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But, in the second stage, Fox’s most prominent figures had a quick change of heart after Trump declared a state of emergency on March 13, acknowledging that the pandemic could have devastating health and economic consequences.

A third message seems to have germinated on Sunday with Hilton’s monologue.

On his program Monday, Tucker Carlson, who previously had warned of the virus’s severity, agreed with Trump’s new, less-restrictive view. “You can’t just let epidemiologists run a country of more than 320 million people,” Carlson said, arguing that it was important to find a balance between fighting the virus and keeping the economy going.

The message was reinforced Tuesday morning on “F0x & Friends,” during which Fox medical correspondent Marc Siegel, a medical doctor, suggested there were “moderate” ways of handling the crisis.

“What if there are no cases in certain states?” he asked, although every state is now handling infections. “What if it’s very low? Maybe there is a way to test, to target, to isolate and then to have more-moderate ways of approaching it in areas that aren’t yet affected. And then, of course, restrict travel from one area that has a lot of it to one that doesn’t. I think that’s a more practical approach, because otherwise the economy gets in worse and worse shape.”

Co-host Brian Kilmeade replied that the issue had divided experts. “You have economists on one side, health officials on the other,” he said. “Maybe the right thing is in the middle.”

Asked Thursday during an appearance on CNBC whether he thought it was possible that the country could be open for business next month, Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin, said, “I do.

The White House cannot unilaterally reopen the country. Though the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has issued federal guidance advising people to avoid social gatherings, work from home and use pickup and delivery options for food, it is state officials who have put the force of law behind those suggestions.

The CDC guidance is set to expire April 30, but the states are free to choose their own paths. Already, the state directives have varied in timing and in severity, and that is certain to continue as they are rolled back.

Among those pushing to reopen the economy, according to senior administration officials, is Marc Short, the vice president’s chief of staff and a top adviser to Trump. Short has argued there will be fewer deaths than the models show and that the country has already overreacted, according to people with knowledge of his comments.

Health experts say that ending the shutdown prematurely would be disastrous because the restrictions have barely had time to work, and because U.S. leaders have not built up the capacity for alternatives to stay-at-home orders — such as the mass testing, large-scale contact tracing and targeted quarantines that have been used in other countries to suppress the virus.

Even one of the most optimistic models, which has been used by the White House and governors, predicts a death toll of 60,400, but only if current drastic restrictions are kept in place until the end of May.

the growing recognition in the administration that the steps meant to stem the spread of coronavirus have inflicted economic pain that is likely to last for many months.

There have been nascent signs that the aggressive social-distancing measures imposed by state and city governments have slowed the spread of the infection, which has killed more than 16,000 Americans. Federal officials have noted that Washington state and California were among the first states to see cases of the virus but have not experienced the high levels of infection and death that others, such as New York and New Jersey, are enduring.

On Thursday — as the Labor Department tallied another 6.6 million Americans applying for unemployment benefits last week — Federal Reserve Chair Jerome H. Powell said the U.S. economy was deteriorating “with alarming speed” and called for a national discussion about what will be required to reopen it.

Trump is preparing to announce this week the creation of a second, smaller coronavirus task force aimed specifically at combating the economic ramifications of the virus, according to people familiar with the plans.

The task force is expected to be led by Mark Meadows, the White House chief of staff, and include Larry Kudlow, the president’s chief economic adviser, and Mnuchin, the treasury secretary, along with outside business leaders. Others expected to play a role are Kevin Hassett, who has been advising Trump on economic models in recent weeks, and the president’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, administration officials say.

A 2007 study funded by the CDC examined the fate of several U.S. cities when they eased restrictions too soon during the 1918 flu pandemic. Those cities believed they were on the other side of the peak, and, like the United States today, had residents agitating about the economy and for relaxing restrictions.

Once they lifted the restrictions, however, the trajectory of those cities soon turned into a double-humped curve with two peaks instead of one. Two peaks means overwhelmed hospitals and many deaths, without the flattening benefit authorities were trying to achieve with arduous restrictions.

