As one union leader put it: "The Covid pandemic is having a huge, devastating, dire impact on postal revenue."
With the Senate set to return to Washington, D.C. next week and uncertainty over when the House will also reconvene, calls continued to mount Wednesday for Congress to provide significant relief to the U.S. Postal Service, the popular federal agency that is struggling financially in the midst of the coronavirus pandemic.
In a Wednesday morning interview on Democracy Now!, American Postal Workers Union (APWU) president Mark Dimondstein discussed how the public health crisis has impacted USPS operations, both in terms of revenue and workers. According to the union leader, at least 45 mail clerks and carriers have died from Covid-19.
While Dimondstein noted that a 2006 congressional mandate requiring the agency to fund retirees' health benefits for several decades has hamstrung the agency, he focused his comments on the current crisis, warning that "the Covid pandemic is having a huge, devastating, dire impact on postal revenue."
Watch:
As Dimondstein explained:
There's no taxpayer dollars that goes into the post office. It runs strictly on the revenue of postal and postal products. And that revenue has to be able to be enough to carry out the mission of what we call the universal service mandate—every address, every person, no matter who we are and where we live, a great small-d democratic right, getting mail, packages, six days a week now, sometimes seven.
And what's happened in this pandemic, and its economic devastation throughout the entire country and world—but what's happened specifically to the Postal Service is the mail has precipitously dropped off. ...The Postal Service will actually run out of money, whether it's this summer, whether it's early fall. The revenue just isn't there, strictly based on Covid.
So, what we've asked—and it's not just the "we" of the postal unions. The postal Board of Governors, which sets policy, which is a majority-Republican board right now, has unanimously asked for robust relief, not a bailout—this is for the people of the country; this doesn't go into any shareholders, any CEOs—but to make up that lost revenue, so the post office can weather this crisis and still, at the same time, serve the people of the country, both in ordinary times and in this time of crisis. So, it's serious. It's real. And again, it's very focused on the Covid pandemic economic impact.
The union leader took aim at President Donald Trump, who on Friday declared that "the Postal Service is a joke," and threatened to block all pandemic-related federal aid unless USPS quadruples its rates for package deliveries. Critics warn doing so could drive business away from the Postal Service and push companies to pass on price increases to customers.
"For a president of the United States to tell the people of this country and the postal workers who are on the frontlines that the postal workers, that the post office, is a joke—something that belongs to everybody in this country, it belongs to the people—that is the absolute insult of insults," Dimondstein told Democracy Now!
Dimondstein added that there are ways that the Postal Service could expand in the future, such as banking and copying services, but "in order to get there, we have to make sure that we have a public Postal Service. And that now is really up for grabs, because, clearly, we have an administration that would like to... sell the public Postal Service off to private corporations, privatize it."
As national radio commentator and author Jim Hightower explained in an op-ed forCreators Wednesday:
The U.S. mail service... is enormously popular and an essential part of our nation's economic and social infrastructure, so Trump can't just blatantly choke off its survival funds. Instead, he's taking the agency hostage, offering to provide a $10 billion "loan" from the Treasury Department—contingent on the public entity agreeing to his draconian demands that it raise postal prices, gut postal unions and cut postal services.
Trump's provisos are postal poison pills, for they would destroy the agency's morale and service, undermine popular support, and clear the political path for profiteering corporations to seize, privatize, and plunder this public treasure.
Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), who last week hosted a virtual town hall with the leaders of the nation's top postal unions to discuss how to save USPS, reiterated his demand to provide support to the agency in a tweet Wednesday morning:
Sanders shared a Washington Postcolumn by Katrina vanden Heuvel of The Nation. In the column Tuesday, vanden Heuvel argued that "the USPS is the quintessential American institution" and members of Congress "must stand up to the White House and deliver the relief the Postal Service needs—not only to survive but also to thrive."
"As Americans across the country are following stay-at-home directives, they are relying on the USPS to deliver their prescription drugs, food, and other essentials," she noted. "Tax refunds and stimulus checks arrive through the mail. So do absentee ballots—this year's presidential election may indeed depend on the Postal Service to facilitate voting by mail."
"As civil rights leaders caution against efforts that would require voters to pay for postage when mailing in ballots, the USPS has restated its previous policy to deliver every ballot, even those with insufficient postage," vanden Heuvel added. "Can you imagine UPS or FedEx doing the same?"
On Democracy Now! Wednesday, Dimondstein noted that "the post office is the most trusted federal agency" and made the case that voting by mail—which is gaining popularity amid the public health crisis—is the best way to secure the 2020 election.
