May 9, 2020

A single Kayleigh McEnany quote gives away the game

Katie Miller, the wife of adviser Stephen Miller, has tested positive for the coronavirus. The infection of Ms. Miller, a close adviser to Vice President Pence, means potential exposure to President Trump’s inner circle — so reporters are raising questions about White House internal testing policies.

The White House has indicated to reporters that Pence and many members of his staff have been getting tested daily, and Pence and Trump appear not to have had contact with Katie Miller recently.

Meanwhile, press secretary Kayleigh McEnany sought to reassure the news media that the White House testing procedures are sound. I wanted to draw attention to this quote from McEnany:

“We have put in place the guidelines that our experts have put forward to keep this building safe, which means contact tracing," McEnany told reporters during Friday’s news briefing. "All of the recommended guidelines we have for businesses that have essential workers, we are now putting them in place here in the White House. So as America reopens safely, the White House is continuing to operate safely.”

The careful reader will note a jarring juxtaposition here. McEnany claims both that the United States is reopening safely and that the White House is operating safely. But only one of these two — the White House — actually has the sort of testing regime the White House itself is now implicitly acknowledging is a prerequisite to safety.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2020/05/08/single-kayleigh-mcenany-quote-gives-away-game/

May 9, 2020

The pandemic exposed a painful truth: America doesn't care about old people

We speak of the elderly as expendable, then fail to protect them.

When the novel coronavirus first emerged, the U.S. response was slowed by the common impression that covid-19 mainly killed older people. Those who wanted to persuade politicians and the public to take the virus seriously needed to emphasize that “It isn’t only the elderly who are at risk from the coronavirus,” to cite the headline of a political analysis that ran in The Washington Post in March. The clear implication was that if an illness “merely” decimated older people, we might be able to live with it.

Of course, older adults are at heightened risk, even though covid-19 strikes younger people, too. But across America — and beyond — we are losing our elders not only because they are especially susceptible. They’re also dying because of a more entrenched epidemic: the devaluation of older lives. Ageism is evident in how we talk about victims from different generations, in the shameful conditions in many nursing homes and even — explicitly — in the formulas some states and health-care systems have developed for determining which desperately ill people get care if there’s a shortage of medical resources.

It’s become clear that nursing homes are particularly deadly incubators: Fifteen states reported (as of Friday) that more than half of their covid-19 fatalities were associated with long-term-care facilities. Meanwhile, the World Health Organization says that as many as 50 percent of all deaths in Europe have occurred in such places. Hans Kluge, the WHO’s top official for Europe, called this “an unimaginable human tragedy.”

Yet this is not an inevitable tragedy. Policymakers and health-care providers have long accepted the preventable suffering of older adults in long-term-care institutions. The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services found that about 20 percent of Medicare beneficiaries in skilled nursing facilities suffer avoidable harm. And for decades, government data has shown that nursing homes can be infection tinderboxes: Almost two-thirds of the approximately 15,600 nursing homes in the United States have been cited for violating rules on preventing infections since 2017, according to a Kaiser Health News analysis of state inspection results.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/nursing-home-coronavirus-discrimination-elderly-deaths/2020/05/07/751fc464-8fb7-11ea-9e23-6914ee410a5f_story.html

May 9, 2020

George Conway: No one is above the law. The Supreme Court is about to teach that lesson.

Twenty-six years ago, I published my first op-ed. Entitled “‘No Man in This Country … Is Above the Law,’” it addressed news reports that President Bill Clinton planned to claim an immunity from having to respond to Paula Jones’s sexual harassment suit. “In a case involving his private conduct,” I wrote, “a President should be treated like any private citizen. The rule of law requires no more — and no less.”

The piece led to my ghostwriting briefs for Jones, including a Supreme Court brief two years later. The Supreme Court agreed unanimously that Jones could proceed, and, like the op-ed, quoted from the Founders’ debates about the status of the president: “Far from being above the laws, he is amenable to them in his private character as a citizen, and in his public character by impeachment.” Which meant that while a president could be impeached for official misconduct, he “is otherwise subject to the laws” — and therefore could be sued — “for his purely private acts.”

I couldn’t have imagined then that another president would challenge that proposition. Then again, I couldn’t have imagined President Donald Trump.

