–Presidential Aide Hope Hicks Tests Positive
WASHINGTON (MaceNews) – The following is Thursday’s status check of developments in the U.S. that can influence economic, health and political outcomes.
· Amazon said Thursday 20,000 of its 1.4 million employees have tested positive for the coronavirus and on Wednesday alone, another 41,000 cases were diagnosed positive across the country, among them a White House official who worked closely with President Trump, Hope Hicks. (More below.) More than half the states continue to show rising numbers of cases. American and United airlines notified nearly 30,000 employees they are being laid off. Publisher Houghton Mifflin Harcourt and previously Walt Disney and Allstate began their own extensive layoffs suggesting they are the leading edge of an enlarging wave. Two charts, coronavirus cases and layoffs, are showing ascending totals. A presidential signature can stop the ascending trajectories in their tracks, at least for a time. The billions and billions for increased testing and for more jobless benefits, business payroll support, rent and mortgage subsidies, paid leave and much more would extend the bridge further to a vaccine and, someday, to an approach to normalcy. Whether $1.6 trillion or $1.8 trillion or whatever House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Treasury Secretary Stephen Mnuchin might settle on, the capital and the rest of the country aren’t flinching at amounts so large that could equip a major war. The White House’s current offer, $1.62 trillion, is a number so staggeringly large it and the funds previously allotted will reverberate in the nation’s budget numbers for the next decade or longer.
· What if there is no agreement? It’s no exaggeration to say President Trump and Pelosi despite each other and in a personal way, beyond professional partisan antipathy. Yet both are assumed capable of putting that aside to meet the needs of a nation facing monumental challenges. Maybe. If not, the future becomes potentially dystopian, without the accelerated testing and contact tracing the next round of pandemic relief would pay for, without the money in the mail for the 12 to 16 million people who are unemployed, according to how they are counted. The vaccine will not be immediate balm for the economy even in the most optimistic scenario. Hundreds of thousands may be forced to take new jobs at lower pay, if they can find them. If the bridge to next year’s outcome, whatever it is, does not reach far enough the pain will keep deepening from now on. So the stakes are high as Pelosi and Mnuchin continue talking.
· Meanwhile, the House Thursday night passed an updated Heroes Act 214-207. The $2.2 trillion virus relief bill saw 18 Democrats vote “no” along with all Republicans. Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell has repeated he wants a less expensive bill and there will be no vote on it in the upper body. Again, all eyes on the Pelosi/Mnuchin talks.
· Lawyers in Texas working for local government and local civic groups are girding for court battles between counties and the governor after he ordered ballot drop-off collection centers be limited to just one per county. In the largest, Harris County, that means going from about a dozen to just one. Local Democratic officials are saying Republican Gov. Greg Abbott’s explanation that he is taking an anti-virus precaution is a smokescreen for voter suppression.
· Back to Hope Hicks, President Trump’s inner circle confidant and adviser, whose initial positive coronavirus test is being backed up with more tests at this hour to see if it was a false positive. All indicators, including the fact she is apparently symptomatic, are that it won’t be a false alarm. By Friday morning the full implications may be better known. Cable news channels showed video of her walking with other White House aides like Stephen Miller, Jared Kushner and Dan Scavino – all without masks – to enter the close confines of the Marine 1 helicopter for the 12-minute hop to Joint Base Andrews Wednesday. The subsequent trip on Air Force One to the MAGA rally in Duluth, the interim meetings, the trip back, whatever White House gatherings took place, a New Jersey fundraiser Thursday and all the contacts in between were opportunities for the virus to travel during a time when Hicks may have been contagious. In a few hours it may be known if the president and the First Lady and anyone else within the White House has tested positive. Since the infection may not be diagnosable immediately there will be more days of uncertainty as tests are repeated. It can take five to seven days before an infection is detectable. Contact tracing will be employed to determine who infected Hicks. First reported by Bloomberg News and soon confirmed by other media, the news was only later confirmed by the White House and then by President Trump in a Fox News interview and in a tweet. Questions were immediately raised for how long the White House knew of Hicks’ positive test without disclosing it. President Trump’s tweet on the subject was posted late Thursday night:
“Hope Hicks, who has been working so hard without even taking a small break, has just tested positive for Covid 19. Terrible! The First Lady and I are waiting for our test results. In the meantime, we will begin our quarantine process!”
· In upcoming economic statistics, the monthly Bureau of Labor Statistics jobs report is at 8:30a ET followed by consumer sentiment at 10a along with factory orders.
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