Favoring Political Allies With National Guard Funding
Although most states are facing severe budget crunches as a result of the Covid-19 pandemic, the Trump administration announced that they would have to begin covering 25 percent of the cost of deploying National Guard troops to fight the coronavirus with the exception of two states governed by the presidents allies, Texas and Florida. States like Arizona and California, whose outbreaks were no less severe, were not exempted. The administration did not provide an explanation for this decision beyond that the Texas and Florida governors had made special, direct cases to the President.
Following criticism, the administration announced that Arizona, California, and Connecticut would also see their National Guard deployments completely funded by the federal government. However, unlike Texas and Florida, whose costs are covered through the end of 2020, Arizona, California, and Connecticut will have to begin paying a share of their costs in October.
Did Trump Try To Cut The Cdc’s Budget As Democrats Claim: Analysis
The allegations come amid the emergency over the COVID-19 coronavirus.
President Donald Trump is taking heat from Democrats for proposing budget cuts to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention amid growing fears about a new coronavirus outbreak in the United States, but administration officials say CDC funding has steadily increased since Trump took office.
An ABC News analysis of the presidents budget proposals compared to the congressionally approved spending plans ultimately enacted show both claims are true.
The president introduced his fiscal year 2021 budget proposal on Feb. 10, just 11 days after the World Health Organization declared the coronavirus outbreak a public health emergency of international concerns. The spending plan included a 16 percent reduction in CDC funding from the 2020 spending levels.
In fact, all of Trumps budget proposals have called for cuts to CDC funding, but Congress has intervened each time by passing spending bills with year-over-year increases for the CDC that Trump then signed into law.
During the Democratic presidential debate in South Carolina Tuesday, former New York City Mayor Mike Bloomberg accused the president of defunding the CDC, claiming the result is that we dont have the organization that we need.
A Celebration Of Life Honoring Loretta Lynn To Air Live On Cmt
Pulling money from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention ? You mean that organization thats supposed to be front and center in responding to the pandemic? Isnt that a bit like being in the Super Bowl and telling your starting quarterback, oh, you know those cleats, shoulder pads, uniform, and helmet that you are wearing? Yeah, were going to need them for an ad campaign. But keep on playing without them. By the way, go team!
Apparently Michael Caputo, the assistant secretary for public affairs at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services , is the brain child of this campaign. This wouldnt necessarily be the first time that Caputo has done something to affect the CDC. I have covered previously for Forbes how Caputos team has allegedly been altering CDC scientific reports and how he claimed that CD scientists are plotting to attack Trump. Even more egregiously, he has accused CDC scientists of wearing sweatpants all the time, except when they go to coffee shops. This, of course, would be inaccurate since CDC scientists wear a variety of leg and pelvic coverings.
Heres some more from Diamond about the campaign:
When Diamond referred to DD& T, he presumably isnt referring to the insecticide.
Garth Brooks reportedly will also be part of the “defeat despair campaign.
Getty Images for NAMM
UPDATE 9/27/20: I have updated the article with a response from Quaid to the POLITICO article.
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Lack Of Qualified Leaders In Key Government Positions Hampering Pandemic Response
The Trump administrations response to the coronavirus pandemic has exposed a crisis in government leadership, marked by numerous vacancies and the elevation of people lacking relevant experience to positions of power.
A wide range of key positions in the Department of Homeland Security , the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, the Food and Drug Administration, the Occupational Health and Safety Administration, and other agencies tasked with planning or implementing the federal governments response to the Covid-19 pandemic have been either vacant or held by acting officials who lack the necessary authority and, in many cases, the relevant experience that Senate-confirmed leaders in these same roles have typically had. For instance, the roles of undersecretary of science and technology at DHS and deputy administrator of the Federal Emergency Management Agency key disaster management positions are staffed by acting personnel. Additionally, personnel performing critical functions in the federal pandemic response at FEMA and other agencies are leaving at a time when the nation desperately needs experts and leaders. And there is a growing list of administration officials lacking the expertise necessary to fulfill science-dependent roles. This has hampered the governments ability to address the crisis quickly and competently.
Shadow Coronavirus Task Force Marred By Nepotism Conflicts Of Interest Inexperience And Lack Of Transparency
Despite the existence of an official coronavirus task force led by the vice president, the presidents son-in-law and senior adviser, Jared Kushner, runs a shadow task force to manage the pandemic, raising numerous issues.
Kushner himself has no training or experience managing public health issues or crises. The same is true of many of the shadow task force volunteers, many of whom come from private equity and consulting firms. None of the task force members, several of whom are healthcare industry investors, have complied with federal ethics disclosure requirements designed to protect against the influence of special interests. And volunteers on the task force often communicate with private email accounts, raising concerns about their compliance with federal records laws.
