Trump enters the stage

{New ruling: is there a change of perspective within the Justice Dept?}

TheHill

COURT BATTLES

March 05, 2020 - 05:13 PM EST
Judge demands unredacted Mueller report, questions Barr’s ‘credibility’

A federal judge on Thursday ordered the Department of Justice (DOJ) to hand over to him a copy of the unredacted Mueller report and accused Attorney General William Barr of misrepresenting its findings in the days before it was submitted to Congress last year.

Judge Reggie B. Walton, a federal district court judge in Washington, said that he could not reconcile Barr’s public comments in April 2019 about the report with the actual findings that former special counsel Robert Mueller outlined.

“The inconsistencies between Attorney General Barr’s statements, made at a time when the public did not have access to the redacted version of the Mueller Report to assess the veracity of his statements, and portions of the redacted version of the Mueller Report that conflict with those statements cause the Court to seriously question whether Attorney General Barr made a calculated attempt to influence public discourse about the Mueller Report in favor of President Trump despite certain findings in the redacted version of the Mueller Report to the contrary,” Walton wrote in his decision.

“These circumstances generally, and Attorney General Barr’s lack of candor specifically, call into question Attorney General Barr’s credibility” as well as the DOJ’s arguments in a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit, Walton added.

A DOJ spokeswoman did not respond when asked for comment.

The judge, who was appointed to the court by former President George W. Bush, said he would review the full report to determine whether the redactions made by the DOJ are subject to a FOIA request. The unredacted version will not be released to the public in the meantime.

After Mueller submitted his long-awaited report on his investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election, the DOJ waited nearly a month before releasing to the public a redacted version in April. During that time, Barr summarized the findings publicly as clearing Trump of any wrongdoing and concluding that neither he nor his campaign had colluded with Russia for assistance during the presidential race.

Mueller criticized Barr’s framing of his report, writing in a letter to the DOJ last year that it “did not fully capture the context, nature, and substance of this Office’s work and conclusions.”

The report said that while the investigation had not been able to establish proof that the campaign had conspired with Russia, it found “multiple links between Trump campaign officials and individuals tied to the Russian government.”

Walton is presiding over a pair of consolidated FOIA lawsuits brought by Buzzfeed journalist Jason Leopold and the nonprofit Electronic Privacy Information Center.

The judge said that Barr’s public statements about the report has caused him to doubt the DOJ’s arguments that the redactions should remain in place.

“The Court has grave concerns about the objectivity of the process that preceded the public release of the redacted version of the Mueller Report and its impacts on the Department’s subsequent justifications that its redactions of the Mueller Report are authorized by the FOIA,” Walton wrote.

He ordered the DOJ to hand over the unredacted report by March 30.

The Hill 1625 K Street,

Trump , Bart on the warpath of a pleasant and rational offensive:

An official website of the United States government

ATTORNEY GENERAL BARR, ACTING HOMELAND SECURITY SECRETARY WOLF AND INTERNATIONAL PARTNERS ANNOUNCE NEW INITIATIVE IN PROTECTING CHILDREN FROM SEXUAL EXPLOITATION

March 5, 2020

U.S. Attorney General William P. Barr, Acting Homeland Security Secretary Chad Wolf and partners from Australia, Canada, New Zealand, and the United Kingdom launch a new initiative to combat online child sexual exploitation and abuse.

Attorney General William P. Barr Announces the Launch of Voluntary Principles to Counter Online Child Sexual Exploitation and Abuse

Department of Justice, Homeland Security and International Partners Announce Launch of Voluntary Principles to Counter Online Child Sexual Exploitation and Abuse

U.S. Department of Justice

950 Pennsylvania Avenue, NW
Washington, DC 20530-0001

{What’s up?} — viral scares plague’ s biopolitocal agenda, or is there more than FDR’s epitath at stake here( there is nothing to fear but fear it’self ?)

Donald Trump’s dangerous freelancing on coronavirus

Analysis by Chris Cillizza, CNN Editor-at-large

Updated 11:31 AM EST, Fri March 06, 2020

(CNN)On Friday morning, amid questions of why President Donald Trump had canceled a planned trip to Atlanta to visit the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the White House released this statement:

"The President is no longer traveling to Atlanta today. The CDC has been proactive and prepared since the very beginning and the President does not want to interfere with the CDC’s mission to protect the health and welfare of their people and the agency

OK! Makes some sense, since a presidential visit requires a massive amount of logistics and security that, theoretically, could take away from the important work the CDC is doing in identifying and containing the novel coronavirus.

Except that, when asked later Friday morning why he had canceled the CDC trip, Trump said this:

“We may go. They thought there was a problem at CDC, somebody that had the virus. They’ve tested the person very fully and it was a negative test,” Trump said. “I may be going they’re going to see if they can turn it around with Secret Service.”

Uh.

So, which is it? Did the White House cancel because they didn’t want to be a distraction to the CDC? Or because there were concerns that by going Trump could expose himself (and his staff) to the virus? Because that’s a BIG difference.

Adding even more confusion, the trip is now back on as of Friday midday, according to White House press secretary Stephanie Grisham. “What the President said is true,” she offered by way of explanation. Er, OK?

That we are getting different messages from the White House’s official channels and the President isn’t, frankly, new. On an almost weekly basis, Trump says something in public that either directly contradicts or undermines a message his own White House has put out. Which, of course, raises the question of who to believe.

While those dual – and dueling – messages are never a good thing, they are particularly problematic in a situation like dealing with the coronavirus. What the public needs are facts. One set of facts. From a trusted source.

Trump’s longstanding issues with telling the truth – 16,000+ misleading or false claims in his first three years in office! – already make this difficult. But it’s even more complicated when the White House is saying one thing and the President is saying something else.

Trump seems to show little concern with the gaps between what he says and what his White House is saying. Or even what he says and what the medical community says.

Consider:

• The President has repeatedly suggested that we are close to coming up with a vaccine for coronavirus, when experts like Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, has repeatedly made clear that a vaccine is at least 12-18 months away.

• Trump rejected the warning from medical exerts that the spread of coronavirus in the US was inevitable, adding: “It probably will, it possibly will. It could be at a very small level, or it could be at a larger level.”

• After the head of the World Health Organization pegged the global mortality rate from COVID-19 at over 3%,Trump told Fox News host Sean Hannity this:

“Well, I think the 3.4% is really a false number. Now, this is just my hunch, and – but based on a lot of conversations with a lot of people that do this, because a lot of people will have this, and it’s very mild.”

• On Friday morning, amid a steady increase of cases in the United States, Trump said this of the virus: “This came unexpectedly, it came out of China, we closed it down, we stopped it, it was a very early shut down.”

The point here is that in a moment when we desperately need clear communication of facts from a credible source, the President is giving us anything but that.

© 2020 Cable News Network. Turner Broadcasting System, Inc. All Rights Reserved.

Now this from CDC - a Grand performance, most of it off cue

!!!#!!!#######??

Trump calls Inslee a ‘snake’ over criticism of coronavirus rhetoric

The president went off on Inslee for saying that he wanted Trump to stick to the science when discussing the coronavirus outbreak.

Washington State Gov. Jay Inslee addresses the press Thursday during a visit by Vice President Mike Pence to discuss concerns over the coronavirus. | Karen Ducey/Getty Images

President Donald Trump on Friday called Washington Gov. Jay Inslee “a snake” for criticizing his administration’s response to the coronavirus outbreak.

Speaking in Atlanta at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Trump went off on Inslee for saying that he wanted Trump to stick to the science when discussing the outbreak. Trump has repeatedly tried to downplay the gravity of the outbreak and floated his own hunches on matters of science.

“I told Mike not to be complimentary of that governor because that governor is a snake,” Trump said, referring to Vice President Mike Pence. “So Mike may be happy with him but I’m not, OK?”

Pence is Trump’s appointed head of the administration’s coronavirus efforts and has been reaching out to state and local officials to coordinate containment plans.

Inslee tweeted last month that he had been contacted by Pence but said he wanted the Trump administration to stick to the facts about the outbreak.

“I just received a call from @VP Mike Pence, thanking Washington state for our efforts to combat the coronavirus,” Inslee tweeted. “I told him our work would be more successful if the Trump administration stuck to the science and told the truth.”

Washington state was the location of the first U.S. death from coronavirus, and the number of deaths has since grown in the state.

Trump has repeatedly complained that he isn’t getting enough credit for attempting to prevent the outbreak.

“If we came up with a cure today, and tomorrow everything is gone, and you went up to this governor — who is, you know, not a good governor, by the way — if you went up to this governor, and you said to him, ‘How did Trump do?’ He would say, ‘He did a terrible job.’ It makes no difference,” Trump said Friday.

© 2020 POLITICO LLC

{ another retributive payback}

Trump calls Inslee a ‘snake’ over criticism of coronavirus rhetoric

The president went off on Inslee for saying that he wanted Trump to stick to the science when discussing the coronavirus outbreak.

Washington State Gov. Jay Inslee addresses the press Thursday during a visit by Vice President Mike Pence to discuss concerns over the coronavirus. | Karen Ducey/Getty Images

President Donald Trump on Friday called Washington Gov. Jay Inslee “a snake” for criticizing his administration’s response to the coronavirus outbreak.

Speaking in Atlanta at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Trump went off on Inslee for saying that he wanted Trump to stick to the science when discussing the outbreak. Trump has repeatedly tried to downplay the gravity of the outbreak and floated his own hunches on matters of science.

“I told Mike not to be complimentary of that governor because that governor is a snake,” Trump said, referring to Vice President Mike Pence. “So Mike may be happy with him but I’m not, OK?”

Pence is Trump’s appointed head of the administration’s coronavirus efforts and has been reaching out to state and local officials to coordinate containment plans.

Inslee tweeted last month that he had been contacted by Pence but said he wanted the Trump administration to stick to the facts about the outbreak.

“I just received a call from @VP Mike Pence, thanking Washington state for our efforts to combat the coronavirus,” Inslee tweeted. “I told him our work would be more successful if the Trump administration stuck to the science and told the truth.”

Washington state was the location of the first U.S. death from coronavirus, and the number of deaths has since grown in the state.

Trump has repeatedly complained that he isn’t getting enough credit for attempting to prevent the outbreak.

“If we came up with a cure today, and tomorrow everything is gone, and you went up to this governor — who is, you know, not a good governor, by the way — if you went up to this governor, and you said to him, ‘How did Trump do?’ He would say, ‘He did a terrible job.’ It makes no difference,” Trump said Friday.

© 2020 POLITICO LLC

Stocks plunge, coronavirus spreads and Trump tweets image of himself playing a fiddle

Published: Mar 8, 2020 11:50 pm ET

President Donald Trump

Is President Donald Trump fiddling while the world burns?

In another era, Roman emperor Nero, according to ancient tradition, climbed to the top of his city walls and, in a familiar phrase, fiddled as Rome burned. While there are all sorts of questions surrounding what actually went down, the adage that rose from the legend is typically used to criticize someone for doing something trivial in the midst of some sort of crisis.

So Trump’s retweet of his social-media manager’s tweet showing him playing a fiddle couldn’t be more timely, considering the continued spread of the coronavirus and the fact that the Dow Jones Industrial Average DJIA-5.18% is poised for a nasty selloff on Monday.

Here’s the retweet, in which Trump acknowledges that he is not sure exactly what Dan Scavino meant by “nothing can stop what’s coming”:

Trump supporters cheered the meme, of course, but his critics keyed into the ominous tone in light of current events and made “Nero” a trending topic on Twitter TWTR-0.48% . The fact that Trump was golfing over the weekend only fueled the fire.

Here are just some of the highlights:

ECONOMY AND POLITICS

Stocks plunge, coronavirus spreads and Trump tweets image of himself playing a fiddle

MARKETS

Dow plunges 7.2% and S&P 500’s plunge triggers 15 minute halt at lows as oil prices deliver a punishing blow to Wall Street

NEWS & COMMENTARY

These nine companies are working on coronavirus treatments or vaccines — here’s where things stand

NEWS & COMMENTARY

Should I cancel my flight? Will recirculated air on a plane spread coronavirus? Here’s what you need to know before traveling

Copyright ©2020 MarketWatch, Inc. All rights reserved.

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Opinion

You Can’t Gaslight a Virus

President Trump’s usual political tricks won’t work now.

By Charles M. Blow

In the Donald Trump era, Democrats and Republicans generally live with two completely different concepts of reality. Their views of Trump, his competence and character, could hardly be more different.

The Pew Research Center last week released the results of a poll that found that an overwhelming majority of Republicans and independents who lean Republican viewed Trump as intelligent. After all, he describes himself as “a very stable genius.” Maybe they believe him. Maybe they see his business dealings and political maneuvering — no matter how shady — and his ability to avoid major punishment as markers of brilliance.

But, they are largely alone on that island. Only 19 percent of Democrats and Democratic-leaning independents view Trump as intelligent.

