Group items tagged

between $2 billion and $3 billion.

In 2003, governor Mitt Romney shelved the project as too expensive, and its fate seemed sealed. But aggressive lobbying from supporters, including US Representative Seth Moulton and former governors Michael Dukakis and Bill Weld, has brought the proposal back into the public conversation

The MBTA faces chronic budget woes and is already seeking to build a $2.3 billion Green Line extension into Somerville and Medford, a project that has been delayed over rising cost estimates.

“North South Rail Link has the potential to fuel the growth of our economy and connect people with both jobs and housing across the state,” Moulton said Wednesday. The state needs to invest in transportation infrastructure to remain globally competitive, he added.

“You have to understand that it doesn’t make a lot of sense for the commuter rail lines in the north and the south to not be connected,” he said

Webb's campaign never really got off the ground and was seen by even some close Webb aides as more of a vanity play than an actual presidential bid. In total, Webb spent four days campaigning in New Hampshire and 20 days in Iowa, far fewer than the senator's challengers.

Webb has long expressed outright frustration with the Democratic Party -- and did so again in announcing the end of his bid -- questioning its strategy and the support they were providing him. During the first Democratic debate earlier this month, Webb spent considerable time complaining about the amount of time he was given to speak.

"Some people say I am a Republican who became a Democrat, but that I often sound like a Republican in a room full of Democrats or a Democrat in a room full of Republicans," Webb said. "Actually, I take that as a compliment."

Webb, then a Republican, notably served as secretary of the Navy under then-President Ronald Reagan after a decorated military career.

The efforts to recruit an independent conservative candidate come as Republican establishment figures increasingly coalesce around Trump's bid. Since effectively securing the nomination on May 3 with his Indiana primary win, more members of Congress have voiced support for Trump, as have former Republican rivals like Sen. Marco Rubio of Florida.

But logistical hurdles to an independent bid are increasing. Ballot deadlines for independent candidates have either passed or soon will.

Sources familiar with efforts by Kristol and other Never-Trump Republicans say they have done extensive polling and gathered other private data, and talked to potential candidates and financial backers.

The group is led by Senator Ted Cruz of Texas and includes Senators Ron Johnson of Wisconsin, James Lankford of Oklahoma, Steve Daines of Montana, John Kennedy of Louisiana, Marsha Blackburn of Tennessee and Mike Braun of Indiana, and Senators-elect Cynthia Lummis of Wyoming, Roger Marshall of Kansas, Bill Hagerty of Tennessee and Tommy Tuberville of Alabama.

But as Mr. Trump continues to perpetuate the myth of widespread voter fraud, a growing number of Republicans in Congress have been eager to challenge the results, either out of devotion to the president or out of fear of enraging the base of their party that still reveres him even in defeat.

Senator Ben Sasse, Republican of Nebraska, on Thursday condemned the attempt, calling it a “dangerous ploy” intended to “disenfranchise millions of Americans.” He accused fellow Republicans of making a political calculation to try to further their careers at the expense of the truth by tapping into Mr. Trump’s “populist base.”

As Mr. Biden racked up victories in November, Mr. Trump indulged in increasingly outlandish fictions, spreading disinformation about the election’s results and encouraging his followers to challenge the vote at every step. In recent weeks, as his legal defeats have stacked up, the president has become more vitriolic in his condemnations of Republicans who fail to support his false claims of having been the true victor in the election, and has lavished praise on those who parrot his accusations.

Senator Mitt Romney of Utah warned of the consequences of backing a bid to subvert the election’s outcome.“I could never have imagined seeing these things in the greatest democracy in the world,” he said in a statement. “Has ambition so eclipsed principle?”

Nevertheless, more than a month after Mr. Biden’s victory, with increasing numbers in their party marching in lock step with Mr. Trump, some Republicans felt the need on Saturday to explain why they planned to vote to uphold the results of a democratic election.

The vice president, the statement continued, “welcomes the efforts of members of the House and Senate to use the authority they have under the law to raise objections and bring forward evidence before the Congress and the American people on Jan. 6th.”

