
"We need you in the White House," @BernieSanders tells @JoeBiden pic.twitter.com/DROKJ52mZg
— Lauren Gambino (@laurenegambino) April 13, 2020
Sanders dropped out of the race on Wednesday after losing a string of primaries last month, saying Biden’s delegate lead had made “victory virtually impossible.”
Nearly three in ten Americans incorrectly believe that coronavirus was created in a lab, according to a newly released poll.
According to the Pew Research Center survey, 29% of Americans say coronavirus was most likely created in a lab, while 43% say it most likely came about naturally.
Conspiracy theories about coronavirus have been flourishing in recent weeks. One theory that falsely posits a link between the virus and 5G technology has even led to vandalism of cell towers in Britain.
White House says Trump will not fire Fauci
The White House said Trump has no intention of firing Dr Anthony Fauci, even though the president reshared a tweet last night that called for the health expert’s dismissal.
NEW: WH Statement on Dr. #Fauci per @hogangidley45: “ The media chatter is ridiculous— President Trump is not firing Dr. Fauci.” pic.twitter.com/0HU2YptyW4
— Fin Gomez (@finnygo) April 13, 2020
“The media chatter is ridiculous— President Trump is not firing Dr. Fauci,” said deputy press secretary Hogan Gidley. “Dr. Fauci has been and remains a trusted adviser to President Trump.”
Trump’s retweet about firing Fauci come hours after the infectious disease expert acknowledged in a CNN interview that earlier implementation of social distancing might have saved American lives.
“[O]bviously, you could logically say that if you had a process that was ongoing, and you started mitigation earlier, you could have saved lives,” Fauci said. “Obviously, no one is going to deny that. ... But there was a lot of pushback about shutting things down back then.”
The White House Correspondents’ Association has rescheduled its annual dinner for August 29, after having to postpone the event because of coronavirus.
New Date, same mission for 2020 #WHCA Dinner pic.twitter.com/KDVTspOugf
— WHCA (@whca) April 13, 2020
“For most of us, the COVID-19 pandemic has been the most important story of our lifetimes,” WHCA president Jonathan Karl of ABC News said in a statement. “We hope our rescheduled 2020 dinner will be a chance to celebrate the kind the important journalism we have seen throughout this crisis.”
The dinner, which was originally scheduled for April 25, will still include comedian Kenan Thompson as the host and Hasan Minhaj as the featured entertainer.
The Senate quickly gaveled out its pro forma session today, without attempting to pass a bill granting additional funds to the small business loan program created by the stimulus package.
Last week, Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell tried to pass a bill allocating $250 billion in additional funding to the program by unanimous consent, which would have bypassed a chamber-wide vote.
But Senate Democrats objected to McConnell’s proposal, demanding that the bill also include an extra $250 billion for hospitals and state and local governments. McConnell objected to that, and the bill failed to advance.
Afterwards, Republicans accused Democrats of playing partisan games while small businesses suffer, while House speaker Nancy Pelosi said McConnell’s move was a political “stunt” aimed at avoiding bipartisan negotiations.
Democrats and Republicans agree on one thing: the $2 trillion stimulus package passed last month will need additional funding to help the country weather this crisis.
Today so far
Here’s where things stand today so far:
- New York’s coronavirus death toll has surpassed 10,000, governor Andrew Cuomo announced at his daily birefing. An additional 671 New Yorkers died of the virus yesterday, even as hospitalizations in the state begin to plateau.
- Trump dubiously claimed he has the power to restart the economy at the federal level. Constitutional experts have said that power lies with governors, many of whom have expressed concerns about relaxing “stay at home” orders too quickly.
- A sailor from the USS Theodore Roosevelt has died of coronavirus. The former commander of the aircraft carrier raised concerns about the spread of coronavirus on the ship, and he was later removed from his post. More than 500 crew members have now tested positive for the virus.
The blog will have more coming up, so stay tuned.
It’s been one month since Trump declared a national emergency over the coronavirus pandemic, and many of his key promises remain unfulfilled.
An in-depth NPR investigation found many of the pledges that Trump made in his March 13 Rose Garden speech have only been parially realized, while others have gone completely ignored.
NPR reports:
NPR’s Investigations Team dug into each of the claims made from the podium that day. And rather than a sweeping national campaign of screening, drive-through sample collection and lab testing, it found a smattering of small pilot projects and aborted efforts.