Furthermore, 71 percent of Republicans and Republican-leaners believe that Trump is honest, even though he has single-handedly provided a jolt of energy and a shield of job security to fact-checkers.

As The Washington Post wrote in January:

“Three years after taking the oath of office, President Trump has made more than 16,200 false or misleading claims — a milestone that would have been unthinkable when we first created the Fact Checker’s database that analyzes, categorizes and tracks every suspect statement he has uttered.”

Trump is a lying machine. It is pathological. It is compulsive. It is unrepentant.

Democrats and their leaners see this, as only 7 percent view Trump as honest.

Sixty-two percent of Republicans and Republican-leaning independents see Trump as morally upstanding. This is a thrice married man whom multiple women have accused of sexual misconduct, and at least one has accused of rape. This is a man who bragged about sexually assaulting women, who was outed for paying off women who claimed to have had extramarital affairs with him, and who has appeared (clothed, thankfully) in at least three soft-core pornographic films.

Again, precious few Democrats and their leaners agreed with this assessment of Trump’s morality.

But perhaps most telling to me was that 87 percent of Republicans and their leaners say that Trump fights for what they believe in, while at the same time 35 percent say that he is prejudiced. There is clearly some overlap here. Allow that to sink it.

Some people don’t like him in spite of his prejudices but because of them, because they share them.

But, there were a couple of areas of general agreement among Democrats and Republicans, one of which was that overwhelming majorities of both groups viewed Trump as self-centered.

That self-centered sensibility has been on full display since the outbreak of the coronavirus.

Trump sees this budding pandemic through the lens of how it will affect him and his re-election prospects. The fact that the people infected and those fearful of becoming so are real people who desperately need the steady hand of a steady leader is lost on him.

Instead of being the president that the country needs in a time of crisis, he has chosen to employ his worn political strategy: lying. Rather than addressing the issue straightforwardly, he has told lie after lie, and in some cases contradicted the scientists trying to manage this issue.

This has real-world consequences for people’s health and the management of the virus’s spread. As a Reuters/Ipsos poll last week found, “Democrats are about twice as likely as Republicans to say the coronavirus poses an imminent threat to the United States,” and “More Democrats than Republicans say they are taking steps to be prepared, including washing their hands more often or limiting their travel plans.”

Furthermore, when asked last week if he would consider canceling some of his large political rallies to avoid the risk of spreading the virus, Trump responded, “It doesn’t bother me and it doesn’t bother them at all.”

Trump could be making his most ardent supporters a petri dish of disease.

But in his mind, it’s not really about them, and certainly not about the rest of us. This is about him, only, always.

Whereas his supporters can be lied to and gaslighted, a virus cannot. A virus is going to do what a virus does. Viruses are not thinking and aware. Technically, they’re not even living things. They are like an army of androids, multiplying as they attack and infect living things.

So none of the tricks that Trump has learned and deployed will work against this virus. Only science, honesty, prudence and genuine concern for public safety will work now.

And precisely for those reasons, this virus exposes Trump’s enormous weaknesses as the chief executive officer of this country.

The public needs to be assured that we have a real leader at the helm, but we are being shown that just the opposite is true. The fact that he wants to spin media coverage of the virus as politically motivated, the fact that he keeps lowballing the number of people infected, and the fact that he has said that the virus may miraculously disappear, all show that Trump is as much a public health threat as the virus itself.

© 2020 The New York Times Company

The New York Times

Opinion

The Coronavirus Is Coming for Trump’s Presidency

Will a nationalist president be undone by his underreaction to a foreign threat?

By Ross Douthat

March 7, 2020

On Jan. 31, over a month ago, the Trump administration made an excellent decision: In an effort to limit the spread of the coronavirus, it forbade most foreign nationals from entering the United States if they had recently traveled to China.

This move was immediately attacked in the language of cosmopolitan sophistication, which assumes that because travel bans and quarantines are associated with things liberals consider bad — nationalism, hardened borders, migration restrictions — they necessarily must not work as well.

But this supposed sophistication is really just a superstition. It’s certainly true that the travel ban could not, and did not, prevent the coronavirus from reaching the United States. But as with local quarantines and closings — all of which emphatically do work, whether you’re looking at the history of the Spanish flu or Hong Kong’s success combating the coronavirus today — you don’t need 100 percent effectiveness for travel restrictions to be wise and helpful. What they buy you, above all, is a slower rate of spread, and with it precious time for preparation.

So Trump made the right call, and in so doing he briefly vindicated a case that his supporters have always made for him: He acted like the guy who would make common-sensical choices in the national interest, even when they went against the nostrums of globalization and the supposed wisdom of the do-gooders.

And then his administration took the month that his decision bought the country and completely wasted it.

[Listen to “The Argument” podcast every Thursday morning, with Ross Douthat, Michelle Goldberg and David Leonhardt.]

Obviously the White House isn’t to blame for everything that’s gone wrong with the coronavirus response. Our inability to roll out testing rapidly, even when thousands of cases are probably in circulation, owes a lot to the inherent problems of medical bureaucracy and the regulatory state, and to the decadence that afflicts American institutions at almost every level.

But the president can still be reasonably held responsible for the urgency with which the bureaucracy attacks the problem, the speed at which rules get suspended and workarounds enacted, the pressure brought to bear on state and local authorities to take a possible pandemic seriously, and the use of presidential rhetoric to encourage private citizens to do the same.

And on all counts the White House has been failing. There should have been a public face of the anti-coronavirus effort long before Mike Pence was finally elevated, with the power to respond quickly to bureaucratic bottlenecks. Weeks ago, private laboratories like Quest Diagnostics should have been encouraged to run their own tests for the virus. Weeks ago, the government should have promised to cover the cost of testing, instead of leaving it to the tangle of insurance. Weeks ago, the White House should have begun working with states and cities to devise a uniform response to outbreaks, and with Congress to ready aid packages for regions that need to go into lockdown — and perhaps to prepare a general stimulus as well. Even a specific issue like the production of surgical masks, outsourced like so many things to China, could have been the focus of a Trump-directed mobilization.

Above all, the president’s rhetoric could have been deployed from early February onward to encourage people to take this disease seriously, to focus a political and social response, to prepare the country for the kind of steps that have contained the coronavirus elsewhere.

Instead, Trump fell into the same trap as the cosmopolitan sophisticates — acting as though the specter of panic is worse than the disease itself, focusing on the more reassuring estimates of the virus’s fatality rates instead of recognizing the wide spread of possible scenarios — while mixing in his own short-termist fixation on the stock market. And then when, at last, even the cosmopolitans became alarmed, he took their anxiety as a partisan insult, and lapsed into “hoax” accusations, pulling a certain percentage of his co-partisans into irresponsibility along with him.

Now the time his travel ban bought us has expired, and the next few weeks will be decisive. There is still a chance that state and local efforts to contain the virus can succeed, and there are still ways in which the White House could exert strong leadership to help that happen. But right now we are headed for a scenario of rising death rates and overwhelmed hospitals, shuttered schools and empty stadiums and cancellations everywhere.

Combine this scenario’s inevitable economic consequences with the optics of the president’s blundering and solipsistic response, and the coronavirus seems very likely to doom Trump’s re-election effort, no matter where he casts the blame.

And how ironic that would be. In 2016 we elected a China hawk who promised a “complete shutdown” in response to foreign threats, a germaphobic critic of globalization who promised to privilege the national interest above all.

Now he is in danger of losing his presidency because when the great test came, in the form of a virus carried by global trade routes from Communist China, he didn’t take the danger seriously enough.

© 2020 The New York Times Company

You can if you are the best gaslighter in the history of gaslighters.

5 congressmen – including Trump’s future chief of staff and lawmaker who shook President’s hand – to self-quarantine after CPAC

By Haley Byrd, Paul LeBlanc, Lauren Fox and Kaitlan Collins, CNN

Updated 8:49 PM EDT, Mon March 09, 2020

(CNN)Three more members of Congress, including President Donald Trump’s future chief of staff, have announced that they would self-quarantine after coming into contact with an individual who has been diagnosed with the novel coronavirus at the recent Conservative Political Action Conference.

North Carolina Rep. Mark Meadows, who was named as the incoming White House chief of staff on Friday night, announced Monday evening that he has been tested for coronavirus and that test came back negative. However, he’s staying in self-quarantine until Wednesday, said Ben Williamson, Meadows’ chief of staff. Meadows has not yet taken his new job and was not scheduled to start this week, an official told CNN.

“Rep. Meadows was advised this weekend that he may have come in contact with the CPAC attendee who tested positive for COVID-19, now 12 days ago. Out of an abundance of caution, Meadows received testing which came back negative,” Williamson said in a statement. “While he’s experiencing zero symptoms, under doctors’ standard precautionary recommendations, he’ll remain at home until the 14 day period expires this Wednesday.”

Two other Republican lawmakers announced earlier in the day that they too would be in self-quarantine out of an abundance of caution after being in contact with the individual who tested positive for coronavirus at CPAC.

Georgia Rep. Doug Collins, the top Republican on the House Judiciary Committee, and Rep. Matt Gaetz of Florida became the third and fourth members of Congress to take the step, following the same announcements from Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas and Rep. Paul Gosar of Arizona on Sunday.

Collins shook Trump’s hand when the President went to Georgia on Friday to visit the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and Gaetz rode with Trump in the presidential limousine and took Air Force One back to Washington with him on Monday.

A fifth Republican member – Rep. Louie Gohmert of Texas – was told by officials over the weekend that he had been in proximity to the individual, but he is not planning to self-quarantine, a Gohmert aide tells CNN, details the congressman himself confirmed on Twitter on Monday evening.

“After CDC physician called me Sunday evening, and we discussed all the specific circumstances of which he was aware along with my circumstances, including that I was and am asymptomatic, he said that all things considered, I was cleared to return to Washington,” Gohmert said in a series of tweets.

Trump ignored questions shouted at him from a White House briefing on whether he’d been tested. Vice President Mike Pence said he himself had not been tested and he did not know if Trump had been, but promised to get an answer to the question shortly.

“I have not been tested for the coronavirus,” Pence said during a briefing on the virus with reporters, which Trump attending the beginning of.

Trump pushes payroll tax cut and assistance for hourly workers in coronavirus economic response

In a separate development, Democratic Rep. Julia Brownley of California also announced that she was closing her Washington office for the week and would be “self-monitoring and maintaining social distancing practices” as will her Washington staff, after interacting with an individual with the coronavirus last week. CNN has reached out to her office for additional details about her plans.

Collins shook hands with Trump when the President visited the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta last week. Gaetz rode on Air Force Once with the President on Monday.

Collins announced the decision in a statement Monday afternoon, saying he was notified by the organizers of the annual Conservative Political Action Conference Monday afternoon that they had found a photograph of Collins with the individual who tested positive for coronavirus.

“While I feel completely healthy and I am not experiencing any symptoms, I have decided to self-quarantine at my home for the remainder of the 14-day period out of an abundance of caution,” Collins wrote.

Two aides to Collins will also self-quarantine, according to an aide familiar with the situation. The aides in question also interacted with the infected person at CPAC at the end of February, and are not experiencing any symptoms.

Gaetz announced his own self-quarantine in a string of tweets later Monday, stating, “While the Congressman is not experiencing symptoms, he received testing today and expects results soon.”

“Under doctor’s usual precautionary recommendations, he’ll remain self-quarantined until the 14-day period expires this week,” the tweet said.

The Florida Republican, who spent the weekend at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago property, had donned a gas mask on the House floor just last week while he voted on a bill that would dedicate billions of dollars to combating coronavirus.

Trump, Vice President Mike Pence and a number of other administration officials also attended the conference, but the American Conservative Union, which runs the event every year, said the infected attendee did not come into contact with the President or Pence.

Speaking to Fox News on Monday, Gosar stressed the need to stay calm about the virus.

“I am in interviews all the way across the board putting out the hysteria,” he said.

Still, the spread of the virus has prompted House and Senate authorities to prepare for how to keep Congress functioning if the disease threatens Hill operations.

A number of House and Senate offices have begun practicing how they would operate if a chunk of aides were forced into quarantine and had to work from home, congressional sources say.

US Capitol Police are working to ensure that secure communications can continue off-site. The leaders of key congressional committees, along with law enforcement authorities and the Capitol physician’s office, have informed each lawmaker’s office to prepare contingency plans in case of an outbreak.

And lawmakers say it’s possible that more extreme measures could have to be taken – such as limiting tourists in the Capitol or moving legislative business off-site – though House Speaker Nancy Pelosi told reporters Monday the virus should not shut down the Capitol.

“No. No, no no, no. Do you understand no?” Pelosi said as she entered her office.

“At this time, there is no reason to do so. But it’s not my decision. It’s a security and health decision, and we’ll be depending on experts.”

This story has been updated with Rep. Mark Meadows also self-quarantining.

