More Than 40 School Principals Quarantined In California After COVID-19 Exposure

More than 40 school principals in northern California have quarantined after they were exposed to the coronavirus during an in-person meeting held by a local school district.

The quarantine follows news that a pre-symptomatic individual tested positive for COVID-19 within days of a June 19 meeting held by the Santa Clara County Unified School District to to discuss school reopening plans for the fall, The San Francisco Chronicle reported Wednesday.

Superintendent Stella Kemp cited the “complexity” of developing a reopening plan as the reason for some meetings to take place in person.

“Of course those meetings are being conducted under the strict guidelines provided to us by the Santa Clara County Public Health Department,” Kemp said, according to the Chronicle. 

Her remarks come even as some members of the school board questioned her decision to convene meetings face-to-face due to concerns about spreading the virus.

Santa Clara County is one of the 19 counties that California Gov. Gavin Newsom (D)  placed under new restrictions earlier this week as the state struggles to contain the virus.

State health officials reported 210 new cases of the coronavirus in Santa Clara County on Wednesday, bringing the county’s case total to roughly 4,500 cases. At least 158 people have died from the virus in Santa Clara.

While the Santa Clara County public health order does not make a recommendation about the number of people who can attend a meeting, it does advise that “only those employees performing job duties that they cannot feasibly perform from home may come to a business’s facility to work.”

The superintendent insisted the meeting was necessary, adding that everyone who attended was administered a test, and that to her knowledge, no one else tested positive.

Health officials in Santa Clara County gave schools a guide on Tuesday for restarting in-person instruction in the fall but said they should be ready to resume instruction remotely if coronavirus conditions do not improve.

Jeffrey Epstein Associate Ghislaine Maxwell Arrested In New Hampshire

Ghislaine Maxwell, a British socialite who was accused by many women of helping procure underage sex partners for Jeffrey Epstein, was arrested in New Hampshire, the FBI said Thursday.

Maxwell, who lived for years with Epstein, was taken into custody around 8:30 a.m., said FBI spokesman Marty Feely.

Continue reading “Jeffrey Epstein Associate Ghislaine Maxwell Arrested In New Hampshire” →

SCOTUS Takes Up House Bid For Mueller Grand Jury Docs

The Supreme Court agreed to hear arguments in a case deciding whether Congress will get access to evidence gathered during the Mueller investigation, the court said on Thursday.

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U.S. Coronavirus Cases Soar Above 50,000 In New Single-Day Record

Nearly 53,000 coronavirus cases were reported in the United States on Wednesday, creating a new single-day record for positive test results as some states scramble to slow or reverse plans to reopen and some hospitals grapple with an overwhelming flood of new patients.

The Wall Street Journal reported that the U.S. accounts for about a quarter of coronavirus cases world-wide and the nation’s death toll climbed above 128,000 earlier this week.

As the number of cases reaches new heights daily, the number of people hospitalized with the virus has also increased dramatically in hotspot areas like Texas and Arizona. 

In Texas, more than 6,500 COVID-19 patients were hospitalized – far exceeding the number of infected people in hospital beds for the month of April and May which was consistently below 2,000.

Arizona, reported that 89% of its ICU beds were occupied as the state reported  close to 5,000 new cases for the day on Wednesday. 

In California, too, hospitalizations are up more than 40% from two weeks ago, Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) responded with new restrictions: closing bars, indoor restaurants, movie theaters, zoos and museums in 19 counties.

New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo also opted to delay plans to resume indoor dining in New York City where many residents are failing to wear masks in public and are not adhering to calls for social distancing. The decision comes even as cases and hospitalizations have fallen significantly in the former hotspot.

4.8 Million Jobs Added In June, Unemployment Falls To 11%

WASHINGTON (AP) — U.S. employers added a substantial 4.8 million jobs in June, and the unemployment rate fell to 11.1%, as the job market improved for a second straight month yet still remained far short of regaining the colossal losses it suffered this spring.

The nation has now recovered roughly one-third of the 22 million jobs it lost to the pandemic recession. And with confirmed coronavirus cases spiking across the Sun Belt states, a range of evidence suggests that a job market recovery may be stalling. In those states and elsewhere, some restaurants, bars and other retailers that had re-opened are being forced to close again.

The re-closings are keeping layoffs elevated: The number of Americans who sought unemployment benefits barely fell last week to 1.47 million. Though that weekly figure has declined steadily since peaking in late March, it’s still more than double the pre-pandemic peak set in 1982. And the total number of people receiving jobless aid remains at a sizable 19 million.

California has re-closed bars, theaters and indoor restaurant dining across most of the state. Florida has also re-closed bars and beaches. Texas has reversed some of its efforts to reopen its economy. New York has paused its plans to allow indoor dining.

Credit and debit card data tracked by JPMorgan Chase show that consumers reduced their spending last week after having increased it steadily in late April and May. The reversal has occurred both in states that have reported surges in COVID-19 and in less affected states, said Jesse Edgerton, an economist at J.P. Morgan.

Nationwide, card spending fell nearly 13% last week compared with a year ago. That’s worse than the previous week, when year-over-year card spending had fallen just under 10%.