In some cases, no action was taken at all.
Target did not formally partner with the federal government, for example.
And a lauded Google project turned out not to be led by Google at all, and then once launched was limited to a smattering of counties in California.
The remarks in the Rose Garden highlighted the Trump administration’s strategic approach: a preference for public-private partnerships. But as the White House defined what those private companies were going to do, in many cases it promised more than they could pull off.
Independent congressman Justin Amash pushed back against Trump’s claim that he has the authority to reopen the economy at the federal level, an assertion that is also challenged by constitutional experts.
President Trump is flat-out wrong. The president has no authority to “close down” or “open up” the states. He’s the one creating conflict and confusion. Put down the authoritarianism and read the Constitution. https://t.co/3AFqRx7YTX
— Justin Amash (@justinamash) April 13, 2020
Amash, who left the Republican party over his opposition to Trump, told the president in a tweet, “Put down the authoritarianism and read the Constitution.”
As NBC News noted, the ability to force businesses to close in the face of a public heath crisis is considered a “police power,” which the Constitution reserves for states.
Cuomo briefing summary
New York governor Andrew Cuomo has just wrapped up his daily briefing on the state’s response to coronavirus.
Here’s some of what he covered:
- New York’s coronavirus death toll has surpassed 10,000. Cuomo announced that 671 New Yorkers died of coronavirus yesterday, bringing the state’s total death toll to 10,056, far exceeding that of any other US state.
- Cuomo said he believes “the worst is over,” but he warned that the state’s progress could be quickly undone if New Yorkers become “reckless” about social distancing.
- Cuomo and other Northeast governors will make an announcement this afternoon. Cuomo said he wants to ensure there is coordination across the region once states start to reopen their economies.
-
Cuomo said he “can’t imagine” Trump will fire Dr Anthony Fauci. The governor said Fauci had been an “extraordinary” asset in the fight against coronavirus and he could not imagine he would be fired, even though Trump reshared a tweet last night suggesting the infectious disease expert should be dismissed.
New York governor Andrew Cuomo said he “can’t imagine” that Trump will fire Dr Anthony Fauci, the nation’s top infectious disease expert.
Cuomo applauded Fauci as an “extroadionary” asset in the country’s fight against coronavirus. “I think Dr Fauci is great. I think Americans trust him,” Cuomo siad.
“As crazy as things get in this world ... I can’t imagine that that would ever happen,” Cuomo said of Trump firing Fauci.
Governor Andrew Cuomo said the number of coronavirus cases in New York will quickly go up if residents become “reckless” about social distancing.
“I’m not confident that the worst is over,” Cuomo said. “The worst can be over, and it is over, unless we do something reckless.”
Cuomo ackowledged the numbers suggest a plateauing of cases, but he added, “Whatever those numbers say is a direct result of what we do.”
The governor, who issued a statwide “stay at home” order about a month ago, also emphasized that “a lot of pain and suffering” had to happen for the state to flatten the curve.
Governor Andrew Cuomo emphasized that no New Yorker should take positive signs about the curve flattening as permission to ease social distancing.
“That’s why I’ve said the exact opposite 57 times,” Cuomo told a reporter who asked whether he worried New Yorkers would now abandon social distancing restrictions.
Cuomo said he has sent a message of “stay the course” at “an annoying, repetitive level” because he wants to ensure the state does not reverse the progress it has made.
New York governor Andrew Cuomo said the state will continue dealing with its coronavirus crisis until a vaccine is developed, which will likely not happen for 12 to 18 months.
“But there will be points between now and then when we can feel more confident,” Cuomo said.
The governor said he wanted New Yorkers to understand that although the worst might be behind them, precautions will need to be taken for many months to come, even if restrictions are somewhat eased.
Cuomo: 'I think you can say the worst is over'
Governor Andrew Cuomo warned New Yorkers that there will not be a single moment in the future when coronavirus is declared defeated.
“There’s going to be no epiphany,” Cuomo said. The governor said the state would instead see “points of resolution over time.”
With the number of coronavirus hospitalizations starting to plateau, Cuomo acknowledged there were glimmers of hope. “Yes, I think you can say the worst is over,” Cuomo said.
But the governor warned New Yorkers need to continue to be vigilant to prevent a resurgence in coronavirus cases.
New York governor Andrew Cuomo said he would be making an announcement this morning with other governments from around the Northeast about reopening the economy.