© 2020 Cable News Network. Turner Broadcasting System, Inc. All Rights Reserved.

President Trump Is Unfit for This Crisis. Period.

His narcissism is a grave danger to our health.

March 9, 2020

President Trump boarding Air Force One in Florida on Monday. Over the weekend, reports say, the White House overruled government health officials who wanted to advise older people against flying.Credit…T.J. Kirkpatrick for The New York Times

The coronavirus is no longer just a slow-moving public health crisis that may soon turn into a rapid-moving one. It’s a crisis of transparency. It’s a crisis of government legitimacy. So it is in this spirit that we all have to say: enough.

Whose side is the Trump administration on? Based on every public appearance we’ve seen so far — whether it’s from a cabinet member or the director of the Centers for Disease Control or the president himself — the answer is clear: not the public’s. President Trump, hellbent on re-election, is focused on massaging numbers and silencing bearers of bad news. That’s what autocrats do. And it’s endangering lives.

On Saturday, The Associated Press reported that Trump overruled his own health officials, who wanted to warn older Americans and the fragile against flying on commercial airlines. Our storied C.D.C., now annexed by politicians, continues to insist that only the most floridly symptomatic patients be tested for the virus. Even that remains a challenge: Last week, it refused to test an ailing nurse in Northern California who’d treated a positive patient, prompting the head of National Nurses United to read her story aloud at a news conference.

At a Friday news conference at the C.D.C., Trump told reporters that tests for the coronavirus were now available to anyone who needed one. Yet just afterward, we heard from governor after governor and doctor after doctor that this is categorically untrue, with states in dire need of more tests. “We have no local testing available,” Dr. Walter Mills, president of the California Academy of Family Physicians, told The San Jose Mercury News.

And of course, it was at that same news conference that Trump infamously said, “I like the numbers being where they are,” in explaining why he was reluctant to let passengers, some of whom have tested positive for the virus, off the Grand Princess cruise ship floating off California (it has since been given permission to dock in Oakland).

That news conference was, to me, the most frightening moment of the Trump presidency. His preening narcissism, his compulsive lying, his vindictiveness, his terror of germs and his terrifying inability to grasp basic science — all of it eclipsed his primary responsibilities to us as Americans, which was to provide urgent care, namely in the form of leadership.

It’s preposterous for Trump to resist determining how widespread this epidemic is. Yet right now, the United States isn’t reporting how many people have been tested; the C.D.C. pulled the number from its website. Late last week, an extraordinarily detailed article by The Atlantic, counting state by state, put that number at only 1,895. In South Korea, the number was more than 140,000. (Which Trump dismissed as “sampling.” It was not. It was testing, straight and simple.)

Because we’re testing only the sickest of the sick, the American fatality rate from the coronavirus is roughly 4 percent. It’s a frightening and highly deceptive number, even higher than China’s. (Most experts predict it’s likely to wind up at 0.5 percent, which is five times more deadly than the typical flu, and it could be as high as 1 percent.) But Trump has made the dangerous calculation that he’d prefer to keep the number of cases low than convey the full magnitude of contagion.

When the coronavirus first appeared in China, some commentators reached for the Chernobyl comparison. Today the comparison looks increasingly apt for the United States as well. Maybe it’s hyperbolic — it’ll be months before we know firm numbers on cases and fatalities — but the commonalities are easy to spot: We’re reckoning with a silent, invisible and potentially devastating public health crisis, and the government is refusing to tell us the facts, or what next steps to take, because it’s too concerned with optics to own up to its initial mishandling of the situation. On Friday morning, Trump crowed, “I think we’re in great shape.”

The difference is that because we live in an age of social networks, the public is still getting information online. But as with all information online, some of it is terrible as well as good.

Reuters just reported that Democrats are twice as apt to view the coronavirus as an imminent threat to our country as Republicans, and the reason seems clear: The news outlets that do the president’s bidding are playing down the potential scope and severity of the problem. Meanwhile, more clear-eyed governors are declaring states of emergency and speaking directly to more mainstream news sources to voice their concerns, as are doctors and epidemiologists.

The gulf between their discourse and the talking points of the federal government can be measured in light years. The administration is still talking containment. Epidemiologists, in the main, are assuming it can no longer be contained, and that we should all be responsibly thinking about next steps so that hospitals don’t become overwhelmed. Many of them are worth following on Twitter. Epidemiologists are the new rock stars.

Everyone needs to step up. For now, the coronavirus is in mostly blue states, where cities are. But it’s only a matter of time. One week after Representative Matt Gaetz of Florida mocked concerns about Covid-19 by wearing a giant gas mask on the House floor, one of his constituents died of it. Senator Ted Cruz of Texas and Representative Paul Gosar of Arizona, both Republicans, have put themselves into quarantine, having interacted with an infected person at the annual Conservative Political Action Conference. There’s even discussion of Congress going into recess.

Fox News, Republican elected officials, the C.D.C. director Robert R. Redfield — they all need to stop with their fulsome tributes to Trump during news conferences and seize the microphone to help explain how to stem the disease’s spread.

Look at Italy. The government locked down an entire region of the country this weekend. Corriere Della Sera recently reported that the intensive care units in Lombardy were on the brink of collapse, with medical workers setting up beds in the hallways. If we aren’t careful, that could next be us.

Two days ago, the British medical journal The Lancet more or less implied that many countries won’t be able to have both a healthy public and a healthy economy at this moment. They’ll have to choose.

This observation jibes with the conversation I had with Nicholas Christakis, author of “Blueprint” and an epidemiologist at Yale, last Friday. His lab is using big data to develop tools that would forecast the course of the epidemic in real time. In his estimation, 35,000 Americans will die from the coronavirus this year, which would place an enormous additional burden on hospitals already overtaxed by the flu season. And his estimate is at the low end for predictions among the people in his field.

“I’m in the deeply ironic position at the moment of strongly discouraging social connection, despite the fact that it’s the central focus of my book — and my life’s work,” he says. “But it’s going to take us working together in this unnatural way — one that goes so against our evolutionary past — to confront this epidemic.”

What’s so frightening — so hideous — is that our president is least equipped to do just that. This crisis has unhelmed and unmasked him. He’s incapable of leading. When it comes to Trump, truth, decency and self-possession have been in quarantine from the start.

The New York Times

Awere-ness said:

“You can if you are the best gaslighter in the history of gaslighters.”

{Yeah, but only a delusive character could wield that kind of suggestion.}

Preet Bharara

@PreetBharara
Replying to @PreetBharara

I am angry and worried right now. As are tens of millions of Americans. I don’t know what will happen next but what I do know is this:

Donald Trump is the greatest hoax ever perpetrated on America
65.2K
8:44 PM - Mar 8, 2020

{ Can we conserve enough , so that the inflationary de-facto pressures : which are the building blocks of capital appreciation : made to not collide with it’s nemesis?
That is the overt attraction in holding that very collusive source, the political
stagmire reflect it’self?
Is not that basic psych , holding to the mirror stage, or before that, so that a reflection can mask a transparency?

The reflected collusive antimony of translation, from induction to the misunderstood regressive , refractive dual -as singular, cam only be a matter of using optics as illusions.

Further then that, it is unavoidable that illusions are allowed to free fall into reified delusions , and that is where REAL trouble started.
The children are the only ones who cam see through the nakedness of authority , as vested on a succeeding schema of gradual undress, so by the time of complete nakedness, moral judgements will be suddenly the cause celebre that stifles the underaged-innocent}

He’s Definitely Melting Down Over This”: Trump, Germaphobe in Chief, Struggles to Control the Covid-19 Story

Ever since the coronavirus exploded outside of China at the end of January, Donald Trump has treated the public health crisis as a media war that he could win with the right messaging. But with cases now documented in 34 states and markets plunging, Republicans close to Trump fear his rosy assessments are fundamentally detached from reality in ways that will make the epidemic worse. “He is trying to control the narrative and he can’t,” a former West Wing official told me.

The problem is that the crisis fits into his preexisting and deeply held worldview—that the media is always searching for a story to bring him down. Covid-19 is merely the latest instance, and he’s reacting in familiar ways. “So much FAKE NEWS!” Trump tweeted this morning. “He wants Justice to open investigations of the media for market manipulation,” a source close to the White House told me. Trump is also frustrated with his West Wing for not getting a handle on the news cycle. “He’s very frustrated he doesn’t have a good team around him,” a former White House official said. On Friday he forced out acting chief of staff Mick Mulvaney and replaced him with former House Freedom Caucus chair Mark Meadows. Trump thought the virus was “getting beyond Mick,” a person briefed on the internal discussions said. Trump has also complained that economic adviser Larry Kudlow is not doing enough to calm jittery markets. Last week Kudlow refused Trump’s request that Kudlow hold an on-camera press briefing, sources said. “Larry didn’t want to have to take questions about coronavirus,” a person close to Kudlow told me. “Larry’s not a doctor. How can he answer questions about something he doesn’t know?”

Trump found a willing surrogate in Kellyanne Conway, but Conway’s dubious claim on Friday that the virus “is being contained” only made the P.R. situation worse.

Trump’s efforts to take control of the story himself have so far failed. A source said Trump was pleased with ratings for the Fox News town hall last Thursday, but he was furious with how he looked on television. “Trump said afterwards that the lighting was bad,” a source briefed on the conversation said. “He said, ‘We need Bill Shine back in here. Bill would never allow this.’”

Trump’s press conference on Friday at the CDC was a Trumpian classic, heavy on braggadocio and almost entirely lacking a sense of the seriousness of the crisis. “I like this stuff. I really get it,” Trump told reporters, his face partly hidden under a red “Keep America Great” hat. “People are surprised that I understand it. Every one of these doctors say, ‘How do you know so much about this?’ Maybe I have a natural ability. Maybe I should’ve done that instead of running for president.” At another point Trump compared the situation to the Ukraine shakedown. “The [coronavirus] tests are all perfect. Like the letter was perfect. The transcription was perfect,” he said.

By now many of the president’s advisers are numb to this kind of performance. “There’s very little that fazes anyone now,” a former official said. But one person who spoke to the president over the weekend saw the press conference as an ominous sign. “He’s just now waking up to the fact that this is bad, and he doesn’t know how to respond.”

As Trump pushes a nothing-to-see-here message in public, sources said he’s privately terrified about getting the virus. “Donald is a famous germaphobe. He hates it if someone is eating nachos and dips a chip back in after taking a bite. He calls them ‘double dippers,’” a prominent Republican said. Former Trump aide Sam Nunberg recalled Trump’s response to the last major outbreak in 2014. “When I worked for Trump, he was obsessed with Ebola,” Nunberg told me. (One Mar-a-Lago guest disputed this and said Trump was handshaking with gusto this past weekend. “He was acting like the opposite of a germaphobe,” the source said.)

Stories about Trump’s coronavirus fears have spread through the White House. Last week Trump told aides he’s afraid journalists will try to purposefully contract coronavirus to give it to him on Air Force One, a person close to the administration told me. The source also said Trump has asked the Secret Service to set up a screening program and bar anyone who has a cough from the White House grounds. “He’s definitely melting down over this,” the source said.

From the Archive: The Waiting Plague

But thus far Trump’s private concerns haven’t affected his public response. Pressure from the public health community is mounting on Trump to cancel his mass rallies, but Trump is pushing back. “He is going to resist until the very last minute,” a former West Wing official said. “He may take suggestions to stop shaking hands, but in terms of shutting stuff down, his position is: ‘No, I’m not going to do it.’”

The White House did not respond to a request for comment.

— How coronavirus is creating a fake-news nightmarescape

— A Nassim Taleb protégé has tips on how to prepare for the coming market crash
— Health officials and scientists are now banned from speaking about coronavirus

Stock Markets Crash as Trump Insists Coronavirus Fears Are “Fake News”

© Condé Nast

Grand Delusion

The New York Times

Opinion

Trump Can’t Handle the Truth

And neither can the rest of America’s right.

By Paul Krugman

March 9, 2020

Over the weekend Donald Trump once again declared that the coronavirus is perfectly under control, that any impressions to the contrary are due to the “Fake News Media” out to get him. Question: Does anyone have a count of how many times he’s done this, comparable to the running tallies fact checkers are keeping of his lies?

In any case, we’ve pretty clearly reached the point where Trump’s assurances that everything is fine actually worsen the panic, because they demonstrate the depths of his delusions. Even as he was tweeting out praise for himself, global markets were in free-fall.

Never mind cratering stock prices. The best indicator of collapsing confidence is what is happening to interest rates, which have plunged almost as far and as fast as they did during the 2008 financial crisis. Markets are implicitly predicting not just a recession, but multiple years of economic weakness.

And at first I was tempted to say that our current situation is even worse than it was in 2008, because at least then we had leadership that recognized the seriousness of the crisis rather than dismissing it all as a liberal conspiracy.