Powell, the Federal Reserve chair, notably did not advocate a May reopening, saying such steps were more likely after July. And even some close to Trump seemed wary of supporting an early date.

Sen. Lindsey O. Graham (R-S.C.), a Trump ally, said an early reopening was “an aspirational goal.”“The real fear is that you do it too quickly and you create a spike in the disease, which is likely to come back in the fall,” Graham said. “It has to be a science-based assessment, and I don’t see a mass reopening of the economy coming anytime soon.”

“If restoring the economy means restoring transit systems back to full-throttle schedules, before covid-19 is defeated, it’s just going to expose more transit workers to harm’s way, and it’s something we would not be in favor of,” said John Samuelsen, the international president of the Transport Workers Union

Trump’s “warrior” turn meant something very different. He’s given up on arguing that anything will be safe or okay. Indeed, he appears to have ditched the idea that people are clamoring to get back to work. They just have to.

“Will some people be affected badly? Yes. But we have to get our country opened,” he said Tuesday.

For Trump the ‘warrior’ talk isn’t about shared sacrifice. He is adding a cheap patina of valor to his demand that people endanger themselves and in some cases die to restore the greatest economy that ever was … the one he created, the one he thinks will get him reelected in November. This is less warrior than cannon fodder.

Ossoff nearly won the seat outright during the first vote on April 18, coming just two points short of the necessary 50 percent. Handel, a former Georgia secretary of state, bested 10 GOP rivals to advance to the June 20 runoff.

. Lopped off the district was Cherokee County, which favored the president over Hillary Clinton by 50 points last November.

He initially pledged to "make Trump furious," and a fundraising haul unprecedented for a House race followed: $8.3 million in the first quarter with 95 percent of the donors from outside Georgia. Having quickly overshadowed the rest of his party's field, Ossoff made the sort of strategic pivot that generally typifies presidential contests between the primary season and the general election.

What he talks like is a professional politician, going before the cameras to proclaim that "both parties in Congress waste a lot of your money."

Do voters trust his posturing, she asks, or do they see "the most liberal of the left who are the power behind his campaign"?

But this past week, Trump created whiplash. On Monday — just moments after Alexander and Murray released the blueprint for a short-term authorization of federal subsidies that help lower-income Americans afford coverage but that the administration had just halted — Trump said he supported the effort.

Corker said his fellow Tennessean has “the patience of Job” to negotiate with Trump, referring to the biblical prophet who suffers one curse after another but keeps his faith.

“The expectation that you will stand by what you said you would do is higher in politics than it is in the cutthroat world of real estate,” Schwartz added. “That’s a brutal environment in which misdirection and bullying and making one offer and changing it later are all common practice.”

Trump’s lack of ideological roots makes him an unusual figure in Washington, where most lawmakers adhere rigidly to their party’s agendas.

Trump has been traveling the country to pitch his plan for broad tax cuts, targeting in particular Manchin and other Democratic senators up for reelection in 2018 in states Trump won last year. The president boasted this past week of being able to easily pass tax legislation this fall, even though a bill has not been introduced.

Schumer said the key to getting things done on Capitol Hill is for the president to take a back seat.

Schwartz said playing to Trump’s ego, as Graham has with his golf compliments, is an effective way to manage him. His advice to those seeking to make deals with Trump: Find the most persuasive way to portray one’s agenda as a personal victory for the president, and be the last person to talk to him. “Trump is motivated by the same concern in all situations, which is to dominate and to be perceived as having won,” Schwartz said. “That supersedes everything, including ideology.”

The president claimed, incorrectly, that the current surge is not more pronounced than during the Trump administration, and more accurately noted that Trump eliminated much of the funding intended to help combat the root causes of illegal immigration.

“Well look, the idea that I’m gonna say — which I would never do — if an unaccompanied child ends up at the border, we’re just gonna let him starve to death and stay on the other side, no previous administration did that either except Trump,” Biden said. “I’m not gonna do it. I’m not gonna do it.”

