CHARLESTON, W.Va. __ White House coronavirus task force leader Dr. Deborah Birx says widespread coronavirus infections in urban and rural America mark a “new phase” for the pandemic as she doubled down on calls to wear face masks and observe social distancing measures.
Birx, speaking on CNN’s “State of the Union” Sunday morning, said “What we are seeing today is different from March and April. It is extraordinarily widespread.”
WASHINGTON (AP) — The vote to renominate President Donald Trump is set to be conducted in private later this month, without members of the press present, a spokeswoman for the Republican National Convention said on Saturday, citing the coronavirus.
However, a Republican National Committee official contradicted that assessment Sunday, emphasizing that no final decisions have been made and that logistics and press coverage options were still being evaluated, The official was not authorized to discuss the matter publicly and spoke on condition of anonymity.
Continue reading “RNC Now Opens The Door To Having Journalists At Trump Nomination Vote”
WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump insists that schools reopen so students can go back to their classrooms, but the Maryland private school where his son Barron is enrolled is among those under county orders to stay closed.
Montgomery County Health Officer Dr. Travis Gayles said his order to stay closed for in-person instruction through Oct. 1 and to conduct online classes only will be reevaluated before Oct. 1 to determine whether it should be extended, terminated or amended.
Gayles noted increases in transmission rates for COVID-19 — the disease caused by the virus — in Maryland, the District of Columbia and Virginia, particularly in younger age groups.
“Since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, we have based our decisions on science and data,” Gayles said in a news release announcing the decision late Friday. “At this point the data does not suggest that in-person instruction is safe for students or teachers.”
Barron, 14, is due to enter ninth grade at St. Andrew’s Episcopal School in Potomac, Maryland, which is located in Montgomery County. The 2020-2021 school year is slated to begin Sept. 8.
St. Andrews has been preparing for two different options: distance learning or a hybrid model with students learning both on an off campus. The school had planned to make a final decision the week of Aug. 10 and notify families, according to a note on the school website.
Trump argues that children are being harmed by being away from the classroom. Federal medical experts have said decisions about reopening schools should be made locally.
Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan criticized the Montgomery County order, saying those decisions should be made by schools and parents, not politicians.
The White House and St. Andrew’s Episcopal School did not immediately return requests for comment late Saturday on the Montgomery County order.
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Associated Press writer Brian Witte in Annapolis, Md., contributed to this report.
WASHINGTON (AP) — Democratic Rep. Karen Bass, one of the top contenders to be Joe Biden’s running mate, on Sunday defended her past travel to Cuba and the sympathetic comments she made after the death of Fidel Castro, the dictator who ruled the communist country for decades.
Bass said she was trying to express her condolences to the Cuban people when she referred to Castro as “Comandante en jefe,” a term that roughly translates as commander in chief but is reviled by some Cuban exiles in Florida. Bass, who represents California in Congress, said she was unaware of the phrase’s political significance in Florida when she issued the 2016 statement, which called Castro’s death a “great loss to the people of Cuba.”
Continue reading “Top VP Contender Rep. Karen Bass Denounces Past Cuba Comments”
WASHINGTON (AP) — The vote to renominate President Donald Trump is set to be conducted in private later this month, without members of the press present, a spokeswoman for the Republican National Convention, citing the coronavirus.
While Trump called off the public components of the convention in Florida last month, citing spiking cases of the virus across the country, 336 delegates are scheduled to gather in Charlotte, North Carolina, on Aug. 24 to formally vote to make Trump the GOP standard-bearer once more.
Continue reading “GOP Convention Bars Journalists For The First Time Ever”
President Donald Trump continued an attack against the nation’s top infectious diseases expert Dr. Anthony Fauci on Saturday afternoon, responding to bleak testimony from the doctor that explained why the United States has failed at containing outbreaks of the virus.
The President retweeted a video from CBS News that showed Fauci testisfying before Congress this week about spikes in cases of coronavirus. Trump accompanied the video with the words, “Wrong!”
