Tag Archives: President Donald Trump

Trump to resume coronavirus briefings after hiatus

By Steve Holland

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – U.S. President Donald Trump, under fire over his administration’s response to the surging coronavirus, said on Monday he will resume holding news briefings on the pandemic after a lengthy hiatus.

He told reporters in the Oval Office the resumption was prompted by a “big flareup in Florida, Texas, a couple of other places.” The virus has killed 140,000 Americans and infected some 3.7 million, both figures leading the world.

White House debate has centered on whether Trump should risk doing daily briefings after he was mocked for musing that people might inject household disinfectants as a way to protect themselves from contracting the virus.

The briefings ended in early May after the new White House of chief staff, Mark Meadows, sought a new focus for the president’s messaging on the subject.

Trump said he expected the first new briefing would take place about 5 p.m. EDT (2100 GMT) on Tuesday.

“We’re going to give you a lot of briefings over the next week and the next few weeks,” he said.

He said he would bring in the heads of some companies involved in the search for vaccines and other treatments for the virus, such as Johnson & Johnson.

(Reporting by Steve Holland; Editing by Howard Goller)

With U.S. under coronavirus siege, Chicago cracks down, Florida cases soar

By Daniel Trotta

(Reuters) – The city of Chicago reimposed some coronavirus restrictions on Monday and the state of Florida reported more than 10,000 new cases for the sixth day in a row, as the pandemic showed few signs of abating in the United States.

In a rare ray of hope, New York state reported the fewest hospitalizations from the coronavirus in four months and New York City entered a new phase of reopening on Monday, but the progress, in the very city and state that were once the epicenter, was eclipsed by the grim news nearly everywhere else.

Metrics for the country have grown worse including a rising number of cases, deaths and hospitalizations along with rates of positive test results. The virus has killed 140,000 people in the United States and infected some 3.7 million, both figures leading the world.

Florida reported 10,347 new cases on Monday, the sixth day in a row the state has announced over 10,000 new infections. Another 92 people died in Florida, increasing the state’s death toll to 5,183.

Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot announced new restrictions due to take effect on Friday including a ban on indoor service at bars and shutdown of personal services such as shaves and facials that require the removal of masks.

“While we aren’t near the peak of the pandemic from earlier this year, none of us wants to go back there,” Lightfoot said in a statement.

The city of Los Angeles is on the brink of issuing a new stay-at-home order and at least 14 states have reported record hospitalizations so far in July, including Alabama, Arizona, Florida, Georgia, Nevada, North Carolina and Texas.

Meanwhile, the administration of U.S. President Donald Trump is pushing for schools to reopen in a few weeks and resisting a federal mandate that people wear masks in public, part of what New York Governor Andrew Cuomo called an “incompetent” federal government response.

“I’ve said to the president from Day One: This virus does not respond to politics,” Cuomo told a news conference. “The solution is medicine and science.”

WHITE HOUSE BRIEFINGS RESUME

The country remained “totally unprepared,” Cuomo said, as other states lagged in testing, contact tracing, and personal protective equipment for doctors and nurses.

“Their mistake was they listened to the president,” Cuomo said, while also blasting “stupid and reckless” people in his own state who persistently gather in large groups.

On Monday Trump, under fire over his administration’s response to the surging virus, said he would on Tuesday resume holding news briefings on the pandemic after a lengthy hiatus.

White House debate has centered on whether Trump should risk doing daily briefings after he was mocked for musing that people might inject household disinfectants as a way to protect themselves from contracting the virus.

Last Friday Trump senior adviser Kellyanne Conway told reporters she favored a return of the briefings, which she said had bolstered his approval ratings.

New York state, where the virus took hold early this year before spreading to other states, recorded only eight deaths on Sunday while the total number of people hospitalized for the disease fell to 716, the fewest since March 18, Cuomo said.

However a Reuters analysis of data from the COVID Tracking Project showed cases rose by more than 5,000 in the past week, the first week-over-week increase since April, breaking a 13-week streak of declines.

