Editor Brian Harrod Provides Comprehensive up-to-date news coverage, with aggregated news from sources all over the world from the Roundup Newswires Network
President lashed out at reporters, swiped at Biden and refused to accept that he had put a foot wrong in coronavirus response
A toddler threw a self-pitying tantrum on live television on Monday night. Unfortunately he was 73 years old, wearing a long red tie and running the world’s most powerful country.
Donald Trump, starved of campaign rallies, Mar-a-Lago weekends and golf, and goaded by a bombshell newspaper report, couldn’t take it any more. Years of accreted grievance and resentment towards the media came gushing out in a torrent. He ranted, he raved, he melted down and he blew up the internet with one of the most jaw-dropping performances of his presidency.
In a bizarre tirade, the president bristled at a suggestion by one of the media that his power was restricted
Donald Trump has declared in a White House briefing that his “authority is total” when it comes to lockdown rules during the coronavirus pandemic, and he denied that he was weighing firing Dr Anthony Fauci, the country’s foremost infectious diseases expert who sits on the coronavirus task force.
After a weekend reprieve from presidential briefings that have been likened to Trump rallies for their uninterrupted flow of Trumpian id, the president returned to the lectern on Monday to deliver one of his most bizarre performances yet.
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It’s been one month since Trump declared a national emergency over the coronavirus pandemic, and many of his key promises remain unfulfilled.
An in-depth NPR investigation found many of the pledges that Trump made in his March 13 Rose Garden speech have only been parially realized, while others have gone completely ignored.
NPR’s Investigations Team dug into each of the claims made from the podium that day. And rather than a sweeping national campaign of screening, drive-through sample collection and lab testing, it found a smattering of small pilot projects and aborted efforts.
In some cases, no action was taken at all.
Independent congressman Justin Amash pushed back against Trump’s claim that he has the authority to reopen the economy at the federal level, an assertion that is also challenged by constitutional experts.
President Trump is flat-out wrong. The president has no authority to “close down” or “open up” the states. He’s the one creating conflict and confusion. Put down the authoritarianism and read the Constitution. https://t.co/3AFqRx7YTX
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.
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Storms and tornadoes have hit the south today with 20 states, including Texas, Mississippi, Alabama and Louisiana affected. That raises two dangers for residents - Covid-19 and the elements. However, the Mississippi Emergency Management Agency said that people should prioritize shelter over social distancing in the case of emergency.
Director Michel and our team are monitoring the weather and standby ready to assist. Have a safe place to go. If you go to a public shelter please wear a mask, bandana, or scarf around your nose and mouth. Practice social distancing. We will get through this! pic.twitter.com/owoDLwL3rI
Louisiana, which has the fourth-highest number of deaths of any state despite ranking only 25th in population, has reported a drop in deaths. The 34 deaths from Covid-19 reported on Sunday was the lowest total in Louisiana since 1 April. Fears the state will run out of ventilators and intensive care beds have also eased. 840 people have now reported to have died from the virus in Louisiana since the start of the outbreak.
The New Orleans Times-Picayune also reports that the number of most serious crimes, such as homicide and robberies, have fallen since Mayor LaToya Cantrell ordered the closing of most businesses in the city last month. However, other crimes such as some categories of domestic violence and shoplifting have risen.
Prominent US public health adviser Dr Anthony Fauci appeared on Sunday to confirm a bombshell New York Times report which said he and other Trump administration officials recommended the implementation of social distancing to combat the coronavirus in February, but were rebuffed for almost a month.
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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What does protest look like under a stay-at-home order?
This evening, activists are lighting a candle in solidarity with more than 90,000 people typically incarcerated in state prisons and jails in New York state, as coronavirus threatens to turn crowded, unsanitary prisons into death traps.
Advocates have been pleading for weeks that San Francisco move people out of homeless shelters and into hotel rooms, given that the conditions inside these facilities are often unsanitary and crowded, making it easy for a virus to quickly spread.
Now, there has been a major coronavirus outbreak inside a homeless shelter in San Francisco: nearly 70 residents at MSC South have tested positive, which is roughly half of all the people who were tested.
After 70 residents of a San Francisco homeless shelter test positive for Covid-19, advocates say others are trapped in lockdown in shelters with restrictions. "Telling them they cannot leave is not protecting them"-@Leahfsw. "People need to be moved to hotels, not just locked up" pic.twitter.com/YTfxVaMIGg
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.
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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.