In addition to the shadow task forces transparency issues, many private sector volunteers helping with its efforts to procure PPE and other medical supplies possess little to no experience in government procurement practices. This has hampered efforts to obtain and distribute critical equipment. Indeed, the United States continues to face supply shortages of needed materials and lacks an effective national strategy to procure and distribute supplies.
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Trump Ends Cdc Virus Data Collection Who’s Filling In
The Trump administrations removal of the CDC from the COVID-19 data collection process has raised concerns. But the CDC has agreed to step out of the government’s traditional data collection process “in order to streamline reporting.”
Hospital data related to the coronavirus pandemic in the United States will now be collected by a private technology firm, rather than the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention a move the Trump administration says will speed up reporting but one that concerns some public health leaders.
The CDC director said Wednesday that he’s fine with the change even though some experts fear it will further sideline the agency. The CDC has agreed to step out of the government’s traditional data collection process “in order to streamline reporting,” Dr. Robert Redfield said during a call with reporters set up by the agency’s parent, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.
HHS officials recently posted a document on the agency’s website that redirected hospitals’ daily reporting of a range of data meant to assess the impact of the coronavirus on them. TeleTracking Technologies, based in Pittsburgh, will now collect that information.
However, if hospitals are already directly reporting to state health departments, they can get a written release from the state to keep doing that.
Hiding The Truth Wont Stop The Virus
At the core of Trump and his administrations complaints about the CDC seems to be a concerted effort to make it appear as though America is quickly returning to normal before the November election. That effort was on display at Augusts Republican convention, which was seemingly designed to downplay Americas Covid-19 epidemic.
Trump even admitted to this in an interview with journalist Bob Woodward: I wanted to always play down, Trump said on March 19. I still like playing it down, because I dont want to create a panic.
This is, of course, a terrible way to approach a pandemic. Viruses dont care about politics, and theyll spread as long as people and their governments dont take action to stop them.
Weve seen that time and time again as Trump has meddled with the CDC. Although he and his staff muzzled Messonnier, it turns out she was right Covid-19 has disrupted day-to-day life significantly. After Trump suggested states reopen faster than the CDC recommended, the US saw a resurgence of Covid-19 cases, from California to Arizona to Texas to Florida, as it turned out states had opened prematurely. After Trump pushed schools to reject the CDC guidelines and open quickly, there have been outbreaks in universities and K-12 settings.
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Under Donald Trump Key Cdc Us Staff In China Fell To 0
If Your Time is short
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The correct figures from the CDC show that overall staffing fell but remained higher than what Biden said.
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The numbers also show the elimination of all U.S. staff to counter the threat posed by the new coronavirus.
Joe Biden, the presumptive Democratic nominee, argues that President Donald Trump failed to protect the country from the coronavirus when he had the chance. In an interview on MSNBC, Biden said Trump “absolutely missed any opportunity to get ahead of this.”
Biden underscored the loss of American staff at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention office in Beijing.
“We had over 44, if Im not mistaken, people from the CDC in China, in China to observe what was going on,” Biden said May 14. “The president brought home the vast majority of them, I think left only four in place.”
This is an intriguing claim. Biden is off on the exact numbers. But his point about stripped-down oversight is supported. According to the CDC, the program in China specifically charged with spotting new infectious diseases went from having four American staff in 2017 to none by 2019.
Its impossible to say with 100% certainty that if those Americans had been there, they would have been able to alert Washington earlier to an emerging threat. But not having them there eliminated that possibility.
When he said the number fell to four, the actual number by December 2019 was three Americans, and 11 Chinese.
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Detaining Immigrants In Unsanitary Conditions Contributing To Spread Of Covid
In the midst of the Covid-19 pandemic, the Trump administration has ignored warnings from public health experts that the coronavirus could spread rapidly in immigration detention centers . Experts have for a reduction in the number of people held in immigration detention centers as the most effective means to promote public health, but the Trump administration has resisted this advice, failing to address the threat the virus poses to detainees in an effective and humane way.
ICE has deported immigrant detainees who are infected with Covid-19, causing the disease to spread in other countries. The Trump administration also transferred a group of immigrants by plane to Virginia in June 2020, causing an outbreak at a detention center there that infected over 300 detainees and killed at least one. Although ICE officials stated that this transfer was meant to reduce overcrowding at detention centers in Arizona and Florida, sources with direct knowledge of the decision revealed that their primary aim in transferring detainees was to enable the rapid deployment of Department of Homeland Security troops to crack down on protests in Washington, D.C., as transporting migrants on the flight enabled ICE to skirt a rule prohibiting agency employees from traveling on chartered planes unless they are accompanied by detained immigrants.
