Story 1: President Trumps Declares A National Emergency — Unleashes Full Power of United States Government — $50 Billion in New Funding To Deal With COVID-19 Pandemic — Videos
BREAKING: Donald Trump declares a national emergency
Trump declares National Emergency over coronavirus
Trump declares national emergency over coronavirus pandemic
Tucker: Regular life is all but suspended
Hannity: Major businesses working with Trump on coronavirus
Trump declares virus emergency; Pelosi announces aid deal
By LISA MASCARO, ZEKE MILLER, ANDREW TAYLOR and JILL COLVIN
President Donald Trump on Friday declared the coronavirus pandemic a national emergency in order to free up more money and resources. But he denied any responsibility for delays in making testing available for the new virus, whose spread has roiled markets and disrupted the lives of everyday Americans.
Speaking from the Rose Garden, Trump said, “I am officially declaring a national emergency,” unleashing as much as $50 billion for state and local governments to respond to the outbreak.
Trump also announced a range of executive actions, including a new public-private partnership to expand coronavirus testing capabilities with drive-through locations, as his administration has come under fire for being too slow in making the test available.
Trump said, “I don’t take responsibility at all” for the slow rollout of testing.
Late Friday, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi announced a deal with the Trump administration for an aid package from Congress that aims at direct relief to Americans — free testing, two weeks of sick pay for workers, enhanced unemployment benefits and bolstered food programs.
“We are proud to have reached an agreement with the Administration to resolve outstanding challenges, and now will soon pass the Families First Coronavirus Response Act,” Pelosi announced in a letter to colleagues. The House was poised to vote.
The crush of late-day activity capped a tumultuous week in Washington as the fast-moving virus shuttered the capital’s power centers, roiled financial markets and left ordinary Americans suddenly navigating through self-quarantines, school closures and a changed way of life.
The White House was under enormous pressure, dealing with the crisis on multiple fronts as it encroached ever closer on the president.
Trump has been known to flout public health advice — eagerly shaking hands during the more than hour-long afternoon event — but acknowledged he “most likely” will be tested now after having been in contact with several officials who have tested positive for the virus. “Fairly soon,” he said.
Still, Trump said officials don’t want people taking the test unless they have certain symptoms. “We don’t want people without symptoms to go and do that test,” Trump said, adding, “It’s totally unnecessary.”
Additionally, Trump took a number of other actions to bolster energy markets, ease the financial burden for Americans with student loans and give medical professionals additional “flexibility” in treating patients during the public health crisis.
“Through a very collective action and shared sacrifice, national determination, we will overcome the threat of the virus,” Trump said.
Central to the aid package from Congress, which builds on an emergency $8.3 billion measure approved last week, is the free testing and sick pay provisions.
Providing sick pay for workers is a crucial element of federal efforts to stop the rapid spread of the infection. Officials warn that the nation’s healthcare system could quickly become overwhelmed with gravely sick patients, as suddenly happened in Italy, one of the countries hardest hit by the virus.
The ability to ensure paychecks will keep flowing — for people who stay home as a preventative measure or because they’re feeling ill or caring for others — can help assure Americans they will not fall into financial hardship.
Hopes for swiftly passing the package seemed to be fading throughout the day as talks dragged on and Trump dismissed it during as “not doing enough.”
Ahead of Trump’s new conference, Pelosi delivered a statement from the speaker’s balcony at the Capitol imploring the Trump administration and congressional Republicans to “put families first” by backing the effort to provide Americans with relief.
“Our great nation has faced crisis before,” Pelosi said. “And every time, thanks to the courage and optimism of the American people, we have prevailed. Now, working together, we will once again prevail.”
Pelosi and Mnuchin engaged in days of around-the-clock negotiations with cross-town phone calls that continued even as Trump was speaking, both indicating earlier they were close to a deal.
They both promised a third coronavirus package will follow soon, with more aggressive steps to boost the U.S. economy, which economists fear has already slipped into recession.
The financial markets closed on an upswing after one of the worst nosedives since the 1987 downturn.
For most people, the new coronavirus causes only mild or moderate symptoms, such as fever and cough. For some, especially older adults and people with existing health problems, it can cause more severe illness, including pneumonia.
The vast majority of people recover. According to the World Health Organization, people with mild illness recover in about two weeks, while those with more severe illness may take three to six weeks to be over it.
Trump said he was gratified that Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro tested negative for the virus, after the pair sat next to each other for an extended period of time last weekend at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago club. A senior aide to Bolsonaro tested positive.
Trump’s daugher, Ivanka Trump, worked from home Friday after meeting with Australian Home Affairs Minister Peter Dutton, now in isolation at a hospital after testing positive for the coronavirus. White House spokesman Judd Deere said she was evaluated by the White House Medical Unit and it was determined that because she was exhibiting no symptoms she does not need to self-quarantine.
Attorney General William Barr, who also met with the Australian official, was staying home Friday, though he “felt great and wasn’t showing any symptoms,” according to his spokeswoman Kerri Kupec.
Several lawmakers, including some close to Trump, have also been exposed to people who tested positive for the virus, and are self-isolating.
Among them are Republican Sens. Lindsey Graham and Rick Scott, who were at Trump’s club on the weekend. Graham announced Friday that he also met with the Australian official who has now tested positive. And GOP Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas, who had previously isolated himself after a potential exposure at a conservative conference in Washington, said Friday he met with a Spanish official and is now self-quarantining.
Hospitals welcomed Trump’s emergency declaration, which they and lawmakers in Congress had been requesting. It allows the Health and Human Services Department to temporarily waive certain federal rules that can make it harder for hospitals and other health care facilities to respond to an emergency.
The American Medical Association said the emergency declaration would help ensure America’s health care system has sufficient resources to properly respond to the ongoing outbreak.
Trump has struggled to show he’s on top of the crisis, after giving conflicting descriptions of what the U.S. is doing to combat the virus. On Wednesday he announced he would ban travel to the U.S. from Europe, and on Friday he suggested extending that to the U.K. because of a recent rise in cases.
Dr. Anthony Fauci, infectious disease chief at the National Institutes of Health, said more tests would be available over the next week, but warned, “We still have a long way to go.”
Fauci said Friday, “There will be many more cases. But we’ll take care of that, and ultimately, as the president said, this will end.”
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Associated Press writers Aamer Madhani, Alan Fram, Lauran Neergaard, Martin Crutsinger, Laurie Kellman, Michael Balsamo and Kevin Freking in Washington and Bill Barrow in Atlanta contributed to this report.
Fed support not enough to salvage stocks gripped by virus fear
As one of the slowest bulls, it still beats the rest of world
Nobody knew then, but it was the start of a rally that would ultimately add $20 trillion to equities and become the most enduring in history.
Now, a bull market that nobody saw coming has ended the same way it began — amid panic, and with little warning. Based on when it last hit a record, the Dow plunged 20% from Feb. 12, and investors who had only just begun to wade back in are getting crushed by a global health scare that has, thus far, resisted every effort to halt. (Inconveniently for market statisticians, the bear market arrived first in the Dow and not their preferred gauge, the S&P 500.)
In the end, it was one more crisis than could be contained by the market’s guardians. What set apart this bull market was, of course, the Federal Reserve. In modern history, no rally has been more closely associated with the central bank — and its unprecedented experiments in monetary policy — than this one. But policy makers who had so successfully shielded investors from credit crises, subpar economic growth and all manner of market turmoil, had no answer for a virus threatening to cause a global recession.
“What changed during this bull market is we assumed the Fed could solve everything. If this becomes a global demand problem, the Fed won’t be as able to help –- not with conventional policy,” said Peter Tchir, head of macro strategy at Academy Securities LLC.
It’s testament to the power of the advance that a plunge as violent as this one has lowered the annualized bull market return by less than 2 percentage points. If by a miracle you bought at the bottom, you’re still sitting on handsome gains — about 15% a year. Someone who waited 12 months before jumping in is doing fine, too.
“The bull market became an old friend and maybe we took its ability to fly for granted a bit too much, its ability to continue to power on,” said Marvin Loh, senior global macro strategist for State Street. “It was unique, it was euphoric. It made a lot of people feel great. But a lot of people didn’t participate as much as they could have, also.”
Not everyone will mourn an era whose early stages were fueled by Ben Bernanke’s controversial approach to stimulus, experiments with names like Quantitative Easing and Operation Twist designed to spur investment by pushing banks and individuals out of the fixed-income havens to which they flocked during the crisis. Every time the rally threatened to collapse — and shares twice before came within points of losing 20% — central bank pronouncements breathed new life.
“Looking back on this bull market, financial textbooks will be re-written to start with central bank policy,” said Matt Miskin, co-chief investment strategist at John Hancock Investment Management. “And that section could equate to nearly half the content.”
The rally was a monster by many measures. At its peak on Feb. 19, the S&P 500 needed to climb about 3% more to eclipse the return of the mother of all bull markets, the dot-com frenzy that lifted it 545%. At the same time, its slow-and-steady nature kept it out of the ranks of the fastest. Going by the S&P 500 — which isn’t in a bear market, technically — the 18.3% annualized gain at the top is actually smaller than all but one of 12 previous bull markets.
Its biggest claim to history is its length. While a robust debate exists among wonks over how to date bull markets, most statisticians consider this to be the most durable on record. It lasted 11 years and two days and featured two calendar years in which the total return exceeded 30%.
The unrelenting climb has made U.S. stocks the envy of the world for a decade. In the past 10 years, the S&P 500’s gained more than 135%, compared with an advance of about 60% in the MSCI All-Country World Index. Emerging market stocks fell around 2% over that period.
“It was an all-American bull market. It paid to be provincial,” said Doug Ramsey, chief investment officer at Leuthold Group. “Toward the end, consumer discretionary did exceptionally well, especially considering we came out of a massive consumer recession. That’s an all-American thing: consumption.”
Amid Europe’s credit crisis, a downgraded U.S. credit rating, the Flash Crash, the rally struggled to gain converts early on — some wags called it the most hated bull market ever. In later stages a different sort of contempt began to emerge, from struggling American wage earners who saw equity returns as a Fed-fomented gift to the 1%. At various times in the past decade the return on the S&P 500 has exceeded growth in worker pay by the most on record. Four tech megacaps have seen their value jump over $1 trillion.
That aside, for anyone depending on the market for old-age money, the sight of the plunge has been harrowing.
“Someday I’ll tell my grandchildren how our generation rode an investment fad that overweighted stocks in our portfolios from the highs down to the lows, leaving us with less than we hoped for in retirement,” said Chris Rupkey, chief financial economist for MUFG Union Bank. “The end of the bull market really means an end of confidence in our own futures. We’ll never see a repeat of 2019’s 28.8% gain in the S&P 500 again.”
