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      US sees record 184,000 new daily Covid cases as Trump politicises vaccine effort

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      The US set yet another daily record for new coronavirus cases on Friday, topping 184,000, while Donald Trump promised imminent distribution of a vaccine – except to New York, which he threatened to leave out for political reasons – and the president-elect, Joe Biden, pleaded with Americans to follow basic mitigation measures.
      According to Johns Hopkins University, 184,514 new cases were recorded on Friday, up from 153,496 on Thursday. More than 10.7 million cases have been recorded in total and more than 244,000 have died. Deaths are also increasing: 1,431 were reported on Friday, the highest toll in 10 days if more than a thousand less than the highest such toll, from April.
      At the White House, in his first remarks since losing the election to Biden, Trump said he expected a vaccine developed by Pfizer to receive emergency use authorisation “extremely soon”, and to be available to the general population by April.
      He also said the federal government would not deliver the vaccine to New York, because its governor, Andrew Cuomo, “doesn’t trust where the vaccine is coming from”. Trump and Cuomo have clashed frequently during the pandemic.
      Cuomo told MSNBC: “None of what he said is true, surprise surprise. We’re all excited about the possibilities about a vaccine.”
      Trump also took a shot at Pfizer, saying its statement that it was not part of Operation Warp Speed, the federal vaccine effort, was “an unfortunate misrepresentation”. Pfizer did not receive support for research or manufacturing, but has agreed to sell its vaccine to the federal government. A spokeswoman said the company was proud to be part of Operation Warp Speed “as a supplier of a potential Covid-19 vaccine”.
      If Trump’s timeline for the vaccine holds, he will be out of power by the time it is distributed to the general population. Trump has not conceded defeat and is mounting legal challenges in battleground states. But he has little to no chance of success and Biden will be inaugurated as the 46th president in Washington on 20 January.
      Preparing for government from Wilmington, Delaware, Biden has named his own Covid taskforce. On Friday one member, Dr Celine Grounder, alluded to delays in providing national security briefings to Biden caused by Trump’s refusal to concede when she told CNN the virus was now “essentially a national security threat [because] Americans are getting infected and sickened by coronavirus, dying from coronavirus, and how the economy is being impacted by the coronavirus”.
      Shortly before Trump spoke, Biden issued a statement with a conspicuously presidential tone.
      “The crisis does not respect dates on the calendar,” he said. “It is accelerating right now. I renew my call for every American, regardless of where they live or who they voted for, to step up and do their part on social distancing, hand washing, and mask wearing.”
      With winter closing in, socialising moving indoors and case numbers reaching levels regularly warned of by Dr Anthony Fauci, a widely trusted expert with whom Trump has regularly clashed, states across the Republican midwest are struggling. Hospital resources are stretched and governors have appealed for help.
      “It’s on fire,” Mike DeWine, the governor of Ohio, told the Wall Street Journal. “We’ve never seen anything like this. Our spring surge and summer surge were nowhere like this.”
      Another Republican, Doug Bergum of North Dakota, ordered a mask mandate and imposed business restrictions. In Nevada, Democratic governor Steve Sisolak tested positive.
      The governors of New Mexico and Oregon have ordered strict social limitations. Imposing a two-week stay-at-home order, Michelle Lujan Grisham, the Democratic governor of New Mexico, said: “We are in a life-or-death situation, and if we don’t act right now, we cannot preserve the lives, we can’t keep saving lives, and we will absolutely crush our current healthcare system and infrastructure.”
      Oregon governor Kate Brown, also a Democrat, said: “This situation is dangerous, and our hospitals have been sounding the alarm. I know this is hard, and we are weary. But we are trying to stop this ferocious virus from quickly spreading far and wide.”
      In Idaho, Governor Brad Little, a Republican, has enlisted the state national guard to assist in pandemic response and slowed reopening plans.
      On the east coast, Ned Lamont, the governor of Connecticut, entered quarantine after an aide tested positive. In New York, public schools could close on Monday while New York City’s courthouses, which may be the busiest in the US, are imposing restrictions on in-person proceedings, after positive tests were recorded among court employees.

