Back on April 13, President Trump made an astonishing declaration, even for him, and he’s made some doozies. You may recall that this was the briefing at which he showed a strange campaign-style video featuring compliments from Democratic officials, which had clearly been inspired by a very similar compilation shown the night before on Sean Hannity’s Fox News show, already a de facto Trump celebration hour.
It was also the appearance in which he repeatedly made the claim that he had “total authority” to reopen the government and blathered on about how he’d saved hundreds of thousands of lives when he supposedly “closed” the country in the first place.
Kaitlan Collins of CNN asked him a question I think we all were wondering at that point:
You said, “When someone is president of the United States, their authority is total.” That is not true. Who — who told you that?
Trump didn’t answer. The next day Trump announced that it would be up to the governors to decide when they wanted to open up. (He said he would “authorize” them to do it, even though they don’t need any such authorization.) Various media outlets have reported that he was convinced to do this because it would be better for his electoral prospects if he can blame the governors for whatever goes wrong with the reopening.
Trump has often touted his alleged total authority, saying on one famous occasion that Article II of the Constitution gives him “the right to do whatever I want as president.” But when Collins asked him that question I was pretty sure I knew who told him that. The most powerful legal authority in the administration who believes that the president has almost unlimited power is Attorney General William Barr.
Barr made an appearance on Laura Ingraham’s show not long ago — I wrote about it here — and made some comments at the time which give us a clue about how he sees the president’s authority in this circumstance. Ingraham went on a tear about forcing churches to close during the pandemic and Barr correctly pointed out that unless the state was singling out religious institutions for closure while allowing other large gatherings, the First Amendment had not been violated.
What came next in that conversation reveals Barr’s real agenda, however, and possibly that of all the other schemers in the administration. At the time of the interview, the first rumblings from the astroturf groups in various swing states with Democratic governors were starting to be heard. Barr was on it already:
I think we have to be very careful to make sure this is — you know, that the draconian measures that are being adopted are fully justified, and there are not alternative ways of protecting people. And I think, you know, when this — when this period of time is — at the end of April expires, I think we have to allow people to adapt more than we have and not just tell people to go home and hide under the bed, but allow them to use other ways — social distancing and other means — to protect themselves.
Since then we’ve had heavily-covered small protests like this around the country demanding that governors rescind their stay-at-home orders:
On Tuesday, Barr appeared on Hugh Hewitt’s show and made clear that if anyone thought the top law enforcement officer in the country might find armed protests against public health measures to be a threat to public order, they needed to think again. He reiterated his belief that the states have imposed unnecessary and draconian measures and implicitly backed the protests, calling stay-at-home orders “disturbingly close to house arrest.”
The legal issues he believes are salient are civil liberties and something vague to do with interstate commerce. If I had to guess, I’d suggest that Barr intends to argue that states that are not open for business are somehow impinging on other states’ rights to conduct business across state lines. Either that, or he anticipates that there really will be checkpoints on the highways as infected people from Trump states decide to descend upon others. In any case, he announced that the federal government will join individual lawsuits to force states to open, whatever the task force guidelines endorsed by Vice President Pence may say.
According to the Detroit News, Barr has the support of the man who was widely considered the worst attorney general of recent history, Reagan administration stalwart Ed Meese. Apparently, Meese and some other right-wing extremists wrote to Barr earlier this week, accusing the states of “rampant abuses of constitutional rights and civil liberties” and exhorting him “to undertake an immediate review of all the orders that have been issued by the states and local governments across the nation.”
Is it possible that these people are unaware that these measures are being taken all over the world to contain a deadly virus? Do they think these governors are doing this out of some twisted ideological desire to destroy their constituents’ livelihoods and their states’ tax bases? Apparently so.
It’s hard to know how widely Barr plans to use Department of Justice levers to force Americans to risk their lives for Donald Trump. But he is definitely figuring out ways to help make that happen.
For a man without a medical degree or any other relevant expertise, he seems confident that he knows more than the public health experts about how to deal with a deadly pandemic:
You can’t just keep on feeding the patient chemotherapy and say well, we’re killing the cancer, because we were getting to the point where we’re killing the patient. And now is the time that we have to start looking ahead and adjusting to more targeted therapies.
If there is a worse analogy for what we’re going through, I haven’t heard it.
At the moment, social distancing is the only way we have of mitigating the spread of the disease and killing tens of thousands of people unnecessarily. There is no “targeted therapy,” metaphorical or otherwise. But Trump and Barr and the rest of the nihilist right are telling Americans that they should ignore all the scientific expertise and go out and play Russian roulette in workplaces, malls and restaurants, all in the name of freedom and liberty.
It’s true that Barr hasn’t said that Trump can simply issue an “order” forcing these state governments to go against all the pubic health recommendations. But he has almost certainly told him that the Department of Justice can figure out how to get the job done. There is more than one way to exercise “total authority.”
McConnell said the Senate will proceed “cautiously” to the next phase of coronavirus relief despite rapidly escalating demands for more aid from members of both parties. And he said that all 100 senators need to be around before Washington spends more money on an unprecedented economic rescue of workers and businesses caught in the virus’ fallout.
“You’ve seen the talk from both sides about acting, but my goal from the beginning of this, given the extraordinary numbers that we’re racking up to the national debt, is that we need to be as cautious as we can be,” McConnell said. “We need to see how things are working, see what needs to be corrected, and I do think that the next time we pass a coronavirus rescue bill we need to have everyone here and everyone engaged.”
After two weeks of bickering over McConnell’s initial proposal to send a quarter-billion dollars to revive the depleted Paycheck Protection Program, the Senate clinched a deal Tuesday providing more aid to small businesses and hospitals, and for disease testing. But it was neither easy nor pretty and the episode exposed the pitfalls of trying to legislate while the Senate is in recess.
McConnell said his goal is still to bring the Senate back on May 4 despite uncertainty nationwide over the spread of a virus that has killed more than 40,000 Americans. But it’s clear that the ongoing recess is becoming untenable: Two Republican senators openly fumed on the Senate floor on Tuesday about passing bills without input from individual lawmakers of Congress. Had either objected, the bipartisan deal would have been derailed and senators would have been hauled back to D.C.
“It’s time to do our job. It’s time to return to Washington and get to work,” said Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah). “We can’t legislate without our members here.”
Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) said he would not demand a recorded vote that would have upended McConnell and Minority Leader Chuck Schumer’s plans to quickly pass the aid package. But he warned of the “massive debt Congress is creating,” called for the economy to open up and officially registered his opposition to the bill. He also offered a motion to allow remote voting, but McConnell blocked it.
Iranian Revolutionary Guard boats come close to a U.S. warship in the Persian Gulf near Kuwait, in this photo provided by the U.S. Navy.
AP via U.S. Navy
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AP via U.S. Navy
Iranian Revolutionary Guard boats come close to a U.S. warship in the Persian Gulf near Kuwait, in this photo provided by the U.S. Navy.
AP via U.S. Navy
President Trump says the U.S. Navy should fire on Iranian boats if they continue to harass U.S. warships in the Gulf, a move that raises the prospect of open hostilities between the two rivals.
The president’s Wednesday morning tweet came shortly after Iran announced it had successfully launched a military satellite into orbit for the first time.
With the U.S. and Iran both battling to control a coronavirus outbreak at home, the ongoing friction between the two countries had receded from the headlines.
But Wednesday’s developments point to an escalation of tensions that have been building in recent days.
Last week, U.S. military ships were in the northern Persian Gulf for exercises. The U.S. warships were in international waters, though relatively close to Iran.
I have instructed the United States Navy to shoot down and destroy any and all Iranian gunboats if they harass our ships at sea.
Iran sent small boats, known as “fast boats,” toward the American warships, with one coming as close as 10 yards, according to the Navy, which released a video. The Pentagon accused Iran of sending 11 fast boats to make “dangerous and harassing approaches” to six American warships.
These kinds of standoffs in the Gulf have been taking place for many years. The U.S. and Iran usually observe unwritten rules and the confrontations rarely escalate into actual hostilities, with occasional exceptions.
However, Trump’s instruction for the Navy to shoot Iranian boats raises the ante.
Air Force Gen. John Hyten, the vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, spoke to reporters at the Pentagon shortly after Trump tweeted. Hyten said he “liked that the president warned an adversary.”
“If we see a hostile act, if we see hostile intent, we have the right to respond up to and including lethal force, and if it happens in the Gulf, if it happens in any way, we will respond with overwhelming lethal force if necessary to defend ourselves,” Hyten added.