When you look back at the record, however, you discover that as the financial crisis developed right-wingers were also deeply in denial, inclined to dismiss bad news or attribute it to liberal and/or media conspiracies. It was only in the final stages of financial collapse that top officials got real, and right-wing pundits never did.

PAUL KRUGMAN’S NEWSLETTER

Get a better understanding of the economy — and an even deeper look at what’s on Paul’s mind. Sign up here.

Let’s take a trip down memory lane.

The 2008 financial crisis was brought on by the collapse of an immense housing bubble. But many on the right denied that there was anything amiss. Larry Kudlow, now Trump’s chief economist, ridiculed “bubbleheads” who suggested that housing prices were out of line.

And I can tell you from personal experience that when I began writing about the housing bubble I was relentlessly accused of playing politics: “You only say there’s a bubble because you hate President Bush.”

When the economy began to slide, mainstream Republicans remained deeply in denial. Phil Gramm, John McCain’s senior economic adviser during the 2008 presidential campaign, declared that America was only suffering a “mental recession” and had become a “nation of whiners.”

Even the failure of Lehman Brothers, which sent the economy into a full meltdown, initially didn’t put a dent in conservative denial. Kudlow hailed the failure as good news, because it signaled an end to bailouts, and predicted housing and financial recovery in “months, not years.”

Wait, there’s more. After the economic crisis helped Barack Obama win the 2008 election, right-wing pundits declared that it was all a left-wing conspiracy. Karl Rove and Bill O’Reilly accused the news media of hyping bad news to enable Obama’s socialist agenda, while Rush Limbaugh asserted that Senator Chuck Schumer personally caused the crisis (don’t ask).

The point is that Trump’s luridly delusional response to the coronavirus and his conspiracy theorizing about Democrats and the news media aren’t really that different from the way the right dealt with the financial crisis a dozen years ago. True, last time the crazy talk wasn’t coming directly from the president of the United States. But that’s not the important distinction between then and now.

No, what’s different now is that denial and the resulting delay are likely to have deadly consequences.

It’s not clear, even in retrospect, how much better things would have been if right-wingers had recognized economic reality in 2008. Years of deregulation and lax enforcement had already weakened the financial system, and it was probably too late to head off the coming crisis.

Virus denial, by contrast, squandered crucial time — time that could have been used to slow the coronavirus’s spread. For the clear and present danger now isn’t so much that large numbers of Americans will get sick — that was probably going to happen anyway — but that the epidemic will move so fast that it overloads our hospitals.

By not instituting widespread testing from the start, the U.S. has ensured that there are now cases all over the country — we have no idea how many — and that the virus will spread rapidly. And even now there is no hint that the administration is ready for the kinds of public health measures that might limit the pace of that spread.

Oh, and when it comes to the economic response, it’s worth noting that basically everyone on the Trump economic team was totally wrong about the 2008 crisis. It seems to be a job requirement.

The bottom line is that like so much of what is happening in America right now, the coronavirus crisis isn’t just about Trump. His intellectual and emotional inadequacy, his combination of megalomania and insecurity, are certainly contributing to the problem; has there ever been a president so obviously not up to the job? But in refusing to face uncomfortable facts, in attributing all bad news to sinister conspiracies, he’s actually just being a normal man of his faction.

In 2020 we’re relearning the lessons of 2008 —

March 10, 2020

© 2020 The New York Times Company

Maybe not merely tens of millions, more like hundreds , or even billions.

Billions of disillusioned people, to say the least, are a very strong force to reckon with, in case of an appearance of lack of credible judgement.

The Worst Outcome

If somebody other than Donald Trump were in the White House, the coronavirus crisis would not be unfolding this way.

DAVID FRUMMARCH 11, 2020

At every turn, President Trump’s policy to coronavirus has unfolded as if guided by one rule: How can I make this crisis worse?

Presidents are not all-powerful, especially not in the case of pandemic disease. There are limits to what they can do, for good or ill. But within those limits, at every juncture, Trump’s actions have ensured the worst possible outcomes. The worst outcome for public health. The worst outcome for the American economy. The worst outcome for American global leadership.

Read: Trump’s dangerously effective coronavirus propaganda

Trump’s Oval Office speech of March 11 was the worst action yet in a string of bad actions.

Here are the things the president did not do in that speech.

He offered no guidance or policy on how to prevent the spread of the disease inside the United States. Should your town cancel its St. Patrick’s Day parade? What about theaters and sporting events? Schools and colleges? Nothing.

He offered no explanation of what went wrong with the U.S. testing system, nor any assurance of when testing would become more widely available. His own previous promises of testing for anyone who needs it have been exploded as false. So what is true? Nothing.

Layoffs are coming, probably on a very large scale, as travel collapses and people hunker at home. Any word for those about to lose their jobs? Only the vaguest indication that something might be announced sometime soon.

It’s good to hear that there will be no copays on the tests nobody seems able to get. What about other health-care coverage? Any word on that? Nothing.

The financial markets have plunged into a 2008-style crash, auguring a recession, perhaps a severe one. The Trump administration has had almost two months to think about this crisis. It has trial-ballooned some ideas. But, of course, fiscal policy would require assent from the House of Representatives. Trump is still pouting at Speaker Pelosi. So—aside from some preposterously unconvincing happy talk about the economy—again: Nothing.

The Best Thing Bernie Sanders Can Do Is Drop Out

Trump Is Counting on the Supreme Court to Save Him

DAVID FRUM

Thomas Levenson: Conservatives try to rebrand the coronavirus

There was one something in the speech: a ban on travel from Europe, but not the United Kingdom. It’s a classic Trump formulation. It seeks to protect America by erecting a wall against the world, without thinking very hard how or whether the wall can work. The disease is already here. The numbers only look low because of our prior failure to provide adequate testing. They will not look low even four days from now. And those infected with the virus can travel from other countries and on other routes. Trump himself has already met some.

The travel ban is an act of panic. Financial futures began crashing even as Trump was talking, perhaps shocked by his lack of an economic plan, perhaps aghast at Trump’s latest attack on world trade. (Trump’s speech seemed to suggest an embargo on European-sourced cargo as well, but that looks more like a mental lapse of Trump’s than a real policy announcement. The ban on cargo was retracted by a post-speech tweet, although the ban remains in the posted transcript of the speech.) Among other things, the ban represents one more refutation by Trump of any idea of collective security against collective threats. While China offers medical assistance to Italy, he wants to sever ties to former friends—isolating America and abandoning the world.

This crisis is not of Trump’s making. What he is responsible for is his failure to respond promptly, and then his perverse and counter-productive choice of how to respond when action could be avoided no longer. Trump, in his speech, pleaded for an end to finger-pointing. It’s a strange thing for this president of all presidents to say. No American president, and precious few American politicians, have ever pointed so many fingers or hurled so much abuse as Donald Trump. What he means, of course, is: Don’t hold me to account for the things I did.

But he did do them, and he owns responsibility for those things. He cannot escape it, and he will not escape it.

More people will get sick because of his presidency than if somebody else were in charge. More people will suffer the financial hardship of sickness because of his presidency than if somebody else were in charge. The medical crisis will arrive faster and last longer than if somebody else were in charge. So, too, the economic crisis. More people will lose jobs than if somebody else were in charge. More businesses will be pushed into bankruptcy than if somebody else were in charge. More savers will lose more savings than if somebody else were in charge. The damage to America’s global leadership will be greater than if somebody else were in charge.

There is always something malign in Trump’s incompetence. He has no care or concern for others; he cannot absorb the trouble and suffering of others as real. He monotones his way through words of love and compassion, but those words plainly have no content or meaning for him. The only thing that is real is his squalid vanity. This virus threatens to pierce that vanity, so he denied it as long as he could. What he refuses to acknowledge cannot be real, can it?

And even now that he has acknowledged, he still cannot act, because he does not know what to do. His only goal now is to shove blame onto others. Americans have to face that in the grip of this epidemic, the Oval Office is for all practical purposes as empty as the glazed eyes of the man who spoke from that office tonight.

DAVID FRUM is a staff writer at The Atlantic and the author of Trumpocalypse

Copyright © 2020 by The Atlantic Monthly Group. All Rights Reserved.

BBC News

Coronavirus: Trump suspends travel from Europe to US

12 March 2020

US & Canada

Video captionThe US President made the announcement from the Oval Office at the White House

US President Donald Trump has announced sweeping new travel restrictions on Europe in a bid to combat the spread of the coronavirus.

In a televised address, he said travel from 26 European countries would be suspended for the next 30 days.

But he said the “strong but necessary” restrictions would not apply to the UK, where 460 cases of the virus have now been confirmed.

There are 1,135 confirmed cases of the virus across the US, with 38 deaths.

“To keep new cases from entering our shores, we will be suspending all travel from Europe,” Mr Trump said from the Oval Office on Wednesday evening.

“The new rules will go into effect Friday at midnight,” he added. The travel order does not apply to US citizens.



LIVE UPDATES: Follow the latest developments

EASY STEPS: How to keep safe

A SIMPLE GUIDE: What are the symptoms?

GETTING READY: How prepared is the UK?

TRAVEL PLANS: What are your rights?

Mr Trump said the European Union had “failed to take the same precautions” as the US in fighting the virus.

A Presidential Proclamation, published shortly after Mr Trump’s speech, specified that the ban applies to anyone who has been in the EU’s Schengen border-free area within 14 days prior to their arrival in the US.

This implies that Ireland is excluded from the ban as it is not one of the 26 Schengen countries. Bulgaria, Croatia and Romania are also EU members without being part of the Schengen area.

Mr Trump spoke just hours after Italy - the worst affected country outside China - announced tough new restrictions on its citizens . It will close all shops except food stores and pharmacies as part of its nationwide lockdown.

He said the travel suspension would also “apply to the tremendous amount of trade and cargo” coming from Europe into the US. But he later tweeted to say that “trade will in no way be affected” by the new measures.

Mr Trump also announced plans to provide billions of dollars in loans to small businesses, and urged Congress to pass major tax relief measures in an attempt to stymie the effect of the coronavirus outbreak on the economy.

“We are marshalling the full power of the federal government and the private sector to protect the American people,” he said.

What’s the situation in the US?

Officials had said the risk of infection was low for the general US public, but concern deepened after a number of new cases were confirmed earlier this month.

Containment efforts have begun in earnest. Troops have been deployed to New Rochelle, just north of New York City, where one outbreak is believed to have originated.

The National Guard will deliver food to some individuals who have been told to self-isolate there.

The governor of Washington state has also banned large gatherings in several counties. The north-western state is the focal point of the outbreak in the US, accounting for 24 of at least 38 deaths across the country.

Could the US do what Italy has done?

Who Trump supporters blame for virus ‘hysteria’

How worried should the US be over coronavirus?

What’s the risk on public transport?

And in an unprecedented move, the National Basketball Association (NBA) announced that it would suspend the season after Wednesday night’s games. The decision came after one player for the Utah Jazz tested positive for the virus.

Shortly after the NBA announcement, the Oscar-winning actor Tom Hanks announced that he and his wife had contracted the virus in Australia .

Dr Anthony Fauci, director the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, told Congress that the outbreak is “going to get worse”, and that depended on the ability to contain those infected.

High medical costs make the virus particularly problematic - many Americans avoid doctor’s visits because of unaffordable charges. A lack of paid sick leave is another concern, as are fears about the number of available tests.

But Vice-President Mike Pence, who is in charge of the task force co-ordinating the response to the crisis, has said that “any American can be tested, no restrictions, subject to doctor’s orders”, and that insurers had promised to offset the charges.

What about the rest of the world?

Earlier on Wednesday, the World Health Organization (WHO) said the outbreak was a pandemic. This is defined as a disease that is spreading in multiple countries around the world at the same time.

WHO chief Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said the number of cases outside China had increased 13-fold in two weeks. He said he was “deeply concerned” by the “alarming levels of inaction”.

Video captionCoronavirus outbreak has officially become pandemic says WHO

Italian Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte then announced an escalation in the country’s ongoing lockdown.

He said the majority of shops as well as bars, hairdressers, restaurants and cafes that could not guarantee a metre’s distance between customers would close until 25 March.

Italy has more than 12,000 confirmed cases and a death toll of 827. Nearly 900 people with the virus in Italy were in intensive care, the WHO said.

Elsewhere, Denmark - which has 514 confirmed cases, up 10-fold since Monday - is to close all schools and universities from Friday. The government also urged the cancellation of events with more than 100 people attending.

India suspended most visas for foreigners until 15 April and Guatemala banned European citizens from entering from Thursday.

Meanwhile, the UK is expected to switch to tactics aimed at delaying the spread of the virus rather than containing it.

More on this story



Coronavirus: What is the incubation period, and other questions

12 March 2020



Coronavirus symptoms: What are they and how do I protect myself?