Representative Mo Brooks, Republican of Alabama, has said he will object to certifying the results, and with Mr. Hawley’s support, that challenge would hold weight, prompting senators and representatives to retreat to their chambers on opposite sides of the Capitol for a two-hour debate and then a vote on whether to disqualify a state’s votes. Both the Democratic-controlled House and Republican-controlled Senate would have to agree to toss out a state’s electoral votes — something that has not happened since the 19th century and is not expected to this time.

“A fair and credible audit — conducted expeditiously and completed well before Jan. 20 — would dramatically improve Americans’ faith in our electoral process and would significantly enhance the legitimacy of whoever becomes our next president,” they wrote. “We are acting not to thwart the democratic process, but rather to protect it.”

Vice President Mike Pence signaled his support as 11 Republican senators and senators-elect said that they would vote to reject President-elect Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s victory.

The senators’ opposition to certifying Mr. Biden’s election will not change the outcome. But it guarantees that what would normally be a perfunctory session on Capitol Hill on Wednesday to ratify the results of the presidential election will instead become a partisan brawl, in which Republicans amplify specious claims of widespread election rigging that have been debunked and dismissed for weeks even as Mr. Trump has stoked them.

“We fully expect most if not all Democrats, and perhaps more than a few Republicans, to vote otherwise,” the senators wrote.

The Cabinet includes the vice president and the heads of 15 executive departments

Klain served as Biden's chief of staff in the Obama White House and was also a senior aide to the President.

Klain has been a top debate preparation adviser to Biden, Obama, Bill Clinton, Gore, John Kerry and Hillary Clinton.

O'Malley Dillon will join Biden's incoming administration as a deputy White House chief of staff. O'Malley Dillon was Biden's presidential campaign manager and has served numerous other political campaigns -- including former Rep. Beto O'Rourke's failed 2020 presidential primary campaign and both of Barack Obama's presidential campaigns.

Richmond is expected to leave Congress to join Biden's White House staff in a senior role.

Rice served in the Obama administration as UN ambassador and national security adviser.

During the Clinton administration, Blinken served as a member of the National Security Council staff at the White House, and held roles as the special assistant to the president, senior director for European affairs, and senior director for speechwriting and then strategic planning. He was Clinton's chief foreign policy speechwriter

Rice at one point was thought to be the clear choice to succeed Hillary Clinton as secretary of state, but in 2012 withdrew her name from consideration to avoid a bitter Senate confirmation battle.

Blinken served in the Obama administration as the deputy secretary of state, assistant to the president and principal deputy national security adviser.

A longtime Biden ally, Coons was one of the first members of Congress to endorse the former vice president when he declared his 2020 presidential candidacy.

Yates was fired by Trump from her role as acting attorney general.

Throughout his Senate career, Coons has been known for working across the aisle and forging strong relationships with high-profile Republicans who shared common interests.

Brainard currently serves as a member of the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System

Brainard was the US representative to the G-20 Finance Deputies and G-7 Deputies and was a member of the Financial Stability Board. During the Clinton administration, Brainard served as the deputy national economic adviser and deputy assistant to the President.

Raskin was the deputy secretary of the US Department of the Treasury during the Obama administration. She was previously a governor of the Federal Reserve Board.

Outside of Sen. Elizabeth Warren, Raskin, a former deputy secretary at the department, would be the top choice for most progressives.

If chosen and confirmed, Flournoy would be the first female secretary of defense.

During the mid-1990's, she served as principal deputy assistant secretary of defense for strategy and threat reduction, as well as deputy assistant secretary of defense for strategy

Mayorkas was deputy secretary of Homeland Security during the Obama administration, and served as the director of the Department of Homeland Security's United States Citizenship and Immigration Services

Monaco played a critical role in Biden's vice presidential selection committee, and served as Homeland Security and counterterrorism advisor to Obama.

Jones is the junior United States Senator from Alabama. He lost his reelection bid earlier this month to Republican Tommy Tuberville.

Jones was also involved in the prosecution of Eric Rudolph, whose 1998 attack on a Birmingham abortion clinic killed an off-duty police officer.

Rice was one of a handful of women on Biden's shortlist for a running mate.

Yates had been appointed by Obama and was set to serve until Trump's nominee for attorney general was confirmed.