      Cuomo said he would meet with leaders of six north-eastern states, to figure out supplemental steps.
      On the national stage, Trump said: “Ideally we won’t go to a lockdown. I will not go – this administration will not be going to a lockdown. Hopefully the – whatever happens in the future, who knows which administration will be.
      “I guess time will tell. But I can tell you this administration will not go to a lockdown.”
      Biden has promised to follow advice from scientists about new social restrictions, although he walked back an initial statement that he would go back into widespread lockdown if so advised. He supports a national mask mandate.
      Several dozen US Secret Service agents have contracted the virus, likely as a result of staffing events at the White House and on the campaign trail at which mitigation measures were not enforced. Trump, members of his family, cabinet members and senior aides and top Republicans have tested positive. In October, the president spent three days in hospital.
      One scientific model predicts more than 400,000 deaths by March. Two weeks ago, in an interview with the Washington Post, Fauci warned of a winter of more than 100,000 new cases a day and said the country was in for “a whole lot of hurt”. The US has now recorded more than 100,000 cases a day for 10 days running. More

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      'A whole lot of hurt': Fauci angers Trump White House with dark Covid outlook

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      Top expert says Biden taking pandemic ‘seriously’Spokesman for president accuses doctor of political biasSwing-state health workers organize in bid to beat TrumpThe US should prepare for “a whole lot of hurt” under the coronavirus pandemic, senior public health expert Anthony Fauci said, predicting a winter of 100,000 or more cases a day and a rising death toll. Related: Wisconsin battles rapid rise in Covid cases amid partisan disputes over safety Continue reading… More

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      If Biden wins what would the first 100 days of his presidency look like?

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      If Joe Biden wins the 2020 US election against Donald Trump next week, the new president-elect will face enormous pressures to implement a laundry list of priorities on a range of issues from foreign policy to the climate crisis, reversing many of the stark changes implemented by his predecessor.
      But Biden’s first and most pressing task for his first 100 days in the White House would be to roll out a new nationwide plan to fight the coronavirus crisis, which has claimed more than 220,000 lives in the US and infected millions – more than any other country in the world – as well as taking steps to fix the disastrous economic fallout.
      And, while the new president might be fresh from victory, the moderate Biden will also have to wrangle with his own side – a Democratic party with an increasingly influential liberal wing, hungry for major institutional changes to try to answer some of the most urgent questions over the country’s future.
      “He basically has to do something historic,” said Saikat Chakrabarti, a Democratic activist and former chief of staff to the progressive New York congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. “He’s being handed a depression, a pandemic, and he’s being elected on a mandate to actually solve this stuff and do something big.”
      In the best-case scenario for Biden, he would be elected in a landslide, and the Democrats would flip the Senate, taking control of both chambers of Congress. If that happens, Biden and his team could enact their most ambitious plans for a presidency with the same feel as Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s, which saw the sweeping New Deal recovery and relief programs in response to the economic crisis of the 1930s.
      “In many ways, they’re going to be stepping in the same situation that we stepped in in 2009. But in some ways worse,” said the former Obama administration deputy labor secretary Chris Lu, who ran the 44th president’s transition team in 2008. “We came in during the Great Recession, they’re going to be taking over within a recession as well. They have the added and much more difficult challenge of dealing with a public health crisis as well.”
      By the time of the inauguration in January 2021, more than 350,000 Americans could have died from coronavirus, according to projections that assume current policies and trajectories are maintained.
      Biden’s “first order of business” in office would probably be aimed at containing the death toll and addressing the economic damage, said Neera Tanden, who was director of domestic policy for the Obama-Biden presidential campaign, and went on to be senior adviser at the Department of Health and Human Services (DHS). More

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      Trump attempts to save himself in battleground states as Covid cases surge