Though Trump did use Title 42 to return minors without giving them a chance to seek asylum — something the Biden administration says it will not do — the former president did not simply send them back to Mexico to starve to death or wander the desert, as Biden and some of his top officials have implied.

“I’m tired of talking about Donald Trump,” he said at the time.

Trump did his part to remain omnipresent, calling into Laura Ingraham’s Fox News show Thursday night to attack Biden’s immigration policies as “inhumane” and boast about his partially built border wall.

GOP leaders justify the voter suppression measures by arguing that they are needed to crack down on fraud and to restore the public's faith that US elections are fair. But multiple courts and Trump's own Justice Department found there was no widespread electoral fraud in 2020.

The Georgia bill is only one example of GOP efforts in multiple states -- including many crucial electoral battlegrounds -- to hold back a diverse demographic tide in cities that favor Democrats, which critics see as an attempt to cement minority rule in the United States.

Georgia Republicans also lost two US Senate seats that handed Democrats control of the 50-50 chamber on the basis of huge Black turnout in runoff elections in January.close dialogSign up for CNN's CNN's Chris Cillizza cuts through the political spin and tells you what you need to know. Sign Me UpNo ThanksBy subscribing, you agree to ourprivacy policy.Sign up for CNN's CNN's Chris Cillizza cuts through the political spin and tells you what you need to know. Please enter above Sign Me UpNo ThanksBy subscribing, you agree to ourprivacy policy.You're on the list for CNN'sCNN's Chris Cillizza cuts through the political spin and tells you what you need to know. close dialog/* effects for .bx-campaign-1245919 *//* custom css .bx-campaign-1245919 *//* custom css from creative 47804 */@-ms-keyframes bx-anim-1245919-spin { from {

"This should be marked as Exhibit A in making the case that discriminatory voter suppression is alive and well, and makes clear why we need federal voting rights legislation to stop these laws in their tracks," Hewitt said. "We stand ready to take action and protect the fundamental right to vote through the courts."

as a remnant of the Jim Crow era that institutionalized racism and hinted that he could ultimately back abolishing the Senate filibuster to get the Democrats' House-passed bill through the chamber. But Biden declined to reveal his strategy for getting the voting rights bill into law.

Georgia's action threw a political grenade into the debate over a Washington campaign by many Democrats to abolish Senate supermajority rules that Republicans could use to block their sweeping election bill, known as the For the People Act.

In a statement to CNN, Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, a Republican who defied Trump's pleas in a telephone call to find votes to overturn Biden's victory, said he would still stand up for voter freedoms but did not criticize the law."In implementing this law, I will ensure that no eligible Georgia voter is hindered in exercising their right to vote, and I will continue to further secure our elections so that every Georgian can have confidence in the results of our elections," Raffensperger said

"As the FBI continue to round up seditionists who spilled blood to defend a lie about our elections, Republican state leaders willfully undermine democracy by giving themselves authority to overturn results they do not like," Abrams said in a statement. "Now, more than ever, Americans must demand federal action to protect voting rights as we continue to fight against these blatantly unconstitutional efforts that are nothing less than Jim Crow 2.0."

Black voters hampered by the restrictions of voting in urban areas have often found themselves lining up for hours to vote in inclement weather. The clear targeting of African American voters in Georgia and elsewhere recalls some of the ugliest racial episodes of America's past, and is fueling claims of open Republican racism.

Former President Donald Trump's campaign of lies about a stolen election just delivered a huge victory with a new Georgia law that could suppress the votes of many of the citizens who helped eject him from the White House.

Republican state lawmakers rushed through a broad law Thursday making it harder to vote that disproportionately targets Democratic and Black voters

The move confirms the Peach State as the epicenter of the fight for American democracy

The Georgia law raises the question of whether election safeguards that prevented Trump's energetic efforts to rig the 2020 White House race after the fact in the state will stand firm in future elections amid false claims of electoral fraud by a president.