Haaland is a congresswoman from New Mexico, and is one of the first Native American women to serve in Congress. Biden has said he wants an administration that looks like the country. Haaland, the vice chair of the House Natural Resources Committee, would be the first Native American Cabinet secretary if she were to get an offer and accept it.

Yang is an entrepreneur and former 2020 Democratic presidential candidate. He rose from obscurity to become a highly-visible candidate, and his supporters are sometimes referred to as the "Yang Gang." His presidential campaign was centered around the idea of universal basic income, and providing every US citizen with $1,000 a month, or $12,000 a year.

Nelson is the international president of the Association of Flight Attendants-CWA. She cemented her image as a rising star of the labor movement during a prolonged government shutdown that stretched from December 2018 to January 2019.

Sanders is reaching out to potential supporters in labor to ask for their support as he mounts a campaign for the job. But he is viewed as a long shot and so far has received mix reactions from labor leaders.

Walsh is AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka's pick for the job, a big endorsement in what could soon turn into a contentious debate between moderate Democrats and progressives, who will favor Sen. Bernie Sanders or Michigan Rep. Andy Levin

Levin is a popular progressive who is also growing his base of support with labor leaders, including at the Communications Workers of America.

But he also has credibility with climate activists for having helped create Michigan's Green Jobs Initiative.

Murthy, a doctor of internal medicine, is the co-chair of Biden's coronavirus advisory board

Bottoms is the mayor of Atlanta and is a rising star of the Democratic Party. Bottoms stepped into the national spotlight when she denounced vandalism in her city as "chaos" after demonstrations over the death of George Floyd, a Black man who was killed by police in Minneapolis. Bottoms is a former judge and city council member.

Weingarten is the president of the American Federation of Teachers, AFL-CIO and has long pushed for education reform

Inslee is the governor of Washington state, and previously served in the US House of Representatives.

Buttigieg is the former mayor of South Bend, Indiana, and a former 2020 Democratic presidential candidate. Buttigieg's presidential bid was historic -- he was the first out gay man to launch a competitive campaign for president, and he broke barriers by becoming the first gay candidate to earn primary delegates for a major party's presidential nomination.

Mr. Netanyahu said of the attempt to resume talks: “It’s something I want. It’s something you want. It’s something I hope the Palestinians want as well.”

Even if trade flows begin to balance and there is less job loss in the future, the integration of the U.S. economy with those of its low-wage trading partners will pull down wages for many American workers, and will contribute to the ever rising inequality of incomes in the U.S. economy.

The mounting pressure applied by organized labor can be seen if you compare the votes of California House Democrats in 1993 on the North American Free Trade Agreement with votes on granting approval this year to fast track the TPP.

Nafta was approved in 1993, 234 to 200 by the full House, with Republicans in favor 132-43 and Democrats opposed 156-102. On June 18 of this year, the House passed fast-track legislation, but the partisan differences were much sharper: Republicans voted in favor, 190 to 50; Democrats opposed the legislation 158-28.

In between the votes on Nafta in 1993 and this year’s TPP, there was one major development pushing the union movement to the wall: the decline in manufacturing employment as trade with China accelerated in the 2000s.

The upstairs-downstairs character of the Democratic coalition proved to be the party’s strength in Obama’s two elections, and its continued viability is crucial to Clinton’s prospects next year. Trade, taxes and social spending are subjects that have not yet achieved progressive consensus and retain the potential to fracture the party

Trade always implies job destruction — this is the whole point of trade, namely to destroy jobs in import competing sectors to create them in exporting sectors, thus allowing for reallocation to sectors with comparative advantage, leading to an increased efficiency, the basis for the gains from trade.

Trade was linked to job losses in manufacturing that happened in the 1980s and then again in 2001-2004; it’s not happening now, because those jobs that could be shifted have been.” The bigger problem, Shapiro wrote, “is incomes – a majority of households saw their incomes decline from 2002-2013, even as they aged – i.e., people earned less at 40 than they had at 29.

In addition, one of “the ripple effects of globalization” is an intensification of competition, which, in turn, forces businesses to cut jobs and wages. “When people are feeling squeezed or worse economically, they retreat and see trade as a threat.”

The Democratic opposition to free trade has intensified in large part because of the current prominence of liberal-populist strength and the liberal tilt of individual – as opposed to special interest — donors.

