The House passed a $484 billion package Thursday to bolster small businesses and hospitals ravaged by the coronavirus crisis and expand testing desperately needed to start the return to normal life.
Donning face coverings and voting in alphabetical sets to cut the risk of infection, representatives approved the bill easily by a 388-5-1 vote. One member, independent Rep. Justin Amash of Michigan, voted “present.” The House sends the proposal to President Donald Trump, who is set to sign it into law in the coming hours.
Before the chamber passed the plan to try to rescue a crumbling U.S. economy, it also approved a Democratic-majority select subcommittee to oversee the Trump administration’s use of a $500 billion pool of aid for corporations, states and municipalities. Congress approved those funds last month.
Between votes, House staff swept through the chamber to clean and disinfect it. Representatives came back to the Capitol in force Thursday for the first time in about a month.
Once signed into law, the legislation will bring the government’s total emergency response to an unprecedented total of more than $2.5 trillion across four bills. After days of sniping over what the measure should include, lawmakers replenished a key $350 billion small business aid program that dried up last week.
The bill passed Thursday includes:
$310 billion in new funds for the so-called Paycheck Protection Program, which gives small firms loans that could be forgiven if they use them on wages, benefits, rent and utilities. Within that pool, $60 billion will specifically go to small lenders, a priority Democrats pushed for after they blocked a $250 billion funding bill earlier this month.
$60 billion for Small Business Administration disaster assistance loans and grants.
$75 billion in grants to hospitals overwhelmed by a rush of Covid-19 patients.
$25 billion to bolster coronavirus testing, a core piece of any plan to restart the U.S. economy.
Four Republicans and one Democrat voted against the proposal. The lone Democrat who opposed it was Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who represents hard-hit areas of the Bronx and Queens. She argued the bill did not go far enough to help struggling individuals and governments.
The bill’s approval likely will not end the government’s response to the outbreak or disagreements about how best to reduce the devastating toll on Americans’ health and paychecks. The first round of small businesses funding was committed just days after it became available — though it is unclear how many companies have actually received it — and the new money could also dry up quickly.
Democrats have pushed for an additional bill to send money to states and municipalities asking the federal government to help them cover budget crunches created by the pandemic, among other priorities for the party. While Trump has said he supports passing the aid, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell said this week that he supports allowing states to declare bankruptcy instead.
The destruction coronavirus has wrought shows in mounting infections, deaths, layoffs and furloughs. The U.S. now has more than 850,000 Covid-19 cases, and the disease has killed at least 47,000 people, according to data compiled by Johns Hopkins University.
As they look ahead to the next legislation, Democratic leaders have called for hazard pay for Americans still required to go into their workplaces, national mail-in ballots to make voting safer and money to rescue the U.S. Postal Service. Trump has pushed for a sprawling infrastructure plan — an area where he and Democrats have failed to reach accord so far in his presidency — along with incentives for restaurant and entertainment spending and a payroll tax cut.
Republican congressional leaders, meanwhile, have grown more wary of spending as the government tab during the crisis approaches $3 trillion.
Trevor Noah called up New York’s governor, Andrew Cuomo for Wednesday’s Daily Social Distancing Show as the heart of America’s coronavirus outbreak, New York City, stares down a long road to recovery. Noah asked Cuomo how, over six weeks into mass shutdowns, he’s balancing the dueling pressures of keeping people safe versus reopening a devastated economy. “The pressure that people are under is phenomenal,” Cuomo said. “It is traumatic. This is traumatic for people, and that’s the way I think about this.”
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“The relationship between myself and the president is: he doesn’t like me.”@NYGovCuomo says he and Trump put aside personal beef in their White House meeting. pic.twitter.com/0Q6WXp5DTB
Bills are still being collected, jobs are lost or may never return, and “people are about to burst, on one level, they’re under that kind of pressure”, he continued. “On the other hand, we had 474 people die yesterday. You tell me how many people go outside today and touch other people, I’ll tell you how many people walk into a hospital three days from now. The cause and effect is that tight.”
In New York, where social distancing can’t occur – you’re not getting 6ft of space on a subway car, ever – the number of cases will increase as places open up. “It’s an impossible balance, Trevor,” Cuomo said. Ultimately, he said, it comes down to the data (death rate, hospitalization rate); “you don’t start to reopen until you have those numbers under control.”
As for recovery, “it has to be phased in, it has to be slow and building, and watch that infection rate as you start to open up the valve to reopen”, said Cuomo.
Noah also asked the governor about his relationship with Donald Trump and the federal government. “The relationship between myself and the president is, the president doesn’t like me,” Cuomo said. “That is the relationship. It is unambiguous. It is honest. It is open.” Still, he gave the president credit for an “honest conversation” on Tuesday about ramping up testing. “Who cares about how I feel about him personally? My feelings are irrelevant, my emotions are irrelevant. Just do the job.”
