The cheap and widely available drug dexamethasone has been shown to help save the most seriously ill COVID-19 patients and dramatically cut the risk of death in a new study by British researchers, reported the BBC.
The low-dose steroid treatment cut the risk of death by a third for patients on ventilators, and by a fifth for patients on oxygen.
Researchers estimated the drug could have saved up to 5,000 lives in the U.K. if it had been available from the start.
"The study is a large, strict test that randomly assigned 2,104 patients to get the drug and compared them with 4,321 patients getting only usual care," reported the Associated Press.
This study, which found the drug had no effect on less sick patients, is the same trial that showed the anti-malarial drug hydroxychloroquine did not work against the coronavirus.
President Donald Trump once cut off family payments for the medical care of his nephew, who had cerebral palsy, during a dispute over their inheritances.
The family's eldest son, Fred Trump Jr., became an airline pilot instead of joining his namesake father and younger brother in the real estate business, but his children believed they would one day share in the family wealth after their father died from alcoholism in 1981 at age 42, reported the Washington Post.
However, after Fred Trump Sr. died in 1999, Donald Trump and his siblings fought to keep most of the money themselves -- setting off a lawsuit a year later from Fred Trump III and Mary Trump accusing their relatives of persuading the family patriarch to change his will.
The future president responded by cutting off family company payments for medical care for Fred Trump III's son, William, who had cerebral palsy.
“When [Fred III] sued us, we said, ‘Why should we give him medical coverage?’" Trump told the New York Daily News at the time.
Fred Trump III told the court that his "aunt and uncles thought nothing about taking away my critically ill son’s coverage in an attempt to browbeat me into abandoning my claim in the probate contest.”
The future president has said he regretted constantly criticizing his older brother for staying out of the family business, but Fred Trump III said he didn't mind getting his hands dirty.
“You have to be tough in this family,” Fred III told the Daily News as the lawsuit simmered. “I guess I have what my father didn’t have. I will stick to my guns. I just think it was wrong. These are not warm and fuzzy people. They never even came to see William in the hospital. Our family puts the ‘fun’ in dysfunctional.”
The president has tried to downplay those interfamily disputes, and declined to speak at length about his punitive attack on his disabled nephew.
“One child was having a difficult time,” Trump said. “It was an unfortunate thing. It worked out well, and we all get along.”
Fred Trump III has not publicly spoken about the case since it was settled confidentially, but Mary Trump has nursed a grudge against her older brother for years -- which will spill into the open with the publication of her new book, “Too Much and Never Enough: How My Family Created the World’s Most Dangerous Man,” on July 28.
“Given this family, it would be utterly naive to say it has nothing to do with money,” Mary Trump said. “But for both me and my brother, it has much more to do with that our father be recognized. He existed, he lived, he was their oldest son, and William is my father’s grandson. He is as much a part of that family as anybody else. He desperately needs extra care.”
Appearing on CNN on Tuesday morning, Mary Jordan, the author of "The Art of Her Deal" about Melania Trump, said that the future first lady selected Mike Pence to be his running mate out of fear that two other leading contenders for the job would try and overshadow -- and then replace -- the resident eventually.
Speaking with "New Day" host Alisyn Camerota, Jordan said that Melania spent two days with Pence and his family before making her recommendation.
Stating that Pence was competing with former GOP lawmaker Newt Gingrich and former New Jersey Governor Chris Christie, Jordan related that the President's wife told him, "You know, I think Pence is your guy because he'll be content to be number two and the other two will be gunning for your job."
You may be wondering why, over the last few months, the state pension problem – normally not a subject of widespread discussion – has been in the news.
In fact, you may be wondering just what the state pension problem is.
The first time the subject came up recently was toward the end of February. That’s when teachers in Kentucky called a sick-out and protested various pension changes advocated by the state legislature.
Then, in late April, five GOP senators wrote to the president to say they didn’t want the federal government to give additional aid to states hard-hit by COVID-19. “We believe additional money sent to the states … will be used to bail out unfunded pensions, reward decades of state mismanagement, and incentivize states to become more reliant on federal taxpayers,” they wrote.
The senators’ sentiments were echoed by many in the Senate Republican leadership, including Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, who said, “There’s not going to be any desire on the Republican side to bail out state pensions by borrowing money from future generations.”
The problem has been a long time coming, but COVID-19 may make it into a crisis.
Retirement payouts were set based on a formula of age, years of service and amount paid during some peak earnings period. The employee was guaranteed the pension benefit amount when they retired and thus had little uncertainty about what they would get.
The state, on the other hand, faced all of the uncertainty of how to manage the investment and the state contribution in order to be able to make those future payments.
