Skip to main content

Home/ History Readings/ Group items tagged Mike

Rss Feed Group items tagged

Filter: All | Bookmarks | Topics Simple Middle
6More

Trump takes aim at China over coronavirus as known U.S. infections double - The Washing... - 0 views

www.washingtonpost.com/...a-abef-020f086a3fab_story.html trump press pandemic
shared by Javier E on 20 Mar 20 - No Cached
  • The president dug in on his use of the term “Chinese virus” to describe the novel coronavirus that was first detected in Wuhan, China, late last year and did not rule out directing economic retaliation toward Beijing.
  • Trump’s use of the term has become a point of pride among some White House aides and supporters, and the president has used it more as his handling of the public health emergency has been increasingly faulted.
  • “China unleashed this plague on the world, and China has to be held accountable,” Cotton said in an interview Wednesday evening with Fox News host Sean Hannity. “That’s why I’m introducing legislation that will say we’re no longer going to buy our basic pharmaceuticals from China. There will be a total ban on buying.”
  • ...3 more annotations...
  • Trump’s shift to more fully blame China coincides with widening devastation from the virus in the United States and increasing criticism that his administration missed opportunities to prepare and respond. For weeks in January and February, Trump publicly dismissed the outbreak as of very little risk to Americans, even as he banned air travel for non-U.S. citizens traveling from China.
  • Trump’s recent criticism of China also aligns the president with the tougher message that Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and other members of his administration have voiced for weeks.Trump went further Thursday, saying China could have stopped all spread beyond the Wuhan area but deliberately chose not to do so.
  • After being egged on by a reporter from the pro-Trump One America News Network, Trump blamed the media for its coverage of the crisis and for accusations that his use of “Chinese virus” was racist or xenophobic.
14More

Cuomo warns coronavirus infection rates are rising faster than expected | US news | The... - 0 views

www.theguardian.com/...s-cases-andrew-cuomo-hospitals politics us trump COVID-19 crisis economics
shared by brickol on 24 Mar 20 - No Cached
  • New York’s governor, Andrew Cuomo, has issued his most dire statement yet about the coronavirus pandemic, warning that coronavirus infection rates are rising much faster than expected and the state’s hospitals are woefully unequipped for the deluge.
  • “The inescapable conclusion is that the rate of infection is going up,” Cuomo said at a press conference on Tuesday morning. “It is spiking. The apex is higher than we thought, and the apex is sooner than we thought. That is a bad combination of facts.”
  • In New York state, 25,665 cases of coronavirus were confirmed as of Tuesday morning, with 210 deaths – far higher numbers than elsewhere in the US – as 14,776 cases and 131 fatalities were concentrated in New York City alone.
  • ...11 more annotations...
  • New York is conducting more testing per capita than countries such as South Korea, which may partially explain the spike in numbers.
  • “We need to be smarter about this … we need the federal help and we need it now,” he said, calling on Donald Trump to utilise the Defense Production Act (DPA) to force companies to produce medical equipment and provide them the necessary financial support to do so. So far, the administration has relied on volunteer efforts that Cuomo said were not appropriate for the urgency of crisis.
  • “What happens to New York is gonna wind up happening to California, and Washington state and Illinois. It’s just a matter of time. We’re just getting there first,” Cuomo said. “Look at us today … where we are today, you will be in four weeks or five weeks or six weeks. We are your future.”
  • Speaking later in the day, the vice-president, Mike Pence, said the Federal Emergency Management Agency (Fema) had sent New York 2,000 ventilators and plans to send 2,000 more on Wednesday.
  • With cases surging, Cuomo said new projections estimate his state will need 140,000 hospital beds once the crisis reaches its apex, which could happen within 14 to 21 days instead of in May as previously forecast.
  • uomo’s urgent message comes as a spokesperson for the World Health Organization (WHO) warned the US has the potential to become the next global hotspot for the pandemic. The country already has more than 46,000 confirmed Covid-19 cases, resulting in close to 600 deaths, according to Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine.
  • He also rejected the suggestion, floated by the president in recent days, that advice from public health officials could be rowed back in a matter of weeks to protect the US economy, saying that sensible steps in both areas could be made now without increasing risk to more vulnerable people in society.
  • The outbreak has led to a dramatic change in America’s social fabric: as of Monday, the New York Times estimated that more than 158 million people in 16 states would soon be under strict orders to stay at home – approaching half of the population.
  • The shift in messaging came after James Bullard, president of the Federal Reserve Bank of St Louis, predicted unemployment could reach 30% nationwide, according to Bloomberg News, and as negotiations for a coronavirus stimulus package dragged on for days in the US Senate. For weeks, suddenly jobless workers have been imploring the government for help, and Trump is staring down what could become a historic recession during an election year.
  • Even still, medical experts have cautioned against such an abrupt restart to the economy while the virus continues to spread exponentially. “You can’t call off the best weapon we have, which is social isolation, even out of economic desperation, unless you’re willing to be responsible for a mountain of deaths,” Arthur Caplan, founding head of the division of medical ethics at NYU School of Medicine, told the New York Times. “Can’t we try to put people’s lives first for at least a month?”
  • “If you ask the American people to choose between public health and the economy, then it’s no contest,” Cuomo said. “No American is going to say, accelerate the economy at the cost of human life, because no American is going to say how much a life is worth.”
25More