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Exclusive: Us Slashed Cdc Staff Inside China Prior To Coronavirus Outbreak
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WASHINGTON – The Trump administration cut staff by more than two-thirds at a key U.S. public health agency operating inside China, as part of a larger rollback of U.S.-funded health and science experts on the ground there leading up to the coronavirus outbreak, Reuters has learned.
Most of the reductions were made at the Beijing office of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and occurred over the past two years, according to public CDC documents viewed by Reuters and interviews with four people familiar with the drawdown.
The Atlanta-based CDC, Americas preeminent disease fighting agency, provides public health assistance to nations around the world and works with them to help stop outbreaks of contagious diseases from spreading globally. It has worked in China for 30 years.
The CDCs China headcount has shrunk to around 14 staffers, down from approximately 47 people since President Donald Trump took office in January 2017, the documents show. The four people, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said the losses included epidemiologists and other health professionals.
The material reviewed by Reuters shows a breakdown of how many American and local Chinese employees were assigned there. The documents are the CDCs own descriptions of its headcount, which it posts online. Reuters was able to search past copies of the material to confirm the decline described by the four people.
Chinas embassy in Washington, D.C. declined to comment.
Censoring Undermining And Attacking Leading Government Scientists
The Trump administration has repeatedly censored and attacked preeminent government scientists, whose research and analysis would normally be leading the national response to a public health crisis like Covid-19.
The administration has implemented new policies to block government scientists from communicating with the public. For instance, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention stopped holding media briefings and instituted a restrictive media policy for agency scientists receiving inquiries for information about Covid-19 even though these scientists have traditionally been allowed to speak to the press. The Trump administration also prevented National Institute for Allergy and Infectious Diseases Director Dr. Anthony Fauci and other senior health officials from communicating with the public, instead requiring that all communications be controlled by Vice President Mike Pence . A top political aide at the Department of Health and Human Services instructed Dr. Faucis press team that Fauci was to refrain from advising that children wear masks. The White House also prevented Fauci from testifying before the House of Representatives, because the chamber was full of Trump haters. He blocked other experts from testifying before Congress at all, including the CDC director, who was invited to testify about how to reopen schools safely.
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Scientists Sidelined Silenced And Ignored
At a campaign rally this week, Trump suggested that if he were re-elected, he would fire much-revered and long-standing infectious-disease expert Anthony Fauci, who has led the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, part of the National Institutes of Health , since 1984. Fauci has earned international acclaim as an adviser on HIV/AIDS to six US presidents, and is one of the most-cited researchers in the world.
This display follows a pattern of Trump attempting to silence and discredit Fauci throughout the pandemic: in May, in an unprecedented move, the administration blocked Fauci from testifying about the US pandemic response in front of the Democrat-led House of Representatives appropriations committee. Never in my 30-plus years here in Washington do I recall ever a White House refusing to let an NIH expert testify before Congress, says Zuckerman. The White House did not respond to Natures request for comment.
Why the United States is having a coronavirus data crisis
Trump Organization Seeking Benefits From Trump Administration And Foreign Governments
The presidents failure to divest from his business interests has created myriad ethical issues throughout his time in office, including in relation to the Covid-19 pandemic. As the hospitality industry struggles, the Trump Organization has sought relief from both the federal government and from the British and Irish governments the latter for employees wages at the companys golf courses overseas. In particular, the Trump Organization sought a break on rental payments for the Washington, DC Trump Hotel from the General Services Administration, the federal agency with which the Trump Organization has a lease for the hotel. This puts the federal agency in a bind: denying the request could invoke the ire of the president, who appoints its leader, while accommodating the request would raise concerns that the decision was motivated by the presidents financial interests.
President Trump has also demanded that Congress include money for a new downtown FBI headquarters in a coronavirus relief bill. By ensuring the FBI does not move to a suburban campus instead, the measure would protect the Trump Hotel from possible competition from a proposed new hotel on the site of the FBI building a longstanding concern of the president.
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Favoritism And Political Bias In Awarding Small Business Loans
Small business loan programs implemented by the Trump administration have prioritized funding large corporations, including some with ties to President Trump and other administration officials, over smaller businesses with immediate needs. In March 2020, Congress passed the Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security Act , which included the Paycheck Protection Program , intended to give small businesses loans to protect jobs. In its implementation of the program, the Trump administration has stretched the language of the CARES Act to provide financial support to large businesses such as oil and gas firms including businesses with ties to the Trump administration.
Even as large businesses with ties to the Trump administration have received support, the administration has denied funding to many small businesses particularly those owned by women and people of color. One study found that Black applicants faced discrimination when applying for PPP loans. Another found that small businesses in majority-Black ZIP codes had to wait much longer than similar businesses in majority-white areas to receive funding. Additionally, in keeping with the presidents past hostility towards clean energy initiatives, the administration has left $43 billion in low-interest loans intended for clean energy products completely untouched.
