Donald Trump and Jeff Sessions’ playground fight continued into Sunday. In an interview with Sinclair TV, Trump said Sessions had not been “mentally qualified” to be his first attorney general.
Related: Jeff Sessions snaps back after Trump tells Alabama not to trust him
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Here’s a look at today’s main stories:
After Donald Trump said on Friday that he believes places of worship should be deemed as essential services, Minnesota’s Democratic governor, Tim Walz, issued an executive order addressing the issue. Places of worship in the state will now be able to open at 25% of capacity. Individuals or households in the buildings must maintain six feet distance.
Walz said he still encouraged citizens to worship remotely. “I am under no illusion whatsoever: Every move we make that loosens up increases the risk,” Walz said.
Continue reading...Former vice-president said in an interview ‘If you have a problem figuring out whether you’re for me or Trump, then you ain’t black’
Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden triggered a fresh controversy on Friday morning when he suggested that if American voters supported Donald Trump “then you ain’t black”.
The former vice-president did an interview with Charlamagne tha God, a co-host of the radio show The Breakfast Club. Charlamagne had pressed Biden on a number of issues, including the legalization of marijuana and his choice of running mate.
Continue reading...Donald Trump Jr and Eric Trump, the US president’s oldest sons, have attracted fierce criticism for attacking Joe Biden and Democrats in terms most observers considered beyond the pale even in America’s toxic political climate.
Related: ‘They don’t give him enough credit’: the voters who back Trump, even through the pandemic
Continue reading...The electoral map does not favor Republicans and the pandemic has helped put them on defense in states they once thought safe
Just three months ago, centrist Democrats were panicking. After strong performances in Iowa, New Hampshire and Nevada, the Vermont senator Bernie Sanders appeared poised to sail away with the nomination for president. Some in the party feared the self-identified democratic socialist would wreak havoc down the ballot.
Related: Could Susan Collins' vote for Kavanaugh help the Democrats flip the Senate in 2020?
Continue reading...Donald Trump has ratcheted up his “Obamagate” conspiracy theory to implicate Joe Biden and other former White House officials in what critics say is a desperate attempt to distract from the coronavirus pandemic.
Related: What is 'Obamagate' and why is Trump so worked up about it?
Continue reading...Mike Garcia will replace Hill, who resigned amid scandal in 2019 after securing the first Democratic victory in district in decades
Republican Mike Garcia has beat Democrat Christy Smith in the special election to fill the seat of the former US representative Katie Hill, who resigned amid scandal in late 2019.
After a bitter political battle complicated and constrained by the pandemic, Garcia’s win was a blow for Democrats who in 2018 had secured the suburban Los Angeles district for the first time in since 1990. But the candidates will soon have a rematch. Garcia will serve only five months before the seat is up for a vote again in November.
Continue reading...Mike Garcia leading in California’s special election while Tom Tiffany easily won a special congressional election in Wisconsin
Republicans appeared on track for a pair of congressional wins on Wednesday, after notching an easy victory in a Wisconsin House seat and appearing poised to take a seat away from the Democrats in California.
The wins would be seen as a boost to the party and President Donald Trump, whose re-election campaign has been battered by outrage over his response to the coronavirus pandemic and whose popularity has been dipping in many recent polls.
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Precautions against Covid-19 infection have been stepped up at the White House but are hampered by the cramped and poorly ventilated conditions in the West Wing, Kevin Hassett, a special adviser to Donald Trump on the pandemic response, said on Sunday.
Treasury secretary Steven Mnuchin has been talking to Fox News Sunday about the Trump administration’s attempts to reopen and restart the stalled US economy, and whether there will be another huge stimulus bill. Democrats who control the House want one of those but the White House doesn’t – that’s the short version.
The White House is “absolutely pushing for a payroll tax cut”, Mnuchin says. Most observers think that is a non-starter, because Democrats won’t let it. Payroll taxes, meaning deductions from regular paychecks, include funds for Social Security and Medicare, vital social benefits.
Related: US job losses have reached Great Depression levels. Did it have to be that way?
Continue reading...John Ratcliffe was forced to withdraw his nomination for the same post nine months ago for exaggerating his security experience
A Trump loyalist nominated as director of national intelligence (DNI) looked set to sail through Senate confirmation hearings on Tuesday, only nine months after being forced to withdraw for having exaggerated his security experience.
Related: John Ratcliffe: Trump's intelligence chief pick withdraws amid qualification doubts
Continue reading...With Covid-19 deaths set to almost double this month, the president is putting the stock market before lives, critics say
Donald Trump is effectively abandoning a public health strategy for the coronavirus pandemic and showing “clear willingness to trade lives for the Dow Jones”, critics say.