"This pandemic has brought home that if we're going to have true access to the ballot box—or more access to the ballot box, because we really don't have true access now—vote-by-mail is definitely the way to go," he said. "It was before. Now it's very, very clear. And postal workers are ready to continue to serve the people of this country in all sorts of ways, including that defense of our democratic right to vote."
Correctional officers, health care staff and detainees describe how COVID-19 spread through Cook County Jail in Chicago as the sheriff came under fire for his handling of the crisis. “You’re working in a petri dish,” one staffer said.
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The Cook County Jail in Chicago is one of the largest in the country. Sprawling across 96 acres on the Southwest Side, the facility houses more than 4,000 people, most awaiting trial. Its cramped living conditions made it a perfect petri dish for COVID-19.
Today, the jail is home to one of the largest known outbreaks in the country and has been a flashpoint in the national debate over how to contain the virus in correctional facilities. More than 9,400 cases have emerged in prisons across the U.S., according to an analysis by The Marshall Project. In the Cook County Jail, nearly 500 detainees and more than 300 correctional officers have tested positive. Seven people have died: six inmates and one guard.
Sheriff Tom Dart is now under fire for his oversight of the jail in the era of coronavirus. In a federal lawsuit, civil rights attorneys have blamed him for failing to curtail what they have called a “rapidly escalating public health disaster,” and the judge in that case has ordered Dart to improve sanitation, to expand social distancing and to report back on his progress.
Dart has repeatedly defended his handling of the health crisis. While citing unique challenges — like weighing if a detainee might use hygiene supplies as a weapon, asone allegedly did this month by using soap inside a sock in an attack — he has maintained that his office has “been in front of this pandemic every step of the way,” from screening new admissions for the virus to supplying staff and detainees with hand sanitizer to educating detainees about social distancing.
But people who live and work inside the jail say otherwise.
WBEZ and ProPublica interviewed a dozen correctional officers, health care staff and inmates about how authorities responded to the crisis. They described a lack of personal protective equipment, inadequate testing and a spillover to community hospitals, as confusion and terror spread along with the virus. Taken together, their accounts offer potential lessons for other institutions that are now facing their own outbreaks.
Dart declined an interview, but his office responded to a list of questions. Below are people’s stories in their own words, edited for length and clarity. Some staff and detainees spoke to us on the condition that we not publish their names, because they were concerned about repercussions.
David Evans III, Correctional Officer and Chief Union Steward
David Evans III (Manuel Martinez/WBEZ)
I would say it was toward the end of February that I started getting phone calls from staff members saying: “I’m feeling sick, I’m feeling weak. My partners are going through the same problems, they’re coughing.” At first, people kind of shrugged it off as the flu or something like that. Then, once the pandemic hit, we knew at that point there was a problem.
Staff say the sheriff warned employees with COVID-19 symptoms to stay home. In a statement, the sheriff’s office said it began medical screenings of employees who returned to work after an absence on March 19. On March 22, the sheriff’s office announced that a Cook County correctional officer tested positive for COVID-19. The next day, two detainees also tested positive.
Keanna Ford, Former Detainee
We all heard it on the news. I was in the medical part of the jail because I was pregnant. And a lot of women were taking high blood pressure medicine or diabetes medicine. I remember the conversation clear as day. We said, “We need to get up out of here before we die.” We were scared. Some of us was crying.
Everybody got a bed and it’s close to each other, it’s just like a dorm room. We were all making sure our hands are clean. Make sure we talked about it. “How you doing? How are you feeling? Are you breathing OK?”
By me being pregnant, one of the guards told me they was praying for me to get out: “You are carrying another body inside of you.” I’m just praying that they can let the elderly people up out of there.
Keanna Ford (Manuel Martinez/WBEZ)
Detainee A
Just by word of mouth you hear: “Hey, this guy just has to go to the hospital. These inmates over here are all quarantined.”
We all just looked at each other like, “Let me get 6 feet away from you guys.” Because at that time we had no protection. It’s a really scary situation.
Correctional Officer A
We all pretty much resigned ourselves to the fact that we were going to get some form of COVID-19. I mean, for some people, it’s scary. For other people, it’s just resignation.
Across the country, hospitals, nursing homes, jails and prisons are scrambling for supplies to fight COVID-19. Dart reassured the public that he had begun preparing in January and his office was taking actions to keep people in the jail safe.
But multiple staff members and detainees say that while the sheriff’s office sometimes supplied some soap, hand sanitizer and cleaning supplies, availability was limited.
Dart addressed the issue in a March press conference. By that point, there were 38 detainees and nine staff members who had tested positive. The sheriff’s remarks are excerpted below.
