Розділ: Політика
Trump Expects to Sign Order on Immigration Halt
Amid the coronavirus pandemic there will be a pause of at least 60 days in the issuance of green cards, U.S. President Donald Trump announced on Tuesday – a move that will potentially close the country off to tens of thousands of people. “It would be wrong and unjust” for those laid off by COVID-19 “to be replaced by new immigrant labor from abroad,” Trump said. The short break on the arrival of those granted permanent residency, according to Trump, “will protect the solvency of our health care system” overwhelmed by the pandemic. The president said he will likely sign the executive order on Wednesday. Farm workers not affected“The farmers will not be affected by this at all,” Trump said, indicating there will not be restrictions on agricultural workers and others helping to secure the food supply. “If anything, we’re going to make it easier, and we’re doing a process to make it better for those workers to come in to the farm.” The administration reportedly is also seeking to require technology workers in the country on H-1B visas to provide updated certifications that they are not displacing American workers. “The president didn’t want to put travel restrictions in place, he didn’t want to put immigration restrictions in place, but we have to because of this terrible virus that’s been unleashed from foreign shores,” National Security Adviser Robert O’Brien told reporters earlier in the day. Critics of the president accuse him of using the health crisis as an excuse to pursue a hardline immigration policy to appeal to his conservative supporters in an election year. “I’m not doing that at all,” Trump said. “The president more than anything else just simply wants to try to pivot away from the criticisms of the way he’s handled the pandemic … and towards a subject that can rile up his base and a subject that he’s comfortable talking about,” Christobal Ramon, senior policy analyst for immigration at the Bipartisan Policy Center, told VOA. “Unfortunately, President Trump seems more interested in fanning anti-immigrant flames than in saving lives,” commented Andrea Flores, deputy policy director of the equality division of the American Civil Liberties Union. “We cannot allow President Trump to exploit this pandemic to advance his racism and xenophobia.” “We have to build back our country,” Trump said Tuesday in the White House press briefing room. “People want to get back to work.” Twenty of the 50 states are moving quickly toward reopening their economies, the president said. While the White House coronavirus task force, led by Vice President Mike Pence, issued guidelines to slow the spread of the coronavirus, Trump has repeatedly emphasized the need to relax the strictures in the advisories and get people back to work. Recent tweets by the president with the imperative “Liberate” targeted at several states with Democratic Party governors with strict stay-at-home orders continue to generate criticism. FILE – Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker says he’s concerned about protests against stay-at-home orders.”He’s fomenting protest, and I hate to say, that is fomenting some violence,” said Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker. “I’m very concerned about what that might mean for the country if he keeps doing things like that.” Another Democratic governor, Andrew Cuomo of New York, whose state is the current epicenter of the global pandemic, met with Trump at the White House on Tuesday afternoon. The president did not pressure him on a fast reopening of his state’s economy, Cuomo told MSNBC. Testing still an issueThe governor said his focus during the meeting was on ramping up COVID-19 testing – a benchmark needed for determining the timing and extent of relaxing social guidelines. Cuomo said he also told Trump that states, reeling from the economic impact of shutdowns, need federal funding. “I stayed focused on what we were there to talk about and for me the substantive agenda was testing – who does what, how do we get it up the scale – and somebody has to stand up for funding for the states,” the governor said during a live telephone interview. “That’s part of phase four” of stimulus money, said the president, who on Tuesday lauded the Senate for approving a third-phase package of nearly half a trillion dollars that is expected to be approved by the House on a bipartisan basis Wednesday. The coronavirus, for which there is no vaccine, has claimed nearly 45,000 lives in the United States – the most reported by any country. A total of 820,000 people in the country are confirmed to have been infected with COVID-19, with more than 250,000 in the state of New York alone. An improvement in the trend is being seen in large metropolitan areas across the country, except for the Washington, D.C. area, a member of the coronavirus task force, Dr. Deborah Birx, told reporters Tuesday. Additionally, “we’re still seeing outbreaks in long-term care facilities” such as nursing homes, she said. Patsy Widakuswara contributed to this report.
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By Polityk | 04/22/2020 | Повідомлення, Політика
Coronavirus Gets Political as US Leaders Debate Testing, Funding
The battle against the coronavirus in the U.S. becomes a political fight as state and federal leaders debate who gets more funding and COVID-19 testing. VOA’s Elizabeth Lee has the details.
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By Polityk | 04/21/2020 | Повідомлення, Політика
As Mail Voting Pushed, Some Fear Loss of In-Person Option
Scrambling to address voting concerns during a pandemic, election officials across the country are eliminating polling places or scaling back opportunities for people to cast ballots in person — a move raising concerns among voting rights groups and some Democrats who say some voters could be disenfranchised.
In Nevada, election officials will open only one polling place per county for its June primary. In Florida, county officials warn they may have to consolidate polling places across the state. In Ohio’s primary next week, only the disabled and the homeless will be allowed to vote in person.
The closures come as many state officials are encouraging voters to vote by mail — and expanding opportunities to do so. Many election officials and health experts see mail-in and absentee voting as the best way to keep voters from spreading the coronavirus and to address a shortage of poll workers who are able to work without risking their health.
But advocates say some states are moving so quickly to embrace the shift to mail that they are not doing enough to accommodate certain voters, including the disabled, people who lack regular mail service, groups with little history of absentee voting or those who are simply unable to keep up with last-minute election changes and mail-in deadlines.
“Not everyone can or should vote by mail,” said Stacey Abrams, a former Democratic candidate for Georgia governor who now runs Fair Fight Action, a voting rights group.
The concerns over polling places largely have been overlooked in the fight over voting rights during the outbreak, which has so far centered on partisan disputes over mail-in and absentee voting.
Democrats and voting rights groups have filed lawsuits seeking to expand mail and absentee voting options and pushed for an extra $2 billion to help states adjust their election systems. National Republicans are fighting those efforts, while President Donald Trump claims without evidence that mail-in voting is vulnerable to fraud.
But the challenge of securing in-person voting may prove just as contentious and just as likely to curb voter participation in the upcoming primaries, which are largely viewed as a dry run for November. In the chaotic recent Wisconsin election, where voters waited for hours to cast ballots, one expert estimated that the closure of polling sites in Milwaukee and other cities may have kept as many as 100,000 people from casting ballots.
Last week, Democrats sued Nevada’s top election official, a Republican, for limiting each county to a single polling location during the state’s June 9 primary, alleging that will channel 87% of the state’s voters into only two locations. Democrats, who count on big turnout at the polls in the populous county that contains Las Vegas, also sought changes to make mail voting simpler in a state where the overwhelming majority normally vote in person.
A conflict is also brewing in swing state Florida, where the nonpartisan county election coordinators have asked Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis to loosen rules on early voting and allow the consolidation of precinct polling stations for elections in August and November.
Democrats fear that polling places may close in Palm Beach and Broward counties, two dense areas that are their bases in the state. “Any diminution of access by reducing precincts or whatever should be avoided as much as possible,” said Terrie Rizzo, the chair of the Florida Democratic Party.
But the rush to eliminate in-person voting can be bipartisan. Democrats’ party-run primary in Wyoming was conducted exclusively by mail, as was its one in Alaska. Party officials said they took steps like allowing same-day registration that help compensate for lack of in-person options. Kansas Democrats agreed to eliminate polling places for their May primary. Party chairwoman Vicki Hiatt said in-person voting sites were “going to be too risky.”
Ohio, Hawaii, Idaho and New Jersey are also sharply limiting or abolishing in-person voting in coming elections.
Advocates acknowledge election officials are in a difficult position and support an increase in vote by mail for those who want it. But in-person voting, they say, provides an important “fail-safe” in the event of errors or mail delivery issues.
“I really don’t buy the argument that it can’t be done safely because grocery stores are open now, essential businesses are open right now,” said Sylvia Albert of Common Cause. “The businesses that are open now are considered essential and voting is essential.”
According to a new report from the liberal Center for American Progress and the NAACP, African-Americans are particularly reliant on in-person voting. In 2018, only 11% cast a ballot by mail — less than half the rate of whites and Latinos.
“There are going to be people who are going to be disenfranchised by moving entirely to a vote-by-mail system,” warned Center for American Progress’ Danielle Root.
Ohio’s April 28 primary eliminates in-person voting for all but those with disabilities or those without a home address. Anyone who fails to request an absentee ballot before the deadline or whose absentee ballot doesn’t arrive in time would not be able to vote in person.
That may include Katie Brickner, 39, who lives in a Cleveland suburb. Her absentee ballot application was returned to her last week as undeliverable after water somehow damaged the front of the envelope after she dropped it off with the post office. She immediately mailed another but is worried about getting her ballot back after hearing reports that it’s taking a few weeks for applications to be processed.
“I will have no voice in the election and it’s really important to me this year,” she said.
In Maryland, state election officials were poised to cancel in-person voting but decided to keep at least one polling place open in each of the state’s 24 counties after voting rights groups raised concerns.
In Idaho, state election officials said it “simply was not safe for voters, election workers or the larger community” to hold in-person voting for the May 19 primary. The state is mailing absentee ballot applications to voters who haven’t requested one and has partnered with local grocery stores who will be providing stamps for those who need them to return their completed ballots.
Still, the decision to eliminate in-person voting could still pose a barrier for some tribal members in the state. One county has reported the number of absentee ballot requests coming from the Shoshone-Bannock Tribes in southeastern Idaho as “critically low,” according to Randy’L Teton, tribal spokeswoman.
Teton worries the process for requesting an absentee ballot may pose a challenge for those used to voting in person.
“We’re going to need to explain this or delegate a family member that can help their grandma or grandpa on how to get through this,” Teton said.
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By Polityk | 04/20/2020 | Повідомлення, Політика
White House to Hold Call with Governors on Testing Supplies
After insisting it was up to governors to ramp up coronavirus testing in their states, the Trump administration is finally acknowledging their pleas for help.
Vice President Mike Pence will lead a teleconference with the nation’s governors Monday morning from FEMA headquarters in response to calls for a national testing strategy to help secure in-demand supplies like testing swabs and chemical reagents — a day after Trump announced that he would be using the Defense Production Act to compel one company to manufacture swabs.
Pence will “review what more they can do and do together to develop locally tailored testing strategies,” Trump said at a White House news conference Sunday. “We want to help them out.”
Officials and health experts say the country needs to dramatically scale its testing infrastructure if it is going to safely roll back restrictions and reopen businesses without risking a major spike in infections that would negate weeks of social distancing and economic strife.
Dr. Anthony Fauci, the nation’s top infectious diseases expert, told ABC’s “Good Morning America” Monday morning that the nation is currently running about 1.5 to 2 million tests per week. But, “we really need to get up to, at least, you know, maybe two times that, three times that.”
Administration officials have insisted that the U.S. currently has enough testing capacity to safely implement “Phase One” of a plan they released last week to begin a slow return to normalcy. And they have argued that states could be running twice as many tests as they are now if only they were using all the equipment they already have access to.
“So we really gotta help them to get to it. And that’s what’s being done right now, to try to make the connectivity between what’s unused capacity as well as tests within that capacity to help them,” Fauci said. “We gotta keep going. It’s gotta be done together really in a partnership.”
Trump on Sunday said the White House would be sending sending governors a list of the large laboratory machines in their state before the call.
“They have a lot of machinery in the states that some aren’t that aware of, but they’re there,” he said.
But governors on both sides of the aisle have been complaining for weeks now that they can’t ramp up testing without federal assistance, especially when it comes to accessing supplies.