Live Coronavirus News, Updates and Video - The New York Times - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...navirus-news-live-updates.html politics us trump COVID-19 crisis economics
shared by brickol on 24 Mar 20 - No Cached
  • The Tokyo Olympics have been postponed. New York, now the center of the outbreak in America, braces for a flood of patients. The playwright Terrence McNally dies of complications from the coronavirus.
  • tocks rallied on the hope that Washington was close to producing a stimulus bill. Shares soared for airlines and other companies expected to benefit.
  • Trump expressed outrage at having to ‘close the country’ to curb the spread of the virus.
  • ...22 more annotations...
  • Even as nations from Britain to India declare nationwide economic lockdowns, President Trump said he “would love to have the country opened up, and just raring to go, by Easter,” less than three weeks away, a goal that top health professionals have called far too quick.
  • he expressed outrage about having to “close the country” to curb the spread of the coronavirus and indicated that his guidelines on business shutdowns and social distancing would soon be lifted.
  • “I gave it two weeks,” he said, adding, “We can socially distance ourselves and go to work.”
  • “We are honored to serve and put our lives on the front line to protect and save as many lives as possible,” the American Medical Association, American Hospital Association and American Nurses Association wrote in an open letter. “But we need your help.”
  • Mr. Trump fell back on his comparison of the coronavirus to the flu, saying that despite losing thousands of people to the flu, “We don’t turn the country off.”
  • States including California, Maryland, Illinois and Washington have declared stay-at-home or shutdown orders, but other states have been looking for directives from the Trump administration. And countries in Asia are beginning to see a resurgence of coronavirus after easing up on restrictions.
  • For governors and mayors who have been trying to educate people about the urgent need to stay home and maintain social distance, Mr. Trump’s recent statements suggesting that such measures may be going too far threatened to make their jobs more difficult.
  • Mr. Hogan, the chairman of the bipartisan National Governors Association, said that health officials suggest that the virus’s peak could be weeks or months away. “We’re just trying to take the best advice that we can from the scientists and all the experts, and making the decisions that we believe are necessary for our states,” he said.
  • Both Mr. Trump and Vice President Mike Pence said that a lockdown had never been under consideration for the United States.
  • But the president and vice president were resolute that they want the country reopened. Mr. Pence said the administration’s timeline for trying to get businesses restarted and workers out of their homes was shorter than the period that health experts have said would be necessary to flatten the curve.
  • “We’ll focus on our most vulnerable, but putting America back to work will also be a priority, in weeks not months,” Mr. Pence said.
  • Mr. Pence also said two malaria drugs, chloroquine and hydroxychloroquine, had been approved by the Food and Drug Administration for off-label use treating patients with Covid-19, the disease caused by the coronavirus. The F.D.A. did not immediately confirm that assertion, but two administration health officials said it was not true.
  • India, the world’s second-most populous country, will order its 1.3 billion people to stay inside their homes for three weeks to try to curb the spread of the coronavirus, Prime Minister Narendra Modi declared on Tuesday.
  • Left unclear was how Indians would be able to get food and other needed supplies. Mr. Modi alluded vaguely to the government and civil society groups stepping in to help, but offered no details.
  • Mr. Modi also pledged to spend about $2 billion on medical supplies, isolation rooms, ventilators, intensive care units and training for medical personnel to combat the pandemic.
  • New York’s case count is doubling every three days, the governor says.
  • “We haven’t flattened the curve,” he said. “And the curve is actually increasing.” The governor, appearing in front of piles of medical supplies, spoke in a far more sober tone and delivered notably bleaker news than he has in previous days.The peak of infection in New York could come as soon as two to three weeks, far earlier than previously anticipated, Mr. Cuomo said, which would put even bigger strain on the health care system than officials had feared.
  • The governor said the state now projects that it may need as many as 140,000 hospital beds to house virus patients, up from the 110,000 projected a few days ago. As of now, only 53,000 are available. Up to 40,000 intensive-care beds could be needed. “Those are troubling and astronomical numbers,” he said.
  • In New York City alone, there have been around 15,000 cases.“Look at us today,” he warned the rest of the country. “Where we are today, you will be in four weeks or five weeks or six weeks. We are your future.”
  • Perhaps it was inevitable that New York City and surrounding suburbs would become the epicenter of the coronavirus epidemic in the United States. The population density, reliance on public transportation and constant influx of tourists — all would seem to make the metropolitan area a target.
  • But to stop the virus, scientists have to figure out which factors played a greater role than others. As it turns out, that is not so simple.
  • Perhaps the epidemic in New York had less to do with the virus than with discrete opportunities to spread: In so-called super-spreader events, one patient somehow manages to infect dozens, even scores of others. At one point, half the cases in Massachusetts were attributed to a single initial infection.
6More

The Senate Impeachment Trial Reveals Priorities - The Atlantic - 0 views

www.theatlantic.com/...605926 senate politics history trump impeachment
shared by Javier E on 01 Feb 20 - No Cached
  • It is not necessary to romanticize the history of the Senate to acknowledge that something profound about it has changed. In the 1850s, it was the Senate that temporized America’s original sin of slavery in ways that all but guaranteed the Civil War. For the first half of the 20th century, the chamber was in the grip of southern racists who perpetuated vicious Jim Crow segregation.
  • But beginning with the civil-rights acts of the 1960s and continuing through Vietnam, Watergate, the CIA’s abuses of domestic and international intelligence, Iran-Contra, Bill Clinton’s impeachment, and the Senate Intelligence Committee’s unsparing investigation of the George W. Bush administration’s torture program, the Senate—in moments of great national peril—has generally risen to the occasion in at least some halting, lurching, imperfect, but still bipartisan way.
  • Leahy is the last of the so-called Watergate babies elected to the Senate in 1974, and when I buttonholed him in the Capitol’s basement subway, he ticked through the long list of bipartisan leaders under whom he has served. “Bob Dole and George Mitchell, working so closely together, Democrat and Republican, the leaders working things out,” he said. “Like Trent Lott and Tom Daschle did, Mike Mansfield and Hugh Scott. I was there with all of them, and I’ve always felt the Senate should be the conscience of the nation. And we’re not sure [sic] the conscience.”
  • ...3 more annotations...
  • One spring day in 1994, Dole, then the Senate’s Republican minority leader, passed a note to his longtime Democratic friend Daniel Patrick Moynihan of New York, who as the powerful chairman of the Senate Finance Committee had jurisdiction, asking, “Pat, Are we ready for the Moynihan-Dole Bill?” But the Clinton White House said no compromise, the Republican House leader Newt Gingrich said no dice, and Dole, who wanted nothing so much as to win the Republican nomination for president in 1996, realized he had to give up
  • Long-shot efforts at compromise by John Chafee, a Republican from Rhode Island and veteran of Guadalcanal who had been John F. Kennedy’s Navy secretary, and John Breaux, a laissez les bon temps rouler Democrat from Louisiana, also came to naught. Months later, the Democrats lost both houses of Congress and, arguably, nothing in Washington has ever been quite the same.
  • The House Intelligence Committee chair received an unsought assist from Trump’s former White House Chief of Staff John Kelly, who said in an interview yesterday that the Senate would forever be known as a body that “shirks its responsibilities” if the trial concludes without calling witnesses.
3More