Story 2: World Health Organization (WHO) Declares COVID-19 Pandemic — 4 Countries (China, Iran, Italy, and South Korea ) Have Most Cases and Over 100 Countries Have Reported Cases– Videos
BREAKING: Coronavirus declared a pandemic by WHO
What can we expect from Trump’s national address on coronavirus pandemic?
Coronavirus IS a pandemic: World Health Organization dramatically upgrades COVID-19 outbreak after ‘severity’ of cases across the globe and calls out ‘alarming inaction’ by some governments
The WHO said it was ‘deeply concerned by the alarming levels of spread and severity’ of the coronavirus
A pandemic is the uncontrolled spread of a new disease – more than 100 countries have recorded cases
Europe is now the centre of the crisis, with growing outbreaks in Italy, Spain, France, Germany and the UK
At least 125,000 patients have been infected and 4,000 have died since the outbreak began last December
The virus has been spreading between humans in four continents since February 28, the WHO has admitted
Do you have a story about coronavirus? Email stephen.matthews@mailonline.co.uk or ring 020 361 51181
The World Health Organization today finally declared the coronavirus outbreak a pandemic after blaming ‘alarming levels of inaction’ by governments across the planet for fueling the crisis.
As the number of confirmed cases of the bug worldwide surpassed 112,000 – and the death toll neared 4,500 – the WHO said it was ‘deeply concerned by the alarming levels of spread and severity’.
Director-General of the UN agency Dr Tedros Adhanom also blasted governments for ignoring repeated WHO pleas to take urgent and aggressive action, with cases of the deadly illness outside of China having risen 13-fold in the space of a fortnight because of escalating crises in Italy, Iran, Spain, Germany, and France.
The WHO said: ‘Pandemic is not a word to use lightly or carelessly. It is a word that, if misused, can cause unreasonable fear, or unjustified acceptance that the fight is over, leading to unnecessary suffering and death.’
In a desperate call for governments to band together and tackle the coronavirus, Dr Adhanom said: ‘We’re in this together, to do the right things with calm and protect the citizens of the world. It’s doable.’
The last pandemic – defined as the uncontrolled worldwide spread of a new disease – to be officially declared was the swine flu outbreak in 2009, which scientists estimate killed hundreds of thousands of people.
More than 125,000 people globally have already been infected with the coronavirus, which can cause pneumonia but causes mild flu-like symptoms for 98 per cent of patients.
Cases have slowed dramatically in China, where the bug first emerged at the end of December. However, the crisis has now enveloped Europe, where the number of cases rises by the day.
Around 60million Italians – whose country is the worst-hid by the infection after China – are now subject to an official curfew imposed upon them by the Italian Government.
Outbreaks are also worsening in Spain, France, Germany, and the UK; in the latter, the eighth confirmed death by the coronavirus was announced earlier, leading to charges of dithering by Boris Johnson’s administration.
Leading experts, including Germany’s health minister, have called the crisis a pandemic for weeks – and the WHO itself has admitted the killer virus has been spreading between humans in four continents since February 28.
2 Medics in hazmat suits care to a patient in Civile Hospital, Brescia, Italy. Italy is at the centre of the escalating coronavirus crisis, with more than 10,000 cases recorded
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A doctor in Wuhan, China – where the outbreak began at the end of December – checks the medicine given to an infected patient
Medical workers in Seoul, South Korea transfer a coronavirus patient to a hospital in a special tube to contain the virus
WHAT IS THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN A PANDEMIC AND AN EPIDEMIC?
An epidemic is a situation in which a disease takes hold in a single community, which could be a town, region or country.
For an epidemic to be declared, the disease must be continuing to spread among the population without people having to catch it from other people and not from the disease’s original source – in the case of the coronavirus this would be the animal market in Wuhan.
A pandemic is when this ongoing person-to-person spread of the disease happens in multiple countries around the world.
A disease being a pandemic does not make it more dangerous, nor change anything about how it affects people or what can be done to stop it.
The World Health Organization had hesitated to declare a pandemic because, for a long time, most of the cases being seen in countries outside of China were in people who had travelled there or caught it directly from someone who travelled there.
Now the disease is so widespread that people can catch it without any obvious link to China, and the numbers are continuing to rise worldwide despite travel bans, showing the virus is in constant circulation within various countries.
A report by the WHO on Monday confirmed that the virus was spreading unchecked in at least 30 countries in Europe, which is now at the centre of the global crisis.
In other developments to the escalating global crisis today:
An elderly woman became the first person to die of coronavirus in the Republic of Ireland;
Iran reported 63 new deaths from the virus in 24 hours, the highest single-day toll since it announced the first deaths from the outbreak;
Three Disneyland Paris workers tested positive for the killer infection and were placed in quarantine as the park closes two attractions;
Holiday plans were thrown into further doubt as Turkey became the latest tourist hotspot to be hit by the coronavirus;
A passenger was arrested for licking his hand and wiping it on a handrail on the Belgian subway, forcing the train to be taken off service and disinfected;
A British woman became the first person to catch the killer illness in Jamaica – it is unclear where she caught the virus;
Experts have warned Italy has a higher death rate than expected because its population is older than average.
The specific definition of a pandemic are not universally agreed upon, but there are known to be three main criteria.
These are: sustained person-to-person transmission, evidence of world-wide spread and a disease that can cause sudden illness or death.
COVID-19 is a mild flu-like illness for the overwhelming majority of patients, which may explain why the WHO was so reluctant to call it a pandemic.
Until today, it said the clusters of cases in other countries around the world could be traced back to Asia, where the situation began.
Calling the outbreak a pandemic does not mean any advice given to countries on on how to contain the killer virus will change – it is just an admission that it is now spreading in dozens of nations.
More countries have now confirmed cases of COVID-19, the disease caused by the killer infection, than those that haven’t.
Saudi Arabia temporarily suspended travel of citizens and residents and halted flights with several states on Thursday due to coronavirus fears.
The decision includes the European Union, Switzerland, India, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Philippines, Sudan, Ethiopia, South Sudan, Eritrea, Kenya, Djibouti, and Somalia, source added, saying the Kingdom also suspended entry to those coming from these countries.
Saudi Arabia also suspended passenger traffic through all land crossings with Jordan, while commercial and cargo traffic is still allowed, and the passage of exceptional humanitarian cases.
The decision excludes health workers in the Kingdom from Philippines and India, and evacuation, shipping and trade trips taking necessary precautions. Saudi Arabia has 45 coronavirus cases.
Cuba confirmed its first cases of coronavirus, while its textile industry has been drafted to fabricate masks and the government also urged citizens to make their own, amid a cash crunch and dwindling supplies worldwide.
The World Health Organization has said the coronavirus outbreak can now be classed as a pandemic. Pictured, it’s chief executive Dr Tedros Adhanom
WHAT ARE COUNTRIES DOING TO STOP THE CORONAVIRUS?
World Health Organization director-general, Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, applauded the efforts Italy, South Korea and Iran have been making to try and stop the coronavirus.
Here’s what they’re doing:
Italy
Italy’s government has this week put the entire country into a lockdown. Citizens have been told not to travel out of their hometowns unless it is necessary, and face jail time if they try to break the rules. They are allowed out to go shopping and to go to work in some cases.
Schools, museums, sports events and large gatherings have all been closed or cancelled to stop people coming together in crowds.
The country is urging all tourists who are there to leave and return to their home countries.
South Korea
South Korea has been hailed as a success in its coronavirus response as it appears to have managed to stem a rapidly spiralling outbreak. Thousands of people were infected there in a short space of time but the country locked down the worst-hit cities – Daegu and Cheongdo – and ramped up testing and isolation protocols.
The nation quickly upgraded its response to a high alert level and was meticulous in tracing the contacts of its confirmed cases and testing and isolating them, too. Rapid diagnostic tests have been available there since mid-January, Pharmaceutical Technology reports.
It issued stay-home notices to citizens in Cheongdo and Daegu and sent the cities into shutdown while officials tracked down coronavirus patients.
Iran
Iran has also seen a devastating surge in coronavirus cases in a short time but has told its citizens to stop travelling around the country.
The country’s national airline has stopped all flights to Europe and the authorities have closed all schools and universities, stopped large events and sports matches, and cut people’s working hours to try and reduce travel and slow down the spread of the virus.
There are roadblocks with checks on people travelling around the city of Qom, where the outbreak started, The Guardian reported.
At a press conference in Geneva – where the WHO is based, Dr Tedros revealed 81 countries have not reported any cases.
He said: ‘We cannot say this loudly enough, or clearly enough, or often enough: all countries can still change the course of this pandemic. Even those countries with community transmission or large clusters can turn the tide on this coronavirus.’
Dr Tedros said several countries have demonstrated the virus can be suppressed and controlled – outbreaks in China and South Korea have dramatically slowed.
But he added the ‘challenge for many countries’ now dealing with large clusters ‘is not whether they can do the same – it’s whether they will’.
Dr Tedros also said: ‘Some countries are struggling with a lack of capacity. Some countries are struggling with a lack of resources.’
And in a veiled jab at some countries battling escalating outbreaks, he added: ‘Some countries are struggling with a lack of resolve.’
He said: ‘We are grateful for the measures being taken in Iran, Italy and South Korea to slow the virus and control their COVID19 epidemics. We know that these measures are taking a heavy toll on societies and economies, just as they did in China.
‘All countries must strike a fine balance between protecting health, minimizing economic & social disruption & respecting human rights.
‘This is not just a public health crisis, it is a crisis that will touch every sector – so every sector and every individual must be involved in the fight.
‘I remind all countries that we are calling on you to: activate & scale up your emergency response mechanisms; communicate with your people about the risks and how they can protect themselves; find, isolate, test and treat every COVID19 case and trace every contact.’
An epidemic is a situation in which a disease takes hold in a single community, which could be a town, region or country. A pandemic is when this ongoing person-to-person spread of the disease happens in multiple countries around the world.
A disease being a pandemic does not make it more dangerous, nor change anything about how it affects people or what can be done to stop it.
A report by the WHO on Monday confirmed that the virus was spreading unchecked in 30 countries in Europe, which is now at the centre of the global crisis.
The list of countries include Spain, Germany and France – popular Easter holiday destinations for thousands of Brits looking to jet abroad.
It comes after an elderly woman today became the first person to die of the killer coronavirus in the Republic of Ireland.
The patient, who hasn’t been identified, suffered from respiratory symptoms before a doctor decided to test for COVID-19.
Health chiefs in Ireland did not reveal her age but said she died earlier today despite treatment at a hospital in the east of the country.
Chief medical officer Dr Tony Holohan said: ‘I would like to extend my condolences to the family and friends of this patient.’
Europe is now the centre of the world’s coronavirus crisis and has more than 19,000 cases, with numbers shooting up by the day as the situation in China stagnates
The head of the Irish Health Service Executive (HSE) Paul Reid tweeted that the Republic is entering ‘a new phase’ of coronavirus
IRAN RECORDS 63 NEW DEATHS FROM THE VIRUS – THE HIGHEST DAILY TOLL
Iran today reported 63 new deaths from the coronavirus in the past 24 hours, the highest single-day toll since it announced the first deaths from the outbreak.