New York City entered a new phase on Monday that will allow low-risk outdoor activity, entertainment at 33 percent capacity and professional sports events. But Major League Baseball’s Yankees and Mets will start their seasons in empty New York City ballparks, indoor dining in restaurants is still prohibited, and bars are subject to social distancing rules.

(Reporting by Daniel Trotta, Maria Caspani, Doina Chiacu and Lisa Shumaker; Editing by Howard Goller)

U.S. Congress girds for a fight over new coronavirus aid bill

By David Morgan and Doina Chiacu

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – U.S. Senate Democrats are prepared to block Republicans from moving forward on a partisan coronavirus aid bill, the chamber’s top Democrat warned on Monday, as Republican leaders were expected to meet at the White House to discuss legislation.

The Republican-controlled Senate and Democratic-led House of Representatives have less than two weeks to hammer out a new relief package before enhanced unemployment benefits run out for tens of millions of American workers made jobless by the COVID-19 pandemic.

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and House Republican leader Kevin McCarthy were due to discuss legislation with President Donald Trump and Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin at the White House on Monday, a White House official said over the weekend.

But Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer warned Republicans not to try to move forward on their own legislation, saying Senate and House Democrats would unite to demand bipartisan action.

“We will stand together again if we must,” Schumer said in a letter to colleagues. “A bipartisan, bicameral process will result in a much better bill for the American people.”

Congress has so far passed legislation committing $3 trillion to the crisis. In the more than 12 weeks since Trump signed the last response law, the number of U.S. coronavirus cases has more than tripled to over 3.7 million.

Similar partisan standoffs preceded the last bills.

Senate Republican plans to unveil a coronavirus bill this week have been upstaged by a White House effort to eliminate billions of dollars for coronavirus testing and tracing from the legislation.

“That goes beyond ignorance. It’s just beyond the pale. Hopefully, it was a mistake and they’ll back off it, because it is so very wrong,” House Speaker Nancy Pelosi told MSNBC.

Republicans and Democrats appear to be far apart on what should be included in the next coronavirus package.

Republicans have circulated draft documents laying out liability protections for businesses, schools, government agencies and charities.

Democrats, who oppose liability protections, have pledged to fight for legislation akin to the $3 trillion bill that the House approved in mid-May. McConnell has said his bill would not cost more than $1 trillion.

(Reporting by Doina Chiacu and David Morgan; Editing by Scott Malone and Jonathan Oatis)

U.S. officials defend Portland crackdown: ‘We’re not going to apologize’

By Doina Chiacu and Lisa Lambert

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Top Homeland Security officials said on Monday they had no intention of pulling back in Portland, Oregon, and defended the federal crackdown on anti-racism protests, including the use of unmarked cars and unidentified officers in camouflage.

The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) sent law enforcement units to Portland to back up the Federal Protective Service responsible for guarding U.S. government facilities after receiving intelligence about planned attacks around July 4, the DHS officials said.

“DHS is not going to back down from our responsibilities. We are not escalating, we are protecting,” Chad Wolf, acting secretary of Homeland Security, told Fox News.

President Donald Trump condemned protests in Portland and violence in other “Democrat-run” cities on Sunday as his Republican administration moves to intervene in urban centers he says have lost control of demonstrations. Protests began across the country after the police killing of African American George Floyd in Minneapolis in late May.

In Portland, federal officers last week started cracking down on crowds, using tear gas to disperse protesters and taking some into custody in unmarked cars.

Portland Police early on Monday provided details on another tense night between protesters and federal law enforcement in the city, saying federal agents used tear gas to disperse a crowd that had gathered outside a federal courthouse downtown.

Wolf said federal law enforcement was doing its job.

“We’re not going to apologize for it,” he said. “We’re going to do it professionally and do it correctly.”

The clampdown in the liberal city has drawn widespread criticism and legal challenges as videos surfaced of officers without clear identification badges using force and unmarked vehicles to arrest protesters without explanation.