The Case Against Impeachment Has Nothing to Do With Impeachment - The Atlantic - 0 views

www.theatlantic.com/...605698 white supremacy impeachment politics US history trump
shared by Javier E on 31 Jan 20 - No Cached
  • As another presidential election nears, with American demographics trending more and more nonwhite, one need only observe the transparent schemes of voter suppression or glance at Fox News or listen to talk radio to realize that the ruling white, conservative minority perceives itself as under dire and imminent threat.
  • It is thus easy to see why Mitch McConnell is so beloved on the right. He and his Republican colleagues are fighting not so much to keep Donald Trump in office as to shore up their reign, which, in their minds, might never be reclaimed once surrendered. They are all-too aware that Vice President Mike Pence simply does not evoke the passion that Donald Trump does, and the risk, if Trump were removed with the help of Republican senators, of that passion turning to rage against their own could easily cost Republicans both the presidency and the Senate.
  • Under these circumstances, asking McConnell and other Republicans to voluntarily cede power because of the inconvenience of a president violating the Constitution is a fantasy. Rather, they will overlook any crime, any abuse of power, lest their rule be lost.
9More

'I don't like rich guys...but I like him': who supports billionaire Tom Steyer? | US ne... - 0 views

www.theguardian.com/...m-steyer-democrats-2020-caucus politics US election trump
shared by andrespardo on 07 Feb 20 - No Cached
  • someone run down the field and kick my teammate in the face,” a billionaire former-hedge fund manager and Democratic presidential candidate Tom Steyer told the crowd of voters in Clinton, Iowa, on Friday.
  • Steyer appeared to have won the support of the anti-face kicking wing of the Democratic party. If he is to win the Democratic nomination, however, Steyer will have to build a broader coalition. His strategy so far has mostly involved spending lots and lots of money ($201m in 2019), but having just watched one billionaire become president, can Democrats really stomach another?
  • Still, it’s easy to see how that background might not go over very well in somewhere like Clinton, where the high street is lined with shuttered businesses and the median household income is $34,000, well below the state average.
  • ...6 more annotations...
  • Steyer hates the comparison
  • a 77-year-old who used to work at the sprawling dog food factory that greets visitors to Clinton, pumping out both steam and a vague smell of meat.
  • Nevertheless, there have been grumblings, about Steyer’s campaigning methods. By 13 January he had spent $123m on tv and digital advertising, according to NPR. Not including fellow Democratic presidential candidate Michael Bloomberg, the former New York City mayor who is even wealthier than Steyer, that is more than all the other Democratic candidates combined.
  • ettner was open to voting for Steyer, potentially, but preferred the more progressive candidates, Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren. Indeed, for all the goodwill Steyer received in Clinton, none of the people the Guardian spoke to actually planned to vote for him, and it was a similar story in Dubuque. You can lead a horse to water, but you can’t make it vote for you.
  • “There’s no way that anybody, including Mike Bloomberg, can buy an election, the only thing you can do is see if Americans respond to what you have to say, and who you are, and what you’ve done in the past.
  • On Monday, when Iowans go to the caucuses, we’ll find out if that is, actually, how Americans see it.
6More

After Nevada Win, Sanders Claims 'Uniter' Mantel | RealClearPolitics - 0 views

www.realclearpolitics.com/...ims_uniter_mantel__142468.html nevada democratic party election bernie sanders politics
shared by johnsonel7 on 23 Feb 20 - No Cached
  • “We’re taking on the whole damn 1% -- Donald Trump and the Republican establishment — and we’re taking on the Democratic establishment,” Sanders told more than 2,000 supporters gathered Friday evening for a final outdoor rally here before caucus voting began the next morning
  • It’s remarks like those that helped fuel the “feel the Bern” movement that propelled Sanders from obscure Senate backbencher to giving Hillary Clinton a run for her money in Democratic nominating contest four years ago. But with the big win in Nevada, Sanders eclipsed Joe Biden as the Democratic front-runner, earning more than twice as many votes as the former vice president and attracting a diverse coalition of supporters spanning nearly every voter demographic.
  • “Tonight is a historic victory because we won it in one of the most diverse states in the country,” Sanders told supporters gathered at his victory party. “We put together a coalition that is going to win all over America.” “We are going to win because we are bringing people together, in a multi-generational, multi-racial campaign that will involve working people in the political process in a way we have never seen before,” he added
  • ...3 more annotations...
  • Former South Bend, Ind. Mayor Pete Buttigieg issued a dire warning about Sanders’ early surge in the delegate chase. “Before we rush to nominate Sen. Sanders,” realize that he “believes in an inflexible, ideological revolution that leaves out most Democrats, not to mention most Americans,” Buttigieg argued in his Nevada concession speech.
  • Sanders’ supporters also emphasized that it wasn’t just “Bernie bros” who handed him the decisive victory in the most diverse state so far in the nominating process. His Nevada win reflected a broad cross-section of the party – those with college degrees, and those without, union members and non-union members, young people and voters in every age group except those over 65. Exit polls showed that the coalition included more than half of Hispanic voters, nearly four times as much support as Biden garnered. Even those Democrats who consider themselves moderate or conservative narrowly went for Sanders.
  • Excitement was building throughout the Sanders camp in the days leading up to the caucuses, especially after former New York Mayor Mike Bloomberg’s debate debut ended up  an embarrassing bust. Elizabeth Warren bloodied him with zingers and questions about the non-disclosure agreements women have signed after legal disputes with the billionaire businessman. But Saturday’s results showed, as some had noted beforehand, that her fire was misdirected. She helped let Sanders skate to a crushing  victory.
9More

Trump's Leadership - WSJ - 0 views

www.wsj.com/...trumps-leadership-11585175446 trump leadership pandemic
shared by Javier E on 06 Apr 20 - No Cached
  • Who’s left?
  • Who’s left is the president we’ve got, the one elected in 2016. With Democrats bailing out on bipartisanship in a unique circumstance, the responsibility of national leadership—a historic opportunity—defaults to Mr. Trump.
  • There are national problems and there are national crises. In the latter, as in world wars, the task of national leadership is to protect a nation’s confidence in itself so that it can emerge intact as a society.
  • ...6 more annotations...
  • American success isn’t a random effect. It requires leadership.
  • Mr. Trump will emerge from this crisis either as just another president or a president who led his entire country through a great battle. If Democrats choose to be the opposition in this battle, voters will judge that choice.
  • Mr. Trump’s path to presidential greatness may begin by doing something small but desired by virtually all Americans: Separate himself from the pettiness of our politics
  • It diminishes a wartime president to spend valuable time tussling with the barely relevant nonquestions of NBC reporters. It diminishes the president’s most impressive accomplishment: delegating and distributing operational authority for the details of the coronavirus battle to Vice President Mike Pence and the task force’s scientific and administrative experts.
  • Churchill had his war rooms. The White House press scrum is no war room. The public will keep faith with the president if it believes policy decisions are being made in the Situation Room.
  • If by September Mr. Trump and his team are bringing the U.S. through the threat from this pandemic, he will be re-elected. Without a single rally. Rallying a nation is what gets presidents remembered.
14More