These kinds of plans were expensive for employers, who might have to pay more into the plan when investment yields went down. So during the early 1980s, the private sector began to freeze their defined benefit plans.
Instead, they would offer defined contribution plans. In those, both employee and employer contributed money, but there was no guaranteed payout of retirement benefits.
The uncertainty regarding future benefits and how their money was invested was now shifted to the employee. So if your plan’s investments did well, you would get a higher payment than if the investments did poorly.
Some plans have enough money in them to cover future pension payments; some don’t. Several states, including Wisconsin, South Dakota and Tennessee, have managed to keep their unfunded liabilities – the portion of future pension obligations they don’t have money to pay for – close to or about zero.
In 2017, total pension liabilities for all states was US$4.1 trillion and assets were $2.9 trillion. That means collectively, state pension funds would need $1.3 trillion to be able to make payments to everyone promised a pension. This represents about 9% of the U.S. GDP.
Unclear public pension benefits make retirement planning difficult.
There is a lot of blame to go around for this problem.
Unions often pushed for increased benefits in terms of health care and pensions as opposed to increased wages and salaries – because the former are not taxed.
This failure to contribute happened especially when budgets were tight – as they have been over the last decade – and where there was no state law that required the state to set aside the money their analysts told them the state would need to add into the pension funds.
Pension fund investments often did not meet the return targets due to poor financial management; some states like California budgeted for unrealistic 8.25% returns, when the market was only delivering 7% returns. The Great Recession and the slow recovery substantially affected the return on investment to pension funds, too. And key assumptions by state analysts about how long people would live (and thus require pension payments) as well as future costs of living were often flawed.
COVID-19 and the state pension crisis
Given all of the fiscal uncertainty in states due to the fallout of COVID-19 – from exploding Medicaid and other health care spending to the collapse of state revenues – it is most likely that many states will again fail to make their full contribution to pensions over the next two years.
As a longtime observer of state government as the previous head of the National Governors Association, I believe that after COVID-19 there will be a restructuring of state governments to maximize the use of technology and substantially reduce the number of full-time workers.
This means lower pension contributions by public employees. And that means less money that can be used to pay current obligations and obligations into the near future.
Finally, with interest rates at all-time lows and the stock market unlikely to make normal returns until the economy fully recovers in two to three years, the rate of return on investments will be much lower than commonly projected by pension analysts.
The combination of the failure to contribute the state portion into pension funds, the reduced pension contributions from fewer full-time workers, and lower rates of return on investment over the next several years will turn the pension problem into a fiscal crisis for states.
States will be obligated to pay pensions, but won’t have the money to pay for them. So that will require shifting state spending over to pensions – and away from schools and all the public services that state residents expect their tax dollars to pay for.
According to a report from Politico, at least four members of Congress and their families cashed in on the multi-billion small business loan program set up to support companies hammered by the shut down during the still ongoing coronavirus pandemic.
As the report notes, they might not be the only ones.
According to the Politico report, "It’s a bipartisan group of lawmakers who have acknowledged close ties to companies that have received loans from the program — businesses that are either run by their families or employ their spouse as a senior executive."
The report notes the four include two Democrats and two Republicans including Rep. Roger Williams (R-TX), who owns several auto dealerships, body shops and car washes, and Rep. Vicky Hartzler (R-MO), "whose family owns multiple farms and equipment suppliers across the Midwest."
The Democrats on the list include Rep. Susie Lee from Nevada, "whose husband is CEO of a regional casino developer, and Rep. Debbie Mucarsel Powell of Florida, whose husband is a senior executive at a restaurant chain that has since returned the loan."
The report notes that there are likely more lawmakers who took advantage of the program, but because Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin is refusing to reveal recipients it may be a long time before others are exposed.
"Democrats have tried to pry free the list of recipients. But their push in the House to require disclosure of at least some companies was blocked on the floor late last month by Republicans — including Williams and Hartzler, who voted against the bill. Lee and Powell joined all Democrats in supporting it. All four lawmakers have previously voted in favor of the small-business program," Politico reports.
According to Rep. Dean Phillips (D-MN) who wrote the bill, “This is the largest distributor of taxpayer money in human history, and we need to ensure taxpayers know where it’s going,” before adding, "his bill “was not written to expose members of Congress, because frankly I expected members of Congress to be forthright and transparent to begin with.”
Politico goes on to report, "Spokespeople for Williams and Hartzler declined to say how much money was provided under the loans to the privately held companies lawmakers own. Full House Resorts, of which Lee's husband is the president and CEO, received $5.6 million, according to Securities and Exchange Commission filings. Fiesta Restaurant Group, which employs Mucarsel Powell's husband as a senior executive, received $15 million before returning it in full."