In an attempt to combat the disease, firefighters were deployed this morning to spray disinfectant over the city’s streets.
Iran’s Health Ministry said the deaths are among some 9,000 confirmed cases in Iran, where the virus has spread to all of the country’s provinces.
Iran is yet to officially impose quarantines but authorities have repeatedly called on people to refrain from travelling. It has closed schools and universities and resorted to shutting hotels and other tourist accommodation to discourage travel.
Among the dead are five of Iran’s elite Revolutionary Guard members and an unspecified number of the Guard’s volunteer Basij force.
There are concerns that the number of infections across Iran is much higher than the confirmed cases reported by the government, which is struggling to contain or manage its spread. The rising casualty figures each day in Iran suggest the fight against the new coronavirus is far from over.
In other developments, a British woman died of coronavirus in Indonesia – becoming the country’s first death in the epidemic.
Indonesia’s government said the 53-year-old woman with diabetes and lung disease had died in hospital after being admitted in a critical condition.
Reports in Indonesia say she was cremated today. Her husband was also in Indonesia and is due to return to Britain soon, officials say.
It means eight Brits have now died from COVID-19. The first death to be recorded was a holidaymaker onboard the doomed Diamond Princess cruise ship, which was quarantined off the coast of Japan.
Six fatalities have since been recorded in England. Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland have yet to record any deaths.
Iran today reported 63 new deaths from the coronavirus in the past 24 hours, the highest single-day toll since it announced the first deaths from the outbreak.
In an attempt to combat the disease, firefighters were deployed this morning to spray disinfectant over the city’s streets.
Iran’s Health Ministry said the deaths are among some 9,000 confirmed cases in Iran, where the virus has spread to all of the country’s provinces.
Iran is yet to officially impose quarantines but authorities have repeatedly called on people to refrain from travelling.
It has closed schools and universities and resorted to shutting hotels and other tourist accommodation to discourage travel.
Indonesia’s government said the 53-year-old woman with diabetes and lung disease had died in hospital, reportedly the Sanglah hospital in Bali (pictured)
The British woman was reportedly cremated at this crematorium complex in Bali today (pictured) after she died following a positive test for coronavirus
Most of the cases confirmed in the UK have been in England (387). Fears are mounting that the worsening crisis in the UK is mirroring that of Italy, where 60million people have been placed in an unprecedented lockdown
People wearing a protective face masks walking across London Bridge today as Britain braces itself for an increase in cases of the coronavirus. Experts expect the outbreak to peak in the next fortnight with thousands more cases
Firefighters on a firetruck trundle down a road in southern Tehran today, spraying disinfectant to stem the spread of the coronavirus
A firefighter points from the spraying end of a fire truck that is disinfecting the streets of Tehran, today
Disinfection works are being carried out by fire brigade crew in the streets of Tehran as a precaution against coronavirus (COVID-19) today
Iranian firefighters disinfect the streets of Tehran to halt the spread of the coronavirus today
WHY ARE SO MANY PATIENTS DYING IN ITALY?
Italy has the highest coronavirus death rate in the world with one in every 16 people who catch the disease there dying from it.
At least 10,149 people have now been diagnosed with the virus, making it the worst hit country outside of China, and 631 are confirmed to have died.
Its death rate is 6.22 per cent, according to the most recent data – the highest in the world.
The deadly impact in Italy has been put down to three possible factors – a huge population of old people, cases being concentrated in a small area, and a lag in testing meaning the number of total cases is inaccurate.
Italy has the biggest population of elderly people in Europe, with almost a quarter of people (22 per cent) aged 65 or older. And the median age – the middle of the age range – is 46.5 years old, according to the CIA – the fifth highest in the world.
For comparison, the UK’s median age is 40.6 (18 per cent aged over 65) and the US’s is 38.5 (17 per cent over 65).
The older someone is, the more deadly catching the coronavirus can be. Age is known to be one of the biggest risk factors because the immune system and lungs are naturally weaker so the body is less able to fend off pneumonia, which the virus causes in severe cases.
Research has found that people aged 80 or over have a 14.8 per cent risk (one in seven) of dying if they develop COVID-19, the disease caused by the coronavirus.
Among the dead are five of Iran’s elite Revolutionary Guard members and an unspecified number of the Guard’s volunteer Basij force.
There are concerns that the number of infections across Iran is much higher than the confirmed cases reported by the government, which is struggling to contain or manage its spread.
The rising casualty figures each day in Iran suggest the fight against the new coronavirus is far from over.
It comes after a passenger was arrested for licking his hand and wiping it on a handrail on the Belgian subway, forcing the train to be taken off service and disinfected.
The unidentified man, who appears intoxicated, can be seen removing his mask before bringing his hand to his mouth and licking it.
He then brings his right hand up to the vertical rail and grips it, before rubbing it along the bar.
The Brussels Intercommunal Transport Company, the capital’s public transport provider, tweeted shortly after the event: ‘The man (intoxicated) was arrested by the police and our security service.
‘The subway train was withdrawn from service to be disinfected. Thank you for your message. Our metros are cleaned every day.’
The video, posted by a user who preferred to remain anonymous, was uploaded to Twitter on Saturday and social media users were outraged by the man’s behaviour.
Elsewhere in Europe, Poland today closed all schools, museums and cinemas, while Ukraine’s capital city Kiev will shut all educational buildings due to fears of coronavirus spreading despite both countries having lower rates of infection compared to the rest of Europe.
Speaking at a joint conference following a special meeting on coronavirus, Polish ministers said that pre-schools and schools would stop teaching on Thursday, but limited care would still be provided this week to the youngest children. Universities, museums, theaters and cinemas will also close on Thursday for two weeks, the officials said.
In the footage posted on the 9 March, the man can be seen cradling his can of beer on the Belgium subway system
The man, who the Brussels public transport system said was intoxicated, can be seen pulling down his face mask
BUT DIDN’T THE WORLD HEALTH ORGANIZATION SAY IT WOULD NOT DECLARE OUTBREAKS A PANDEMIC?
The WHO drew flak for declaring the 2009 swine flu outbreak a pandemic, which turned out to be mild and less deadly than feared.
It used to use a six-phase system for outbreaks, with phase six being a full-blown pandemic. Critics said the WHO created panic about swine flu and caused governments to stockpile vaccines which went unused.
Some even questioned its links to the pharmaceutical industry, after firms such as GlaxoSmithKline profited from producing a H1N1 vaccine.
H1N1, which emerged in Mexico and the US, is thought to have killed up to 200,000 people in more than 200 countries.
WHO spokesperson Tarik Jasarevic told MailOnline that the body no longer uses the six-tier phasing system but added its advice ‘remains the same’.
He said: ‘We continue working with countries to limit the spread of the virus while also preparing for the possibility of wider spread.’
The WHO eventually declared the coronavirus outbreak a public health emergency of international concern (PHEIC) on January 30.
The WHO rejected making the coronavirus outbreak a PHEIC before its eventual U-turn. It is only the sixth time the term has been used.
The designation, still in place, was aimed at helping countries with weaker health systems shore up their defenses, especially in Africa.
The move is also being carried out by Poland’s neighbour, Ukraine, in its capital city, Kiev.
Poland has confirmed 26 cases of coronavirus, but looking at how fast the virus spreads in some other European countries, the government decided to take the preventive action, officials said.
The Mayor of Kiev, Vitaly Klitschko, whose country has counted just one case, said he was introducing similar ‘preventive measures’.
The WHO earlier this month admitted the killer coronavirus outbreak sweeping the world won’t be officially declared a pandemic.
Instead, the UN-body said the crisis has already been a public health emergency of international concern – the highest warning level – for a month.
The WHO drew flak for declaring the 2009 swine flu outbreak a pandemic, which turned out to be mild and less deadly than feared.
It used to use a six-phase system for outbreaks, with phase six being a full-blown pandemic.
Critics said the WHO created panic about swine flu and caused governments to stockpile vaccines which went unused.
Some even questioned its links to the pharmaceutical industry, after firms such as GlaxoSmithKline profited from producing a H1N1 vaccine.
H1N1, which emerged in Mexico and the US, is thought to have killed up to 200,000 people in more than 200 countries.
The WHO eventually declared the coronavirus outbreak a public health emergency of international concern (PHEIC) on January 30.
The WHO rejected making the coronavirus outbreak a PHEIC before its eventual U-turn. It is only the sixth time the term has been used.
The designation, still in place, was aimed at helping countries with weaker health systems shore up their defenses, especially in Africa.
Polish Border Guard officers during a sanitary control on the Polish-Ukrainian railway border in Przemysl, southeastern Poland, yesterday
Health workers wear a protective masks and suits as they stands next to a temporary health facility before screening passengers on the A1 highway near the Polish-Czech border yesterday in Gorzyczki, Poland
Why are so many people dying from the coronavirus in Italy? Experts warn country’s population is older than average and say thousands of cases could have been missed because symptoms are so mild
Italy has the highest coronavirus death rate in the world with one in every 16 people who catch the disease there dying from it.
At least 10,149 people have now been diagnosed with the virus, making it the worst hit country outside of China, and 631 are confirmed to have died.
Its death rate is 6.22 per cent, according to the most recent data – the highest in the world.
In China the death rate is 3.91 per cent and scientists have suggested if that is higher than the true figure because many cases are likely to be going unreported.
The deadly impact in Italy has been put down to three possible factors – a huge population of old people, cases being concentrated in a small area, and a lag in testing meaning the number of total cases is inaccurate.
Only Wuhan and the Hubei province around it have more cases of the coronavirus than Lombardy, the worst hit area in Italy, which is putting immense pressure on local health systems.
Italy has the worst coronavirus death rate in the world, which experts put down to its elderly population and the possibility that a large number of cases are not being diagnosed
Milan’s Duomo cathedral is pictured almost deserted today as Italy is in complete lockdown as it grapples with the worst coronavirus outbreak outside of China
A municipal worker is seen spraying disinfectant in Piazza San Marco in Venice today. Tourism has all but stopped in Italy and citizens are banned from travelling
Italy has become the unlikely epicenter of the world’s coronavirus crisis.
It yesterday recorded a massive 168 deaths in a single day and, on Monday, had at least 1,492 new infections confirmed.
Even in the peak of its own epidemic, China – with a population 22 times the size of Italy’s – never recorded more than 3,900 in a day.
Government complacency has been blamed for the speed at which the outbreak has gripped the country, but the age of its citizens may be what is causing the deaths.
Italy has the biggest population of elderly people in Europe, with almost a quarter of people (22 per cent) aged 65 or older.
And the median age – the middle of the age range – is 46.5 years old, according to the CIA – the fifth highest in the world.
For comparison, the UK’s median age is 40.6 (18 per cent aged over 65) and the US’s is 38.5 (17 per cent over 65).