Opinion | The Leaders Who Passed the Coronavirus Test - The New York Times - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...us-california-washington-.html pandemic leaders leadership
shared by Javier E on 08 Apr 20 - No Cached
  • Over the last few days, I reached out to Gavin Newsom, the Democratic governor of California; Jay Inslee, the Democratic governor of Washington; and Mike DeWine, Ohio’s Republican governor. I also spoke to London Breed, the mayor of San Francisco, and Brad Smith, the president of Microsoft, one of the first large companies to direct its employees to work from home.
  • I asked them all a simple question: How did you get the coronavirus so right so early, when so many other leaders missed the boat?
  • They kept their eyes open. They were lucky enough to get an early peek at the disaster, and they were wise enough to take the warning seriously.
  • ...11 more annotations...
  • They heeded clear warnings.
  • “When I’ve made decisions that I’ve regretted,” DeWine said, it was often because “I didn’t have enough facts, I didn’t ask enough questions, I didn’t ask the right people.”
  • They trusted the experts.
  • Again, obvious, and again, so rare: These leaders understood the limits of their own knowledge, and when faced with tough choices, they deferred to the experts.
  • in January, the federal government began bringing back Americans from affected areas of China, many to military bases in California. Newsom told me that working on the issue got him and the state’s other top officials thinking seriously about what was to come.
  • They moved forcefully but incrementally.
  • They knew they couldn’t ask it all at once; they would have to prepare the public, over weeks, for a new reality.
  • “We had the benefit of enlightened business and community leaders,” Inslee said, referring to Microsoft and other large Seattle-area companies.
  • Smith, of Microsoft, echoed this sentiment: “Too often, people in the tech sector think that they can find the answer to anything, because they’ve been smart and successful — and I thought it was of fundamental importance that we not think that we’re as smart as the experts, and so we turned to the public health experts in King County and listened to them on Day 1.”
  • In that vein, there was something else very unusual in the places that moved first, too — actual bipartisanship. DeWine worked with Ohio’s biggest cities, many run by Democrats, to impose social distancing; Inslee and Newsom had to consult with many Republican officials
  • “It’s the science of the lifeboat,” Inslee told me. “When you’re all in the same lifeboat, there just isn’t room. When you’re in the middle of a storm, you got to keep the lifeboat afloat.”
50More

