Trump to keep virus task force after Pence floated pulling plug
President Donald Trump says his administration’s coronavirus task force will continue indefinitely, a day after the White House floated the notion of winding it down.
Trump, in a series of tweets Wednesday morning, said the task force will continue with a focus on reopening the country, as well as development of vaccines and therapeutic treatments. “We may add or subtract people to it, as appropriate,” Trump said, without elaborating.
Trump’s tweets come after a series of statements from the White House on Tuesday that the task force, led by Vice President Mike Pence, may be shuttered.
“Mike Pence and the task force have done a great job, but we’re now looking at a little bit of a different form,” Trump said during an event in Phoenix on Tuesday. “We’re having conversations about that,” Pence had said earlier in Washington.
Trump struck up the task force in late January before putting Pence in charge about a month later. Members of the task force held daily news briefings for weeks, but those were dialed back after April 24, when Trump was ridiculed after musing about treating coronavirus patients with light and disinfectant.
— Bloomberg News
Four GOP lawmakers sue Inslee over coronavirus stay-home order
In the latest in an escalating series of legal challenges by Republicans, four Washington state legislators sued Gov. Jay Inslee in federal court on Tuesday, seeking to strike down his stay-home order aimed at slowing the spread of the coronavirus.
A 28-page complaint, filed by the lawmakers and others in U.S. District Court for the Western District of Washington, contends “the emergency has been contained” and that continuing restrictions for workers, businesses and residents are not legally justified.
The lawmakers joining the lawsuit are Reps. Drew MacEwen, R-Union; Andrew Barkis, R-Olympia; Chris Corry, R-Yakima; and Brandon Vick, R-Vancouver. Four other Washington residents also are plaintiffs, saying their rights to work, operate businesses, obtain medical care and worship have been harmed. The plaintiffs are represented by Joel Ard, a Seattle lawyer and member of the conservative Federalist Society, and David DeWolf, a professor emeritus of law at Gonzaga University.
Inslee’s emergency stay-home order, which was first imposed March 23, was recently extended through May 31, although some workplaces, construction sites and recreational activities are reopening in phases.
The new lawsuit portrays the threat of the COVID-19 pandemic in Washington as overblown, pointing, for example, to the state sending ventilators to other states and scrapping a U.S. Army field hospital which had been built at CenturyLink Field.
With hospitals not currently at risk of being overwhelmed, the lawsuit says that underpinning of Inslee’s emergency order is no longer valid.
“The threat has faded. But Inslee continues on,” the complaint states, adding the virus is a threat primarily to older, vulnerable populations. Inslee has not shown deaths would rise among any group if the stay-home order is lifted, the lawsuit asserts, “other than the most vulnerable population — sick, elderly people in long term care.”
It adds that the governor has not adequately considered targeted measures to protect that population, while allowing others to return to work.
Inslee called the lawsuit’s claims “biologically ignorant and humanly heartless” when asked about it at a news briefing Tuesday afternoon.
“It’s just ignorant, because this is a very transmittable disease,” Inslee said. “It continues to transmit disease, we had hundreds of new cases just yesterday, it’s just a biological fact.”
— The Seattle Times
‘Live and Let Die’ blasts as Trump visits mask factory
As President Donald Trump toured an N95 mask manufacturing plant in Phoenix on Tuesday, his visit through the facility was accompanied by a head-scratching musical soundtrack: the Paul McCartney-penned “Live and Let Die,” as performed by Guns ‘N Roses.
The president and his entourage were touring a Honeywell factory that produces the masks, worn by medical workers to protect them from breathing in the deadly COVID-19 virus. Standing next to a green bin filled with hundreds of masks, a notably un-face-masked Trump watched an employee work as the music segued from the Animals’ “House of the Rising Sun” into the song McCartney wrote and recorded for the James Bond film of the same name.