Ken Cuccinelli, the acting Department of Homeland Security (DHS) deputy secretary, said the federal officers wore the same uniforms every day and the crowds knew who they were. He also defended the use of unmarked cars as routine.

“Unmarked police vehicles are so common it’s barely worth discussion,” he told CNN.

Cuccinelli said if federal authorities receive the same kind of intelligence threat in other places, they would respond the same way. “It’s really as simple as that,” he said.

On Sunday, Democrats in the U.S. House of Representatives demanded internal investigations into whether the Justice and Homeland Security departments “abused emergency authorities” in handling the Portland protests.

Portland’s mayor called the intervention an abuse of federal power and said it was escalating the violence. Oregon’s attorney general filed a lawsuit against the federal agencies, saying they had seized and detained people without probable cause.

Cuccinelli dismissed local leaders’ calls to leave the city.

“We will maintain our presence,” he said.

(Reporting by Doina Chiacu and Lisa Lambert in Washington, additional reporting by Maria Caspani in New York; Editing by Chizu Nomiyama and Jonathan Oatis)

U.S. government plans to end week with third execution after 17-year hiatus

By Jonathan Allen

(Reuters) – A week that marked the return of capital punishment by the U.S. government after a 17-year hiatus was due to end on Friday with a third planned execution of a federal prisoner.

If President Donald Trump’s administration faces no legal obstacle in putting Dustin Lee Honken, a convicted murderer, to death by lethal injection at 4 p.m. EDT (2000 GMT), it will have completed as many executions in a few days as happened in the preceding 57 years.

Lawyers for the condemned men have amassed legal challenges, which include arguments that the U.S. Department of Justice’s new one-drug lethal-injection protocol breaches a constitutional ban on cruel and unusual punishments.

These arguments have been rejected twice this week in overnight rulings by a 5-4 majority in the Supreme Court.

Dustin Honken was a dealer in illegal methamphetamine when he and his girlfriend murdered five people in Iowa in 1993, including two girls aged 10 and 6. He was convicted in 2004.

He is one of several inmates on federal death row in Terre Haute, Indiana, who have said the new one-drug protocol, which replaces a three-drug protocol the government last used in 2003, would cause an unnecessarily painful death.

The litigation will continue in the U.S. District Court in Washington with the surviving inmates. Since last year, Judge Tanya Chutkan, who is overseeing the cases, has ordered injunctions on three occasions delaying the scheduled executions to allow the legal challenges to play out. All three were overruled by the Supreme Court.

Two other men convicted of murdering children were executed in Terre Haute earlier this week: Daniel Lee on Tuesday, and Wesley Purkey on Thursday.

Families of the killers’ victims have been divided, reflecting broader public disagreement over capital punishment, which has been abolished by most other countries. Relatives of Lee’s victims pleaded for Trump to scrap Lee’s execution. The father of the 16-year-old girl murdered by Purkey told reporters that Purkey’s death brought some resolution to his grief.

Cassandra Stubbs, director of the American Civil Liberties Union’s Capital Punishment Project, called it “a truly dark period for our country.” She joined the condemned men’s lawyers in criticizing higher courts in what they called a rush to short-circuit their legal rights.

While the Supreme Court’s conservative majority wrote that it had established that lethal injection was a constitutional method, some of the liberal justices complained new problems raised by the changed protocol were being dismissed too hastily.

“I remain convinced of the importance of reconsidering the constitutionality of the death penalty itself,” Justice Stephen Breyer wrote in a dissenting opinion on Thursday.

(Reporting by Jonathan Allen in New York; editing by Jonathan Oatis)

U.S. aircraft carriers return to South China Sea amid rising tensions

By James Pearson

HANOI (Reuters) – For the second time in two weeks, the United States has deployed two aircraft carriers to the South China Sea, the U.S. Navy said on Friday, as China and the United States accuse each other of stoking tensions in the region.

The USS Nimitz and USS Ronald Reagan carried out operations and military exercises in the contested waterway between July 4 and July 6, and returned to the region on Friday, according to a U.S. Navy statement.