“We really need help,” Republican Gov. Mike DeWine of Ohio said Sunday on NBC’s “Meet the Press.”
Maryland’s Republican Gov. Larry Hogan told CNN Sunday.that testing was “probably the number one problem in America, and has been from the beginning of this crisis.”
“To try to push this off to say that the governors have plenty of testing, and they should just get to work on testing, somehow we aren’t doing our job, is just absolutely false,” he said. “Every governor in America has been pushing and fighting and clawing to get more tests, not only from the federal government, but from every private lab in America and from all across the world.”
Wyoming Gov. Mark Gordon, another Republican, on Friday called on the federal government to take a larger role to stop states from competing against once another for supplies.
“It’s a perilous set of circumstances trying to figure out how to make this work, and until we’ve got the testing up to speed — which has got to be part of the federal government stepping in and helping — we’re just not going to be there,” he said.
For most people, the coronavirus causes mild or moderate symptoms, such as fever and cough that clear up in two to three weeks. But for some, especially older adults and people with existing health problems, it can cause more severe illness, including pneumonia and death.
In recent days, however, protesters have taken to the streets in some states, flouting their governors’ stay-at-home orders and social distancing regulations as they demand an end to restrictions.
Fauci told ABC that, “clearly this is something that is hurting from the standpoint of economics,” but warned that, “unless we get the virus under control, the real recovery economically is not gonna happen.”
“So what you do if you jump the gun and go into a situation where you have a big spike, you’re gonna set yourself back,” he said. “It’s gonna backfire. That’s the problem.”
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By Polityk | 04/20/2020 | Повідомлення, Політика
Fact-Check: Trump Falsely Blames Governors for Virus Test
President Donald Trump is wrongly casting blame on governors and the Obama administration for shortages in coronavirus testing and declaring victory over what he calls relatively low death rates in the U.S. That’s too soon to tell.A look at his claims over the weekend, also covering the economy:TESTINGTRUMP, on governors urging wider availability of virus tests: “They don’t want to use all of the capacity that we’ve created. We have tremendous capacity. …They know that. The governors know that. The Democrat governors know that; they’re the ones that are complaining.” — news briefing Saturday.THE FACTS: Trump’s assertion that governors are not using already available testing capacity is contradicted by one of his top health advisers. He’s also wrong that Democrats are the only ones expressing concerns about the adequacy of COVID-19 testing; several Republican governors also point to problems.Dr. Anthony Fauci, the federal government’s top infectious disease expert, told The Associated Press that the U.S. does not yet have the critical testing and tracing procedures needed to begin reopening the nation’s economy.“We have to have something in place that is efficient and that we can rely on, and we’re not there yet,” Fauci, a member of the White House’s coronavirus task force, said Tuesday.Among Fauci’s top concerns: that there will be new outbreaks in locations where social distancing has eased, but public health officials don’t yet have the capabilities to rapidly test for the virus, isolate any new cases and track down everyone that an infected person came into contact with.His concerns are echoed by several Republicans.Wyoming Gov. Mark Gordon, a Republican, on Friday said his state’s testing capacity was inadequate and urged a larger role for the federal government.He said states have been competing with each other to try to get more testing supplies, a process he described as “a slog.”“It’s a perilous set of circumstances trying to figure out how to make this work, and until we’ve got the testing up to speed — which has got to be part of the federal government stepping in and helping — we’re just not going to be there.”Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine, a Republican, plans to keep applying pressure on the Food and Drug Administration to address the rationing of a key component that is necessary to produce tests. He said full testing capacity can’t be reached unless it is more widely distributed.Republican Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan on Sunday called the lack of virus testing “probably the number one problem in America, and has been from the beginning of this crisis.”“And I can tell you, I talk to governors on both sides of the aisle nearly every single day,” he said on CNN’s “State of the Union.” “The administration, I think, is trying to ramp up testing, and trying — they are doing some things with respect to private labs. But to try to push this off to say that the governors have plenty of testing, and they should just get to work on testing, somehow we aren’t doing our job, is just absolutely false. ”TRUMP: “Some partisan voices are attempting to politicize the issue of testing, which they shouldn’t be doing, because I inherited broken junk.” — news briefing Saturday.TRUMP: “We inherited a broken, terrible system.” — news briefing Saturday.THE FACTS: His repeated insistence that the Obama administration is to blame for initial delays in testing is wrong. The novel coronavirus did not exist until late last year, so there was no test to inherit.The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention instead struggled to develop its own test for the coronavirus in January, later discovering problems in its kits sent to state and county public health labs in early February.It took the CDC more than two weeks to come up with a fix to the test kits, leading to delays in diagnoses through February, a critical month when the virus took root in the U.S. Not until Feb. 29 did the FDA decide to allow labs to develop and use their own coronavirus diagnostic tests before the agency reviews them, speeding up the supply. Previously, the FDA had only authorized use of a government test developed by the CDC.Meantime the U.S. bypassed a test that the World Health Organization quickly made available internationally. Trump has said that test was flawed; it wasn’t.DEATH RATESTRUMP: “The United States has produced dramatically better health outcomes than any other country. … On a per capita basis, our mortality rate is far lower than other nations of Western Europe, with the lone exception of possibly Germany. …You hear we have more death. But we’re a much bigger country than any of those countries by far.“ — news briefing Saturday.THE FACTS: His suggestion that the U.S. response to the coronavirus has been better than many other countries’ because its mortality rate is “far lower” is unsupported and misleading.In each country, for instance, the age and overall health of the population are important factors. Many countries in western Europe such as Italy have an older population than the U.S., and seniors are at an especially high risk of death from COVID-19.Beyond age, underlying health conditions increase risk, too. Indeed, an AP analysis of available state and local data found nearly one-third of U.S. deaths are among African Americans, with black people representing about 14% of the population in the areas covered in the analysis. Health conditions such as obesity, diabetes and asthma are more common in the black community.But more broadly, it’s too early to know the real death rate from COVID-19 in any country. Look at a count kept by Johns Hopkins University, and you can divide the number of recorded deaths with the number of reported cases. The math nevertheless provides a completely unreliable measurement of death rates, and the Johns Hopkins tally is not intended to be that.First, the count changes every day as new infections and deaths are recorded.More important, every country is testing differently. Knowing the real denominator, the true number of people who become infected, is key to determining what portion of them die. Some countries, the U.S. among them, have had trouble making enough tests available. When there’s a shortage of tests, the sickest get tested first. Even with a good supply of tests, someone who’s otherwise healthy and has mild symptoms may not be tested and thus go uncounted.The only way to tell how many went uncounted early on is to do a completely different kind of testing — blood tests of the population to find how many people bear immune system antibodies to the virus, something only now starting in selected places.ECONOMYTRUMP: “China was supposed to catch us. … For years, I’ve heard, ‘By 2019, China will catch us.’ There’s only one problem: Trump got elected in 2016. That was a big difference. And we were going leaps and bounds above China.” — news briefing Saturday.THE FACTS: No matter who got elected in 2016 — Trump or Democrat Hillary Clinton — China’s economy could not have caught up to America’s.Even if the U.S. economy had not grown at all since 2016, China’s gross domestic product — the broadest measure of economic output — would have had to have surged by 79% in three years to pull even with America’s. That comes to growth of more than 21% a year — something even China’s super-charged economy has never approached.Before the coronavirus outbreak, the Chinese economy had been slowly narrowing the gap because every year it grows much faster than America’s. In 2019, for example, the International Monetary Fund predicted Chinese GDP to increase 6.2%, more than double the 2.6% growth it expects for the United States. The global pandemic isn’t expected to change that trend line: last week, the IMF said the U.S economy will fall 5.9% this year and China’s will manage to grow 1.2%.That means China has got a long way to go to surpass the U.S., whether Trump is president or not.
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By Polityk | 04/20/2020 | Повідомлення, Політика
Coronavirus Could Complicate Trump’s Path to Reelection
The coronavirus is poised to reshape the political map, pummeling battleground states and alarming Republicans who see early signs of an election that could be a referendum on President Donald Trump’s management of the crisis.The pandemic, which has killed more than 30,000 Americans and left millions out of work, has eviscerated Trump’s hope to run for reelection on a strong economy. A series of states he won in 2016 could tilt toward Democrats.In Florida, a Republican governor closely aligned with Trump has come under scrutiny for being slow to close the state. In Wisconsin, the Democratic victor in last week’s Supreme Court race captured 28 counties, up from the 12 that Hillary Clinton won four years ago. In Michigan, a Democratic governor has seen her approval rating rise against the backdrop of a fight with Trump. And in Arizona, low marks for Trump could be enough to turn the formerly Republican stronghold into a tossup.”It makes me wonder if there’s something brewing in the weaker elements of the Trump base,” said Paul Maslin, a Wisconsin-based Democratic pollster. “Is the pandemic fight the final straw that’s going to cause some of this small slice of votes he needs to win these states to back away?”Trump’s public approval rating has remained consistent nationally throughout his presidency, and some polls even suggested an uptick at the onset of the pandemic. And his unique brand of politics rooted in cultural grievances could once again overcome hurdles that would sink other presidents seeking reelection, especially if the pandemic wanes or the economy rebounds.But Trump’s campaign is concerned about losing support in several key swing states, particularly Florida and Wisconsin, according to five current and former campaign staffers who spoke to The Associated Press on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly about internal strategy. There are also growing worries about Arizona and Pennsylvania. There is no better example of the altered map confronting Trump than Michigan, which he captured in 2016 by fewer than 11,000 votes.The mounting deaths in heavily African American Detroit and the politically dynamic suburban counties have been the backdrop for the tiff between Gov. Gretchen Whitmer and Trump. Though her handling of the virus outbreak has prompted some public protests, Whitmer’s poll numbers have gone up and her criticism of the federal response prompted Trump to obliquely dismiss the governor, telling virus task force members “Don’t call the woman in Michigan.”In a sign of enthusiasm, participation in Democrats’ March primary was up 32% over 2016 as the party rallied around its likely nominee, former Vice President Joe Biden. The Trump campaign already had a light footprint in Michigan — it does not have a single field office — and advisers privately concede it could be the toughest battleground state to hold.Many pollsters believe Wisconsin could be the tipping point this November for either candidate to reach the needed 270 electoral votes. The state has long been considered the Rust Belt prize Trump was likeliest to keep, but poignant images of mask-wearing voters lining up outside Milwaukee’s few open polling places last week signaled Democratic enthusiasm. “We are starting to see more evidence that suburban voters disapprove of the way Trump is handling the coronavirus pandemic,” said Democratic strategist Adrienne Elrod, who notes that counties outside Philadelphia and Phoenix “have a similar electorate to the suburban areas that delivered a huge win for Democrats in Wisconsin.”Although the state Supreme Court race received national attention, Republicans were quick to dismiss it since only Democrats held a competitive presidential primary, boosting that party’s turnout. Wisconsin’s spring Supreme Court contests have been a shaky predictor of presidential elections, which usually feature twice as many voters.”President Trump has been clear — through actions and words — that what matters most is the health and safety of every American. This crisis is hitting Americans — not Democrats or Republicans,” said Trump campaign spokeswoman Erin Perrine. “To try and politicize this crisis in terms of the election is ludicrous.”Although Arizona hasn’t yet seen a spike in infections, Biden’s promise of pragmatic, experienced management may play well in a state that has turned purple. A Biden victory there would build pressure on Trump to hold two of the trio of Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania.The pandemic has hamstrung the Trump campaign’s effort to build momentum. Though its digital outreach has ramped up, the campaign has been unable to wield its financial advantage over Biden and can’t hold its signature rallies to bolster enthusiasm and collect valuable voter data.