The conflict between a pro-free-trade presidential wing of the Democratic Party and an anti-free-trade congressional wing has the potential to become a permanent fixture of the center-left. The conflict gives expression to both the downscale forces in the party that lean against trade and the pro-trade upscale forces.

from 2000 (the year that Congress granted China permanent normal trade relations status) to 2010, the number of manufacturing jobs fell by 34 percent, from just over 17 million to 11.5 million.

The real question, then, is how long will left and right within the Democratic coalition tolerate an inherently unstable posture on such a core issue as how this country does business abroad, and how it provides a livelihood for its citizens.

Roshan Shankar, an adviser to the Delhi government, said the authorities had regained control of a canal that supplied water to New Delhi, though the canal was badly damaged. For now, he said, the government was using existing reserves and other water bodies to meet the need. He said severe, widespread shortages had not been reported so far.

Nevertheless, he added, officials were “trying to get people to ration.”

A Jat leader, Satpal Singh Sangwan, a retired government official, said in an interview that officials had assured him that the Jat group would be added to a list of more than 2,000 other groups considered “backward,” making their members eligible for quotas in government jobs and university admissions.

A year ago, another relatively prosperous caste group, in the state of Gujarat, also demanded, unsuccessfully, to be part of the “backward classes.” Yet the latest caste protests are only the most violent and visible in what has been a steady stream of requests from different caste groups claiming to be “backward.”

It is one of the country’s major paradoxes that a population that has been trying for decades to rid itself of the caste system finds so many groups demanding to be ranked lower on the socioeconomic ladder in order to advance themselves economically.

Experts say the trend is being driven by increasing numbers of Indians who fear being left behind in the rapidly modernizing economy and who see government quotas as the only tangible way they can gain influence to help better themselves economically.

Vast numbers of Indians now “feel totally helpless with regard to the economy and private capital,” said Satish Deshpande, a sociology professor at Delhi University.

Despite the economic liberalization that began here in the 1990s, many people still lack jobs and educational opportunities, intensifying the competition for the age-old staple of government jobs.

Almost half of government jobs and university seats in the country are reserved for members of special groups.

India’s Constitution guarantees equality to all, but it also enshrines caste-based affirmative action for the lowest social group, the Dalits, known in legal terms as scheduled castes, and for indigenous forest-dwellers, known as scheduled tribes. In time, the government created a third group, the Other Backward Classes.

In many cases, groups flex their electoral muscles to induce the government to add them to the list of groups considered backward.The Jats started on that path. In 2014, as national elections approached, the incumbent Congress party agreed to their demand for backward status. But the Supreme Court struck down the decision last year, noting that a commission set up to review the program had refused to recommend such a step for the group.

The Jat protests became so out of hand over the weekend that the Indian Army had to be called in. Mr. Das said several protesters were killed in clashes with another caste group whose property was being burned. Other people were killed when law enforcement officials fired at protesters who had turned violent, he said. At least 19 people in all have been killed, Mr. Das said.

The riots also disrupted businesses. Maruti Suzuki India, the country’s biggest car manufacturer, said over the weekend that it had suspended manufacturing at two area factories.

Perry was accused of using his veto power to threaten a public official and overstepping his authority, but the judges ruled that courts can't undermine the veto power of a governor.

"Come at the king, you best not miss," Republican Judge David Newell wrote in his concurring opinion, quoting a popular line from the HBO series "The Wire."

Perry has been campaigning for Republican presidential candidate Ted Cruz since becoming the first major GOP candidate to drop out of the race last year.

"I've always known the actions I took were not only lawful and legal, they were right," said Perry, who spoke at the headquarters of an influential Texas conservative think tank, which has previously christened its balcony overlooking downtown as the "Gov. Rick Perry Liberty Balcony."

The court said veto power can't be restricted by the courts and the prosecution of a veto "violates separations of powers." A lower appeals court had dismissed the other charge, coercion by a public servant, in July.

Perry had rebuked the charges as a partisan attack from the start, calling it a "political witch hunt," but the dismissal brought accusations of Republican judges doing a favor for a party stalwart.

Texans for Public Justice, a left-leaning watchdog group that filed the original criminal complaint that led to the indictment, said Perry was handed a "gift" based on his stature.