"Redundant nuclear weapons, off-books spending accounts, and endless wars in the Middle East don't keep us safe."
Demanding that Congress "prioritize our safety and our future, not more war," Rep. Barbara Lee on Monday unveiled a resolution proposing up to $350 billion in cuts to the Pentagon budget by closing U.S. military bases overseas, ending ongoing conflicts, scrapping weapons programs, and eliminating President Donald Trump's Space Force.
"Redundant nuclear weapons, off-books spending accounts, and endless wars in the Middle East don't keep us safe," the California Democrat said in a statement. "Especially at a time when families across the country are struggling to pay the bills—including more than 16,000 military families on food stamps—we need to take a hard look at every dollar and reinvest in people. It's time to cut weapons of war and prioritize the well-being of our troops, anti-poverty programs, public health initiatives, and diplomacy."
Lee's resolution (pdf) comes as the House of Representatives is scheduled to begin marking up the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) for fiscal year 2021 next week. The Senate version of the NDAA calls for $740.5 billion in military spending, a budget Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) has proposed cutting by 10%.
"We cannot continue to prioritize funding for a department known for its waste, fraud, abuse, and failure to pass an audit," said Lee, "especially when the money to 'protect national security' is failing to protect our most vulnerable citizens."
The California Democrat's measure proposes saving:
$68 billion by eliminating the Overseas Contingency Operations account;
$90 billion by shuttering 60% of U.S. military bases overseas;
$66 billion by ending funding for ongoing U.S. wars;
$57.9 billion by eliminating "obsolete, excessive, and dangerous" weapons;
$38 billion by cutting military overhead by 15%;
$26 billion by slashing private service contracting by 15%;
$2.6 billion by dashing Trump's Space Force proposal;
$18 billion by "ending use-it-or-lose-it contract spending";
$6 billion by freezing operations and maintenance budgets; and
$23 billion by cutting U.S. presence in Afghanistan in half.
"Congress supports moves to reduce the priority given to war in our foreign policy and our current war-based national economy by using significant cuts, up to $350,000,000,000 as detailed above, from current budget plans, while using the funds to increase our diplomatic capacity and for domestic programs that will keep our Nation and our people safer," the resolution reads.
Lee's office noted in a press release that the Pentagon's budget for fiscal year 2020—$738 billion—was the "largest on record" and came "at the expense of healthcare, education, infrastructure spending, and public health research."
"For years, our government has failed to invest in programs that actually keep our country safe and healthy," said Lee. "By over-prioritizing the Pentagon and military solutions, our country is drastically underprepared for any crisis that needs a non-military solution."
MSNBC's Joe Scarborough explained why Joe Biden had a much easier line of attack against President Donald Trump than Hillary Clinton did in 2016.
A new ad from the Democratic National Committee attacks Trump's record in the White House, and the "Morning Joe" host said that exposed the distance between the "tough" guy he campaigned as and the "bad president" he had actually been.
"Let's strip this down to its bare essence, which I tell people when they come to me saying they want to run," Scarborough said. "I say, what's your bumper sticker? The bumper sticker here is, Trump is a bad president. Whereas in 2016, the bumper sticker from Hillary Clinton was Trump is a bad guy. People in 2016 said yeah, he's a bad guy, [but] maybe we need a bad guy. In fact, the 2020 Trump campaign ad is, Trump is a bad guy, maybe we need a bad guy right now."
"But what this Biden ad does is he shows how Trump being a bad president is impacting America," he added. "He's cutting your health care, working-class Americans, he's promising to cut your health care guarantees you had under the Affordable Care Act. He's giving tax cuts not to you, not to the small businesses that employ you, but the billionaires. He's got a failed trade war that cost billions of dollars and thousands of jobs. A hundred thousand Americans are dead because he couldn't manage the pandemic because of his magical thinking. Tens of millions of jobs are lost because he didn't act quickly enough on the pandemic. We now have a recession, and then, of course, Donald Trump saying, 'I bear no responsibility.'
Scarborough said the DNC's new ad had effectively connected Trump's personality to his job performance, and showed how that impacted voters' lives.
"This is what the Hillary Clinton campaign didn't do," he said. "What they couldn't do in 2016 because he was running as a challenger. This is exactly what the Biden campaign is doing right now."
MSNBC's Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski laughed out loud over President Donald Trump's latest complaints about coronavirus testing.
The "Morning Joe" co-hosts rolled video of the president complaining that the "downside" to testing was that it raised the total number of cases, saying that "if we stopped testing right now, we'd have very few cases, if any."
