Biden, who has mostly stayed in his house here for nearly four months, will venture out Tuesday afternoon to deliver a speech at a local school on his vision for fighting the coronavirus crisis.
As infections and hospitalizations surge, and with the United States poised to surpass 125,000 confirmed covid-19 deaths as soon as today, Biden will recall how President Trump described himself as a “wartime” leader at the start of the pandemic and then accuse him of “surrendering to the virus.”
“Americans social distanced and did their part to bend the curve, but Trump didn’t lead,” Biden plans to say, according to a preview shared by aides.
Biden will argue that the need for federal outlays to contain the worst public health crisis since 1918 and the worst economic crisis since 1933 is only growing – and he wants to guarantee emergency paid leave not just for everyone who gets covid-19 but also those who care for them – “for as long as they need to recover.”
Biden’s address, on this final day of June, comes amid the looming expiration of emergency relief programs enacted early in the spring. Enhanced unemployment benefits will expire on July 31. The Paycheck Protection Program will stop accepting new loan applications today. Mortgage payment holidays and eviction freezes are due to lapse in many states over the coming weeks.
But both White House officials and congressional Republican leaders have said they do not feel any particular urgency to pass another round of stimulus spending, offering to begin negotiations in the latter half of July after Congress returns from a two-week holiday recess.
Pointing to growing evidence of the economy’s shakiness, Biden says more must be done “to make Americans who lose their jobs financially whole by ensuring they get their unemployment insurance on time and in full.” He wants every essential worker who qualifies to receive federal child-care assistance and other emergency support, along with an unspecified boost in pay.
Several of Biden’s proposals focus on getting workers back on the job and children back in schools. He calls for increasing federal funding to K-12 schools to help them reopen, scaling up National Institutes of Health funding to support pediatric research and building what he calls a Safer Schools Best Practices Clearinghouse so local districts can easily communicate and share about what’s working – and what is not.
Biden wants to make clear that he is willing to use the full weight of the federal government to help get people back to work safely. For example, he will reiterate today that he would direct the Occupational Safety and Health Administration to set tougher workplace safety standards and pursue large fines on corporations that either do not abide by these stricter standards or “recklessly expose” their workers to the coronavirus. This is a very different approach from Republicans, who want to limit liability for companies in the event their employees get sick to give them the confidence to reopen.
Testing and contact tracing will be major focuses of Biden’s remarks this afternoon. The Democratic candidate will emphasize that he wants to “guarantee regular, reliable, free access to testing for every worker called back on the job.” He vows to hire “at least” 100,000 workers to build a national case-tracking system. Biden remains willing to invoke the Defense Production Act to require manufacturers to produce more personal protective equipment. And he calls for appointing a “commander” to oversee national supply chains before an expected second wave hits.
Biden has not outlined in detail either how much how all this would cost nor how exactly he would pay for it. But he suggested during a virtual fundraiser on Monday afternoon that he would “get rid of the bulk” of Trump’s 2017 tax cuts, close several other “loopholes,” raise the corporate tax rate to 28 percent, change how capital gains are taxed and crack down on tax avoidance schemes.
One reason Trump has taken his foot off the gas on coronavirus relief spending is growing concern among some conservatives inside the White House and on Capitol Hill about the skyrocketing debt. The federal budget deficit has exploded into 10-figures partly because Trump’s 2017 tax cuts have failed to generate the promised growth in revenue.
Vincent Mai, the founder and chairman of private equity firm Cranemere, asked Biden during the fundraiser how he would balance the short-term requirements to address the crisis with the long-term investments that the nation needs to make. Biden answered that “relief and recovery” are “intertwined,” and that the recovery can be used as “an opportunity” to build a “stronger, more inclusive middle class.”
“Folks, this is going to be really hard work and Donald Trump has made it much harder to foot the bill,” Biden said. “We have to think as big as the challenges we face. … I think people are ready to do things that they weren’t before, and I think we can significantly grow the economy, grow the GDP, but also do it in a way that we provide dignity for people.”
In his speech, Biden will attack Trump for turning his public focus away from the virus. The president has stopped holding regular briefings. Last Friday’s coronavirus task force update was relegated to the offices of the Health and Human Services Department, instead of the White House. And Trump skipped it.