Wrong! We have more cases because we have tested far more than any other country, 60,000,000. If we tested less, there would be less cases. How did Italy, France & Spain do? Now Europe sadly has flare ups. Most of our governors worked hard & smart. We will come back STRONG!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) August 1, 2020
In the clip, Fauci contrasted how the United States shut down comparatively less than some European nations, saying that in parts of Europe “they really did it to the tune of about 95% plus of the country.”
Fauci said that although the United States shuttered parts of the economy temporarily to curb the spread of coronavirus “we really only functionally shut down only about 50% in the sense of the totality of the country.”
In his testimony, Fauci argues that a reluctance to shut down more of the country had a lasting impact and when the country reopened it was more vulnerable to a surge in cases.
In response to the video, Trump went on a familiar rant that “if we tested less, there would be less cases.”
But that argument has been challenged by many of the President’s own health experts.
During the House hearing Friday, Assistant Health and Human Services Secretary Adm. Brett Giroir did not demonize testing to explain away rising numbers of cases.
Giroir instead described testing as more like a tool that “heralds impending outbreaks” and “informs resource allocation.” He added that testing “assists in minimizing economic and social disruption.”
Trump’s attack on Fauci follows a complaint earlier this week that Fauci had a higher approval rating than he did.
“He’s got this high approval rating, so why don’t I have a high approval rating, and the administration with respect to the virus?” Trump mused out loud.
Rep. Raúl Grijalva (D-AZ) has tested positive for COVID-19, days after chairing a committee hearing attended by Rep. Louie Gohmert (R-TX) who announced a positive test for coronavirus earlier this week.
“While I cannot blame anyone directly for this, this week has shown that there are some Members of Congress who fail to take this crisis seriously,” he said in a statement that he posted to his Twitter account on Saturday afternoon. “Stopping the spread of a deadly virus should not be a partisan issue,” he added.
I have tested positive for COVID-19.
As a result, I will be self-isolating in quarantine. I currently have no symptoms, feel fine, and hope to make a quick & speedy recovery.
COVID-19 is not a joke & we should all take this seriously.
My full statement: pic.twitter.com/nnBskdSyTF
— Raul M. Grijalva (@RepRaulGrijalva) August 1, 2020
Grijalva said that he currently has no symptoms and is self-isolating at the recommendation of an attending physician.
The Arizona congressman chairs the House Natural Resources Committee which held a meeting Tuesday that Gohmert also attended. Gohmert reported a positive test for COVID-19 the following day, although it was not immediately clear whether Gohmert had infected Grijalva or others.
Gohmert has routinely refused to wear a mask also attended a hearing of the House Judiciary Committee.
House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-MD) told CNN Wednesday that while the House isn’t mandating testing for lawmakers yet, “we’re discussing that.”
Since Gohmert’s announcement, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) ordered a broad mask mandate for House members that was scheduled to go into effect Thursday. It included a requirement for members and staff to wear masks in the House chamber in addition to House office buildings with few exceptions.
U.S. general manager of TikTok Vanessa Pappas said early Saturday that the video app wasn’t “going anywhere,” in spite of plans announced by President Donald Trump on Friday night that he would ban it.
“As far as TikTok is concerned we’re banning them from the United States,” Trump said, according to NBC News.
But in a one-minute video message to the app’s users in the United States posted to its Twitter account early Saturday, Pappas had a different message.
“We’re not planning on going anywhere,” Pappas said, adding that the the video-sharing app was “here for the long run.”
Trump has said he could ban the app using an executive order telling reporters Friday according to the NBC News report that he has “that authority.”
The President’s plans to ban the app follow reports Friday that Microsoft was in talks to acquire the app’s U.S. operations.
Pappas’ message to users comes hours after a spokesperson for TikTok said in a statement obtained by NBC News that the app creates jobs for Americans and it is committed to protecting user privacy and safety.