Tom Dart, Sheriff
I’ve had this thing come up now three times about soap. And I’ve told people: Please, I have a really complicated job. My staff does as well. Either stop lying, which you’re doing, or if you’re aware of somebody who does not have soap — unless your idea of fun is to make sure that person gets sick — I would suggest you’d give me the name of that person so I can get them some soap.
This is not going to end tomorrow or the following day, it’s just not going to happen. That’s wishful crazy thinking, and so thoughtful people put plans together, long-term plans. And that’s what we’ve done here.
Correctional Officer A
That’s all a joke. I had to fight to get gloves. I had to call in favors from other areas of the jail to get the basic surgical masks. We were on our own.
At one point PPE equipment was available. But it was locked up in an administrator’s office, and we’re getting yelled at by supervisors. “Why don’t we have it?”
“Well, I don’t have access to his office. Why are you yelling at me?”
And then it still took an additional two days to pass it out. Some of the equipment is so old, the bands were rotted.
Cook County Jail. (Manuel Martinez/WBEZ)
On March 28, less than a week after the first reported cases of COVID-19 in the jail, the numbers soared: A total of 89 detainees and 12 sheriff’s office employees had tested positive.
Evans
My phone doesn’t stop ringing. These officers call me all night with concerns. And I want to talk to everyone. There will be times when I’m talking until 3 o’clock in the morning.
I saw officers that did not have masks. I saw officers that were confused on what was disinfectant and what was hand sanitizer. There’s no system set in place, where on a consistent basis that everybody is being given these things every day.
In court filings, the sheriff said he worked to obtain PPE and in light of national shortages “explored unconventional methods” of getting supplies, such as donations. The sheriff’s office also said in a statement that it provided a hotline number for staff to contact if they are having any issues with PPE.
Correctional Officer A
There was no onsite testing for employees at that point, so I went proactively to get it done elsewhere. Like, I had better do it just to be on the safe side. A week and a half later they called: “You’ve got it.” And I was like, “Great, so I’ve been walking around for a week and a half.” I was already working double shifts at the time.
I felt really guilty. I had a mild case. I walked around, possibly infecting the people I’m trying to protect.
Every decision I make there comes down to one thing: What is going to screw us the least? Because we’re all getting screwed. Like no matter what we do, we’re going to get screwed somehow.
The sheriff’s office said starting March 28 it took the temperature of employees entering and exiting the jail and sent away anyone who showed symptoms.
By March 31, there were 4,767 people in the facility — about 800 fewer than at thebeginning of the month. To help reduce the jail’s population, Cook County prosecutors, defense attorneys and judges had expeditedbond hearings, resulting in the release of scores of people who were accused of crimes but still waiting to go to trial. Dart said he assisted by helping identify detainees who would be “suitable for release.”
But, because most other court functions had been shut down, trials and hearings were delayed.
Detainee A
I’m supposed to go to court for a new sentencing hearing. And God willing, I’ll be getting time served. But instead of going to court and being let out, now I’m stuck here and it’s really messing with my mental health.
It’s hard for me to sleep. I’ve been putting in request after request to see my mental health care professional. Prior to this whole crisis, you can drop a medical slip for anything and they would call you and treat you. But now it’s like we’re just left to fend for ourselves. It’s really, really frightening.
They just recently started handing out face masks. But that’s only when the COs decide to. They want you to jump through hoops just to get basic things to protect yourself.
What do I do? I wrote a letter to my family. I told them I love them and if I should pass, I hope God can forgive me for all my sins.
County officials say they continued to provide mental health services throughout the pandemic.
The sheriff’s office said it created a team on April 2 to ensure PPE was being used properly.
The first COVID-19-positive person detained at Cook County Jail died on April 5. Jeffrey Pendleton was 59 and in jail on gun and drug charges. Pendleton had a $50,000 bond, which, in Cook County, means he would have had to pay $5,000 to go home while he awaited trial.
Vidal Martinez, Detainee
It made us want to break out of here, because they are letting us die. And knowing that that individual had never been proven guilty, that’s even worse.
It’s disturbing when we look outside the window and we see ambulances coming out of the county jail because it makes it feel like, “OK, when is it gonna be my turn?”
On April 6, two weeks after the first correctional officer tested positive, the sheriff made testing available to staff on-site. Cermak, a medical treatment facility for the jail, also obtained newly developed rapid test kits.
Within days, the number of known cases among detainees tripled, to more than 300 people. Two people had died.
The virus was also rapidly spreading among the staff, with 174 correctional officers testing positive. The sheriff was opening up unused parts of the jail to make room for social distancing and quarantining, which required more staff. Correctional officers say staff were forced to work 16-hour days.