“We can’t wait to get back out there and do things the old-fashioned way,” said Lara Trump, a senior campaign official and the president’s daughter-in-law.Employment has cratered in many of the states key to Trump’s reelection.The economy shed 22 million jobs in the past four weeks, according to requests for unemployment benefits. And while some of those jobs will return as the lockdown gets lifted, it’s unclear how quickly workers will be needed at hotels in Florida, auto plants in Michigan and stores and offices that fill Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and Arizona.Both Michigan and Pennsylvania have lost more than 1 million jobs since the outbreak, which implies unemployment rates of more than 20% in both states, according to Labor Department figures. Unemployment filings suggest Florida employers have let go of roughly 6% of its jobs, but declines there could worsen as applicants have struggled to access unemployment benefits.Without Florida, Trump’s path to victory becomes nearly impossible. Its Trump-friendly governor, Ron DeSantis, took heat for allowing beaches to stay open despite the risk of spread to his state’s massive population of vulnerable senior citizens.”They thought they were going to be running for reelection with a very popular governor, but DeSantis has taken some real hits over his handling of this,” said Republican strategist Alex Conant, who worked for Marco Rubio’s presidential campaign. “The image of spring breakers spreading coronavirus is going to be replayed in October.”
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By Polityk | 04/18/2020 | Повідомлення, Політика
Trump Tweets in Support of Protests Against Stay-at-Home Orders
U.S. President Donald Trump sent out messages Friday from his Twitter account apparently in support of protesters in three states seeking to defy measures designed to prevent the spread of the COVID-19 virus. In three successive tweets, the president wrote, “LIBERATE MINNESOTA!” “LIBERATE MICHIGAN!” and, finally, “LIBERATE VIRGINIA, and save your great 2nd Amendment. It is under siege!” The last tweet refers to gun control measures being proposed by Democratic lawmakers in the state. Protests were held in all three states this week demanding restrictions on businesses and other public activities be lifted, arguing they are killing the economy and violating personal rights. Trump’s tweets would seem to contradict guidelines for how states can begin to reopen, which he released at a White House briefing Thursday. Those guidelines call for a slow phase-out of safety measures whereas the protesters want them lifted immediately. The Washington Post notes all three states mentioned in Trump’s tweets have Democratic governors and are likely to be significant in the November presidential election.
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By Polityk | 04/17/2020 | Повідомлення, Політика
New Information Adds to Questions About Russia Probe Dossier
Newly released material raises the possibility that Russian disinformation made its way into a dossier of opposition research that the FBI relied on when applying for warrants to eavesdrop on a former campaign adviser to President Donald Trump.The new material, contained in footnotes to a Justice Department watchdog report that were recently declassified by the Trump administration, indicates the FBI was advised even as it sought the warrants that some of the information included in the dossier was not accurate or was potentially influenced by Russian disinformation.It may add to accusations that the FBI did not take seriously enough concerns that were raised about the dossier’s reliability as it investigated ties between the Trump campaign and Russia. A Justice Department inspector general report from December that included the blacked-out footnotes faulted the FBI for failing to reassess the credibility of the dossier after receiving information that called into question some of its reporting.The FBI did not rely on the dossier when it opened the Russia investigation in July 2016, instead using other information about possible Trump campaign links to Russia. But it did rely in part on the document a couple months later when it applied for a warrant to monitor the communications of former Trump campaign adviser Carter Page. The fact that the dossier was used at all is one of the main points of contention Trump supporters cite in challenging the legitimacy of the probe. The footnotes were released by two Republican senators, Chuck Grassley of Iowa and Ron Johnson of Wisconsin, who said in a joint statement that the information makes clear that the FBI’s justification in targeting Page “was riddled with significant flaws.”On Thursday, the senators asked FBI Director Christopher Wray to provide all intelligence records received and reviewed by the FBI team that conducted the Russia investigation.”These recently declassified footnotes raise another issue of significant concern: what other parts of the FBI’s investigation were infected by Russian disinformation?” they wrote.One of the footnotes says the FBI was alerted in 2017 that a particular allegation included in the dossier was “part of a Russian disinformation campaign to denigrate U.S. foreign relations.” It also cites a February 2017 U.S. intelligence report saying that an individual with reported ties to Trump and Russia had cautioned that certain allegations related to Trump’s behavior during a trip to Moscow four years earlier were false and the product of Russian intelligence “infiltrate(ing) a source into the network.”An FBI spokeswoman declined to comment Thursday. The FBI has acknowledged problems during the Russia investigation and has instituted a series of changes designed to make its surveillance applications more accurate and thorough.The dossier of information was compiled during the course of the 2016 presidential campaign by Christopher Steele, a former British spy whose research into ties between Trump and Russia was financed by Democrats.The FBI relied in part on information from the dossier during multiple applications to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court in 2016 and 2017 to monitor the communications of Page on suspicion that he was an agent of a foreign power. Page has denied any wrongdoing and was never charged.Inspector General Michael Horowitz said in his report that, though there was no evidence that the FBI was motivated by political bias during the investigation, the bureau made serious errors during the application process, including by omitting information that called into question the reliability of certain reporting included in the dossier.The inspector general report said the FBI had contemplated the possibility “that Russia was funneling disinformation to Steele, and the possibility that disinformation was included in his election reports.” But, Horowitz said, more should have been done by the FBI to determine if that was the case.One footnote says a January 2017 report identified an inaccuracy in the dossier’s reporting on Michael Cohen, Trump’s former personal lawyer. It does not detail the inaccuracy, but it could be a reference to a claim in the document that Cohen met with Kremlin representatives in Prague in the summer of 2016. Cohen has long denied that.The footnotes also say a June 2017 intelligence report indicated that two people affiliated with Russian intelligence “were aware of Steele’s election investigation in early July 2016.” That assertion raises the prospect that Steele’s reporting could have been influenced by disinformation from the Kremlin.”The Supervisory Intel Analyst told us he was aware of these reports, but that he had no information as of June 2017 that Steele’s election reporting source network had been penetrated or compromised,” the footnote states.
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By Polityk | 04/17/2020 | Повідомлення, Політика
Democratic Super PAC: We Will Fight Trump in Court Over Ads
A leading Democratic super PAC has promised it will tangle in court with President Donald Trump’s reelection campaign to keep airing television ads the Republican president is trying to keep off the airwaves.Priorities USA Action chief Guy Cecil said Thursday that his group will intervene as a defendant in a lawsuit that Trump’s campaign filed in Wisconsin state court to block a local NBC affiliate from airing one of the super PAC’s ads that blasts the president’s response to the coronavirus pandemic. “The Trump campaign is trying to railroad a TV station into censorship of ads critical of the president, and we will not let that stand,” Cecil said. “We stand by the facts in the ad and will defend it in court if necessary.”The lawsuit, filed against WJFW-TV, an NBC affiliate in northern Wisconsin, sets up a notable battle between Trump’s financially flush reelection campaign and one of the biggest spending groups in Democratic politics. Priorities USA has spent much of Trump’s term researching voters’ views in key battleground states, including Wisconsin, that delivered Trump his Electoral College victory in 2016, and the PAC has committed to an extended television and digital advertising campaign to potential swing voters in those states. The ad in question pieces together audio clips of the president downplaying the threat posed by the COVID-19 virus, while a chart that is splashed across the screen gradually begins to shoot upward as cases of the virus skyrocketed across the nation. “The coronavirus … this is their new hoax,” Trump is heard in the ad’s opening, with two clips that are different recordings. Trump’s campaign alleges that the ad is “defamatory” because it splices together the clips in a way that makes it appear as though the president said the virus itself was a “hoax.” Trump’s campaign argues that the president did not call the virus a “hoax,” but was referring to Democrats politicizing his handling of it.Cecil countered that the ad simply uses the president’s own words. The remainder of the ad features full Trump quotes dismissing or softening the COVID-19 threat.Trump spent the first months of 2020 downplaying the pandemic, accusing Democrats and media of hysteria as he pointed to low numbers of confirmed cases and death from the virus. Trump’s full “hoax” quote at a Feb. 28 rally in South Carolina, however, came in the context of Democrats’ criticism of his response.”Now the Democrats are politicizing the coronavirus, you know that right? Coronavirus, they’re politicizing it. We did one of the great jobs,” he said, later continuing, “They tried the impeachment hoax. That was on a perfect conversation. They tried anything. They tried it over and over. They’d been doing it since you got in. It’s all turning. They lost. It’s all turning. Think of it. Think of it. And this is their new hoax.”The Trump campaign lawsuit comes after Trump’s campaign late last month threatened legal action against local TV stations across five states if they didn’t pull the commercial.Steve Shanks, general manager at WJFW in Wisconsin, did not immediately respond Thursday to a request for comment.
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By Polityk | 04/17/2020 | Повідомлення, Політика
Trump: New Guidelines Aim to Lift Some Restrictions
President Donald Trump said he’s prepared to announce new guidelines allowing some states to quickly ease up on social distancing even as business leaders told him they need more coronavirus testing and personal protective equipment before people can safely go back to work. The industry executives cautioned Trump that the return to normalcy will be anything but swift. The new guidelines, expected to be announced Thursday, are aimed at clearing the way for an easing of restrictions in areas with low transmission of the coronavirus, while keeping them in place in harder-hit places. The ultimate decisions will remain with governors. “We’ll be opening some states much sooner than others,” Trump said Wednesday. But in a round of calls with business leaders earlier in the day, Trump was warned that a dramatic increasing in testing and wider availability of protective equipment will be necessary for the safe restoration of their operations. The new guidelines come as the federal government envisions a gradual recovery from the virus, in which disruptive mitigation measures may be needed in some places at least until a vaccine is available — a milestone unlikely to be reached until next year. Trump said at his daily briefing that data indicates the U.S. is “past the peak” of the COVID-19 epidemic, clearing the way for his plans to roll out guidelines to begin to “reopen” the country. He called the latest data “encouraging,” saying the numbers have “put us in a very strong position to finalize guidelines for states on reopening the country.” Dr. Deborah Birx, White House coronavirus response coordinator, speaks about the coronavirus in the Rose Garden of the White House, April 15, 2020, in Washington.Dr. Deborah Birx, the White House coronavirus task force coordinator, added that data from across the country showed the nation “improving” but that Americans had to recommit to social distancing to keep up the positive momentum. She said nine states have fewer than 1,000 cases and just a few dozen new cases per day. She said those would likely be the first to see a lifting in social distancing restrictions at the direction of their governors under the guidelines set to be released Thursday. Birx said the White House was particularly concerned about Rhode Island, noting it is now seeing a surge in cases from the Boston metro area after seeing a spike several weeks ago from cases from New York. Trump consulted dozens of high-profile CEOs, union officials and other executives via conference calls Wednesday. He received a mixed message from the industry leaders. They, too, said they want to get the economy going but had worries about how to safely do so. In a tweet midway through Trump’s round of conference calls with the executives, the president said the participants were “all-in on getting America back to work, and soon.” But participants in a morning call that included dozens of leading American companies raised concerns about the testing issue, according to one participant who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe the private discussion. Another person who participated in Wednesday’s calls said it was stressed to Trump that expansion of testing and contact tracing was crucial, as well as guidelines for best practices on reopening businesses in phases or in one fell swoop. The participant said those on the call noted to the administration that there was about to be a massive rush on personal protective equipment. Many businesses that are now shuttered will need the protective equipment to keep their employees and customers safe. Trump was told “the economy will look very different and operations will look very different,” one participant said. FILE – Dallas Mavericks’ owner Mark Cuban watches his team warm up before an NBA basketball game against the Houston Rockets, Nov. 24, 2019, in Houston.Mark Cuban, the billionaire entrepreneur and owner of the Dallas Mavericks, was among several representatives from major sports leagues to speak with Trump. During a Fox News Channel interview ahead of the calls, he credited the president with gathering some of the “best of the best” to help shape his approach on reopening the economy. Still, Cuban did not embrace Trump’s push to reopen parts of the economy May 1. “This is such a moving target that I think the biggest mistake we can make is rush to a decision,” said Cuban, who previously had been critical of Trump’s response to the pandemic. “But I’m going to help him in every way I can, whatever he needs me to do.” The panel, which Trump dubbed the new Great American Economic Revival Industry Groups, also could help give Trump a measure of cover. If cases surge once restrictions are lifted, as many experts have warned, Trump will be able to tell the public he didn’t act alone and the nation’s top minds — from manufacturing to defense to technology — helped shape the plan. Rich Nolan, president and CEO of the National Mining Association, who participated in one of the calls with Trump, said there was also discussion about tax relief as well as “making sure that people are optimistic about the economy and they feel safe coming back to work.” “I think you’ll see steps to reopen the country at different rates in different states in the not too distant future,” Nolan said. The launch of the council was not without hiccups. FILE – AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka speaks to union members and other federal employees at a rally to call for an end to the partial government shutdown, Jan. 10, 2019 at AFL-CIO Headquarters in Washington.AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka didn’t know until he heard his name announced in the Rose Garden on Tuesday that he would be part of the advisory group, according to Carolyn Bobb, a spokeswoman for the union. “We were not asked,” Bobb said in an email. It was “just announced.” Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan said Trump has appointed some “smart people” to his task force who could offer state leaders helpful guidelines as they negotiate the way forward. “There are certain roles that only the federal government can play and should play, but I think the governors are going to make their own decisions within those recommended guidelines,” Hogan said.
