WASHINGTON (MaceNews) – The following is Thursday’s status check of developments in the U.S. that can influence economic, health and political outcomes.
- The quiet day-long procession of Americans paying respect to Ruth Bader Ginsburg was the day’s solemn background music, an impressive tribute to a remarkable woman. And then President Trump came by, wearing a black mask, and there was a momentarily discordant note as some of the crowd chanted “Vote Him Out.” The White House spokeswoman called it an “appalling” display but not surprising from “the heart of the swamp.” The president said later he couldn’t make out what the chanters were saying.
- Swirling controversy, concerning overtones, ambiguity and Donald Trump, another news cocktail that spreads a fog of speculation and dismay. In other words another routine day leading up to the presidential election. As “Status Check” led off Wednesday night, so the headlines followed on Thursday, President Trump won’t say he’ll necessarily accept the election results if he loses. What does that mean exactly, that he might foment violence in the streets if he doesn’t win? Of course Republican party lawyers will fight for every disputed ballot just as will Democratic lawyers. The Republican-controlled Senate quickly passed a resolution that once would have been considered remarkable, sponsored by a Democrat, saying, “There should be no disruptions by the president or any person in power to overturn the will of the people.” Several Republicans, including the Senate Majority Leader, also declared no one, presumably including the president, will interfere. And to remember, once upon a time, American apathy about election turnout was an embarrassment. “The president will accept the results of a free and fair election,” the president’s spokeswoman said in the afternoon. The president himself, in a ropeline comment during the day, repeated, “I’m not sure that it can be” honest, referring to an election that involves so many unsolicited mail-in ballots. Later in a CNN interview, White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows said, “I fully expect to have a peaceful transfer of power.” Michael Cohen, the president’s former attorney, appearing on CNN again Thursday night repeated Trump will never allow a peaceful transition. As a “master of chaos,” Cohen said, “everything he’s doing is deflection.”
- And then the Pennsylvania disclosure, first by President Trump in a morning Fox interview, then by White House spokeswoman Kayleigh McEnany in her afternoon briefing and finally in an unusual Department of Justice press release, that seven military ballots in the past Pennsylvania primary had been discarded because they had been accidentally opened, all marked for the president. The FBI is investigating. Does the discovery strengthen voter confidence in voting oversight, as the Democratic state attorney general said. Or does it reinforce the president’s narrative about rampant voter fraud? Or does it mean almost nothing in a state where 6 million ballots were cast in the last presidential election? FBI Director Chris Wray testified during the day, “We have not seen historically any kind of coordinated national vote fraud.” Last week, after Wray’s testimony that Russia is still trying to disrupt the election, Trump had said, “I did not like his answers.”
- At his afternoon Charlotte stop, President Trump followed through and signed a long-promised executive order to protect individuals with preexisting conditions and to lower costs to provide more affordable health care. The existing law, the Affordable Care Act, already does that but could be struck down by the Supreme Court as the Trump administration has asked. An administration rule to allow pharmaceuticals to be imported from Canada was made final and another rule, to allow low-income Americans to afford insulin and Epi-Pens was proposed. Thirty-three million seniors will receive prescription drug discount cards. Hospitals will have to itemize charges when patients are discharged.
- CNBC reported that what once were hundreds of lawsuits filed by American firms before the U.S. Court of International Trade has grown to be several thousand, all trying to overturn the tariffs they pay on imports from China. President Trump has consistently and incorrectly insisted China pays the 25% tariffs on nearly $400 billion in products, not American importers.
- Federal Reserve Chair Jay Powell had his third and final appearance before a congressional committee this week, repeating to the Senate Banking Committee there’s a potential “downside” to not providing more congressional pandemic relief. He repeated savings and CARES Act checks are running out. He was accompanied by Treasury Secretary Stephen Mnuchin, who repeated he wished Congress would authorize the reallocation of hundreds of billions for a second round of Paycheck Protection Program checks aimed at small business in the absence of a more comprehensive measure. The Senate is expected to easily pass budget legislation Friday that agrees with the House to prevent a government shutdown midnight Wednesday. There was no move to break the impasse on pandemic legislation for which Democrats are holding out for a trillion dollars more than Republicans are offering. Congress is preparing to abandon Washington for pre-election campaigning.
- In the pandemic, more than 1,000 people died from COVID-19 again in the latest 24-hour period as the rate of fatalities has failed to moderate as government officials recently predicted would happen by now. The NYT virus tracker said there have been an average of 41,882 new cases a day in the past week, an increase of 14% from two weeks previous. New York and as many as four other states say they will conduct their own final reviews of any vaccine for safety and effectiveness, not trusting that the federal government’s approval process has been free of undue White House pressure. The IHME middle-of-the-range projection for deaths by Jan. 1 is 371,509. The top of the range, assuming less mitigation, is 425,918.
- Upcoming economic statistics include the latest report of durable goods orders at 8:30a ET. The morning’s report on new-home sales rose by a strong 4.8% to top a 1 million unit annual rate in August, the highest since September 2006. As Kevin Kastner also details elsewhere on this macenews.com site, the weekly count of new claims for state unemployment benefits failed to substantially recede, coming in at 870,000, “within the same narrow range for the last four weeks.”
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