WASHINGTON — People who don’t normally file tax returns but want to receive a coronavirus stimulus payment finally have a clear way to get their information to the federal government.

The IRS released a new “simple tax return” tool Friday that can be filled out online, geared toward low-income people and others who aren’t required to file tax returns. The stimulus bill based eligibility for the checks or direct deposits on federal tax returns, sparking widespread confusion about how non-tax filers would qualify and how the IRS would know where to send the cash.

Anyone who already filed a federal tax return for 2018 or 2019 doesn’t need to fill out the form. People who get Social Security retirement or disability benefits, as well as Railroad Retirement benefits, also do not need to fill out the form. It remains unclear whether those receiving Supplemental Security Income (SSI) need to submit the form, but tax experts recommend they do so just in case.

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People who are not on Social Security but make too little to owe taxes, or otherwise don’t have to file tax returns, should submit the “simple tax return.” That includes people who are homeless or recently incarcerated who may not have recent information on file with the IRS.

Filing the simple tax return requires far less detailed financial information that the typical Form 1040 that most Americans use to file income taxes.

You start by creating a username and password. You need to provide your full name, email and mailing address, along with your date of birth and your driver’s license, if you have one. You also need a valid Social Security number, which is required to qualify for a payment, as well as the name and valid Social Security number of any child you are claiming as a dependent.

If you have a bank account, you’ll be asked for the account number, type of account and routing number, so the government can send you the payment by direct deposit.

After submitting the form, you’ll get an email telling you whether or not it was successful and how to fix it if it wasn’t. The information will be relayed to the IRS, which will determine whether you qualify for a payment and sent it to you if you do.

As Americans have struggled to decipher the $2 trillion stimulus and how to ensure they get assistance, several major tax preparers have also created their own easy-to-use tools to get the needed information to the IRS. TaxAct is offering a free “Stimulus Registration” tool that walks users through the process of filing a basic return to qualify for a payment.

The CARES ACT that Congress passed last month and President Donald Trump signed into law authorized one-time cash payments of up to $1,200 for an individual or $2,400 for a couple who files taxes jointly, plus another $500 for parents of children 16 years or younger. Individuals who make less than $75,000 or couples making less than $150,000 qualify for the full amount.

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Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin has said payments will start going out by the end of next week for people whose direct deposit information is already on file with the IRS. Social Security recipients should expect to see the money deposited into their accounts later in April, and the IRS will start sending out paper checks in May.

The IRS is still expected to create a separate online portal for people who have already filed tax returns to update their direct deposit information with the IRS. That may prove particularly useful for people whose bank account has changed, did not get their tax refund direct deposited, or did not qualify for a tax refund when they last filed. It’s unclear when that web portal will go live.

Source Article from https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/2020-election/coronavirus-stimulus-checks-irs-releases-new-simple-tax-return-help-n1181241

Surgeon General Jerome Adams said Friday “most of the country” will not be able to reopen by May 1, despite suggestions from some Trump administration officials that next month may be a time to revisit strict social distancing guidelines. 

“Once we get past this thirty days, some places around the country can think about reopening,” Adams said on Fox News, referring to the 30-day period for the White House social distancing guidelines.  

Asked about Dr. Anthony Fauci’s comments about maintaining social distancing restrictions, Adams said, “now is the time to continue to lean into this (social distancing).”

“There are places around the country that have seen consistently low levels, and as we ramp up testing and can feel more confident that these places actually can do surveillance, and can do public health follow-up, some places will be able to think about opening on May 1,” he said. “Most of the country will not, to be honest with you, but some will.” 

Source Article from https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2020/04/10/coronavirus-surgeon-general-says-most-u-s-cant-reopen-may-1/5129897002/

Los Angeles County health officials warned Friday that the region needs to significantly increase social distancing to slow the spread of coronavirus and that stay-at-home restrictions could remain into the summer.

Even with the dramatic social distancing the county is now seeing, officials forecast that up to 30% of residents could be infected by mid-summer without more behavioral changes, such as reducing shopping trips.

As a result, Los Angeles County is extending the stay-at-home order for California’s most populous county through at least May 15.

Officials could not provide a definitive answer as to when the stay-at-home order will ease.

“Everybody wishes we could answer that and answer it definitively, and we can’t. We do know that we will reopen,” said Barbara Ferrer, director of the Los Angeles County Department of Public Health. “We do know that we will be lifting some of the restrictions and we do hope that we’re able to take a hard look this summer at what makes sense for us to be relaxing, in terms of some of the closures right now that are making it impossible, for example, for some people to get back to work. But it really does depend on the data.”

While the strict physical distancing measures in L.A. County, which have been in effect for three weeks, have clearly had an effect in saving many lives, models presented by the county Friday show troubling forecasts if officials lifted the stay-at-home order now.

There are still too many people becoming infected with the coronavirus in Los Angeles County, officials said. And there is more than a 50% chance that the current supply of intensive care unit beds in Los Angeles County, roughly 750 beds now, could run out by late April.

“There’s a greater than 50% chance that if we did nothing to increase the number of ICU beds in the county relative to our normal footprint that we would run out of ICU beds near the end of April, or the beginning of May,” said Dr. Roger Lewis, a biostatistician and chair of the emergency medicine department at Harbor-UCLA Medical Center. Work is underway to increase the county’s ICU bed capacity.

Officials outlined the stark paths ahead for Los Angeles County. If the stay-at-home order was quickly rescinded and people resumed to their normal habits, an astonishing 95.6% of L.A. County residents would be infected with the coronavirus by Aug. 1, according to projections released by the county.

Staying at the current levels of physical distancing would still result in 29.8% of residents being infected by Aug. 1.

But increasing our efforts to stay apart from one another by one-third could reduce that to just having 5.5% of Los Angeles County residents infected by Aug. 1.

Put another way: Junking the stay-at-home order now would result in 18,000 people needing hospitalization in L.A. County by mid-May, in a county with fewer than 4,000 beds. But maintaining the current level of physical distancing would keep the number of those needing hospitalization under 1,000 by late May, and significantly lower if we improved our physical distancing.

Officials cautioned that the forecasts will change over time as more data is fed into them. But the data indicates now is not the time to let up on the stay-at-home order, they said.