Americans Are Paying the Price for Trump's Failures - The Atlantic - 0 views

www.theatlantic.com/...609532 trump response presidency
shared by Javier E on 08 Apr 20 - No Cached
  • don’t take responsibility at all,” said President Donald Trump
  • Those words will probably end up as the epitaph of his presidency
  • Trump now fancies himself a “wartime president.” How is his war going?
  • ...47 more annotations...
  • On the present trajectory, it will kill, by late April, more Americans than Vietnam. Having earlier promised that casualties could be held near zero, Trump now claims he will have done a “very good job” if the toll is held below 200,000 dead.
  • The United States is on trajectory to suffer more sickness, more dying, and more economic harm from this virus than any other comparably developed country.
  • The loss of stockpiled respirators to breakage because the federal government let maintenance contracts lapse in 2018 is Trump’s fault. The failure to store sufficient protective medical gear in the national arsenal is Trump’s fault
  • That states are bidding against other states for equipment, paying many multiples of the precrisis price for ventilators, is Trump’s fault. Air travelers summoned home and forced to stand for hours in dense airport crowds alongside infected people? That was Trump’s fault too
  • Trump failed. He is failing. He will continue to fail. And Americans are paying for his failures.
  • The lying about the coronavirus by hosts on Fox News and conservative talk radio is Trump’s fault: They did it to protect him
  • The false hope of instant cures and nonexistent vaccines is Trump’s fault, because he told those lies to cover up his failure to act in time.
  • The severity of the economic crisis is Trump’s fault; things would have been less bad if he had acted faster instead of sending out his chief economic adviser and his son Eric to assure Americans that the first stock-market dips were buying opportunities.
  • The fact that so many key government jobs were either empty or filled by mediocrities? Trump’s fault. The insertion of Trump’s arrogant and incompetent son-in-law as commander in chief of the national medical supply chain? Trump’s fault.
  • sooner or later, every president must face a supreme test, a test that cannot be evaded by blather and bluff and bullying.
  • Ten weeks of insisting that the coronavirus is a harmless flu that would miraculously go away on its own? Trump’s fault again. The refusal of red-state governors to act promptly, the failure to close Florida and Gulf Coast beaches until late March? That fault is more widely shared, but again, responsibility rests with Trump: He could have stopped it, and he did not.
  • Those lost weeks also put the United States—and thus the world—on the path to an economic collapse steeper than any in recent memory.
  • It’s a good guess that the unemployment rate had reached 13 percent by April 3. It may peak at 20 percent, perhaps even higher, and threatens to stay at Great Depression–like levels at least into 2021, maybe longer.
  • This country—buffered by oceans from the epicenter of the global outbreak, in East Asia; blessed with the most advanced medical technology on Earth; endowed with agencies and personnel devoted to responding to pandemics—could have and should have suffered less than nations nearer to China
  • Through the early weeks of the pandemic, when so much death and suffering could still have been prevented or mitigated, Trump joined passivity to fantasy. In those crucial early days, Trump made two big wagers. He bet that the virus could somehow be prevented from entering the United States by travel restrictions. And he bet that, to the extent that the virus had already entered the United States, it would burn off as the weather warmed.
  • If Trump truly was so trustingly ignorant as late as January 22, the fault was again his own. The Trump administration had cut U.S. public-health staff operating inside China by two-thirds, from 47 in January 2017 to 14 by 2019, an important reason it found itself dependent on less-accurate information from the World Health Organization. In July 2019, the Trump administration defunded the position that embedded an epidemiologist inside China’s own disease-control administration, again obstructing the flow of information to the United States.
  • Yet even if Trump did not know what was happening, other Americans did. On January 27, former Vice President Joe Biden sounded the alarm about a global pandemic in an op-ed in USA Today.
  • Because Trump puts so much emphasis on this point, it’s important to stress that none of this is true. Trump did not close the borders early—in fact, he did not truly close them at all.
  • Trump’s actions did little to stop the spread of the virus. The ban applied only to foreign nationals who had been in China during the previous 14 days, and included 11 categories of exceptions. Since the restrictions took effect, nearly 40,000 passengers have entered the United States from China, subjected to inconsistent screenings, The New York Times reported.
  • At a House hearing on February 5, a few days after the restrictions went into effect, Ron Klain—who led the Obama administration’s efforts against the Ebola outbreak—condemned the Trump policy as a “travel Band-Aid, not a travel ban.”
  • The president’s top priority through February 2020 was to exact retribution from truth-tellers in the impeachment fight.
  • Intentionally or not, Trump’s campaign of payback against his perceived enemies in the impeachment battle sent a warning to public-health officials: Keep your mouth shut
  • Throughout the crisis, the top priority of the president, and of everyone who works for the president, has been the protection of his ego
  • Denial became the unofficial policy of the administration through the month of February, and as a result, that of the administration’s surrogates and propagandists.
  • That same day, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo scolded a House committee for daring to ask him about the coronavirus. “We agreed that I’d come today to talk about Iran, and the first question today is not about Iran.”
  • The president’s lies must not be contradicted. And because the president’s lies change constantly, it’s impossible to predict what might contradict him.
  • During the pandemic, this psychological deformity has mutated into a deadly strategic vulnerability for the United States.
  • For three-quarters of his presidency, Trump has taken credit for the economic expansion that began under President Barack Obama in 2010. That expansion accelerated in 2014, just in time to deliver real prosperity over the past three years
  • The harm done by Trump’s own initiatives, and especially his trade wars, was masked by that continued growth.
  • The economy Trump inherited became his all-purpose answer to his critics. Did he break laws, corrupt the Treasury, appoint cronies, and tell lies? So what? Unemployment was down, the stock market up.
  • On February 28, very few Americans had heard of an estimated death toll of 35,000 to 40,000, but Trump had heard it. And his answer to that estimate was: “So far, we have lost nobody.” He conceded, “It doesn’t mean we won’t.” But he returned to his happy talk. “We are totally prepared.” And as always, it was the media's fault. “You hear 35 and 40,000 people and we’ve lost nobody and you wonder, the press is in hysteria mode.”
  • on February 28, it was still not too late to arrange an orderly distribution of medical supplies to the states, not too late to coordinate with U.S. allies, not too late to close the Florida beaches before spring break, not too late to bring passengers home from cruise lines, not too late to ensure that state unemployment-insurance offices were staffed and ready, not too late for local governments to get funds to food banks, not too late to begin social distancing fast and early
  • Stay-at-home orders could have been put into effect on March 1, not in late March and early April.
  • So much time had been wasted by the end of February. So many opportunities had been squandered. But even then, the shock could have been limited. Instead, Trump and his inner circle plunged deeper into two weeks of lies and denial, both about the disease and about the economy.
  • Kudlow repeated his advice that it was a good time to buy stocks on CNBC on March 6 after another bad week for the financial markets. As late as March 9, Trump was still arguing that the coronavirus would be no worse than the seasonal flu.
  • The overwhelmed president responded by doing what comes most naturally to him at moments of trouble: He shifted the blame to others.
  • Trump’s instinct to dodge and blame had devastating consequences for Americans. Every governor and mayor who needed the federal government to take action, every science and medical adviser who hoped to prevent Trump from doing something stupid or crazy, had to reckon with Trump’s psychic needs as their single biggest problem.
  • Governors got the message too. “If they don’t treat you right, I don’t call,” Trump explained at a White House press briefing on March 27. The federal response has been dogged by suspicions of favoritism for political and personal allies of Trump. The District of Columbia has seen its requests denied, while Florida gets everything it asks for.
  • The Trump administration is allocating some supplies through the Federal Emergency Management Agency, but has made the deliberate choice to allow large volumes of crucial supplies to continue to be distributed by commercial firms to their clients. That has left state governments bidding against one another, as if the 1787 Constitution had never been signed, and we have no national government.
  • Around the world, allies are registering that in an emergency, when it matters most, the United States has utterly failed to lead
  • s the pandemic kills, as the economic depression tightens its grip, Donald Trump has consistently put his own needs first. Right now, when his only care should be to beat the pandemic, Trump is renegotiating his debts with his bankers and lease payments with Palm Beach County.
  • He has never tried to be president of the whole United States, but at most 46 percent of it, to the extent that serving even the 46 percent has been consistent with his supreme concerns: stealing, loafing, and whining.
  • Now he is not even serving the 46 percent. The people most victimized by his lies and fantasies are the people who trusted him, the more conservative Americans who harmed themselves to prove their loyalty to Trump.
  • Governments often fail. From Pearl Harbor to the financial crisis of 2008, you can itemize a long list of missed warnings and overlooked dangers that cost lives and inflicted hardship. But in the past, Americans could at least expect public spirit and civic concern from their presidents.
  • Trump has mouthed the slogan “America first,” but he has never acted on it. It has always been “Trump first.” His business first. His excuses first. His pathetic vanity first.
  • rump has taken millions in payments from the Treasury. He has taken millions in payments from U.S. businesses and foreign governments. He has taken millions in payments from the Republican Party and his own inaugural committee. He has taken so much that does not belong to him, that was unethical and even illegal for him to take. But responsibility? No, he will not take that.
  • Yet responsibility falls upon Trump, whether he takes it or not. No matter how much he deflects and insults and snivels and whines, this American catastrophe is on his hands and on his head.
5More

Maryland and Virginia governors unveil road maps to recovery but say states aren't read... - 0 views

www.cnn.com/...index.html
shared by katherineharron on 26 Apr 20 - No Cached
  • Hogan, a Republican, said that the state plans to follow the federal guidelines issued by President Donald Trump last week, which call for states to meet specific metrics before considering lifting restrictions, including a 14-day downward trend in key numbers. He warned that the state has not yet hit its peak for coronavirus cases and deaths,.
  • The Democrat explained that phase one of reopening will require downward trends in new cases and hospitalizations for 14 days, increased testing and contact tracing and a sustainable supply of hospital beds and personal protective equipment. The specifics for the second and third phases have not yet been unveiled.
  • The first stage would begin by lifting the state's stay-at-home order. It would include reopening many small businesses, including certain retail shops and golf courses, and restarting many lower-risk community activities, like recreational boating and fishing, tennis and outdoor religious activities, along with outdoor fitness and gym classes. It would also include the resumption of elective outpatient surgeries and procedures in certain counties with lower concentrations of cases.
  • ...2 more annotations...
  • The second stage would see a larger number of businesses would reopen, nonessential workers who cannot telework return to work and other public activities return. Indoor religious gatherings could resume with limited capacity and physical distancing measures. It would include raising the limits on the number of people in social gatherings. Stage two could also see more normal public transit schedules and opening of restaurants and potentially bars with significant safety restrictions.
  • The third and final stage would reinstitute higher-risk activities, such as larger social gatherings, events, religious gatherings and activities at entertainment venues and a further lessening of restrictions at hospitals and eventually nursing homes.
16More