"What I'm worried about is how un-American this whole initiative is. It's sick. It's sick," President Joe Biden

Republicans in multiple states pursue new laws to limit voting.

Georgia Republicans also lost two US Senate seats that handed Democrats control of the 50-50 chamber on the basis of huge Black turnout in runoff elections in January.close dialogSign up for CNN What Matters NewsletterEvery day we summarize What Matters and deliver it straight to your inbox.Sign me upNo thanksBy subscribing you agree to ourprivacy policy.By subscribing you agree to ourprivacy policy.Sign up for CNN What Matters NewsletterEvery day we summarize What Matters and deliver it straight to your inbox.Please enter aboveSign me upNo thanksBy subscribing you agree to ourprivacy policy.By subscribing you agree to ourprivacy policy.Sign up for CNN What Matters NewsletterEvery day we summarize What Matters and deliver it straight to your inbox.//assets.bounceexchang

After leaving office, Trump demanded that Republican state legislatures pass laws to ban mail-in voting and to prevent courts from weighing in on electoral disputes.

the former President has made the acceptance of his false conspiracy theories about voter fraud in 2020 a litmus test for Republican candidates

Iowa has already passed a measure to limit absentee balloting and voting hours. Texas is taking steps to cut voting hours and absentee balloting in big Democratic cities like Houston. New voting laws are being pushed by Republicans in another swing state Trump lost, Arizona.

GOP leaders justify the voter suppression measures by arguing that they are needed to crack down on fraud and to restore the public's faith that US elections are fair. But multiple courts and Trump's own Justice Department found there was no widespread electoral fraud in 2020.

voter mistrust was largely fueled by Trump's blatantly false claims

Georgia's action threw a political grenade into the debate over a Washington campaign by many Democrats to abolish Senate supermajority rules that Republicans could use to block their sweeping election bill, known as the For the People Act.

The drama in the Georgia Legislature unfolded as Biden condemned restrictive state legislation as a remnant of the Jim Crow era that institutionalized racism and hinted that he could ultimately back abolishing the Senate filibuster to get the Democrats' House-passed bill through the chamber.

The law allows any Georgian to make unlimited challenges to voter registrations, and, incredibly, makes it a misdemeanor crime for anyone to offer food and water to voters stuck in long lines to cast ballots.

The clear targeting of African American voters in Georgia and elsewhere recalls some of the ugliest racial episodes of America's past, and is fueling claims of open Republican racism.

The Georgia law was quickly signed by Republican Gov. Brian Kemp, who incurred the wrath of Trump last year for refusing to play along with his attempt to override Biden's victory by 12,000 votes in the state, which was confirmed by several audits.

"In implementing this law, I will ensure that no eligible Georgia voter is hindered in exercising their right to vote, and I will continue to further secure our elections so that every Georgian can have confidence in the results of our elections," Raffensperger said.

Kemp is up for reelection in 2022 and could face Democrat Stacey Abrams, a former state lawmaker and prominent voting rights advocate

"As the FBI continue to round up seditionists who spilled blood to defend a lie about our elections, Republican state leaders willfully undermine democracy by giving themselves authority to overturn results they do not like," Abrams said in a statement. "Now, more than ever, Americans must demand federal action to protect voting rights as we continue to fight against these blatantly unconstitutional efforts that are nothing less than Jim Crow 2.0."

the measure directly targeted voters of color who took part in record numbers in the 2020 election.

The For the People Act awaiting action in the Senate would create automatic voter registration nationwide and restore portions of the Voting Rights Act that were gutted by the Supreme Court. It would also strengthen mail-in voting and permit early voting across the country, while taking steps to cut wait times at the polls.

He predicted critics of the new law "will threaten, boycott, sue, demonize and team up with their friends in the national media to call me everything in the book."

The new law imposes new voter identification requirements for absentee ballots, empowers state officials to take over local elections boards, limits the use of ballot drop boxes and makes it a crime to approach voters in line to give them food and water.