“Physical distancing is working. It has worked to date, and it is working now, and it is important that that physical distancing remain in place in order to reduce not just the strain on the hospital system, but more importantly the overall number of infections,” said Dr. Christina Ghaly, director of the L.A. County Department of Health Services. “It is absolutely the single most important weapon that we have in our arsenal to fight the virus.”

Still, Ghaly said, there are more infections being found every day. “Each person with the infection is still infecting more than one person,” Ghaly said. As long as that happens, the trajectory of coronavirus cases will continue to slope upward.

Even just improving physical distancing by just one-third of our current efforts will have a dramatic effect, officials said. Officials are not contemplating new broadbased mandates to close down even more sectors of our society — local authorities across California have already said they think they’ve largely done all they can without shutting down essential sectors of our society.

But residents can do better. Officials will be looking to see if more people wearing cloth face coverings will help. And residents who continue to go to the supermarket every day are being urged to cut back on going out.

“I know that that has become for many people the routine, is like, ‘Well, I can still go to the grocery store,’ and I get that … but we’re really telling people, ‘No, be very sensible: Limit the amount of of time that you’re out and about with other people, even to do those essential purchases,’” Ferrer said.

“We’re not talking about some dramatic new set of measures and opportunities to even further close down wholesale parts of our lives,” Ferrer added. “We have a lot of that in place. We just are all going to do a better job trying to stay safe, stay home, protect each other and keep our distance.”

Based on current data from the county and other communities, roughly 3% of people with COVID-19 require hospitalization. One-third of those patients, or 1% of total cases, will end up in the ICU. The majority of those in intensive care need to be put on a ventilator.

Officials said there are significant activities going on now to increase the total ICU bed capacity in the county, including opening a previously closed hospital and relying on the Navy hospital ship Mercy to take non-COVID patients into its intensive care facilities.

Authorities are optimistic they can increase the number of ICU beds in the coming weeks to meet projected demand. Another 400 to 500 ICU beds may be needed even if residents continue to physically distance themselves as they have been in the last three weeks, and “I do believe that is a gap we can close,” Ghaly said. The naval hospital ship Mercy docked in the L.A. area adds 80 ICU beds; the Los Angeles Surge Hospital, where the shuttered St. Vincent Medical Center campus sits, has 266 beds, a large number of which can be converted into ICU beds; four of the county hospitals run by the Department of Health Services is looking at adding 100 to 150 ICU beds; and the county is working with privately owned hospitals to boost intensive care unit capacity.

Ferrer said she wished she could give a definitive answer when the stay-at-home order can be lifted.

“If the health care system can’t stay functional, you also will have a lot of increased mortality from from other people who will die of other diseases and conditions as well,” Ferrer said. “At the point we start seeing some serious significant declines in both the rate of new cases and the rate of deaths, we can talk about what’s a reasonable way to particularly get people back to work.”

Source Article from https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2020-04-10/coronavirus-stay-at-home-order-social-distancing-summer

“It’s mind-boggling, actually, the degree of disorganization,” said Tom Frieden, former Centers for Disease Control and Prevention director. The federal government has already squandered February and March, he noted, committing “epic failures” on testing kits, ventilator supply, protective equipment for health workers and contradictory public health communication. The next failure is already on its way, Frieden said, because “we’re not doing the things we need to be doing in April.”

Source Article from https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/2020/04/10/contact-tracing-coronavirus-strategy/

The toll of the coronavirus pandemic continued to grow Friday as New York reported that nearly another 800 people died across the state in just 24 hours — but the strict lockdown orders continued to slow the flood of new cases into hospitals, Gov. Andrew Cuomo said Friday.

Cuomo reported that 777 people died from the virus since Thursday, bringing the number of fatalities in the Empire State to a horrifying total of 7,844.

“These lives lost are people who came in at that height hospitalization period and we’re losing them,” Cuomo said during his daily press briefing in Albany.

Cuomo again likened the pandemic to the lives lost during the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks.

“I believe 9/11 was the worst situation that I was going to deal with in my lifetime,” Cuomo said. “So in terms of lives lost this situation should exceed 9/11 is still beyond my capacity to fully appreciate, to tell you the truth.”

New statistics from hospitals across the state signaled that the spread of the vicious virus has slowed — but Cuomo warned that New York’s hard-won progress would be lost if people relax and stop following the shutdown orders.

The governor noted that hospitalizations remain down statewide and that for the first time since the virus outbreak, the number of patients in intensive care units across the state continues to drop.

New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo announces updates on the spread of the coronavirus.Hans Pennink

“We are cautiously optimistic that we are slowing the infection rate,” Cuomo said. “That’s what the numbers say, that’s what the data suggest.”

Source Article from https://nypost.com/2020/04/10/new-york-state-sees-777-deaths-from-coronavirus-in-just-a-day/

Texas Gov. Greg Abbott signed an executive order banning all elective medical procedures, including abortions, during the coronavirus outbreak. The ban extends to medication abortions.

Eric Gay/AP


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Eric Gay/AP

Texas Gov. Greg Abbott signed an executive order banning all elective medical procedures, including abortions, during the coronavirus outbreak. The ban extends to medication abortions.

Eric Gay/AP

Governors across the country are banning elective surgery as a means of halting the spread of the coronavirus. But in a handful of states that ban is being extended to include a ban on all abortions.

So far the courts have intervened to keep most clinics open. The outlier is Texas, where the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit this week upheld the governor’s abortion ban.

Four years ago, Texas was also the focus of a fierce legal fight that ultimately led to a U.S. Supreme Court ruling in which the justices struck down a Texas law purportedly aimed at protecting women’s health. The court ruled the law was medically unnecessary and unconstitutional.

Now Texas is once again the epicenter of the legal fight around abortion. In other states–Ohio, Iowa, Alabama, and Oklahoma–the courts so far have sided with abortion providers and their patients.

Not so in Texas where Gov. Greg Abbott signed an executive order barring all “non-essential” medical procedures in the state, including abortion. The executive order was temporarily blocked in the district court, but the Fifth Circuit subsequently upheld the governor’s order by a 2-to-1 vote, declaring that “all public constitutional rights may be reasonably restricted to combat a public health emergency.”