Even a Republican judge who dissented in the ruling said the decision could leave the public with an uneasy perception that the system went out of its way to clear a famous politician with deep connections.

Perry, the longest-serving governor in Texas history, made just one court appearance in the case and was defiant from the start — he went out for ice cream after turning himself in for booking at an Austin jail, and smiled wide for his mug shot.

Legal scholars across the political spectrum raised objections about the case. Still, the Republican judge overseeing it repeatedly refused to throw it out on constitutional grounds, prompting Perry's appeals.

Michael McCrum, the special prosecutor who secured Perry's indictment, maintained that the matter was built on evidence — not politics — and deserved to go to trial. He can appeal, but that would be a lengthy process. Combined, the original charges carried a potential maximum of 109 years in prison.

Perry had formally announced he was running for president in June, hoping to convince GOP primary voters he deserved another chance after his 2012 bid was undone by a series of public gaffes. But his second campaign lasted barely three months, and he dropped out of the race in September.

The former governor spent more than $2 million on top defense lawyers. His latest White House campaign raised barely half that much in its first month, and Perry blamed the indictment for his sluggish fundraising. But polls showed he was badly trailing despite visits to Iowa, New Hampshire and South Carolina. He was the first candidate to leave a GOP field jammed with 17 presidential hopefuls at the time.

Phone-card sellers also tend to push whatever makes them the most money. Mr. Khan noted that another carrier had recently awarded him his choice of a Hero motorcycle or 45,000 rupees — nearly $700 — for signing up 1,000 customers. Reliance offered nothing similar.

“This is a program that is working to bring people online, and working incredibly well.” Mr. Daniels said. “Connectivity is something that improves people’s lives. It’s an enabler for people to be able to help themselves find jobs, help themselves improve their health situation, improve their education for themselves and their children.”

The Telecom Regulatory Authority of India is still mulling potential regulations. In a recent interview, however, the agency’s chairman, Ram Sewak Sharma, was skeptical of Internet.org. “Maybe they have wonderful objectives, but the way it is being implemented, that’s not really appropriate,” he said.

“During the run-up to the election, the Trump and Clinton campaigns bid ruthlessly for the same online real estate in front of the same swing-state voters. But because Trump used provocative content to stoke social-media buzz, and he was better able to drive likes, comments, and shares than Clinton, his bids received a boost from Facebook’s click model, effectively winning him more media for less money,” García Martínez continues. “In essence, Clinton was paying Manhattan prices for the square footage on your smartphone’s screen, while Trump was paying Detroit prices. Facebook users in swing states who felt Trump had taken over their news feeds may not have been hallucinating.”

Trump was a socialgenic candidate with a team that maximized—or exploited—his potential to create engagement: As dozens of stories have attested over the last two years, Trump was the “clickbait candidate.” Clinton’s posts and advertisements, for whatever basket of reasons, did not generate the same volume of likes, clicks, and shares. And in today’s electioneering, that has severe consequences.

From Facebook’s perspective, their platform is “neutral,” in the sense that it provides all advertisers with an equal opportunity to maximize their reach and minimize their costs. “The auction system works the same for everybody,” says Andy Stone, a Facebook spokesperson. “It affords equality of opportunity.”

Their personal politics mattered far less than the politics of the system that they half-wittingly created. While the clickbait candidate this last round was Donald Trump, future elections could just as easily feature a left-wing ideologue with an equally engaging style.

The University of Virginia media-studies professor Siva Vaidhyanathan, who has a book coming out on Facebook in September—Antisocial Media: How Facebook Disconnects Us and Undermines Democracy—had a stark response, especially with the midterms six months away. “There is no reform. The problem with Facebook is Facebook,” he told me. “When you marry a friction-free social network of 2 billion people to a powerful, precise, cheap ad system that runs on user profiling you get this mess. And no one can switch it off. So we are screwed.”

Within a week of its first confirmed case, South Korea’s disease control agency had summoned 20 private companies to the medical equivalent of a war-planning summit and told them to develop a test for the virus at lightning speed. A week after that, the first diagnostic test was approved and went into battle, identifying infected individuals who could then be quarantined to halt the advance of the disease.