Comey Testimony a Prism for Viewing American Politics - The New York Times - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...viewing-american-politics.html trump crisis US
shared by malonema1 on 10 Jun 17 - No Cached
  • Comey Testimony a Prism for Viewing American Politics
  • n bars, V.F.W. halls, offices and living rooms, Americans were riveted by the testimony of James B. Comey, the former F.B.I. director, before the Senate Intelligence Committee on Thursday, a moment of high drama about the conduct of President Trump, the workings of American democracy and the threats of Russian involvement in the presidential election
  • “He’s causing his own demise,” said Chad Cunningham, 45, an Air Force veteran who has voted for Republicans and Democrats but sat out the last presidential election. “He’s not doing anything for this country except embarrassing us.”
  • ...13 more annotations...
  • Mr. Cunningham said the former F.B.I. director seemed honest and forthright, a man with little to hide and little reason to lie. To him, Mr. Comey’s steady, detailed delivery made Mr. Trump’s shoot-from-the-phone Twitter habit seem especially intemperate and cavalier. He said he would be perfectly happy if Vice President Mike Pence took over for Mr. Trump.
  • He said he was disturbed by Russian hacking and interference in the last election, and was shocked more people were not equally outraged.
  • When he criticized the president, Ms. Wing would often respond that the country needed to come together after a divisive election and give him time to grow into the office. She said she still believed that to an extent, but as the testimony played overhead, she was developing another view.
  • “He’s just a spoiled rotten baby,” Ms. Wing said. “Let’s move forward. What are you going to do to make this country better?”
  • But though it was easy to find a television beaming out Mr. Comey’s remarks, many people found other things to focus on.
  • Ms. Barnes, dressed in a black barber’s smock with “Debbie” embroidered in red, had the hearing on in her shop. About an hour into Mr. Comey’s testimony, her customers had paid little attention, she said.
  • She added, “Whether you’re Democrat or Republican, your president is your damn president.”
  • family sat in a booth closest to the television where Fox News was playing.
  • A couple of hours in, Mr. Stone said he heard enough to conclude that Mr. Trump — a man he described as “awful” and “dirty” — had tried to manipulate Mr. Comey.
  • But the three friends agreed that Mr. Comey’s public testimony was a positive step, a sign that investigators were taking the Russia issue seriously and that wrongdoers might be held accountable.
  • Mr. Comey was testifying before Congress, so the bartender, Kathie Larsyn, tuned in to ABC and put up the volume, figuring everyone wanted to hear what Mr. Comey had to say. Advertisement Continue reading the main story
  • In this slice of Arizona, a state that last voted for a Democratic presidential candidate in 1996, the debate around the bar on Thursday was not about red or blue ideology, or about who was right — Mr. Comey or Mr. Trump. There was only sporadic interest in what was being said and instead a dismissive sense about politics in general.
  • Mr. Gaines recalled the weekly duck-and-cover in school when he was a child and the fear that he and everyone had of a nuclear attack by the former Soviet Union.
18More

Trump may have to be patient about North Korea - CNNPolitics.com - 0 views

www.cnn.com/...index.html
shared by izzerios on 19 Apr 17 - No Cached
  • Lean on China to turn off its life support to its neighbor, for another
  • warnings that Trump will fix the showdown with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, it's so far unclear whether at its foundation, his strategy is all that different from previous administrations -- which for the last quarter century have failed
  • "The era of strategic patience is over," Vice President Mike Pence
  • ...15 more annotations...
  • the US, working closely with the UN and Japan, South Korea, China and Russia, could create enough international pressure to eventually push North Korea to denuclearize
  • Pyongyang recently conducted its fifth nuclear test and is soon expected to conduct a sixth, part of its accelerated drive to develop missiles that can reach the continental US with nuclear weapons small enough to place in the nosecones.
  • it's possible that Trump has pushed Beijing to pressure its unpredictable ally and trade partner
  • possible cost of North Korean retaliation for any military action against its nuclear and missile complex -- an artillery barrage targeting civilians in Seoul and thousands of US troops south of the border
  • China's capacity and willingness to make North Korea bend to Washington's will, for instance by cutting off fuel, food and investment supplies that sustain Kim's regime.
  • "We're definitely not seeking conflict or regime change," Susan Thornton, acting assistant secretary of State for East Asian and Pacific Affairs
  • The US has "made a decision -- and it's a decision that's been made with all of our allies and partners on this issue -- to maximize pressure, economic pressure, on the North Korean regime to try to get it to make tangible steps to roll back their illegal programs," Thornton said. "We just have to stick with it, be patient."
  • I think we should give the Chinese president some opportunity, some time, as well as pursuing the economic and diplomatic pressures that we have and our allies have that we can bring to bear on North Korea."
  • White House optimism about China's evolving role in the North Korea crisis was the summit earlier this month between Trump and Xi in Florida
  • China accounts for some 80% of North Korea's trade and as such, could have outsized influence on Pyongyang. "President Trump is very hopeful the Chinese will use the leverage they have,"
  • Trump, for instance, praised China last week for sending back a fleet of coal ships to North Korea, in line with international sanctions on the Stalinist state's exports adopted during the Obama administration.
  • Beijing is determined to avoid any action that could trigger the chaotic downfall of his regime and send refugees fleeing across the border into China.
  • China also wants to avoid the eventual scenario of a unified Korea, which could produce a US-allied nation on its frontier
  • "The conditions are not really ripe for any kind of talks until North Korea shows it is serious about what would be accomplished by undertaking such talks,"
  • "We're looking for some sort of signal that they've realized that the status quo is unsustainable."
19More