The TikTok app is owned by ByteDance, one of the largest tech companies in China. The app’s Chinese ownership has become the subject of concern for lawmakers, regulators and privacy activists. ByteDance, for example, is required to follow Chinese censorship laws, and some say the video app may be forced to surrender user data to the Chinese government under the country’s national security law.
Several companies have even directed their employees to delete the app citing concerns about surveillance and potential espionage.
But the spokesperson for TikTok maintained in the app’s statement that “U.S. user data is stored in the U.S., with strict controls on employee access.”
“We are committed to protecting our users’ privacy and safety as we continue working to bring joy to families and meaningful careers to those who create on our platform,” the statement added.
TikTok CEO Kevin Mayer had responded to recent privacy concerns raised about the app by offering Wednesday to allow U.S. regulators and privacy experts to take a closer look at its software code amid claims about data-sharing on American users with the Chinese government.
According to the statement referenced by NBC News, the video sharing app added 1,000 people to its U.S. team this year, and is “proud to be hiring another 10,000 employees into great paying jobs across the U.S.” The spokesperson said that the app’s reported $1 billion creator fund “supports U.S. creators who are building livelihoods from our platform.”
The job creation angle taken by the TikTok app, comes as the United States continues to struggle with unemployment made worse by the coronavirus pandemic. Data from the Census Bureau late last month showed at least four consecutive weeks of decline in the number of employed people nationwide.
Earlier this week, the Commerce Department also announced that the American economy took its worst quarterly plunge ever — shrinking at a 33% annual rate in its most recent quarter.
Trump’s plans to ban TikTok also follow taunting claims by some of its users who in June said they signed up for tickets to his campaign rally in Tulsa with no attention of going. The rally, which then Trump campaign manager Brad Parscale boasted had registrations for a million tickets, was sorely under-attended — filling about one-third of a 19,000-seat stadium.
This week I (virtually) sat down for a fascinating conversation with Tom Nichols, a professor of national security affairs at the US Navy War College but likely more known to many of you as a leading anti-Trump conservative voice on Twitter and the cable networks. He’s also an advisor to The Lincoln Project, that outfit of defrocked and lapsed Republican activists and consultants producing slashing ads against not only President Trump but almost every Republican Senator up for reelection in 2020. We talked about everything from US nuclear policy to President Trump to why he believes the current institutional Republican party needs to be burned to the ground before a responsible center-right party of government can possible emerge in its place. You can watch our conversation after the jump if you’re a member.
After a lockdown hiatus we have restarted our TPM Inside Briefings and we’re going to be experimenting with ways to bring the best of them to all our members. In this case we are making available the entire interview.
Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg was discharged from a New York hospital on Friday following a procedure on a bile stent that was placed last August, the Supreme Court said.
According to a court statement obtained by Reuters, Ginsburg is home and “doing well.”
The news of her discharge comes two days after the court’s oldest justice was admitted to “revise a bile stent” at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center.
The procedure follows another one last month to clean out the stent.
A Wednesday statement issued by Kathleen Arberg, a public information officer for the court, said that Ginsburg’s doctors had assured that stent revisions are “common occurrences” and that the procedure, which was conducted using endoscopy and medical imaging, was done to “minimize the risk of future infection.”
The justice had formerly issued a statement on July 17 announcing a recurrence of cancer after a scan in February followed by a biopsy revealed lesions on her liver.
The justice said at that time that chemotherapy treatments were yielding “positive results,” saying that recent scans on July 7 showed “significant” reduction of the lesions “no new disease.” Ginsburg said at that time that she would continue bi-weekly chemotherapy, adding, “I have often said I would remain a member of the Court as long as I can do the job full steam. I remain fully able to do that.”
The justice’s health is closely watched given that any health challenge preventing the liberal icon from continuing her tenure on the bench would provide an opening for President Donald Trump to potentially nominate a conservative replacement.