Both hosts laughed out loud at the president's remarks, and tried to make sense of what he could possibly mean.
"What does he mean cases -- like, officially?" Brzezinski said. "Because people still have it."
"And they're dying of it," Scarborough added. "That's the remarkable thing."
The United States has passed 117,000 deaths, and Scarborough said the president doesn't seem to understand or care.
"Donald Trump keeps saying that if we don't test for the coronavirus," he said, "then it will magically go away, we won't have any more cases. Actually, testing for the coronavirus does not kill people. That's just like saying, you know, pregnancies would be driven down to zero if we stopped having pregnancy tests."
Co-host Willie Geist then chimed in, saying there was no need to unravel Trump's meaning.
"I think he meant exactly what he said, and how do we know this?" Geist said. "He said it before. He just showed yesterday what he said a month ago, in the middle of May, he made this almost identical comment that we thought was a slip of the tongue or misunderstanding, he means what he says. He's frustrated because 2 million cases, with 117,000 deaths, he just means we're testing a lot, and if we would just stop that testing we wouldn't have the alarm over the number of cases."
"I can't explain it any further than that except to say when you say it twice, I think it means you believe it," Geist added.
Appearing on CNN on Tuesday morning, former Ohio Democratic lawmaker Nina Turner lashed out at police in light of a series of deaths of African-Americans at the hands of cops and said proposed changes to policing can't come fast enough.
Speaking with CNN "New Day" host Alisyn Camerota, Turner said that, even with police reform on the horizon, there appears to be nothing coming quickly at hand that will halt police from assaulting Blacks even after the national outrage over the death of George Floyd at the hand of four Minneapolis cops.
"It's definitely a start, but there's no time for patting each other on the back and slapping hands," Turner told the CNN host. "What we fail to realize is that this is a system and that the police are really just a microcosm of a racist system, an anti-black system whereby generations of black folks have lost their lives. And when they were not physically killed, the spiritual death, the mental death, political, economic, social death, that is the thing."
"So, yes, it is a start, but we are a long way from atonement," she continued. "And the United States of America as a whole must atone for its sins against the African-American community. So what I don't want is folks to get slap-happy about this. This is a start, but a long way from where we need to go as Breonna Taylor's family, George Floyd's family, Tamir Rice's family -- Emmett Till didn't have a smartphone to verify whether or not he was entitled to some humanity in the United States of America."
"So, this is no time for celebration," she added. "This is a time to continue work. We need not only a total restructuring, but we need wholesale, tear-down the system and start and reimagine policing in a different way."
"This dishonesty has caused increased deaths and will cause more. They are effectively killing people for perceived political gain."
Vice President Mike Pence urged governors during a conference call on Monday to parrot President Donald Trump's lie that the spikes in Covid-19 cases reported by more than a dozen states across the U.S. in recent days are largely the result of an increase in testing, and do not necessarily amount to evidence that reopenings are causing the virus to spread.
"I would just encourage you all, as we talk about these things, to make sure and continue to explain to your citizens the magnitude of increase in testing," Pence said on the call, according to audio obtained by the New York Times. "And that in most of the cases where we are seeing some marginal rise in number, that's more a result of the extraordinary work you're doing."
A readout of the call released by the White House late Monday says "participants discussed the significant surge in testing capacity across the nation" but does not mention Pence's effort to tie the increase in testing to the new surges in Covid-19 cases documented by a number of states as they move to reopen businesses.
Pence's remarks to the nation's governors represent an iteration of Trump's absurd claim Monday afternoon that "if we stop testing right now, we'd have very few cases, if any."
"Pence is lying," tweeted Harvard epidemiologist and health economist Eric Feigl-Ding. "Positivity is going up, which means case rise is outstripping testing volume."
As the Washington Post's Philip Bump explained Monday:
In six states—Kentucky, Missouri, Oklahoma, South Carolina, South Dakota, and Wyoming—the seven-day average of new cases has increased since May 31 while the average number of daily tests being conducted has declined, according to data collected by the Covid Tracking Project and the New York Times. In 14 other states, the rate of new cases is increasing faster than the increase in the average number of tests.
There are more concrete warning signs in some places. In 10 states, the seven-day average of the rate at which tests are coming back positive has increased more than 2 percentage points since the end of May. In 11 other states, the seven-day average for the number of new deaths is up at least 5 percent since the end of last month.
During the call with governors Monday, according to the Times, Pence downplayed new outbreaks of Covid-19 across the U.S.—and the resulting increase in hospitalizations in several states—as "intermittent" spikes that can be quickly ameliorated and claimed the virus has been effectively contained.