Samantha Bee
“As the great American lockdown continues, we have reasons to be grateful,” Samantha Bee said on another in-the-woods episode of Full Frontal. Physical distancing is working, “so naturally the question on everyone’s minds is: when can the country reopen?”
“Unfortunately, not yet,” answered Bee, unless you’re watching Fox News. “The sentient bobblehead dolls at Fox News are acting like containing Covid-19 is somehow un-American,” she said, pointing to clips of Laura Ingraham and Harris Faulkner arguing that lockdowns violate their freedoms. “It makes sense that everyone at Fox is fine with people dying so we can get back to work. They’re already used to working for a mummified corpse,” Bee added next to a photo of Fox News’ owner, Rupert Murdoch.
“As scary as it is to hear these idiots dismiss people’s lives, it’s really terrifying that elected officials are saying it too,” Bee continued. And no one is saying that louder, more “all-caps”, than Trump, who last week said that America “wants to be open”.
“Ah, yes, ‘America wants to be open’,” Bee said. “The ‘she was asking for it’ of coronavirus relief measures.”
Bee acknowledged that for many Americans, “it’s understandable to feel angry and upset”, especially since 26 million people are now out of work. “But reopening the economy prematurely could backfire and lead to another shutdown. We’re not facing a choice between saving lives or saving the economy. The simple fact is, the economy is people. And dead people don’t buy stuff.”
So though Americans love “quick and easy fixes” like “gas station boner pills”, Bee concluded, “the only way out of this mess is to finish the hard work we’ve begun” with shutdown measures and physical distancing. “The process to return to normal will be long, hard, sometimes painful – which, coincidentally is the slogan for those boner pills. But unlike those pills, this can work.”
Stephen Colbert
“It is the 50th Earth Day, the big 5-0, and I gotta say, Earth is still looking good – she’s just getting hotter every year,” said Stephen Colbert said on Wednesday’s Late Show. How did Trump celebrate the occasion? By “threatening to blow up chunks of the planet” with a bizarre tweet about instructing the navy to “shoot down” Iranian gunboats if they “harass our ships at sea”.
“Here’s the thing: Trump’s attempt to change the subject to immigration or to China or Iran or to anything is not gonna work,” Colbert said. “Trump’s normal tricks he uses to change the narrative aren’t working, because it’s hard to come up with a more gripping narrative than stay inside or you might die. You can tweet all you want, but it’s hard to capture people’s hearts and minds when they’re worried about their hearts and lungs.
“You can’t have Bill Barr redact the virus or call Ukraine to get dirt on Hunter Virus, or get Mitch McConnell to have 51 Republicans vote that there is no virus,” he continued, addressing Trump. “You can’t even pay the virus $130,000 to stay quiet, which is too bad, because this virus is definitely spanking your ass. So if you want to keep your job, you’re gonna have to do the unthinkable: your job!”
While Covid-19 deaths across the state have begun to level off, the “number of lives lost is still breathtakingly tragic,” Cuomo said. The state’s mortality rates remains persistently high, at 7.4% with at least 19,453 fatalities and 263,754 confirmed cases, according to data compiled by Johns Hopkins University. The antibody testing indicates that the actual death rate is far lower, less than 1%, Cuomo said.
The testing results also may be artificially high because “these are people who were out and about shopping,” Cuomo added. “They were not people who were in their home, they were not people isolated, they were not people who were quarantined who you could argue probably had a lower rate of infection because they wouldn’t come out of the house.”
While Cuomo cautioned that the data was preliminary, he also said the 3,000 test sample was a “significant data set.”
On Sunday, Cuomo said the U.S. Food and Drug Administration approved the state’s antibody test that will provide the “first true snapshot” of how many people have been infected with Covid-19 in New York. State officials don’t know the true number of infections because they haven’t been able to conduct diagnostic coronavirus testing on a large scale, Cuomo said.
Global health officials have questioned the reliability of antibody testing, however, and whether it can accurately determine whether someone is immune to the disease. World Health Organization said on Friday that there’s no evidence serological tests can show whether a person has immunity or is no longer at risk of becoming reinfected.
Dr. Mike Ryan, executive director of WHO’s emergencies program, said scientists are also studying how long any potential immunity might last.
President Donald Trump on Wednesday signed a presidential proclamation suspending the admission of new permanent residents into the United States for the next two months, citing the potential for “a potentially protracted economic recovery with persistently high unemployment if labor supply outpaces labor demand.”
Trump told reporters that he’d signed the order during the White House Coronavirus Task Force’s daily press briefing. He said that he signed the document just prior to entering the White House briefing room.
“In order to protect our great American workers, I’ve just signed an executive order temporarily suspending immigration into the United States. This will ensure that unemployed Americans of all backgrounds will be first in line for jobs as our economy reopens,” Trump said.