Cuomo said he hoped to devise “as coordinated a regional plan as you can” to enable the state to start reopening the economy once coronavirus cases start to subside.
Cuomo noted New York will need to work in conjunction with neighboring states to effectively get people back to work.
New York governor Andrew Cuomo warned against easing social distancing restrictions too quickly, as the president reportedly looks to reopen the economy by the end of the month.
Cuomo said the state would listen to experts to determine when to relax restrictions, striking a “delicate balance” between restarting the economy and still protecting public health.
The governor said he wanted to “learn from those other countries” that have already started to reopen their economies to determine what next steps to take.
New York coronavirus death toll surpasses 10,000
New York governor Andrew Cuomo announced the state’s coronavirus death toll has surpassed 10,000 after this past weekend.
New York lost 671 patients to coronavirus yesterday, bringing the state’s total death toll to 10,056. This is nearly four times the state’s death toll from the September 11 attacks, when 2,753 New Yorkers lost their lives.
Cuomo mourned the loss of thousands of New Yorkers, describing the “horrific level of pain and grief and sorrow” from this crisis.
Updated
New York continues to flatten the curve, Cuomo says
New York governor Andrew Cuomo said in his daily briefing that the state continues to flatten the curve of its coronavirus cases.
Cuomo noted the state appears to be hitting a plateau in the number of hospitalizations, and the three-day average of intubations is down.
Trump’s claim that he has the authority to order a federal reopening of the economy also contradicts his own recent comments about govenors’ powers.
“We have a thing called the Constitution, which I cherish, number one,” Trump said on April 4 when asked about why he has not mandated a federal lockdown in response to coronavirus.
“Number two, those governors ... they’re doing a great job. They’re being very, very successful in what they’re doing. And as you know, I want the governors to be running things.”
Trump has tried to shuft responsibility on to the governors as his administration has been criticized for its early response to the pandemic, which makes the president’s latest comment all the more puzzling.
Trump’s dubious claim that he has the sole authority to determine when the economy reopens likely came in response to a CNN story about how that power likely lies with governors.
Chyron on CNN earlier this hour: "TRUMP WANTS TO REOPEN ECONOMY, BUT GOVERNORS WILL DECIDE" https://t.co/qpmg3koEag
— Oliver Darcy (@oliverdarcy) April 13, 2020
Governors from both parties have made clear that they are hesitant to relax social distancing guidelines at all before the number of coronavirus cases begins to subside.
“We do also have to think about how do we eventually ramp up and get some folks back to work. But you can’t just pick a date and flip a switch,” Maryland’s Republican governor, Larry Hogan, said yesterday. “I don’t think it’s going to be that simple.”
Trump says he can reopen the country, contradicting experts
Trump dubiously claimed the federal government has the authority to determine when the country’s economy reopens, even though constitutional experts have said the president likely doesn’t have the authority to implement (or lift) a federal lockdown.
“It is the decision of the President, and for many good reasons,” Trump said in a tweet about reopening the country. “With that being said, the Administration and I are working closely with the Governors, and this will continue.”
....It is the decision of the President, and for many good reasons. With that being said, the Administration and I are working closely with the Governors, and this will continue. A decision by me, in conjunction with the Governors and input from others, will be made shortly!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) April 13, 2020
But constitutional analysis and Suprme Court precedent seem to indicate much of the authority here lies with individual states. USA Today reports:
Federal law allows Washington to impose quarantines in some circumstances and limit travel between states, but the Trump administration has not invoked those powers. And the Supreme Court has struck down attempts by the federal government to intervene within states. For instance, the court noted in a 1985 decision that invalidated Food and Drug Administration rules for blood plasma donation centers that ‘the regulation of health and safety matters is primarily and historically a matter of local concern.’
Updated
Results from last week’s Wisconsin primary will start rolling in at 4 pm CT, state election officials said.
The second half of a traditional Election Day in Wisconsin arrives at 4 p.m. today when local election officials can start reporting results from April 7.https://t.co/54zcuNs63N
— Wisconsin Elections (@WI_Elections) April 13, 2020
Wisconsin’s election was marred by long lines and confusion after Democratic governor Tony Evers’ executive order to cancel in-person voting was blocked by the state supreme court.
More than a million absentee ballots have already been returned, but voting rights advocates feared that overall turnout may have been affected by fears about voting in person amid the coronavirus pandemic.