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      With little more than two weeks to reverse his dismal standing in the polls, and amid a coronavirus resurgence that could sink his pursuit of a second term, Donald Trump has embarked on a tour of battleground states.New US daily cases of Covid-19 are averaging above 55,000, their highest level since July, according to government figures, and rising in more than 40 states, including many the Republican president must win on 3 November.Yet despite trailing Democratic challenger Joe Biden by double digits in almost every national poll, all of which show a substantial deficit in approval over handling the pandemic, Trump is continuing to host large rallies with few supporters wearing masks and little social distancing.Trump was in Nevada on Sunday, attending church in Las Vegas before a rally. Thousands were expected at events in other swing states on Monday (Arizona), Tuesday (Pennsylvania) and Wednesday (North Carolina). Trump is expected to continue to prioritise hopes for economic recovery above measures including new lockdowns.In an interview on a Wisconsin radio station, Trump was asked if rallies at which mostly maskless supporters are packed tightly together sent the wrong message.I’m not a big shutdown believerDonald Trump“I don’t think so because I’m not a big shutdown believer,” he said. “If you take a look at your state, they’ve been shut down and they’ve been locked down and locked up and, you know, they’ve been doing it for a long time.”Trump won Wisconsin by less than one point in 2016 but trails there now by more than seven, according to FiveThirtyEight.com. At a rally in Janesville on Saturday the president insisted again that the fight against the pandemic was being won, despite statistics from the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention continually showing the opposite.Only Vermont and Missouri have reported a decrease in the average number of reported cases over the past week. Connecticut and Florida lead the nation, with increases by 50% or more. Another 27 states rose between 10% and 50%, according to Johns Hopkins University. More than 8.1m US cases have been confirmed, the death toll near 220,000.“We’re doing great, we’re doing really well,” Trump said in Wisconsin. “We’re rounding the corner. We have unbelievable vaccines coming out real soon.”On NBC’s Meet the Press on Sunday, the health secretary, Alex Azar, pleaded with the American people to “hang in there with us. We are so close. We are weeks away from monoclonal antibodies for you, for safe and effective vaccines. We need to bridge to that day, so please just give us a bit more time of your individual, responsible behavior of washing your hands, watch your distance, wear your face coverings when you can’t watch your distance.”Azar dodged questions about why the president could not deliver such advice.As my grandfather would say, ‘This guy’s gone around the bend if he thinks we’ve turned the corner’Joe BidenIn North Carolina on Sunday, Biden told supporters: “As my grandfather would say, ‘This guy’s gone around the bend if he thinks we’ve turned the corner’. Things are getting worse, and he continues to lie to us about circumstances.”Biden’s running mate, California senator Kamala Harris, canceled events over the weekend after an aide tested positive for Covid-19. She will return to the trail in Florida on Monday, that state’s first day of early in-person voting.Trump is targeting several states he won in 2016 and cannot afford to lose if he is to secure the 270 electoral college votes he needs to stay in the White House. Polling continues to suggest he is in serious trouble. His deficit to Biden in Pennsylvania, which he won from Hillary Clinton by fewer than 45,000 of 6m votes, is currently more than six points. In Arizona, he trails by about four, the margin by which he won in 2016.Ronna McDaniel, chair of the Republican National Committee, said she did not believe the polls. “I am seeing more enthusiasm than I saw in 2016,” she told ABC’s This Week. “I study the data every day. We know that our voters are going to turn out on election day. They don’t trust the mail-in balloting as much. They are getting out in these early vote states right now.”Trump will face Biden on Thursday in a final debate in Nashville, Tennessee, following a first meeting marked by the president’s interruptions and evasions. A second debate was cancelled after Trump contracted coronavirus and spent three days in hospital, then refused to hold the debate virtually. More

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      American Crisis review: Andrew Cuomo on Covid, Trump … and a job with Joe Biden?