In a separate development also likely to heighten tensions, Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps said it had launched a military satellite into orbit for the first time. This raised the possibility that Iran could use the technology to develop intercontinental ballistic missiles.
“Today, the world’s powerful armies do not have a comprehensive defense plan without being in space, and achieving this superior technology that takes us into space and expands the realm of our abilities is a strategic achievement,” Gen. Hossein Salami, the leader of the Revolutionary Guard, was quoted as saying by The Associated Press.
Trump has pursued a policy of “maximum pressure” against Iran, which has included the U.S.’s unilateral withdrawal in 2018 from an international nuclear deal with Iran.
Iran has subsequently abandoned the limitations of the treaty and has pushed to expand its capabilities in areas outside the treaty, including satellite launches. Iran experienced several failed launches in recent months.
U.S.-Iran tensions ratcheted up near the end of last year. In January, the U.S. carried out an airstrike that killed Iran’s most prominent military official, Qassim Soleimani. Iran responded with missile strikes on military bases in Iraq that were hosting U.S. forces.
The two countries pulled back from that confrontation, but the latest developments point to the possibility of a new round of tensions.
For more than a decade, Ms. Nagar, an Indian citizen, had steadily built a life in the United States but she was now back in India, awaiting a visa extension. She and her husband, who works for Microsoft, have applied for green cards. They hung an American flag from their balcony in their home in Washington State, where Ms. Nagar had given birth to the couple’s 5-year-old daughter.
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – U.S. Attorney General William Barr waded further into a debate over governors’ stay-at-home orders meant to slow the spread of the new coronavirus, saying he would not rule out legal action against states if he thought their actions infringed civil liberties.
Governors across the nation have closed businesses and schools and banned social gatherings in the face of a pandemic that has killed more than 43,000 Americans. Over the past week, a smattering of scattered protests have called for those orders to be eased to dull the disease’s heavy economic toll.
“We’re looking carefully at a number of these rules that are being put into place. And if we think one goes too far, we initially try to jawbone the governors into rolling them back or adjusting them,” Barr said during a radio interview on the Howard Hewitt show on Tuesday.
“And if they’re not and people bring lawsuits, we file statements of interest and side with the plaintiffs … As lawsuits develop, as specific cases emerge in the states, we’ll take a look at them.”
His comments come after the Justice Department recently sided with a Mississippi church that sued the city of Greenville over state shut-down orders on the grounds it was imposing on religious freedoms.
In that case, the Justice Department filed a statement of interest in support of Temple Baptist Church, which claims Greenville is seeking to prevent it from holding drive-in church services that comply with social-distancing guidelines.
Some states are aiming to reopen parts of their economies, while others have taken a more cautious approach, saying they need more testing before things can return to normal.
Barr said on Tuesday that stay-at-home orders come “disturbingly close to house arrest” but could, in some cases, be justified to protect public safety.
He said there was a distinction between stay-at-home orders requiring people to maintain a distance of 6 feet (1.8 m) or to wear masks in public. Those orders “are fine” because they reduce the risk of transmission.
Barr said he was more concerned about “blunter” orders which call for staying at home or shutting down a business “regardless of the capacity of the business to operate safely.”
Reporting by Sarah N. Lynch; Editing by Scott Malone and Bernadette Baum
Earlier today, the Senate passed a $484 billion bipartisan bill to supplement the $2 trillion Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security (CARES) Act.
What Were The Initial Stimulus Payments?
The CARES Act included many components including direct stimulus checks to Americans. These payments, which the Treasury Department started disbursing last weekto individuals who qualified, were a one-time remittance of:
$1,200 for individuals
$2,400 for married couples
$500 for each dependent child 16-years-old or younger
Additional Second Stimulus Check Proposals:
There have been several proposals floating around Congress to provide Americans with financial relief in light of the economic impact caused by coronavirus. The most widely circulated was the Emergency Money for the People Act introduced by Tim Ryan and Ro Khanna. Their proposal would have provided additional and ongoing payments with qualifying Americans receiving a $2,000 monthly payment for up to 12 months. Eligibility for the $2,000 stimulus check would depend on age, filing status, and income:
If you are single, your income is less than $130,000, and you are over the age of 16, you would receive $2,000 per month;
If you are married and your income is less than $260,000, you would receive at least $4,000 per month;
If you have dependent children, you would receive an additional $500 payment per child each month, capped at three children.
Does The Bill Include Additional Stimulus Payments To Individuals?
Unfortunately, the $484 billion bill passed by the Senate does not include provisions for additional stimulus checks for individuals.
Instead, the bill focused on replenishing the Paycheck Protection Program (PPP), which is aimed at small businesses and offers guarantees for forgivable loans if the majority of the money is used to retain employees. Lawmakers scrambled to pass the bill after the initial PPP funding from the CARES Act was quickly depleted.
$320 billion: the vast majority of the funds in the new Senate bill, would replenish the Paycheck Protection Program;
$60 billion: would be allocated to the Small Business Administration’s disaster relief fund;
$75 billion: would be made available for hospitals;
$25 billion: would go towards coronavirus testing
While the bill has only passed the Senate, the House is expected to vote and pass the bill on Thursday. President Trump has signaled that he will sign it.
While the bill won bipartisan support, there was disagreement among Senate leaders about what would come next. Minority Leader Chuck Schumer was already laying the groundwork for additional measures. “I’d remind my colleagues this is an interim measure,” Schumer said. “There’s plenty of hard-won provisions that we Democrats are pleased with but it’s ultimately a building block. In the weeks ahead Congress must prepare another major bill similar in size and ambition to the Cares Act. The next bill must be big and bold and suited to the needs of a beleaguered nation.”
However, Majority Leader Mitch McConnell struck a different tone. He told The Washington Post that it was time to “push the pause button” on additional spending legislation.” Those hoping for additional stimulus payments are out of luck with the most recently bill.
Coronavirus stimulus payments have started going out to Americans. They’re valued at up to $1,200 per adult and $500 per dependent child and were authorized by the CARES Act to mitigate the financial damage caused by the great lockdown.
If you haven’t received your payment yet and want to get it ASAP, you may need to act very quickly to provide the IRS with your updated information. Here’s when you need to act — and how to get what you need.
Image source: Getty Images.
You may need to provide the IRS with your current bank information
The IRS is sending both paper checks and direct deposit payments. But while direct deposits have started, paper checks won’t begin going out until the week of April 20. Just five million checks will be mailed per week, which means it could take five months for everyone waiting for a check to get their stimulus payment.
You don’t want to be left without your check until August. You need to make sure the IRS has your correct bank information so they can get your check to you via direct deposit. They’ll get that information from your 2018 or 2019 tax return if you filed one and provided your bank details. If you receive Social Security or railroad retirement benefits, the IRS can also send your check to the account on file for those payments.
But if you have outdated bank info on your past returns, or didn’t provide your bank details, you’ll need to tell the IRS about your current bank account. You’ll be able to use the online tool to do that if you don’t have direct deposit information on file yet or if your information was inaccurate and resulted in a refund check.
And if you didn’t file a return in either 2018 or 2019 and aren’t receiving Social Security or railroad retirement benefits, you’ll need to provide the IRS with not just your bank details but also with other basic financial information about your income and dependents. Otherwise, you won’t get any payment at all, even by mail.
You need to update your bank details before the IRS begins processing your payment, or it will be too late. Since they’ve begun sending payments already, you really need to act now.
How can you get your details to the IRS?
The IRS has created a simple online website you can use to check the status of your payment and to update your bank information. The same site also allows you to submit the financial info needed to get your check if you didn’t file a return in 2018 or 2019.
To find out if there’s still time to update your bank info, visit the site and click on the “Get My Payment” option. If your payment shows as pending or processed, you cannot change your bank details any more — it’s too late. If it doesn’t, you have the option to provide your updated info if things have changed since your last tax return was filed.
If you haven’t filed a return at all and don’t get Social Security or railroad retirement benefits, visit the same site but click on “Non-Filers: Enter Payment Info Here.” Provide information on your dependents and your income to prove eligibility for the coronavirus stimulus to allow the IRS to determine the amount you’re owed and to tell them where to send your money.
Don’t wait to act
If the IRS sends your check to the wrong bank account, the bank will reject the money if the account is closed. The IRS will be notified and mail a paper check, but this means it will take a lot more time to get your money. If the account is still open but you can’t access it for some reason, you’ll have to contact the bank to figure out what your options are.