“He has refused to wear a mask in public and has held two large rallies — both circumstances that run counter to the advice of health officials, including those in his administration,” Annie Linskey reports. “The president also has offered unproven and at times dangerous ideas on how to address the coronavirus, including promoting a drug now believed to be ineffective and suggesting that the virus could be treated via ‘an injection inside’ the body with a disinfectant.
“Trump also said at a rally that he had instructed officials to ‘slow the testing down’ as a way to keep the country’s official data on infections lower. In March the president said, ‘I don’t take responsibility at all’ for lagging coronavirus testing in the United States. Biden last week hit Trump for his administration’s decision to ask the Supreme Court to strike down the Affordable Care Act, saying the action risked the lives of Americans who rely on the insurance.”
Biden’s approach is also designed to establish a contrast with Senate Republicans. The former senator, leading in nationwide and battleground state polling, feels increasingly hopeful that Democrats could win control of the upper chamber if he has long enough coattails. This would make governing much easier if he wins, something he surely remembers well from his first two years as vice president.
“House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) and Senate Minority Leader Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.) called on Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) on Monday to immediately start negotiations on a new coronavirus relief bill,” Erica Werner reports. “Senate Republicans and the White House have been eyeing late July as the time frame for putting together another coronavirus bill, after passing four bills in March and April pumping about $3 trillion into the economy. The Democratic-led House passed another massive relief bill 45 days ago, but Republicans declared it dead on arrival in the Senate and Trump threatened to veto it. Congress is in session this week, but lawmakers then plan to leave Washington for a two-week recess for the Fourth of July. There are no plans to pass coronavirus legislation before the recess.”
McConnell said Friday in Kentucky that, “if there’s a final rescue package,” it will be developed by his office later next month. “So we will sit down in July and figure out what seems to fit the way forward based on the conditions a few weeks from now,” the majority leader said. “One thing I can tell you will certainly be in the bill — it’s not negotiable — [is] liability protection for hospitals, doctors, nurses, businesses, universities [and] K-12 related to the coronavirus.”
On a party line vote, House Democrats advanced a bill to spend more than $100 billion in emergency rental assistance and homeowner assistance. It would include a moratorium on evictions and foreclosures, plus billions for fighting coronavirus outbreaks among homeless people. But the Senate has no plans to take it up.
Some veteran lawmakers are worried that the two sides will not be able to bridge their differences to pass something, even later this summer. “Every day we’re closer to the election, every day bipartisan legislation gets harder,” Rep. Tom Cole (R-Okla.), a longtime member of the Appropriations Committee, told Erica. “But the reality is we need another coronavirus bipartisan package to put the funds we need for vaccines and research, more money in public health, assistance to businesses, encouragement for people to go back to work with appropriate protections. All those things are going to require, again, us to work together. And right now, since we’ve passed that fourth package, we’ve been pulling apart rather than pulling together.”
The latest on the coronavirus
Scientists are still trying to understand why a more dangerous coronavirus mutation has taken over the world.
“Of the approximately 50,000 genomes of the new virus that researchers worldwide have uploaded to a shared database, about 70 percent carry the mutation, officially designated D614G but known more familiarly to scientists as ‘G,’” Sarah Kaplan and Joel Achenbach report. “At least four laboratory experiments suggest that the mutation makes the virus more infectious, although none of that work has been peer-reviewed. Another unpublished study led by scientists at Los Alamos National Laboratory asserts that patients with the G variant actually have more virus in their bodies, making them more likely to spread it to others. The mutation doesn’t appear to make people sicker, but a growing number of scientists worry that it has made the virus more contagious.”
As outbreaks worsen in the South and West, Trump’s press secretary says they’re just “embers.”