But here we are. On Tuesday, the Supreme Court will hear telephonic arguments in three cases addressing whether Trump can keep his tax and financial information from being disclosed, whether from Congress or criminal prosecutors. In Trump v. Vance, which involves a New York state grand jury investigation, Trump’s lawyers argue that, even when it comes to purely private conduct, the presidency insulates him from the legal process.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2020/05/08/george-conway-why-trump-will-lose-court/

Thanks, George, for reminding us how twisted you were in the past.

I have little confidence the Republican nominees on the Supreme Court will make the obviously proper and lawful decision.

May 9, 2020

The judge should look skeptically at Barr's latest effort to rescue another Trump crony

“I RECOGNIZE that the actions I acknowledged in court today were wrong, and, through my faith in God, I am working to set things right,” Michael Flynn said when he pleaded guilty to the felony of lying to the FBI in 2017. “I accept full responsibility for my actions.”

Now, in a stunning blow to impartial justice, Attorney General William P. Barr is proposing to clear Mr. Flynn, who served as national security adviser at the beginning of President Trump’s term. It is the latest and perhaps most disturbing action Mr. Barr has taken to overrule the professionals of the Justice Department in a manner pleasing to his boss.

U.S. Attorney Jeff Jensen said he made the call, then consulted Mr. Barr, who agreed. Mr. Jensen should not have been in a position to make that call. He had that position because Mr. Barr tapped him to “assist” other Justice Department prosecutors on a case of particular interest to Mr. Trump. Yet those other prosecutors needed no help determining Mr. Flynn’s guilt.

According to Mr. Flynn’s admissions, he advised Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak shortly before Mr. Trump’s 2017 inauguration that Moscow should resist responding to U.S. sanctions on Russia, which the Obama administration had imposed in response to the Kremlin’s 2016 election interference. Mr. Flynn also admitted that he misled Vice President Pence about what he had discussed with the Russian ambassador. In a plea deal, Mr. Flynn disclosed that he had knowingly lied to FBI agents who were investigating Mr. Flynn’s Russia ties.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/the-judge-should-look-skeptically-at-barrs-latest-effort-to-rescue-another-trump-crony/2020/05/08/e9d8c17a-90c0-11ea-a9c0-73b93422d691_story.html

May 9, 2020

This is how economic pain is distributed in America

Job losses due to the coronavirus shutdown have fallen unequally on Americans according to age, gender, educational attainment and race

As the unemployment rate soared in April to its highest levels since the Great Depression, with 14.7 percent of workers without jobs, the coronavirus shutdown fell unequally on Americans according to age, gender, educational attainment as well as race.

Women became unemployed at higher rates than men. Hispanics and blacks were hit harder than whites and Asians. Those without high school diplomas fared the worst. As did teenagers, of whom nearly a third are now out of work.

The numbers, released Friday by the Labor Department, are the first to capture an entire month of stalled business activity, offering the clearest illustration to date of how economic pain is distributed among Americans.

And yet, while the numbers demonstrate a “collective crisis,” they still “don’t fully capture employment despair,” said Darrick Hamilton, an economist and executive director for the Kirwan Institute for the Study of Race and Ethnicity at Ohio State University.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2020/05/09/jobs-report-demographics/

May 9, 2020

Trump's Bid to Stand Above the Law

Next week, the Supreme Court will hear lawyers argue the president’s claim that he has absolute immunity while in office.

On Tuesday, the U.S. Supreme Court is scheduled to hear one of the most consequential cases ever considered on executive privilege. Trump v. Vance concerns a subpoena issued by the Manhattan district attorney to President Trump’s accountants demanding the release of tax returns and other financial documents to a grand jury.

What is at stake is no less than the accountability of a president to the rule of law.

Mr. Trump claims that a president has “temporary absolute immunity,” meaning he cannot be criminally investigated while in office. Indeed, in oral argument before the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit in New York, his lawyers said that if the president were to shoot someone on Fifth Avenue, he could not be investigated or indicted until after he left office.

If the justices endorse this extreme view, they will make it impossible to hold this president, and all future presidents, answerable in courts for their actions.

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/05/08/opinion/supreme-court-trump-executive-privilege.html

We're going to find out soon which Supreme Court justices will pervert the rule of law to support this criminal president. I have little confidence the Republican nominees will make the proper lawful decision.

May 9, 2020

As Job Losses Mount, Lawmakers Face a Make-or-Break Moment

The United States just lost 20 million jobs. The wrong federal response could make those layoffs a permanent fixture of the U.S. economy and sentence thousands of companies to bankruptcy.