11 March 2020

Coronavirus: Coachella music festival postponed

11 March 2020

Coronavirus: Up to 70% of Germany could become infected - Merkel

11 March 2020

India suspends most visas to halt coronavirus spread

12 March 2020

Copyright © 2020 BBC. The BBC is not responsible for the content of external sites.

Trump talks to the nation:

BBC News

Coronavirus: Trump suspends travel from Europe to US

12 March 2020

US & Canada

US President Donald Trump has announced sweeping new travel restrictions on Europe in a bid to combat the spread of the coronavirus.

In a televised address, he said travel from 26 European countries would be suspended for the next 30 days.

But he said the “strong but necessary” restrictions would not apply to the UK, where 460 cases of the virus have now been confirmed.

There are 1,135 confirmed cases of the virus across the US, with 38 deaths.

“To keep new cases from entering our shores, we will be suspending all travel from Europe,” Mr Trump said from the Oval Office on Wednesday evening.

“The new rules will go into effect Friday at midnight,” he added. The travel order does not apply to US citizens.

Mr Trump said the European Union had “failed to take the same precautions” as the US in fighting the virus.

A Presidential Proclamation, published shortly after Mr Trump’s speech, specified that the ban applies to anyone who has been in the EU’s Schengen border-free area within 14 days prior to their arrival in the US.

This implies that Ireland is excluded from the ban as it is not one of the 26 Schengen countries. Bulgaria, Croatia and Romania are also EU members without being part of the Schengen area.

Mr Trump spoke just hours after Italy - the worst affected country outside China - announced tough new restrictions on its citizens . It will close all shops except food stores and pharmacies as part of its nationwide lockdown.

He said the travel suspension would also “apply to the tremendous amount of trade and cargo” coming from Europe into the US. But he later tweeted to say that “trade will in no way be affected” by the new measures.

Mr Trump also announced plans to provide billions of dollars in loans to small businesses, and urged Congress to pass major tax relief measures in an attempt to stymie the effect of the coronavirus outbreak on the economy.

“We are marshalling the full power of the federal government and the private sector to protect the American people,” he said.

What’s the situation in the US?

Officials had said the risk of infection was low for the general US public, but concern deepened after a number of new cases were confirmed earlier this month.

Containment efforts have begun in earnest. Troops have been deployed to New Rochelle, just north of New York City, where one outbreak is believed to have originated.

The National Guard will deliver food to some individuals who have been told to self-isolate there.

The governor of Washington state has also banned large gatherings in several counties. The north-western state is the focal point of the outbreak in the US, accounting for 24 of at least 38 deaths across the country.

And in an unprecedented move, the National Basketball Association (NBA) announced that it would suspend the season after Wednesday night’s games. The decision came after one player for the Utah Jazz tested positive for the virus.

Shortly after the NBA announcement, the Oscar-winning actor Tom Hanks announced that he and his wife had contracted the virus in Australia .

Dr Anthony Fauci, director the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, told Congress that the outbreak is “going to get worse”, and that depended on the ability to contain those infected.

High medical costs make the virus particularly problematic - many Americans avoid doctor’s visits because of unaffordable charges. A lack of paid sick leave is another concern, as are fears about the number of available tests.

But Vice-President Mike Pence, who is in charge of the task force co-ordinating the response to the crisis, has said that “any American can be tested, no restrictions, subject to doctor’s orders”, and that insurers had promised to offset the charges.

What about the rest of the world?

Earlier on Wednesday, the World Health Organization (WHO) said the outbreak was a pandemic. This is defined as a disease that is spreading in multiple countries around the world at the same time.

WHO chief Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said the number of cases outside China had increased 13-fold in two weeks. He said he was “deeply concerned” by the “alarming levels of inaction”.

Video captionCoronavirus outbreak has officially become pandemic says WHO

Italian Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte then announced an escalation in the country’s ongoing lockdown.

He said the majority of shops as well as bars, hairdressers, restaurants and cafes that could not guarantee a metre’s distance between customers would close until 25 March.

Italy has more than 12,000 confirmed cases and a death toll of 827. Nearly 900 people with the virus in Italy were in intensive care, the WHO said.

Elsewhere, Denmark - which has 514 confirmed cases, up 10-fold since Monday - is to close all schools and universities from Friday. The government also urged the cancellation of events with more than 100 people attending.

India suspended most visas for foreigners until 15 April and Guatemala banned European citizens from entering from Thursday.

Meanwhile, the UK is expected to switch to tactics aimed at delaying the spread of the virus rather than containing it.

Coronavirus: Up to 70% of Germany could become infected - Merkel

11 March 2020

India suspends most visas to halt coronavirus spread

12 March 2020

Copyright © 2020 BBC. The BBC is not responsible for the content of external sites.

EMOULMENT CLAUSE again!:

POLITICO

CORONAVIRUS

Trump’s travel ban sidesteps his own European resorts

The president announced new travel restrictions on Europeans as the coronavirus pandemic escalated, but a few key spots on the continent were spared.

President Donald Trump’s new European travel restrictions have a convenient side effect: They exempt nations where three Trump-owned golf resorts are located.

Trump is already under fire for visiting his properties in both countries as president, leading to U.S. taxpayer money being spent at his own firms. The president has been saddled with lawsuits and investigations throughout his term alleging that he’s violating the Constitution’s emoluments clause by accepting taxpayer money other than his salary.

The U.S. government proclamation initiating the ban targets 26 European countries that comprise a visa-free travel zone known as the Schengen Area.

The United Kingdom, which is home to Trump Turnberry and Trump International Golf Links, and Ireland, which is home to another Trump-branded hotel and golf course at Doonbeg, do not participate in the Schengen Area. Bulgaria, Croatia and Romania are also not part of the Schengen Area. All three of the resorts are struggling financially.

Ireland’s prime minister, Leo Varadkar, is scheduled to meet Trump at the White House on Thursday in one of the few events related to St. Patrick’s Day that has not been canceled due to coronavirus concerns.

The administration’s European travel proclamation notes that “the Schengen Area has exported 201 COVID-19 cases to 53 countries. Moreover, the free flow of people between the Schengen Area countries makes the task of managing the spread of the virus difficult.”

Trump’s European travel ban comes with several other loopholes.

There are now 460 confirmed coronavirus cases in the U.K., including Nadine Dorries, the British government’s own health minister in charge of patient safety. Wednesday saw the biggest rise in U.K. cases in a single day, and the country’s highest-level crisis committee — known as Cobra — will meet Thursday to consider additional moves to reduce the impact of the virus.

Though they are subject to border checks on arrival, residents of the 26 Schengen Area countries are also free to live and work in the United Kingdom, meaning they could fly to the United States from a British airport as long as they hadn’t spent time within the Schengen countries in the last 14 days.

EU leaders condemned Trump’s move on Thursday, and disputed the president’s criticism of Europe’s handling of the crisis.

“The Coronavirus is a global crisis, not limited to any continent and it requires cooperation rather than unilateral action,” European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen and European Council President Charles Michel said in a joint statement.

“The European Union disapproves of the fact that the U.S. decision to impose a travel ban was taken unilaterally and without consultation,” they said, adding that the bloc was “taking strong action to limit the spread of the virus.”

© 2020 POLITICO LLC

BREAKING|68,149 views|Mar 12, 2020,04:22pm EST

Trump Will Not Get Tested After Meeting Brazilian Official With Coronavirus

Topline: President Donald Trump met and dined with an individual who has now tested positive for the coronavirus—but the White House said the president will not get tested for the disease.

Fabio Wajngarten, Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro’s press secretary, has tested positive for Covid-19, according to local media, after returning to Brazil from the U.S. this week.
Wajngarten was in close contact with both Trump and Vice President Mike Pence four days ago at Mar-a-Lago, posting an Instagram photo of himself standing next to Trump.
Trump said he “isn’t concerned” about the situation, according to the Washington Post, and White House Press Secretary Stephanie Grisham said, “Both the President and Vice President had almost no interactions with the individual who tested positive and do not require being tested at this time.”
Senators Rick Scott and Lindsey Graham said they will self-quarantine after attending the same event as Wajngarten at Mar-a-Lago. Trump has not made a similar announcement.

Key background: Trump has also been in contact with two U.S. GOP Congressmen—Reps. Matt Gaetz and Doug Collins—who are currently in self-quarantine after being exposed to an individual who tested positive at the Conservative Political Action Conference in late February. Gaetz has since tested negative (Collins has said he does not feel symptomatic).

News peg: Trump has been criticized for downplaying the severity of the virus. He has continued shaking hands, the Associated Press reported, flouting the CDC’s recommendations. And two days ago he equated the disease to the common flu, even as a top health official said coronavirus is 10 times more deadly.

© 2020 Forbes Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.

March 13, 2020



By David Leonhardt

Opinion Columnist

The great problem with economic crises is that they’re reinforcing. People stop spending money, which leads other people to lose their jobs or have their incomes reduced. These layoffs and pay cuts lead, in turn, to further cuts in spending. And so on.

A century ago, economists didn’t understand how to break this vicious cycle — and the Great Depression ensued. Today, economists do understand: Governments need to step into the void and spend large sums of money, until the economy is able to function healthily again on its own. These sums of money have come to be known as stimulus packages.

This morning, House Democrats and the Trump administration seem close to a deal on a stimulus program, in response to the market downturn caused by the coronavirus. (Senate Republicans have largely sat out the talks, deferring to the Trump administration.)

According to news reports, the deal includes two weeks of paid sick leave; tax credits for smaller businesses, to help pay for the leave; enhanced unemployment benefits; and federal funds for Medicaid. It also seems likely to include free virus testing.

Katie Porter, a House Democrat from California, may have played a key role in assuring the free testing. In an exchange that’s worth watching, she pushed the director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to agree to it. “I did the math,” Porter wrote afterward. “A full battery of coronavirus testing costs at minimum $1,331.”

Nancy Pelosi, the House speaker, said Congress would almost immediately begin working on other legislation to address the virus. That’s the right approach. This crisis is unlike anything the country has been through, in its effect on both public health and the economy. The list of closures, cancellations and delays announced in the last 24 hours is staggering: Broadway, Disneyland, music concerts, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Major League Baseball, the N.C.A.A. basketball tournament, hundreds of schools and more.

As Jason Furman, a Harvard economist who helped design the Obama administration’s response to the financial crisis, wrote in The Wall Street Journal last week:

The likelihood that history judges the economic response to coronavirus as too little and too late is much higher than the converse. If the economic shock is small and stimulus proves to be unnecessary, its negative effects are likely to be small. But if the shock is bigger and policy makers fail to act now, it will be harder to reverse the economic damage. With the federal government able to borrow at a negative real interest rate, doing too much is a minimal risk.

Derek Thompson, The Atlantic:

In an outbreak, public-health interventions are the most effective stimulus. In many ways, though, giving people money is a public-health intervention. More than 10 percent of Americans skip doctor appointments even when they feel sick, because they don’t think they can afford it. In the next few weeks, the Trump administration may have to request that Americans withdraw from public life — to “cancel everything.” This request to engage in economically damaging activity may be more palatable for many families if it comes with a financial package that compensates them for the damage. In a precarious economy where millions of people feel like they have to work to survive, more Americans will insist on going to work even as they show signs of illness, which means more Americans will be infected, and sick patients will overwhelm America’s hospitals.

Nicholas Kristof and Stuart A. Thompson, in The Times: “Working with infectious disease epidemiologists, we developed this interactive tool that lets you see what may lie ahead in the United States and how much of a difference it could make if officials act quickly. (The figures are for America, but the lessons are broadly applicable to any country.)”
…

What if We Just Counted Up All the Votes for President and Saw Who Won?

It’s Time to Declare a National Emergency

The U.S. government needs a coordinated response to the coronavirus on par with its response to the 2008 financial crisis.

Trump utterly fails to rise to his first real crisis.

Trump to reportedly declare national emergency over coronavirus – live

Declaring emergency would allow easier flow of federal aid

Unprepared America wakes up to coronavirus, gradually then all at once

Trump promises more coronavirus tests

Trump’s deflecting, xenophobic reaction to coronavirus –

Louisiana will postpone its April 4 presidential preference primary amid ongoing concern over coronavirus, Kyle Ardoin, the state’s top election official announced on Friday.

The Democratic contest will be postponed until June 20. Ardoin is acting to the contest using a provision in state law that allows him to move an election in an emergency situation, according to the Advocate. Louisiana is the first state to postpone its primary election as the nation tries to contain the spread of the virus.

Election officials in other states are rushing to implement last-minute changes to safeguard against the virus. Ohio Secretary of State Frank LaRose this week ordered local election officials to relocate all polling stations from senior centers and assisted living facilities. Some election officials in Illinois and Florida are taking similar steps.

Throughout the country, local election offices are taking extra sanitization steps, providing wipes and hand sanitizer at polling stations.

More reports are suggesting that Donald Trump will be declaring a national emergency at a 3pm press conference today.