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By Polityk | 04/16/2020 | Повідомлення, Політика
Reopening Could Require Thousands More Public Health Workers
Before stay-at-home orders are lifted, the nation’s public health agencies want to be ready to douse any new sparks of coronavirus infection — a task they say could require tens of thousands more investigators to call people who test positive, track down their contacts and get them into quarantine.Without the extra help, officials insist, states cannot possibly be ready to resume normal everyday activities, and some agencies are so desperate they are considering recruiting librarians and Peace Corps volunteers to join the effort.”We are trying to build these teams and processes in the midst of a crisis,” said Sharon Bogan, a public health spokeswoman for Seattle and King County, which are seeking at least 20 more investigators.As federal officials weigh how and when to reopen the country, experts worry that the United States does not have enough public health workers to suppress another outbreak, especially those qualified to do contact tracing, the critically important search for people who may have been exposed to the virus.While the exact number of workers needed is a subject of debate, a top federal health official this week acknowledged the mandate to find many more.”Everybody agrees that our public health capacity at the local and state level is not ready to take this on at a very large scale without reinforcements,” said Dr. Anne Schuchat of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, who oversees the agency’s coronavirus response work.The work could require as many as 300,000 public health workers — a daunting number given that the combined federal, state, and local public health workforce has been shrinking and is now probably less than 280,000, according to some estimates.To address the shortage of help, governments are weighing whether to enlist people with little to no experience in public health, including the Peace Corps volunteers, furloughed social workers and public health students. San Francisco is training librarians, medical students and people who work for the city attorney’s office.The extra workers would help conduct testing, isolate sick cases and trace everyone those sick people had contact with.It’s crucial that such a system be in place before government officials ease social-distancing guidelines, reopen schools or lift stay-at-home orders, said Dr. Tom Frieden, a former CDC director.”If we have explosive spread when we reopen, we’ll have to close again. That will be very damaging, not just economically but from a health standpoint,” Frieden said.The U.S. government has funneled about $800 million to states for coronavirus response work that can include contact tracing. On top of hundreds of staff sent to states to help with coronavirus work, the CDC has already assembled “community protection teams” of six to 12 people each to do contact tracing and investigate tools that could help with it. Some have already been deployed to states where spread of the virus has been relatively low.Tiny Rhode Island has nearly 100 people “focused on nothing but contact tracing,” reaching out to hundreds of contacts of infected people each day, Gov. Gina Raimondo told reporters. She has urged all residents to take a minute each evening to write down who they physically encountered that day and where those encounters took place.”If I’m going out to the store, I’ll put the date, what store I went to, and then the time I was there,” said Drew Grande, 40, of Cranston, Rhode Island. He started a contacts diary on a note-taking app on his phone after he heard the governor’s request.Contact tracing has changed over the last few months in the U.S. When the first handful of infections were being identified, teams of 20 or more might be assigned to each confirmed case. Investigations would often start with a staffer or two doing an in-person interview at a hospital bedside. Disease trackers might spend hours asking a sick person and that person’s relatives who they had been in contact with since symptoms surfaced.In-person interviews are often better, said Isaac Ghinai, a CDC disease tracker assigned to Chicago to work with that city’s health department.”There’s a value to looking someone in the eye. You can build a relationship face to face that you can’t always do by phone,” he said. Some people are comfortable sharing personal details over the phone but others “require more cajoling.”With hundreds of new cases emerging each day in Chicago, that kind of attention to individual infections has largely stopped. Instead, the priority is large groups of people who are particularly vulnerable, like those at nursing homes or homeless shelters. Many new confirmed cases are not being investigated, and when they are, the interviews may be done by only two or three people, and over the phone, Ghinai said.Could there be a digital solution? Apple and Google are teaming up on a contact-tracing app, and other efforts use Bluetooth to gather data from phones that came close to an infected person. Seattle scientist Trevor Bedford has developed a digital interview that public health departments can use if they don’t have enough people trained in contact tracing.Whatever the solution, it will take a while.People have to be tested and diagnosed before contact tracing kicks into gear, and testing remains limited in many parts of the country. This week, the Association of American Medical Colleges sent a letter to the White House Coronavirus Task Force saying that testing materials and machines remain in short supply.President Donald Trump has floated the idea of easing at least some restrictions as early as May 1.Some observers believe restrictions could be eased first in places where the spread is low, if rigorous testing and contact tracing could prevent a sudden explosion in infections.But Schuchat warned that “there is no way the entire country could relax mitigation on May 1 and the country not experience a major resurgence.”
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By Polityk | 04/16/2020 | Повідомлення, Політика
Coronavirus Could Narrow Biden’s Choices for Vice President
For Joe Biden, the presumptive Democratic Party nominee for president, selecting a running mate during the coronavirus pandemic has taken on even greater importance. Biden had promised to name a female vice presidential nominee to run with him against President Donald Trump in the November presidential election – leading to speculation he might pick a woman senator. But as VOA’s Brian Padden reports, experience such as a governor may possess may now matter more than political appeal.
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By Polityk | 04/16/2020 | Повідомлення, Політика
Trump Threatens to Force Congress to Adjourn Over Stalled Nominees
U.S. President Donald Trump is threatening to adjourn Congress because lawmakers have not approved his candidates for senior posts in his administration, including his nominee to run the independent agency overseeing the Voice of America. “I have very strong power,” Trump declared Wednesday, referencing language in the second article of the U.S. Constitution that allows a president “on extraordinary occasions” to adjourn either or both chambers of Congress. “The Senate should either fulfill its duty and vote on my nominees or it should formally adjourn so I can make recess appointments,” Trump said. “We have a tremendous number of people that have to come into government. And now more so than ever before because of the virus and the problem.” The Constitution requires nominees to a number of senior administration posts to be confirmed by a majority vote in the Senate. However, on occasions when Congress is not in session, the president may make a “recess appointment,” which expires if the candidate has not been confirmed by the end of the next full session. No president has ever exercised the specific authority to dissolve Congress in Article II, Section 3 of the Constitution. “Perhaps it’s never been done before, nobody’s even sure if it has,” Trump said during a Rose Garden briefing on the coronavirus pandemic. “But we’re going to do it. We need these people here. We need people for this crisis, and we don’t want to play any more political games.” FILE – USAGM CEO nominee Michael Pack at his confirmation hearing, Sept. 19, 2019.Documentary filmmaker Michael Pack, whom Trump has selected to run the U.S. Agency for Global Media, is one of 15 key nominees awaiting confirmation by the Senate. Trump cited Pack by name (but erroneously identified the body he would head as USAGM’s predecessor agency, the Broadcasting Board of Governors). The president also noted his nominees for director of national intelligence, two members of the Federal Reserve Board and the undersecretary of agriculture responsible for administering food security programs as among those yet to be confirmed. Trump blamed the delay on Democrats, accusing the opposition party of “a concerted effort to make life difficult.” “The current practice of leaving town while conducting phony pro-forma sessions is a dereliction of duty that the American people cannot afford during this crisis,” the president said. “What they do, it’s a scam and everybody knows it.” Pack’s nomination has “been stuck in committee for two years, preventing us from managing the Voice of America — very important,” the president said. “And if you heard what’s coming out of the Voice of America, it’s disgusting. The things they say are disgusting toward our country. And Michael Pack would get in and do a great job, but he’s been waiting for two years — can’t get him approved.” VOA respondsVOA management, in a response Wednesday evening, rejected Trump’s criticism. “For more than 75 years VOA has followed its mission of telling America’s story overseas and of bringing objective, fact-based information to places around the world that have no other access to it. As we have long said, we export the First Amendment,” said VOA Director Amanda Bennett in a prepared statement. FILE – VOA contributor Greta Van Susteren interviews President Donald Trump in Singapore, Aug 12, 2018. (White House photo by Shealah Craighead)“I believe in that mission. And, judging from the way our audiences are surging to us seeking information they can rely on in this coronavirus crisis, the world believes in our mission. It’s hard work, and it’s important work, perhaps more than ever before.” In a subsequent email to VOA’s employees, Bennett added: “We have a lot of work to do. It’s hard work and it’s important work. Let’s not get distracted from the job in front of us.” Bennett was appointed to her position in the previous administration of Barack Obama and has been in the post for four years — a relatively long tenure for a VOA director. The veteran journalist and Pulitzer Prize recipient is the agency’s 29th director in 75 years. The White House launched an attack on VOA last week, which The New York Times termed “a bizarre broadside.” China coverage at issueTrump’s social media director, Dan Scavino Jr., said American taxpayers were paying for China’s “very own propaganda, via the U.S. Government funded Voice of America.” As an example, he cited a posting on VOA’s Twitter account of an Associated Press video. The video showed a light show in Wuhan marking last week’s reopening of the city where COVID-19 was first detected. Hours later, the White House, in its digital “1600 Daily,” accused VOA of creating graphics “with Communist government statistics to compare China’s coronavirus death toll to America’s.” In fact, VOA uses a widely respected tally by Johns Hopkins University to track coronavirus cases and deaths around the world. “V.O.A. too often speaks for America’s adversaries — not its citizens,” the White House post read. The New York Times remarked that “the charges hurled at the 75-year-old broadcaster seemed so overheated that some readers worried that hackers had infiltrated the White House’s networks.” Bennett responded to last week’s criticism with a prepared statement noting that VOA is “thoroughly covering China’s disinformation and misinformation in English and Mandarin and at the same time reporting factually.” She added that VOA “has thoroughly debunked much of the information coming from the Chinese government and government-controlled media.” Pack, if confirmed, would take over from Grant Turner, who is serving as the USAGM CEO on an interim basis, following the resignation of John Lansing, who was an Obama appointee. Lansing was selected last September by the corporate board of National Public Radio to become NPR’s CEO.