"It's like the Christmas tree of goodies for voter suppression," Democratic state Sen. Jen Jordan said on the Senate floor

"In large part because of the racial disparities in areas outside of voting -- such as socioeconomic status, housing, and employment opportunities -- the Voter Suppression Bill disproportionately impacts Black voters, and interacts with these vestiges of discrimination in Georgia to deny Black voters (an) equal opportunity to participate in the political process and/or elect a candidate of their choice," the lawsuit states.

The package is part of a national Republican effort that aims to restrict access to the ballot box following record turnout in the election.

Voting rights advocates say the state's rapid-fire action -- and plans in other Republican-controlled states to pass restrictions of their own -- underscores the need for federal legislation to set a national baseline for voting rules.

"Now, more than ever, Americans must demand federal action to protect voting rights," she said in a statement.

Advocates said they were alarmed by measures that will allow any Georgian to lodge an unlimited number of challenges to voter registrations and eligibility, saying it could put a target on voters of color. And Democrats in the Georgia Senate on Thursday lambasted measures that boot the secretary of state as chairman of the state elections board and allow lawmakers to install his replacement, giving lawmakers three of five appointments.

Another provision shortens the runoff cycle from the current nine weeks to just four weeks

Republicans scaled back some restrictive provisions from earlier iterations of the legislation, including a proposed repeal of no-excuse absentee voting.

As of February, state legislators in 43 states have introduced more than 250 bills with restrictive voting provisions, according to a tally from the Brennan Center for Justice at New York University.

20,000 conservative activists it said had lobbied lawmakers to pass the overhaul.

Last November, Biden became the first Democrat in nearly three decades to win the state. And strong voter turnout in January helped send two Democrats to the US Senate, flipping control of the chamber to their party. One of those new senators, Raphael Warnock, captured his seat in a special election and will be on the ballot again in 2022.

And voters who seek absentee ballots have to provide a copy of their identification or the number of their Georgia driver's license or state ID to both apply for and return the ballot. The also prohibits the secretary of state's office from sending unsolicited absentee ballot applications, as it did before the 2020 primaries due to the coronavirus pandemic.

At least one farmer reportedly died.

After nightfall Tuesday, those unions called off the tractor rally. Farmers climbed down from the ramparts of the Red Fort. But they did not go home. They returned only to their protest camps, on the outskirts of Delhi — from which they're planning another march on the capital in less than a week.

Republican grassroots activists mounted a weekend campaign to ensure the bill's passage

The efforts to restrict voting come after the traditionally red state backed Democrat Joe Biden for the presidency last year and sent two Democrats to the US Senate, Raphael Warnock and Jon Ossoff.

The ACLU of Georgia executive director Andrea Young said her group would use "every tool" available to block the voting restrictions, including taking the fight to the state's corporate interests.

Lauren Groh-Wargo -- the CEO of Fair Fight Action, the voting rights group founded by former Democratic gubernatorial nominee Stacey Abrams -- promised to "fight in Georgia, in the courts and in Congress to make sure that Georgians' voting rights are not infringed."

"The Lt. Governor has been crystal clear that he does not support the roll-back of absentee voting, and instead believes that modernizing and updating the system is more appropriate," McFall said in a statement to CNN.

The state's Republican Gov. Brian Kemp has not declared whether he would sign the bill in its current form into law

More broadly, Kemp wants to "ensure Georgia's elections are secure, accessible, and fair -- and that it must be easy to vote and hard to cheat in Georgia," Blount added, echoing Kemp's standard line about voting.Leading up to Monday's vote, Georgia Republicans faced pressure from grassroots GOP activists to pass voting restrictions. Former President Donald Trump has made repeated and baseless claims that election fraud contributed to his defeat in Georgia and elsewhere. And Trump has lashed out against Kemp, who is up for reelection in 2022, and other Republicans in the state who refused to back his fraud claims.

there's no evidence of widespread fraud that would have overturned the election's outcome in Georgia or anywhere else, federal and state officials have said.