“Nimitz and Reagan Carrier Strike Groups are operating in the South China Sea, wherever international law allows, to reinforce our commitment to a free and open Indo-Pacific, a rules based international order, and to our allies and partners in the region,” Rear Admiral Jim Kirk, commander of the Nimitz, said in the statement.

The presence of the carriers was not in response to political or world events, the statement added, but relations between Washington and Beijing are currently strained over everything from the new coronavirus to trade to Hong Kong.

Heated rhetoric has been on the rise in the region, where Brunei, Malaysia, the Philippines, Taiwan and Vietnam challenge China’s claim to about 90% of the sea.

China held military drills in the sea earlier this month, drawing strong condemnation from both Vietnam and the Philippines, at the same time as the two carriers first crossed the waterway for what the U.S. Navy said were pre-planned exercises.

The U.S. Navy says its carriers have long carried out exercises in the Western Pacific, including in the South China Sea, which extends for some 1,500 km (900 miles). At one point recently, the United States had three carriers in the region.

About $3 trillion of trade passes through the South China Sea each year. The United States accuses China of trying to intimidate Asian neighbors who might want to exploit its extensive oil and gas reserves.

(Reporting by James Pearson; Editing by Simon Cameron-Moore)

Netanyahu ally wants West Bank ‘cultivation’ now, not annexation

By Dan Williams

JERUSALEM (Reuters) – Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s top coalition partner wants Israel to shelve planned West Bank annexations and instead focus on improving conditions for Jewish settlers and Palestinians in the occupied territory, two cabinet ministers said on Friday.

Centrist ex-general Benny Gantz and the conservative Netanyahu agreed to begin discussing annexations as of July 1, but the plan — already dogged by diplomatic blow-back — has been sidelined by a resurgence of coronavirus.

Gantz says the health crisis should take precedence over any West Bank moves that may inflame conflict with the Palestinians. The Israeli-occupied West Bank is part of territory Israel captured in the 1967 Middle East war.

Netanyahu could go it alone in declaring Israeli sovereignty over the West Bank settlements and strategic Jordan Valley. But Gantz’s misgivings have complicated Israeli efforts to present a united front on annexations and how they might fit with U.S. President Donald Trump’s plan for Middle East peace.

While Gantz — whose popularity has plunged since he broke with an opposition alliance to join Netanyahu in March — has limited political clout, his role as defense minister also puts him directly in charge of civilian activities in the West Bank.

Alon Schuster, Israel’s agriculture minister and a member of Gantz’s Blue and White party, said he was working to achieve “cultivation and not annexation, now” for West Bank farmers.

“We need to bring water to the Jordan Valley — for both the Israelis and the Palestinians who live there, by the way — and to improve electricity,” Schuster told Tel Aviv radio station 102 FM. “Why quarrel and waste time? … I hope we expend our national resources on this.”

Another Blue and White minister said this was also Gantz’s approach, and that the party leader believed working on West Bank infrastructure shared by settlers and Palestinians would “enable coexistence in accordance with the Trump plan”.

Asked to respond, Netanyahu’s office declined comment.

The Palestinians have rejected the Trump plan, which envisages them gaining statehood in 70% of the West Bank, as a non-starter. European powers worry unilateral Israeli territorial moves could kill off long-moribund peacemaking.

Senior ministers from Netanyahu’s Likud party have urged annexation now. Some privately worry that Trump’s interest will wane as the U.S. election in November nears, and that should he lose, that would close a window of opportunity for annexation.

(Writing by Dan Williams; Editing by Catherine Evans)

Kids, safety and schools: A pandemic debate plays out in California county

By Sharon Bernstein

SACRAMENTO, Calif. (Reuters) – In Sutter County in California’s bucolic Sacramento Valley, coronavirus cases are rising, but Mike Ziegenmeyer wants his kids back in the classroom.

Unlike big-city school districts that plan to offer only remote learning this fall as COVID-19 rages through the state, several school districts in this agricultural region – once part of the 19th century gold rush – intend to accommodate that wish.