Although the president described the measure as one that suspends immigration into the U.S., in actuality the order he approved only prevents non-citizens living outside the country from obtaining a “Green Card” if they do not have a valid immigrant visa or other travel document that grants entry to the United States.
Additionally, non-citizens who are doctors, nurses, or other health care professionals are exempt from the suspension so long as they are seeking to enter the U.S. “to perform medical research or other research intended to combat the spread of COVID-19; or to perform work essential to combating, recovering from, or otherwise alleviating the effects of the COVID-19 outbreak.” Spouses and children of such individuals are exempt as well.
Moreover, the proclamation also exempts the spouses and children of American citizens, any member of the U.S. Armed Forces, their spouses and children, Iraqi or Afghan citizens employed by U.S. forces, children who are being adopted from abroad by U.S. citizens, and any non-citizens who can invest $1.8 million into an American business.
The administration’s Green Card moratorium arose from Trump’s late-night tweet Monday. “In light of the attack from the Invisible Enemy, as well as the need to protect the jobs of our GREAT American Citizens, I will be signing an Executive Order to temporarily suspend immigration into the United States!” he wrote, referring to the novel coronavirus pandemic.
Although some of Trump’s more hawkish advisers—such as Senior Policy Adviser Stephen Miller—have long favored putting a stop to all immigration to the United States, the president’s staff was caught off-guard after Trump tweeted he would do just that, according to two White House officials who were not authorized to speak publicly.
Administration officials began to walk back their boss’ words Tuesday morning, after White House Counsel’s Office attorneys began working on crafting the order, and as feedback rolled into White House officials on the effect a sweeping immigration ban would have on key sectors of the economy, the scope of the order grew more narrow. A senior White House official close to the process told Newsweek that work on drafting the order had continued through Tuesday night and well into Wednesday, with a final version gaining approval from White House Counsel Pat Cipollone and the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel shortly before Trump signed it.
One early version of the measure would have temporarily halted the use of non-immigrant visas such as the H-1B visa, which grants highly-educated workers entry to work for U.S.-based employers. While administration sources with knowledge of the drafting process told Newsweek that that version of the order had been envisioned with exceptions for agricultural and medical workers who have been deemed essential to fighting the Covid-19 pandemic. However, White House officials scrapped that iteration because of fierce opposition from groups representing broad swaths of the U.S. economy—including the technology, manufacturing, pharmaceutical, and biotechnology sectors—which employ non-Americans in key positions.
One CEO opposed to the order, online remittance service Remitly co-founder Matt Oppenheimer, said in a statement that the decision to suspend immigration to the U.S. was not only wrong, but “baseless and counterproductive.”
“Immigrants have a profound impact on this country, and are the backbone of many essential services, including farming, healthcare, and food delivery services,” he said.
By the time Trump announced the measure at Tuesday evening’s White House Coronavirus Task Force daily briefing, the order had changed again. He told reporters he would be signing a two-month moratorium on the issuance of “Green Cards,” which confer permanent resident status upon non-citizens.
While non-immigrant visas such as the H-1B are conditioned on employment with a particular company and expire after a set period of time, a “Green Card” allows a non-citizen to remain in the United States indefinitely, and to work for any employer.
Recent polls showed that temporarily restricting immigration during the pandemic draws support from both sides of the political aisle. A recent USA Today-Ipsos poll, for example, found that a majority of Americans—79 percent—said the U.S. government should temporarily stop immigration to help contain the virus’ spread.
But as for Trump and his administration’s response to the Covid-19 pandemic, recent polling also shows that large swaths of the electorate are displeased with both.
According to a YouGov poll commissioned by The Economist, 51 percent of respondents surveyed between April 19 and April 21 said they disapprove of Trump’s job performance as president. The same poll shows former Vice President Joe Biden holding a six-point lead over Trump, with 48 percent of respondents saying they preferring Biden to Trump’s 42 percent.
A separate poll conducted over the same time period by Rasmussen Reports, a pollster whose results are generally more favorable to the president, showed his approval rating even deeper underwater by an 11-point margin, with 55 percent of respondents disapproving of Trump and just 44 percent approving of his performance.
The conventional wisdom among Trumpworld veterans is that focusing on “suspension of all immigration” into the U.S., the president can galvanize his own base while forcing Democrats to make politically damaging statements that can later be weaponized in GOP attack ads.
Officials with the president’s reelection campaign also promoted his latest order before the details of what it included had been confirmed by the White House.
In a statement released at 1:30 pm on Tuesday, Trump campaign communications director Tim Murtaugh said the president’s immigration policies “just makes sense as the United States fights the war against the coronavirus” because “more competition for jobs would worsen unemployment and depress wages, especially in Black and Latino communities,” and because “preventing further entrance of people potentially infected with the virus is an additional safety measure for the country.”
Former Vice President Joe Biden—Trump’s likely general election opponent—criticized the president for pivoting to immigration instead of keeping his administration focused on establishing the testing regiment which experts say is a prerequisite to relaxing social distancing and returning the economy to normal.