The Guardian’s Sam Levine covered all of Wisconsin’s chaos in this excellent piece from Friday:
House appropriations committee chairwoman Nita Lowey said the chamber would likely not return to session next week.
“I certainly do not think so,” she said when asked whether members would return to Washington on April 20. “I don’t think it’s possible.”
Lowey noted many members have been conducting meetings remotely as social distancing restrictions remain in effect.
“Unless it’s safe, I think we are better off doing our work, as we have been doing, passing bills by unanimous consent,” Lowey said. The process of unanimous consent allows for bills to be approved without the House taking a full-chamber vote.
House majority leader Steny Hoyer previously said that the chamber would not return until April 20 at the earliest, but that could be pushed back, especially considering coronavirus cases are surging in the Washington metropolitan area.
Supreme Court to start hearing oral arguments by teleconference next month
The Supreme Court will start hearing oral arguments via teleconference next month after repeatedly delaying arguments due to coronavirus.
“The Court will hear oral arguments by telephone conference on May 4, 5, 6, 11, 12 and 13 in a limited number of previously postponed cases,” the court said in a statement.
Among the cases to be heard virtually next month is Trump’s request to block the release of his financial records, which were subpoenaed by Congress and New York prosecutors.
That case was originally set to be heard in March, but oral arguments were canceled as social distancing restrictions went into effect.
The director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said the US is “nearing the peak” of its coronavirus crisis in an interview this morning with the “Today” show.
“We are nearing the peak right now.” Watch @CDCDirector’s full interview with @savannahguthrie about if he thinks we’ve hit the peak of the coronavirus yet, when the country could start reopening and much more. pic.twitter.com/hZdWDKSbSb
— TODAY (@TODAYshow) April 13, 2020
“We are nearing the peak right now,” Dr Robert Redfield told NBC News’ Savannah Guthrie. “You’ll know when you’re at the peak when the next day is actually less than the day before. ... We are stabilizing across the country right now, in terms of the state of this outbreak.”
The federal guidelines on social distancing currently extend through the end of April, but those guidelines could be extended if the country is still seeing high numbers of coronavirus cases.
Health experts in the administration, including Dr Anthony Fauci, have repeatedly warned that we could see a resurgence in cases if social distancing is relaxed too quickly.
Trump plans to announce cuts in US funding to the World Health Organization this week, according to the Washington Post. The news comes as Trump has repeatedly tried to blame the spread of coronavirus on the UN agency.
The Post reports:
Trump hinted at a temporary hold on U.S. funding Friday but said he wanted to wait until after Easter to announce anything. He said his administration would discuss the organization ‘in great detail’ this week, saying he did not want to go further ‘before we had all the facts.’
Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and other U.S. officials are expected to recommend to Trump how to dock or condition payments to the agency as Republicans in Congress seek documentation of WHO dealings with China, said people familiar with White House and State Department discussions who requested anonymity to discuss the private conversations.
Trump has accused the WHO of being “very, very China-centric,” suggesting the agency was not responsive enough when the first cases of coronavirus were reported.
The president’s complaints come as a number of experts have criticized his administration’s early response to the virus, and a new report suggests Trump resisted enacting social distancing earlier in the year, which could have saved thousands of lives.
ABC News anchor George Stephanopoulos announced on “Good Morning America” that he has tested positive for coronavirus, although he has not shown any symptoms.
Why are some COVID-19 cases asymptomatic? @DrJAshton weighs in on asymptomatic cases after @GStephanopoulos tells us he has tested positive for COVID-19 yet has no symptoms after his wife Ali Wentworth also tested positive. https://t.co/PLhEP1OIMr pic.twitter.com/DACO1U7fbw
— Good Morning America (@GMA) April 13, 2020
Stephanopoulos’ wife, Ali Wentworth, announced her own diagnosis nearly two weeks ago, saying she had “never been sicker,” but the anchor said his case had been asymptomatic.
“I’ve never had a fever, never had chills, never had a headache, never had a cough, never had shortness of breath,” Stephanopoulos said. “I’m feeling great.”
Stephanopoulos, who previously served as Bill Clinton’s White House communications director, said his family had been practicing the “home version of social distancing” since Wentworth’s diagnosis.
Two CNN anchors, Chris Cuomo and Brooke Baldwin, have also announced they have tested positive for the virus.