Evans
These officers are being chewed up, spit out. The mandated work, the 16-hour days. You know, it’s a lot for anybody. Their immune systems are breaking down.
The sheriff’s office told WBEZ and ProPublica the mandated overtime was necessary “to provide a safe and secure facility.” The office also reassigned 328 sheriff’s deputies who usually work in the courts to come and staff the jail.
Cook County Jail (Manuel Martinez/WBEZ)
One employee received notice that he would be going to Division 6, which staff members say was ground zero for the virus.
Sheriff’s Staffer A
When I got the email, I was home. I looked at my phone, I was like: “You gotta be kidding me. You’re sending me into the hotbed where all the infected are.” I tried to keep it from the wife. But she knew something was wrong. I wasn’t talking. I was livid. I contemplated quitting.
I’ve seen what this virus can do. I saw a co-worker from the jail, who I’m talking to one day, and the next thing I know, he’s calling me saying, “Hey, man, I got oxygen flowing.” And he shows me a video of himself. He’s a mellow guy, and to see the look in his face — this wasn’t the same person. I don’t want to be overly dramatic, but he looked like he was scared to death.
Despite all the talk about appreciating health care workers, one California nurse caring for the sickest patients felt she needed more support.
I cannot go over to the jail and bring this virus back to my children. So now when I come home, I throw all my clothes in the washing machine, I take a shower in the basement and I sleep in my basement. My son comes to the top of the stairs and I’m at the bottom of stairs talking to him, wearing a mask.
Health care staff also felt the strain.
The Cook County Health System hired additional nurses through a staffing firm to go to the jail. But inmates were also being sent to outside hospitals, including Cook County’s Stroger Hospital, where Elizabeth Lalasz works.
Elizabeth Lalasz, Nurse
My unit has turned into a COVID-only unit for the inmates at Cook County Jail. It’s quite stunning.
We have limits on the numbers of critical care beds and limits on the human beings who can take care of them.
Nurses have actually been the primary people taking care of everything because of the lack of PPE. We pick up the garbage, we are giving respiratory treatments — things that other workers within the hospital would normally be doing.
My union, [National Nurses United], is demanding a decarceration of all nonviolent offenders from the Cook County Jail. It’s really about decreasing the numbers of people who actually contract this virus and come into the hospital.
Elizabeth Lalasz speaks at a rally outside the Cook County Jail on April 10. (Manuel Martinez/WBEZ)
In their lawsuit against Dart, civil rights lawyers maintain that people who work and live inside the facility are in danger. In early April, they asked a federal judge to force the county to immediately release medically vulnerable detainees. The judge did not grant them that request, but did order the sheriff to improve sanitation.
Plaintiffs said some detainees were receiving masks and soap. However, they added, they lacked cleaning supplies for their cells, and testing was inadequate.
Martinez
We have several elderly people here. They don’t have energy and their chest hurts. And staff only take their temperature and they tell them, “OK, since you don’t have a fever, nothing’s wrong with you.”
Regardless of the pandemic, we only clean our cells once a week. They give us some really small sized soaps, once a week. … It’s not enough.
You have to go to commissary and you have to get your cleaning supplies yourself. So if you don’t have any money, there’s nothing that you can really do. I mop myself with my own rags. I buy towels.
Multiple detainees who spoke with WBEZ and ProPublica expressed similar concerns about cleaning their cells.
The sheriff’s office said that detainees are provided with “ample” cleaning supplies to keep their living areas clean, and they are supervised by staff while cleaning their cells daily.
County officials said testing for the coronavirus has been informed by guidance from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and driven primarily by the availability of tests.
On April 19, the first correctional officer testing positive for the coronavirus, Sheila Rivera, 47, died.
Sheriff’s Staffer A
This is not like working in a jail like it was before. This is what I tell myself: You’re working in a petri dish. Be very, very, very, very mindful of it.
You don’t want to get too close to people, so you don’t want to have to physically restrain or detain anyone. You learn to de-escalate things a lot faster. When you tell people, “Hey man, you can’t stand in the doorway. Go back inside,” and they want to stand in there anyway, normally it would be: immediately grab a person, put them against the wall and handcuff them. Now it’s more: “Why are you standing in the doorway? What’s going on with you?”
You’re more pressed to really find out what’s going on. And you find some of them just want attention because they don’t have anybody to talk to at home. They’ll tell you: “I haven’t talked to my girl in a month. I have kids at home I haven’t seen.”
OK, I can understand it. I can really relate with you on that one. Because I’m sleeping in the basement right now.