Contest will unfold in a political landscape transformed by pandemic that has claimed thousands of lives and millions of jobs
Democrats made their choice and on Wednesday Bernie Sanders made it official. His withdrawal from the Democratic primary race leaves Joe Biden with only one opponent: Donald Trump.
Now the stage is set for a November general election battle between two candidates with radically different visions of presidential leadership and America’s role in the world. The contest will unfold in a political landscape transformed beyond all recognition by the coronavirus pandemic that has already claimed at least 14,000 American lives and nearly 10mjobs.
With coronavirus occupying people’s attention, the Trump administration is giving handouts to big business, appointing judges and rolling back regulations
The last time America was facing a possible economic depression, Rahm Emanuel, Barack Obama’s chief of staff, observed: “Never allow a good crisis go to waste. It’s an opportunity to do the things you once thought were impossible.”
It is advice Donald Trump and his Republican allies appear to have taken to heart.
Tripp, whose secret recordings of conversations with Monica Lewinsky blew the whistle on Clinton, was terminally ill
Linda Tripp, whose secretly recorded phone conversations with Monica Lewinsky led to Bill Clinton’s impeachment in the 1990s, has died. She was 70 years old.
Tripp’s lawyer, Joseph Murtha, confirmed Tripp’s death to the Guardian earlier today, but did not provide further details.
Inspirational senator’s youth-led movement pushed for sweeping social change but fell far behind Joe Biden in bid for nomination
Bernie Sanders, the 78-year-old senator from Vermont who reshaped American politics with his youth-led movement for sweeping social change, announced on Wednesday that he was ending his presidential campaign for the 2020 Democratic nomination.
Sanders informed staff he was suspending his presidential campaign during a conference call on Wednesday morning, capping what has been an extraordinary rise from relative obscurity to standard-bearer of the American left as an unabashed democratic socialist who championed the working class and called for political revolution.
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Joe Biden said he would like Bernie Sanders to be “part of the journey,” although not his running mate, if he wins the Democratic nomination.
Biden has a significant lead in the delegate count, but Sanders remains in the race, despite an increasingly narrow path to the nomination.
President Trump said he had a friendly phone conversation with former Vice President Joe Biden to talk about the federal response to the coronavirus pandemic. Biden told @craigmelvin in a one-on-one interview that he doesn't want the November election delayed. pic.twitter.com/DICLhBafTE
The White House has confirmed Stephanie Grisham is leaving her role as press secretary to rejoin the first lady’s team.
“My replacements will be announced in the coming days and I will stay in the West Wing to help with a smooth transition for as long as needed,” Grisham said in a statement released by the White House.
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Dr Birx shared a personal story about her granddaughter’s current high fever and her inability to visit. Earlier, Trump accidentally referred to her “grandson”.
“I’m sure it’s roseola or something,” Birx says of her 10-month-old granddaughter’s high fever.
She doubts it’s coronavirus because her family is self-isolating.
“No one is allowed into that house or out of that house because there’s too much precious cargo inside,” Birx says https://t.co/zvWlrulgbf
More details from the Guardian’s Sam Levine on the Wisconsin election:
The US supreme court ruled 5-4 that Wisconsin voters have to have their mail-in ballots postmarked by 7 April, election day, in order to have them counted in the state’s closely watched election. The deadline for election officials to receive the ballot is 13 April. The decision, which came shortly after the state supreme court ordered the election to move forward on Tuesday, ends days of legal fighting over the deadline for receiving absentee ballots in the state.
While I do not doubt the good faith of my colleagues, the court’s order, I fear, will result in massive disenfranchisement. A voter cannot deliver for postmarking a ballot she has not received. The question here is whether tens of thousands of Wisconsin citizens can vote safely in the midst of a pandemic.”
Donald Trump has warned Americans that the toll from coronavirus in the US will be 'the toughest' during the next two weeks, saying there will be 'a lot of death'. According to the Johns Hopkins University in Maryland, by Saturday evening more than 305,000 cases of Covid-19 had been confirmed in the US, resulting in more than 8,000 deaths
Mike Pompeo and Mark Esper agreed to proceed with US withdrawal of Open Skies Treaty despite pandemic, sources say
The Trump administration is determined to withdraw from a 28-year-old treaty intended to reduce the risk of an accidental war between the west and Russia by allowing reconnaissance flights over each other’s territory.
Despite the coronavirus pandemic, which has put off a full national security council (NSC) meeting on the Open Skies Treaty (OST), the secretary of defence, Mark Esper, and secretary of state, Mike Pompeo, have agreed to proceed with a US exit, according to two sources familiar with administration planning.