The older someone is, the more deadly catching the coronavirus can be.
Age is known to be one of the biggest risk factors because the immune system and lungs are naturally weaker so the body is less able to fend off pneumonia, which the virus causes in severe cases.
Research has found that people aged 80 or over have a 14.8 per cent risk (one in seven) of dying if they develop COVID-19, the disease caused by the coronavirus.
The local president of Lombardy, Attilio Fontana, confirmed: ‘All the deaths we’ve had are either very old people or very sick people,’ the New York Times reported.
Figures from the World Health Organization and Chinese scientists reveal that as the age of the patient increases, the greater their risk of dying
People queue up outside a supermarket in Rome today. People have been urged to keep their distance from others and to avoid forming crowds
Top-tier football teams Juventus and Inter Milan are pictured playing a match behind closed doors earlier this week – the Serie A league has since been put on hold as the government battles the outbreak
A roadblock is shown at the Austrian border – Austria is now turning away Italian citizens who try to cross onto its soil without a certificate proving they’re coronavirus-free
Victim’s brother furious at lack of support from Italian authorities
WHAT ARE THE RULES OF ITALY’S QUARANTINE?
THE SICK MUST STAY AT HOME
People who have tested positive for coronavirus must not leave their homes for any reason.
Anyone with a fever or respiratory symptoms is urged to stay at home and limit social contact, including with their doctor.
NO TRAVEL ACROSS ITALY
Travel is only allowed for ‘urgent, verifiable work situations and emergencies or health reasons’. Grocery shopping is considered a ‘necessity’ and still allowed.
To avoid work-related travel, public and private companies have been urged to put their staff on leave.
Flights, trains and public transport will continue but Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte says he wants as many people as possible to stay at home.
People who do want to travel will need to fill in a document explaining their reasons for doing so and carry it with them.
NO PUBLIC GATHERINGS
‘All forms of gatherings in public places or sites open to the public’ are banned, the decree says.
Cinemas, museums, theatres, pubs, dance schools, betting shops and discos are all closed. Weddings and funerals are banned. Schools and universities will remain shut until April 3.
Bars and restaurants were only allowed to open between 8am and 6pm, the decree said, and only if a distance of at least 3ft could be kept between customers.
Sporting events of all levels and disciplines were cancelled – stopping play in the Serie A football league. Fixtures in international competitions can go ahead but will be played behind closed doors.
Gyms, sports centres, swimming pools, spas and leisure centres must close.
SHOPS MUST KEEP 3FT DISTANCE
Shops can remain open but only if they can guarantee the 3ft safety distance for customers.
Big and mid-sized shopping centres have to close at the weekend. Food stores are allowed to remain open at all hours.
NO LEAVE FOR HEALTH WORKERS
Leave for health workers is cancelled. People accompanying their friends or relatives to emergency units are not allowed to stay with them in the waiting rooms without express permission.
ALL OF ITALY IS COVERED
The entire country, including the islands of Sicily and Sardinia, is covered by the decree – covering a total population of some 60million people.
As patient ages decline, so do their chances of dying.
Between 60 and 69 years old the death rate is around 3.6 per cent, while it is more like 1.3 per cent for those aged 50 to 59.
For people in their 40s this drops to 0.4 per cent, and it’s just 0.2 per cent for those in their 30s.
People who have other long-term health problems, such as diabetes, heart disease or cancer are also at a greater risk because they have weaker immune systems than usual.
Italians caught up in the country’s coronavirus outbreak may also be at particularly high risk because most of the cases are concentrated in a small area.
The northern regions of Lombardy and Veneto are the ones that have been hardest hit by the infection.
Lombardy is an area smaller than England with Milan as its only major city, but is host to more than 5,000 coronavirus cases, while the surrounding regions of Emilia-Romagna, Veneto and Piedmont contain the majority of the remainder.
This means Lombardy has more cases than any province of China outside of Hubei, of which Wuhan is the capital.
That region alone has more cases than Spain, France, Germany or the US do in total.
As a result local hospitals are under immense pressure, which means patients may not get the high quality care they need and the virus could be more likely to spread in overloaded hospitals.
Experts also say that the true number of cases is not being recorded in Italy because the infection is spreading so fast and people with mild illness may not be counted.
This means the death rate appears higher than it is because all the deaths will be counted – most patients will have been hospitalised and diagnosed before dying –but not all the infections.
Krys Johnson, a disease expert at Temple University in Philadelphia, admitted: ‘We probably don’t know how many people have actually become infected,’ according to Scientific American.
The situation is so bad in Italy partly because the Government stopped testing people in late January unless they had been to China.
Strict rules had been put in place to test anyone with the symptoms of coronavirus but, after the Government banned all flights from China – it was the first country to do so – the testing relaxed.
As a result, infected people are believed to have travelled into Italy from other countries.
The first confirmed patient is thought to have passed the virus on to at least five other people, including doctors and patients in the hospital he was taken to, before even being diagnosed.
Officials still don’t know how the man, a 38-year-old in Milan, was infected, and there are fears the virus circulated for weeks before he was discovered.
WHAT DO WE KNOW ABOUT THE CORONAVIRUS?
Someone who is infected with the coronavirus can spread it with just a simple cough or a sneeze, scientists say.
More than 4,500 people with the virus are now confirmed to have died and more than 125,000 have been infected. Here’s what we know so far:
What is the coronavirus?
A coronavirus is a type of virus which can cause illness in animals and people. Viruses break into cells inside their host and use them to reproduce itself and disrupt the body’s normal functions. Coronaviruses are named after the Latin word ‘corona’, which means crown, because they are encased by a spiked shell which resembles a royal crown.
The coronavirus from Wuhan is one which has never been seen before this outbreak. It has been named SARS-CoV-2 by the International Committee on Taxonomy of Viruses. The name stands for Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome coronavirus 2.
Experts say the bug, which has killed around one in 50 patients since the outbreak began in December, is a ‘sister’ of the SARS illness which hit China in 2002, so has been named after it.
The disease that the virus causes has been named COVID-19, which stands for coronavirus disease 2019.
Dr Helena Maier, from the Pirbright Institute, said: ‘Coronaviruses are a family of viruses that infect a wide range of different species including humans, cattle, pigs, chickens, dogs, cats and wild animals.
‘Until this new coronavirus was identified, there were only six different coronaviruses known to infect humans. Four of these cause a mild common cold-type illness, but since 2002 there has been the emergence of two new coronaviruses that can infect humans and result in more severe disease (Severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) and Middle East respiratory syndrome (MERS) coronaviruses).
‘Coronaviruses are known to be able to occasionally jump from one species to another and that is what happened in the case of SARS, MERS and the new coronavirus. The animal origin of the new coronavirus is not yet known.’
The first human cases were publicly reported from the Chinese city of Wuhan, where approximately 11million people live, after medics first started publicly reporting infections on December 31.
By January 8, 59 suspected cases had been reported and seven people were in critical condition. Tests were developed for the new virus and recorded cases started to surge.
The first person died that week and, by January 16, two were dead and 41 cases were confirmed. The next day, scientists predicted that 1,700 people had become infected, possibly up to 7,000.
Just a week after that, there had been more than 800 confirmed cases and those same scientists estimated that some 4,000 – possibly 9,700 – were infected in Wuhan alone. By that point, 26 people had died.
By January 27, more than 2,800 people were confirmed to have been infected, 81 had died, and estimates of the total number of cases ranged from 100,000 to 350,000 in Wuhan alone.
By January 29, the number of deaths had risen to 132 and cases were in excess of 6,000.
By February 5, there were more than 24,000 cases and 492 deaths.
By February 11, this had risen to more than 43,000 cases and 1,000 deaths.
A change in the way cases are confirmed on February 13 – doctors decided to start using lung scans as a formal diagnosis, as well as laboratory tests – caused a spike in the number of cases, to more than 60,000 and to 1,369 deaths.
By February 25, around 80,000 people had been infected and some 2,700 had died. February 25 was the first day in the outbreak when fewer cases were diagnosed within China than in the rest of the world.
Where does the virus come from?
According to scientists, the virus almost certainly came from bats. Coronaviruses in general tend to originate in animals – the similar SARS and MERS viruses are believed to have originated in civet cats and camels, respectively.
The first cases of COVID-19 came from people visiting or working in a live animal market in Wuhan, which has since been closed down for investigation.
Although the market is officially a seafood market, other dead and living animals were being sold there, including wolf cubs, salamanders, snakes, peacocks, porcupines and camel meat.
A study by the Wuhan Institute of Virology, published in February 2020 in the scientific journal Nature, found that the genetic make-up virus samples found in patients in China is 96 per cent identical to a coronavirus they found in bats.
However, there were not many bats at the market so scientists say it was likely there was an animal which acted as a middle-man, contracting it from a bat before then transmitting it to a human. It has not yet been confirmed what type of animal this was.
Dr Michael Skinner, a virologist at Imperial College London, was not involved with the research but said: ‘The discovery definitely places the origin of nCoV in bats in China.
‘We still do not know whether another species served as an intermediate host to amplify the virus, and possibly even to bring it to the market, nor what species that host might have been.’
So far the fatalities are quite low. Why are health experts so worried about it?
Experts say the international community is concerned about the virus because so little is known about it and it appears to be spreading quickly.
It is similar to SARS, which infected 8,000 people and killed nearly 800 in an outbreak in Asia in 2003, in that it is a type of coronavirus which infects humans’ lungs. It is less deadly than SARS, however, which killed around one in 10 people, compared to approximately one in 50 for COVID-19.
Another reason for concern is that nobody has any immunity to the virus because they’ve never encountered it before. This means it may be able to cause more damage than viruses we come across often, like the flu or common cold.
Speaking at a briefing in January, Oxford University professor, Dr Peter Horby, said: ‘Novel viruses can spread much faster through the population than viruses which circulate all the time because we have no immunity to them.
‘Most seasonal flu viruses have a case fatality rate of less than one in 1,000 people. Here we’re talking about a virus where we don’t understand fully the severity spectrum but it’s possible the case fatality rate could be as high as two per cent.’
If the death rate is truly two per cent, that means two out of every 100 patients who get it will die.
‘My feeling is it’s lower,’ Dr Horby added. ‘We’re probably missing this iceberg of milder cases. But that’s the current circumstance we’re in.
‘Two per cent case fatality rate is comparable to the Spanish Flu pandemic in 1918 so it is a significant concern globally.’
How does the virus spread?
The illness can spread between people just through coughs and sneezes, making it an extremely contagious infection. And it may also spread even before someone has symptoms.
It is believed to travel in the saliva and even through water in the eyes, therefore close contact, kissing, and sharing cutlery or utensils are all risky. It can also live on surfaces, such as plastic and steel, for up to 72 hours, meaning people can catch it by touching contaminated surfaces.