“Rather than execute a swift and aggressive effort to ramp up testing, Donald Trump is tweeting incendiary rhetoric about immigrants in the hopes that he can distract everyone from the core truth: he’s moved too slowly to contain this virus, and we are all paying the price for it,” Biden said Tuesday evening in a statement released after Trump’s daily briefing had concluded.
Biden conceded that restricted travel policies meant to contain the novel coronavirus are “rational,” but added that it was “irrational” for Trump to not focus “the full force of the presidency” on the need to produce and distribute the Covid-19 tests that are necessary “to determine whether all people entering the U.S. — regardless of citizenship status — are carrying COVID-19, and to successfully contain the virus.”
“That’s one of the most glaring failures of this president’s response and sending inflammatory tweets to try to hide it helps no one,” he said.
Good morning. A top US government doctor has turned whistleblower after he says he was pushed out of his role in the search for a coronavirus vaccine. Rick Bright told the New York Times he believed he was dismissed as director of the US health department’s Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority because he resisted Donald Trump’s push to use an unproven malaria drug, hydroxychloroquine, as a treatment for Covid-19:
Contrary to misguided directives, I limited the broad use of chloroquine and hydroxychloroquine, promoted by the administration as a panacea, but which clearly lack scientific merit.
Trump and his cheerleaders at Fox News have recently backed away from promoting the possible benefits of hydroxychloroquine, after a trial of the drug in US veterans hospitals went badly. The president told reporters on Wednesday that he had “never heard of” Bright.
The studies so far. There have been several scientific studies of hydroxychloroquine and Covid-19, writes Julia Carrie Wong – but none have produced evidence that the drug works.
Even Trump says Georgia is reopening ‘too soon’
‘Too soon’: Trump ‘strongly’ disagrees with Georgia governor’s reopening plan – video
Despite expressing his support for the anti-lockdown movement, Trump said on Wednesday that he “strongly” disagrees with Georgia governor Brian Kemp’s decision to reopen bowling alleys, hair salons and other businesses this weekend. Many of the state’s business owners have also concluded it is “way too early” to return to normal.
But Kemp is far from the only leader eschewing the lockdown. In South Dakota, where Republican governor Kristi Noem never issued a stay-at-home order, hundreds of people are expected to attend motor races this weekend. And the mayor of Las Vegas told CNN she would “love everything open” and said her city could be a “control group” to assess the impact of the virus.
A tale of two states. Kentucky and Tennessee share a border, but their governors took very different approaches to their coronavirus outbreaks and, as Josh Wood reports, they have seen very different outcomes.
New voters go unregistered. The pandemic has made it almost impossible to register new voters using traditional methods in states across the US. That could have a huge impact on November’s election, writes Sam Levine.
A study says China’s official case numbers fell far short
Chinese soldiers wear protective face masks as they march along a street in Beijing. Photograph: Kevin Frayer/Getty Images
Mainland China reported 55,000 cases of coronavirus in the country’s first wave of infections. But a study by researchers in Hong Kong suggests that number would have been more like 232,000, had the later adopted definition of a Covid-19 case been applied from the outset.
By contrast, South Korea had some of the most reliable infection numbers, suffered a comparatively low death toll and is now beginning to return to something like normal life. Justin McCurry explains how it got there.
Why South Korea’s coronavirus death toll is comparatively low – video explainer
Meanwhile, in…
…Italy, relatives of those killed by the coronavirus have launched a Facebook effort to take legal action against the authorities, over what they claim were errors made at the start of the country’s outbreak.
A testing site in the northern California town of Bolinas. Photograph: Kate Munsch/Reuters
A doctor from Bolinas, California, says her small town north of San Francisco is hoping to become a “model” for the rest of the country, after resolving to test every single member of its community for Covid-19. The town raised $300,000 through GoFundMe to buy testing equipment for its population of 1,600, to help researchers understand how the virus spreads.
Early deaths. Tissue samples from the autopsy of a 57-year-old woman who died in northern California on 6 February have tested positive for Covid-19, suggesting the coronavirus started killing Americans weeks earlier than was originally thought.
A couple strolls through a flooded neighbourhood in Louisiana last December, in the wake of Hurricane Barry. Photograph: Scott Olson/Getty Images
‘Catastrophic’ flooding is coming soon. That’s according to new research, which has found that the number of people affected by floods will double to around 147 million annually by the end of the 2020s.
Iran puts its first military satellite in orbit. The reported launch of the “Noor” ratchets up existing tensions between Tehran and Washington, with the US secretary of state, Mike Pompeo, saying it violates a 2015 UN security council resolution.
A million-dollar art heist was caught on camera. A Dutch crime show broadcast footage of a man with a sledgehammer smashing his way into a museum in the Netherlands on 30 March, and fleeing with a Van Gogh painting under his arm.