“No more elective medical procedures can be done in the state because of the potential of needing both people … beds and supplies, and obviously doctors and nurses,” said Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton in an interview with NPR.

‘Exploiting This Crisis’

Nancy Northrup, CEO of the Center for Reproductive Rights, sees things very differently. “It is very clear that anti-abortion rights politicians are shamelessly exploiting this crisis to achieve what has been their longstanding ideological goal to ban abortion in the U.S.,” she said.

Paxton denies that, saying Texas “is not targeting any particular group.”
The state’s the “only goal is to protect people from dying,” he said.

Yet the American Medical Association just last week filed a brief in this case in support of abortion providers, as did 18 states, led by New York, which is the state that has been the hardest hit by the coronavirus.

They maintain that banning abortion is far more dangerous,because it will force women to travel long distances to get one. A study from the Guttmacher Institute found that people seeking abortions during the COVID-19 outbreak would have to travel up to 20 times farther than normal if states successfully ban abortion care during the pandemic. The AMA also notes that pregnant women do not stop needing medical care if they don’t get an abortion.

Northrup, of the Center for Reproductive Rights, sees this as more evidence that the ban is a calculated move by the state: what “puts the lie to this is the fact that they’re trying to ban medication, abortion as well; that’s the use of pills for abortion.

“Those do not need to take place in a clinic and they can be done, taken effectively by tele-medicine. So it shows that the real goal here, tragically, is shutting down one’s right to make the decision to end the pregnancy, not a legitimate public health response.”

‘I Was Desperate’

Affidavits filed in the Texas case tell of harrowing experiences already happening as the result of the Texas ban. One declaration was filed by a 24-year-old college student. The week she lost her part-time job as a waitress, she found out she was pregnant. She and her partner agreed they wanted to terminate the pregnancy, and on March 20 she went to a clinic in Forth Worth alone; because of social distancing rules, her partner was not allowed to go with her.

Since she was 10 weeks pregnant, still in her first trimester, she was eligible for a medication abortion. Under state law, she had to wait 24 hours before getting the pills at the clinic, but the night before her scheduled appointment, the clinic called to cancel because of Abbott’s executive order.

He partner was with her and we “cried together,” she wrote in her declaration. “I couldn’t risk the possibility that I would run out of time to have an abortion while the outbreak continued,” and it “seemed to be getting more and more difficult to travel.”

She made many calls to clinics in New Mexico and Oklahoma. The quickest option was Denver–a 12-hour drive, 780-mile drive from where she lives. Her partner was still working, so her best friend agreed to go with her. They packed sanitizing supplies and food in the car for the long drive and arrived at the Denver Clinic on March 26, where she noticed other cars with Texas plates in the parking lot, according to the affidavit.

At the clinic, she was examined, given a sonogram again, and because Colorado does not have a 24-hour waiting requirement, she was given her first abortion pill without delay and told she should try to get home within 30 hours to take the second pill.

She and her friend then turned around to go home. They were terrified she would have the abortion in the car, and tried to drive through without taking breaks. But after six hours, when it turned dark they were so exhausted they had to stop at a motel to catch some sleep. The woman finally got home and took the second pill just within the 30-hour window.

She said that despite the ordeal she was grateful she had the money, the car, the friend, and the supportive partner with a job, to make the abortion possible. Others will not be so lucky, she wrote. But “I was desperate and desperate people take desperate steps to protect themselves.”

A ‘Narrative’ Of Choice

Paxton, the Texas attorney general, does not seem moved by the time limitations that pregnancy imposes, or the hardships of traveling out of state to get an abortion. He told NPR “the narrative has always been ‘It’s a choice’ … that’s the whole narrative. I’m a little surprised by the question, given that’s always been the thing.”

On Thursday abortion providers and their patients returned to the district court in Texas instead of appealing directly to the U.S. Supreme Court to overturn the Fifth Circuit’s ruling from earlier this week. The district court judge, who originally blocked the governor’s ban, instead narrowed the governor’s order so that medical abortions–with pills–would be exempt from the ban, as well as abortions for women who are up against the state-imposed deadline. Abortions in Texas are banned after 22 weeks.

In the end, though, this case may well be headed to the U.S. Supreme Court. And because of the addition of two Trump appointees since 2016–the composition of the court is a lot more hostile to abortion rights.

Source Article from https://www.npr.org/2020/04/10/831273530/legal-fight-heats-up-in-texas-over-ban-on-abortions-amid-coronavirus

Apple and Google announced a system for tracking the spread of the new coronavirus, allowing users to share data through Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) transmissions and approved apps from health organizations.

The new system, which is laid out in a series of documents and white papers, would use short-range Bluetooth communications to establish a voluntary contact-tracing network, keeping extensive data on phones that have been in close proximity with each other. Official apps from public health authorities will get access to this data, and users who download them can report if they’ve been diagnosed with COVID-19. The system will also alert people who download them to whether they were in close contact with an infected person.

Apple and Google will introduce a pair of iOS and Android APIs in mid-May and make sure these health authorities’ apps can implement them. During this phase, users will still have to download an app to participate in contact-tracing, which could limit adoption. But in the months after the API is complete, the companies will work on building tracing functionality into the underlying operating system, as an option immediately available to everyone with an iOS or Android phone.

Apple/Google

Contact tracing — which involves figuring out who an infected person has been in contact with and trying to prevent them from infecting others — is one of the most promising solutions for containing COVID-19, but using digital surveillance technology to do it raises massive privacy concerns and questions about effectiveness. Earlier this week, the American Civil Liberties Union raised concerns about tracking users with phone data, arguing that any system would need to be limited in scope and avoid compromising user privacy.

Unlike some other methods — like, say, using GPS data — this Bluetooth plan wouldn’t track people’s physical location. It would basically pick up the signals of nearby phones at 5-minute intervals and store the connections between them in a database. If one person tests positive for the novel coronavirus, they could tell the app they’ve been infected, and it could notify other people whose phones passed within close range in the preceding days.

The system also takes a number of steps to prevent people from being identified, even after they’ve shared their data. While the app regularly sends information out over Bluetooth, it broadcasts an anonymous key rather than a static identity, and those keys cycle every 15 minutes to preserve privacy. Even once a person shares that they’ve been infected, the app will only share keys from the specific period in which they were contagious.