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By Polityk | 04/16/2020 | Повідомлення, Політика
Capitol Hill Spars Over Trump WHO Funding Cut
Congressional Democrats condemned U.S. President Donald Trump’s announcement he would halt funding to the World Health Organization (WHO) based on his belief the international organization failed to hold China accountable for the coronavirus crisis.
“This decision is dangerous, illegal and will be swiftly challenged,” House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said in a statement Wednesday.
Pelosi and other Democrats have warned that defunding the United Nations agency responsible for international public health will cripple the international coordination necessary to combat the global pandemic.
Senator Patrick Leahy, the Vice Chair of the Senate Appropriations Committee, likened the move to “cutting off ammunition as the enemy closes in.” Leahy said the president’s criticism of WHO was an effort to distract from his own decision-making process as the virus spread across the world.
Trump charged that WHO was slow in recognizing the gravity of the pandemic and “pushed China’s misinformation” about the virus.FILE – Democratic Senator Patrick Leahy waves as he arrives at the Capitol in Washington, Jan. 30, 2020.“Even after restricting flights from China which the President likes to brag about after praising China’s response, nearly half a million people entered the United States from China and the virus was also coming here from Europe and elsewhere,” Leahy said in a statement Tuesday. “Not wanting to take responsibility as the deaths continue to mount, he blames others.”
In a letter to the White House Tuesday night, Democrats on the House Oversight Committee detailed five instances, with the latest occurring on March 13th, in which President Trump praised China or Chinese President Xi for efforts to combat the coronavirus and share that information with the United States.
Trump said his administration would halt funding while conducting a 60 to 90 -day review of the WHO, redirecting those funds to other groups and countries.
“American taxpayers provide between 400 and 500 million dollars per year to the WHO, in contrast China contributes roughly $40 million a year and even less. As the organization’s leading sponsor, the United States has a duty to insist on full accountability,” Trump said Tuesday.FILE – President Donald Trump speaks about the coronavirus in the James Brady Press Briefing Room at the White House, April 13, 2020.The United States is the leading funder of the WHO, with $893 million in pledges in the two-year cycle from 2018 to 2019. Part of that funding is made up of assessments that are similar to membership fees, based on the size and wealth of member countries. The rest of the funding is allocated to specific programs. It’s not immediately clear how much control the U.S. Congress has over that funding.
Congressional Republicans have stepped up criticism of the WHO in recent days, arguing the organization helped the Chinese Communist Party cover up information concerning the threat posed by the coronavirus.
In an April 14 letter to WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, a group of seven Republican senators requested documents from WHO leadership on all of the data the agency had requested and received from China relating to the coronavirus.
Florida Senator Rick Scott – one of the signers of the letter – has called for a congressional investigation into the role China and the WHO played in informing the world about the threat of the coronavirus. FILE – Republican Senator Rick Scott waits for an elevator on Capitol Hill in Washington, Feb. 5, 2020.“When it comes to Coronavirus, the WHO failed. They need to be held accountable for their role in promoting misinformation and helping Communist China cover up a global pandemic,” Scott said in the March 31 statement. “We know Communist China is lying about how many cases and deaths they have, what they knew and when they knew it – and the WHO never bothered to investigate further. Their inaction cost lives. “
Trump’s Hill ally, Republican Senator Lindsey Graham, praised the president’s decision in a tweet Wednesday, writing “The current WHO leadership has proven to be incompetent and shown overwhelming evidence of China bias. Cutting off funding to the WHO at this time is the right move.”
Democrats acknowledged the WHO has problems but have argued reforms should be sought instead of a stoppage of funding at a critical time.
“Structural changes are needed at the World Health Organization to prevent it from being exploited by China and other countries for misinformation, but the way to do that is through engagement based on American leadership,” House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer said.
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By Polityk | 04/16/2020 | Повідомлення, Політика
Senator Warren Endorses Democratic Presidential Hopeful Biden
U.S. Senator Elizabeth Warren endorsed Democratic presidential hopeful Joe Biden on Wednesday, declaring the former vice president is a proven leader who is best able to move the country forward.”Empathy matters. And, in this moment of crisis, it’s more important than ever that the next president restores Americans’ faith in good, effective government — and I’ve seen Joe Biden help our nation rebuild,” Warren said in a video posted on Twitter.In this moment of crisis, it’s more important than ever that the next president restores Americans’ faith in good, effective government—and I’ve seen Joe Biden help our nation rebuild. Today, I’m proud to endorse @JoeBiden as President of the United States. pic.twitter.com/VrfBtJvFee— Elizabeth Warren (@ewarren) April 15, 2020″He knows that a government run with integrity, competence, and heart will save lives and save livelihoods,” Warren added. “And we can’t afford to let Donald Trump continue to endanger the lives and livelihoods of every American.”Warren, a progressive Biden opponent before she ended her 2020 presidential campaign last month, is the third high-profile person to endorse him this week as the Democratic Party seeks to unify before the November general election.Fellow progressive and independent Senator Bernie Sanders endorsed Biden on Monday after suspending his campaign last week, one day before former president Barack Obama endorsed his former vice president.I’m proud to endorse my friend @JoeBiden for President of the United States. Let’s go: https://t.co/maHVGRozkX— Barack Obama (@BarackObama) April 14, 2020Endorsements from Warren and Sanders could help Biden win support from the Democratic Party’s progressive wing.Biden has sought to embrace his former opponents by adopting some of their political positions. In March, Biden announced his support for the repeal of parts of a law that made it harder to declare bankruptcy. Biden and Warren clashed over the issue more than 15 years ago when then-Senator Biden supported the proposal and Warren opposed it as a bankruptcy expert and professor at Harvard University.”Among all the other candidates I competed with in the Democratic primary, there’s no one who I’ve agreed with 100% of the time over the years,” Warren said. “Joe Biden was there at the very moment I became a senator — he swore me in. And when he did, he said, ‘You gave me hell! And you’re gonna do a great job.'”
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By Polityk | 04/15/2020 | Повідомлення, Політика
US Military Sees No Quick Exit From ‘New World’ of Coronavirus
The U.S. military is bracing for a months-long struggle against the coronavirus, looking for novel ways to maintain a defensive crouch that sustains troops’ health without breaking their morale — while still protecting the nation.Unlike talk in the Trump administration of possibly reopening the country as early as May, military leaders are suggesting that this summer may be the best-case scenario of tiptoeing toward a return to normal activities. Even that is uncertain, and for now the focus is on adjusting as the pandemic’s threat evolves.”We are going to need to change and adapt, because even over the coming months the virus isn’t going to go away. We’re going to have to be able to operate in a COVID environment,” Deputy Defense Secretary David Norquist said recently, referring to the disease caused by the novel coronavirus.Officials have frozen most forces in place overseas, stopped troops and their families from moving to new assignments, and cut back access to the Pentagon. The military services have halted or restricted recruit training, canceled major exercises, and isolated troops in the most sensitive units. The new Space Force has delayed a satellite launch, and the Navy this week postponed the return of the USS Harry S. Truman, keeping the aircraft carrier at sea to shield its crew from virus exposure at home.These steps to protect the force have parallels in civilian society, but a far-flung military can’t function by staying at home.”This will be a new way of doing business that we have to focus in on,” says Air Force Gen. John Hyten, vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. “We’re adjusting to that new world as we speak today.”The notion of “normal” in the military may never be the same.”We’ve all deployed and fought enemies abroad, however, today’s enemy is here in our communities,” said Lt. Gen. Brad Webb, commander of the Air Force’s training and education command. “We don’t know what ‘new normal’ will look like until we get to the other side.”Defense Secretary Mark Esper testifies to the Senate Armed Services Committee about the budget, March 4, 2020, on Capitol Hill in Washington.Defense Secretary Mark Esper has been consistent in saying it will take time to determine when to begin lifting restrictions on the military, and he has faced little public pressure — from military families or the White House — to rush things. In civilian society, there is an open split between those like President Donald Trump who want the country reopened soon to mitigate economic damage and those, including many state governors, who fear reopening prematurely will undermine progress against the virus.Gen. Mark Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said the the pandemic has spread so far and wide, potentially creating instability in some countries, that the U.S. military cannot return to business as usual.”We have got to take a hard look at how we as a military, we as a Department of Defense, conduct operations in the future,” he said.In a further sign of uncertainty, Esper said Tuesday that he will extend a “stop movement” order halting what are called permanent change-of-station moves by troops and their families. He did not say how long he will extend the order, aimed at protecting troops and originally set to expire May 11. If it continues into the summer, military members with children could face serious hardship, since they need time to settle and enroll their children in new schools.Coronavirus has been less deadly in the military than in the rest of American society, but the number of confirmed cases is still rising. As of Tuesday the total exceeded 2,600, up from 1,521 a week earlier. Two troops have died of the disease — a National Guard member in March and a Navy sailor on Monday.Even after the number of the military’s coronavirus cases crests, a degree of uncertainty about restoring normalcy will linger. The Navy’s top doctor, Rear Adm. Bruce Gillingham, says the virus wields a “secret power” that the military must take into account as it adjusts in the weeks and months ahead.”What we’ve learned, certainly in the Navy with regard to COVID-19, (is) that stealth, in the form of asymptomatic transmission, is this adversary’s secret power,” he told reporters. “And so we recognize that despite really our best efforts, we’re going to have to learn how to operate with the virus.”Webb, the Air Force training commander, said his service is doing about 99% of its recruiting online rather than with traditional in-person pitches. And while the way ahead isn’t clear, he said, “I think we have the opportunity now to never go back to old ways.”For the Army, a major priority is keeping combat brigades healthy but also ready for war. Prior to the coronavirus crisis, more than half of the brigades were at high readiness levels, but in the past month training has significantly slowed down.”We’re in good shape but you’ve got to be able to turn it back on,” said Army Secretary Ryan McCarthy. He says that increased coronavirus testing capabilities will allow the Army to test units and then send them out for large battalion and company-sized exercises where they can remain in a bubble.”We’re going to have to do that, and that’s where you’re going to have to manage the risk until there’s a vaccine,” he said. “We’re preparing ourselves to do just that.”Even as they take precautions, defense officials are eager to bat down any idea that they are so focused on protecting troops’ health that the force has been weakened or is unable to fight if needed.”I don’t want anyone out there in the world to think that somehow the U.S. military’s readiness is significantly degraded. It is not,” Milley said last week.
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By Polityk | 04/15/2020 | Повідомлення, Політика
Obama Endorses Biden in Democratic Race
Former U.S. President Barack Obama endorsed Joe Biden for the Democratic Party’s presidential nomination on Tuesday, after Biden’s former rival, Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, offered his endorsement a day earlier. Mike O’Sullivan reports that Biden, as his party’s presumptive nominee, faces the challenge of uniting Democrats ahead of the November election.