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      On Thursday, the US reported 65,000 new cases of Covid-19 and Donald Trump falsely told a television town hall 85% of people who wear masks contract the disease. With more than two weeks to the election and a record-shattering 17 million Americans having already voted, the rhythms and tropes of the past seven months will only intensify between now and 3 November.Early in the pandemic, Andrew Cuomo’s daily briefings emerged as must-see television, counter-programming to the campaign commercials that masqueraded as presidential press conferences. The New York governor was forthright and reassuring, even as the body count mounted.Covid-related deaths in the Empire State now exceed 25,000, the highest in the US. New York was both frontline and lab experiment. What happened there foreshadowed national tragedy. Red states were not immune. Right now, the plague rages in the heartland.Cuomo’s new book, subtitled Leadership Lessons from the Covid-19 Pandemic, is his effort to shape perceptions of his own performance amid the pandemic while pointing a damning finger at Trump and Bill de Blasio, New York City’s woefully inept mayor. Like the governor, American Crisis is informative and direct – but not exciting.I believe that this was on a par with the greatest failure to detect an enemy attack since Pearl HarborAndrew CuomoThe book reads like a campaign autobiography except that Cuomo, by his own admission, will never run for president. It contains its share of heroes, villains and family vignettes. Cuomo’s three daughters appear throughout.Like the governor, American Crisis is programmatic, neither poetic nor poignant. Indeed, in a final chapter tritely titled A Blueprint for Going Forward, the governor offers 28 pages of policy proposals.Covid has taken nearly 220,000 American lives. The US suffered 58,000 combat deaths in Vietnam, 116,000 in the first world war. Only the second world war, the civil war and the flu pandemic of 1918-1919 resulted in greater casualties.Not surprisingly, Cuomo saves his harshest words for the Trump administration: “New York was ambushed by Covid. I believe that this was on a par with the greatest failure to detect an enemy attack since Pearl Harbor.”On that score, Cuomo compares Trump to FDR and of course finds him wanting. The administration did deliver early warnings – to members of the financial community and Republican donors. With that in mind, Cuomo’s take is almost mild.Cuomo’s relationship with the president was already fraught. On top of Trump and congressional Republicans capping deductions for state and local taxes, the governor acknowledges fighting with the administration over “immigration policy, environmental policy, you name it”. He adds: “I found his pandering to the far right alternately disingenuous and repugnant.”American Crisis also relays a conversation with the president in which the governor urged the former resident of Queens, a borough of New York City, to invoke the Defense Production Act and mandate private industry to produce tests and personal protective equipment. Trump declined, claiming such a move would smack of “big government” – as opposed to issuing diktats to big tech, directing that companies relocate, unilaterally imposing tariffs on imports and offering private briefings to those favored by the administration.Time has passed. In the 1980s, Governor Mario Cuomo and his son Andrew were Trump allies, of a sort. Back then, Trump retained the services of twentysomething Andrew Cuomo’s law firm, in connection with commercial leases on Manhattan’s West Side. According to Trump, they were “representing us in a very significant transaction”. Not any more.The president is not the only member of the administration to come in for criticism. Mark Meadows, the latest White House chief of staff, receives a large dollop of Cuomo’s wrath. In Cuomo’s telling, Meadows conditioned assistance to New York on it conveying hospital test results for hydroxychloroquine, Trump’s one-time Covid treatment of choice.Cuomo said the state would provide the test data once it was available, not before. Meadows told him the federal government was ready to release hospital funding to states, but “strongly implied” that if the test results did not soon arrive, New York would not “receive any funding”. To Cuomo, that reeked of extortion. More

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      Will the New York Times taxes report sink Donald Trump?