Great reads
Hugh Jackman as the troubled Frank Tassone in HBO’s Bad Education. Photograph: AP
Is Bad Education Hugh Jackman’s best performance yet?
The X-Men and Greatest Showman star’s latest role is that of Frank Tassone, a real-life school district superintendent who turned out to have been skimming millions from the budget, in HBO’s new drama Bad Education. It’s the performance of his career, writes Charles Bramesco.
New Orleans musicians mourn with a new kind of show
The city that gave birth to jazz has lost hundreds to coronavirus, including one of its musical greats, the pianist Ellis Marsalis. Rather than go silent, his disciples have adapted to lockdown with online gigs, mobile concerts and internet recording sessions, as Oliver Laughland reports.
Therapy under lockdown: ‘I’m as terrified as my patients’
Gary Greenberg, a psychotherapist for 35 years, is still seeing his patients via videocall. Even Freud at his most misanthropic, he writes, could not have imagined that when we need each other most, the best we can do to care for each other is keep well apart.
Opinion: this crisis could help us face the climate challenge
If we spend the next few years restoring business as usual, we will have only a few years left to transform that business as usual into something else. It simply won’t be able to be done.
Last Thing: A Welsh minister’s hot mic Zoom moment
Welsh minister caught swearing about colleague during online session – video
A Welsh health minister has apologised after he forgot to turn off his mic during a Zoom call with the country’s assembly – and accidentally broadcast a sweary rant about a colleague. The four-letter audio clip has been preserved for posterity, as have the priceless reactions of his fellow assembly members.
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WASHINGTON — The House of Representatives is expected to pass a nearly $500 billion interim coronavirus bill Thursday that includes additional money for the small business loan program, as well as for hospitals and testing, making way for the legislation to become law by the end of the week.
The bill includes more than $320 billion for the Paycheck Protection Program created by the CARES Act passed late last month. That program, which quickly ran out of money, provides forgivable loans to small businesses that keep their employees on payroll.
Roughly $60 billion of the additional PPP funding will be set aside for businesses that do not have established banking relationships, such as rural and minority-owned companies. Expanding access to the aid was a priority for Democrats who worried that some businesses were being shut out of the fund.
The bill also provides $60 billion in loans and grants for the Small Business Administration’s disaster relief fund, $75 billion for hospitals and $25 billion for coronavirus testing.
The interim bill does not include the additional funding for states and local governments that Democrats had sought.
President Donald Trump is expected to sign the bill into law by the end of the week.
“We come to the floor with such heartache, such sorrow,” House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., said ahead of the vote on Thursday. “It’s about the lives and the livelihoods of the American people. That’s what this is about.”
Rep. Maxine Waters, D-Calif., said on the House floor that she was dedicating the legislation to her sister who was dying from the virus.
“I’m going to take a moment to dedicate this legislation to my dear sister who is dying in a hospital in St. Louis, Missouri, right now, infected by the coronavirus,” Waters said.
Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., also shared Thursday that her brother had died earlier in the week from the coronavirus.
House members arrived at the Capitol building Thursday wearing face masks and were instructed to remain six feet apart. Members were also broken up into eight different alphabetical groups based on their last name for voting in an effort to limit the number of people on the House floor.
The Senate reached a standoff earlier in the month over a Republican proposal that would have provided just $250 billion to replenish the depleted small-business funds. Democrats pushed to expand the scope of the bill to include more coronavirus emergency relief funds.
Although the bill ballooned into nearly half a trillion dollars, both parties have been referring to it as “interim” legislation meant to bridge the gap between the $2 trillion CARES Act and the next expansive round of coronavirus legislation.
“There will be a big, broad, bold COVID 4. For anyone who thinks this is the last train out of the station, that is not close to the case,” Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., said at a news conference with Pelosi on Tuesday after the Senate passed the interim bill.
Pelosi and Schumer said their proposal for the next round of legislation would include election reform, hazard pay for frontline workers, money to states and local governments, money for the postal service, and more.
But Republicans are already raising issues with the Democrats’ priorities for the next bill.
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., said on “The Hugh Hewitt Show” earlier this week that he was “not ready to just send a blank check down to states and local governments to spend any way they choose to,” stressing that more funding “has to be coronavirus-related.”
McConnell also suggested that the Senate would have to come back to Washington to pass the next measure, potentially creating a logistical hurdle for lawmakers who have been in their districts since the Senate adjourned at the end of March.
“We will not try to pass another rescue package by consent,” McConnell told reporters on Wednesday. The Senate has passed previous coronavirus legislation by voice vote or unanimous consent, meaning that lawmakers were not on record voting for or against the bills.
“My view is we ought to bring everybody back, have full participation to begin to think about the implications to the country’s future for this level of national debt.”
House members scrambled to return to Washington this week to vote on the interim bill after they could not agree to vote by unanimous consent.