Sailor from USS Theodore Roosevelt dies of coronavirus
A sailor from the USS Theodore Roosevelt, which has confirmed hundreds of coronavirus cases among crew members, has died of the virus.
The Navy said in a statment that the sailor had tested positive for the virus on March 30 and been admitted to the ICU on Thursday after being found unresponsive. The sailor was declared dead today, making him the first active-duty service member to die of coronavirus.
Captain Brett Crozier, the former commander of the USS Theodore Roosevelt, was removed from his post earlier this month after he raised concerns about the spread of coronavirus on the ship.
“We are not at war. Sailors do not need to die,” Crozier wrote in a letter to Navy officials. “If we do not act now, we are failing to properly take care of our most trusted asset — our sailors.”
The letter was leaked, costing Crozier his job, but most of the ship’s crew members were allowed to disembark and quarantine after the warning was made public.
At least 550 of the ship’s crew members, including Crozier, have now tested positive for the virus, the Navy said Saturday.
Updated
This is Joan Greve in Washington, taking over for Martin Pengelly.
Dr Anthony Fauci, the nation’s top infectious disease specialist, will be taking questions live on C-SPAN tonight at 8 pm ET.
Dr. Anthony Fauci takes your calls.
— Howard Mortman (@HowardMortman) April 13, 2020
LIVE tonight on C-SPAN ... 8pmET primetime @cspanwj ...
Hosted by @SteveScully pic.twitter.com/jwluVCOqp3
Fauci, the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, has become one of the most recognizable faces of the government’s response to coronavirus.
In a Monmouth University poll released last week, Fauci was named as the most trusted government official in connection to the pandemic. More than a third (35%) of Americans listed Fauci as the official they trust more when looking for information on the virus, in comparison to 20% for Trump.
Considering the expert’s sudden rise to fame, it’s perhaps unsurprising that the president, who has historically resisted sharing the spotlight with other officials, retweeted a message last night suggesting Fauci should be fired.
It’s worth a look at what the #FireFauci tweet retweeted by Trump said.
It was tweeted by DeAnna Lorraine, a “Republican/Christian” who ran unsuccessfully to challenge Democratic House Speaker Nancy Pelosi for her California seat later this year, and it says:
Fauci is now saying that had Trump listened to the medical experts earlier he could’ve saved more lives. Fauci was telling people on February 29th that there was nothing to worry about and it posed no threat to the US public at large. Time to #FireFauci...
29 February is a key date in the coronavirus outbreak, as this exhaustive timeline from the Washington Post shows. It was the day on which the first US death from Covid-19 was reported, in Washington state. (Where, as Hallie Golden examines here, efforts to tackle the outbreak have been relatively successful.)
Here’s Fauci speaking on 29 February, on NBC’s Today Show. The hosts point out it was the day after Trump told a rally the outbreak, or fears over it, was “the Democrats’ new hoax”.
Fauci refuses to comment on that but discusses “community spread”, then making it “more difficult to track down what the original source was”. He discusses federal efforts to monitor people coming in from China and problems with the availability of coronavirus tests.
Asked if Americans “should be changing our habits and if so, how”, Fauci says:
No. Right now at this moment there is no need to change anything that you’re doing on a daily basis.
“Right now the risk is still low but this could change. I’ve said that many times, even on this programme. You’ve gotta watch out because the risk is low now. You don’t need to change anything you’re doing. When you start to see community spread, this could change and force you to become much more attentive.”
Fauci also says “this could be a major outbreak … or it could be something that’s reasonably well controlled … hopefully we can protect the American public from any serious degree or morbidity and mortality.”
According to the New York Times report which Fauci appeared to confirm on CNN on Sunday, public health experts pushed for the introduction of social-distancing protocols in mid-February but were rebuffed. Such federal guidelines were introduced on 16 March:
Again, the US figures today, Monday 13 April:
- Cases: 557,247
- Deaths: 22,107
Axios has an interesting exclusive about Michelle Obama, who the news site reports will “throw her support today behind expanding vote-by-mail options … with her voting rights group embracing legislation before Congress amid coronavirus fears”.
In a statement, the former first lady and co-chair of the rather starry When We All Vote – other co-chairs include Tom Hanks, Lin-Manuel Miranda and Janelle Monae – said: “There is nothing partisan about striving to live up to the promise of our country; making the democracy we all cherish more accessible; and protecting our neighbors, friends and loved ones as they participate in this cornerstone of American life.”