Shannon Heffernan is a criminal justice reporter for WBEZ. She’s also reported on mental health, poverty, labor and climate change. Email Heffernan atsheffernan@wbez.org and follow her on Twitter at @shannon_h.
President Donald Trump on Thursday threw cold water on conservatives who have been advocating that the United States follow Sweden's lead in not having any official lockdown to contain the COVID-19 pandemic.
"Despite reports to the contrary, Sweden is paying heavily for its decision not to lockdown," the president wrote. "As of today, 2462 people have died there, a much higher number than the neighboring countries of Norway (207), Finland (206) or Denmark (443). The United States made the correct decision!"
While it was jarring to see the president using accurate information to contradict a narrative being peddled by many of his own supporters, it appears that the president may have been inspired to write this tweet after watching one of his most hated media outlets.
Media Matters researcher Matt Gertz notes that Trump's tweet came less than an hour after CNN aired a report about COVID-19 death tolls in Sweden that featured the exact same numbers touted by Trump in his tweet.
Although the president relies heavily on Fox News for his information, he does channel surf from time to time to see what's being said on CNN and MSNBC, even though he regularly rails against both networks.
A diverse coalition of nearly 120 progressive advocacy groups is urging Congress not to grant corporations sweeping immunity from coronavirus-related workplace safety lawsuits, warning that the Republican-backed proposal could have devastating consequences for both employees and customers.
In a letter (pdf) to Democratic and Republican congressional leaders on Wednesday, the groups said they “strongly oppose any legislation that would establish nationwide immunity for businesses that operate in an unreasonably unsafe manner, causing returning workers and consumers to risk Covid-19 infection.”
“When workplaces are not properly protected, patients, customers, clients, and the community are all at risk,” reads the letter, which was led by Public Citizen and the Center for Justice and Democracy. “This concern is not hypothetical. Some essential businesses have already put employees back in the workforce without ensuring their safety. As a result, infections have spread in and out of the workplace.”
The letter came after Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell said Monday that protecting corporations from coronavirus-related legal action by workers and customers is his “red line” for the next Covid-19 stimulus package.
“This is obscene,” Public Citizen tweeted Wednesday. “Mitch McConnell thinks the most pressing threat facing our nation right now is that people might need to take a company to court for doing something dangerous or illegal during this pandemic.”
President Donald Trump has also voiced support for shielding companies from legal responsibility for exposing their workers to Covid-19, a proposal pushed by the Koch network and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.
“We are trying to take liability away from these companies,” Trump said during a press briefing last week. “We just don’t want that because we want the companies to open and to open strong.”
According to the Washington Post, the Trump administration is considering issuing “a liability waiver that would clear businesses of legal responsibility from employees who contract the coronavirus on the job.”
Debbie Berkowitz, director of the worker safety and health program at the National Employment Law Project, condemned the idea as “one of the most appalling things I’ve heard in the context of this crisis.”
The undersigned organizations fully support the nation’s safe economic recovery. For that reason, we strongly oppose any legislation that would establish nationwide immunity for businesses that operate in an unreasonably unsafe manner, causing returning workers and consumers to risk Covid-19 infection. Removing legal accountability for businesses not only would jeopardize the health and safety of workers, it would also jeopardize everyone who enters those workplaces. This would be extremely damaging to the nation’s economic recovery.
Any recovery requires the public to have confidence that businesses are operating as safely as possible. Establishing legal immunity for businesses that operate unsafely would do the opposite of instilling public confidence. Instead, it would introduce new anxieties to an already highly-anxious public. And it would have real-life consequences for every community, since legal liability is one of the most powerful incentives we have to ensure that businesses operate safely. When workplaces are not properly protected, patients, customers, clients, and the community are all at risk.
This concern is not hypothetical. Some essential businesses have already put employees back in the workforce without ensuring their safety. As a result, infections have spread in and out of the workplace. In some cases, this has led to renewed shutdowns, slowing the pace of recovery. From protecting the food supply chain to preventing needless deaths in nursing homes, it is clear that companies responsible for the health and safety of others must continue having every incentive to protect them. Many companies already had serious safety problems prior to the Covid-19 pandemic, but the pandemic cannot be an excuse for failing to protect workers and the public.
Moreover, greatly compounding the problem are recent trends toward deregulation and lax regulatory enforcement of workplaces. The federal Occupational Safety and Health Administration has substantially stepped back from its role to protect the health and safety of workers during this pandemic, and is dangerously relying on employers to self-police. Under these circumstances, the specter of unsafe workplaces is a significant concern. Without adequate protective equipment and other safety measures, workers will be deterred from coming back to work. Immunity would only exacerbate these problems.