Some 357,896 tests later, the country has more or less won the coronavirus war. On Friday only 91 new cases were reported in a country of more than 50 million.

The US response tells a different story. Two days after the first diagnosis in Washington state, Donald Trump went on air on CNBC and bragged: “We have it totally under control. It’s one person coming from China. It’s going to be just fine.”

Though the decision to allow private and state labs to provide testing has increased the flow of test kits, the US remains starkly behind South Korea, which has conducted more than five times as many tests per capita. That makes predicting where the next hotspot will pop up after New York and New Orleans almost impossible.

Today, 86,012 cases have been confirmed across the US, pushing the nation to the top of the world’s coronavirus league table – above even China.

Most worryingly, the curve of cases continues to rise precipitously, with no sign of the plateau that has spared South Korea.

Jeremy Konyndyk, who led the US government’s response to international disasters at USAid from 2013 to 2017, frames the past six weeks in strikingly similar terms. He told the Guardian: “We are witnessing in the United States one of the greatest failures of basic governance and basic leadership in modern times.”

It was not until 29 February, more than a month after the Journal article and almost six weeks after the first case of coronavirus was confirmed in the country that the Trump administration put that advice into practice. Laboratories and hospitals would finally be allowed to conduct their own Covid-19 tests to speed up the process.

If Trump’s travel ban did nothing else, it staved off to some degree the advent of the virus in the US, buying a little time. Which makes the lack of decisive action all the more curious.

In the absence of sufficient test kits, the US Centers of Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) initially kept a tight rein on testing, creating a bottleneck. “I believe the CDC was caught flat-footed,” was how the governor of New York, Andrew Cuomo, put it on 7 March. “They’re slowing down the state.”The CDC’s botched rollout of testing was the first indication that the Trump administration was faltering as the health emergency gathered pace. Behind the scenes, deep flaws in the way federal agencies had come to operate under Trump were being exposed.

In 2018 the pandemic unit in the national security council – which was tasked to prepare for health emergencies precisely like the current one – was disbanded. “Eliminating the office has contributed to the federal government’s sluggish domestic response,” Beth Cameron, senior director of the office at the time it was broken up, wrote in the Washington Post.

It was hardly a morale-boosting gesture when Trump proposed a 16% cut in CDC funding on 10 February – 11 days after the World Health Organization had declared a public health emergency over Covid-19.

The Food and Drug Administration (FDA), which regulates the diagnostic tests and will control any new treatments for coronavirus, has also shown vulnerabilities. The agency recently indicated that it was looking into the possibility of prescribing the malaria drug chloroquine for coronavirus sufferers, even though there is no evidence it would work and some indication it could have serious side-effects.

As the former senior official put it: “We have the FDA bowing to political pressure and making decisions completely counter to modern science.”

Trump has designated himself a “wartime president”. But if the title bears any validity, his military tactics have been highly unconventional. He has exacerbated the problems encountered by federal agencies by playing musical chairs at the top of the coronavirus force.

The president began by creating on 29 January a special coronavirus taskforce, then gave Vice-President Mike Pence the job, who promptly appointed Deborah Birx “coronavirus response coordinator”, before the federal emergency agency Fema began taking charge of key areas, with Jared Kushner, the president’s son-in-law, creating a shadow team that increasingly appears to be calling the shots.“There’s no point of responsibility,” the former senior official told the Guardian. “It keeps shifting. Nobody owns the problem.”

So it has transpired. In the wake of the testing disaster has come the personal protective equipment (PPE) disaster, the hospital bed disaster, and now the ventilator disaster.Ventilators, literal life preservers, are in dire short supply across the country. When governors begged Trump to unleash the full might of the US government on this critical problem, he gave his answer on 16 March.In a phrase that will stand beside 20 January 2020 as one of the most revelatory moments of the history of coronavirus, he said: “Respirators, ventilators, all of the equipment – try getting it yourselves.”

In the absence of a strong federal response, a patchwork of efforts has sprouted all across the country. State governors are doing their own thing. Cities, even individual hospitals, are coping as best they can.

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.

“Restricting information workflow this way adds friction to the deliberative process, making it more cumbersome and less responsive,” he added. “Inferior policy decisions are a likely result.”