Originally, people were thought to be catching it from a live animal market in Wuhan city. But cases soon began to emerge in people who had never been there, which forced medics to realise it was spreading from person to person.
What does the virus do to you? What are the symptoms?
Once someone has caught the COVID-19 virus it may take between two and 14 days, or even longer, for them to show any symptoms – but they may still be contagious during this time.
If and when they do become ill, typical signs include a runny nose, a cough, sore throat and a fever (high temperature). The vast majority of patients will recover from these without any issues, and many will need no medical help at all.
In a small group of patients, who seem mainly to be the elderly or those with long-term illnesses, it can lead to pneumonia. Pneumonia is an infection in which the insides of the lungs swell up and fill with fluid. It makes it increasingly difficult to breathe and, if left untreated, can be fatal and suffocate people.
Figures are showing that young children do not seem to be particularly badly affected by the virus, which they say is peculiar considering their susceptibility to flu, but it is not clear why.
What have genetic tests revealed about the virus?
Scientists in China have recorded the genetic sequences of around 19 strains of the virus and released them to experts working around the world.
This allows others to study them, develop tests and potentially look into treating the illness they cause.
Examinations have revealed the coronavirus did not change much – changing is known as mutating – much during the early stages of its spread.
However, the director-general of China’s Center for Disease Control and Prevention, Gao Fu, said the virus was mutating and adapting as it spread through people.
This means efforts to study the virus and to potentially control it may be made extra difficult because the virus might look different every time scientists analyse it.
More study may be able to reveal whether the virus first infected a small number of people then change and spread from them, or whether there were various versions of the virus coming from animals which have developed separately.
How dangerous is the virus?
The virus has a death rate of around two per cent. This is a similar death rate to the Spanish Flu outbreak which, in 1918, went on to kill around 50million people.
Experts have been conflicted since the beginning of the outbreak about whether the true number of people who are infected is significantly higher than the official numbers of recorded cases. Some people are expected to have such mild symptoms that they never even realise they are ill unless they’re tested, so only the more serious cases get discovered, making the death toll seem higher than it really is.
However, an investigation into government surveillance in China said it had found no reason to believe this was true.
Dr Bruce Aylward, a World Health Organization official who went on a mission to China, said there was no evidence that figures were only showing the tip of the iceberg, and said recording appeared to be accurate, Stat News reported.
Can the virus be cured?
The COVID-19 virus cannot be cured and it is proving difficult to contain.
Antibiotics do not work against viruses, so they are out of the question. Antiviral drugs can work, but the process of understanding a virus then developing and producing drugs to treat it would take years and huge amounts of money.
No vaccine exists for the coronavirus yet and it’s not likely one will be developed in time to be of any use in this outbreak, for similar reasons to the above.
The National Institutes of Health in the US, and Baylor University in Waco, Texas, say they are working on a vaccine based on what they know about coronaviruses in general, using information from the SARS outbreak. But this may take a year or more to develop, according to Pharmaceutical Technology.
Currently, governments and health authorities are working to contain the virus and to care for patients who are sick and stop them infecting other people.
People who catch the illness are being quarantined in hospitals, where their symptoms can be treated and they will be away from the uninfected public.
And airports around the world are putting in place screening measures such as having doctors on-site, taking people’s temperatures to check for fevers and using thermal screening to spot those who might be ill (infection causes a raised temperature).
However, it can take weeks for symptoms to appear, so there is only a small likelihood that patients will be spotted up in an airport.
Is this outbreak an epidemic or a pandemic?
The outbreak was declared a pandemic on March 11. A pandemic is defined by the World Health Organization as the ‘worldwide spread of a new disease’.
Previously, the UN agency said most cases outside of Hubei had been ‘spillover’ from the epicentre, so the disease wasn’t actually spreading actively around the world.
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Federal Reserve’s rate cut was a ‘disaster’: Expert
Bond King’ Gundlach says Fed panicked and short-term rates are ‘headed toward zero’
“Bond King” Jeffrey Gundlach says he believes the Fed panicked in cutting interest rates earlier this week and that short-term U.S. rates are headed for zero.
“I’m in the camp that the Fed is going to cut rates again,” Gundlach said. “When I say panicked, it doesn’t mean it’s not justified. Sometimes panic is justified.”
The benchmark 10-year Treasury note yield hit an all-time low under 0.9% just after the longtime bond investor made his comments around 12:40 p.m. ET.
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VIDEO00:01
Gundlach: I expect Fed to cut rates again, maybe in two weeks
“Bond King” and DoubleLine Capital CEO Jeffrey Gundlach said Thursday that he believes the Federal Reserve panicked in cutting interest rates earlier this week and that short-term U.S. rates are headed for zero.
“If we look at history, once the Fed does a panic, intermeeting rate cut, particularly when it’s 50 basis points … they typically cut pretty quickly again,” Gundlach said. “I’m in the camp that the Fed is going to cut rates again, perhaps even in two weeks” during its regularly scheduled meeting.
The benchmark 10-year Treasury note yield hit an all-time low under 0.9% just after the longtime bond investor made his comments on CNBC’s “Halftime Report” around 12:40 p.m. ET. The 2-year U.S. rate hit also hit a record low of 0.554% earlier in the session.
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“We will see short rates headed toward zero,” Gundlach added. And “when I say panicked, it doesn’t mean it’s not justified. Sometimes panic is justified.”
“Business activity is likely to contract,” he said. “I received multiple emails today of clients that were planning on visits to DoubleLine saying they’re canceling them.”
Although President Donald Trump has spoken fondly of negative interest rates, Gundlach said he doesn’t think the Fed is likely to follow the route taken by Japan and some countries in Europe.
On Tuesday, the Federal Reserve lowered its benchmark interest rate unexpectedly by 50 basis points, saying that the spread of the coronavirus “poses evolving risks to economic activity.” The move marked the first time since the financial crisis that the U.S. central bank was forced to impose an emergency rate cut.
The action failed to ease stock market concern about the potential economic impact of the coronavirus outbreak, however, but sparked a sharp drop in short-term U.S. rates. Markets remain fearful that the disease will prevent major exporters, like China, from sending components to American manufacturers and have a rippling effect on global growth.
Risk assets continued their slide Thursday as the Dow Jones Industrial Average was down more than 900 points, or 3.4%, in midafternoon trading. The Dow fell more than 1,000 points earlier in the day. The S&P 500 dropped 3.3%, led lower by rate-sensitive regional and consumer-facing banks that generate profits through loans.
Federal Reserve Retools Capital Rules for Largest U.S. Banks
New Fed rule creates capital buffer tied to annual stress tests
The overhaul reflects the latest moves by the Federal Reserve to recalibrate oversight of big U.S. lenders.
PHOTO: LIU JIE/XINHUA/ZUMA PRESS
By Andrew Ackerman
WASHINGTON—The Federal Reserve retooled capital rules for the largest U.S. banks, completing one of the biggest changes to the postcrisis rulebook for Wall Street during the Trump administration.
Fed officials on Wednesday said the changes would simplify rules for big banks such as JPMorgan Chase & Co. and Wells Fargo & Co. without posing risks to the stability of the financial system.
The overhaul “simplifies the post-crisis capital framework for banks, while maintaining the strong capital requirements that are the hallmark of the framework,” Fed Vice Chairman for Supervision Randal Quarles said in a statement.
The overhaul reflects the latest moves by the Fed to recalibrate oversight of big U.S. lenders. Already, officials have completed separate changes aimed at easing liquidity and capital rules for regional U.S. banks and retooled speculative trading limits for large firms.
Fed governor Lael Brainard, an Obama-era appointee, cast the sole dissenting vote against the plan, saying she believed it would reduce banks’ required capital levels and the amount they set aside as a buffer above their regulatory requirements.
In a statement, she said the plan “gives a green light for large banks to reduce their capital buffers materially, at a time when payouts have already exceeded earnings for several years on average.”
Ms. Brainard said she expects a reduction in capital largely because the overhaul requires banks to set aside funds for dividend payments for four quarters, down from the current nine.
But Mr. Quarles said the changes would maintain the overall level of capital in the system and modestly increase required capital levels for the largest firms. His estimates were based on stress-test data from 2013 to 2019, he said.
Parts of the overhaul are likely to be welcomed by big banks, including changes that streamline aspects of stress tests, which require 34 large banks to show how they would weather simulated market and economic shocks.
Wednesday’s plan reduces the total number of big-bank capital requirements to eight from 13, the Fed said. For large Wall Street firms, those changes could be offset by a new “stress capital buffer.”
Banks’ annual stress-test results would be used to calculate the size of the new buffer, which the firms would have to meet during the ensuing year. If a firm’s capital fell below this level, it would face limits on its capital distributions and bonus payments.
Under the Trump administration, regulators have sought to soften the impact of the 2010 Dodd-Frank law, which was intended to prevent another financial crisis, saying its requirements were too stringent and inflexible.
A law signed by President Trump in 2018 rolled back restrictions for banks with less than $250 billion in assets and served as the impetus for further regulatory changes.
Some of Wednesday’s changes incorporate adjustments sought by banks. The Fed’s stress tests would assume lenders restrain growth in their balance sheets during stressful periods, which doesn’t happen under current rules. That would likely have the effect of boosting banks’ capital levels in the stress tests.
The Fed held off on making some changes to the stress tests envisioned by Mr. Quarles, such as incorporating a dormant policy tool to combat credit crunches in a downturn known as the countercyclical capital buffer. The Fed would have to separately propose such changes.
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Dow tanks more than 950 points as Wall Street’s roller-coaster week continues
Stocks plunged on Thursday, erasing most of the steep gains in the previous session, as markets remained highly volatile in the face of the fast-spreading coronavirus.
The Dow Jones Industrial Average ended the day 969.58 points, or 3.5%, lower at 26,121.28 after tanking nearly 1,150 at its session low. The S&P 500 dropped 3.3%, or 106.18, to 3,023.94 and the Nasdaq Composite fell 3.1%, or 279.49, to 8,738.60. All 11 S&P sectors finished the day in the red. Stocks turned sharply lower as the 10-year Treasury yield fell to an all-time low below 0.9%.
Fears about the coronavirus disrupting the global economy continued to grip Wall Street as countries around the world extended quarantines and travel restrictions. California declared a state of emergency after a coronavirus-related death and 53 confirmed cases in the state. The number of infections in New York also doubled overnight to 22 as the state ramps up its testing.
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VIDEO04:40
Stocks dropped sharply again because of the fast-spreading coronavirus
“The majority of this is just growing concern about the fallout from the virus because it’s spreading,” said Tom Essaye, founder of the Sevens Report. “For every hour, another group of people have it and it’s in another state. People are getting a bit nervous about this constant barrage of headlines.”
That angst fueled investor demand for safer assets like U.S. Treasurys and gold. The tumbling yields kept pressure on bank stocks, which led the major indexes lower. JPMorgan and Bank of America both dropped about 5%.