Crucially, there is no centrally accessible master list of which phones have matched, contagious or otherwise. That’s because the phones themselves are performing the cryptographic calculations required to protect privacy. The central servers only maintain the database of shared keys, rather than the interactions between those keys.

The method still has potential weaknesses. In crowded areas, it could flag people in adjacent rooms who aren’t actually sharing space with the user, making people worry unnecessarily. It may also not capture the nuance of how long someone was exposed — working next to an infected person all day, for example, will expose you to a much greater viral load than walking by them on the street. And it depends on people having apps in the short term and up-to-date smartphones in the long term, which could mean it’s less effective in areas with lower connectivity.

It’s also a relatively new program, and Apple and Google are still talking to public health authorities and other stakeholders about how to run it. This system probably can’t replace old-fashioned methods of contact tracing — which involve interviewing infected people about where they’ve been and who they’ve spent time with — but it could offer a high-tech supplement using a device that billions of people already own.

Source Article from https://www.theverge.com/2020/4/10/21216484/google-apple-coronavirus-contract-tracing-bluetooth-location-tracking-data-app

The rise of Peter Navarro – the man put in charge of marshalling emergency US production of medical equipment in the midst of a pandemic – is in many ways a classic story of the Trump era.

The 70-year-old White House trade adviser was first recruited by Trump because he wrote a string of books about the Chinese strategic threat – one called Death by China – despite having spent almost no time in the country and having no grasp of the language.

Five of Navarro’s books cited a China hand with a particularly pithy turn of phrase called Ron Vara, who turned out not to exist. The name is an anagram of Navarro and the imaginary expert operated as an alter ego, confirming the author’s views.

Navarro made headlines in the past week by challenging Dr Anthony Fauci – the nation’s leading immunologist and the public face of the US scientific community’s race to contain Covid-19 – in a showdown in the White House situation room over the merits of an experimental drug.

When asked later why he thought he was qualified to start recommending pharmaceuticals to the nation, Navarro replied: “My qualifications in terms of looking at the science is that I’m a social scientist. I have a PhD. And I understand how to read statistical studies, whether it’s in medicine, the law, economics or whatever.”

People who have worked closely with Navarro agree he is undoubtedly bright. He holds a PhD in economics from Harvard. But there is nothing in his career to date that suggests he has the credentials or experience to manage the state intervention necessary to steer US industry towards producing the masks, gowns, ventilators and other life-saving supplies the country will need over the course of this pandemic.

Before coming to the White House, Navarro was a west coast academic economist with views on trade far outside the American mainstream and a failed political career behind him, have lost five elections and won none in his adoptive home town of San Diego.

His former campaign adviser, Larry Remer, said: “I wouldn’t trust him to go out to get lunch and come back with everybody’s sandwich and drink order correctly. I don’t know how he could be put in charge of logistics.

“On one level it’s amusing but on another level, it’s really dangerous,” added Remer, a San Diego political consultant.

Navarro’s appearance in the Trump camp during the 2016 presidential campaign came as a shock to those who knew him from his days in San Diego politics. He had started out as a registered Republican but became an anti-growth, environmentalist independent, then a Democratic candidate for Congress in 1996, promoted energetically but unsuccessfully by Hillary Clinton.

Navarro came closest to victory in 1992 when he emerged as the surprise contender to be San Diego mayor, taking on the city’s entrenched Republican establishment. He stood as an independent, with a working-class background, determined to stand up for the little guy in the face of rampant development. He called his movement Plan (Prevent Los Angelization Now) and he appeared to have a good chance of winning going into a final television debate a couple of days before the vote.



Peter Navarro walks past reporters on the driveway outside the West Wing of the White House. Photograph: Yuri Gripas/EPA

Towards the end of the debate the Republican candidate, Susan Golding, became emotional as she regretted the bruising nature of the campaign, in which the candidates had exchanged multiple slurs. Navarro misjudged the moment, accusing Golding of acting. He came across as cynical and unfeeling, and lost the race at the final hurdle.

“There’s something about the process that really brings out your essence,” Remer said. “And in this case it brought out Peter’s essence, which is that he has no people skills at all, and he has no empathy for other people.”

The personality problem got worse with each defeat, according to Navarro’s former spokeswoman, Lisa Ross, who worked with him on four campaigns.

“As the years went on and as he kept losing campaign after campaign, he became more and more brittle, more and more confrontational, and ended up … alienating just about everyone,” Ross said. “Peter was not a nice person at the end of the day … He can really get in your face.”

Ross said she watched Navarro’s extraordinary rise in Trump’s world with open-mouthed astonishment.

“He was the guy who was waving his arms in front of the bulldozer, so it was surprising when he went to work for the biggest bulldozer in the country,” she said, speculating it was his personality that drew Navarro into such close orbit of the president.

“It occurred to me that really Peter and Trump are the same kind of animal. They’re very media savvy but very brittle,” Ross said. “Peter can be a real bully and maybe that’s why Trump picked him. He wanted a bully to do the job.”

Navarro’s rollicking 1998 memoir, San Diego Confidential, displays some of the bravado that appears to have attracted Trump, who is said to refer to him as “my Peter”.

In the book Navarro acknowledged his reputation as “the cruelest and meanest son-of-a-bitch that ever ran for office in San Diego”, adding: “I don’t have any concern at all about making stuff up about my opponent that isn’t exactly true – I know that bastard running against me doesn’t have any scruples either.”

As well as echoing some of Trump’s own traits, Navarro has also shown, on occasion, the gift of prescience. His tirades against China and free trade anticipated the rhetoric that helped Trump win the presidency. In the first two years of the administration, though often marginalised by more powerful, pro-trade officials, he has emerged triumphant long after they have gone.

“He is extraordinarily influential in the White House and whether you like him or not, whether you agree with his politics he caught on early with Donald Trump,” said Walter Lohman, the director of Asian studies at the Heritage Foundation. “He sort of scratches an itch that Donald Trump has.”