In sum, we strongly oppose any legislation that would immunize businesses that fail to ensure safe workplaces.
President Donald Trump's right-wing allies are sacrificing their followers to preserve inequality, according to a new analysis by a political scientist.
Relatively small but widespread protests, promoted by right-wing corporate interests, have sprung up across the country, revealing a poisonous ideology that's stoked by political and business elites, wrote political scientist Joe Lowndes for The New Republic.
"Their hope is that people already conditioned by an ideology centered on the marketplace, the individual, and the nation will be more likely to believe that their lives and livelihoods are under greater threat from state-ordered economic shutdowns and coercive social measures than they are from the disease," wrote Lowndes, who teaches at the University of Oregon.
Trump's allies are hoping Americans believe they can work and shop their way out of the COVID-19 crisis, no matter what the cost in human lives, rather than reorder the political system to create a more just and egalitarian society, Lowndes argued.
"Demands to re-open states provide great cover for the Trump administration, the Republican Party in Congress, red-state governors, and the Federal Reserve, who are working to keep current wealth stratifications in place and protect the rich from economic harm — and doing so without much pushback from Democrats," Lowndes wrote. "As conditions become more dire, the right will do all it can to enlist the loyalty of middle- and working-class victims of the crisis. Here, the logics of race and nation will become increasingly important."
The right uses the historical philosophies of self-reliance and individualism as cover for racist opposition to social welfare programs, and those same dynamics are being amplified by the coronavirus crisis.
"In a basic way, this vision of freedom is conveyed by the defiance of guidelines to stop the spread of the virus," Lowndes wrote. "It isn’t just the protesters. The dozen or so Republicans in the House of Representatives refusing to wear masks when called to vote on the latest coronavirus relief bill performed precisely that kind of political theater for their constituents. It is meant as a tough-guy taunt, to show their own robustness and the weakness of their opponents."
Lowndes notes that demonstrators repeat Fox News talking points at those protests and focus their venom on city dwellers, which reflects the growing divide between rural and urban areas, and helps cover for Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell's threat to bankrupt "blue states."
"Defenders of the current political order will continue to do whatever is necessary protect wealth and privilege," Lowndes wrote. "They understand that to address the enormity of the economic crisis would upend the neoliberal consensus of this second Gilded Age, which has greatly enriched a few while systematically dismantling public goods, disempowering workers, and diminishing democratic rule. Their hope is that enough Americans go along with this resistance, even if it kills them."
Jared Kushner cheered his own work as part of the White House response to the coronavirus pandemic as "a great success story" during an appearance on President Donald Trump's favorite morning show as confirmed cases passed 1 million in the U.S.
"We're on the other side of the medical aspect of this," Kushner, who has no previous medical experience, told the co-hosts of "Fox & Friends" on Wednesday.
"We've achieved all the different milestones that are needed. The federal government rose to the challenge," he added. "And this is a great success story, and I think that's really what needs to be told."
The watchdog group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) announced hours later that it had sent a letter to the independent Office of Government Ethics calling for an investigation into a shadow coronavirus task force run by Kushner after members appeared "to have violated federal conflicts of interest and transparency laws."
Despite the bleak new milestone for the country which has recorded the largest number of cases worldwide, Kushner painted a rosy picture as he predicted a "rocking" economy.
"I think you'll see by June a lot of the country should be back to normal and the hope is that by July the country's really rocking again," Kushner continued, knocking "the eternal-lockdown crowd" for "making jokes on late-night television."
Kushner's predictions directly conflict with those of the nation's top infectious disease expert, who recently cautioned that a return to normalcy would not be the same as turning on a "light switch."
"In many respects, it would be, you know, anywhere from presumptuous to impossible for me to say, 'This is what's going to happen in June,'" Dr. Anthony Fauci, head of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, told ABC News' David Muir earlier this month. "We don't know. It's really going to depend on what happens with the virus, as we pull back on mitigation."
Though infection rates have begun to decline in hotspots such as New York and New Orleans, they are on the rise in rural states. Public health experts, including those on the official White House task force, have repeatedly cautioned against attempting a return to normal before tests, contact tracing and a vaccine are readily available.
Eager to draw on Kushner's private-sector experience, which includes operating both a beleaguered newspaper and a beleaguered family real estate empire, the administration solicited his help in early March at the behest of Vice President Mike Pence's chief of staff Marc Short.
Kushner reportedly recruited government allies and private industry representatives onto the squad, focusing first on establishing drive-through testing and distributing healthcare supplies. The efforts did not meet with initial success and reportedly sowed confusion.
