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His baldness bathed in gold, his body pooled in shadow, Kurtz murmurs: “Are my methods unsound?” And Willard — filthy, hollow-eyed, stunned by what he’s seen — replies: “I don’t see any method at all, sir.”

This is basically how reasonable people should feel about the recent conduct of the House Republicans.

there is still something well-nigh-unprecedented about how Republicans have conducted themselves of late. It’s not the scale of their mistake, or the kind of damage that it’s caused, but the fact that their strategy was such self-evident folly, so transparently devoid of any method whatsoever.

A massive bill that extends billions of dollars in tax assistance to businesses and expands the budget deficit won U.S. House of Representatives approval on Thursday in the closest thing to a grand bipartisan tax bargain in years.

Lawmakers voted 318-109 for the $622 billion measure, which is a step toward avoiding a government shutdown.

The bill now goes to the Senate, where it will likely be voted on together with a $1.1 trillion spending bill that must be approved to avert a repeat of a government shutdown in 2013 that damaged the U.S. economy.

The key result: the 20 most prosperous districts are now held by Democrats, while Republicans represent 16 of the 20 least prosperous, measured by share of G.D.P. The accompanying chart illustrates their analysis.

The authors’ calculation of the contribution to the G.D.P. of every congressional district showed that Democratic districts produce $10.2 trillion of the nation’s goods and services and Republican districts $6.2 trillion.

Candidates on the right do best during hard times and in recent elections, they have gained the most politically in regions experiencing the sharpest downturn. Electorally speaking, in other words, Republicans profit from economic stagnation and decline.

President Donald Trump is about to discover the reverse side of Richard Neustadt’s famous observation that the most important presidential power is the power to persuade. Trump’s conduct as candidate and president long ago deprived him of any power to persuade anyone not already predisposed to support him

The solution to that problem is not a lengthy process of design, tendering, land expropriation, grading, and construction. The solution is to get more adjudicators into the asylum system now

In this budget shutdown, Trump discarded his leverage from the very start, by declaring for the cameras that the budget shutdown was his decision, his responsibility

The stereotype of government employees as pampered, overpaid, Washington-bound bureaucrats has been around for many years. Republicans have long portrayed them as the enemies of reform and efficiency.

But Trump targeted them as no one did before. From his earliest months in office, he and his allies have portrayed those who dedicate their lives to serving their country as the corrupt, subversive “deep state” — the bottom-feeders of a swamp in need of draining. As the shutdown began, Trump first made the absurd suggestion that 800,000 government workers were happy to give up grocery and rent money for a construction project on the U.S.-Mexico border that would stand as a monument to the president’s vanity. Then he contradicted himself in a tweet that declared it was largely his political enemies who were feeling the pain: “Do the Dems realize that most of the people not getting paid are Democrats?”

Donald Trump’s popularity is rising. What gives?

even as we’re seeing him flounder, people want to believe they have a leader who knows what he’s doing in this crisis. So it’s not surprising his polls have ticked up.

Although actually Trump’s popularity hasn’t risen all that much considering the intensity of the situation. Certainly nothing compared to what we saw with George W. Bush after 9/11.

the gathering, like similar ones held in the electoral battleground states of Ohio, Minnesota and North Carolina, was also the clearest sign yet of a simmering ideological movement on the right resisting government mandates over the virus.

The protests at state capitals in recent days had the feel of early Tea Party rallies in 2009, with far-right conservatives taking a lead role and more cautious elected Republicans keeping their distance.

In a survey released Thursday by the Pew Research Center, very conservative Americans were twice as likely as others to worry that businesses would reopen too slowly.

More than 20 experts in public health, medicine, epidemiology and history shared their thoughts on the future during in-depth interviews. When can we emerge from our homes? How long, realistically, before we have a treatment or vaccine? How will we keep the virus at bay

The path forward depends on factors that are certainly difficult but doable, they said: a carefully staggered approach to reopening, widespread testing and surveillance, a treatment that works, adequate resources for health care providers — and eventually an effective vaccine.

The scenario that Mr. Trump has been unrolling at his daily press briefings — that the lockdowns will end soon, that a protective pill is almost at hand, that football stadiums and restaurants will soon be full — is a fantasy, most experts said.

The human cost of China's coronavirus outbreak is tragic, mounting and already readily apparent. The cost to businesses around the world could also become severe in the coming weeks.

"It only takes one missing part to stop a line," said Mike Dunne, a consultant to the auto industry in Asia and the former head of GM's operations in Indonesia. He said there have been many examples in the past where problems like a fire or natural disaster shutting a single supplier plant can affect auto plants around the world. This could be far worse depending on how widespread the shutdown of plants due to the virus becomes.