Undercover With the Alt-Right - The New York Times - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...hite-supremacy-undercover.html alt-right nativism culture politics influence nazi
shared by Javier E on 20 Sep 17 - No Cached
  • young men are being radicalized largely through the work of a popular group of new far-right internet personalities whose videos, blog posts and tweets have been consistently nudging the boundaries of acceptable conversation to the right — one of the explicit goals of racist extremists everywhere.
  • Hope Not Hate conclusively shows that the alt-right is itself now a global movement with regular interaction among far-right figures from Scotland to Sweden to Seattle.
  • This goal of mainstreaming is an abiding fixation of the far right, whose members are well aware of the problems their movement has had with attracting young people in recent decades.
  • ...16 more annotations...
  • Mr. Jorjani imagined a near future in which, thanks to liberal complacency over the migration crisis, Europe re-embraces fascism: “We will have a Europe, in 2050, where the bank notes have Adolf Hitler, Napoleon Bonaparte, Alexander the Great. And Hitler will be seen like that: like Napoleon, like Alexander, not like some weird monster who is unique in his own category — no, he is just going to be seen as a great European leader.”
  • “Our original vision was the alt-right would become like a policy group for the Trump administration,” he explained, and the administration figure “who was the interface was Steve Bannon.”
  • Alt-light sites like Breitbart, formerly home to Mr. Yiannopoulos, as well as Prison Planet, where Mr. Watson is editor at large, draw millions of readers and are key nodes in a hyperkinetic network that is endlessly broadcasting viral-friendly far-right news, rumors and incitement.
  • The alt-light promotes a slightly softer set of messages. Its figures — such as Milo Yiannopoulos, Paul Joseph Watson and Mike Cernovich — generally frame their work as part of an effort to defend “the West” or “Western culture” against supposed left-liberal dominance, rather than making explicitly racist appeals.
  • Many of them, in fact, have renounced explicit racism and anti-Semitism, though they will creep up to the line of explicitly racist speech, especially when Islam and immigration are concerned.
  • they tend to have much bigger online audiences than even the most important alt-right figures — and why Hope Not Hate describes them as “less extreme, more dangerous.
  • The extreme alt-right are benefiting immensely from the energy being produced by a more moderate — but still far-right — faction known as the “alt-light.”
  • Fluent in the language of online irony and absurdism, and adept at producing successful memes, alt-lighters have pulled off something remarkable: They’ve made far-right ideas hip to a subset of young people, and framed themselves as society’s forgotten underdogs.
  • The alt-light provides its audience easy scapegoats for their social, economic and sexual frustrations: liberals and feminists and migrants and, of course, globalists.
  • The alt-light’s dedicated fan base runs into the millions. Mr. Watson has more than a million YouTube followers, for example, while Mr. Yiannopoulos has more than 2.3 million on Facebook. If even a tiny fraction of this base is drafted toward more extreme far-right politics, that would represent a significant influx into hate groups.
  • According to researchers, the key to hooking new recruits into any movement, and to getting them increasingly involved over time, is to simply give them activities to participate in. This often precedes any deep ideological commitment on the recruits’ part and, especially early on, is more about offering them a sense of meaning and community than anything else.
  • Intentionally or not, the far right has deftly applied these insights to the online world. Viewed through the filters of alt-light outlets like Breitbart and Prison Planet, or through Twitter feeds like Mr. Watson’s, the world is a horror show of crimes by migrants, leftist censorship and attacks on common sense. And the best, easiest way to fight back is through social media.
  • The newly initiated are offered many opportunities to participate directly.
  • These efforts — a click, a retweet, a YouTube comment — come to feel like important parts of an epochal struggle. The far right, once hemmed in by its own parochialism, has manufactured a worldwide online battlefield anyone with internet access can step into.
  • maybe, along the way, one of your new online Twitter buddies will say to you, “Milo’s O.K., but have you checked out this guy Greg Johnson?” Or maybe they’ll invite you to a closed online forum where ideas about how to protect Europe from Muslim migrants are discussed a bit more, well, frankly
  • “I’m just fighting less and less opposition to our sorts of ideas when they’re spoken,” Mr. Johnson, the Counter-Currents editor, told Mr. Hermansson. His optimism, unfortunately, appears to be well founded.
12More

Where in the World Can We Find Hope? - The New York Times - 1 views

www.nytimes.com/...he-world-can-we-find-hope.html tribe deliberation culture politics discourse community policy
shared by Javier E on 27 Aug 17 - No Cached
  • Yet if we can’t trust ordinary citizens to identify fake news in their Facebook feed, why should we value their judgment on health care or climate change?
  • “The typical citizen drops down to a lower level of mental performance as soon as he enters the political field,” the economist Joseph A. Schumpeter wrote. “He becomes a primitive again.” Was Schumpeter onto something?
  • olicy makers’ anxieties about consulting the public are understandable — because they go about consultation in the wrong way.
  • ...9 more annotations...
  • The typical town hall meeting “happens when something’s gone wrong, or a decision has been made, and an elected official is trying to explain it,”
  • “This is dressed up as an opportunity to have your say.
  • We try to subdue tension and emotion by giving a rational, technocratic account of the decision. Then what we do — least helpfully — is ask people to do the very thing we know most people are petrified of, and that’s stand in front of a room of strangers and speak at an open mike.”
  • Naturally, “it comes to seem that the essential quality of the public is volatile emotionality,” he said: Schumpeter’s “primitive” voter.
  • Instead, Mr. MacLeod’s company sends out invitations to randomly selected households and then draws names to assemble a representative panel of volunteers. They meet with experts and policy makers for several weekends to study an open policy question. Eventually the panels issue nuanced recommendations on matters ranging from hospital budgets to mass transit.
  • The great promise of a well-designed deliberative process may not always be better policy, but its potential to change the participants themselves. It can teach people to be better citizens by entrusting them with responsibility and pushing them to talk — and listen — to people who look and think differently.
  • The democratic process should civilize us all. “The basis of democratic citizenship is putting yourself in someone else’s shoes. This is democracy as empathy,
  • The most dangerous threat posed by President Trump and his European allies does not lie in any single executive order or diplomatic crisis, but in their barren and cynical view of community. Sometimes I still worry that they are right: Maybe our prejudices and tribes are our most essential features, never to change.
  • We have no choice but to hope that they are wrong.
9More

Bill O'Reilly, Roger Ailes & Toxic Conservative-Celebrity Culture | National Review - 0 views