And if the IRS doesn’t have your bank details, they’ll mail your money to your last known address. But it could take months until they get around to sending it.
To make sure you don’t get stuck waiting for your money, make sure the IRS has the information they need to get it to you quickly. Visit the IRS site today to check your payment status and update your data while there’s still time.
WASHINGTON – President Donald Trump’s intention to suspend parts of the U.S. immigration system could have wide-ranging implications for industries that rely on foreign workers, experts say.
Trump has made immigration restrictions a hallmark of his administration, and his response to coronavirus has included a number of ways to curtail entry into the country. He has halted nonessential travel along the northern and southern borders, suspended flights from China and Europe and suspended regular visa services at U.S. embassies and consulates.
But if immigration was suspended broadly, it could discourage a wide variety of employment and may have a major effect on industries where millions of immigrants work, like health care, manufacturing, agriculture and academics.
Trump announced his intention in a tweet Monday to protect the jobs of American citizens during the pandemic by “signing an Executive Order to temporarily suspend immigration into the United States!”
About 22 million people have filed for unemployment claims since Trump declared a national emergency a month ago. Kayleigh McEnany, the White House press secretary, quoted Trump in blaming lower wages and higher unemployment on decades of record immigration.
“President Trump is committed to protecting the health and economic well-being of American citizens as we face unprecedented times,” she said in a statement. “At a time when Americans are looking to get back to work, action is necessary.”
Trump indicated Tuesday that his executive order would halt new green card awards for at least 60 days and would be reevaluated after that period. The president stressed that his move would not affect temporary workers, such as seasonal workers arriving from other countries through several visa programs.
“It would be wrong and unjust for Americans laid off by the virus to be replaced with new immigrant labor flown in from abroad,” the president told reporters. “We must first take care of the American worker.”
Trump said his executive order, which the White House had not yet provided, would “only apply to individuals seeking a permanent residency, in other words, those receiving green cards.” Trump said he would most likely sign the executive order Wednesday.
Sen. Tom Cotton, R-Ark., retweeted Trump and said it’s important to get people who were laid off back to work “before we import more foreigners to compete for their jobs.”
Roy Beck, president of NumbersUSA, a group that advocates for lower levels of legal and illegal immigration, said skyrocketing unemployment in the country right now is all the reason necessary to close the nation’s borders.
“The president’s comments reflect a sensitivity to a primary purpose of all immigration laws of every country, and that is to protect a nation’s vulnerable workers,” Beck said. “With tens of millions of Americans who want to work full time not able to, most immigration makes no sense today, and to allow it to continue at its current level at this time would show a callous disregard for those enduring deep economic suffering.”
But critics argued that Trump’s proposal was entirely political and could cause devastating harm to the economy if implemented. Ben Johnson, executive director of the American Immigration Lawyers Association, suggested Trump is trying to score political points with his base.
“He’s doing this at a time when there is nobody traveling,” Johnson told USA TODAY. “Everybody needs to understand that this is a political strategy and if it ever turns into a policy strategy, it’s going to make things much worse, not better.”
Before details of Trump’s proposal were provided, the vow raised alarms across a variety of industries.
“We urge President Trump not to endanger the country’s economic recovery by closing its economy to the rest of the world,” Jason Oxman, CEO of the of the Information Technology Industry Council, a trade group for companies such as Amazon, Facebook and Microsoft, told USA TODAY.
Oxman said some of the most recognizable and dynamic American companies were started by immigrants. He said the country won’t benefit from shutting down legal immigration while tech workers play an essential role in the response to COVID-19.
“They will be vital to the U.S. economic recovery and must remain part of the workforce,” Oxman said.
“Immigrants are vital to our company & the nation’s economy,” Smith said. “As we focus on recovery for all Americans, we must not lose sight of the critical importance of immigrants.”
Six million U.S. health care workers are foreign born, including about 29% of all doctors, 38% of home health aides and 23% of retail-store pharmacists, according to the Migration Policy Institute.
“Trump’s ill-defined, insidious and irrational tweet insults the thousands of immigrants who are risking their lives in the fight against COVID-19 as health care, pharmacy, manufacturing, transportation, and grocery workers, among other critical roles,” said Nihad Awad, national executive director of the Council on American-Islamic Relations. “Banning these and other immigrants from our nation amid the COVID-19 pandemic not only undermines our values but would result in fewer essential workers and makes us less safe.”
Greg Siskind, an immigration lawyer in Tennessee, questioned the message Trump’s proposal sends to foreign executives at U.S. manufacturing plants in his state such as Nissan and Volkswagen.
“Telling those companies that their Japanese executives and German executives are not welcome in the United States to oversee their plants is going to be an interesting conversation for those governors and senators,” Siskind told USA TODAY. “There are hundreds of thousands of workers in our region that are employed by those companies. I am sure that that is going to be a difficult message.”
More than 1 million international students attend colleges nationwide and contribute more than $39 billion to the economy, according to the American Council on Education. Siskind said foreign students subsidize domestic classmates because they pay full tuition that schools rely upon.
“All these colleges are no doubt getting inundated today with messages from students who have been accepted, trying to make final decisions on where they’re going,” Siskind said. “There are a lot of departments at universities around the country that cannot stay open without international students, especially in the sciences. It has huge implications for research and academia in the United States if this stands.”
IF ALL GOES AS PLANNED, by Thursday morning, the HOUSE will be voting on the half-trillion-dollar coronavirus relief bill that just passed the Senate, readying it for a trip to the White House for President DONALD TRUMP’S signature.
AND, AT THE SAME TIME, REPUBLICANS will begin unfurling a new political attack against the Democrats with whom they negotiated this package: They wasted time and cost Americans jobs.
REPUBLICANS ARE PLANNING to blame Democrats for sky-high jobless numbers after they spent two weeks pushing to broaden the package to include funding for priorities like hospitals and coronavirus testing. Republicans had preferred a smaller bill, with just more money for small-business loans.
WE SAW THE BEGINNING OF THIS STRATEGY on Tuesday, when House Minority Leader KEVIN MCCARTHY told Lou Dobbs on Fox Business that the new jobless claims data this week will be “Nancy Pelosi’s unemployment list. … A lot of people are going to be laid off, a lot of small businesses are going to close because she held it up again to play politics, just like she did with the CARES Act, trying to put into that more money for the Kennedy Center for the Arts, changing election law, Green New Deal, Planned Parenthood, sanctuary cities.”
REPUBLICANS’ CLAIM is a stretch, as are many political critiques. But the broadside is instructive in understanding the outlines of the GOP’s political strategy six months before what could be one of the strangest elections of our lifetime.
JUST AFTER THEY NEGOTIATED THIS DEAL WITH DEMOCRATS, Republicans plan on smacking them across the face with it, breaking the tacit agreement that negotiated, bipartisan policy accords should not become political wedges.
DEMOCRATS, of course, say that they were able to turn a simple $251 billion business lending package into a robust, $500 billion bill that gave much-needed money to hospitals, testing and other priorities. And Democrats say they proposed the outlines of the eventual deal a few weeks ago, so they have a credible case to make that it was Republicans who were slow to come around to that reality.
IN WRAPPING UP THE PACKAGE TUESDAY, MCCONNELL said several important things:
— HE SAID he will not begin considering another phase of coronavirus stimulus until the Senate is back in session. This is a pump-the-brakes moment for MCCONNELL. He also toldBURGESS EVERETT this in an interview after the bill passed: “We need to see how things are working, see what needs to be corrected, and I do think that the next time we pass a coronavirus rescue bill we need to have everyone here and everyone engaged.”
— MCCONNELL STARTED SOUNDING THE ALARM on the amount of money Congress is spending. “We’ve allocated a stunning amount of money — $2.2 trillion — knowing full well that that probably wouldn’t be enough. … I think it’s also time to begin to think about the amount of debt that we’re adding to our country and the future impact of that.”
YOU’LL HEAR A LOT OF DEMOCRATS and some Republicans say that the GOP cares about the debt only when it’s convenient to them — maybe so, maybe not. But this does signal MCCONNELL has little interest in the large-scale bill that some are talking about as the next phase of rescue efforts.
… SPEAKING OF THAT — CNBC’S @kaylatausche: “NEW: Sec. @stevenmnuchin1 says a fourth stimulus bill ‘will most likely’ be all the U.S. needs if economy reopens. Mnuchin’s list: Infrastructure (roads, bridges broadband) … Incentives for restaurants, sports, entertainment … Payroll tax cut … $$ for states.”