"It's difficult to say when it will start to bite here," she said. "I would expect to see a cascading global impact by the end of February if Chinese production doesn't come back [this week]. All automakers have a supply chain war room going on right now to determine what they can be doing. But China is so huge, there is no way they cannot be impacted."

t represented yet another violent policy swing. First, Trump told Americans there was nothing to worry about and the virus would disappear “like a miracle”. Then he spun 180 degrees and declared himself “a wartime president”, issuing federal guidelines urging Americans to limit social contact and stay home. Now, it seems, he is pivoting back to the original position.

Trump’s Pollyannish tone was jarring on day that people were dying and hospitals desperately running short of masks and other equipment. It made for a startling contrast with the UK’s prime minister, Boris Johnson, who announced a strict lockdown in Britain, and the draconian measures in place across Europe. It also begged the question of whether citizens would sufficiently trust him to feel safe returning to work or public places and whether state governors would have the final say in any case.

But the president insisted “we can do two things at one time”, adding: “We have a very active flu season, more active than most. It’s looking like it’s heading to 50,000 or more deaths – deaths, not cases. 50,000 deaths – which is, that’s a lot. And you look at automobile accidents, which are far greater than any numbers we’re talking about. That doesn’t mean we’re going to tell everybody no more driving of cars. So we have to do things to get our country open.”

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.

In the first stage, Ingraham, Hannity, Lou Dobbs and weekend pundit Jeanine Pirro cast criticism of Trump’s handling of the virus’ outbreak as a conspiracy by Democratic officials and members of the news media to undermine his reelection chances. They called critics “panic pushers” who were inciting “mass hysteria.”

They also minimized the impact of the virus, which could have a potentially disastrous effect on higher-risk groups such as older people — coincidentally, the most loyal cohort of Fox viewers

To date, neither Fox nor any of the network’s hosts have apologized for, clarified or retracted any of their earlier statements. (Fox’s media representatives offered no comment Tuesday).

governors must also use this time to work with businesses on a plan for reopening the economy in a way that mitigates health risks. The White House is reportedly discussing ways to ease restrictions as early as next week, but local and state officials will have to produce well-considered plans to open up the economy in a relatively safe way.

A blanket lockdown can’t go on. Keeping every business closed and every worker at home until a vaccine is available won’t work

If this were the plague, with 50% of the infected dying, it might be a different story. But people won’t put up with losing many trillions of dollars to flatten the curve of this virus.

The virus has killed more than 300,000 people in Brazil, its spread aided by a highly contagious variant, political infighting and distrust of science.

More than a year into the pandemic, deaths in Brazil are at their peak and highly contagious variants of the coronavirus are sweeping the nation, enabled by political dysfunction, widespread complacency and conspiracy theories. The country, whose leader, President Jair Bolsonaro, has played down the threat of the virus, is now reporting more new cases and deaths per day than any other country in the world.

At Hospital Restinga e Extremo Sul, one of the main medical facilities in Porto Alegre, the emergency room has become a crammed Covid ward where many patients received care in chairs, for lack of a free bed. Last week, the military built a tent field hospital outside the main entrance, but hospital officials said the additional bed space is of little use for a medical staff stretched beyond its limit.

Ugandans voted on Thursday amid heightened security and an internet shutdown after a hotly contested and violent race in which a youthful rapper-turned-lawmaker is attempting to unseat one of Africa’s longest-serving leaders.

Some 18 million voters cast ballots at around 35,000 polling stations across the coffee- and oil-producing country to decide a presidential election that has sparked the worst political clashes in decades. Dozens of military trucks mounted with machine guns patrolled the uncharacteristically quiet streets of the capital, Kampala. State television warned voters not to wear clothing in colors that denoted partisanship, to “avoid trouble.”

Incumbent President Yoweri Museveni has easily won previous contests since assuming power in 1986, but his winning streak appears to be in jeopardy in the face of a challenge from Bobi Wine, a 38-year-old musician.

Turmoil is never far away in South Asia, between disputed borders, acute resource shortages, and threats ranging from extremist violence to earthquakes. But in 2019, two crises stood out: an intensifying war in Afghanistan and deep tensions between India and Pakistan. And as serious as both were in 2019, expect them to get even worse in the coming year.

Afghanistan has already seen several grim milestones in the last 12 months that attested to the ferocity of the Taliban insurgency. Casualty figures for Afghan security forces and civilians set new records. It was also the deadliest year for U.S. forces since 2014.

Meanwhile, 2019 was a dangerously tense year for India and Pakistan—two rivals that are both neighbors and nuclear states. In February, a young Kashmiri man in the town of Pulwama staged a suicide bombing that killed more than three dozen Indian security forces—the deadliest such attack in Kashmir in three decades.

For many weeks, public health officials had expressed concern that a second wave of the coronavirus would hit New York City, which until recently had achieved striking success in beating back the outbreak after a devastating spring that left more than 20,000 residents dead.

under the new restrictions, Mr. de Blasio would close all schools — public and private — in nine of the city’s 146 ZIP codes

as well as all nonessential businesses. Indoor and outdoor dining in restaurants in those areas will not be allowed.