Navarro was also vindicated in his dire warnings about the threat of Covid-19, sending a memo to the president in late January with an estimate that it could kill more than half a million Americans and cost close to $6tn. Trump has said he has no recollection of seeing the memo but the White House Cassandra has since emerged looking adept by comparison to the blithe counsel of treasury secretary, Steven Mnuchin, and the president’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner.

Navarro, the environmental activist turned China hawk, now has one of the most important jobs in the country as the coronavirus pandemic strengthen its grip. He has to save tens of thousands of lives in the face of woefully inadequate preparation by his own administration. He is equipped with little relevant experience and few allies, but with a fierce confidence in his own convictions.

Source Article from https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/apr/10/peter-navarro-what-trumps-covid-19-tsar-lacks-in-expertise-he-makes-up

WASHINGTON — People who don’t normally file tax returns but want to receive a coronavirus stimulus payment finally have a clear way to get their information to the federal government.

The IRS released a new “simple tax return” tool Friday that can be filled out online, geared toward low-income people and others who aren’t required to file tax returns. The stimulus bill based eligibility for the checks or direct deposits on federal tax returns, sparking widespread confusion about how non-tax filers would qualify and how the IRS would know where to send the cash.

Anyone who already filed a federal tax return for 2018 or 2019 doesn’t need to fill out the form. People who get Social Security retirement or disability benefits, as well as Railroad Retirement benefits, also do not need to fill out the form. It remains unclear whether those receiving Supplemental Security Income (SSI) need to submit the form, but tax experts recommend they do so just in case.

People who are not on Social Security but make too little to owe taxes, or otherwise don’t have to file tax returns, should submit the “simple tax return.” That includes people who are homeless or recently incarcerated who may not have recent information on file with the IRS.

Filing the simple tax return requires far less detailed financial information that the typical Form 1040 that most Americans use to file income taxes.

You start by creating a username and password. You need to provide your full name, email and mailing address, along with your date of birth and your driver’s license, if you have one. You also need a valid Social Security number, which is required to qualify for a payment, as well as the name and valid Social Security number of any child you are claiming as a dependent.

If you have a bank account, you’ll be asked for the account number, type of account and routing number, so the government can send you the payment by direct deposit.

After submitting the form, you’ll get an email telling you whether or not it was successful and how to fix it if it wasn’t. The information will be relayed to the IRS, which will determine whether you qualify for a payment and sent it to you if you do.

As Americans have struggled to decipher the $2 trillion stimulus and how to ensure they get assistance, several major tax preparers have also created their own easy-to-use tools to get the needed information to the IRS. TaxAct is offering a free “Stimulus Registration” tool that walks users through the process of filing a basic return to qualify for a payment.

The CARES ACT that Congress passed last month and President Donald Trump signed into law authorized one-time cash payments of up to $1,200 for an individual or $2,400 for a couple who files taxes jointly, plus another $500 for parents of children 16 years or younger. Individuals who make less than $75,000 or couples making less than $150,000 qualify for the full amount.

Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin has said payments will start going out by the end of next week for people whose direct deposit information is already on file with the IRS. Social Security recipients should expect to see the money deposited into their accounts later in April, and the IRS will start sending out paper checks in May.

The IRS is still expected to create a separate online portal for people who have already filed tax returns to update their direct deposit information with the IRS. That may prove particularly useful for people whose bank account has changed, did not get their tax refund direct deposited, or did not qualify for a tax refund when they last filed. It’s unclear when that web portal will go live.

Source Article from https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/2020-election/coronavirus-stimulus-checks-irs-releases-new-simple-tax-return-help-n1181241

Schools closed because of the coronavirus will likely reopen in the fall but reviving the U.S. economy to pre-outbreak levels will be a taller order, Bill Gates said Thursday.

The 64-year-old billionaire co-founder of Microsoft, who with his wife now runs the philanthropic Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, made the remarks during an interview on CNBC.

“I do think school will be able to resume in the fall,” Gates told “Squawk Box” host Becky Quick. “But I don’t think this school year there’s going to be any significant attendance.”

TRUMP VOWS CORONAVIRUS-WRECKED ECONOMY WILL ‘BOUNCE’ BACK DESPITE RECORD JOBLESS NUMBERS

States’ school closure policies currently range from “recommended closure,” to “closed until further notice,” to “closed for the academic year.” In between are closures with tentative reopenings set for April or May, according to Education Week.

Gates noted that many private schools have used online learning to keep classes going but the option is less commonplace in public schools, in part because of concerns about low-income families lacking internet connectivity.

“Different school districts have decided some don’t do online learning because it would be unjust in terms of the kids who don’t have access,” Gates told Quick. “And so that’s really a dilemma.”

He said philanthropists such as Ray Dalio and Jeff Bezos were involved in trying to make online learning more broadly available.

As for the economy, Gates said some industries will likely be able to come back by the end of May – such as manufacturing and construction. But until a coronavirus vaccine is available, it may take longer for crowd-based businesses, such as pro sports or air travel, to fully return because of lingering potential health risks.

He also said a green light from government won’t guarantee a complete rebound for the economy – because the public’s behavior will play a large role in determining which companies come back successfully and which don’t.

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“The behavior of people in terms of wanting to travel or go to events or even go to a restaurant, it’s been utterly changed by the concerns about this disease,” he said. “No one should think the government can wave a wand and all of a sudden the economy is anything like it was before this happened. That awaits either a miracle therapeutic that has an over 95 percent cure rate, or broad usage of the vaccine” – which he said could still be as much as 18 months away.

Gates’ remarks came the same day the Labor Department reported a third straight spike in weekly jobless claims, bringing the three-week total to more than 16 million people out of work in connection with the outbreak.

Source Article from https://www.foxnews.com/media/bill-gates-schools-may-reopen-in-fall-but-no-one-can-wave-a-wand-to-fix-us-economy

The proposal is contingent upon the widespread deployment of antibody tests which the National Institutes of Health and the Food and Drug Administration are in the process of validating in the the U.S., Fauci said.

“Within a period of a week or so, we’re going to have a rather large number of tests that are available” to the public, he added.

The development of a comprehensive antibody testing system represents the next phase of the administration’s efforts to reopen the country and begin reintegrating essential workers such as health care providers and first responders back into society.

Although coronavirus testing thus far has been able to determine if an individual has an active infection, antibody tests report whether an asymptomatic person was previously infected but has since recovered, potentially allowing them to return to their jobs.