A senior White House source said “stand by” when asked if President Trump would be declaring a national emergency today. Now, the president will speak at 3 p.m. and is expected to make that move which would free up up to $42.6 billion for efforts.

Miami mayor tests positive for coronavirus

The mayor of Miami, Florida Francis Suarez has tested positive for coronavirus, the Miami Herald is reporting. Suarez attended an event with a Brazilian government official earlier this week who has since tested positive with coronavirus.

Suarez announced earlier this week that he was not displaying any symptoms, but self-quarantined himself out of safety precaution once he learned that one of Bolsonaro’s staff members tested positive.

Suarez was one of several politicians who interacted with Brazilian president Jair Bolsonaro and his staff, along with Donald Trump and his staff, when they came to Miami earlier this week. Earlier today, reports said Bolsonaro tested positive for coronavirus, but now other reports are saying the test came back negative.

BREAKING: Miami Mayor Francis Suarez has tested positive for COVID-19, the disease caused by the novel coronavirus, four days after the mayor attended a Miami event with a Brazilian government official who later tested positive for the virus. https://t.co/D9SHXIV1mN

Trump may declare national emergency at 3pm press conference

Three Bloomberg reporters are saying that multiple sources have told them that Donald Trump will announce a national emergency over coronavirus at a press conference this afternoon.

Declaring a national emergency will allow an easier flow of federal aid to state and local governments who are responding to outbreaks.

////BREAKING: Trump plans to declare a national emergency over the coronavirus outbreak, invoking the Stafford Act to open the door to more federal aid for states and municipalities, sources tell me, @jendeben and @SalehaMohsin

White House staff called into ‘urgent meeting’ over Bolsonaro

There are multiple reports that the White House Chief of Staff’s has called for an “urgent meeting” among staff because of news that Brazilian president Jair Bolsonaro, who met with Donald Trump Saturday, has reportedly tested positive for covid-19.

.@JohnRobertsFox: A number of White House staff (including comms team) were just called to an urgent meeting in the Chief of Staff’s office because of the Brazilian President Bolsonaro positive test for coronavirus.

Donald Trump just tweeted that he will hold a press conference at 3pm EST on coronavirus. We got a sneak peak of what he will say from a tweet he posted moments earlier. He said the 40 coronavirus-related deaths in the US is due to the “very strong border policy” in place. “If we had weak or open borders, that number would be many times higher!” he wrote.

To this point, and because we have had a very strong border policy, we have had 40 deaths related to CoronaVirus. If we had weak or open borders, that number would be many times higher!

Keep in mind that the number of cases in the US has been rising dramatically over the past few weeks, yet Trump has stuck to praising himself and his administration for having a handle on a situation that is getting increasingly dire.

Boston Marathon postponed until September

State and local officials have postponed the Boston Marathon until 14 September over fears of the coronavirus outbreak. The race was originally scheduled for 20 April.

WGBH reported that this is the first time the marathon has been delayed in its 124-year history. About 30,000 people run the marathon each year.

10:24 EDT

Trump administration won’t let states use Medicaid to respond to crisis

States experiencing dramatic coronavirus outbreaks are unable to use Medicaid more freely to respond to the outbreak by expanding medical care, the Los Angeles Times is reporting.

The White House has tools it can use to assist states looking to bolster their healthcare efforts, but so far, the Trump administration has not made any moves to ease the burden on states.

As coronavirus has intensified in the US over the last few weeks, Trump has tried to downplay the effect that the illness will have on Americans. He called the illness Democrats’ “new hoax” and has compared it to the flu, which has a far lower mortality rate.

Additionally, as the LA Times point out, Seema Verna, head of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, has been a champion of conservative states who have been trying to cut the number of people on Medicaid.

Here’s more from the LA Times:

Months into the current global disease outbreak, the White House and senior federal health officials haven’t taken the necessary steps to give states simple pathways to fully leverage the mammoth safety net program to prevent a wider epidemic.

That’s making it harder for states to quickly sign up poor patients for coverage so they can get necessary testing or treatment if they are exposed to coronavirus.

And it threatens to slow efforts by states to bring on new medical providers, set up emergency clinics or begin quarantining and caring for homeless Americans at high risk from the virus.

Ted Cruz extends his self-quarantine

Senator Ted Cruz, a Republican from Texas, said in a statement that he has extended his self-quarantine after learning that another person he interacted with on 3 March has tested positive for Covid-19.

Cruz tweeted on Sunday that he was in self-quarantine after learning that an attendee at the Conservative Political Action Conference he interacted with tested positive for coronavirus. Cruz said in today’s statement that his self-quarantine was supposed to end tonight and he is showing no symptoms, but will extend his self-quarantine until 17 March.

New: @tedcruz is extending his self-quarantine: “Unfortunately, last night I was informed I had a second interaction with an individual who yesterday tested positive for COVID-19."

Yesterday, the Utah state legislature passed a bill that would ban all elective abortions – which excludes abortion procedures for maternal health or procedure disease – if Roe v. Wade is overturned by the Supreme Court.

The bill is a signal that conservative states are gearing up for an overturn of the decision in the near future. Under Donald Trump, the Supreme Court has had two conservative appointees who have had reservations about Roe v. Wade and the right to abortion.

Last week, the Supreme Court heard arguments for June Medical Services v. Russo, a case from Louisiana about a law that significantly restricts abortion access by requiring doctors at abortion clinics to be registered at nearby hospitals. The law is similar to one the Supreme Court overturned in 2016.

The swing vote for the decision is likely to be chief justice John Roberts, who is known for being an institutionalist who does not like to disturb precedent.

The US Food and Drug Administration just sent out word that they will allow New York state’s health department to begin authorizing labs to conduct their own testing for Covid-19 once their tests have been validated.

Testing has been a serious concern in New York state and the US overall, with many fearing there is a shortage of available and quick testing for people who are showing symptoms. New York governor Andrew Cuomo told CNN that the US is “way behind on testing” and called the “federal bottleneck” so bad that he authorized New York officials to contract private labs for testing.

Here’s the FDA press release. Sounds like it authorizes New York’s health department to approve new labs for testing rather than making the labs apply to the FDA for approval.

The house is expected to continue discussion on a coronavirus economic stimulus package when it opens -

© 2020 Guardian News & Media Limited or its affiliated companies. All rights reserved.

Coronavirus spreads as US declares ‘national emergency’
By Jessie Yeung, Joshua Berlinger, Adam Renton, Meg Wagner, Mike Hayes and Veronica Rocha, CNN
Updated 4:46 PM ET, Fri March 13, 2020

Coronavirus spreads as US declares ‘national emergency’ What you need to know
JUST IN: President Trump said he was declaring a “national emergency” to free up federal resources to combat coronavirus. Meanwhile, travel restrictions into the US go into effect today.
Talk to us: Do you have a question about coronavirus or a story about the outbreak? Share them here.
Stay updated: Our coronavirus newsletter. The Coronavirus: Fact vs Fiction podcast. Alerts on the pandemic in the CNN app. All the latest information and updated case numbers here.
8:39 p.m. ET, March 13, 2020
Brazilian president’s lawyer says she tested positive for coronavirus
From CNN’s Taylor Barnes in Atlanta
Attorney Karina Kufa, who reportedly traveled with Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro on his recent trip to the United States, tweeted Friday night that she tested positive for novel coronavirus.

“My coronavirus exam came back positive. I returned yesterday from Miami and I isolated myself immediately when I learned about the state of @Fabiowoficial’s health,” she wrote, referring to Bolsonaro’s press secretary, Fabio Wajngarten, who tested positive for the virus on Thursday. “I am following the protocols and feeling well. Now I only need a few days of rest to get back in the fight again!”
The Brazilian newspaper Estado de Sao Paulo, among other Brazilian media, reported that Kufa, who is Bolsonaro’s attorney and the treasurer of a political group launched by Bolsonaro, traveled with the Brazilian president on his recent trip to meet President Trump.

An Instagram account under Kufa’s name includes an image that appears to be the lawyer standing next to an artistic rendering of Bolsonaro in the studio of Miami artist Romero Britto. The Brazilian presidency published an article about Bolsonaro’s visit to Britto’s studio that includes the president standing next to the same rendering.

Earlier on Friday, Bolsonaro said that his own coronavirus test came back negative.
8:31 p.m. ET, March 13, 2020
Washington Monument will temporarily close
From CNN’s Diane Ruggiero

Brendan Smialowski/AFP/Getty Images/FILE
The Washington Monument will close temporarily, effective Saturday, suspending elevator tours, according to the National Park Service.

Visitors will still be able to visit grounds, as well as other monuments along the National Mall, according to a NPS statement.

7:50 p.m. ET, March 13, 2020
IOC president says governing body will listen to WHO’s recommendation about future of Tokyo Olympics
From CNN’s Homero De La Fuente

If the World Health Organization says the Olympic Games should be canceled, they will be, the Olympics’ governing body president said.

International Olympic Committee president Thomas Bach said in an interview with CNN affiliate ARD on Thursday that the IOC will listen to the advice of the WHO, and if the WHO tells the IOC to cancel the 2020 Tokyo Games, the IOC will follow that recommendation.

“We listen to the advice of the WHO that is the expert group who is responsible for exactly these questions,” he told ARD. “That is why we have been linked to the WHO in a task force since mid-February and have constant contact. … We will follow the advice of the WHO.”
7:48 p.m. ET, March 13, 2020
Miami mayor says he’s starting to feel the symptoms of coronavirus

Miami Mayor Francis Suarez learned Friday that he tested positive for coronavirus and he said he’s already starting to feel the symptoms.

“You know it feels similar to the on set of a cold,” he told CNN’s Erin Burnett on Friday.
Suarez said he plans to share his experience in the hopes that “it calms people down because it’s something I’m going through myself.”

The mayor went on to say that he’s not sure where he caught the virus, but noted that he was recently in close proximity of someone who tested positive for the virus.

In a statement that he released earlier, Suarez said, “If we did not shake hands or you did not come into contact with me if I coughed or sneezed, there is no action you need to take whatsoever. If we did, however, touch or shake hands, or if I sneezed or coughed near you since Monday, it is recommended that you self-isolate for 14 days, but you do not need to get tested.”

7:48 p.m. ET, March 13, 2020
ICE suspends social visitation at detention facilities because of coronavirus
From CNN’s Priscilla Alvarez
US Immigration and Customs Enforcement is suspending social visitation at detention facilities “as a precautionary measure,” the agency announced Friday in a statement.

There have not been any confirmed cases among detainees in custody, ICE said, adding that the agency is incorporating US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention guidance and instituting screening guidance for new arrivals.

8:03 p.m. ET, March 13, 2020
Poland will close borders to foreigners due to coronavirus
From CNN’s Artur Osinski in London

Poland’s Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki Julien Warnand/Pool/AFP/Getty Images/FILE
Poland will not allow non-resident foreigners into the country for at least 10 days, starting Sunday midnight local time, Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki announced Friday.

He said the measures were being implemented to tackle the spread of the novel coronavirus. Any Poles coming from abroad will be automatically put into quarantine for 14 days. Goods will be allowed to go through. All international flights and train services will be suspended.

Starting Saturday midnight local time, shopping malls will be partially shut, with only pharmacies, grocery stores, laundromats and chemical stores open. All dine-in restaurants, pubs, bars, casinos and nightclubs will be shut for at least 14 days. It will be possible to order takeaway or delivery food. All gatherings of more than 50 people will be banned.

At least 68 cases of coronavirus have been confirmed in Poland. Two deaths from coronavirus have also been reported there.

7:18 p.m. ET, March 13, 2020
Trump declares Sunday a national day of prayer
From CNN’s Jason Hoffman
President Trump tweeted that he is declaring Sunday will be a National Day of Prayer as many churches around the country are closed due to the spread of coronavirus.

Large gatherings have been discouraged as social distancing is being used in an attempt to stop the spread of the virus.

“No matter where you may be, I encourage you to turn towards prayer in an act of faith. Together, we will easily PREVAIL!” he wrote in a subsequent tweet.

Read Trump’s tweet:
7:16 p.m. ET, March 13, 2020
Uruguay reports first cases of coronavirus
From CNN’s Jackie Castillo
Uruguay’s Ministry of Health reported four people have tested positive for coronavirus Friday. These are the first cases of coronavirus reported in Uruguay.

All four people entered the country earlier this month from Milan, Italy, the ministry tweeted.

According to statement, the patients are stable and at home.

7:14 p.m. ET, March 13, 2020
Three more shows suspend TV production over coronavirus concerns
From CNN’S Sandra Gonzalez
Three more series have decided to suspend production in wake of heightened concerns over coronavirus.

On Friday, Ellen DeGeneres announced on Twitter her daytime talk show would suspend production until March 30.

Comedy Central also said two of its series, “The Daily Show with Trevor Noah” and “Lights Out with David Spade” would also suspend production.