"We don't know who these people are," an official told The Post. "Who is this? We're all getting these emails."
Dr. Deborah Birx, the White House coronavirus response coordinator, called his role "essential" but others have been less charitable. For example, the comedian John Oliver called the president's son-in-law a "f*cking moron." (Oliver is likely an intended target of Kushner's remarks dismissing "the eternal-lockdown crowd" that would "make jokes on late-night television" about him.)
The U.S. recently passed South Korea in tests per capita, but the country needs to build on those numbers significantly before it can begin rebooting the economy in earnest, according to both experts and the White House's own guidance.
"I'm very confident we have all the testing we need to start reopening the country," Kushner told "Fox & Friends," claiming that states now have "excess capacity" for testing.
"What you must be able to do is to have in place the capability of rapidly identifying by testing, getting someone who's infected out of the circulation, obviously taken care of if they need medical help if they could be handled at home, do contact tracing, do it in an efficient way where it means something," Fauci told ABC News. "Not contact tracing many, many, many days after an individual actually is exposed."
A recent report by Harvard University bio-ethicists indicates that the U.S. needs to be testing 20 million people a day for a safe and large-scale reopening by the summer.
"Somebody asked me why [testing] took so long," Kushner said. "I actually said, 'You should look at how did we do this so quickly.'"
Trump administration officials have ordered intelligence agencies to search for a link between the novel coronavirus and a government-run laboratory in China, according to the New York Times.
So far, there has been no direct evidence that the virus came from the Wuhan lab, and the official explanation for the origins of the disease remains that someone contracted it from eating contaminated meat they bought at a Wuhan market.
"Most intelligence agencies remain skeptical that conclusive evidence of a link to a lab can be found, and scientists who have studied the genetics of the coronavirus say that the overwhelming probability is that it leapt from animal to human in a nonlaboratory setting, as was the case with H.I.V., Ebola and SARS," the paper notes.
Trump has alternately blamed and praised China for its handling of the disease, as he has tried to walk a careful line between scapegoating the country while maintaining his relationship with Chinese President Xi Jinping.
CNN reporter Jeremy Diamond told host John Berman on Thursday that Trump is raging against his own officials after they showed him dire polling data from swing states in the last week.
"President Trump is growing increasingly unnerved about his prospect for re-election, particularly in the last week as he's gotten updates from campaign and RNC officials showing he's losing in key battleground states to the former vice president, Joe Biden," Diamond explained.
Diamond also said that campaign officials have had difficulty getting Trump to believe he's in peril because he flat-out refuses to believe the polls.
"The president has insisted repeatedly during his conference calls, one source familiar with these calls has told me, that he is not going to lose to Joe Biden," Diamond said. "'I'm not losing to Joe Biden,' is what the president has explained at different points during these conversations."
MSNBC's Joe Scarborough rolled video showing President Donald Trump apparently nodding off during a meeting of his coronavirus task force.
The president last week attacked Joe Biden as a "sleepy guy in the basement," referring to his Democratic rival's campaign podcasts recorded at home during the pandemic, and the "Morning Joe" host said Trump's attacks often projected his own weaknesses.
"We showed a clip of Donald Trump nodding off, looked like he was nodding off," Scarborough said.
Co-host Mika Brzezinski said the president was, in fact, sleeping during the meeting.
"In a coronavirus meeting," Scarborough said. "So, you know, as we've said before, everything with Donald Trump, well, it's either confession [or projection]."
Scarborough commented as the video showed Trump closing his eyes and momentarily nodding off as Vice President Mike Pence spoke during the meeting.
"Go to sleep, Donald, go to sleep," he said. "Wake up, there's Mike, he's talking about you. It is either confession or it is projection."
Scarborough, , who spent much of Wednesday morning discussing the president's apparent "cognitive decline," then rolled a supercut of Trump mangling words and wandering aimlessly during public events.
MSNBC's Joe Scarborough has been alarmed over President Donald Trump's apparent "cognitive decline" since the early days of his administration, but he said voters are finally beginning to notice.
The "Morning Joe" host has known Trump for years, and he says the president doesn't seem as mentally sharp, but he said the coronavirus crisis has laid bare his deficiencies just over six months before the election.
"On the 5 million [tests] a day, the guy that runs testing said there was no way this was ever going to happen on this planet or any other planet," Scarborough said. "He said that in the morning to Time magazine, then in the afternoon, Donald Trump, who seems to be a little more confused lately, and contradicting his own people, it's truly disturbing. I'm starting to get really concerned, even more concerned about how quickly he gets confused."
The death toll has passed 61,000 in the U.S., but Americans can see for themselves that the president seems more concerned with its impact on his re-election.