“As we look forward, as we get to the point of at least considering opening up the country, as it were, it’s very important to appreciate and to understand how much that virus has penetrated the society,” Fauci said.

Immunity certificates are already being implemented by researchers in Germany and have been floated by the United Kingdom and Italy, the most recent epicenter of the global outbreak in Europe.

In parts of China, citizens are required to display colored codes on their smartphones indicating their contagion risk. The controversial surveillance measure facilitated earlier this week the end of the lockdown of Wuhan, the city in China’s central province of Hubei where the novel coronavirus first emerged.

Asked Thursday about various methods of monitoring Americans who have come into contact with those who are infected, Dr. Robert Redfield, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, said “people are looking at all the different modern technology that could be brought to bear to make contact tracing more efficient and effective.”

“Are there more, if you will, say, tech-savvy ways to be more comprehensive in contact tracing versus the old fashioned way? You know, currently, these things are under aggressive evaluation,” Redfield told NPR.

Source Article from https://www.politico.com/news/2020/04/10/fauci-coronavirus-immunity-cards-for-americans-are-being-discussed-178784

“She was very human in a profession that isn’t always that way,” Stephen Bussell, a fellow Santa Rosa police officer and close friend, said. “In law enforcement, there can be a tendency to be robotic, but she was extremely passionate and empathetic.”

Detective Armer died on March 31, the first police officer in California who died of complications from the coronavirus. One of eight Santa Rosa police employees to test positive for Covid-19, she was hospitalized after developing flulike symptoms. She was 43.

On April 2, the governor’s office said flags at the Capitol would be flown at half-staff in her honor.

She began her career 20 years ago as an evidence technician and worked her way up.

“She was always that person who made people feel connected,” said Kris Capeheart, a friend and field evidence technician at the department, which is in Northern California. “She took the time to make everybody feel special.”

Her friendships ran deep and she often vacationed with colleagues in far-flung corners of the world, including Thailand and Peru. “She knew how to have fun, she wanted to meet people, and she wanted to learn cultures,” Ms. Capeheart said. “She was my rock.”

Detective Armer is survived by a husband and daughter.

[Read more about those we’ve lost here.]


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Source Article from https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/10/us/california-mail-in-ballot-coronavirus.html

The rise of Peter Navarro – the man put in charge of marshalling emergency US production of medical equipment in the midst of a pandemic – is in many ways a classic story of the Trump era.

The 70-year-old White House trade adviser was first recruited by Trump because he wrote a string of books about the Chinese strategic threat – one called Death by China – despite having spent almost no time in the country and having no grasp of the language.

Five of Navarro’s books cited a China hand with a particularly pithy turn of phrase called Ron Vara, who turned out not to exist. The name is an anagram of Navarro and the imaginary expert operated as an alter ego, confirming the author’s views.

Navarro made headlines in the past week by challenging Dr Anthony Fauci – the nation’s leading immunologist and the public face of the US scientific community’s race to contain Covid-19 – in a showdown in the White House situation room over the merits of an experimental drug.

When asked later why he thought he was qualified to start recommending pharmaceuticals to the nation, Navarro replied: “My qualifications in terms of looking at the science is that I’m a social scientist. I have a PhD. And I understand how to read statistical studies, whether it’s in medicine, the law, economics or whatever.”

People who have worked closely with Navarro agree he is undoubtedly bright. He holds a PhD in economics from Harvard. But there is nothing in his career to date that suggests he has the credentials or experience to manage the state intervention necessary to steer US industry towards producing the masks, gowns, ventilators and other life-saving supplies the country will need over the course of this pandemic.

Before coming to the White House, Navarro was a west coast academic economist with views on trade far outside the American mainstream and a failed political career behind him, have lost five elections and won none in his adoptive home town of San Diego.

His former campaign adviser, Larry Remer, said: “I wouldn’t trust him to go out to get lunch and come back with everybody’s sandwich and drink order correctly. I don’t know how he could be put in charge of logistics.

“On one level it’s amusing but on another level, it’s really dangerous,” added Remer, a San Diego political consultant.

Navarro’s appearance in the Trump camp during the 2016 presidential campaign came as a shock to those who knew him from his days in San Diego politics. He had started out as a registered Republican but became an anti-growth, environmentalist independent, then a Democratic candidate for Congress in 1996, promoted energetically but unsuccessfully by Hillary Clinton.

Navarro came closest to victory in 1992 when he emerged as the surprise contender to be San Diego mayor, taking on the city’s entrenched Republican establishment. He stood as an independent, with a working-class background, determined to stand up for the little guy in the face of rampant development. He called his movement Plan (Prevent Los Angelization Now) and he appeared to have a good chance of winning going into a final television debate a couple of days before the vote.



Peter Navarro walks past reporters on the driveway outside the West Wing of the White House. Photograph: Yuri Gripas/EPA

Towards the end of the debate the Republican candidate, Susan Golding, became emotional as she regretted the bruising nature of the campaign, in which the candidates had exchanged multiple slurs. Navarro misjudged the moment, accusing Golding of acting. He came across as cynical and unfeeling, and lost the race at the final hurdle.

“There’s something about the process that really brings out your essence,” Remer said. “And in this case it brought out Peter’s essence, which is that he has no people skills at all, and he has no empathy for other people.”

The personality problem got worse with each defeat, according to Navarro’s former spokeswoman, Lisa Ross, who worked with him on four campaigns.

“As the years went on and as he kept losing campaign after campaign, he became more and more brittle, more and more confrontational, and ended up … alienating just about everyone,” Ross said. “Peter was not a nice person at the end of the day … He can really get in your face.”

Ross said she watched Navarro’s extraordinary rise in Trump’s world with open-mouthed astonishment.

“He was the guy who was waving his arms in front of the bulldozer, so it was surprising when he went to work for the biggest bulldozer in the country,” she said, speculating it was his personality that drew Navarro into such close orbit of the president.

“It occurred to me that really Peter and Trump are the same kind of animal. They’re very media savvy but very brittle,” Ross said. “Peter can be a real bully and maybe that’s why Trump picked him. He wanted a bully to do the job.”