Democrats have been more apprehensive about requiring lawmakers to fly back to Washington to work on the next bill in close quarters at the Capitol.
“If we were to come back prematurely and that were to set a bad example for people, that’s a bad thing,” Schumer said Tuesday. “I would like to be governed by the medical experts.”
Madison Elmer got the offer shortly after she and some friends started organizing a protest to oppose Wisconsin’s coronavirus stay-at-home order: An outside group wanted to chip in some money to help pay for the rally she plans this week.
Concerned about the strings that could be attached, Elmer turned it down.
“We felt like it had a political agenda behind it,” said the Wisconsin native, who declined to name the group. “We didn’t want to be pawns in somebody’s else’s game.”
As protesters across the country plan to challenge statewide coronavirus orders, they fiercely resist a growing narrative that they are aligned with or funded by national groups, gun rights organizations or entities supporting President Donald Trump’s reelection – even as some of those groups take part in the events.
The protests, focused on rolling back stay-at-home orders to slow the spread of coronavirus, snarled traffic in Michigan, blocking a hospital entrance. Thousands of cheering, flag-waving drivers cruised around Pennsylvania. Some demonstrations feature Trump campaign flags, but homemade signs – such as one in Tennessee that encouraged Americans to “fear your government,” not the coronavirus – are more prevalent.
They have continued even as some states tentatively began reopening businesses and easing distancing guidelines. More than 46,000 Americans have died from the disease, according to Johns Hopkins University. Trump encouraged states with fewer cases and deaths to begin bringing their economies back online.
Elmer said she started organizing a protest for Friday after hearing from friends who were struggling, not because they are sick but because they are running out of money. Friday was the day that Gov. Tony Evers’ social distancing restrictions were initially set to lift.
Instead, they have been extended to May 26.
“I was listening to all these concerns, and I was sick of not doing anything about it,” she said. “There are people suffering on both sides of this.”
Republicans divided by orders
Much like the tea party movement that sprang up a decade ago, the coronavirus protests are a cultural eddy of conservative ideologies, from gun rights advocates to religious groups. Though many organizers insist the “gridlock” events and protests are nonpartisan, many have taken on the flavor of Trump rallies – including a smattering of campaign signs and the president’s trademark red “MAGA” caps.
Nearly 60% of the nation’s voters say they are more concerned about additional deaths from the virus than they are about the economic impact, according to an NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll this week. That sentiment is more prevalent among Democrats than Republicans. GOP respondents are divided – almost half are more concerned with the economy.
Alvin Tillery, a political scientist at Northwestern University, sees the protests – and Trump’s exhortations – as an attempt to rally his base when he has faced intense criticism from Democrats for his early handling of the crisis.
“It’s directed toward the blue states. It’s meant to distract from Mr. Trump’s incredibly poor performance in managing the crisis,” Tillery said. “It distracts but also gives them an issue that activates their desire to vote against the Democrats.”
Trump has encouraged the groups, including from the podium of the White House briefing room. Friday, in a series of tweets, he suggested it was time to “liberate” Michigan, Minnesota and Virginia. He has been less clear about what he’d like those states to do, and he has batted away questions about whether the protesters flout social distancing guidelines he and his aides promoted.
The first item in those guidelines is to “listen and follow” directions from authorities. The guidance goes on to encourage Americans to work from home, cancel unnecessary travel and avoid gatherings of more than 10 people.
“Look, people – they want to get back to work, they got to make a living,” Trump said late Tuesday. “They have to take care of their family.”
Trump took a different approach a day later, saying he disagreed “strongly” with Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp’s decision to move toward reopening parts of that state’s economy. Kemp, a Republican and Trump ally, is pushing to reopen gyms, barber shops and other businesses as soon as Friday.
Trump said Wednesday he thought it was “just too soon.”
National groups involved?
Elmer stressed that she took no money or help from outside interests, but she’s aware that a group called Wisconsinites Against Excessive Quarantine plans an event Friday at the same place and at roughly the same time as the rally she organized. That entity is associated with a national gun rights group.
“Cool – if they’re supporting our mission, which is reopening Wisconsin,” she said.
Similarly, organizers reached by USA TODAY in Virginia, Tennessee, Indiana and several other states denied working with national groups but said they were inspired by protests elsewhere. Some tapped into guns rights or tea party organizations to help spread the word but claimed no formal affiliation with wider networks.
There is some overlap: In addition to Wisconsin, rallies in Pennsylvania, Ohio and Minnesota were promoted by Facebook pages started by brothers – Chris, Ben and Aaron Dorr – who have a network of gun advocacy organizations in multiple states.
Pennsylvanians Against Excessive Quarantine, which was launched by the Pennsylvania Firearms Association and led by Chris Dorr, was among a trio of groups that helped organize Monday’s rally in Harrisburg.