As the nation confronts unemployment levels not seen since the Great Depression, Congress and the Trump administration face a pivotal choice: Continue spending trillions trying to shore up businesses and workers, or bet that state reopenings will jump-start the United States economy.

At least 20 million Americans are unemployed and a large share of the nation’s small businesses are shut and facing possible insolvency. Policy errors in the coming weeks could turn the 18 million temporary layoffs recorded in April into permanent job losses that could plunge the United States into a deep and protracted recession unrivaled in recent history.

Yet the federal government is lurching away from the strategy that has thus far helped slow the spread of the coronavirus and sustain people and companies struggling during the self-inflicted economic shutdown.

Over the past two months, as consumers and workers retreated and state officials imposed limits on economic activity, President Trump and bipartisan coalitions in the House and Senate have approved $3 trillion in federal spending to help companies, workers and the unemployed. The Federal Reserve has taken extraordinary steps to keep the financial system functioning, buying up government-backed securities and embarking on plans to purchase corporate and municipal debt to keep credit flowing. Governors have embraced stay-at-home orders in an effort to slow the virus’s spread.

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/05/09/business/as-job-losses-mount-lawmakers-face-a-make-or-break-moment.html

I think we aren't going back to the old normal.

May 9, 2020

Trump flouts coronavirus protocols as security experts warn of need to protect president

Source: Washington Post

Trump flouts coronavirus protocols as security experts warn of need to protect president from a lethal threat

President Trump on Friday continued to eschew key public health guidelines from his own administration — meeting with Republican lawmakers and World War II veterans without a face mask — while expressing confidence that he is protected from the coronavirus despite a second White House staffer testing positive this week.

The president appeared puzzled that the aide, Katie Miller, the press secretary for Vice President Pence, had contracted the virus “out of the blue” after testing negative several times under a routine White House screening program put in place last month.

During the event with GOP members, Trump suggested “the whole concept of tests isn’t great,” but he declared that he was satisfied with the procedures that are in place to protect him and his top aides.

“I don’t worry about things. I do what I have to do,” said Trump, who this week resumed traveling with a visit to a manufacturing facility in Phoenix. “We’re dealing with an invisible situation. Nobody knows. All you can do is take precaution and do the best that you can.”

Read more: https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/trump-flouts-coronavirus-protocols-as-security-experts-warn-of-need-to-protect-president-from-a-lethal-threat/2020/05/08/3a6a9cec-9136-11ea-a9c0-73b93422d691_story.html

May 9, 2020

Soaring joblessness could shake U.S. economy, politics for years

Eye on lessons from the Great Depression and 2008 crisis

The United States is facing a political and economic challenge like nothing it has seen in nearly 100 years.

Mass unemployment on a scale not seen since the Great Depression has erased the economic gains of the past decade and now threatens to linger for years, fueling social discord and shaking an already polarized political system.

Almost overnight, it seems, the U.S. economy, which just two months ago boasted abundant jobs and soaring stock values, has become a shambles. Not since the government began collecting official data in 1948 has a smaller share of the U.S. population been employed.

The unique character of this economic collapse, triggered by an ongoing public health crisis, may lead to an enduring decline in the demand for labor. While the pandemic rages, companies are developing new ways to operate with fewer people, replacing the lost workers with machines that are impervious to illness.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2020/05/08/jobs-coronavirus-unemployment-economy-politics/

May 8, 2020

Column: As an L.A. newcomer, I adored Souplantation. I'm grieving its closing

The Los Angeles food scene is renowned for its richness and diversity. So when I moved here from New York in September 2018, I hoped to eventually find my way around the region through its cuisines, inspired by the example of the beloved critic Jonathan Gold, who had died two months earlier.

Instead I discovered Souplantation.

This soup-and-salad restaurant chain — with its no-nonsense buffet-style offerings and family-friendly seating — sustained me on many nights when I was too tired to cook. The wonton chicken salad was my standby. I relished the soups — the bacon bits in the Yankee clam chowder, the robust minestrone, the sweet and tart French onion soup.

A native New Yorker, I was unfamiliar with Souplantation, and only today, upon learning of its closing, am I learning of its origins. The first Souplantation opened in San Diego in 1978, founded by a surfer; the chain expanded in the mid-1980s, after it was acquired by two young entrepreneurs. It weathered an E. coli outbreak and a bankruptcy filing, growing to 97 locations and 4,400 employees at the time of its closure this week due to the coronavirus pandemic.

https://www.latimes.com/food/story/2020-05-07/souplantation-closing-los-angeles