The background music for the tour also included Trump rally stalwarts such as Lee Greenwood’s “God Bless the U.S.A.” and Survivor’s “Eye of the Tiger.”
In a tweet, Jimmy Kimmel noted: “I can think of no better metaphor for this presidency than Donald Trump not wearing a face mask to a face mask factory while the song ‘Live and Let Die’ blares in the background.”
The song’s climactic blast of music arrived as a Honeywell representative was explaining to the president the ways in which the mask’s material protects against particulates. As he was doing so, Rose could be heard yowling, “If this ever-changing world in which we live in/Makes you give in and cry/say live and let die.”
— Los Angeles Times
Trump says U.S. must reopen even if more Americans get sick, die
President Donald Trump declared Tuesday that the U.S. must begin to reopen its economy immediately, even if it leads to more Americans falling sick and dying from the coronavirus outbreak.
“Will some people be affected? Yes. Will some people be affected badly? Yes. But we have to get our country open and we have to get it open soon,” Trump said at an event with Native Americans in Phoenix.
The president has expressed increasing frustration with the coronavirus-sparked recession that has put more than 30 million Americans out of work and hurt his case for a second term. The U.S. continues to sport the largest coronavirus outbreak in the world, with about 1.2 million people infected and more than 70,000 killed so far.
— Bloomberg News
Airbnb to cut almost 1,900 jobs due to the ‘most harrowing crisis’
Airbnb said Tuesday it will cut almost 1,900 jobs as the short-term home rental company deals with the fallout from a travel industry wracked by upheaval stemming from the coronavirus pandemic.
Brian Chesky, Airbnb’s chief executive and co-founder, made the announcement in a letter sent to company employees, and posted on the Airbnb website. While not mentioning coronavirus or COVID-19 by name, Chesky left no doubt about what was behind the decision to shed approximately 25% off Airbnb’s 7,500 jobs.
“We are collectively living through the most harrowing crisis of our lifetime, and as it began to unfold, global travel came to a standstill,” said Chesky, who added that San Francisco-based Airbnb expects its revenue this year to be less than half the amount it took in during 2019.
Chesky said that the coronavirus crisis has created a situation in which “we don’t know exactly when travel will return,” and “when travel does return, it will look different.”
As such, Chesky said Airbnb would need to refocus its business, and would put the brakes on its transportation, hotel and luxury home rental operations.
“This crisis has sharpened our focus to get back to our roots, back to the basics, back to what is truly special about Airbnb,” Chesky said. “Everyday people who host their homes and offer experiences.”
Chesky said May 11 will be the last workday for those employees affected by the layoffs, and that U.S. employees will receive 14 weeks of base pay, plus one week of pay for every year at Airbnb, in addition to 12 months of healthcare coverage.
— The Mercury News
Fauci on Chinese lab origin theory: ‘I don’t get what they’re talking about’
The boss isn’t going to like this one bit.
Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, told National Geographic it’s unlikely the coronavirus pandemic somehow started in a Chinese lab, despite suggestions to the contrary by President Donald Trump and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo.
“If you look at the evolution of the virus in bats, and what’s out there now is very, very strongly leaning toward this (virus) could not have been artificially or deliberately manipulated,” Fauci said in an article published this week. “A number of very qualified evolutionary biologists have said that everything about the stepwise evolution over time strongly indicates that it evolved in nature and then jumped species.”
The 79-year-old Brooklyn native also dismissed the conspiracy theory that the virus was brought into a lab by Chinese scientists, then somehow spun out of control.
“But that means it was in the wild to begin with,” Fauci said in the interview, published Monday. “That’s why I don’t get what they’re talking about (and) why I don’t spend a lot of time going in on this circular argument.”
In his far-reaching interview with the science and nature publication, Fauci said there are always theories floating about, but he has a small team that decides which matters deserve his attention. The expert immunologist compared trying to consume all of the information about the pandemic to “drinking from a fire hydrant.”
— New York Daily News