Related: Will Americans ever forgive Trump for his heartless lack of compassion? | Francine Prose
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Donald Trump appears to have revised upward to 100,000 his expectations for the number of Americans who will die of Covid-19.
“Hopefully we’re going to come in below that 100,000 lives lost, which is a horrible number nevertheless,” Trump said at a White House event to honor people who are doing work related to the coronavirus pandemic, according to Reuters.
The last patient has left the field hospital that was erected in New York City’s Javits convention center, the AP reports.
The emergency facility was erected by the members of the US military to alleviate strain on the city’s hospital system at the height of the outbreak. It ultimately treated 1,095 patients, the last 8 of whom left the hospital today.
Continue reading...Trump’s transformation of the federal judiciary means the stakes have never been higher in an election than they are for Democrats
He is 37 and less than 10 years out of law school. He had never tried a case, nor served as co-counsel at trial, when he was tapped last year for America’s federal bench. But he did go on Fox News to push the cause of Brett Kavanaugh when Trump’s supreme court pick was mired in sexual abuse claims two years ago.
And now he is bound for the second highest court in the land.
Continue reading...Findings underscore partisan divide over voting as Democrats push to ease restrictions while Republicans defend them
As America hurtles towards the critical 2020 presidential election during the Covid-19 pandemic, less than half of Democrats are confident it will be fair and accurate, according to a new national survey from the Pew Research Center.
Just 46% of Democrats are confident in the fairness and accuracy of the November election, the survey found. Even fewer are confident all citizens will be able to vote if they want to.
Continue reading...The president had been intending to campaign on a strong economy and facing a socialist opponent but scapegoating foreigners has worked for him before
Donald Trump had been intending to run a re-election campaign based on a strong economy and a socialist opponent. Both have vanished in the past month. But the US president still has his ultimate weapon: xenophobia.
Related: Debacle of Trump's coronavirus disinfectant comments could be tipping point
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New York governor Andrew Cuomo reiterated that the federal government must be involved in expanding testing capacity, after Trump tweeted it was up to the states to make tests more widely available.
“If we don’t have federal help on testing, that’s a real problem,” Cuomo said.
Trump sent a series of tweets trying to deflect responsibility for the coronavirus crisis, suggesting states are the ones who need to expand testing capacity.
The States have to step up their TESTING!
Continue reading...People who made less than $50,000 per year were 10 percentage points more concerned about threat posed by infectious disease
Americans with lower incomes and less education were more like to say the spread of infectious disease was a major threat to the US, according to a Pew Research Center survey released Monday.
Nearly all US adults said the spread of infectious disease is a threat to the country, but people who made less than $50,000 per year were 10 percentage points more concerned about the threat posed by infectious disease than those with higher incomes in a survey conducted in March.
Continue reading...Tom Cotton told Fox News he did not believe virus originated in Wuhan market and said bioweapons link should not be ruled out
A Republican senator who floated a conspiracy theory which said the Chinese government created Covid-19 in a weapons lab claimed on Saturday that since he first learned of the outbreak, in mid-January, “common sense has been my guide”.
The Covid-19 outbreak began in the Chinese city of Wuhan, but has spread globally and by Saturday evening had killed more people in America, nearly 20,000, than in any other country. White House public health experts have said they currently expect a death toll of around 60,000 in the United States.
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Fact check: The majority of states have less than 10% positive cases
Earlier, Dr Deborah Birx, a coordinator on the coronavirus response task force, said that 63% of the states (31 states) had less than 10% of total people tested for Covid-19 be positive. A quick glance at data provided by the Covid Tracking Project, a collaborative, volunteer-run project that collects data from local health departments, shows that about 28 states plus US Samoa meet that threshold.
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The White House is reportedly having discussions about reopening the economy next month, which could cause friction with health experts who have warned against lifting “stay at home” orders too quickly.
CNN reports:
Officials said the options being discussed on reopening the country vary widely in scope, from recommendations on benchmarks for when individual states can begin easing restrictions to a nationwide ‘big bang’ that Trump previewed Tuesday evening on Fox News. The officials said the conversations were still preliminary and would likely evolve over the course of the next weeks.
Still, some officials have even begun mulling the type of event Trump may want to mark the day when nationwide restrictions are lifted after he suggested a ‘big celebration’ when the crisis is over. ...
At some point, the president is going to have to look at Drs. Fauci and Birx and say, we're opening on May 1. Give me your best guidance on protocols, but we cannot deny our people their basic freedoms any longer.
Barack Obama called for a “robust system of testing and monitoring” to confront the coronavirus crisis.
Social distancing bends the curve and relieves some pressure on our heroic medical professionals. But in order to shift off current policies, the key will be a robust system of testing and monitoring – something we have yet to put in place nationwide. https://t.co/evkTSrzReB
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