HEADS UP … Rep. THOMAS MASSIE (R-Ky.) is heading to D.C. ahead of the vote on the coronavirus package Thursday. REMEMBER: As long as the House has a quorum — 215 lawmakers — they have the power to basically ignore whatever he wants to do.
Good Wednesday morning. Happy Earth Day.
DEPT. OF UGH … WAPO’S LENA SUN: “Even as states move ahead with plans to reopen their economies, the director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention warned Tuesday that a second wave of the novel coronavirus will be far more dire because it is likely to coincide with the start of flu season.
“‘There’s a possibility that the assault of the virus on our nation next winter will actually be even more difficult than the one we just went through,’ CDC Director Robert Redfield said in an interview with The Washington Post. ‘And when I’ve said this to others, they kind of put their head back, they don’t understand what I mean.’
“‘We’re going to have the flu epidemic and the coronavirus epidemic at the same time,’ he said. Having two simultaneous respiratory outbreaks would put unimaginable strain on the health-care system, he said.” WaPo
NEW via STEVEN SHEPARD: A POLITICO/MORNING CONSULT POLL shows wide support for continued social distancing measures, and majorities still say they are more concerned with the public health implications of the coronavirus.
BUT THE POLL — conducted Saturday and Sunday as small protests percolated in a handful of states — does show an uptick in the percentage of voters worried about the U.S. economy. Just over a third in the new poll, 35%, say they are more concerned about the economic impact of the coronavirus, up 6 points from last week. The majority, 58%, say they are more worried about the public health impacts, down 6 points from 64% last week.
REALITY CHECK: Ending social distancing now is still a fringe position. Only 14% say Americans should stop social distancing to stimulate the economy even if it means increasing the spread of the virus, though that’s up 4 points from last week. More than three in four, 76%, say Americans should continue to social distance for as long as necessary, even if it means continued economic damage. Toplines…Crosstabs
SILVER LINING … AP: “As people stay home, Earth turns wilder and cleaner,”by Seth Borenstein: “An unplanned grand experiment is changing Earth. As people across the globe stay home to stop the spread of the new coronavirus, the air has cleaned up, albeit temporarily. Smog stopped choking New Delhi, one of the most polluted cities in the world, and India’s getting views of sights not visible in decades. Nitrogen dioxide pollution in the northeastern United States is down 30%. Rome air pollution levels from mid-March to mid-April were down 49% from a year ago. Stars seems more visible at night.”
HAPPENING TODAY: ANNA and JAKE will talk with former Secretary of State JOHN KERRY about his push on climate change, the 2020 campaign and the U.S. response to the coronavirus at 4 p.m. Register
— NEW: Maryland Gov. LARRY HOGAN will join us Thursday at 9 a.m. for a virtual Playbook Interview about the behind-the-scenes efforts that secured 500,000 coronavirus testing kits for Maryland, what it will take to reopen the state economy and how governors are trying to collaborate with the White House on the pandemic response. Sign up
WSJ: “Global Markets Steadier After Two Days of Oil-Driven Turbulence,” by Joanne Chiu and Avantika Chilkoti: “International markets regained some poise Wednesday, as investors came to terms with the effects of this week’s spectacular collapse in U.S. oil prices. Futures linked to the S&P 500 rose 0.8% early Wednesday, suggesting U.S. shares could gain. …
“Oil futures remained under pressure. Prices for West Texas Intermediate crude for June delivery fell about 5.4% to $10.95 a barrel, a day after the U.S. oil benchmark’s lowest close in 21 years. Brent crude, the global equivalent, erased early gains, falling 9% to $17.60 a barrel.” WSJ
NYT’S BEN PROTESS, STEVE EDER and DAVID ENRICH: “Trump (the Company) Asks Trump (the Administration) for Hotel Relief”: “President Trump’s signature hotel in the nation’s capital wants a break on the terms of its lease. The landlord determining the fate of the request is Mr. Trump’s own administration. …
“In recent weeks, the president’s family business has inquired about changing its lease payments, according to people familiar with the matter, which the federal government has reported amount to nearly $268,000 per month. …
“Eric Trump, the president’s son, confirmed that the company had opened a conversation about possible changes to the terms of the lease, which could include adjustments to future monthly payments. The Trump Organization has said it is current on its rent.
“The younger Mr. Trump said the company was asking the G.S.A. for any relief that it might be granting other federal tenants. The president still owns the company, but his eldest sons run the day-to-day operations. ‘Just treat us the same,’ Eric Trump said in a statement on Tuesday. ‘Whatever that may be is fine.’”
WAPO’S SEUNG MIN KIM and TOLUSE OLORUNNIPA: “Some Senate Republicans look for ways the federal government can play a bigger role in coronavirus testing”: “Led by Sens. Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn.) and Roy Blunt (R-Mo.), Senate Republicans have largely envisioned the federal government taking a lead role in experimenting with diagnostic and serological tests for the coronavirus, even if some of the ideas ultimately fail — the thinking being that the government can take chances that perhaps the private sector cannot. …
“Sen. Bill Cassidy (R-La.), has proposed a centralized immunity registry that would track who would be protected from infecting others with the coronavirus, modeling it on existing systems for other diseases that record who has been vaccinated.”
— LAT: “California becomes first state to recommend coronavirus tests for some without symptoms,”by Emily Baumgaertner: “California public health officials have partially lifted restrictions on who should receive tests for the coronavirus, recommending for the first time that asymptomatic people living or working in high-risk settings such as nursing homes, prisons and even some households should now be considered a priority.
“The move makes California the first state to broaden restrictive federal guidelines and reflects increasing availability of testing, as major labs report sufficient supplies and excess capacity to run more procedures, according to the public health department. The developments are viewed by some experts as a significant step toward establishing widespread testing in California to identify and isolate every coronavirus case.”
THE WSJ ED BOARD is not interested in the president’s new immigration policy: “Trump’s Immigration Distraction: There’s no economic or health case for blocking all immigrants”: “One question is why this is necessary even for public-health reasons. Mr. Trump has barred travel to the U.S. from much of the world, and his Administration has stopped processing nearly all new visas for foreigners.
“Foreign governments have suspended nonessential travel to the U.S. All of this plus mandatory 14-day quarantines for new arrivals should block any new coronavirus surge from overseas. … Beyond the damage to life and livelihood, the greatest threat from the coronavirus are policy mistakes that prolong the economic pain. Democrats want to use the pandemic as an excuse to put government in charge of much more of the private economy. Now Mr. Trump wants to limit America’s supply of human talent. If they succeed, we will wake up in 2021 having defeated Covid-19 but at the high cost of a diminished economic future.”
FOR THE OVERSIGHT PANEL … BRIAN FALER: “Why the U.S. government is sending checks to dead people”: “The agency is under pressure to push the money out as quickly as possible — even as the coronavirus is simultaneously killing tens of thousands of people. The IRS is supposed to check death records before okaying the payments, but the government does not have real-time information on who dies. That data percolates up from the states, and there is invariably a lag in reporting.”
WASHINGTON INC. — “Coronavirus fuels K Street lobbying gush, new disclosures show,” by Theo Meyer: “Airlines, pharmaceutical companies, utilities and shrimp processors are among the industries that have stepped up their Washington lobbying in an effort to influence the federal government’s response to coronavirus.
“New disclosure filings show how of much of corporate America — as well as small companies that had never hired lobbyists before — have pressed Congress and the Trump administration for help as the virus has placed entire industries in peril.
“At least 3,200 companies, trade groups and other organizations lobbied on the $2.2 trillion relief bill that President Donald Trump signed into law last month and other efforts to respond to coronavirus, according to an analysis of disclosure filings by the Center for Responsive Politics. They include giants such as Apple, CVS and Toyota, as well as smaller players, such as the American Shrimp Processors Association.” POLITICO
DAVID SIDERS: “How the coronavirus crisis is remaking the swing state map”: “The economic and political impact of the coronavirus crisis is beginning to reverberate across the presidential battleground states, creating unforeseen red-state opportunities for Joe Biden but also offering promise for Donald Trump in several Democratic-leaning states where his prospects once seemed limited.
“Interviews with more than 30 political strategists, campaign advisers and officials in both parties paint a portrait of an expanded swing state electoral map, upended by the coronavirus pandemic and the economic dislocation it has caused.
“In the industrial Midwestern states that unexpectedly flipped to Trump in 2016, Democrats have more cause than ever to believe they can win back states such as Wisconsin and Michigan. In Arizona and Georgia, traditionally red states, party officials see the virus’ disproportionate effect on communities of color enhancing conditions for victory.