“I want my kids in school,” said Ziegenmeyer, a county supervisor and political conservative. “I think they need the social interaction.”

Ziegenmeyer, at least for now, will get his wish. The tiny Brittan School District where his three children attend class plans to bring students back to the classroom.

But opposition by some other parents in the county shows how Sutter County is a microcosm of a debate raging across California and the United States of whether it is safe to reopen schools amid a resurgent wave of coronavirus cases.

Cases started rising sharply in Sutter, as elsewhere in California, at the beginning of June and have continued to climb, increasing from about 75 cases to nearly 700. At least 17 people from Sutter, with a population of 97,000 and just a few hospital beds, were hospitalized with COVID-19 as of July 16, and 378 are currently ill, county data show.

Like so many of the controversies related to the pandemic, the school issue has become increasingly politicized. Republican President Donald Trump has been urging a return to regular school schedules, while many Democrats advocate a more cautious approach, such as continuing with the virtual lessons widely introduced when the spreading pandemic forced a sudden shutdown of schools in the spring.

Ziegenmeyer resents what he says is a heavy-handed approach by Democratic Governor Gavin Newsom, who early this week put the brakes on the reopening of California’s economy as he reversed orders that had allowed many businesses to open their doors again. On Friday Newsom will release new guidelines on reopening schools.

Ziegenmeyer is also concerned parents will suffer economic harm if they can’t work because children are home from school.

HYBRID MODEL

In California, many large urban districts, including Los Angeles, San Diego and Sacramento, have said they will begin the academic year with remote instruction. But plans vary from county to county, and from one school district to another.

The board of the Yuba City Unified School District, Sutter’s county seat and its largest municipality with 67,000 residents, voted last week to reopen with traditional instruction, five days per week.

The move, which was against the superintendent’s recommendation, stunned parents and teachers expecting either remote learning or a hybrid model, under which children attend small classes for part of the week, with strict social distancing. The teachers union began tense negotiations on Thursday over the plan.

“It is my hope that they will change their minds,” said Dina Luetgens, president of the Yuba City Teachers Association, which wants a hybrid model under which only half the district’s students would be on campus at a time.

In-person instruction, even under such a model, would require careful planning and protective gear for teachers as well as students, she said. Without that, teachers and children would be safer studying remotely from home, she said.

The school district did not respond to requests for comment. But Superintendent Doreen Osumi told the local Appeal-Democrat newspaper the district would have to implement social distancing guidelines and require children to wear face coverings. Parents who do not wish to send their children back to school will be allowed to choose a remote learning plan, although it was not immediately clear how it would be organized.

Sutter County is no stranger to not following the crowd. In May, Sutter, neighboring Yuba and Modoc counties defied state restrictions aimed at controlling the coronavirus spread and allowed restaurants, retail stores and fitness centers to reopen even though it was prohibited by state guidelines.

The guidelines Newsom is expected to release on Friday could upend plans to reopen school campuses. But even if reopening continues, Leslie Gundy says she will not send her two children back to school in Yuba City.

“We are in no way prepared to do that,” said Gundy, whose husband is a teacher in the district. “There’s been too little communication about their plan and how they are going to keep my children safe – and our teachers safe.”

(Reporting by Sharon Bernstein; Editing by Bill Tarrant and Leslie Adler)

Fauci bullish on prospects for U.S. vaccine, not worried about China winning race

By Julie Steenhuysen

(Reuters) – The leading U.S. expert on infectious diseases, Dr. Anthony Fauci, predicted on Wednesday the country will meet its goal of a coronavirus vaccine by year’s end and was unmoved by the prospect that China would get there first.

While there are no guarantees, “I feel good about the projected timetable,” Fauci told Reuters in an interview.

His comments follow promising early stage data for the Moderna Inc’s coronavirus vaccine, released on Tuesday, that was developed with scientists at the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, which Fauci directs.

Many experts see a safe and effective vaccine as the only way out of the pandemic that has infected millions and killed more than 575,000 people worldwide.

Fauci said Moderna’s results were especially promising because the vaccine appeared to offer the type of protection seen in a natural infection.

