Raw Story Investigate

The startlingly unethical antics of ventilator manufacturers

Earlier this year, the U.S. Attorney’s Office in South Carolina announced that a company called ResMed had agreed to pay more than $37 million to settle allegations under the False Claims Act that it illegally paid kickbacks to promote sales of equipment used to treat sleep apnea. The case did not receive much attention at the time, […]

The $2 trillion coronavirus relief bill opens a Pandora’s box of Big Pharma profiteering

The $2.2 trillion coronavirus relief bill that Donald Trump signed into law creates new price gouging opportunities for the drug companies. This flaw was not a simple mistake made when quickly drafting a bill but a deliberate effort to enable price gouging, as we will explain. Left out of the relief bill was language from […]

NLRB suspends unionizing amid COVID-19 crisis

Just as delivery personnel, medical staffers and just about everyone who has to be out in first-responder roles is raising serious questions about lacking proper protections, the federal government has found this is the time to suspend union elections. Given the date, it sounds like a cruel April Fools’ Day joke. But it is a […]

Trump takes another step towards authoritarianism as America grapples with the coronavirus pandemic

No sooner did Donald Trump sign the $2-trillion coronavirus aid bill last Friday than he immediately made clear that he intends to break the new law to insist on his own powers, not those dictated by Congress, in seeing how money gets spent. One of the main blocking points to the bill as originally outlined […]

‘The greatest risk factor of disease and death is Donald Trump’: Forensic psychiatrist

The final death toll from coronavirus will not be the result of viral disease; it will be the result of mental disease. The greatest risk factor of disease and death is not being considered, and that is Donald Trump. If he continues in this presidency, he is on course for having three main effects: First, he will […]

Donald Trumps needs a coronavirus scapegoat — and right now it’s China

“If we are at war, who is the enemy?” asks Fred Hiatt, editorial page editor for The Washington Post in a smart piece that examines the question of who constitutes a target for a self-declared “wartime president.” While it is obvious that the enemy, in this case, is a tiny, sticky, invisible microbe that stubbornly gloms onto […]

Pandemic modelers warn that Trump’s lies may increase the spread of COVID-19

Welcome to another edition of What Fresh Hell?, Raw Story’s roundup of news items that might have become controversies under another regime, but got buried – or were at least under-appreciated – due to the daily firehose of political pratfalls, unhinged tweet storms and other sundry embarrassments coming out of the current White House. Epidemiologists model […]

Another Trump screw-up: Food may ‘rot in the fields’ — and our distribution system may collapse

Early signs show that the systems that get fresh fruit and vegetables to American homes is strained and may experience major failures. The Trump administration is only making matters worse, allowing his racism against Mexicans to inflict damage on American farms that depend on legal labor from south of the border. In Florida, winter crops […]

Trump’s cabinet Bible study leader teamed up with a prayer warrior to pray against ‘evil pork’ in coronavirus bill

“You are a holy, righteous God who reigns, and all the evil darts that the secularist journalists, etc., would like to use to poke at us would be thwarted.” Dave Kubal, who runs the pro-Trump prayer warrior group Intercessors for America, hosted congressional and Cabinet Bible study teacher Ralph Drollinger on a special prayer call […]

Gleeful neo-Nazis see echoes of the 1930s as America plunges into a coronavirus crisis

One post shared on the social-media app Telegram depicts a Nazi stormtrooper flanked by pixelated text declaring, “Kali Yuga ends, black sun rises,” signaling a transition from a “dark age” to a fascist nirvana as symbolized by the “black sun” design elevated during the Third Reich. The mocking, faux-sacramental testimonial attached to the March 12 […]

‘If they’re so smart why are they broke?’ Corporate CEOs looking for bailout funds flunk basic personal finance

Before Mitch McConnell, his Radical Republican Senate conference and Steve Mnuchin hand over billions of dollars to a ragtag collection of corporations—gamblers, bankers, airline executives and whoever else is saddled up at the trough—here’s a suggestion: Make Every CEO take a basic family-finance class. Yes, they probably know how to balance a checkbook or know […]

‘Don’t believe anything that the president says’: Wife speaks out after husband dies trying to take drug Trump touted

A woman from Arizona warned people not to trust President Donald Trump after her husband died from ingesting chloroquine phosphate, which shares an active ingredient with a drug the president has been touting. Trump has claimed that chloroquine, which is used to treat malaria, could be effective in fighting Covid-19, the disease caused by the […]