"The Republican base is united in this, and I dare Brian Kemp to veto a strong election security bill that comes to his desk," she said. "He's in enough trouble as it is. I know a lot of Republicans that have pledged not to support him under any circumstance."

The bill aims to dismantle a 2005 Republican-backed law allowing no-excuse absentee voting. Georgia is one of 34 states that do not currently require an excuse to vote by mail, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures.

Under the measure approved Monday, to qualify for an absentee ballot, voters must be 65 years old or older, absent from their precinct, observing a religious holiday, required to provide constant care for someone with a physical disability, or required to work "for the protection of the health, life, or safety of the public during the entire time the polls are open," or be an overseas or military voter.

"It's an example of how a 'race neutral policy' can end up having racially disparate impacts," said Kevin Morris, a Brennan Center researcher. "You don't have to use the word 'race' to carve up the electorate in racially disparate ways."

But Trump's support is less pronounced in the Senate, where GOP leader Mitch McConnell and John Thune, the No. 2 Senate Republican who faces reelection in South Dakota next year, have both worked to distance themselves from the former President.

"No more money for RINOS," Trump said in a Monday evening statement.

But while Trump may put his name behind a candidate, McConnell is still armed with a well-funded outside group, the Senate Leadership Fund, which stands poised to drop millions in key races to try and push the GOP leader's preferred choices across the finish line.

A clear majority of Americans -- 60% -- approves of the new President's handling of the pandemic in a new CNN poll.

The virus is far from purged. Covid-19 variants may trigger a new spring surge in infections before vaccination campaigns can tamp them down. Republican governors racing to open their states with cases still at a high plateau could also cause a new wave of unnecessary deaths.

A fast-building southern border crisis threatens to turn into the first big non-Covid-19-related emergency of this presidency, with Biden yet to get a handle on a surge of undocumented child migrants across the border.

Biden's success -- along with Democratic leaders -- in piloting a massive piece of legislation through Congress despite the tightest of majorities in the first weeks of his presidency is a historic achievement that ranks alongside the fastest of starts by modern presidents. The new law delivers on his promise to send $1,400 stimulus payments to millions of Americans.

No longer does the president of the United States spend his time attacking American democracy, waging personal feuds on Twitter or cratering painstakingly brokered political compromises in Congress.

The overhaul of the US counter-pandemic strategy after Trump's denial and mismanagement and Biden's success in passing the Covid-19 rescue plan leave an impression that the new President is effectively wielding the tools of his office, after a lifetime Washington apprenticeship.

Biden's impact is also being felt in the way he has restored traditional expectations of presidential behavior and has projected human decency from the White House -- for instance, when he visited an old friend, former GOP Senate Majority Leader Bob Dole, after his recent cancer diagnosis.

Since taking office, Biden has led the nation in mourning for 525,000 lost citizens and has managed a steady rise in vaccinations, which now average 2 million a day.

Early victories do not guarantee successful or ultimately popular presidencies. The job is so vast, and the challenges -- from domestic security threats to a sudden foreign policy crisis -- can be grave and unexpected. The pandemic, which destroyed the economy Trump had hoped to ride to reelection, is proof of that.

If Biden fails to get the immigration crisis under control, the success of passing the rescue plan may be quickly forgotten.

One crucial issue overshadowed by the race to vaccinate Americans and put them back to work is the unresolved threat to American democracy. Republican state legislators across the nation are rushing to suppress the potential vote of the 2022 midterm elections and the 2024 presidential election with new laws that often directly discriminate against minority and Democratic voters.

Given such tests, Biden's objectively strong start to his presidency is only revealing the height of the political mountain up ahead.