Navarro’s rollicking 1998 memoir, San Diego Confidential, displays some of the bravado that appears to have attracted Trump, who is said to refer to him as “my Peter”.

In the book Navarro acknowledged his reputation as “the cruelest and meanest son-of-a-bitch that ever ran for office in San Diego”, adding: “I don’t have any concern at all about making stuff up about my opponent that isn’t exactly true – I know that bastard running against me doesn’t have any scruples either.”

As well as echoing some of Trump’s own traits, Navarro has also shown, on occasion, the gift of prescience. His tirades against China and free trade anticipated the rhetoric that helped Trump win the presidency. In the first two years of the administration, though often marginalised by more powerful, pro-trade officials, he has emerged triumphant long after they have gone.

“He is extraordinarily influential in the White House and whether you like him or not, whether you agree with his politics he caught on early with Donald Trump,” said Walter Lohman, the director of Asian studies at the Heritage Foundation. “He sort of scratches an itch that Donald Trump has.”

Navarro was also vindicated in his dire warnings about the threat of Covid-19, sending a memo to the president in late January with an estimate that it could kill more than half a million Americans and cost close to $6tn. Trump has said he has no recollection of seeing the memo but the White House Cassandra has since emerged looking adept by comparison to the blithe counsel of treasury secretary, Steven Mnuchin, and the president’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner.

Navarro, the environmental activist turned China hawk, now has one of the most important jobs in the country as the coronavirus pandemic strengthen its grip. He has to save tens of thousands of lives in the face of woefully inadequate preparation by his own administration. He is equipped with little relevant experience and few allies, but with a fierce confidence in his own convictions.

Source Article from https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/apr/10/peter-navarro-what-trumps-covid-19-tsar-lacks-in-expertise-he-makes-up

Dr. Anthony Fauci said Friday he would “want to see a clear indication” that the U.S. is “very clearly and strongly going in the right direction,” before reopening the country.

“The virus kind of decides whether or not it’s going to be appropriate to open,” the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases said on CNN. He warned the country could “prematurely” end social distancing measures and then “you’re right back in the same situation.” 

Fauci said that the curve of new cases appear to be flattening as hospitalizations and patients on ventilators in New York were down: “We’re going in the right direction, let’s keep in that direction.”

Elsewhere, travelers were being cautioned to stay home around the world to mark the traditions of Good Friday and the Easter weekend. Eagerly awaited stimulus checks should soon be hitting Americans’ bank accounts. And UK leader Boris Johnson, out of intensive care, has his father worried but filled with “relief.”

Source Article from https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/health/2020/04/10/coronavirus-live-updates-good-friday-stimulus-checks/5126742002/

New York state has more confirmed coronavirus cases than any other country outside of the United States, according to data from Johns Hopkins University. 

The state has at least 161,807 confirmed cases, overtaking Spain, Italy, France and Germany. The United States leads as the country with the most confirmed cases, clocking in at over 466,000. 

New York state, though it beats out every country but the United States in terms of confirmed cases, has fewer deaths than countries like Spain, France, and Italy. Spain’s reported 15,843 deaths, according to the latest tallies, while Italy has reported 18,279 and France has 12,228. 

New York City, which has become the epicenter of the outbreak, has had at least 5,150 deaths, according to the latest tallies from Johns Hopkins University.

China, where the virus is believed to have originated, has 82,940 confirmed cases, according to the latest data. But the Chinese government has deliberately underreported the total number of coronavirus cases and deaths in the country, the U.S. intelligence community told the White House, according to a report. China denied the accusation, calling it a “despicable attempt to put political interests above human life.”

Gov. Andrew Cuomo has been vocal about New York receiving support from the federal government to deal with the outbreak. He has asked the White House for ventilators, masks and other respiratory and medical equipment to ensure the safety of those on the front lines responding to the pandemic. 

“We’re in a battle, right, but this is about a war,” Cuomo said at a press conference in Albany on Thursday. 

“This virus is very, very good at what it does. We lost more lives yesterday than we have to date.” New York has lost more lives and is suffering greater economic damage than from the 9/11 attacks, Cuomo said.

President Donald Trump, in response, invoked the Defense Production Act, a statute that gives the White House authority to compel companies to manufacture much-needed goods. He’s since called upon companies like General Motors and others to ramp up production of ventilators and other medical equipment. 

While the number of deaths in New York is climbing, the rate of new cases and new coronavirus hospitalizations is starting to level off, Cuomo said on Thursday. But he warned residents against becoming complacent, saying officials worry the coronavirus could resurge if they let up on stay-at-home restrictions that were put in place 18 days ago.

The number of new coronavirus hospital admissions dropped to 200 on Wednesday, the smallest number of new cases since March 18, according to a chart. Cuomo said it was the “lowest number we’ve had since this nightmare started.”

Earlier on Thursday, New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio warned that the city may need to tighten its social distancing restrictions to contain the coronavirus outbreak and prevent it from resurging, saying it’s going to be a “long, tough” April.

The coronavirus has spread to dozens of countries globally, with more than 1.6 million confirmed cases worldwide and over 96,787 deaths so far, according to data from Johns Hopkins University. 

CNBC’s Noah Higgins-Dunn, William Feuer, Kevin Breuninger and Berkeley Lovelace Jr. contributed to this report.

Source Article from https://www.cnbc.com/2020/04/10/new-york-state-now-has-more-coronavirus-cases-than-any-country-outside-the-us.html

The Russia investigation into President Trump‘s 2016 campaign was “one of the greatest travesties in American history,” Attorney General William Barr said Thursday during an appearance on “The Ingraham Angle.”

Barr said he has seen troubling signs from U.S. Attorney John Durham’s ongoing probe into the origins of the two-year probe, which resulted in no allegations of wrongdoing against the president.

“My own view is that the evidence shows that we’re not dealing with just the mistakes or sloppiness,” Barr told host Laura Ingraham. “There was something far more troubling here. We’re going to get to the bottom of it. And if people broke the law and we can establish that with the evidence, they will be prosecuted.”

DOJ’S RUSSIA PROBE REVIW FOCUSING ON ‘SMOKING GUN’ TAPES OF MEETING WITH TRUMP AIDE: SOURCES

Trump “has every right to be frustrated” by the investigation, Barr added.