“U.S. deaths are approaching 125,000, and the total number of coronavirus cases reported topped 2.5 million amid worsening outbreaks in Florida, Texas and Arizona,” Anne Gearan, Brittany Shammas and Lateshia Beachum report. “Jacksonville, the largest city in Florida and host of the Republican National Convention in late August, announced Monday that masks will be mandatory in public and indoor locations. … It is not clear whether the requirement will remain in force at the time of the convention or whether Trump and attendees would abide by it. … Jacksonville city spokeswoman Nikki Kimbleton told The Post that whether the mandate applies to the convention will be addressed ‘as we get closer to the event,’ noting that it is still two months away. … [Vice President] Pence conferred with governors and others out of sight of news cameras Monday and plans to travel to Florida and Arizona, two of the states with spiking cases, for meetings this week with governors and health teams. …
“Arizona saw another record high in hospitalizations days after Trump visited the state for a raucous indoor rally where almost no one wore a mask. … Florida’s rolling seven-day average has risen by 102 percent since a week ago, an increase second only to Louisiana, where the seven-day average is 123 percent higher than that of a week ago. … The surging number of cases could result in nearly half the country infected with the virus by the end of this year, and overall deaths are likely to return to more than 1,000 a day, according to former Food and Drug Administration commissioner Scott Gottlieb.”
A top doctor at the CDC said the U.S. has “way too much virus” to control it. “We’re not in the situation of New Zealand or Singapore or Korea where a new case is rapidly identified and all the contacts are traced and people are isolated who are sick and people who are exposed are quarantined and they can keep things under control,” Anne Schuchat, principal deputy director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, said in an interview with the Journal of the American Medical Association’s Howard Bauchner. “We have way too much virus across the country for that right now, so it’s very discouraging. … This is really the beginning.” (CNBC)
- Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) refuses to order a statewide mask mandate despite the surge on his watch, leaving that decision up to local leaders. (Local 10)
- Arizona Gov. Doug Ducey (R) pushed back plans to reopen public schools and banned gatherings of more than 50 people. He also closed down bars, nightclubs, movie theaters and water parks, warning residents “we can’t be under any illusion that this virus is going to go away on its own.” Other hard-hit states, such as Tennessee and Georgia, opted to extend their stay-at-home orders. (Antonia Farzan)
- New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy (D) said plans to allow indoor dining would be postponed “indefinitely,” while New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo (D) said his administration is reconsidering whether indoor dining can restart safely in New York City next week as part of Phase 3 reopening. The news come as a blow to restaurant owners in the region, who have been preparing to reopen by expanding their staffs and restocking their inventory amid financial struggles. (NYT)
- More than 30 bars sued Texas Gov. Greg Abbott (R) over his order to close bars due to a surge in cases. Meanwhile, city and county leaders asked Abbott for authority to implement local stay-at-home orders, stressing concerns abut hospital capacity. (Texas Tribune)
- Los Angeles County health officials issued a dire warning that conditions are rapidly deteriorating and the virus is spreading quickly in the nation’s most populous county. Officials warned the county’s reopening would coincide with jumps in cases with the potential to overwhelm hospitals. (LAT)
- The American Academy of Pediatrics is calling for in-person school this fall. Citing “mounting evidence” that the spread of the virus by young children is uncommon, the AARP argued that schools must reopen because remote learning is likely to result in severe learning loss and increased social isolation. (NPR)
- Maryland’s casinos reopened Monday, but gamblers must wear masks and capacity is limited to 50 percent. (Joe Heim)
- Broadway will remain shuttered until at least January. (Peter Marks)
- The Washington Nationals are still waiting for approval from the D.C. government to use Nationals Park for training camp. (Gene Wang)
- More than 200 people in West Virginia were advised to quarantine after being possibly exposed to the virus at a gym. (CNN)
- U.S. airlines will ask travelers to answer health questions before boarding. Passengers will also be asked to commit to wearing a mask at the airport and on their flight. (Luz Lazo)
- The CEOs of some of the nation’s largest companies expect the economic effects of the pandemic to last through 2021. Nearly a third of them expect the harm to last even longer. (Hannah Denham)
Millions track the spread on John Hopkins’s dashboard. But those who built it say some miss the real story.
“Since launching in January, the university’s Coronavirus Resource Center has exploded in scope and popularity, garnering millions of page views and popping up in news coverage and daily conversation. Through numbers, the tracker has told the story of what the virus is doing while the story is still unfolding, offering a nearly real-time picture of its silent march across the globe,” Kyle Swenson reports. “But even as data has jumped to the forefront of international discussions about the virus, the Johns Hopkins team wrestles with doubts about whether the numbers can truly capture the scope of the pandemic, and whether the public and policymakers are failing to absorb the big picture. They know what they are producing is not a high-resolution snapshot of the pandemic but a constantly shifting Etch a Sketch of the trail of covid-19, the disease caused by the virus. Case counts are consistently inconsistent. Reporting practices differ from country to country, state to state, even county to county. If authorities fail to contextualize the virus with other factors — such as Zip codes, race or Medicaid usage — the hardest-hit communities can go unseen.”