There is of course everything partisan about mail-in voting and its desirability or otherwise. In short:
- Donald Trump really doesn’t like it – he claims it encourages fraud (experts say it doesn’t) and famously told Fox & Friends the other week that attempts to make voting easier mean “you’d never have a Republican elected in this country again”.
- Republicans really don’t like it – and stood against it in Wisconsin last week, where elections played out amid a pandemic with voters risking their lives to cast their ballots.
- But Democrats do like it, a lot, because in general the more people vote, and particularly minorities and women, the better Democrats do.
The fate of the presidential election in November, of course, remains at serious issue as the pandemic continues.
The legislation Obama is supporting is the Resilient Elections During Quarantines and Natural Disasters Act of 2020, introduced by three Democrats in the House and one Democratic senator.
Here’s Guardian voting rights reporter Sam Levine’s look at what unfolded in Wisconsin:
Extraordinary video from CBS’ 60 Minutes, after Trump coronavirus tsar Peter Navarro defended the administration’s pandemic response in an interview broadcast on Sunday night.
Navarro angrily challenged his hosts to show him they had covered pandemic preparations under previous administrations.
So 60 Minutes did.
“I challenge you,” said Navarro, “show me the 60 Minutes episode a year ago, two years ago, or during the Obama administration, during the Bush administration that said, ‘Hey, global pandemic’s coming, you gotta do x, y and z and by the way we gotta shut down the economy to fight it.
“Show me that episode. Then you’ll have some credence in terms of attacking the Trump administration for not being prepared.”
60 Minutes duly ran clips from a 2009 feature on the fight against H1N1, or swine flu – “a pandemic, meaning it’s a global epidemic, the first flu pandemic in 41 years” – and a 2005 section on H5N1, or avian flu, which the show said had “the potential to cause an influenza pandemic similar to the one that killed 50m people in 1918”.
Here’s the video:
And here’s world affairs editor Julian Borger’s rather amazing – and distinctly amazingly headlined – profile of Navarro from last week, written in the wake of news that one of the advisers who warned Trump about Covid-19 was … Peter Navarro. (Though not, so far as we know, Ron Vara.)
Good morning…
…and welcome to another day of coverage of the coronavirus outbreak in the US – and the politics around it. First, as usual, the figures according to researchers at Johns Hopkins University:
- US cases: 557,247
- US deaths: 22,107
- New York deaths: 9,385
- New Jersey deaths: 2,350
- Michigan deaths: 1,479
It’s worth noting that Massachusetts now has the third-most confirmed cases, 25,475, behind New York and New Jersey but many fewer deaths. On Sunday, New York governor Andrew Cuomo noted that his state’s death rate has flattened – at nearly 800 a day.
Debate continued about when the shuttered US economy might reopen but Donald Trump spent Sunday evening fuming – about a New York Times report which said his public health advisers wanted social distancing to be implemented in February but were rebuffed and did not see it happen till mid-March.
On CNN yesterday morning, Dr Anthony Fauci of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases appeared to confirm the report.
Asked if he thought lives could have been saved “if social distancing, physical distancing, stay-at-home measures had started [in the] third week of February, instead of mid-March”, Fauci said: “What goes into those kinds of decisions is complicated.
“But you’re right. I mean, obviously, if we had, right from the very beginning, shut everything down, it may have been a little bit different. But there was a lot of pushback about shutting things down back then.”
Trump did not stage White House briefings over the Easter weekend – there’s one on the schedule for today, Monday, at 5pm ET – but despite engaging in some intensive and successful phone diplomacy with Russia and Saudi Arabia he did have his Twitter account within reach. Here’s his most recent tweet on the matter:
The @nytimes story is a Fake, just like the “paper” itself. I was criticized for moving too fast when I issued the China Ban, long before most others wanted to do so. @SecAzar told me nothing until later, and Peter Navarro memo was same as Ban (see his statements). Fake News!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) April 13, 2020
With the media indulging in its favourite game – “Will he sack Fauci this time?” – and Trump ominously having retweeted a message which ended “Time to #FireFauci” – we can expect more to come this morning. More to come on Navarro, the coronavirus tsar, as well.
In the meantime, here’s some further reading including a devastating piece from Ed Pilkington, our chief reporter:
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