Cuomo's favorable rating jumped to 77%. Just two months earlier, his favorable rating had been 44% -- a paltry figure for a Democrat from a blue state. close dialogThe world is watching as the Biden administration takes office.Get updates on US politics delivered to your inbox daily. Sign Me UpNo ThanksBy subscribing you agree to ourprivacy policy.The world is watching as the Biden administration takes office.Get updates on US politics delivered to your inbox daily. Please enter aboveSign Me UpBy subscribing you agree to ourprivacy policy.Success! See you in your inbox.</

California was one of the earliest states hit in the pandemic, and most voters applauded Newsom's response. His approval rating among likely voters in Public Policy Institute of California polling topped out at 64% in May 2020. That was up from 52% in February 2020 and 49% in January 2020. Newsom, though, has been criticized for how he handled lockdowns and business and school reopenings during the last year

His favorable rating is down to 44% and a mere 36% of voters want him to run for reelection, according to a March Quinnipiac University poll. The one piece of good news for Cuomo is that most Democrats (60%) have a favorable view of the governor, a slim majority (50%) want him to run again in 2022 and just 21% want him to resign.

More prominently, Cuomo is dealing with multiple allegations of inappropriate behavior toward women. The attorney general's office is investigating the claims, and the state Assembly speaker has allowed an impeachment investigation to begin. Many state and federal officials are calling on Cuomo to resign.

Still, the fact that Newsom is facing a recall and that his approval rating is averaging only about 50% right now is not a great position for a Democrat in California. Of course, both Cuomo and Newsom are in better political shape than Trump. While Trump ended up losing the election, at least in part to his response to the pandemic, voters actually had rallied around him early.

By the summer, Trump's overall approval rating dropped into the low 40s. He consistently low on who would better handle the pandemic compared with Democrat Joe Biden, who's now president. Indeed, Trump may very well have won the election without the pandemic. His approval rating on the economy was better than that of any of the incumbents who had lost in the last 45 years before him.

That sentiment is hardly new on the political right, and it’s one that Biden specifically tried to undercut in his speech. But on this issue, it’s also a sentiment that Fox News, Carlson and Trump all amplified repeatedly over the past 12 months. With the coronavirus pandemic raging and Trump seeking reelection, he and his allies sought to cast the spread of the virus and the burdensome efforts to contain it as the fault of other people, including Fauci.

Powell, who has frequently pushed the falsehood that Trump was reelected, also appeared at the event and said Trump should be "simply reinstated" and that a "new inauguration day is set."

Some QAnon followers are obsessed with the idea that the US military will somehow put Trump back into office. Some believed and hoped Trump would declare martial law on Inauguration Day to stop Joe Biden from entering the White House.

Talk among Trump supporters of a coup not only happens online, CNN spoke to followers of the former President in Ventura, California, in February who said they wanted to see a Myanmar-style coup happen here.

Yet there is no doubt that the political implications of his plan have the potential to be nothing less than radical.

It was 11 years ago, almost to the day, that House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said of Obamacare, “we have to pass the bill so that you can know what’s in it.” That notion, which seemed borrowed from the Queen of Hearts’ absurdist “Sentence first! Verdict afterwards!” approach in Alice in Wonderland, turns out to have been even more applicable to this week’s American Rescue Act.

And there’s an $86 billion commitment to protect the pensions of a million retirees whose multi-employer plans were in danger of insolvency—without even a pretense that this is linked to the Covid pandemic. It’s the kind of bailout you might expect in a nation where organized labor is a significant share of the workforce. Now, in a United States where unions represent barely 6 percent of the private sector labor force, that protection is law.

what it represents is the possibility that the Democratic Party has found a tool to reconnect it to a working and middle class whose loyalty has been threatened for well over half a century.

The fraying of the New Deal coalition was very much on the mind of Robert F. Kennedy, whose presidential campaign was based on holding it together. In his last weeks, he began talking about an issue he believed had broad appeal: specifically, how many of the wealthiest Americans avoided paying a fair share of taxes. By the end of 1968, divisions over the war in Vietnam, deadly riots in the cities and upheaval on college campuses reduced the Democratic share of the presidential vote from 60 percent in 1964 to 43 percent; Richard Nixon and George Wallace divided the rest.