www.nationalreview.com/...ve-celebrity-culture-character culture conservatism conservative politics ideology demagogue partisan
shared by Javier E on 21 Apr 17 - No Cached
  • when we ask for fighters first, and we elevate aggression over truth and competence, we ask for exactly the kind of scandals we’ve endured.
  • the degradation to our culture far outweighs any short-term, tribal political benefit. The message sent when conservatives rally around the flag to defend the indefensible is exactly the message the Democrats sent so loudly as they continued to prop up the Clinton machine through scandal after scandal.
  • bad character sends a country to hell just as surely as bad policy does, and any movement that asks its members to defend vice in the name of advancing allegedly greater virtue is ultimately shooting itself in the foot.
  • ...6 more annotations...
  • The cost has been a loss of integrity and, crucially, a loss of emphasis on ideas and, more important, ideals. There exists in some quarters an assumption that if you’re truly going to “fight,” then you have to be ready to get your hands dirty. You can’t be squeamish about details like truth or civility or decency. When searching for ideological gladiators, we emphasize their knifework, not their character or integrity.
  • Liberals use condescending mockery. Conservatives use righteous indignation. That’s not much of a difference.
  • What followed was a toxic culture of conservative celebrity, where the public elevated personalities more because of their pugnaciousness than anything else. Indeed, the fastest way to become the next conservative star is to “destroy” the Left, feeding the same kind of instinct that causes leftists to lap up content from John Oliver, Samantha Bee, and Stephen Colbert
  • Time and again prominent conservative personalities have failed to uphold basic standards of morality or even decency. Time and again the conservative public has rallied around them, seeking to protect their own against the wrath of a vengeful Left. Time and again the defense has proved unsustainable as the sheer weight of the facts buries the accused.
  • But this isn’t scalp-taking, it’s scalp-giving
  • here are those who say that the Left is “taking scalps,” and they have a list of Republican victims to prove their thesis. Roger Ailes is out at Fox News. Bill O’Reilly is out at Fox News. Michael Flynn is out at the White House.
4More

Committee to weigh border security bill amid DACA fight - CNNPolitics - 0 views

www.cnn.com/...index.html DACA policy US politics history security
shared by krystalxu on 23 Oct 17 - No Cached
  • The House homeland security committee will mark up the bill next week, Chairman Mike McCaul announced Wednesday.
  • Republicans, including Trump, are demanding that any DACA deal include border security and possibly interior enforcement.
  • The measure may be controversial, though there is precedent.
  • ...1 more annotation...
  • waive a number of federal laws to give Customs and Border Protection nearly absolute access to the border to conduct its patrols and for security needs,
8More

Miami Beach Issues Curfew To Curb Swelling Spring Break Crowds : Coronavirus Updates : NPR - 0 views

www.npr.org/...us-knocks-vcu-from-march-madne
shared by anonymous on 22 Mar 21 - No Cached
  • Just as tens of thousands of revelers were dreaming of dancing the night away in Miami Beach on Saturday, the city abruptly declared a state of emergency. Local officials shut down traffic on the causeways leading into the beach mecca, ordered outdoor restaurants to suspend outdoor dining starting at 7 p.m. and banned strolling on the city's iconic Ocean Drive after 8 p.m. The announcement came after cheap flights, discounted hotel rooms and new rules rolling back state-mandated COVID-19 restrictions led to a surge of visitors into Miami Beach and other Florida hot spots just as U.S. colleges pause for spring break.
  • Gelber said he was imposing the 8 p.m. curfew and entry restrictions into Miami Beach preemptively before things get worse. Videos of the area show dense crowds of revelers, many of them maskless, drinking, dancing and ambling along Ocean Drive on Saturday night before police moved in to disperse them.Police say they arrested "at least a dozen" people for violating the state of emergency on Saturday night. This is actually fewer arrests than last week, when Miami Beach police detained nearly 100 people as cops tried to break up spring break crowds.
  • As in much of the U.S., COVID-19 numbers in Florida have dropped from a peak in January, but that previous nationwide surge followed soon after the Christmas and New Year's holidays. Public health officials are now warning that gatherings for spring break and the upcoming Easter holiday could again amplify coronavirus transmission as pandemic fatigue prompts people to let their guard down.
  • ...5 more annotations...
  • Dr. Francis Collins, director of the National Institutes of Health, echoed that sentiment in an interview with NPR's Mary Louise Kelly this month. Collins said Americans need to be patient and continue with masks and social distancing for a bit longer.
  • In another disruption to the national rites of spring, the pandemic blew out some March Madness brackets over the weekend. In the NCAA men's basketball tournament, a surreal score line of 1-0 popped up on tracking apps for the game between Virginia Commonwealth University and the University of Oregon. VCU was forced to pull out of the event after reporting multiple positive coronavirus tests.
  • VCU coach Mike Rhoades said on a videoconference Saturday night announcing his team's withdrawal from the tournament.
  • Rhoades said there were "no dry eyes" when he told his players the news. "This is what you dream of as a college player and a coach, and to get it taken away like this is just a heartbreaking moment in their young lives."
  • But Rhoades added that all his squad did was lose a basketball game, while "500,000 people have lost their lives."
13More

Tornadoes and Violent Storms Hit Southeast, Leaving at Least Five Dead - The New York T... - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...tornadoes-southeast.html US climate storms
shared by ethanshilling on 26 Mar 21 - No Cached
  • At least five people died and homes and businesses were leveled in Alabama as a result of powerful storms and tornadoes moving across the Southeast on Thursday.
  • The National Weather Service reported multiple tornadoes in Alabama, including one that likely traveled over 100 miles, from near Birmingham to the northeastern corner of the state.
  • In Florence, Ala., a police officer was struck by lightning during the height of the afternoon storm, said Chief Mike Holt. The officer suffered burns but survived.
  • ...10 more annotations...
  • More than 45,000 properties across several states had lost electricity by evening, according to PowerOutage.us.
  • The National Weather Service issued tornado warnings in Alabama, Georgia, and South Carolina, urging residents facing the most imminent danger to “TAKE COVER NOW!”
  • “Our priority at the moment is identifying those citizens in need of emergency medical attention,” John Samaniego, the sheriff in Shelby County, said in a statement, adding that there had been “significant tornado damage,” including residences that had been “completely destroyed.”
  • In Birmingham, James Spann, an ABC33/40 meteorologist, was reporting on the storms when a tornado struck his own home.
  • “It’s not a good situation,” Mr. Spann said when he returned. “The reason I had to step out —we’ve had major damage at my house. My wife is OK, but the tornado came right through there.”
  • Officials warned residents to prepare as schools and government offices closed early. “Stay home, stay safe, stay informed,” Andy Berke, the mayor of Chattanooga, Tenn., said on Twitter.
  • The destructive weather returned a week after some of the same areas were hit by an outbreak of powerful storms that swept through Mississippi and Alabama before moving on to Georgia, the Carolinas and Virginia.
  • In 2020, the United States saw almost 1,000 tornadoes and 76 tornado deaths, according to preliminary counts from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
  • Officials have also warned residents to have an emergency supply kit on hand, complete with items like a first aid kit, nonperishable food, water and batteries.
  • In Florence, Ala., meanwhile, Chief Holt marveled at the unlikely chance that his officer would be hit by lightning and his relatively good fortune at surviving. “He’s doing really well for someone who got struck by lightning,” Mr. Holt said.
« First ‹ Previous 181 - 200 of 348 Next › Last »
Showing 20▼ items per page