“A government that is powerful enough to make unilateral decisions that close down the means of production, well, they’re also then able, in a future school shooting or another Pittsburgh shooting, to reinvoke that same power and say we’re going to ban constitutional freedoms to bear arms,” said Dorr, the firearms association’s director.
Dorr downplayed the amount of money and coordination involved.
“These Facebook groups, they are completely free,” Dorr said. “All I did was start the page and then invited about 10 or 15 friends into it, and it spiraled out of control from there. There’s not even 5 bucks behind this whole thing.”
Tea party echoes
Several national groups that fueled the tea party movement during President Barack Obama’s administration said they are helping but not leading the groups. Many of the same charges about “AstroTurf” organizing were leveled against that movement, which sprang up partly in response to the Affordable Care Act.
“There is no central person organizing everything,” said Adam Brandon, president of FreedomWorks, a conservative group that focuses on economic issues.
Brandon said 25,000 people took his group’s “grassroots training program,” and many of them work with groups to stage the demonstrations. The training includes coaching organizers on how to promote their events, such as through writing news releases and contacting reporters.
Jenny Beth Martin, co-founder of the Tea Party Patriots, said the real organizers are “people who are fed up.”
Martin described the events as an organic movement that relies on social media. National groups such as hers, she said, blast out announcements posted to social media by local organizers to help spread the word.
“We want to make sure our supporters are aware events are happening,” Martin said.
Organizers dismissed claims of national organization.
“It’s nonsense,” said Robert Hall, a longtime conservative figure in Indiana who helped promote a protest in Indianapolis. “It’s all grassroots.”
Stephen Moore, an outside economic adviser to Trump, applauded the events but said he declined invitations to speak at them because he doesn’t want organizers to be seen as swayed by national interests. Moore cautioned protesters against wearing MAGA hats and other Trump merchandise, arguing it could turn off some supporters.
“It really has been a spontaneous combustion,” he told USA TODAY.
‘We’re winging this’
In some cases, the organization of the protests borders on chaotic.
Teo De Las Heras created a “ReOpen PA” Facebook page last week after spotting a similar effort in North Carolina. The tech company employee from Langhorne, Pennsylvania, told USA TODAY that the page quickly grew to more than 60,000 members. Within days, other members of the group organized a protest he attended but didn’t help to stage.
“We’re basically a grassroots thing right now,” said De Las Heras, a registered Republican, who said he abstained from voting in the 2016 election. “All the admin and moderators are basically just small-business owners and people impacted by this.”
He said an individual reached out to him about having a conversation about “some kind of national organization,” but he didn’t know the specifics nor the person’s group. “They’re contacting all the different influencers out there on social media,” De Las Heras said. He agreed to talk, but the meeting was canceled.
De Las Heras said his Facebook group was initially filled with people looking to impeach Gov. Tom Wolf, a Democrat, but he’s sought to keep it focused on the economy.
Keeping protesters on message – and avoiding an association with some of the hate speech that has cropped up – has been a challenge for organizers. Some protesters have reportedly flashed anti-Semitic signs. Organizers have rebuked that behavior, which has been rare, and said it distracts from the intended message.
In Virginia, David Britt, a spokesman for the Reopen Virginia “gridlock” rally, said the support keeps getting “exponentially bigger” since the event was organized last Thursday. He said his group is “not getting a dime” in outside funding or other help.
A self-described “constitutional conservative” and “political big-mouth on Facebook,” Britt said he was driven to action after watching last week’s rally in Lansing, Michigan. He proposed on Facebook that Virginians do the same thing.
“We’re winging this and flying by the seat of our pants,” said Britt, a mental health counselor from Fairfax, Virginia.
Virginia organizers are particularly upset about the length of Democratic Gov. Ralph Northam’s stay-at-home order, which is to run through June 10. They said it’s too extreme and will lead to unemployment and other unintended consequences, from homelessness to domestic violence.
Britt said organizers discouraged people from turning an event planned for Wednesday into a Trump rally or a protest over Second Amendment rights and instead urged them to stay “laser-focused” on their message about getting Virginians back to work.
“We’re trying to discourage that as much as possible,” Britt said, who described himself as a supporter of the president. “This isn’t a Trump rally. This isn’t a Republican rally.”
Contributing: Jorge L. Ortiz, USA TODAY; Lansing State Journal; Milwaukee Journal Sentinel
Long Island GOP Rep. Pete King on Wednesday ripped Mitch McConnell as the “Marie Antoinette of the Senate” after the majority leader suggested struggling states go bankrupt amid the coronavirus crisis.
King was reacting to McConnell’s comments on a radio talk show earlier in the day in which the senator dismissed the idea of more federal aid to states, claiming governors “would love to have free money.”
“McConnell’s dismissive remark that States devastated by Coronavirus should go bankrupt rather than get the federal assistance they need and deserve is shameful and indefensible,” King wrote on Twitter.