Airline stocks also took a huge beating, leading the declines in the Dow Jones Transportation Average, which dipped into bear market territory Thursday. United Airlines cratered 13.4%, while American Airlines tanked 13.2%, suffering its worst day since 2016.
The market moves came amid a roller-coaster week on Wall Street, which saw the 30-stock Dow swinging 1,000 points or higher twice in the past three days.
The Dow posted its second-biggest point gain on Wednesday as major wins from former Vice President Joe Biden during Super Tuesday sparked a relief rally, especially in the health-care sector. Investors also cheered signs of a global response to the outbreak, including a more than $8 billion in emergency funding from Congress.
“The optimism coming off Super Tuesday has come and gone and we reverted to being driven by fear over the containment of the virus and the impact it’s going to have on the global economy down the road,” said Mike Loewengart, managing director of investment strategy at E-Trade.
The move failed to assuage stock market concerns about the potential economic impact of the coronavirus outbreak and triggered sharp movements in the markets.
“Despite the rally in stocks [Wednesday], Treasury yields and gold prices did not respond in-kind,” said Matt Maley, chief market strategist at Miller Tabak. “None of the other markets saw the kinds of moves yesterday that would indicate that we’re out of the woods on the negative impact of the coronavirus. In other words, many other markets are still sending up warning signals.”
Investors will monitor a key jobs report on Friday for signs of any negative impact on the labor market from the coronavirus. The U.S. economy is expected to have added 175,000 jobs in February, down from 225,000 in January.
The weekly jobless claims data on Thursday underscored the labor market strength despite the outbreak. Initial claims for state unemployment benefits slipped 3,000 to 216,000 for the week ended Feb. 29. Economists polled by Reuters had forecast claims would fall to 215,000 in the latest week.
—CNBC’s Thomas Franck and Fred Imbert contributed to this report.
Cruise Ship Held Off California Becomes New Focus of Concern
A cruise liner bound for San Francisco from Hawaii is believed to be linked to two coronavirus cases, one of them fatal. More cases were found in a number of states, including Texas and New Jersey.
Gov. Gavin Newsom spoke last month at the California Department of Public Health. He announced a state of emergency in the state on Wednesday.Credit…Max Whittaker for The New York Times
A cruise ship bound for California is believed linked to the first U.S. death outside Washington State.
Gov. Gavin Newsom announced on Wednesday that a cruise ship returning to California from Hawaii that had suspected links to two coronavirus cases, one of them fatal, was being held off the coast of San Francisco, as public health officials prepared to screen everyone on the ship.
Eleven passengers and 10 crew members on the boat were showing symptoms on Wednesday, the governor said. “That number may significantly understate” the scope of infection, he said, or “it may indeed be abundance of caution.”
“The ship will not come on shore until we appropriately assess the passengers,” Mr. Newsom added.
The governor also announced that the state was declaring a state of emergency to help mobilize its response to the coronavirus outbreak. The number of cases in the state shot up to 54 on Wednesday, the most in the nation.
Governor Newsom said that about 2,500 people, more than half of them Californians, had been aboard the ship, identified by its owners as the Grand Princess, during a recent voyage from San Francisco to Mexico. One of those passengers died Wednesday in Placer County, Calif., the first U.S. coronavirus death outside Washington State and the 11th overall. Another passenger was being treated for the illness in Sonoma County. State and federal officials were racing to contact others who had been on board.
Mr. Newsom said the ship had gone on to Hawaii after its stop in Mexico, and then had sailed back toward California with some of the passengers from the original San Francisco-to-Mexico leg of the voyage still on board.
The person who died in Placer County had underlying health conditions and had been in isolation at a hospital after falling ill. Officials believe the patient was probably exposed to the virus on the San Francisco-to-Mexico leg of the voyage last month.
The New York Times would like to hear from health care providers who are struggling to get patients tested for coronavirus or are having difficulty getting sufficient medical supplies. Please email us at coronavirus@nytimes.com. A reporter may contact you to follow up. Thank you.
Health officials in Los Angeles County announced six new cases on Wednesday, and Santa Clara County announced three more cases. The virus has been detected across the United States, but so far has been concentrated on the West Coast.
A person who conducted medical screenings at Los Angeles International Airport tested positive for the virus, the Department of Homeland Security said on Wednesday. The person last worked at the airport on Feb. 21, eight days before showing symptoms of infection, the agency said.
Each of the six new cases reported by Los Angeles County was linked to a known exposure, a history of international travel or contact with someone who had traveled or been diagnosed with the virus, officials said.
Coronavirus Map: Tracking the Spread of the Outbreak
The virus has infected more than 97,800 people in at least 81 countries.
A Facebook contractor in Seattle has tested positive for the virus.
Facebook on Wednesday said that a worker in the company’s Seattle offices tested positive for Covid-19, the disease caused by the new coronavirus, making it the second major tech company in the city to be affected by the outbreak.
The tech industry is vital to the economy of Washington State, where a cluster of infections has taken root and 10 people have died, leading companies there to take extra measures to halt the spread of the virus.
“A contractor based in our Stadium East office has been diagnosed with Covid-19,” said Andy Stone, a company spokesman. “We’ve notified our employees and are following the advice of public health officials to prioritize everyone’s health and safety.”
The Seattle area is Facebook’s largest engineering outpost outside of its Bay Area headquarters. It had 5,000 employees in the region as of last September, when it announced plans to expand even more.
2019-2020 U.S. Flu Season: Preliminary Burden Estimates
CDC estimates* that, from October 1, 2019, through February 22, 2020, there have been:
32,000,000 – 45,000,000
flu illnesses
14,000,000 – 21,000,000
flu medical visits
310,000 – 560,000
flu hospitalizations
18,000 – 46,000
flu deaths
*Because influenza surveillance does not capture all cases of flu that occur in the U.S., CDC provides these estimated ranges to better reflect the larger burden of influenza. These estimates are calculated based on CDC’s weekly influenza surveillance data and are preliminary.
This web page provides weekly, preliminary estimates of the cumulative in-season numbers of flu illnesses, medical visits, hospitalizations, and deaths in the United States. CDC does not know the exact number of people who have been sick and affected by influenza because influenza is not a reportable disease in most areas of the U.S. However, CDC has estimated the burden of flu since 2010 using a mathematical model that is based on data collected through the U.S. Influenza Surveillance System, a network that covers approximately 8.5% of the U.S. population (~27 million people).
Limitations
The estimates of the cumulative burden of seasonal influenza are subject to several limitations.
First, the cumulative rate of laboratory-confirmed influenza-associated hospitalizations reported during the season may be an under-estimate of the rate at the end of the season because of identification and reporting delays.
Second, rates of laboratory-confirmed influenza-associated hospitalizations were adjusted for the frequency of influenza testing and the sensitivity of influenza diagnostic assays. However, data on testing practices during the 2019-2020 season are not available in real-time. CDC used data on testing practices from the past influenza seasons as a proxy. Burden estimates will be updated at a later date when data on contemporary testing practices become available.
Third, estimates of influenza-associated illness and medical visits are based on data from prior seasons, which may not be accurate if the seriousness of illness or patterns of care-seeking have changed.
Frequently Asked Questions
What does the cumulative burden of influenza for the 2019-2020 season mean?
The cumulative burden of influenza is an estimate of the number of people who have been sick, seen a healthcare provider, been hospitalized, or died as a result of influenza since October 01, 2018. CDC does not know the exact number of people who have been sick and affected by influenza because influenza is not a reportable disease in most areas of the United States. However, these numbers are estimated using a mathematical model, based on observed rates of laboratory-confirmed influenza-associated hospitalizations.
How does CDC estimate the cumulative burden of seasonal influenza?
Preliminary estimates of the cumulative burden of seasonal influenza during the 2019-2020 season in the United States are based on crude rates of laboratory-confirmed influenza-associated hospitalizations, reported through the Influenza Hospitalization Surveillance Network (FluSurv-NET), which were adjusted for the frequency of influenza testing during recent prior seasons and the sensitivity of influenza diagnostic assays. Rates of hospitalization were then multiplied by previously estimated ratio of hospitalizations to symptomatic illnesses, and frequency of seeking medical care to calculate symptomatic illnesses, medical visits, and deaths associated with seasonal influenza, respectively.
Why does the estimate of cumulative burden change each week?
The estimates of cumulative burden of seasonal influenza are considered preliminary and may change each week as new laboratory-confirmed influenza-associated hospitalizations are reported to CDC. New reports include both new admissions that have occurred during the reporting week and also patients admitted in previous weeks that have been newly reported to CDC.
How does the number of flu hospitalizations estimated so far this season compare with previous end-of-season hospitalization estimates?
The number of hospitalizations estimated so far this season is lower than end-of-season total hospitalization estimates for any season since CDC began making these estimates. This table also summarizes all estimated influenza disease burden, by season, in U.S. from 2010-11 through 2017-18.
Preliminary Cumulative Estimates of Hospitalizations in the U.S. 2019-2020 Flu Season
*These estimates are preliminary and based on data from CDC’s weekly influenza surveillance reports summarizing key influenza activity indicators.
Estimated number of influenza-associated hospitalizations
The y-axis extends from 0 to 1 million.
The x-axis is a timeline starting October 5, 2019 and extending to May 30, 2020.
There is a single blue-shaded curve labeled with “2019/20”.
There are several other lines on the right side of the graph under Total hospitalizations at end of past seasons. The lines are labeled, from top to bottom, as 2018/19, 2017/18, 2014/15, 2016/17, 2012/13, 2013/14, 2015/16, 2010/11, and 2011/12 and represent the estimated burden for these seasons. This allows for the comparison of the current season to past seasons.
(Bloomberg) — Highly contagious and manifesting in some with little or no symptoms, the coronavirus has the world struggling to keep up. But when it comes to containing the epidemic, one country may be cracking the code — by doubling down on testing.
South Korea is experiencing the largest virus epidemic outside of China, where the pneumonia-causing pathogen first took root late last year. But unlike China, which locked down a province of more than 60 million people to try and stop the illness spreading, Korea hasn’t put any curbs on internal movement in place, instead testing hundreds of thousands of people everywhere from clinics to drive-through stations.
It appears to be paying off in a lower-than-average mortality rate. The outbreak is also showing signs of being largely contained in Daegu, the city about 150 miles south of Seoul where most of the country’s more than 5,700 infections have emerged. South Korea reported the rate of new cases dropped three days in a row.
It’s an approach born out of bitter experience.
An outbreak of Middle East Respiratory Syndrome in 2015 killed 38 people in South Korea, with a lack of kits to test for the MERS pathogen meaning infected patients went from hospital to hospital seeking help, spreading the virus widely. Afterward, the country created a system to allow rapid approval of testing kits for viruses which have the potential to cause pandemics.
When the novel coronavirus emerged, that system allowed regulators to collaborate quickly with local biotech companies and researchers to develop testing kits based on a genetic sequence of the virus released by China in mid-January. Firms were then granted accreditation to make and sell the kits within weeks –a process that usually takes a year.