“What happened to him was one of the greatest travesties in American history — without any basis,” Barr said. “They started this investigation of his campaign. And even more concerning, actually, is what happened after the campaign. A whole pattern of events while he was president … to sabotage the presidency … or at least have the effect of sabotaging the presidency.”

Barr appointed Durham to review the events leading up to the 2016 presidential election and the origins of the Russia probe, through Trump’s Jan. 20, 2017, inauguration.

During Thursday’s show Barr also addressed what he described as abuse of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA), saying he believed “safeguards” would “enable us to go forward with this important tool.”

” I think it’s very sad and the people who abused FISA have a lot to answer for,” he said, “because this was an important tool to protect the American people.

“They abused it. They undercut public confidence in FISA but also the FBI is an institution and we have to rebuild that.”

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Justice Department Inspector General Michael Horowitz last year said the FBI made repeated errors and misrepresentations before the FISA Court in an effort to obtain the warrants against former Trump campaign adviser Carter Page. The court later found those warrants “lacked probable cause.”

Fox News’ Brooke Singman and The Associated Press contributed to this report.

Source Article from https://www.foxnews.com/media/ag-william-barr-on-the-russia-investigation-theres-something-far-more-troubling-here

Americans are unhappy with President Donald Trump’s handling of the U.S. economy during the coronavirus outbreak, according to a poll released Wednesday by CNN and research firm SSRS.

With most states placed under stay-at-home orders by their governors in an effort to curb the spread of coronavirus, many non-essential businesses have been closed, throwing millions of individuals out of work.

Trump holds a 48 percent approval rate on how he is dealing with the U.S. economy among those polled. When the same question was asked in March, 54 percent of Americans approved of Trump’s economic policies. That number represents the first time Trump’s approval rating in that area has gone below 50 percent since September 2019.

While 39 percent of those surveyed classified economic conditions in the U.S. as “good,” 60 percent said they were “poor” with 32 percent calling them “very poor.”

However, 67 percent of those polled said they expected the economy to improve in about a year, with only 31 percent estimating that conditions will be “poor.”

Americans surveyed in the poll were nearly evenly divided as to whether or not the coronavirus has caused them any economic hardships. While 49 percent said they had experienced financial difficulties, 51 percent of those polled saying they had not.

Newsweek reached out to the White House for comment but did not receive a response in time for publication.

1,002 adults participated in the poll, which has a plus-minus 3.7 percent margin of error, conducted in the first week of April.

Since the U.S. began taking measures to combat the spread of coronavirus, Trump has often spoken of his desire to reopen the country for business. His initial aim was to begin reopening American businesses by Easter Sunday, but instead chose to extend nationwide social distancing guidelines.

“We can expect that by June 1, we will be well on our way to recovery,” Trump said during a March news briefing. “We think by June 1 a lot of great things will be happening.”

Unemployment rates in the U.S. have increased greatly, with over 6 million individuals filing for unemployment benefits during the first week of April.

In March, Trump signed off on a $2 trillion coronavirus emergency economic stimulus package designed to help some individual Americans by sending them direct cash payments of approximately $1,200. Money is expected to start being distributed in April via direct deposit.

“This will deliver urgently needed relief to our nation’s families, workers and businesses,” Trump said during the signing ceremony, “and that’s what this is all about.”

More funds could be on the way to Americans, according to Trump, who said Monday his administration “could very well do a second round” of direct cash payments.

“It is absolutely under serious consideration,” Trump added.

Small businesses were also encouraged to enrol in the Paycheck Protection Program, a loan program that would ostensibly allow employers to keep employees on the payroll and cover other expenses, such as utilities and rent.

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Source Article from https://www.newsweek.com/trumps-approval-rating-economy-dips-lowest-since-september-amid-coronavirus-pandemic-1496956

President Donald Trump on Thursday said a widespread COVID-19 testing program to assess whether workers can safely return to their workplaces is “never going to happen” in the United States.

As he addressed reporters during the daily White House Coronavirus Task Force briefing, Trump touted the fact that 2 million Americans had been tested for the virus as a “milestone” in the U.S. fight against the global pandemic caused by SARS-Cov-2.

The 2 million tests that have been administered so far represents a high water mark after weeks of problems in obtaining and administering tests caused by the Trump administration’s rejection of a test developed by the World Health Organization. However, that number means only .61 percent of the 330 million U.S. population has been tested for COVID-19.

That’s a paltry number compared to many other countries which have implemented testing programs. Italy, for example, has administered tests to approximately 1.4 percent of its population, and South Korea, which flattened its infection curve with widespread testing, has reached .9 percent of its population.

Most public health experts have stressed the need for the U.S. to significantly expand its testing program, both with currently available tests to determine whether a given person is infected with SARS-Cov-2, and with so-called “antibody tests” to determine whether a person has successfully fought off the virus and is therefore immune to it.

U.S. President Donald Trump speaks during the daily coronavirus briefing as Labor Secretary Eugene Scalia (R) looks on in the Brady Press Briefing Room at the White House on April 09, 2020 in Washington, DC. U.S. unemployment claims have approached 17 million over the past three weeks amid the COVID-19 pandemic. Alex Wong/Getty

Both varieties of test, experts say, must be administered in far greater quantities than currently being done in order to allow Americans to return to work without fear of infection, though Trump has repeatedly suggested that the U.S. could begin to emerge from social distancing measures within a few weeks.

But when asked how his administration could discuss “reopening” the U.S. economy without an adequate testing program in place, Trump claimed that such a program was not just unnecessary, but was something that was simply not in the cards.

“Do you need it? No. Is it a nice thing to do? Yes,” Trump said.

“We’re talking about 325 million people, and that’s not going to happen,” he continued, adding later that testing at such a high rate “would never happen with anyone else, either,” and claiming that the countries that have implemented such programs “do it in a limited form” and that the U.S. would soon be “the leader of the pack” on testing.

Correction (4/9/2020, 11:00 p.m.): This article was updated to correct mathematical errors in the percentages of those tested.

Source Article from https://www.newsweek.com/trump-says-widespread-coronavirus-testing-would-never-happen-isnt-needed-reopen-country-1497210?amp=1