And Kronos, which produces time management software, has found that in the past two weeks, growth in the number of shifts worked has slowed in the Southeast and is now rising at just half the rate of the Northeast.

“The pace of recovery is starting to slow,” said Dave Gilbertson, an executive at Kronos. “We are expecting to see more of a plateauing over the next couple of months.”

Thursday’s jobs report is based on data gathered in the second week of June, which helps explain why the figures reflect an improving trend. Last week’s plateau in work shifts will instead affect the July jobs figures, to be released in early August.

McDonald’s has paused its reopening efforts nationwide, and Apple says it will re-close 30 more of its U.S. stores, on top of 47 that it had already shut down for a second time.

Economists have long warned that the economic benefits of allowing businesses to reopen would prove short-lived if the virus wasn’t brought under control. Until most Americans feel confident enough to dine out, travel, shop or congregate in groups without fear of infection, restaurants, hotels and retailers will lack enough customer demand to justify rehiring all their previous workers.

Still, some bright spots in the economy have emerged in recent weeks. Manufacturers expanded in June after three months of shrinking, the Institute for Supply Management, a trade group, said Wednesday. New orders are flowing in, and factories are adding more jobs, the ISM said.

And record-low mortgage rates are encouraging more home buyers. Purchases of new homes rose sharply in May. And a measure of signed contracts to buy existing homes soared by a record amount, a sign that sales should rebound after falling for three straight months.

Judge Rules In Favor Of Publisher In Mary Trump Tell-All Book Debacle

The publisher of Mary Trump’s tell-all book can go ahead for now with publication plans following a ruling by a New York appellate judge on Wednesday, which reversed a lower court’s decision to pause the publication of a much-anticipated account by President Trump’s niece.

The book, “Too Much and Never Enough: How My Family Created the World’s Most Dangerous Man,” according to court papers filed by publisher Simon & Schuster and obtained by The New York Times, has allegedly already been printed and sold tens of thousands of copies. It is also listed as a best seller on Amazon.

The account is anticipated to reveal how Mary Trump contributed to a report from The Times on the Trump family’s tax schemes. 

The text was central to a legal dispute about whether, by writing the book, Trump’s niece had violated a two decades old confidentiality agreement that she signed after a struggle over the will of Donald Trump’s father Fred Trump Sr.

In his decision, Judge Alan Scheinkman ruled that Simon & Schuster was not a party to the confidentiality agreement and therefore could not be bound by it in spite of a Tuesday ruling that placed a temporary restraining order on the book’s publication. While the restraining order was lifted on Simon & Schuster, the court left the temporary restraining order in place for Mary Trump until a hearing scheduled for July 10.

“Unlike Ms. Trump,” Scheinkman wrote, “S&S has not agreed to surrender or relinquish any of its First Amendment rights.” The publishers had earlier argued they were unaware of Mary Trump’s signing of a confidentiality agreement.

Simon & Schuster quickly celebrated the decision as a win in a statement on Wednesday night, calling the book a work of “real interest and importance” that “fully deserves to be published for the benefit of the American public.”

“As all know, there are well-established precedents against prior restraint and pre-publication injunctions, and we remain confident that the preliminary injunction will be denied,” the publishing company added.

While Scheinkman declined to rule on the question of whether Mary Trump had violated the agreement, he said it it was reasonable for a prominent family to agree to keep “intimate family matters” away from the public.

He also said, however, that the 20-year-old agreement to protect the Trump family’s privacy may have been altered by the fact that Donald Trump had become the president during that time.

 The book is scheduled to be released at the end of July.

Stonewall Jackson Statue Removed After Richmond Mayor Orders Removal Of All Confederate Statues

RICHMOND, Va. (AP) — Work crews wielding a giant crane, harnesses and power tools wrested an imposing statue of Gen. Stonewall Jackson from its concrete pedestal along Richmond, Virginia’s famed Monument Avenue on Wednesday, just hours after the mayor ordered the removal of all Confederate statues from city land. Continue reading “Stonewall Jackson Statue Removed After Richmond Mayor Orders Removal Of All Confederate Statues” →

Stop Talking About “Reopening”

From the start of the COVID epidemic we’ve been talking about “reopening”, when it would happen, whether it is safe. The President started demanding it about two weeks into the crisis – the churches needed to be full on Easter, the 12th of April. Now we talk about which states have reopened and which haven’t. It’a all wrong. From the start this metaphor has saddled us with distorting language and a distorted concept which has enabled and driven bad policy. It suggests a binary choice when one doesn’t exist. The impact goes beyond semantics.

There is no opening or closing and there won’t be until we have a vaccine or a very effective cure for COVID. There are various mitigation strategies. Does the state push or mandate widespread masking? Does it permit indoor dining? Are bars open? Has it scaled sufficient testing capacity and a robust contact tracing program? The devil and the death toll are all in this particulars. The ‘reopening’ metaphor obscures all of this.

WH Doubles Down On Trump Fantasy That COVID-19 Will Just ‘Disappear’

White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany defended President Trump’s remarks earlier Wednesday that the coronavirus will “just disappear” as several states continue experiencing significant spikes in infection rates. Continue reading “WH Doubles Down On Trump Fantasy That COVID-19 Will Just ‘Disappear’” →