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By Polityk | 04/15/2020 | Повідомлення, Політика
Obama Endorses Biden, Says ‘Country’s Future Hangs on This Election’
Former U.S. President Barack Obama endorsed his former second in command, Joe Biden, for president Tuesday, calling Biden a clear choice to replace President Donald Trump in November’s national election. “Our country’s future hangs on this election,” Obama said. He added that it would not be easy to defeat Trump, who won an upset victory in 2016 over former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. Obama urged Americans to “keep believing in the possibilities of a better world” by supporting Biden’s campaign. Obama praised the courage and skills of health care workers treating coronavirus victims. But he said national leadership in fighting the ravages of the disease was missing in Trump’s White House. “If there’s one thing we’ve learned as a country from moments of great crisis, it’s that the spirit of looking out for one another can’t be restricted to our homes, or our workplaces, or our neighborhoods, or our houses of worship. It also has to be reflected in our national government,” Obama said in a nearly 12-minute video. “The kind of leadership that’s guided by knowledge and experience, honesty and humility, empathy and grace,” he continued. “That kind of leadership doesn’t just belong in our state capitols and mayors’ offices. It belongs in the White House. And that’s why I’m so proud to endorse Joe Biden for president of the United States.” Obama said, “Choosing Joe to be my vice president was one of the best decisions I ever made. And he became a close friend. I believe Joe has all the qualities we need in a president right now. “Joe was there when we rebuilt from the Great Recession (in 2008 and 2009) and rescued the American auto industry,” Obama recalled. “He was the one asking what every policy would do for the middle class. “Joe gets stuff done,” Obama said, pointing to Biden’s help combating the H1N1 virus and preventing the Ebola epidemic from becoming a pandemic. FILE – In this combination of photos, former Vice President Joe Biden speaks in Wilmington, Delaware, March 12, 2020, left, and President Donald Trump is seen at the White House in Washington, April 5, 2020.That Obama would endorse Biden is not on its face surprising. But the early pledge of support from Obama marks a turning point in the former president’s political activity against Trump. While Trump during his presidency has frequently assailed Obama’s actions and sought to overhaul his trade, environmental and health care programs, Obama has largely avoided public rejoinders. Obama consulted privately with several of the two dozen or more Democratic candidates who sought the 2020 party nomination to run against Trump. But Obama endorsed no one during the months-long campaign that started in mid-2019, opting to let voters and the give-and-take of numerous spirited debates among the candidates dictate the outcome. Obama and Biden have reportedly had several conversations in the past couple of weeks. Biden told donors at a virtual fundraiser earlier this month that he had asked the former president for advice on choosing a running mate, whom he has said will be a woman. “So, I called President Obama, not as to who but how soon you have to start,” the former vice president said. The support of Obama, who polls show remains very popular among Democrats, could help Biden unite fractious Democrats after the long party nomination process.Biden’s last major challenger, Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, suspended his campaign last week after concluding that Biden had amassed an insurmountable lead in pledged delegates to the party’s national presidential nominating convention in August. On Monday, Sanders appeared on Biden’s webcast and wholeheartedly endorsed him. “We’ve got to make Trump a one-term president, and we need you in the White House,” Sanders told Biden. “I will do all that I can to see that that happens, Joe.” Biden was vice president from 2009 to early 2017 during Obama’s presidency. He often played a key role in advancing Obama’s policy goals, key among them the 2010 passage of a national health care plan that gave millions of Americans without health insurance a chance to buy coverage on a government website. The health plan, popularly known as Obamacare, was approved with no legislative support from opposition Republicans but has survived legal attacks and Trump’s attempts to repeal or undermine it. Even with Obamacare, however, millions of U.S. citizens still have no health insurance.Brad Parscale, Trump’s reelection campaign manager, belittled Obama’s Biden endorsement, saying the former president “spent much of the last five years urging Joe Biden not to run for president out of fear that he would embarrass himself,” and now “has no other choice but to support him.”“Obama was right in the first place: Biden is a bad candidate who will embarrass himself and his party,” Parscale said in a statement. “President Trump will destroy him.”
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By Polityk | 04/15/2020 | Повідомлення, Політика
Trump Challenges Governors’ Authority on Reopening Economies
U.S. President Donald Trump is asserting that he, not the states, has “the ultimate authority” to decide when to lift stay-at-home directives and reopen the country’s economy. The president “calls the shots,” Trump said in a reply to a question from VOA about whether consortiums of states developing their own reopening plans pose a challenge to his authority to declare a national reopening amid the coronavirus pandemic. “They can’t do anything without the approval of the president of the United States,” Trump declared. Trump insisted there are numerous provisions of the Constitution backing him up on this, asserting “when somebody is president of the United States, the authority is total.” Under the U.S. Constitution, what powers are not defined in that framework for the federal government are left to the states. When a reporter pointed this out to the president that what he was claiming is not true, he responded, “Enough, please.” New York Governor Andrew Cuomo, calling into CNN just after Trump’s remarks, said that in the United States, “the president doesn’t have total authority. We have a Constitution. We don’t have a king.” If the president puts forward a reopening plan that “I believe is irresponsible and jeopardizes public health, I would oppose it legally,” Cuomo added. The governor noted Trump has helped New York and other states with the coronavirus response. And in view of that, Cuomo said, he does not understand why the president “would pivot at this point to this aggressive, hostile suggestion of a total authority of the federal government and abandon the partnership cooperation.” Trump says he will soon decide whether to reopen the United States to commerce at a time when 42 of the 50 state governors have imposed stay-at-home edicts because of the viral pandemic. The president recommended physical distancing between Americans through the end of April but is considering whether to reopen the country fully or partly May 1. A pedestrian stands along in a sparsely populated transit hub in the downtown financial district as retail stores remain shuttered due to COVID-19 concerns, Saturday, March 21, 2020, in New York. New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo announced sweeping orders. Cuomo and five other governors of northeastern states had a joint telephone call to announce they are to begin deliberations Tuesday on a regional plan to reopen their economies. It should be state governors who make these decisions as they have been the ones “showing great leadership,” which has kept people safe, Rhode Island’s Gina Raimondo told her fellow governors. The governors of three Western states, California, Oregon and Washington, also announced Monday they are similarly taking a unified approach. The East and West Coast consortiums, in states led by opposition Democratic Party governors, together represent about 100 million people, nearly a third of the country’s population. New York City is the epicenter of the global pandemic and the state where more than 7,300 of the total 23,000 U.S. deaths have been recorded. Hospitals in the state, according to Cuomo, are still receiving 2,000 new COVID-19 patients per day, but the curve continues to flatten for the total number of New York cases. “I’m not confident the worst is over,” the governor said during a nationally televised briefing, warning the number could rise again “if we do something stupid.” The United States has more than 577,000 reported COVID-19 cases, the most of any country. Trump denied during Monday’s briefing he plans to remove Dr. Anthony Fauci, a member of the White House coronavirus task force and the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases since 1984.Director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases Dr. Anthony Fauci speaks during a coronavirus task force briefing at the White House, April 10, 2020, in Washington.Trump on Sunday had reposted a tweet that contained the phrase “Time to #FireFauci.” “It doesn’t matter,” he said of the tweet and expressed support for the respected physician before noting that “not everybody is happy with Anthony.” Trump referred to Fauci as a “wonderful guy.” Fauci, appearing Sunday on CNN, said earlier mitigation would have saved more lives, a statement he attempted to clean up during Monday’s briefing, explaining that he was responding to a hypothetical question that was taken out of context and he used “a poor choice of words.” Fauci’s credibility, according to public opinion polls, is much higher than any politician, including the president. Trump also is facing criticism for using Monday’s briefing, which ran nearly 2½ hours, to play what his critics quickly labeled a “propaganda” video to counter reports he ignored early warning about the coronavirus. “Because we have fake news, I like to document things,” Trump said of the video that he explained was produced by his social media director, Dan Scavino, and other White House staff. The screening of the video prompted some U.S. networks, such as CNN and MSNBC, to cut away from what live coverage of the daily White House coronavirus task force briefing. “Everything we did was right,” Trump told reporters, after playing the campaign style video. A former executive editor of the New York Times, Howell Raines, called the video “one of the most astonishing acts of disinformation from the White House since the Vietnam (War) era.”
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By Polityk | 04/14/2020 | Повідомлення, Політика
Biden Wins Wisconsin Primary
Former U.S. Vice President Joe Biden has won last week’s Democratic primary in the state of Wisconsin. Results released Monday showed Biden capturing about twice the votes of Senator Bernie Sanders, his final opponent in a once very crowded field contending to face off against Republican President Donald Trump in the November general election. Wisconsin turned out to be the last contested state in the series of elections the party uses to allocate pledged delegates on the way to picking the nominee. The day after the voting took place, Sanders dropped out of the race, leaving Biden as the presumptive nominee. Sanders went further Monday, endorsing Biden in a show of unity aimed at rallying his supporters to help defeat Trump. Supporters of Democratic presidential hopeful former Vice President Joe Biden cheers as he speaks at the National Constitution Center in Philadelphia, on March 10, 2020.Wisconsin, like in the 2016 presidential election, is expected to play a key role in the outcome in November. Trump narrowly won the state four years ago over Democrat Hillary Clinton, the first time a Republican presidential candidate had won the state since 1984. The U.S. does not conduct its presidential elections by popular vote, instead by the Electoral College, in which the outcomes in each of the 50 states help determine the national winner, with the biggest states holding the most votes. While Wisconsin held its primary election last week, the results were delayed by a legal battle that saw Democratic Governor Tony Evers try to postpone voting due to the coronavirus outbreak, only to have his decision overturned by the state’s conservative-dominated supreme court. Those who opposed going ahead with the vote said it made little public health sense to have people show up to polling places in the midst of the coronavirus pandemic. Hundreds of would-be Election Day workers refused to keep their promise to show up at polling stations to check in voters off registration lists. In Milwaukee, the state’s biggest city, only five of 180 polling stations were opened, with some voters forced to stand in line for up to 2 ½ hours to cast ballots. Health care workers handed out face masks to the voters, who mostly stayed at least two meters apart from others waiting in line. The Republican-led legislature advocated holding the vote because many state and local offices were on the ballot and, absent a vote, would have left the positions vacant if the vote were postponed to June as Evers wanted to do. Judges said voters could submit ballots by mail if they were postmarked by election day and received by Monday for counting.
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By Polityk | 04/14/2020 | Повідомлення, Політика
Sanders Endorses Democratic Rival Biden
Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders on Monday formally endorsed his erstwhile rival, former U.S. Vice President Joe Biden, for U.S. president in the November national election against Republican President Donald Trump. “We’ve got to make Trump a one-term president and we need you in the White House,” Sanders told Biden in joint virtual appearance on a Biden webcast. “I will do all that I can to see that that happens, Joe,” Sanders vowed. “I want to thank you for that,” Biden responded. “It’s a big deal. Your endorsement means a great deal, a great deal to me.” Democratic U.S. presidential candidate and former Vice President Joe Biden speaks about the COVID-19 coronavirus pandemic at an event in Wilmington, Delaware, U.S., March 12, 2020. REUTERS/Carlos BarriaSanders, a self-declared democratic socialist, was Biden’s last challenger for the Democratic presidential nomination, but suspended his campaign last week in the face of Biden’s seemingly insurmountable lead in pledged delegates to the party’s national presidential nominating convention in August. Sanders had pushed for several significant U.S. policy changes that Biden has resisted, such as a government takeover of medical health insurance — Medicare for All, Sanders called it — and free tuition for college students at public universities.When Sanders ended his active campaigning after the Democratic presidential primary in the Midwestern state of Wisconsin last week, Biden adopted modified stances on the Sanders health insurance and tuition positions, an effort to woo Sanders supporters to his candidacy. Biden, on his third run for the U.S. presidency over three decades, said that rather than a full government takeover of health insurance, Americans should be able to adopt government-assisted care at age 60 instead of the current 65. On tuition, Biden called for writing off student debt for low-income and middle-class families who attended public colleges and universities and some private institutions. Sanders had said since the outset of his 2020 campaign that he would do whatever he could to help the eventual Democratic nominee, if it wasn’t him, to defeat Trump. But it remains unclear whether the most ardent supporters of Sanders’ progressive policy stances will follow him to support Biden. In 2016, even though Sanders eventually endorsed the Democratic nominee, Hillary Clinton, after losing to her in a long party nomination campaign, post-election polls showed about 12% of Sanders supporters voted for Trump over Clinton as she lost the national election.