All through the 1980s, Democrats and their intellectual allies tried to grapple with the fact that voters seemed to prefer Democratic policies (on health care, education, taxes), but voted, at least at the presidential level for Republicans. (I have a vivid memory of House Majority Leader Dick Gephardt assuring a group of journalists that once the American people saw his party’s proposals for lower drug prices and access to college, they would return to the fold.)

And it took an emerging demographic sea change that yielded an increasingly nonwhite electorate, and a more liberal cohort of college-educated whites, to outweigh (at least in popular vote terms), the increasingly Republican tilt of less-educated whites and to put Barack Obama in the White House.

While both were reelected, those midterm failures had severe consequences that endure; in particular, 2010 produced a GOP takeover at the state level that now threatens severe voting limits across the country.

It is an unapologetic assertion of the power of government to redress a set of grievances without any assertion of identity politics; while the stark facts of the pandemic mean that it has hit with special force in Black and brown communities, the remedial power of government is directed to the victims defined by circumstance, not color.

This is a possibility that Republicans simply may not have imagined, given their midterm successes in running against the initiatives of the past two Democratic presidents, and inflicting on Clinton and Obama successive political catastrophes.

More broadly, it appears to contain provisions that leapfrog a dilemma that has plagued Democratic social programs in the past: When they are perceived as helping one class of voters, they meet with a powerful backlash, (often one infused by racial resentment). When a program reaches broadly—Social Security, Medicare and, increasingly, the Affordable Care Act—it becomes politically potent.

But what does seem clear is that, unlike past measures that required huge congressional majorities, a radical change in the social fabric of the United States has become a reality—and with it, an opportunity for the Democratic Party no one could have imagined 50 days ago.

“If we interject ourselves, we are the reagent catalyst that will make this problem hotter,” said one senior defense official, who asked to remain anonymous to discuss sensitive operational planning. “Militarily we know that if we do too much, push too hard, China will use that optic and they will do more against Taiwan.”

Washington and Taipei have robust economic ties but do not have formal diplomatic relations. The Trump administration sought to strengthen this relationship with controversial arms sales and senior-level visits. Officially, the United States has a “One China” policy that recognizes China and Taiwan's historic connection but has consistently opposed the coerced resolution of the status of the island.

“Preparing for Taiwan contingencies has been a focus in China’s military modernization for some time, so as their capabilities are increasing, obviously, we are paying very careful attention to the military balance in the Taiwan Strait,” David Helvey, the acting assistant secretary of defense for Indo-Pacific security affairs, told reporters traveling with Austin to Japan.

Despite a global pandemic, in 2020 China commissioned 25 advanced new ships, including cruisers, destroyers and ballistic missile submarines — capabilities designed to keep America and its allies that might interfere on Taiwan’s behalf at bay, a second senior defense official said. Meanwhile, Beijing is integrating its new equipment into an increasingly sophisticated force, demonstrated in a loudly publicized live-fire event last fall in which Chinese forces took out an “enemy” with ballistic missiles, and developing a theater command structure much like that of the U.S. military.

Meanwhile, officials are increasingly concerned that Taipei may force Beijing into action by unilaterally declaring its independence, particularly after Taiwan’s president was reelected in a landslide last year. Polling data consistently shows the Taiwanese people want a separate identity that is not Chinese, the second official said.

The Trump administration exacerbated the Taiwan problem, the second official said. Trump sought to use Taipei as a cudgel against Beijing during the tariff-driven trade war he launched against China, increasing the number of senior-level visits and publicizing arms sales and an anti-China military strategy.

Sayers urged the new administration to increase investment in its forward-based forces in the Pacific, strengthen ties with Japan and Australia to deter Beijing, and take steps to bolster Taiwan’s defenses.

“If we were to all of a sudden militarize the engagement, if we were to do a lot more to push back on China, if [Taiwan’s] government declares independence — those are all bellwether events that could significantly alter the facts or the assumptions that we have about a military crisis,” said the first senior defense official.