In vaccine development, “one of the things that you hope for is that your vaccine induces a response that’s comparable to a natural infection, because theoretically, the best vaccine you could possibly ever get is a natural infection.”

Moderna’s candidate, which is set to enter the last stage of testing on July 27, is just one of more than a hundred vaccines in development globally, but only one of a few contenders that have earned millions of dollars in backing from Operation Warp Speed, the White House program that aims to deliver more than 300 million doses of a safe and effective COVID-19 vaccine by January.

Fauci, who has become a popular and trusted figure during the coronavirus outbreak, came under criticism from President Donald Trump and some of his Republican allies as Fauci cautioned against reopening the U.S. economy too soon.

Asked how he copes with the attacks on his character and allegiance to the president, Fauci told Reuters, “I don’t let it bother me. What we’re doing with vaccines, what we’re doing with therapeutics, what we’re doing with clinical trials is the real substance,” Fauci said.

VACCINE RACE

As U.S. states have begun to reopen businesses and coronavirus infections have soared, some White House officials have pointed fingers at China, where the virus first emerged late last year.

Fauci was unmoved by the prospect that China could cross the finish line first. Although he said he hopes China succeeds, he does not think they will win the vaccine race, at least not by much.

“I think everybody’s sort of on the same track.” If they do get there, he said, “They’re not going to get it particularly sooner than we get it. That’s for sure.”

Ultimately, he hopes multiple successful candidates prevail. “I don’t worry about anybody getting there first.”

Even if a vaccine succeeds in provoking an immune response, Fauci said it is still not clear how long that protection will last.

“These are questions that don’t have answers right now, because we’re only six months into the outbreak.” He said it may take a year before that immunity question is answered.

A recent Reuters poll found that a quarter of Americans are hesitant about taking a vaccine, voicing concern that the record pace of development could compromise safety. Fauci said he is aware of such concerns.

“It’s understandable, but unjustified,” he said. “We’re not compromising safety; we’re not compromising scientific integrity.”

Fauci said the normal development process of waiting for a vaccine to be proven effective before manufacturing begins wastes precious time.

“If the vaccine doesn’t work, the only thing you’ve lost is money.”

(Reporting by Julie Steenhuysen in Chicago; Editing by Lisa Shumaker)

Germany urges WHO to hasten review of its handling of pandemic

BRUSSELS/BERLIN (Reuters) – Germany’s health minister urged the World Health Organisation (WHO) to speed up its review of how it handled the pandemic, apparently signalling Europe’s tougher line on the United Nations body.

Berlin, which holds the rotating presidency of the European Union, has so far largely shielded the organization from the most intense criticism by Washington, which wants to leave the WHO because of its alleged excessive closeness to China.

But now Germany seems to be taking a more assertive position.

Spahn told reporters he had discussed the review of the WHO’s management of the crisis with its chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus twice over the last 20 days.

“In both conversations I encouraged him very clearly to launch this independent commission of experts and to expedite its launch,” Spahn said.

The WHO said last week it was setting up an independent panel to review its handling of the COVID-19 pandemic and the response by governments.

U.S. President Donald Trump has accused the WHO of being too close to China and not doing enough to question Beijing’s actions at the start of the crisis. Tedros has dismissed the suggestions and said his agency kept the world informed.

Tedros has said the panel will provide an interim report to an annual meeting of health ministers in November and present a “substantive report” next May.

Spahn said the review was important now, even if the pandemic is still raging across the world, because “we can already draw conclusions.”

This could lead to quick actions over the body’s governance and to improve “cooperation between the political and the scientific level” of the organisation, Spahn added.

EU governments have said the review should be followed by a reform of the organisation, a possibility already being discussed with the United States and other members of the G7 group of rich countries, officials told Reuters.

One official had said the aim was to ensure WHO’s independence.

(Reporting by Francesco Guarascio @fraguarascio in Brussles, Joseph Nasr and Andeas Rinke in Berlin, Editing by William Maclean)