Trump’s foreign policy
Despite his denials, Trump received information about the suspected Russian effort to kill U.S. troops. He did nothing.
“Leading Republican lawmakers on Monday confirmed that U.S. intelligence agencies have developed information about a Russian military operation targeting U.S. and allied forces in Afghanistan. But they said that any U.S. response should wait until intelligence agencies fully review the material, some of which was shared with members of Congress in a classified briefing at the White House. Current and former intelligence officials familiar with the intelligence said it was less ambiguous than White House officials and some lawmakers have portrayed and indicated that Russian military intelligence had offered bounties to Taliban-linked militants who killed U.S. military personnel,” Ellen Nakashima, Shane Harris, Karen DeYoung and Greg Miller report. “In a statement Monday evening, CIA Director Gina Haspel did not address the intelligence directly, nor did she dispute reports that it showed the Russians targeting U.S. forces. … Without mentioning Russia or Afghan militants by name, Haspel said, ‘Hostile states’ use of proxies in war zones to inflict damage on U.S. interests and troops is a constant, longstanding concern.’ …
“The intelligence was considered significant and credible enough that it was included in the President’s Daily Brief, according to two individuals familiar with the matter … Some officials think the Russian operation led to the deaths of several U.S. service members, according to intelligence gleaned from captured militants in recent months. … Within the intelligence agencies, there remains some disagreement about the credibility of all the sources … It’s not unusual for agencies to disagree about some pieces of information and even question the accuracy of a source but still agree that the intelligence points toward a particular conclusion. Trump dismissed the intelligence reports and said he was never told …
“Former intelligence officials said it was unusual not to inform the president about threats to U.S. forces, even if the information was still being assessed. They also noted reports that the United States shared the intelligence with British officials, given that their forces also were thought to have been targeted. Trump should have been briefed in case the issue came up in conversation with the British prime minister … Britain has nearly 1,000 troops in Afghanistan and has a close intelligence relationship with the United States. Officials there are said to be particularly interested in whether the Russian intelligence unit said to have spearheaded the bounty program is the same one that orchestrated the 2018 poisoning in the English city of Salisbury of Sergei Skripal, a former Russian military officer and double agent for British intelligence, and his daughter.”
The New York Times specifies that an item on the Russian operation appeared in the PDB on Feb. 27: “Moreover, a description of the intelligence assessment that the Russian unit had carried out the bounties plot was also seen as serious and solid enough to disseminate more broadly across the intelligence community in a May 4 article in the C.I.A.’s World Intelligence Review, a classified compendium commonly referred to as The Wire, two officials said. … Late Monday, John Ratcliffe, the recently confirmed director of national intelligence, issued a statement warning that leaks about the matter were a crime.” (Feb. 27 was also the day Trump met with right-wing Internet personalities Diamond & Silk at the White House.)
The Associated Press reports the White House has been aware that Russia was secretly offering bounties to the Taliban to kill Americans since early 2019. The intelligence assessment was included in at least one of Trump’s written briefings at the time, officials said. Then-national security adviser John Bolton also told colleagues he briefed Trump on the issue back in March 2019.
- The Daily Beast reports that, when intelligence about the Russian bounties emerged earlier this year, intelligence and national security leaders didn’t brief the president orally and in person because officials are generally reluctant to push information they know he’ll resist.
- Felicia Arculeo, the mother of a Marine killed in action last year in Afghanistan, wants an investigation into reports that her son, Cpl. Robert Hendriks, and two other Marines may have been the targets of Taliban-linked fighters who collected Russian bounties. (CNBC)
Quote of the day
“Ignorance isn’t exculpatory,” said Sen. Tammy Duckworth (D-Ill.), who lost her legs while flying a combat mission over Iraq, on Trump’s failure to retaliate against Russia for allegedly offering bounties to kill U.S. troops. (HuffPost)
Trump’s phone calls with Vladimir Putin and other autocrats have deeply alarmed many top U.S. officials.