“Our top priority is the safety of our guests and staff. Beginning Monday, March 16th, Comedy Central’s The Daily Show with Trevor Noah and Lights Out with David Spade will temporarily suspend production as a precautionary measure. We will continue to closely monitor the situation per guidance issued by the CDC and public health authorities and hope to return Monday, March 30th," Comedy Central said in a statement.

View More
© 2020 Cable News Network. Turner Broadcasting System, Inc. All Rights Reserved

A Profile in Courage

The Downfall of the Republican Party

There Is No Christian Case for Trump

PETER WEHNER

That said, the president and his administration are responsible for grave, costly errors, most especially the epic manufacturing failures in diagnostic testing, the decision to test too few people, the delay in expanding testing to labs outside the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and problems in the supply chain. These mistakes have left us blind and badly behind the curve, and, for a few crucial weeks, they created a false sense of security. What we now know is that the coronavirus silently spread for several weeks, without us being aware of it and while we were doing nothing to stop it. Containment and mitigation efforts could have significantly slowed its spread at an early, critical point, but we frittered away that opportunity.

“They’ve simply lost time they can’t make up. You can’t get back six weeks of blindness,” Jeremy Konyndyk, who helped oversee the international response to Ebola during the Obama administration and is a senior policy fellow at the Center for Global Development, told The Washington Post. “To the extent that there’s someone to blame here, the blame is on poor, chaotic management from the White House and failure to acknowledge the big picture.”

Ben Rhodes: How Trump designed his White House to fail

Earlier this week, Anthony Fauci, the widely respected director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases whose reputation for honesty and integrity have been only enhanced during this crisis, admitted in congressional testimony that the United States is still not providing adequate testing for the coronavirus. “It is failing. Let’s admit it.” He added, “The idea of anybody getting [testing] easily, the way people in other countries are doing it, we’re not set up for that. I think it should be, but we’re not."

We also know the World Health Organization had working tests that the United States refused, and researchers at a project in Seattle tried to conduct early tests for the coronavirus but were prevented from doing so by federal officials. (Doctors at the research project eventually decided to perform coronavirus tests without federal approval.)

But that’s not all. The president reportedly ignored early warnings of the severity of the virus and grew angry at a CDC official who in February warned that an outbreak was inevitable. The Trump administration dismantled the National Security Council’s global-health office, whose purpose was to address global pandemics; we’re now paying the price for that. “We worked very well with that office,” Fauci told Congress. “It would be nice if the office was still there.” We may face a shortage of ventilators and medical supplies, and hospitals may soon be overwhelmed, certainly if the number of coronavirus cases increases at a rate anything like that in countries such as Italy. (This would cause not only needless coronavirus-related deaths, but deaths from those suffering from other ailments who won’t have ready access to hospital care.)

Yascha Mounk: The extraordinary decisions facing Italian doctors

Some of these mistakes are less serious and more understandable than others. One has to take into account that in government, when people are forced to make important decisions based on incomplete information in a compressed period of time, things go wrong.

Yet in some respects, the avalanche of false information from the president has been most alarming of all. It’s been one rock slide after another, the likes of which we have never seen. Day after day after day he brazenly denied reality, in an effort to blunt the economic and political harm he faced. But Trump is in the process of discovering that he can’t spin or tweet his way out of a pandemic. There is no one who can do to the coronavirus what Attorney General William Barr did to the Mueller report: lie about it and get away with it.

The president’s misinformation and mendacity about the coronavirus are head-snapping. He claimed that it was contained in America when it was actually spreading. He claimed that we had “shut it down” when we had not. He claimed that testing was available when it wasn’t. He claimed that the coronavirus will one day disappear “like a miracle”; it won’t. He claimed that a vaccine would be available in months; Fauci says it will not be available for a year or more.

Trump falsely blamed the Obama administration for impeding coronavirus testing. He stated that the coronavirus first hit the United States later than it actually did. (He said that it was three weeks prior to the point at which he spoke; the actual figure was twice that.) The president claimed that the number of cases in Italy was getting “much better” when it was getting much worse. And in one of the more stunning statements an American president has ever made, Trump admitted that his preference was to keep a cruise ship off the California coast rather than allowing it to dock, because he wanted to keep the number of reported cases of the coronavirus artificially low.

“I like the numbers,” Trump said. “I would rather have the numbers stay where they are. But if they want to take them off, they’ll take them off. But if that happens, all of a sudden your 240 [cases] is obviously going to be a much higher number, and probably the 11 [deaths] will be a higher number too.” (Cooler heads prevailed, and over the president’s objections, the Grand Princess was allowed to dock at the Port of Oakland.)

On and on it goes.

To make matters worse, the president delivered an Oval Office address that was meant to reassure the nation and the markets but instead shook both. The president’s delivery was awkward and stilted; worse, at several points, the president, who decided to ad-lib the teleprompter speech, misstated his administration’s own policies, which the administration had to correct. Stock futures plunged even as the president was still delivering his speech. In his address, the president called for Americans to “unify together as one nation and one family,” despite having referred to Washington Governor Jay Inslee as a “snake” days before the speech and attacking Democrats the morning after it. As The Washington Post’s Dan Balz put it, “Almost everything that could have gone wrong with the speech did go wrong.”

Read: You’re likely to get the coronavirus

Taken together, this is a massive failure in leadership that stems from a massive defect in character. Trump is such a habitual liar that he is incapable of being honest, even when being honest would serve his interests. He is so impulsive, shortsighted, and undisciplined that he is unable to plan or even think beyond the moment. He is such a divisive and polarizing figure that he long ago lost the ability to unite the nation under any circumstances and for any cause. And he is so narcissistic and unreflective that he is completely incapable of learning from his mistakes. The president’s disordered personality makes him as ill-equipped to deal with a crisis as any president has ever been. With few exceptions, what Trump has said is not just useless; it is downright injurious.

The nation is recognizing this, treating him as a bystander “as school superintendents, sports commissioners, college presidents, governors and business owners across the country take it upon themselves to shut down much of American life without clear guidance from the president,” in the words of Peter Baker and Maggie Haberman of The New York Times.

Donald Trump is shrinking before our eyes.

The coronavirus is quite likely to be the Trump presidency’s inflection point, when everything changed, when the bluster and ignorance and shallowness of America’s 45th president became undeniable, an empirical reality, as indisputable as the laws of science or a mathematical equation.

It has taken a good deal longer than it should have, but Americans have now seen the con man behind the curtain. The president, enraged for having been unmasked, will become more desperate, more embittered, more unhinged. He knows nothing will be the same. His administration may stagger on, but it will be only a hollow shell. The Trump presidency is over

Government coronavirus response: Trump declares national emergency, says he ‘likely’ will get tested

The move comes one day after Dr. Anthony Fauci called U.S. testing "a failing.‘’

President Trump announces national emergencyPresident Donald Trump on Friday declared a national emergency, releasing $50 billion to fight COVID-19.Saul Loeb/AFP via Getty Images

President Donald Trump announced Friday he’s declaring a national emergency to deal with the coronavirus crisis as cases increase alarmingly and criticism mounts over how he’s responding to the situation.

He also said he “most likely” will get tested himself, although he said he had no symptoms. “I think I will be,” he said. “Fairly soon, we’re working on that, we’re working out a schedule,” he responded to a reporter’s question, saying not because of any exposure he might have had, “but because I think I will do it anyway.”

He had been photographed last weekend standing next to a Brazilian official who tested positive.

Speaking from the Rose Garden, Trump said, “To unleash the full power of the federal government, I am officially declaring a national emergency.” Referring to that phrase as “two very big words,” he said it would allow him to quickly get $50 billion to states, territories and localities “in our shared fight against this disease.”

With Dr. Anthony Fauci, Vice President Mike Pence, Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar and other members of his coronavirus task force standing behind him, Trump said, “No resource will be spared – nothing whatsoever.”

The news conference was also an effort to deal with the political fallout two days after a speech to the nation Wednesday night that was seen as largely ineffective, leaving many confused and Wall street rattled.

“Declaring a national emergency does two things: it coveys to the public that the nation faces a serious crisis and that drastic action is necessary and it will immediately make available resources and other support that can be directed to protect communities across the nation,” former Acting Homeland Security Undersecretary John Cohen, now an ABC News contributor, said.

MORE: Two-thirds of Americans concerned about contracting coronavirus, as country grapples with growing crisis: POLL

“This is an important step that based on current conditions should surprise no one – the only surprise is that it wasn’t done sooner,” Cohen said.

“I’m also asking every hospital in this country to activate its emergency preparedness plan, so that they can meet the needs of Americans everywhere,” Trump said in his remarks.

“Emergency orders I’m issuing today will also confer broad new authority to the Secretary of Health and Human Services. The Secretary of HHS will be able to immediately wave revisions of applicable laws and regulations to give doctors, hospital – all hospitals – and health care providers maximum flexibility to respond to the virus and care for patients,” the president continued.

MORE: How hospitals can handle an influx of patients with COVID-19

“This includes the following critical authorities: the ability to waive laws to enable tele-health, a fairly new, and incredible thing,” he said. “It gives remote doctor’s visits and hospital check ins. The power to waive certain federal license requirements so the doctors from other states can provide services in states with the greatest need.”

“They can do what they have to do. They know what they have to do. Now they don’t have any problem getting it done,” Trump said. “Today we’re announcing a new partnership with private sector to vastly increase and accelerate our capacity to test for the coronavirus. We want to make sure that those who need a test can get it as very safely quickly.”

He added, “We’ve been in discussions with pharmacies and retailers to make drive-through tests available in critical locations identified by public health professionals. The goal is for individuals to be able to drive up and be swabbed without having to leave your car.”

“Again, we don’t want everyone taking this test. It’s totally unnecessary,” the president said.

Trump then invited Fauci, the widely-respected director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, to speak. He called Trump’s actions an example of what he termed a “forward-leaning” approach to the crisis. “We still have a long way to go. There will be many more cases,” he warned. “But what’s going on here today is going to help it to end sooner than it would have.”

“Not only are we bringing a whole of government approach to confronting the coronavirus, we’re bringing an all-of-America approach,” Pence said, speaking after Fauci.

“It’s especially important now that we look after senior citizens with chronic underlying health conditions,” he said, reminding that they “helped us with our homework” and “tucked us in at night.” He later added, “And now it’s time for us to be there for them.”

MORE: Trump attempts to pass blame to Obama administration for shortcomings in coronavirus response

“Some of the doctors say it (the virus) will wash through, it will flow through. Interesting terms – and very accurate,” Trump said in answering a question. “I think you’re going to find in a number of weeks it’s going to be a very accurate term. In times of hardship, the true character of America always shines through.”

His response about getting tested himself came after a reporter asked, “Are you being selfish by not getting tested and potentially –” but he cut her off, saying, “I didn’t say I wasn’t going to be tested.”

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi made a point of delivering her own statement about an hour before the president was scheduled to speak. She said House Democrats would pass a package of measures “today” to address what she called a “long overdue response” to the crisis, saying the three most important parts deal would deal with “testing, testing, testing.”

Pelosi said the bill would ensure that free tests would be available for “everyone who needs a test,” saying a coordinated, nationwide approach was needed to “understand the scale and scope” of the problem so that there could be a “science-based response.”

The measure would also include paid sick and emergency leave, she said, as well as enhanced unemployment benefits to help families deal with the economic consequences.

The fast-moving developments came after the Trump administration moved Friday morning to appoint a point person for testing and announced expanded measures in what appears to be an acknowledgement of the lack of available testing and delays in processing the results.

Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar has designated Adm. Brett Giroir to coordinate U.S. testing efforts as the cases of infected Americans grow exponentially. Under the HHS umbrella, the Food and Drug Administration is introducing an emergency hotline for private laboratories and providing new funding for partnerships with companies developing rapid tests that can detect the virus within an hour.

MORE: Coronavirus live updates: Mobile testing starts in New Rochelle, more schools close

The announcement of the boost in testing comes as capacity has struggled to catch up with the demand nationally at public health labs. Fauci called the current system “a failing" on Capitol Hill Thursday even as Trump told reporters the same day it’s been “going very smooth.”

MORE: Government response to coronavirus: Fauci backs Trump travel ban, says testing system ‘a failing’

The House is expected to vote on a stimulus plan Friday to offset the economic fallout to everyday Americans from the outbreak, pending a deal between Pelosi and Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin – the administration’s point person on negotiations.

MORE: House set to vote on coronavirus economic relief once Pelosi and Mnuchin cut deal

Here are Friday’s most significant developments in Washington:

President Trump declares national emergency

Trump administration announces steps to speed up testing

Pelosi says House Democrats will pass a economic relief measure ‘today’ that ensures free tests for everyone who needs one

Here is how developments in Washington are unfolding

Trump declares a national emergency

President Donald Trump declared a national emergency on Friday which he said “will open up access to up to $50 billion” to fight the novel coronavirus.