The real cost of the coronavirus is virtually unimaginable — and Trump’s dawdling is making it worse

The $1 trillion coronavirus relief package Congress passed won’t come close to making up for the damage caused by COVID-19 and the Trump administration’s lethal dawdling while the virus spread. And we need the government to act or we could fall into a depression rivaling the 1930s. An 18-month crisis is widely expected. The Trump […]

A pandemic is no time to dismantle regulatory safeguards

As much of the economy melts down amid the coronavirus pandemic, many large corporations are lining up for financial bailouts from the federal government. Assuming the right safeguards are put in place, these payments may be justified. Yet there is a risk that big business may also seek another kind of assistance whose benefit is […]

Investigative reporter explains why Trump and the radical Republicans are calling it the ‘Chinese virus’

In early March, an angry, longtime Republican source contacted me to vent. He was a dedicated conservative, but was furious not only Trump Administration’s bumbling in dealing with COVID-19, but also the endless lies told by his fellow GOPers to persuade the party faithful that the scientific warnings about the outbreak were a scam. Now, […]

Bumbling Trump only cares about appearances as America is rattled by a lack of coronavirus leadership

An odd cocktail of hearing the clash of Donald Trump’s overly simplistic “immediate” cures and treatments with the reality of rising death counts, and the effects of lockdown against infection have me thinking about Time. Amidst all the uncertainty that has befallen us, we’ve lost sense of how long anything takes to get done, to […]

Donald Trump is going to have a big Donald Trump problem in November

Donald Trump and his advisors believe that “his reelection hopes hinge almost entirely on his ability to manage” the coronavirus crisis, according to Politico. “While they acknowledge his initial response was lacking and that the virus poses a mortal threat to his 2020 prospects, they foresee a possible silver lining. If the virus passes and […]

US government is shutting down immigration courts

Citing coronavirus threats, the U.S. government has canceled all deportation hearings for immigrants not in detention after immigration judges and government prosecutors complained busy courts were putting them at risk of infection. This follows announcement that the Customs and Border authorities are pushing new asylum seekers back into Mexico – and now Canada – to […]

Coronavirus outbreak begins to impact travel on America’s highways

Slowing the spread of COVID-19 is starting to affect travel on America’s highways. Access to roadside rest stops and sudden elimination of cash tolls are among the issues we found by surveying major toll road authorities. None of the toll roads have announced a move to require full service fueling by attendants, as New Jersey […]

Strict limits on movement outside your home may be necessary until the fall of 2021: study

A broad coronavirus lockdown looks increasingly likely as American and British officials embrace studies on the spread of COVIC-19. New York City could be on a lockdown by Friday; San Francisco already is. The hard part: strict limits on movement outside the home may be necessary until the fall of 2021. The prospect of more […]

Coronavirus is panicking Wall Street — but it’s got investors in Donald Trump’s second biggest creditor terrified

Shares of the little, and little known, Ladder Capital (LADR) closed Monday at $8.32 a share, down from $18 less than three weeks ago. LADR shares lost 54% of their value. That’s double the drop in the Dow Jones Industrial average. Shares of Trump’s biggest creditor, the large Deutsche Bank, are down 43% in the […]

How little Trump cares for workers — and how much he values corporate swamp monsters — is now on full display

How little Donald Trump cares about workers, and how much more he values corporations, is shown by his economic stimulus plan to address the pandemic. The Trump plan, shown first to Senate Republicans today, proposes spending more than $800 billion, but it will do little good for workers, especially those laid off. The biggest part […]

This simple graphic perfectly explains how the coronavirus works on your body

Just how does COVID-19 infect your body? A superb color graphic explaining the process is available free from the Science Times section of the March 17 New York Times. The virus is so tiny that 20,000 or so fit on the head of a pin. The graphic takes up an entire page.

Trump to governors: ‘You do it’

Donald Trump told governors Monday that they should not wait for the federal government to find hospital ventilators that will be needed for the coronavirus surge, that they should find their own. Later, at a press conference, Trump said he was allowing states to act more quickly by seeking their own sources rather than delaying […]

Trump creditor woes

Coronavirus is panicking Wall Street, but it’s got investors in Donald Trump’s second biggest creditor terrified. They should be. Their entire investment may be flushed down the financial toilet if Trump can’t pay his debts on his heavily leveraged golf resorts, hotels and restaurants. Shares of the little, and little known, Ladder Capital (LADR) closed […]

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