In a short space of time, South Korea has managed to test more than 140,000 people for the novel coronavirus, using kits with sensitivity rates of over 95%, according to the director of the Korean Society for Laboratory Medicine.
That’s in stark contrast to countries like its neighbor Japan and the U.S., where the issues China experienced early on — with unreliable and inadequate testing resulting in thousands of infected patients not being quarantined until it was too late — are now threatening to play out.
Read more: Limited Virus Testing in Japan Masks True Scale of Infection
Testing widely has meant South Korea knows where its infections are centered, and so far they’ve been able to keep them largely contained with outbreaks beyond Daegu in the minority. In the capital Seoul, home to 10 million people, there have only been 103 infections.
President Moon Jae-in has cast the virus fight as a battle, saying the country is “at war,” with a pathogen that’s killed 3,200 people globally and sickened more than 94,000. With parliamentary elections due in April, his government is under pressure to curb the outbreak and has faced criticism for not closing the border fully to travelers from China. Moon’s administration is seizing on the country’s testing apparatus as a solution.
The emphasis on diagnosis is also being credited with helping patients get treatment early, bringing the mortality rate from the virus to under 1% — below every other affected country save Singapore, where the outbreak is on a much smaller scale.
How One Patient Turned Korea’s Virus Outbreak Into an Epidemic
“The coronavirus is highly contagious and even those without symptoms can transmit the virus, which makes it hard to stop infection among communities,” said Lee Hyukmin, director at the Korean Society for Laboratory Medicine and a professor at Yonsei Severance Hospital. “Without enough testing capabilities, the death rate will be high as the delay worsens the damage in the lungs.”
By late February, when South Korea’s outbreak began to accelerate, four local companies had approval to sell kits to test for the virus. The country is now able to test more than 10,000 people a day. In neighboring Japan, only 2,684 people in total have been tested as of March 3.
The tests can deliver results within hours, with sensitivity rates of over 90% and are relatively easy to administer. Officials in Seoul have started operating “drive-through” testing stations in three districts where people can get tested without leaving their cars.
The country is also exporting its testing kits elsewhere, including to China, Europe and Pakistan, according to the manufacturers.
Seegene Inc., a diagnostics company based in Seoul, started developing its coronavirus testing kit during the Lunar New Year holiday in late January.
“It was an adventurous investment for the company to start developing the test kit, as we weren’t sure how contagious the virus would be at the time,” said Park Yo-han, an investor-relations manager at Seegene. “We thought we needed to contribute to society.”
The company’s stock fell slightly Thursday after soaring 21% this year on expectations its sales will grow.
While pharmaceutical giants like Roche Holding AG have also developed reliable coronavirus testing kits, Seegene can churn out tests more quickly using a production system automated with artificial intelligence, said Shin Jae-hoon, an analyst at Hanwha Investment & Securities Co.
The country’s inroads in test kit production also reflect South Korea’s position as a powerhouse for complex manufacturing, with electronic parts like memory chips and OLED displays that go into smartphones and laptops made there. The country spends more of its economic output on scientific and technological research than its most advanced rivals like Japan and Germany.
In Hubei province, the region of China which has been devastated by the virus and is still under mass quarantine, the shortage of tests and their tendency to throw up false negatives meant that thousands of infected patients were not hospitalized before they spread the virus widely to other people.
“China used massive social distancing to respond to the outbreak, but that would be difficult to replicate in most countries and might have adverse economic consequences,” said Ben Cowling, associate professor at the School of Public Health of University of Hong Kong.
Similar issues are now cropping up elsewhere. Japan is facing criticism for a failure to test widely and well: two passengers let off a cruise ship the country locked down for weeks in Yokohama harbor to contain the virus tested positive after they returned home. Local officials from Tokyo to further-flung prefectures like Wakayama say they don’t have enough test kits.
The U.S. case tally — at 126 infections and 11 deaths — has some speculating the country just isn’t testing enough. New York and Florida have complained of faulty tests and a shortage of supply, and fewer than 2,000 people have been been checked for the virus nationally as of last week.
Similar scenarios are playing out other virus hot spots like Iran and Italy. Expanded testing will likely show that transmission within communities has been taking place for longer than realized, said Raina MacIntyre, professor of infectious diseases at the University of New South Wales. “In the US, the emergence of cases with no risk factors suggests that community transmission is a serious concern,” she said.
For South Korea, widespread testing has helped it get a handle on the scale of the epidemic, but once diagnosed with the virus patients need to be isolated and treated. In Daegu, hospital beds are running out and public anger is rising over a shortage of masks and other supplies.
“We are testing people on the biggest scale, at the fastest pace in the world, and disclosing the results transparently and instantly to public,” Moon said in a speech on Tuesday. “We believe this is the best thing we can do for now in order to prevent further spread in local communities.”
(Updates with latest coronavirus data throughout)
–With assistance from Jihye Lee.
To contact the reporters on this story: Heejin Kim in Seoul at hkim579@bloomberg.net;Sohee Kim in Seoul at skim847@bloomberg.net;Claire Che in Beijing at yche16@bloomberg.net
To contact the editors responsible for this story: Rachel Chang at wchang98@bloomberg.net, Emma O’Brien
The Senate passed by a vote of 96-1 the spending bill for the outbreak of the new coronavirus (COVID-19), which will be on President Donald Trump’s desk by week’s end. The bill provides $7.8 billion in new funds to tackle the outbreak and another $490 million in existing funds for telehealth, all with the aim of speeding the response to the pathogen.
The sole nay vote was posted by Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.), who had floated an amendment to provide an offset for the new appropriations with a rescind of monies for unobligated balances for international programs. That amendment faltered, although the amendment drew 16 aye votes against the 80 nay votes. Sen. Richard Shelby (R-Ala.) urged his colleagues to vote yes on the spending bill (H.R. 6074), citing the urgency of containing the pathogen, a sentiment seconded by Vermont Democrat Patrick Leahy, who emphasized the bipartisan nature of the support.
Sen. Maria Cantwell (D-Wash.) noted that many businesses and school districts in the state of Washington are shutting down due to the large volume of diagnoses in the Evergreen State. Cantwell said authorities in King County, Washington, are recommending that some residents, including those aged 60 or older, avoid public places, adding that airlines urgently need guidance on how to avoid spreading the virus.
“We need these funds, we need them now, and we need other states to observe the early testing,” Cantwell said, adding, “let’s get as aggressive about early testing as possible.”
Convention cancellations piling up
The impact of the virus on meetings was already being felt before the Senate vote, with the Health Information Management Systems Society (HIMSS) announcing that its annual meeting was cancelled. Karen Groppe, senior director of communications at Chicago-based HIMSS, said in a March 5 statement that the potential reach of the virus had expanded in the 24 hours prior to the decision, likely a reference to the three confirmed cases in the state of Florida (the meeting was to be held March 9-13 in Orlando, Fla.). At the time of the vote, the U.S. CDC was working to confirm a fourth diagnosis in Florida.
The American College of Cardiology (ACC) said in a March 3 statement that its annual meeting, scheduled for March 28-30 in Chicago, will take place as scheduled, although ACC leadership is monitoring developments.
CMS had created a new health care common procedure coding system (HCPCS) code for coronavirus testing in February (U0001), and has sent an email to Medicare beneficiaries stating that tests are covered via the Part B benefit, assuming a health care professional orders the test. Tests were covered by Medicare as of Feb. 4, but Medicare administrative contractors will not process claims until April 1. The Department of Health and Human Services said it plans to purchase 500 million N95 masks to add to the federal government’s stockpile, which would in turn prompt manufacturers to turn out more production.
Two members of Congress, Rep. Mark Pocan (D-Wis.) and Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.), penned a March 4 letter to the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America inquiring into the prospects for drug shortages stemming from the COVID-19 outbreak. The letter asks for information pertaining to the availability of active pharmaceutical ingredients manufactured in China, and copied the executives with several pharmaceutical companies, including Johnson & Johnson, of New Brunswick, N.J., and Gilead Sciences Inc., of Foster City, Calif.
U.S. Vice President Mike Pence said on a March 4 coronavirus task force briefing that in addition to the FDA’s emergency use authorization, major diagnostic companies have decided to offer diagnostics for the pathogen. Quest Diagnostics Inc. of Secaucus, N.J., said it will begin screening for the virus March 9, although the company did not indicate how many tests it would be able to conduct.
The American Telehealth Association, of Arlington, Va., said in a March 5 statement that the inclusion of funds for telehealth in the COVID-19 legislation and a concomitant waiver of telehealth restrictions will allow timely diagnoses and treatment while cutting down on the spread of the virus. Ann Mond Johnson, the association’s CEO, said, “we are heartened by the swift actions being taken by Congress” to address the crisis, adding that the situation highlights the benefits of telehealth in both routine care and during public health crises.
Johnson said also that the CMS should implement the waiver authority as quickly as possible to ensure that health care professionals understand the requirements and to “help speed the deployment of virtual services.”
Mike Pence admits America does NOT have enough testing kits to meet coronavirus demand as senators are told pledge for one million this week will NOT happen
Mike Pence said the White House would not be able to follow through on its promise to deliver 1 million coronavirus testing kits by the end of this week
‘We don’t have enough tests today to meet what we anticipate the demand going forward,’ the vice president admitted
He made the remarks while visiting a 3M Company plant in Minnesota Thursday
Earlier this week, Pence and other administration officials vowed the new kits would be available for doctors and local health officials
But Thursday, senators revealed that the testing kits would not be delivered in the capacity promised
‘There won’t be a million people to get a test by the end of the week. It’s way smaller than that,’ Republican senator Rick Scott said
Senator James Lankford said. ‘It’s going to take time to be able to get them, receive them, re-verify them and then be able to put them into use.’
In Washington state medical staff report anger when among people told they could not be tested for the coronavirus due to limited capacity
Clinics in the Seattle area reported an increase in patients seeking tests after the state reported 39 cases of coronavirus and 10 deaths – but cannot meet demand
Mike Pence admitted Thursday that the administration will not be able to follow meet its promise to deliver one million coronavirus testing kits by the end of the week.
‘We don’t have enough tests today to meet what we anticipate the demand going forward,’ Pence said during a visit to a 3M Company plant in Minnesota Thursday afternoon.
‘We’re focused very much on a cruise ship just off the California coast today. The Coast Guard delivered a sufficient number of tests for the passengers on that ship,’ the vice president said.
Pence spoke after Trump boasted in a tweet that there were only 129 cases of the virus in the U.S. – but that number is a result of the tiny number of tests which have so far taken place.
The unfolding test fiasco started in January.
The initial test developed to check individuals for if they had contracted coronavirus was flawed and led to several weeks of delays for local health officials and doctors who could not independently check patients for the fast-spreading respiratory virus.