Trump also announced private sector partnerships to “accelerate our capacity to test for the coronavirus.”

Fauci: ‘We have not peaked yet’

Following two days of testimony before the House Oversight Committee, Fauci gave a warning on ABC’s “Good Morning America” Friday that he has made before as the coronavirus continues to spread: “It gets worse before it gets better.”

MORE: Government response to coronavirus: Fauci backs Trump travel ban, says testing system ‘a failing’

“It will be at least a matter of several weeks. It’s unpredictable, but if you look at historically how these things work, it will likely be anywhere from a few weeks to up to eight weeks,” Fauci said. “I hope it’s going to be in the earlier part, two, three, four weeks, but it’s impossible to make an accurate prediction.”

Pelosi: Agreement is ‘near’ with White House on aid package

Earlier, Pelosi said that she and the Trump administration were close to agreement on a coronavirus aid package to reassure anxious Americans by providing sick pay, free testing and other resources, hoping to calm teetering financial markets amid the mounting crisis.

“We have – are near – to an agreement,” Pelosi said, emerging from her office at the Capitol late Thursday night.

Mnuchin tells worried investors ‘don’t stare at the screen’

When asked Friday what his message is for Americans – especially those close to retirement – who are worried as they look at their 401Ks this morning, Mnuchin sought to project calm amid the economic turmoil caused by the coronavirus.

“Don’t stare at the screen, okay,” Mnuchin said, in offering advice. “It will be higher or a year from now, as I said, people who weathered the crash in 1987, people who weathered the financial crisis. For long term investors, the US is the best place to invest in the world.”

MORE: House set to vote on coronavirus economic relief once Pelosi and Mnuchin cut deal

Mnuchin repeatedly noted that what the U.S. is facing today is “not the financial crisis,” describing it as a temporary situation, but said the White House is looking at taking major stimulus actions to help Americans through this time.

“I can assure you, the president is determined, we will do whatever we need. I think the president is looking at a major stimulus package, whether it’s through the payroll tax cut or through another means of delivering liquidity to hard working Americans,” said Mnuchin.

Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin speaks with reporters outside White House in Washington, DC, on March 13, 2020.Jim Watson/AFP via Getty Images

As the administration nears a deal with Pelosi on a COVID-19 aid package, Mnuchin described it as just the “second inning” in a baseball game.

“I think we view this as this is the second inning in a baseball game. The first inning was the $8 billion bill, this is the second inning,” said, Mnuchin, who said the plan to “come quickly back” to Congress on issues facing the airline industry.

His comments illustrate a major shift tone from the administration from just a week ago, when the president’s top economic adviser Larry Kudlow said the administration at that time was not considering any sweeping stimulus measures.

MORE: Trump says he’s ‘not concerned’ that Brazilian official he met with tested positive for coronavirus

Australian official tests positive for COVID-19 after meeting with AG Barr Ivanka Trump

Australia’s minister for Home Affairs, Peter Dutton, said Friday he’s contracted coronavirus.

Copyright © 2020 ABC News Internet Ventures. All rights reserved.

IDEAS

What If the President Gets Sick?

The public deserves to know right away whether the chief executive is infected with COVID-19. He should have gotten tested sooner.

Donald trump acknowledged today that he has been tested for the coronavirus, which causes the disease COVID-19, but says he does not yet know the results. He told reporters at the White House that he took his temperature this morning and it was “totally normal.” At the Conservative Political Action Conference and then at Mar-a-Lago, President Trump stood close to people known to be infected with the coronavirus. Given the contagiousness of the virus, it’s reasonable to worry that the president himself may now be infected. Yet the White House for days insisted that the president did not need to be tested. At almost midnight last night, the White House blasted to reporters a letter from Trump’s doctor repeating the claim that no test was called for. In the president’s reversal today, he made it seem as if the idea had only just occurred to him.

He said he was finally prompted to seek testing after reporters asked him during a press conference yesterday whether he would do so—a press conference in which he was surrounded by other people. By waiting this long to get tested, Trump engaged in gross dereliction of duty. Not only might the president fall gravely ill himself, but he might—and quite possibly already has—spread the illness to others. He has engaged in risky behaviors long after he should have stopped: shaking hands, sharing microphones, gathering crowds, standing very close to people of advanced age.

Any other president would see it as his or her job to model safe behavior. Trump is the president, the head of state. His mental and physical health are vital public concerns. Why is Trump continuing to act in ways that threaten himself and others?

Read: You’re likely to get the coronavirus

At moments of national crisis, there is a strong instinct to support the president’s leadership. In the media, this instinct expresses itself in the impulse to suppress our knowledge of the president’s history and character, and to report on him the way we would have reported on his predecessors. But just as the president has a duty, so do we. Our duty is to describe things as they are, not as we would wish them to be. The coronavirus is a powerful force, but it is not powerful enough to transmute Donald Trump into a different person from the one he was before the crisis.

So when we talk about the president and his protracted refusal to test, we should not write about that decision as if the president who were refusing the test were a figure from Mount Rushmore. It’s Trump. Why did he delay such an urgent health precaution for so long?

Five reasons based on hard experience come to mind.

Donald Trump is a fearful person. He is terrified of sharks. He is especially fearful of disease and death. He banished his chief of staff from the room for coughing. He told a German magazine in 2007 that he would not go near his own children when they were sick. Any medical test is an encounter with mortality. By refusing to look, the encounter is avoided—or postponed. Private citizen Trump hired oddball doctors who assured him that he was in fabulous condition when he obviously was not. President Trump promoted a White House doctor who suggested that Trump might possibly live to 200 given his “fabulous genes.” It’s plausible that Trump doesn’t want to be tested for fear of being told otherwise.

Pro-Trump propaganda depicts the president as muscular and virile. He himself retweeted a meme of his face Photoshopped onto the body of a young Sylvester Stallone. In fact, Trump is obese and rarely exercises beyond hitting a golf ball. A test that revealed illness would pierce the Trump image in ways intolerable to the president. The experience of illness is a humbling one. The ill person tumbles out of a universe of self-sufficiency into another, where he or she must depend on the care of others. But Trump sees himself as always in control, always in command. Better not to know.

Coronavirus tests are in desperately short supply because of Trump’s own negligence and that of his administration. He squandered preparation time because of his own characteristic defects as a manager, most notably his insatiable need for validation and flattery. Trump taking a coronavirus test would remind an anxious country that tests are available only for some, and not others. For Trump to cut to the head of the queue would remind everybody that it is his fault the queue is so long.

Trump’s supreme priority as president has always been to make as much money as he can out of his hotels and resorts. One of his first acts as president was to double the initiation fee at Mar-a-Lago, from $100,000 to $200,000. People willingly paid because Trump dispensed so many rewards to his customers, including ambassadorships of South Africa and the Dominican Republic. But if Trump got sick, it is quite possible he got sick at Mar-a-Lago. What happens to Trump’s resort business if Mar-a-Lago is revealed as a plague spot, a disease epicenter? Business will collapse, and Trump’s personal finances will be hit.

Even when nonlethal, COVID-19 can inflict debilitating suffering on those who succumb. Serious cases must be put on artificial respiration. They may be racked with diarrhea. Organs may fail too. COVID-19 patients can be in the hospital for weeks or even a month before they fully recover. The risk seems greatest for men over 70, with obesity as an additional risk factor—Trump’s exact medical profile.

What happens if President Trump does contract an illness that incapacitates him for days, weeks, or even longer? From the beginning of the Trump administration, many have joked about him as a candidate for the Twenty-Fifth Amendment on psychiatric grounds. If the coronavirus strikes him, depending on the severity, the Twenty-Fifth will have to be invoked on physiological grounds.

Trump is cunning and paranoid enough to recognize how much he is distrusted and disliked even by his own intimates, and certainly by his own party. If he has to step aside from office, will his vice president, Cabinet, and party in Congress really want to let him return? Maybe yes, but will Trump feel he can afford to take the risk? Better to carry on, exploit the weakness of others, and hope that he can bluff his way through self-inflicted disaster to one more comeback. That’s the path Trump has walked so successfully to this point. He’s not going to change now.

DAVID FRUM is a staff writer at The Atlantic and the author of Trumpocalypse: Restoring American Democracy (2020). In 2001 and 2002, he was a speechwriter for President George W. Bush.

Copyright © 2020 by The Atlantic Monthly Group. All Rights Reserved.

{Now the things are beginning to confirm a reduction to primary experience: Mr.Trump waited too long to miss an opportunity to avoid thousands and thousands of infections and deaths, had he did as Phillippine President did:

Not politicize national health issyes, but take the lead, and start immediately to take steps to halt rapid progression.
Why did Trump wait until this was rubbed into his own narcissistic avoidance by institutions and even his closest adhearants?
Does this not at least give an inkling that he is primarily interested about his own political survival , and not the existential survival of the society he was elected to lead and protect?
Will this factor in with those who manage to be able to get up from their suck beds to hobble over to the ballot box?
Will this cross over to the independent thinker, or even his closest hombres, not to mention real democratic idealists?

Let us not hold our breaths for that one! }

Every major political and economic forecast Doug Casey made over the last three decades came true…

From the dot-com bust… to the credit and housing bubble in October of 2006… to the 2008 meltdown.

Doug Casey even predicted the fall of the Soviet Union and correctly forecasted Brexit before it came to a vote.

But nothing comes close to Doug’s new forecast for 2019-2020.

As Doug puts it, a major political coup is unfolding on American soil… that will topple Donald Trump’s presidency…

And give rise to a new socialist state.

The stock market as we know it could lose nearly 40% of its value and a major recession could wipe out the wealth of hard-working Americans.

Just like Venezuela…

The general cost of living — including medication — will be out of reach for boomers, retirees, and even seniors…

Medicare and Social Security payouts will be cut in half to fund new welfare programs.

Food prices will shoot sky high. In fact, major brands like Kellogg’s have warned prices will increase by 12%.

It’s my sincere hope you and your family survive what’s coming.

But only those who prepare will be able to live in peace in a new socialist America.

How do you do that?

But ensure you have what you need to survive when the next recession and socialism hit high gear.

Nick Giambruno
Chief Analyst, The Casey Report

P.S. Fair warning: These are not steps you should take while socialism is in full swing. You have to implement these steps before — which is now.

There isn’t much time left. So I suggest you move quickly so you’re one step ahead.

To prepare, see this important message while you still have time.

The Money & Markets, P.O. Box 8378, Delray Beach, FL 33482.

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{The Federal Reserve acts to the tune of almost a trillion dollars, in addition to slashing interest to almost zero :}

The Federal Reserve slashed interest rates to near-zero and unveiled a sweeping set of programs — including plans to snap up huge amounts of government and mortgage-backed debt — in an effort to backstop the United States economy as the spread of coronavirus poses a dire threat to economic growth.

“The coronavirus outbreak has harmed communities and disrupted economic activity in many countries, including the United States,” the central bank said in a statement on Sunday. “The Federal Reserve is prepared to use its full range of tools to support the flow of credit to households and businesses.”

At a news conference on Sunday afternoon, President Trump congratulated the Federal Reserve for its slashing rates to nearly zero.

“It makes me very happy,” he said.

FREE ACCESSThe New York Times is providing full coronavirus coverage to all our readers.
Besides cutting its key interest rate by a full percentage point, returning it to a range of 0 to 0.25 percent, the Fed said that it would increase its holdings of Treasury securities by at least $500 billion and its holdings of government mortgage-backed securities by at least $200 billion “over coming months.”

“The committee will continue to closely monitor market conditions and is prepared to adjust its plans as appropriate,” it said.

The Fed also encouraged banks to use its discount window, which provides ready access to financing, and said it was “encouraging banks to use their capital and liquidity buffers as they lend to households and businesses.” The Fed also eliminated bank reserve requirements — a suite of efforts meant to free up cash for the banks to keep lending.

Poem of 1918 written by a Young girl:

“I had a bird , it’s name was Enza,
I opened the window and
Influenza”

{Now the following footage is 30 minutes, it is really worth while to see it.}

youtu.be/UDY5COg2P2c

<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<>>>>><<<<<<>><<>><<><><><<<<<<>>>>>>>>>
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The horrific scale of the 1918 Spanish flu pandemic is hard to fathom. The virus infected 500 million people worldwide and killed an estimated 20 million to 50 million victims— that’s more than all of the soldiers and civilians killed during World War I combined.Mar 3, 2020

{ How many people died from the black plague? }

<<<<<<<<<<<<<<>><<<<<<<<><><<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<>>><<>><<{{<}}<<<{<<>> :

The Black Death: The Greatest Catastrophe Ever. Ole J. Benedictow describes how he calculated that the Black Death killed 50 million people in the 14th century, or 60 per cent of Europe’s entire population. The disastrous mortal disease known as the Black Death spread across Europe in the years 1346-53.