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By Polityk | 04/14/2020 | Повідомлення, Політика
COVID: Trump Says Reopening US is His Decision
President Donald Trump said Monday he would soon decide whether to reopen the United States to commerce as health experts voiced optimism that the worst of the coronavirus pandemic in the country may soon be over.In the U.S., 42 of the 50 state governors have imposed stay-at-home edicts as the virus swept through the country. Trump recommended physical distancing between Americans through the end of April but is considering whether to reopen the country fully or partly on May 1.While news stories in the U.S. have suggested it would be up to the governors to decide when to lift their own orders for their states, Trump said on Twitter, “Let it be fully understood that this is incorrect.”For the purpose of creating conflict and confusion, some in the Fake News Media are saying that it is the Governors decision to open up the states, not that of the President of the United States & the Federal Government. Let it be fully understood that this is incorrect….— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) April 13, 2020Trump said, “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!” ….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, 2020Top U.S. health experts voiced cautious optimism that the ravaging coronavirus outbreak in the country is slowing.“In the midst of tragedy, there IS hope,” Surgeon General Jerome Adams said on Twitter.He said the western states of California and Washington “remain stable” in the number of new cases. Adams said New York and New Jersey in the eastern U.S. and the cities of Detroit in the Midwest and New Orleans in the South “appear to be leveling off.”“Social distancing and mitigation IS working. There is a light at the end of this dark tunnel,” Adams said, as he urged Americans to continue to keep themselves away from others by at least two meters.Dr. Robert Redfield, the director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, told NBC’s “Today” show, “We are nearing the peak right now. Sometime, hopefully this week. You 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.”Why It May Take Months to Reopen the US EconomyPublic health experts call for a cautious, phased approach But Redfield, like other government health officials, voiced concerns about reopening the country to commerce and a sense of normalcy on May 1, the date Trump is considering.Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the country’s director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, said Sunday there is “extraordinary risk” of the further spread of the coronavirus if life in the U.S. returns to normalcy too soon.Fauci: ‘Extraordinary Risk’ of Further COVID Spread If US Reopens Too SoonTop infectious disease expert Dr. Anthony Fauci’s warning comes as US coronavirus death toll has topped 20,000, the highest total of any country, with more than 534,000 confirmed casesRedfield said, “I think it’s important to look at the country as many different separate situations. We’re looking at the data county by county by county.”“Clearly the things that need to happen for the reopening is what’s happening with the numbers of new cases,” he said. “We’ve got to substantially augment our public health capacity to do early case identification, isolation and contact tracing. And obviously make sure we have the medical and hospital capacity. And really start working to build confidence” in communities across the country, so they have “confidence to reopen.”“There’s no doubt that we have to reopen correctly,” to avoid a resurgence in the coronavirus in July and August, Redfield said. “It’s going to be a step by step, gradual process. It’s got to be data driven.”Trump Challenged on His Early Bird Bid to Reopen US EconomyAt least one Republican governor warned on Tuesday against easing restrictions too soon even though the clampdown is devastating the US economyTheir assessment came as the U.S. death toll continues to increase, topping 22,000, with 558,000 confirmed cases.Redfield said that the mortality rate, “while sadly still too high, was far less than we anticipated” because of social distancing.Trump in January, February and half of March minimized the severity of the coronavirus threat after the first outbreak in China before declaring a national emergency in mid-March. On several occasions, he said there were few cases in the U.S. and that the disease would quickly dwindle to nothing. Some Trump advisers warned him of the advancing threat, but Sunday on Twitter, Trump appeared peeved at Fauci’s assessment in a CNN interview Sunday that “obviously” the country’s response could have been better.“It would have been better if we had a head start,” Fauci said. “Often the recommendation (of scientists and medical experts) is taken, sometimes it is not.”He said the country’s high death toll “may have been a little bit different” if the U.S. had moved quicker toward social distancing and stay-at-home edicts.Trump retweeted a supporter’s assessment that Fauci should be fired, although Fauci has continued to appear alongside the president at White House coronavirus news conferences.On Monday afternoon, the White House rebuffed talk that Fauci might be ousted.“This media chatter is ridiculous,” Trump spokesman Hogan Gidley said. “President Trump is not firing Dr. Fauci.”Gidley concluded, “Dr. Fauci has been and remains a trusted advisor to President Trump.”
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By Polityk | 04/14/2020 | Повідомлення, Політика
Former Senate Staffer Accuses Joe Biden of Sexual Assault
A former aide to Joe Biden is accusing the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee of sexually assaulting her during the early 1990s when he was a senator. Biden’s campaign denies the charges.In two recent interviews with The Associated Press, Tara Reade alleged the assault occurred in the basement of a Capitol Hill office building in the spring of 1993. She filed a police report in Washington on Thursday saying she was the victim of a sexual assault by an unnamed person in 1993, a copy of which was obtained by the AP.It’s not the first time Reade has made an accusation against the former vice president. Last year, Reade publicly accused Biden of inappropriate touching, but did not allege sexual assault.In a statement, Biden deputy campaign manager and communications director Kate Bedingfield said the former vice president has “dedicated his public life to changing the culture and the laws around violence against women,” pointing to his work passing the Violence Against Women Act. She said “he firmly believes that women have a right to be heard — and heard respectfully,” but added: “Such claims should also be diligently reviewed by an independent press.””What is clear about this claim: it is untrue. This absolutely did not happen,” Bedingfield said.Reade’s charge comes at a pivotal time for Biden. The former vice president is seeking to unify the Democratic Party behind his campaign as the party’s presumptive presidential nominee after Sen. Bernie Sanders dropped out of the primary last week. Women are a crucial voting bloc for Democrats and any erosion of support for Biden could sink his candidacy in the fall.The November contest between Biden and President Donald Trump will be the first presidential race of the #MeToo era, a movement that spurred numerous women to come forward with allegations of sexual assault, including against several prominent men in politics, entertainment and other industries. Trump has also been accused of assault and unwanted touching by numerous women, charges he denies. He was forced to apologize during the 2016 campaign after he was heard on a recording bragging about using his fame to assault women.Earlier in the Democratic primary, Biden faced accusations of unwanted touching by several women, who said they were uncomfortable with hugs, hand holding and other actions. Reade was among the women who came forward at the time.In recent weeks, she’s given a handful of interviews saying Biden’s actions went further that she initially disclosed. In an interview with the AP, she detailed a 1993 encounter that she says occurred when she was asked by a supervisor to bring Biden his gym bag as he was on his way down to the Senate gymnasium. She says Biden pushed her against a wall in the basement of a Capitol Hill office building, groped her and penetrated her with his fingers.”He was whispering to me and trying to kiss me at the same time, and he was saying, ‘Do you want to go somewhere else?”’ she said. “I remember wanting to say stop, but I don’t know if I said it out loud or if I just thought it. I was kind of frozen up.”Reade said that she pulled away and Biden looked “shocked and surprised,” and replied, “Come on, man, I heard you liked me.”Reade, who was a staff assistant in Biden’s office at the time, said she wasn’t aware of any direct witnesses to the encounter. She told the AP she did raise accusations of sexual harassment, but not assault, against Biden in multiple meetings with her supervisors, including Marianne Baker, Biden’s executive assistant; Dennis Toner, Biden’s deputy chief of staff; and Ted Kaufman, the senator’s chief of staff.In a statement provided by the campaign, Baker said that in the nearly two decades she worked for Biden, “I never once witnessed, or heard of, or received, any reports of inappropriate conduct, period — not from Ms. Reade, not from anyone.”The AP spoke to five current or former Biden staffers on Sunday, all of whom worked for him at the time of the alleged incident. None recalled such an incident or a report, and neither Toner nor Kaufman could recall Reade. Both said what she had described was out of character for Biden.”She did not come to me. I would have remembered her if she had, and I don’t remember her at all,” Kaufman said.Reade said she filed a written report with a Senate personnel office. But she didn’t receive a copy of it and has been unable to obtain one since because, she says, Biden’s Senate files are currently at the University of Delaware, which has not yet made them public.The AP has been unable to verify whether a report was made.Reade says after complaining to supervisors, her job responsibilities were scaled back and she was eventually told by Toner that she was not a good fit for the job and encouraged to find a new one.Reade told the AP she spoke to at least four people about Biden’s conduct before she went public with her experience: two friends, her brother and her mother. Her mother passed away, and her brother did not respond to a request for comment.One friend, who knew Reade in 1993, said in an interview Sunday that Reade told them about the alleged assault when it happened. The person, who requested anonymity because of the sensitivity of the situation, didn’t mention the assault allegation during an initial interview with the AP last year, but confirmed those details after Reade went forward with them. The person said they had initially advised Reade against sharing details of the assault because of the negative response to her less serious accusations of harassment.The second friend met Reade more than a decade after the alleged incident and confirmed that Reade had a conversation with them in 2007 or 2008 about experiencing sexual harassment from Biden while working in his Senate office. But the friend, who requested anonymity to protect the privacy of their family, made no mention of assault. In the course of reporting on Reade’s allegations, the AP also contacted 21 former Biden staffers from the time and spoke to several of them. While some remembered Reade, none recalled any instances of inappropriate touching or behavior on Biden’s behalf, or any complaints made by Reade.Melissa Lefko, who worked as a staff assistant for Biden at the same time as Reade, said Biden had very little interaction with staff at their level, and that Reade’s recollection of Biden’s conduct didn’t match her own.”When you work on the Hill, you know who the good guys are who the bad guys are and who you should avoid and Biden was a good guy, he was never, ever on that list of the bad guys,” she said in an interview.Biden’s conduct towards women first came under scrutiny just before he announced his presidential campaign last spring. Eight women, including Reade, came forward with allegations that the former vice president made them feel uncomfortable with inappropriate physical displays of affection. Biden acknowledged the complaints and promised to “be more mindful about respecting personal space in the future.”The AP spoke with Reade about those complaints in April 2019. During that interview, Reade alleged that Biden rubbed her shoulders and neck, played with her hair, and that she was asked by another aide in Biden’s Senate office to dress more conservatively and told “don’t be so sexy.” The AP declined to publish details of the interview at the time because reporters were unable to corroborate her allegations, and aspects of her story contradicted other reporting.In recent months, Reade came forward with the additional allegation of assault, speaking first to progressive podcast host Katie Halper, before The New York Times published an extensive review of her claims Sunday.Reade’s story of sexual harassment had circulated for weeks in both conservative and progressive media outlets. While Reade said she supported Sanders or Elizabeth Warren in the Democratic primary, she said that her decision to come forward with new details was not politically motivated.In her Sunday interview with the AP, Reade said that she was reluctant to share details of the assault during her initial conversations with reporters over a year ago because she was scared of backlash, and was still coming to terms with what happened to her.”Already I was being threatened and kind of smeared, and I just I wasn’t ready,” she said. “So I talked about the sexual harassment and what I was comfortable talking about, but I wasn’t ready to talk about sexual assault.”