If you read just one story today, make it Watergate legend Carl Bernstein’s deep dive for CNN: “In hundreds of highly classified phone calls with foreign heads of state, [Trump] was so consistently unprepared for discussion of serious issues, so often outplayed in his conversations with powerful leaders like [Putin] and Turkish President Recep Erdogan, and so abusive to leaders of America’s principal allies, that the calls helped convince some senior US officials – including his former secretaries of state and defense, two national security advisers and his longest-serving chief of staff — that the President himself posed a danger to the national security of the United States, according to White House and intelligence officials intimately familiar with the contents of the conversations. … The sources said there was little evidence that the President became more skillful or competent in his telephone conversations with most heads of state over time. …
“Putin ‘just outplays’ him, said a high-level administration official — comparing the Russian leader to a chess grandmaster and Trump to an occasional player of checkers. While Putin ‘destabilizes the West,’ said this source, the President of the United States ‘sits there and thinks he can build himself up enough as a businessman and tough guy that Putin will respect him.’ (At times, the Putin-Trump conversations sounded like ‘two guys in a steam bath,’ a source added.) … In separate interviews, two high-level administration officials familiar with most of the Trump-Putin calls said the President naively elevated Russia – a second-rate totalitarian state with less than 4% of the world’s GDP.”
Republicans once again were asked why they’ve allowed Trump to be so feckless in the face of Russian bellicosity.
“Sen. Cory Gardner (R-Colo.) called the reports ‘deeply troubling’ and said he wanted the Senate to pass his legislation that would require the State Department to consider naming Russia a state sponsor of terrorism. Sen. Thom Tillis (R-N.C.), who like Gardner is in a tough reelection race this fall, similarly called for the U.S. government to treat Russia as a state sponsor of terrorism,” Seung Min Kim reports. “Sen. Todd C. Young (R-Ind.), a former intelligence officer in the Marines, said the Russia-financed bounty effort, if confirmed, ‘deserves a strong and immediate response from our government.’ … The reaction from congressional Republicans on Monday was markedly different than the comments from Trump, who dismissed the reports as ‘possibly another fabricated Russia Hoax’ … Left largely unaddressed in many GOP senators’ public comments, however, was Trump’s role in the matter and what he should do now, with few questions from Senate Republicans on Monday about the White House’s contention that the president was left in the dark about an intelligence issue that had prompted a restricted high-level White House meeting in late March. … ‘Well, I think the president can’t single-handedly remember everything, I’m sure, that he’s briefed on, but the intelligence officials are familiar with it and briefed him,’ said Sen. John Cornyn (R-Tex.).”
- GOP members of the House Intelligence Committee have skipped all but one of the panel’s public and private proceedings since before Congress went into lockdown in early March. (Politico)
China enacted its Hong Kong security law stripping the territory of autonomy.
“China on Tuesday adopted a contentious national security law that will allow Beijing to override Hong Kong’s judicial system and target political opponents in the city, stripping the territory of autonomy promised under the handover agreement with Britain and raising the prospect of further retaliation from Washington,” Eva Dou and Shibani Mahtani report. “The move has strained China’s relations with the United States and other Western nations, with Secretary of State Mike Pompeo saying on Friday that Washington would place visa restrictions on Chinese officials responsible for curtailing freedoms in Hong Kong. On Monday, China said it would impose reciprocal measures on unspecified American officials, while the Commerce Department suspended some of Hong Kong’s preferential trade treatment under U.S. law.”
Divided America
As opioids flooded tribal lands, overdose deaths skyrocketed.
“At the height of the opioid epidemic, Native Americans overdosed and died at a rate that rivaled some of the hardest-hit regions in Appalachia. Nationwide, from 2006 to 2014, Native Americans were nearly 50 percent more likely to die of an opioid overdose than non-natives,” Sari Horwitz, Debbie Cenziper and Steven Rich report from Ada, Okla. “As more than 3,000 cities and counties — along with most states — pursue billions in settlement dollars from opioid manufacturers and distributors, tribal leaders are fighting for a fair share of the proceeds through a series of lawsuits filed by Indian tribes. Several of the tribes that have sued are in Oklahoma, home to more than 482,000 Native Americans in 38 federally recognized tribes, including the Cherokee, Choctaw and Chickasaw nations. The patchwork of tribal lands is spread across most of the state’s 77 counties. Here, the opioid death rate for Native Americans from 2006 to 2014 was more than three times higher than the nationwide rate for non-natives, the analysis of federal health data shows. And within the state, Native Americans were about 50 percent more likely to die than non-natives.”