“At the same time, the widespread disruption has presented the president with an opportunity to improve his standing in competitive states such as Nevada and New Hampshire, where Trump was presumed to be at a slight disadvantage.” POLITICO
TRUMP’S WEDNESDAY: The president and first lady Melania Trump will participate in a tree planting ceremony on the South Lawn at noon. He will have lunch with Secretary of State Mike Pompeo at 1 p.m. The coronavirus task force will hold a press briefing at 5 p.m.
— COMING ATTRACTIONS?: “Trump itches for a coronavirus road show,”by Gabby Orr: “President Donald Trump is eager to hit the road. As his own health officials continue to warn against non-essential travel, Trump has privately urged aides over the past week to start adding official events back to his schedule, including photo ops and site visits that would allow him to ditch Washington for a few hours. The day trips would be similar to those Vice President Mike Pence has made visiting businesses during the viral pandemic, according to three people familiar with the planning.”
FOR THE RECORD — “Coronavirus Death in California Came Weeks Before First Known U.S. Death,” by NYT’s Thomas Fuller and Mike Baker: “Officials in Santa Clara County, Calif., announced late Tuesday that two residents there died of the coronavirus in early and mid-February, making them the earliest known victims of the pandemic in the United States. The new information may shift the timeline of the virus’s spread through the country weeks earlier than previously believed.” NYT
SCOOPLET — PER DANIEL LIPPMAN: The Department of Veterans Affairs is spending almost $75,000 on masks with MyPillow, run by Trump friend Mike Lindell, according to a recent purchase order on USASpending.gov. Lindell said that the order has not been filled yet because the company has yet to find a subcontractor to actually make the masks, since the VA wants KN95 and disposable masks and MyPillow only makes cloth masks. Asked if MyPillow is going to profit off the order, Lindell said, “We’re not making one dime of profit.”
HMM — “Donna Shalala failed to disclose stock sales in 2019 in violation of federal law,”by the Miami Herald’s Alex Daugherty: “Miami Democratic Rep. Donna Shalala, the lone House Democrat on the committee set up to oversee $500 billion in taxpayer money being used for coronavirus-related payouts to large businesses, violated federal law when she failed to disclose stock sales while serving in Congress.
“Shalala told the Miami Herald on Monday she sold a variety of stocks throughout 2019 to eliminate any potential conflicts of interest after she was elected to Congress in November 2018. But the transactions were not publicly reported as required by the STOCK Act, a 2012 law that prohibits members of Congress and their employees from using private information gleaned from their official positions for personal benefit and requires them to report stock sales and purchases within 45 days. Shalala’s office said the congresswoman and her financial adviser made a mistake.”
THE TRUMP ADMINISTRATION — “DeVos bars undocumented college students from emergency aid,” by Michael Stratford: “The Trump administration on Tuesday prohibited undocumented college students from receiving emergency federal cash assistance for expenses like food, child care and housing.
“The economic rescue law passed by Congress gives $6 billion to colleges to dole out to students for expenses stemming from the disruption on campuses caused by the pandemic. But Education Department officials in new guidance said the money can go only to students who qualify for federal financial aid — U.S. citizens and some legal permanent residents. That prevents undocumented students from accessing the money, although the law includes no explicit restrictions on which students could receive the emergency grants.
“The group that won’t receive assistance includes hundreds of thousands of members of the Obama-era Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, which has provided work authorization and deportation protections for undocumented people who were illegally brought to the United States as children or overstayed a visa. The Supreme Court is considering whether the program should continue and is expected to issue a decision by June.” POLITICO
— “Director of U.S. agency key to vaccine development leaves role suddenly amid coronavirus pandemic,” by Stat’s Nicholas Florko: “Rick Bright, one of the nation’s leading vaccine development experts and the director of the Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority, is no longer leading the organization, officials told STAT.
“The shakeup at the agency, known as BARDA, couldn’t come at a more inopportune time for the office, which invests in drugs, devices, and other technologies that help address infectious disease outbreaks and which has been at the center of the government’s coronavirus pandemic response. Bright, whose departure was confirmed by three industry sources and two current Trump administration sources, will instead move into a narrower role at the National Institutes of Health.” Stat
VALLEY TALK — ANNA spoke with Facebook VP FIDJI SIMO in the latest Women Rule podcast about the company’s decision to block anti-quarantine activists from planning in-person protests, how Facebook has changed its game plan and much more. Listen and subscribe
SPOTTED at a surprise Zoom party Tuesday night for Sopan Deb’s new book, “Missed Translations: Meeting the Immigrant Parents Who Raised Me” ($23.69 on Amazon): his dad, Shyamal Kanti Deb, who joined from India; Wesley Dietrich, Eli Stokols and Elena Schneider, Jon Lemire, Mike Bender and Ashley Parker …
… Nick Corasaniti, Reid Epstein and Kate Goodloe, Ali Vitali and Jeremy Diamond, Ali Watkins, Kevin Draper, DJ Judd, Dorey Scheimer, Erin Lee Carr, Priyanka Aribindi, Rachael Klarman, Kaye Foley, Sean Gallitz, Megan McKinley, Priya Desai, Sattik and Erica Deb, Ron Deb, and Atish and Sima Sarkar.
FOGGY BOTTOM ARRIVAL LOUNGE — Charles McLaughlin is now senior adviser in the office of policy planning at the State Department. He most recently was director for strategic planning at the NSC’s Strategic Planning Directorate and is an OPIC alum.
TRANSITIONS — Christian Stellakis is now an account manager at the Herald Group. He most recently was an associate at TDS Public Affairs and is an NRCC alum. … Comms firm Portland has hired Meghan Powers as VP and Jamie Enright as manager. Powers previously was VP at Pace PR, and Enright previously was manager of comms at the National Association of Broadcasters.
BIRTHDAY OF THE DAY: Andrew Taverrite, former New Hampshire comms director for Elizabeth Warren’s campaign. A fun fact about him: “Ruminating on this question sent me into a spiral. Do I have fun facts? Is the ability to name the coverage area of every publication in New Hampshire fun? Do I have enough hobbies? Wondering if my mom is going to see this and be annoyed that I didn’t stick with the piano as a kid. It would be nice to say I can play Chopin from memory. But I cannot. I think it’s time to wrap this up.” Playbook Q&A
BIRTHDAYS: Rep. Jody Hice (R-Ga.) is 6-0 … Rep. Jim Langevin (D-R.I.) is 56 … WaPo’s Sari Horwitz … AP’s Elana Schor … Joe Pounder, CEO of America Rising and Bullpen Strategy Group, is 37 … NYT’s Helene Cooper … CNN’s Arlette Saenz is 35 … NBC’s Matt Korade … Sarah Hunt, co-founder and CEO of the Joseph Rainey Center for Public Policy … POLITICO’s Tina Nguyen and Gaurav Agrawal … Julie Whiston … Don Graham is 75 … Matt Moore, managing partner at First Tuesday Strategies … Jummy Olabanji … James Kvaal … Shayndi Raice, WSJ Midwest bureau chief … Kombiz Lavasany … Donald Tusk, former president of the European Council, is 63 … Wade Henderson … Jared Wood, staff assistant for Rep. Bill Huizenga (R-Mich.) (h/t Brooke Starr) … The New Yorker’s Erica Hinsley … Patrick Rucker … Larry Brady … Dahlia Lithwick … Ozy’s Daniel Malloy …
… Bob Reid, senior managing editor at Stars and Stripes … Glenn Simpson,co-founder of Fusion GPS, is 56 (h/t Tim Burger) … Krista Jenusaitis Zuzenak … Marisa (Medrano) Perez … Precision Strategies’ Allie Peck (h/t Miranda Margowsky) … McKinsey’s Elizabeth Anderson Ledet … Allegra Kirkland … Isabella Gomez Torres … Allison Ehrich Bernstein (h/t Jon Haber) … Seth Samuels, co-founder and CEO of the Content Lab … Brian Forde is 4-0 … Rick Dykema … Anastasia Dellaccio … Josh Dorner, managing director at SKDKnickerbocker … WaPo’s Eugene Scott … Nicole Bamber … Allie Medack … Maureen Mooney … Christopher Jennison … Evan Quinnell … Mark Braden … Doug Lowenstein … NYT’s Elisabeth Goodridge … Adele M. Stan … Walter Fields is 6-0 … Evan Dobelle … Lisa Allison … Kyle Osborne … Yasmina Vinci … Andrea Clarke … Britt Cocanour … Andrea LaRue … Chung Seto (h/ts Teresa Vilmain)
“After approximately one hour, the IRGCN vessels responded to the bridge-to-bridge radio queries, then maneuvered away from the U.S. ships and opened distance between them,” the statement added.
Hours after the incident, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said the administration was evaluating a response.
“We’ve seen this before, where the Iranians behave in ways that were inconsistent with international law,” Pompeo said.
He said the U.S. was “evaluating how best to respond and communicate our displeasure with what took place.”
The latest tension comes months after the U.S. and Iran appeared to take a step back from the brink of war.
In January, the U.S. killed Iran’s Gen. Qasem Soleimani, a top official in the country who the U.S. accused of orchestrating attacks on Americans.
As Illinois hospitals have increased the number of intensive care unit beds, the share occupied by COVID-19 patients has dropped. On April 6, such patients were in about 43% of 2,700 beds. On Sunday, they were in about 40% of 3,100 beds, Pritzker said. The percentage of ventilators being used by patients with the coronavirus has dropped from 29% on April 6 to 23% Sunday as the state has acquired more ventilators.
A Bank of America sign is displayed at a branch in New York on April 10, 2020.
Mark Kauzlarich/Bloomberg via Getty Images
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Mark Kauzlarich/Bloomberg via Getty Images
A Bank of America sign is displayed at a branch in New York on April 10, 2020.
Mark Kauzlarich/Bloomberg via Getty Images
Banks handling the government’s $349 billion loan program for small businesses made more than $10 billion in fees — even as tens of thousands of small businesses were shut out of the program, according to an analysis of financial records by NPR.
The banks took in the fees while processing loans that required less vetting than regular bank loans and had little risk for the banks, the records show. Taxpayers provided the money for the loans, which were guaranteed by the Small Business Administration.
According to a Department of Treasury fact sheet, all federally insured banks and credit unions could process the loans, which ranged in amount from tens of thousands to $10 million. The banks acted essentially as middlemen, sending clients’ loan applications to the SBA, which approved them.
For every transaction made, banks took in 1% to 5% in fees, depending on the amount of the loan, according to government figures. Loans worth less than $350,000 brought in 5% in fees while loans worth anywhere from $2 million to $10 million brought in 1% in fees.
For example, on April 7, RCSH Operations LLC, the parent company of Ruth’s Chris Steak House, received a loan of $10 million. JPMorgan Chase & Co., acting as the lender, took a $100,000 fee on the one-time transaction for which it assumed no risk and could pass through with fewer requirements than for a regular loan.
In total, those transaction fees amounted to more than $10 billion for banks, according to transaction data provided by the SBA and the Treasury Department.
NPR reached out to several of the largest banks involved in collecting the fees, including JPMorgan, PNC Bank and Bank of America. Many did not respond to specific questions, but said they were working to help as many small business clients as they could.
In a statement, Bank of America said the bank had more than 8,000 employees working for clients and preparing to get them in on the next round of the program should it be passed by Congress. The program has “significant vetting requirements,” the bank said in an email, including “collecting, personally examining, and storing data” that is required for each application.
Still, Treasury Department guidelines make clear the requirements are less rigorous for the banks compared to processing regular customer loans where banks must verify clients’ asset claims.
“Lenders are permitted to rely on borrower certifications and representations,” the department told lenders.
To be sure, banks do collect fees when processing any SBA loan, but rarely, if ever, have banks processed this volume of loans this quickly with fees ranging past $10 billion in a two-week period. The SBA did not respond to detailed questions about the program.
Congress is now poised to add $320 billion more into the program, called the Paycheck Protection Program, as it looks to pass a $484 billion additional stimulus package this week. President Trump said on Twitter that he supports the bill.
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, a Republican from Kentucky, said on the Senate floor that the program was “saving millions of small-business jobs and helping Americans get paychecks instead of pink slips.”
Even so, Sen. Gary Peters, a Democrat from Michigan, called on the Government Accountability Office to look into the program after tens of thousands of small businesses were left out and larger companies got millions.
One law firm, the Stalwart Law Group, filed five class action lawsuits this week — four in California and one in New York — alleging that banks processed clients with larger loans first because they stood to generate more money in fees. By the time the banks tried to process loans from their smaller clients, the lawsuit alleges, the program had run dry.
“Rather than processing Paycheck Protection Program applications on a first-come, first-served basis as required by the rules governing that program,” the lawsuit says, “[the banks] prioritized loan applications seeking higher loan amounts because processing those applications first generated larger loan origination fees for the banks.”
Banks dispute these allegations. JPMorgan said it handled the applications fairly.
“We funded more than twice as many loans for smaller businesses than the rest of the firm’s clients combined,” the bank said in a statement to clients. “Each business worked separately on loans for its customers. Business Banking, Chase’s bank for our smaller business customers, processed loan applications generally sequentially, understanding that a given loan may take more or less time to process. Our intent was to serve as many clients as possible, not to prioritize any clients over others.”
For Iran, which is already dealing with the coronavirus outbreak, a struggling economy and historically low oil prices, the missile launch may signal a new willingness to take risks. At home, Iran, which was initially overwhelmed by the coronavirus, is seeking to sway international opinion on U.S. sanctions by highlighting its struggles with the coronavirus outbreak. In Iran, the regional epicenter of the outbreak, the virus has killed more than 5,290 people, from among over 84,800 reported cases.
Coronavirus stimulus payments have started going out to Americans. They’re valued at up to $1,200 per adult and $500 per dependent child and were authorized by the CARES Act to mitigate the financial damage caused by the great lockdown.
If you haven’t received your payment yet and want to get it ASAP, you may need to act very quickly to provide the IRS with your updated information. Here’s when you need to act — and how to get what you need.
Image source: Getty Images.
You may need to provide the IRS with your current bank information
The IRS is sending both paper checks and direct deposit payments. But while direct deposits have started, paper checks won’t begin going out until the week of April 20. Just five million checks will be mailed per week, which means it could take five months for everyone waiting for a check to get their stimulus payment.
You don’t want to be left without your check until August. You need to make sure the IRS has your correct bank information so they can get your check to you via direct deposit. They’ll get that information from your 2018 or 2019 tax return if you filed one and provided your bank details. If you receive Social Security or railroad retirement benefits, the IRS can also send your check to the account on file for those payments.
But if you have outdated bank info on your past returns, or didn’t provide your bank details, you’ll need to tell the IRS about your current bank account. You’ll be able to use the online tool to do that if you don’t have direct deposit information on file yet or if your information was inaccurate and resulted in a refund check.
And if you didn’t file a return in either 2018 or 2019 and aren’t receiving Social Security or railroad retirement benefits, you’ll need to provide the IRS with not just your bank details but also with other basic financial information about your income and dependents. Otherwise, you won’t get any payment at all, even by mail.
You need to update your bank details before the IRS begins processing your payment, or it will be too late. Since they’ve begun sending payments already, you really need to act now.
How can you get your details to the IRS?
The IRS has created a simple online website you can use to check the status of your payment and to update your bank information. The same site also allows you to submit the financial info needed to get your check if you didn’t file a return in 2018 or 2019.
To find out if there’s still time to update your bank info, visit the site and click on the “Get My Payment” option. If your payment shows as pending or processed, you cannot change your bank details any more — it’s too late. If it doesn’t, you have the option to provide your updated info if things have changed since your last tax return was filed.
If you haven’t filed a return at all and don’t get Social Security or railroad retirement benefits, visit the same site but click on “Non-Filers: Enter Payment Info Here.” Provide information on your dependents and your income to prove eligibility for the coronavirus stimulus to allow the IRS to determine the amount you’re owed and to tell them where to send your money.
Don’t wait to act
If the IRS sends your check to the wrong bank account, the bank will reject the money if the account is closed. The IRS will be notified and mail a paper check, but this means it will take a lot more time to get your money. If the account is still open but you can’t access it for some reason, you’ll have to contact the bank to figure out what your options are.
And if the IRS doesn’t have your bank details, they’ll mail your money to your last known address. But it could take months until they get around to sending it.
To make sure you don’t get stuck waiting for your money, make sure the IRS has the information they need to get it to you quickly. Visit the IRS site today to check your payment status and update your data while there’s still time.
John Roberts reports from the White House on the decision.
Never let a good crisis go to waste.
President Trump is taking that approach, once popularized by Rahm Emanuel, in spades.
By moving to freeze legal immigration — and saying he’s doing it to protect American jobs — Trump is taking another dramatic step toward a base-first strategy to energize his supporters.
And this comes days after the president urged protestors, some of them waving Trump signs, to “liberate” Minnesota, Michigan and Virginia from the lockdowns imposed by their Democratic governors.
I dubbed this yesterday part of a culture-war strategy to fire up his voters as Trump battles intense media criticism for his handling of the coronavirus, especially the lack of widespread testing. Denouncing his detractors in the media is part of that package, as with Trump’s tweet yesterday on Joe Scarborough: “Watched the first 5 minutes of poorly rated Morning Psycho on MSDNC just to see if he is as ‘nuts’ as people are saying. He’s worse…His mind is shot!” (Scarborough’s response: “Here you have a guy who is in the middle of a pandemic, and he can’t get out of the mud…He can’t help himself.”)
And Trump’s sudden move on immigration is only one piece of the puzzle. The Washington Post quotes sources as saying that top officials “are planning to launch a sweeping effort in the coming days to repeal or suspend federal regulations affecting businesses, with the expected executive action seen by advisers as a way to boost an economy facing its worst shock in generations.”
The effort, said to be aimed at small business, could affect policies on the environment, labor, workplace safety and health care.
Now before the president is pilloried for exploiting the crisis, this is something that both parties routinely do (Rahm, you’ll recall, is a Democrat.) Hill Democrats tried to get some of their ideological wish-list items into the $2-trillion bailout bill before backing down. Environmentalists seize on oil spills, safety advocates on coal mine disasters, gun control activists on mass shootings.
Still, the magnitude of the pandemic is so great that critics are already questioning why Trump is taking this step, though he said last night it would be limited to green card applicants and not affect temporary workers. The president said he hadn’t decided on exemptions for essential industries, which obviously might include technology.
While there might be a case that even legal immigrants could bring Covid-19 from their home countries, the Trump tweet talked only about American jobs.
Keep in mind, during the emotional debate over the millions who break the law in entering this country, legal immigrants are the ones who play by the rules. They are the ones who sometimes wait years to get approval. And now they face an uncertain future, for 60 days at least, once the executive order is issued.
The Post says most visa and green-card holders are relatives of Americans: “Such a move appears to have no modern precedent and would potentially leave the fiancees, children and other close relatives of U.S. citizens in limbo.” Just over a million visas and green cards were approved last year.
And then there’s the Stephen Moore faction. “Even before the pandemic, the president and some of his most hard-line advisers had been eager to reduce legal immigration, arguing that Mr. Trump’s ‘America First’ campaign pledge should be seen as protecting native-born Americans from having to compete with foreign workers,” says the New York Times.
While it’s hard to gauge the economic impact of an immigration freeze, I have no doubt this would help the president politically. In a new Post/University of Maryland poll, 54 percent of those surveyed in a Post/University of Maryland poll called Trump’s handling of the virus not so good or poor.
That, in part, is why the president is determined not to waste this crisis.
WASHINGTON — Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell says it’s “an interesting debate” whether large firms should get small-business coronavirus relief loans.
“The main purpose obviously of this small business program was small businesses,” McConnell said Tuesday.
“On the other hand, you could make an argument that if my job was lost, the size of my employer doesn’t make any difference to me. I’m out of work. So it’s an interesting debate. We’re feeling our way along here, we’re trying to do the best we can to get money to our people and to our small businesses.”
“In terms of how the money’s spent, that’s a good question to ask the administration,” McConnell (R-Ky.) said. “I think we’re bound to learn as we move along here.”
The Paycheck Protection Program offers loans to companies of up to 500 workers, and in cases more. The loans are forgiven if workers aren’t laid off. The program was set up by the $2 trillion coronavirus stimulus bill passed last month.
Large companies that took small-business loans included Ruth’s Chris, which received a $20 million loan, and the Potbelly sandwich chain, which received $10 million. Another large chain, Shake Shack, said it will return $10 million it received.
Democrats fired back at McConnell on Tuesday night, saying he should have done more to ensure small businesses benefited.
Of an additional $310 billion in small-business loans approved by the Senate on Thursday, $60 billion was set aside for small banks, credit unions and other community lenders to expand the PPP to more businesses, including those without bank accounts.
Another $50 billion was approved for the Small Business Administration’s Economic Injury Disaster Loan (EIDL) program and $10 billion to the SBA’s Emergency Economic Injury Grant program.
“That’s a good question for Sen. McConnell. He resisted the changes,” said Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY).
“We’ve taken a giant step forward,” Schumer said. “Have we done everything we need to do for small businesses, rural businesses, minority businesses? No. Have we taken a huge step forward so today they’re going to be in much better shape than they were before this bill passed? Absolutely. And Leader McConnell did not propose a thing. He wanted to propose $250 [billion] for the PPP program, when in fact the EIDL program and the grant program better serve small businesses.”
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) added about the community banking change in the new bill, “there is a set aside — $60 billion set aside for this particular purpose, it would not have been there without the Democratic proposal.”
At the daily White House press conference Monday, President Trump said large companies would have to return loans “if we think it’s inappropriate.” The House is expected to pass the supplemental funds Thursday.
WASHINGTON – President Donald Trump says there are plenty of coronavirus tests available, even as many governors raise alarms, saying they continue to run short even as states begin to lift their stay-at-home orders.
“This is probably the number one problem in America, and has been from the beginning of this crisis, the lack of testing,” Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan, a Republican and the chairman of the National Governors Association, said on CNN Sunday.
Trump fired back Monday, insisting that there was “tremendous capacity” for coronavirus testing at U.S. labs. He said governors like Hogan just needed “to get a little knowledge” about the testing situation.
In fact, the country’s largest private labs say they have plenty of capacity to test samples sent from medical offices and hospitals. But governors in a wide array of states say healthcare providers can’t conduct the tests because of a lack of supplies such as swabs and a chemical known as a “reagent” crucial to the process.
Public health experts and private and public labs contacted by USA TODAY agreed that a major problem was a shortage of supplies at the testing sites where mucus samples are taken.
Wyoming Gov. Mark Gordon, a Republican, said states have been competing with each other to try to get more testing supplies, a process he described as “a slog.”
Concerns over testing have escalated as the Trump administration has issued guidelines meant to help states ease the temporary social distancing restrictions put in place to slow spread of the coronavirus and reopen their economies.
The guidelines call for a three-phase approach: testing, tracing contacts of those infected, and, in time, treatment solutions.
“It’s a perilous set of circumstances trying to figure out how to make this work,” Gordon said last week, “and until we’ve got the testing up to speed – which has got to be part of the federal government stepping in and helping – we’re just not going to be there.”
Swab shortages
At a recent briefing, Trump discussed the swab issue, holding one up alongside a Q-Tip he pulled from his jacket pocket. Trump dismissed swabs and reagents as “so easy to get,” arguing that it was far harder to ramp up production of ventilators.
But in a tacit acknowledgement of the urgency of producing more swabs, he announced that he would be activating wartime powers under the Defense Production Act to compel companies to ramp up manufacturing of them.
“We also are going to be using, and we’re preparing to use, the Defense Production Act to increase swab production in one U.S. facility by over 20 million additional swabs per month,” Trump said.
Like other aspects of testing, the shortages are not consistent across the country. Thomas Denny, chief operating officer of the Duke Human Vaccine Institute and a former consultant to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, said his lab has no problems getting the supplies.
Ashish Jha, the director of the Harvard Global Health Initiative, blames the federal government for failing to address that unevenness.
“Everybody has different sets of problems, and the solution is greater coordination,” he said. “So if one state has too many swabs, but not enough reagents, and the other state doesn’t have enough swabs but plenty of reagents, you can imagine swapping.”
Instead, Jha said, states got into “bidding wars” for materials, like those that erupted around ventilators and protective equipment.
“What’s happening is some states that are missing swabs, they’re trying to call swab manufacturers,” he said. “And then those manufacturers are getting calls from 20 different states.”
Hospitals go it alone
From the beginning, America’s stumbling rollout of testing significantly slowed the nation’s response.
Flawed tests were shipped in February to state and county public health labs nationwide. The nation’s vast network of hospital and private commercial labs did not get the Food and Drug Administration’s regulatory green light until the end of February.
Dr. Dan Hanfling, who advised the National Healthcare Preparedness Program in the Obama and Trump administrations, noted there were “technical challenges” to developing accurate tests so quickly for a new virus.
One challenge, Hanfling said, is that testing was rolled out without an “ironclad guarantee that these tests are reliable” – a formula for setting expectations too high.
“People expect a certain level of testing, and we’re just not technologically there yet,” he said.
By the end of March into April, testing accelerated, with the majority processed by six large commercial lab companies: ARUP, BioReference Laboratories, LabCorp, Mayo Clinic, Quest Diagnostics and Sonic Healthcare.
Soon, those labs faced growing backlogs. On March 25, Quest Diagnostics had 160,000 test orders waiting to be processed, according to documents obtained by CNN.
Wendy Bost, senior director of corporate communications at Quest, acknowledged that initially “the demand outstripped capacity.”
In frustration, hospitals and state public health labs started going it alone, developing their own tests and processes.
Robert Hart, executive vice president and chief medical officer of Ochsner Health in Louisiana, said his state lab was the only place conducting testing. They were getting the results back within a few days.
Then the state was overrun.
“The next move was to send them to the Mayo Clinic,” Hart said. “Mayo quickly became overrun.”
Tests waiting to be completed were shuffled around to the University of Washington and then to Quest, which hit the backlog.
“We literally were waiting 12, 14, 16 days for test results,” Hart said.
Hart said Oschner started doing testing in its own laboratory and now has results within a day.
Today, the private labs say things have changed. They have room to spare and are turning results around quickly.
“Our current capacity is greater than the volume we are currently receiving, and we have no backlog,” said Mike Geller, spokesperson for LabCorp. “Based on current testing volumes, we are now able to deliver test results on average between one to two days from the date of specimen pick up.”
Louise Serio, a spokesperson for the American Clinical Laboratory Association, said the group’s members, which include Quest and LabCorp, have been reaching out to hospitals and other health care providers to communicate the excess capacity.
She says their member labs have enough testing supplies to meet demand right now, but if they are hit with double or triple the demand for testing, Serio says that could be an issue for them as well.
“What we’re focused on for expanding our capacity,” Serio said, “is making sure we have all of the supplies necessary and predictable access to those supplies.”
Shipment from South Korea
The dispute between Trump and the states over testing came to a head this week when Hogan, the Maryland governor, announced he had secured 500,000 coronavirus tests from South Korea.
Later that day, Trump held up a list at his daily briefing of what he said were 5,000 labs nationwide that are prepared to accept the tests. Asked by USA TODAY Tuesday for a copy of the list, the White House declined to provide it.
Hogan tweeted that he was “grateful” to Trump for the list of labs
Both Democratic and Republican governors have been urging the Trump administration to do more to help increase the availability of testing supplies.
“We have a worldwide shortage of some of the materials that go into this. We really need help,” Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine, a Republican, told “Meet the Press” on Sunday. “I could probably double – maybe even triple – testing in Ohio virtually overnight if the FDA would prioritize companies that are putting a slightly different formula together for the extraction reagent kit.”
Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, a Democrat, also said her state could handle two or three times the amount of testing, but lacks the swabs and reagents needed to process the tests.
“We could, if we had all the supplies we needed, do 11,300 tests a day working with our current capacity,” she said Monday. “The reality is that we’re about half of that.“
In a phone call between Vice President Mike Pence and governors on Monday, Whitmer said the plea for the federal administration to use the Defense Production Act to compel production of the supplies was loud and clear.
“We talked quite a bit about the lack of the critical supplies for testing,” she said, adding that testing needs to be much broader for states to feel confident in lifting their stay-at-home orders.
“We’re all needing swabs. We’re all needing reagents,” Whitmer said.
Contributing: John Fritze, Kathleen Gray, Todd Spangler, Ken Alltucker, The Associated Press
The Senate on Tuesday approved hundreds of billions more in new relief to small businesses, injecting new money into a program that was quickly depleted after companies rushed to secure loans to keep their operations going.
The $484 billion legislation, approved by voice vote, also would provide new funding to hospitals and coronavirus testing.
The bill next goes to the House, which is expected to take it up on Thursday. It provides $310 billion for the Paycheck Protection Program, in which small businesses can access loans that can be converted into grants if they maintain payrolls. The small business program that was included as part of the last relief package, the CARES Act, quickly ran through its initial $349 billion round of funding.
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House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer told reporters that after this latest legislation clears Congress, they will turn their attention to another major relief package. President Donald Trump has expressed support for such additional legislation, while Senate Majority Mitch McConnell was somewhat skeptical given the rising national debt.
While many entertainment and media businesses undoubtedly will pursue the PPP money, the legislation does not include a provision sought after to specifically provide relief to a larger number of local media outlets including newspapers, radio and TV stations that have been hit hard from a plunge in advertising revenue.
A consortium of trade associations representing radio and TV broadcasters and news publishers, including the National Association of Broadcasters and the News Media Alliance, want a provision that is similar to what was specifically given to hotels and restaurants in the CARES Act, which passed late last month. That special provision makes larger chains eligible for the relief program if they have fewer than 500 employees per physical location of their businesses.
Last week, four lawmakers — Sen. Maria Cantwell (D-WA), Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-MN), Sen. John Kennedy (R-LA) and Sen. John Boozman (R-AR) — sent a letter to Senate leaders in which they wrote that the last relief package “waived the affiliation rule for hotels and restaurants allowing them to benefit from small business assistance, and the same consideration should extend to local news outlets in light of their vital role in maintaining public health.”
“Even though these news outlets may be owned by larger groups, they operate independently,” they wrote.
A similar letter was sent to House leaders on Tuesday by Rep. David Cicilline (D-RI) and Rep. James Sensenbrenner (R-WI).
“It doesn’t look like it got in this round, but there will be more rounds to follow,” David Chavern, president and CEO of the News Media Alliance, said in an email. “We are going to keep fighting for it, along with a new government advertising program.”
A group of more than 240 lawmakers sent a letter to Trump urging him to direct federal agencies to spend their advertising dollars — estimated between $5 billion and $10 billion — on local media.
The drop-off in advertising has been daunting, as sponsors like auto dealers, mattress stores and even lawyers have held off on their spending amid mass closures and layoffs.
Newspapers have seen their ad revenues drop by up to 50% in the last few months, according to the News Media Alliance, while the NAB reports that losses have been as much as 90% of ad sales.
Hospital clinicians in Newton, Mass., work with test kits to determine if patients have the coronavirus. New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo says President Trump agreed Tuesday to help his state get more of the supplies needed to expand testing.
Joseph Prezioso/AFP via Getty Images
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Joseph Prezioso/AFP via Getty Images
Hospital clinicians in Newton, Mass., work with test kits to determine if patients have the coronavirus. New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo says President Trump agreed Tuesday to help his state get more of the supplies needed to expand testing.
Joseph Prezioso/AFP via Getty Images
New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo said late Tuesday he had a “productive” meeting with President Trump and his team at the White House. During an evening press conference in Albany, Cuomo said Trump committed to procure more coronavirus testing supplies from China and other overseas manufacturers.
The goal is for New York to double the number of people tested daily from 20,000 to 40,000 by mid-May.
“The federal government will work on the supply of tests and reagents from the national manufacturers,” Cuomo said. State officials will work at the same time to expand field testing stations and lab capacity.
Cuomo says New York will focus mostly on diagnostic tests to identify people contagious with the coronavirus, but will also conduct antibody tests to find those who have recovered from COVID-19.
County health departments across New York have worked in recent weeks to track and contain the spread of the coronavirus.
Cuomo said the state will now work to deploy far more workers to quarantine those who test positive and trace their contacts with other people who may have been infected. “That operation is going to be enormous,” he added.
The scarcity of testing kits, chemicals and other supplies has been a major flash point between Trump and some governors since the pandemic reached the U.S. Cuomo has often criticized the White House for not doing more to help. He predicted Tuesday’s agreement would end “the whole back-and-forth and the finger pointing.”
Cuomo was asked whether Trump plans to use the Defense Production Act to force some U.S. companies to help produce more testing components. “We did not talk through how he’s going to do his end of the operation,” he replied.
During the White House meeting, Trump and Cuomo also agreed the Navy ship Comfort will leave New York City as the rate of spread of COVID-19 there continues to decline.
State officials in New York say they’re confident the worst of the pandemic has passed, but speaking earlier Tuesday Cuomo said another 481 New Yorkers had died in the previous 24 hours. That represents a slight increase from the day before. So far, COVID-19 has claimed the lives of 14,828 New Yorkers.
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