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By Polityk | 04/13/2020 | Повідомлення, Політика
Wisconsin to Announce Primary Results
Election officials in the Midwestern U.S. state of Wisconsin are set to release results Monday from last week’s Democratic primary vote. The figures were delayed by a legal battle that saw the governor try to postpone voting due to the coronavirus outbreak, only to have his decision overturned by the state’s supreme court. Those who opposed going ahead with the vote said it made little public health sense to have people show up to polling places, while many volunteers signaled they would no longer participate. The Republican-led legislature advocated holding the vote because many state offices were on the ballot and would otherwise be left vacant. Judges said voters could submit ballots by mail if they were postmarked by election day and received by Monday for counting. The announcement of the presidential primary winner will be anticlimactic. Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders dropped out of the race for the Democratic nomination the day after Wisconsin voted, leaving former Vice President Joe Biden as the presumptive choice to oppose President Donald Trump in November.
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By Polityk | 04/13/2020 | Повідомлення, Політика
Signs Missed and Steps Slowed in Trump’s Pandemic Response
By the time President Donald Trump first spoke publicly about the coronavirus, it may already have been too late.Interviewed at Davos, a gathering of global elites in the Swiss Alps, the president on Jan. 22 played down the threat posed by the respiratory virus from China, which had just reached American shores in the form of a solitary patient in Washington state. “We have it totally under control,” Trump said on CNBC. “It’s one person coming in from China, and we have it under control. It’s going to be just fine.”In the 11 weeks since that interview, the coronavirus has reached every corner of the globe. It has infected more than 500,000 Americans and killed at least 20,000. It has rewritten the rules of society, isolated people in their homes, closed schools, devastated the economy and put millions out of work.President Donald Trump speaks during a coronavirus task force briefing at the White House, Friday, April 10, 2020, in Washington.When Trump spoke in Switzerland, weeks’ worth of warning signs already had been raised. In the ensuing month, before the president first addressed the crisis from the White House, key steps to prepare the nation for the coming pandemic were not taken.Life-saving medical equipment was not stockpiled. Travel largely continued unabated. Vital public health data from China was not provided or was deemed untrustworthy. A White House riven by rivalries and turnover was slow to act. Urgent warnings were ignored by a president consumed by his impeachment trial and intent on protecting a robust economy that he viewed as central to his reelection chances.Twenty current and former administration officials and Republicans close to the White House were interviewed for this account about the critical weeks lost before the president spoke to the nation on Feb. 26. Most spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly about private discussions.Trump Optimistic on COVID-19 RecoveryThe White House lowers projected US death toll from coronavirus’MYSTERIOUS PNEUMONIA’On New Year’s Eve, China informed the World Health Organization of a “mysterious pneumonia outbreak” spreading through Wuhan, an industrial city of 11 million.The government closed a seafood market at the center of the outbreak, moved all patients with the virus to a specially designated hospital and collected test samples to send to government laboratories. Doctors were told to stay quiet; one who issued a warning online was punished. He later died of the virus. The Pentagon first learned about the new coronavirus in December from open source reports emanating from China. By early January, warnings about the virus had made their way into intelligence reports circulating around the government. On Jan. 3, the head of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Robert Redfield, received a call from his Chinese counterpart with an official warning. Dr. Anthony Fauci, the government’s top infectious disease expert, was alerted to the virus around the same time — and within two weeks was fearful it could bring global catastrophe.Quickly, U.S. intelligence and public health officials began doubting China’s reported rates of infection and death toll. They pressed China to allow in U.S. epidemiologists — both to assist the country in confronting the spread and to gain valuable insights that could help buy time for the U.S. response. U.S. officials also pressed China to send samples of the virus to U.S. labs for study and for vaccine and test development. On Jan. 11, China shared the virus’ genetic sequence. That same day, the National Institutes of Health started working on a vaccine.Trump Sees His Handling of COVID-19 as Path to Reelection President’s campaign is seeking to capitalize on the image of the commander in chief holding forth during coronavirus briefingsUltimately, the U.S. was able to get China’s consent to send two people on the WHO team that traveled to China later in the month. But by then precious weeks had been lost and the virus had raced across Asia and had begun to escape the continent.BALANCING ACTFor much of January, administration officials were doing a delicate balancing act.Internally, they were raising alarms about the need to get Americans on the ground in China. Publicly, they were sending words of encouragement and praise in hopes Beijing would grant the Americans access. Matthew Pottinger, Trump’s deputy national security adviser, persistently urged more aggressive action in calling out China and sending teams there.But while word of the virus was included in several of the president’s intelligence briefings, Trump wasn’t fully briefed on the threat until Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar called with an update on Jan. 18 while the president was at his private Mar-a-Lago club in Florida. Trump spent much of the conversation wanting to talk about vaping; he was considering a new policy restricting its use. White House officials now believe Trump didn’t fully grasp the magnitude of the threat to the U.S. in part because Azar, who was feuding with several members of Trump’s inner circle, did a poor job communicating it. Azar was trying to walk a fine line between Trump’s upbeat statements and preparing the government for what might lie ahead. “America’s risk is low at the moment,” he later told House lawmakers. “That could change quickly.” Moreover, the president was in the middle of his Senate impeachment trial and focused on little else, punctuating nearly every White House meeting with complaints about the Democrats out to get him, grievances he would continue late into the night on the phone from his private quarters.Trump also had little desire to pressure Beijing or criticize its president, Xi Jinping, with whom he wanted to secure cooperation on ending a yearlong trade war before the reelection campaign kicked into high gear. When Trump fielded his first question about the virus in Davos, he enthusiastically praised Xi’s response, going well beyond the calibrated risk-reward messaging his aides were encouraging.INFIGHTINGThe West Wing was adrift.By late January, acting chief of staff Mick Mulvaney held the post in name only as rumors swirled of his impending, post-impeachment departure. He was on the initial coronavirus task force, which was plagued with infighting. At the same time, the White House Office of Management and Budget was clashing with Azar’s HHS over money to combat the virus.The Capitol Hill building is pictured in Washington, DC. (Photo: Diaa Bekheet)HHS wanted to send a special coronavirus funding request to Congress but the White House budget office resisted for weeks, insisting that HHS should instead repurpose $250 million of its existing budget to bolster the national stockpile by buying protective equipment. HHS, however, claimed that without congressional authorization it could not buy the needed quantities of masks, gowns and ventilators to rapidly bolster the national stockpileEventually, an initial request went to Congress for $2.5 billion in virus aid, an amount that lawmakers of both parties dismissed as too low. The bill that Congress quickly passed and Trump signed — the first of three so far — was for $8 billion.Even as the two agencies fought, there was no influential voice in Trump’s orbit pushing him to act swiftly on the pandemic. Trump had surrounded himself with loyalists and few in the administration, including national security adviser Robert O’Brien, were able to redirect the president’s attention. In mid-January, meetings were being held at the White House, but the focus was on getting U.S. government employees back from China, which was still playing down how contagious the virus was.A Jan. 29 memo from senior White House aide Peter Navarro accurately predicted some of the challenges faced by the U.S. from what would become a pandemic, though he was hardly the first to sound the alarm. But he, like Pottinger, was viewed by others in the White House as a “China hawk” and their concerns were rejected by others in the administration who did not bring them to the president.Trump Hits Back at WHO Chief Who Urged COVID-19 UnityU.S. President Donald Trump lashed out at the head of the World Health Organization, who called for unity and global solidarity after Trump accused the U.N. agency of being “China-centric” and threatened to suspend funding. White House Correspondent Patsy Widakuswara has the story. On Jan. 30, the WHO declared the virus a global health emergency while Trump held a packed campaign rally in Iowa. The next day, the Trump administration banned admittance to the United States by foreign nationals who had traveled to China in the past 14 days, excluding the immediate family members of American citizens or permanent residents.Trump styled it as bold action, but continued to talk down the severity of the threat. Despite the ban, nearly 40,000 people have arrived in the United States on direct flights from China since that date, according to an analysis by The New York Times.’VERY, VERY READY’On Feb. 10, Trump stood before thousands of supporters packed into a New Hampshire rally and declared: “By April, you know, in theory, when it gets a little warmer, it miraculously goes away.”The crowd roared its approval at Trump’s unproven assertion. The Senate had acquitted Trump on the impeachment charges and the president shifted his focus toward reelection even as others in the administration keyed in on the virus.Federal officials put the CDC solely in charge of developing a test for the virus and left out private interests, a choice that cost precious time when the resulting CDC test proved faulty.Trump spent many weeks shuffling responsibility for leading his administration’s response to the crisis. He put Azar in charge of the administration’s virus task force before replacing him with Vice President Mike Pence toward the end of February. Even as the virus spread across the globe, prevailing voices in the White House, including senior adviser Jared Kushner and Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin, urged the president to avoid big steps that could roil financial markets. The president had firmly linked his fate to Wall Street, and it took a tumble by the markets for Trump to ratchet up his response. In late February, while Trump was on a trip to India, the Dow Jones plummeted 1,000 points amid rising fears about the coronavirus.Trump stewed about the collapse on his Feb. 26 flight back to Washington and lashed out at aides over comments made by a top CDC official, Dr. Nancy Messonnier, during a briefing the prior day, when she warned Americans that they would have to prepare for fairly severe social distancing. “It’s not so much of a question of if this will happen anymore but rather more of a question of exactly when this will happen,” she said.The White House announced that Pence would brief the media about the response that night. But Trump took the podium instead and has not relinquished the stage much since, belatedly making himself the face of the battle against the virus.When Trump first took the lectern in the White House briefing room to speak about the virus, the U.S. had 15 coronavirus patients.”We’re at that very low level, and we want to keep it that way,” Trump said. “We’re very, very ready for this.”
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By Polityk | 04/13/2020 | Повідомлення, Політика
Watchdog: Treasury Acted Appropriately on Trump Tax Returns
A watchdog has found that the Treasury Department appropriately handled Congress’ request for President Donald Trump’s tax returns, which Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin has refused to provide.But the acting inspector general for Treasury, Rich Delmar, also said he had no opinion on whether the advice Mnuchin followed — which came from Justice Department attorneys — was itself well-founded. In refusing to hand over the returns, Mnuchin decided he was legally bound to comply with that advice, Delmar noted in a letter Wednesday to senior House lawmakers. Rep. Richard Neal, the Massachusetts Democrat who chairs the House Ways and Means Committee, asked Delmar last fall to probe how Treasury received, assessed and responded to Neal’s earlier request for six years of Trump’s tax returns. Delmar found that Treasury processed the request properly, sought legal guidance from the Justice Department, determined that it was bound by that guidance and, based on that advice, decided not to provide the tax information. Hie letter went to Neal and Rep. Kevin Brady of Texas, the senior Republican on the tax-writing Ways and Means panel. In the long-running legal battle over Trump’s records, Neal cited a 1924 law that says the Treasury secretary “shall furnish” tax returns to any of the three congressional officers empowered to obtain them, one of whom is the Ways and Means Committee chairman.Neal has said the records are needed because the committee is looking into the effectiveness of IRS mandatory audits of all sitting presidents.
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By Polityk | 04/11/2020 | Повідомлення, Політика