Chief Justice John Roberts’s reasserted himself in Monday’s Supreme Court decision on abortion.
“Monday’s ruling on abortion showed that restrictions on a woman’s right to the procedure for now will go only as far as the chief justice allows,” Robert Barnes reports. “In Monday’s decision, he said the court’s allegiance to honoring its past decisions meant striking down a Louisiana law almost identical to one from Texas that the court said in 2016 was unconstitutional. The twist is that Roberts was a dissenter then. The votes do not mean that Roberts, nominated by President George W. Bush, has had an ideological conversion. But they do serve as a reminder of his 2018 rejoinder to Trump that ‘we do not have Obama judges or Trump judges, Bush judges or Clinton judges.’ Roberts’s admirers speculate he was turned off by the attempt to have the court’s 2016 decision overturned because the court’s membership had changed with Trump’s two appointments. … ‘I find it hard to explain his body of work without some theory that he’s playing a long political game,’ said Daniel Epps, a law professor at Washington University in St. Louis. ‘He wants to push the law to the right, but is extremely careful not to do things that will make the court too much of a political focal point, and thus hurt its ability to shape the law longer-term.’”
A divided court on Tuesday endorsed a Montana tax incentive program that indirectly helps private religious schools, a major victory for those who want to see more public funding of religious institutions. Roberts, writing for a conservative 5 to 4 majority, said the Montana Supreme Court was wrong to strike down the program because of a provision in the state constitution that forbids public funds from going to religious institutions. The U.S. Constitution’s protection of religious freedom prevails, he said. (Barnes)
Trump’s ‘white power’ tweet set off a White House scramble. But the president has not condemned the comment.
“The president shared a video on Twitter that included a Trump supporter shouting ‘white power’ at counterprotesters during a demonstration,” Ashley Parker and Toluse Olorunnipa report. “Senior staffers quickly conferred over the phone and then began trying to reach the president to convey their concerns about the tweet. White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany, son-in-law Jared Kushner and other senior advisers spoke with president … Roughly three hours later, the president gave the go-ahead to delete his incendiary tweet … But neither the president nor his team publicly condemned the racist phrase, setting off another controversial news cycle … Speaking on ‘Fox & Friends’ Monday morning, McEnany said Trump hadn’t heard the ‘white power’ shout but never condemned the language, saying, ‘His point in tweeting out that video was to stand with his supporters, who are oftentimes demonized.'”
Congress launched a probe into federal officers’ use of force on Lafayette Square protesters.
“The hearings before the House Natural Resources Committee were the first of several, with lawmakers signaling they have more questions about the types of weapons used and whether federal police officers issued verbal warnings before launching stun grenades and chemical irritants into the crowd,” Marissa Lang reports. “No members of the Trump administration were called to testify. Park Police officials, who led the charge against protesters on June 1, declined to attend, lawmakers said.”
- The former Minneapolis officers charged in George Floyd’s killing got a tentative trial date for March. (Holly Bailey and Mark Berman)
- Multiple officers in Aurora, Colo., are under investigation after appearing in photos taken at Elijah McClain’s memorial. (Timothy Bella)
Social media speed read
Hundreds of Oklahomans literally camped out at an unemployment office on Sunday night. Our hearts go out to the good people of the Sooner State, and so many other places, who are struggling to make ends meet but who haven’t been able to receive unemployment benefits. Lines like this are a clear indication, as the coronavirus death toll rises, that some states are failing their citizens in this hour of need:
Our Pulitzer Prize-winning intelligence reporter notes that the White House’s spin on the Russian bounty bombshell does not pass the smell test:
There’s always a tweet (in this case, two tweets):
Videos of the day
Hasan Minhaj explained why doing your taxes can be so hard:
Comedian Sarah Cooper has become a social media favorite for her lip-sync parodies of Trump. Here’s a compilation of some of her hits:
