The day after news broke that a military aide who serves as a personal valet to Donald Trump had tested positive for coronavirus, Trump announced that he and Mike Pence would be getting daily tests (even as he continued to downplay the need for expanded testing nationally). But that valet wasn’t the end of it for the White House. Katie Miller, a spokesperson for Pence and the wife of top Trump aide Stephen Miller, also tested positive.
Stephen Miller’s mark continues to be felt through his use of the pandemic as an excuse to treat immigrants even worse than before, with hundreds of migrant children deported after arriving alone in the U.S. But he’s not the only Republican using coronavirus to harm vulnerable people. State-level Republicans are using reopening orders to scare low-wage workers back into unsafe workplaces.
● According to Friday’s jobs report, the unemployment rate is 14.7% and 20.5 million jobs have been lost. But that’s an optimistic picture—it only extends through mid-April, and the 14.7% unemployment rate leaves off millions of people who are underemployed and millions more who have dropped out of the labor force.
● You only have to glance at those numbers to see the continuing need for Congress to take action on more economic relief. That’s especially true because the small business loan program isn't working.
● House Speaker Nancy Pelosi is calling for direct, ongoing cash payments to most Americans, and Senate Democrats are joining her in that push. But … there’s Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell. And Senate Republicans are sticking with Trump, no matter what.
● One big emerging theme of the Republican coronavirus response is secrecy and attempts to hide bad numbers. As Arizona Gov. Doug Ducey plans a reopening, the state health department told academic researchers to stop collecting data and modeling the outbreak in the state. Florida, meanwhile, removed information about COVID-19 cases from the time before the virus was supposed to be making its way through the state.
● In the White House, while Trump brags about “Project Airbridge,” the pandemic supply mission supposedly led by Jared Kushner, they’re keeping it secret where those supplies have gone. Meanwhile, doctors are worried and angry about where the limited supplies of the anti-viral drug remdesivir are going.
● But what they can’t hide, they’ll just try to brazen their way through. Trump keeps raising his estimate of how many people will die. Which may be realistic, but of course he’s not accepting responsibility for his role in the staggering body count in this country.
● ICE detention centers have had their first COVID-19 death—but it won't be the last, advocates warn, “unless immediate action is taken.”
● Sen. Martha McSally hastily walked back comments opposing financial help for cities and towns hit hard by coronavirus. She was trying to run the “blue state bailout” crap Republicans love so much, while her own state gets $1.72 for every dollar its residents pay in federal taxes.
from Daily Kos https://ift.tt/3cjerZR
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