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      Donald Trump

      His returns examined at last, the president stands exposed as a tax avoider and serial debtor. It raises serious questions – but also, most likely, the passions of his fervent supporters
      Trump’s taxes: key findings from the New York Times report

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      0:51

      ‘Fake news’: Trump denies tax claims from New York Times – video

      From the moment he rode down an escalator in the marble-clad, gold-trimmed Trump Tower to declare his candidacy for US president, Donald Trump was selling himself as a successful businessman who could run a successful economy.
      It was an image cultivated with voters for a decade on The Apprentice, the reality TV show in which Trump sat in judgment on aspiring entrepreneurs and told most: “You’re fired!”
      On Sunday the mask was finally torn off. According to a blockbuster New York Times investigation into his taxes, the self-proclaimed billionaire, a personification of the hedonism and extravagance of the 1980s, has been losing more money than he makes.
      These are the three key points of the Times report:
      Trump is not very good at business
      Trump is very good at avoiding taxes
      Trump may have serious conflicts of interests with foreign powers
      Will any of it have a major impact on his reelection chances? Up to a point.
      Trump declared a staggering $1.4bn in losses from his core businesses for 2008 and 2009. He appears to have personally guaranteed loans totalling $421m, most now due within four years. The Times reported: “Should he win re-election, his lenders could be placed in the unprecedented position of weighing whether to foreclose on a sitting president.”
      Joaquin Castro, a Democratic congressman from Texas, told MSNBC the Times report “reveals what many people have suspected, which is the larger point that Donald Trump is a fraud, that he’s not what he claims to be.
      “He claims to be a successful, deal-making businessman who built himself up from the ground and his tax records reveal that he’s actually the opposite. He’s basically a deadbeat who doesn’t pay much in taxes.”
      Indeed, Trump paid no federal income taxes in 11 of 18 years the Times examined. In 2016 and 2017, his tax bill was just $750 – far less than almost every US citizen.
      It pointed to a wider story about tax avoidance by the wealthy elite.
      Elizabeth Warren, a Democratic senator, tweeted: “He knows better than anyone that there’s one set of rules for the wealthy and giant corporations and another for hardworking Americans – and instead of using his power to fix it, he’s taken advantage of it at every turn.”
      It is tempting to see this as terminal for Trump in the November election against Joe Biden. But we have been here many times before. The same was said after the release of an Access Hollywood tape in October 2016, where Trump was heard bragging about sexual assault.
      It is also worth remembering what happened in the first presidential debate against Hillary Clinton. The Democratic candidate suggested that perhaps Trump was not releasing his tax returns because he had paid nothing in federal taxes.
      He interrupted and said: “That makes me smart.”
      There were howls of outrage and prophecies that Trump must be doomed. Yet perhaps that remark resonated with some voters who reckoned that given the chance, they too would delight in getting around the rules in order to save a few bucks.
      Some of the rampant enthusiasm at Trump’s rallies just possibly comes from people who see themselves in him.
      When Trump grumbles bitterly about Barack Obama winning the Nobel peace prize while his own nomination received scant coverage, it seems to strike a chord with anyone in the crowd who feels forgotten, neglected or passed over.
      When Trump presents the story of a self-perceived “outsider” who does not talk like the educated elite yet still made it rich and married a model, these supporters seem to embrace the idea of the blue-collar billionaire as one version of the American dream.
      There are also large chunks of Trump’s cult who pay little attention to the New York Times or Twitter as it is.
      Trump’s tax affairs have been reported before – regarding the family business, for one Pulitzer prize-winning example from the Times, from October 2018. But the new Times investigation raises further, even more damaging questions.
      In his first two years as president, Trump received $73m from foreign operations, including $3m from the Philippines, $2.3m from India and $1m from Turkey. In 2017 he paid $145,400 in taxes in India and $156,824 in the Philippines – but just $750 in the US.
      The president has been notoriously outspoken in his praise for the leaders of the Philippines, India and Turkey.
      Does Trump’s substantial income from abroad conflict with his responsibilities as president? Did he put his personal interest ahead of the American people? Did he break the law?
      The Times has promised more stories to come. They won’t shake the Trump faithful, but they might chip away at enough voters to make an important difference.

      Topics

      Donald Trump

      Trump administration

      US politics

      US elections 2020

      US taxation

      US domestic policy

      Republicans

      analysis

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