“To say that it is ‘free money’ to provide funds for cops, firefighters and healthcare workers makes McConnell the Marie Antoinette of the Senate.”
Marie Antoinette, the queen of France during the French Revolution, allegedly responded derisively to the news that peasants were starving, saying, “Let them eat cake.”
Long Island GOP Rep. Pete King (left) and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnellDennis A. Clark / AFP via Getty Images
During the appearance on “The Hugh Hewitt Show,” McConnell recommended that the federal government hit the “pause button” before doling out more cash to state and local governments.
“We all have governors regardless of party who would love to have free money,” McConnell said on the broadcast.
McConnell instead said that the states bore some responsibility for their debt due to “pension programs” and said bankruptcy should be the first option.
“I would certainly be in favor of allowing states to use the bankruptcy route,” he said. “It’s saved some cities, and there’s no good reason for it not to be available.”
But McConnell lamented the fact that the nation’s governors would insist on receiving more aid during a pandemic that has killed nearly 48,000 people nationwide.
“My guess is their first choice would be for the federal government to borrow money from future generations to send it down to them now so they don’t have to do that,” he said. “That’s not something I’m going to be in favor of.”
US President Donald Trump has said he strongly disagreed with Georgia state’s aggressive push to reopen its economy in the midst of the novel coronavirus pandemic, saying it was “just too soon” to lift restrictions.
Georgia Governor Brian Kemp, a Republican and Trump ally, is allowing businesses such as beauty salons, tattoo parlours and bowling alleys to reopen as soon as Friday. Trump said Georgia is not adhering to federal guidelines for states to restart their economies.
“It’s just too soon. I think it’s too soon,” Trump said on Wednesday. “They can wait a little bit longer, just a little bit – not much. Because safety has to predominate. We have to have that.”
Georgia has had more than 20,000 cases of COVID-19 and has seen more than 800 deaths.
But Trump at his daily briefing on the pandemic largely projected optimism in the nation’s battle against the virus. He said he was encouraged to see other states begin to open up their economies and ease restrictions.
Trump’s top adviser on the pandemic, Dr Anthony Fauci, said mitigation strategies were working, setting the stage for some states to reopen. He urged Kemp to proceed with caution.
“If I were advising the governor, I would tell him, be careful. I would tell him not to just turn the switch on and go,” Fauci said, adding that Georgia could see a rebound of the virus, further damaging the state’s economy.
In response, Kemp on Twitter praised Trump’s leadership but said the state would move forward as planned.
“Our next measured step is driven by data and guided by state public health officials. We will continue with this approach to protect the lives – and livelihoods – of all Georgians,” he said.
Given the favorable data trends, enhanced testing through @AUG_University, & advice of state healthcare leaders, we are taking another measured step forward. We remain focused on protecting lives – and livelihoods – in every part of Georgia. https://t.co/tWih2eRCcl#gapol
Trump‘s reopening guidelines recommend 14 days of declining new infections before moving to the reopening phase that Kemp has called for. That means testing healthcare workers and people who show any symptoms, as well as the screening of asymptomatic people.
The number of tests administered in Georgia had plateaued between 3,500 to 4,000 a day. However, on Wednesday, the state reported almost 6,000 tests over 24 hours, with Kemp saying on a conference call with Republican US Senator Kelly Loeffler that Georgia was “really ramping up” its capacity.
However, despite these measures, many businesses and workers are holding back for fear of illness.
Dewond Brown, 42, was laid off in March from an Atlanta-area restaurant as a line cook, making him worried about his high blood pressure. He told The Associated Press news agency he would not go back if his employer reopened.
“I understand everybody wants to get back to normal, but you hear the medical people say everyday it’s not time yet.”
HHS on Wednesday said providers next week can start registering for the uninsured fund and can begin submitting claims in early May. One estimate from the Kaiser Family Foundation said that the cost of treating uninsured coronavirus patients could range roughly between $14 billion and $42 billion.
The uninsured funding will come out of a $30 billion pot that will also go toward nursing facilities, dentists, providers that only service Medicaid patients and a potential second batch for virus hot spots. HHS declined to further detail how those funds would be distributed.
HHS has already sent $30 billion to providers from the bailout fund based on how much they got paid from Medicare — a formula the agency acknowledged overlooked vulnerable providers but said was necessary for the sake of rapidly sending out funds. The department said it will quickly send out a second $20 billion batch based on providers’ overall patient revenue, and not just what they take in from the seniors’ health care program.
Additionally, HHS is allocating $400 million for the Indian Health Service, as the Native American community has been hit hard by the virus.
HHS was given wide latitude to distribute the bailout fund included in the $2.2 trillion Cares Act. Congress is on the brink of approving another $75 billion for hospitals, which said the first bailout wasn’t enough to keep them afloat, even as some states begin to lift restrictions on elective procedures. The latest bill, expected to pass Congress this week, again gives HHS discretion to divvy up the funding.
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