"He's in a complete meltdown, a complete meltdown, threatening at one point, I think, to sue his campaign manager," Scarborough said, "who, of course, many people claimed that [Brad] Parscale used his position to enrich himself. It is causing concerns. Maybe he is more focused on getting more rich than helping Donald Trump."
"The numbers are horrific in the swing states," he added. "They're even bad in Texas, they're bad in North Carolina, they're bad all across the United States. Donald Trump, of course, is not going to blame himself because of how badly he is doing in these afternoon briefings, because he stumbles over words. Sometimes he seems to fall asleep in the middle of meetings. He seems to be, you know -- people have been talking about his cognitive decline for some time and how it may impact us in a crisis. Now, of course, worries that a cognitive decline are starting to catch up with him. We're starting to pay. But, my gosh, Americans are noticing, and the poll numbers are just collapsing."
The New York Times reports that "Facebook, Twitter and YouTube have declined to remove Mr. Trump’s statements posted online in video clips and transcriptions of the briefing" on the grounds that "he did not specifically direct people to pursue the unproven treatments."
But this has also led to a flurry of activity using the Trump comments as a pretext to push for "miracle" COVID-19 cures.
"A New York Times analysis found 768 Facebook groups, 277 Facebook pages, nine Instagram accounts and thousands of tweets pushing UV light therapies that were posted after Mr. Trump’s comments and that remained on the sites as of Wednesday," the paper writes. "More than 5,000 other posts, videos and comments promoting disinfectants as a virus cure were also on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and YouTube this week. Only a few of the posts have been taken down."
Renee DiResta, a technical research manager at the Stanford Internet Observatory, tells the Times that social media companies' policies would make sense if there were a "competent government" that could serve as a "reputable health authority," but the president so far has not proven capable of being one.
US actor Harrison Ford piloted a plane across a runway as another aircraft was taking off, aviation officials said Wednesday, confirming they have opened an investigation.
It is the latest aviation mishap for the 77-year-old "Indiana Jones" star and flying enthusiast, who misheard an air traffic instruction in the incident which did not result in any damage last Friday.
"The FAA is investigating an incident in which the pilot of an Aviat Husky taxied across the runway... while another aircraft was performing a touch-and-go landing," the Federal Aviation Administration said in a statement to AFP.
The planes were 3,600 feet apart during the incident at a Los Angeles county airport.
Ford had been told to stop as the other plane practiced landing and immediately taking off, but instead he continued across the runway.
"Excuse me sir, I thought exactly the opposite. I'm terribly sorry," Ford can be heard saying in an audio recording.
Ford -- one of the biggest names in Hollywood, who rose to fame as smuggler-pilot Han Solo in the blockbuster "Star Wars" movies -- avoided punishment over a near-miss aviation incident at another southern California airport in 2017.
Ford mistakenly landed a plane of the same model on a taxiway instead of the runway, passing over a Boeing 737 with 110 passengers and six crew on board.
Two years earlier, Ford performed an emergency landing after suffering engine failure in a World War II vintage aircraft, hitting a tree and crashing onto a California golf course.
He suffered multiple injuries in the 2015 incident, including a broken pelvis and ankle.
Ford took his first flying lessons in college, gave up due to lack of money, but got back into it after becoming an established film star.
Now with years of flying under his belt, Ford has been the owner of several planes, from two-seat bush aircraft to corporate jets.
Representatives for Ford told AFP that "there was never any danger of a collision" in the latest incident.
President Donald Trump stayed up late to rant on Twitter against his media enemies.
The president nursed longstanding grudges against MSNBC's Joe Scarborough and Brian Williams after midnight from the White House, as the U.S. passed 61,000 coronavirus deaths in six weeks.
"Lyin’ Brian Williams of MSDNC, a Concast Scam Company, wouldn’t know the truth if it was nailed to his wooden forehead," Trump tweeted. "Remember when he lied about his bravery in a helicopter? Totally made up story. He’s a true dummy who was thrown off Network News like a dog. Stay tuned!"
The rant came shorty after Trump railed at CNN's Don Lemon for discussing a reported rift between the president and his campaign manager Brad Parscale over polls showing him losing badly to Joe Biden, but it's not clear what set him off against the MSNBC hosts.
"I must admit that Lyin’ Brian Williams is, while dumber than hell, quite a bit smarter than Fake News @CNN 'anchorman' Don Lemon, the 'dumbest man on television,'" Trump tweeted. "Then you have Psycho Joe 'What Ever Happened To Your Girlfriend?' Scarborough, another of the low I.Q. individuals!"