"Four months and 120,000 plus deaths in, the White House is still pursuing a strategy of lying about coronavirus and pushing states to lie too," tweetedMother Jones reporter Dan Friedman. "This dishonesty has caused increased deaths and will cause more. They are effectively killing people for perceived political gain."
WASHINGTON — The majority of Florida’s House of Representatives delegation, including Donald Trump confidante Matt Gaetz and 12 of Florida’s 13 House Democrats, are demanding additional answers from the Interior Department regarding any Trump administration plan for offshore drilling near Florida.The letter, led by Central Florida Democratic Rep. Darren Soto, asks when the Interior Department will release its offshore drilling plan, if Florida will be included in the plan and for the Interior Department to support legislation permanently banning offshore drilling in Florida that passed the Hou...
Newly revealed video evidence shows the gruesome, prolonged death of 51-year-old California inmate suffering from a psychological crisis while in police custody.
Phillip Garcia was arrested March 20, 2017, after breaking a neighbor's fence and window during an out-of-character mental crisis, and he was taken to the Riverside County jail and kept in restraints until he died, reported ProPublica.
"Video and other records show that during Garcia’s 44 hours in custody, deputies repeatedly struck, shoved and twisted Garcia’s head and limbs when he was already tied down," the organization reported. "They falsified jail logs, then made false statements in their reports after he died. The county coroner bureau, which is part of the sheriff’s department, determined that Garcia’s death was a homicide. The same sheriff’s department conducted a review of Garcia’s death and did not discipline any deputies."
Earlier in the day, Garcia had been diagnosed in an emergency room with a potentially fatal condition called rhabdomyolysis -- which is brought on by overexertion and causes the body's muscles to break down, and can also lead to kidney failure -- but doctors and nurses appeared to be oblivious to that condition and his apparent psychosis.
"After reviewing footage and records, experts said it was troubling if medical staff did not consider why the patient was so agitated after hours in restraints," ProPublica reported. "They added, it is also possible the nurses were simply unwilling to intervene in the deputies’ handling of Garcia. They emphasized that medical staff need to direct and approve any use of restraints, and force should not be used on a patient who is restrained."
Deputies used overwhelming force -- including pepper balls, a stinger grenade, blinding light, piercing sound, smoke and rubber bullets -- to stun Garcia before violently moving him a few feet away to a so-called safety cell.
However, video obtained by ProPublica still does not show Garcia receiving any medical care while housed in the cell where he died hours later.
"After the tactical team violently moved Garcia to a hospital bed, the unit’s regular staff kept using force on the patient," the website reported. "They shifted and tightened his restraints again and again. As others worked the straps, Deputies Victor Martinez and Noemi Garcia took turns shoving his head down with two hands."
"Sweat poured from Garcia and puddled on the mattress in the last images of him alive," the reporters added.
The United States will resume federal executions on July 13, after a 17-year stay, the Justice Department said Monday.
There have been just three federal execution since the death penalty was reinstated by the US government in 1988.
Attorney General Bill Barr announced a year ago he intended to resume the use of the death penalty for federal crimes. Five convicted murderers were scheduled to undergo lethal injections in December 2019 and January of this year at the federal penitentiary in Terre Haute, Indiana.
But at the last minute, the US Supreme Court refused to lift a stay on federal executions, saying that -- "in light of what is at stake" -- the block on executions should be reviewed by an appeals court.
In April, an appeals court in Washington approved the use of pentobarbital for lethal injections, and Barr ordered that new execution dates be set for four of the five convicts.
"We owe it to the victims of these horrific crimes," Barr said in a statement.
Following his order, the Bureau of Prisons scheduled the executions to take place between July 13 and August 28.
Among the four is Daniel Lewis Lee, an avowed white supremacist, who was sentenced to death for the 1996 murder of a family of three, including an eight-year-old girl.
The mother of one of his victims, Earlene Peterson, opposes Lee's execution due to her religious convictions and appealed to US President Donald Trump to grant Lee clemency.
"I can't see how executing Daniel Lee will honor my daughter in any way," Peterson said in a video posted online. "In fact, kind of like it dirties her name because she wouldn't want it and I don't want it."
Trump, who is a fervent advocate of the death penalty and has even said it should be applied against drug dealers, did not grant her appeal.
According to opinion polls, support for the death penalty has declined in recent years and is down to around 54 percent from 80 percent in the early 1990s.
Only a handful of states, mainly in the US south, still carry out executions. Twenty-two people were executed in 2019.
Most crimes in the United States are heard in state courts, but some are handled by federal prosecutors, such as hate crimes, some particularly heinous crimes or those that take place on military installations or Native American reservations.