Vice President Mike Pence said Thursday that the White House would not be able to follow through on its promise to deliver 1 million coronavirus testing kits by the end of this week
On way to crisis zone: Mike Pence went first to Maplewood, Minnesota, for talks with manufacturer 3M, then was headed to Washington state where 10 of the 12 American deaths occurred
‘We don’t have enough tests today to meet what we anticipate the demand going forward,’ Pence admitted during a visit to a 3M Company plant in Minnesota Thursday afternoon
Boast: Pence spoke after Trump boasted in a tweet that there were only 129 cases of the virus in the U.S. – but that number is a result of the tiny number of tests which have so far taken place.
The CDC says six states are not currently testing for coronavirus but are ‘in progress’: Alabama, Maine, Ohio, Oklahoma, West Virginia and Wyoming. But MaineHealth said it has begun testing and is sending samples to the CDC
Instead, doctors had to send samples off to the Centers for Disease Control for confirmation.
‘As more Americans take an interest in this or have concerns about this, we want to make sure they have access to the coronavirus test as well and we’ve made real progress on that in the last several days,’ Pence continued in remarks at the manufacturing plant in Minnesota.
In Washington D.C. the surgeon general, Jerome Adams, refused to answer questions from reporters but did appear on Fox News where he was not asked about testing kits.
So far 12 Americans have died after contracting coronavirus – 11 in Washington state and one in California.
There are more than 150 confirmed cases in the U.S. as of Wednesday as the president continues to downplay the outbreak.
The nation’s top immunologist at National Institute of Health, Anthony Fauci, said the virus has reached ‘pandemic proportions.’
Promises of accurate testing results come after changes have been made to the kits – but the news is accompanied by confusion over the messaging of when they will become available for use.
Food and Drug Administration Commissioner Stephan Hahn earlier this week told senators during a hearing that the U.S. would be able to perform 1 million tests by the end of this week, which Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar backed up during a White House briefing Wednesday.
Pence also said at the Wednesday briefing that 1.5 million tests would be going out this week.
WHAT ARE THE SYMPTOMS OF CORONAVIRUS?
Like other coronaviruses, including those that cause the common cold and that triggered SARS, COVID-19 is a respiratory illness.
The most common symptoms are:
Fever
Dry cough
Shortness of breath
Difficulty breathing
Fatigue
Although having a runny nose doesn’t rule out coronavirus, it doesn’t thus far appear to be a primary symptom.
Most people only become mildly ill, but the infection can turn serious and even deadly, especially for those who are older or have underlying health conditions.
In these cases, patients develop pneumonia, which can cause:
Potentially with yellow, green or bloody mucus
Fever, sweating and shaking chills
Shortness of breath
Rapid or shallow breathing
Pain when breathing, especially when breathing deeply or coughing
Low appetite, energy and fatigue
Nausea and vomiting (more common in children)
Confusion (more common in elderly people)
Some patients have also reported diarrhea and kidney failure has occassionally been a complication.
Avoid people with these symtpoms. If you develop them, call your health care provider before going to the hospital or doctor, so they and you can prepare to minimize possivle exposure if they suspect you have coronavirus.
But that claim fell apart Thursday as senators revealed that the testing kits would not be delivered in the capacity promised.
‘There won’t be a million people to get a test by the end of the week,’ Republican Senator Rick Scott said Thursday, according to Bloomberg News.
‘It’s way smaller than that. And still, at this point, it’s still through public health departments.’
While the government is ‘in the process’ of sending kits out, lawmakers said the process could take days to weeks as people are trained on how to use them.
‘By the end of the week they’re getting them out to the mail,’ Republican Senator James Lankford said. ‘It’s going to take time to be able to get them, receive them, re-verify them and then be able to put them into use.’
The issue is affecting people around the country, with the CDC saying six states are currently not testing for coronavirus.
The federal health agency published a map of all states and territories with at least one laboratory using diagnostic tests for the disease.
Almost every states is listed as currently testing for coronavirus, except Alabama, Maine, Ohio, Oklahoma, West Virginia and Wyoming.
Those six states are currently listed as being ‘in progress,’ according to the map key.
However, MaineHealth announced that it has begun testing and is sending samples to the CDC.
Maine say it has begun testing and is sending swabs from test kits to the CDC.
Oklahoma’s Department of Health announced on Tuesday that it plans to do its own coronavirus testing.
The Ohio Department of Health says it will be conducted its own testing later this week and Alabama and Wyoming say they’re in the process of setting up their laboratories.
Meanwhile, Washington state officials are urging patience as medical staff report fear and anger among people told they could not be tested for the coronavirus due to limited capacity.
Clinics in the Seattle area reported an increase in patients seeking tests after the state reported 39 cases of coronavirus and 10 deaths.
Health officials and front-line medical staff in Seattle’s King County, the location of most cases, asked mildly sick people to stay home rather than inundate clinics and hospitals for tests and risk infecting others.
Thousands of passengers are currently on the Grand Princess cruise ship that was banned on Wednesday from returning to its home port of San Francisco from a voyage to Hawaii amid the suspected coronavirus outbreak (file image)
‘We know there is huge demand out there for testing, we know there are a lot of people in our state who are sick and they want to know if they have [coronavirus],’ state health officer Kathy Lofy said at a news conference.
‘I want to tell you we are doing everything possible to expand testing capacity here in our state.’
Nurse practitioner Paula Ruedebusch, who works at an urgent care clinic in the Seattle suburb of Monroe, asked patients not to take out frustrations on front-line medical staff.
‘We have had patients presenting here, angry that they cannot be tested for COVID-19, yelling, cussing, throwing their dirty mask at us and even spitting their secretions on the floor and walls on their way out,’ Ruedebusch wrote on Facebook.
‘Please don’t do that. We are not the ones making the decisions here, we are just the ones trying to triage, manage and treat those who are sick and injured…and, that is just gross.
Map showing the numbers of cases of the coronavirus per country
WHAT YOU NEED TO KNOW ABOUT BEING TESTED FOR CORONAVIRUS
On Tuesday, Vice President Mike Pence announced that any American can be tested for coronavirus as long as a doctor approves it.
The move appears to expand upon previous criteria needed for testing by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).
But how do you determine if you have symptoms of COVID-19 and when you should see a doctor?
We break down everything you need to know about being tested for the virus that has infected more than 120 Americans and killed at least nine.
WHAT ARE THE LATEST GUIDELINES FOR BEING TESTED?
There are three groups of people that the CDC recommends get tested.
1. People with symptoms such as fever, cough or shortness of breath who have been in ‘close contact’ with someone confirmed to have coronavirus
2. Patients with symptoms who have traveled to areas affected by the virus within the last 14 days
3. Those with symptoms who need to be hospitalized and no other cause for their illness is found. They don’t need to have a travel history or exposure to another patient
HOW DOES THIS DIFFER FROM THE PREVIOUS CRITERIA?
When the CDC first began testing, only those with a travel history to China – where the outbreak emerged – or those who had been exposed to a confirmed coronavirus patient were tested.
However, the agency says its criteria for testing is always ‘subject to change as additional information becomes available.’
WHAT TO DO IF YOU NEED A TEST?
Health officials strongly advise that anyone who believes they may be infected not show up unannounced at their doctor’s office in case they expose others to the highly-contagious disease.
Instead, the CDC suggests immediately calling your physician or healthcare provider.
‘Your healthcare professional will work with your state’s public health department and CDC to determine if you need to be tested for COVID-19,’ the CDC’s website states.
If you are suspected of having the virus, you will most likely get tested at a hospital.
The test involves getting a swab of the patient’s nostril and throat. If the patient has a wet cough, a sample of sputum (a mixture of saliva and mucus) will also be collected.
WHY HAS IT BEEN DIFFICULT FOR PEOPLE TO GET TESTED?
There have been multiple reports of people not having accessing to get tested.
The first batch of test kits that the CDC sent to state and local health departments were faulty, which led to a delay.
Secondly, the CDC had strict criteria for testing, which led to missed diagnoses of people who caught the virus from so-called ‘community spread,’ meaning it’s unknown how they were infected.
A third reason is that some health departments did not leave the decision to test up to doctors as the CDC suggested.
For instance, the Massachusetts Department of Public Health initially required doctors to call a hotline to determine if their patients met CDC criteria for testing.
Then, before the test could be administered, it had to be authorized at the State Public Health Lab.
WILL IT BE EASIER TO GET TESTED NOW?
Since the CDC’s testing fiasco, several health departments have either received new kits from the federal agency or made their own.
Additionally, the US Food and Drug Administration expanded its Emergency Use Authorization (EUA) policy so allow more labs can apply for approval to test for the virus.
The CDC that 75,000 test kits are currently available and more are being manufactured.
FDA Commissioner Dr Stephen Han told reporters on Monday that close to one million people would be tested by the end of the week.
But figures from the Association of Public Health Laboratories show that likely no more than 100,000 people would be tested by week’s end.
Story 4: World Health Organization Appeals To Governments to Pull Out The Stops To Contain COVID-19 — Videos
WHO Urges the Globe to ‘Pull Out the Stops’ Against Coronavirus Outbreak
How to protect yourself against COVID-19
This is not a drill’: WHO urges the world to fight virus
By MATT SEDENSKY and JOHN LEICESTER34 minutes ago
The global march of the new virus triggered a vigorous appeal Thursday from the World Health Organization for governments to pull out “all the stops” to slow the epidemic, as it drained color from India’s spring festivities, closed Bethlehem’s Nativity Church and blocked Italians from visiting elderly relatives in nursing homes.
As China, after many arduous weeks, appeared to be winning its epic, costly battle against the new virus, the fight was revving up in newly affected areas of the globe, unleashing disruptions that profoundly impacted billions of people.
The U.N. health agency urged all countries to “push this virus back,” a call to action reinforced by figures showing about 17 times as many new infections outside China as in it. The virus has infected nearly 98,000 people and killed over 3,300.
“This is not a drill. This is not the time for giving up. This is not a time for excuses. This is a time for pulling out all the stops,” WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said in Geneva. “Countries have been planning for scenarios like this for decades. Now is the time to act on those plans.”
In Italy, the epicenter of Europe’s outbreak, workers in latex gloves pinned “closed” notices on school gates, enforcing a 10-day shutdown of the education system. Italy’s sports-mad fans are also barred from stadiums until April 3.
A government decree that took effect Thursday urged the country’s famously demonstrative citizens to stay at least 1 meter (3 feet) apart from each other, placed restrictions on visiting nursing homes and urged the elderly not to go outside unless absolutely necessary.
That directive appeared to be widely ignored, as school closures nationwide left many Italian children in the care of their grandparents. Parks in Rome overflowed with young and old, undercutting government efforts to shield older Italians from the virus that hits the elderly harder than others. Italy has the world’s oldest population after Japan.
“It’s an absolute paradox!” said Mauro Benedetti, a 73-year-old retiree called upon to watch his grandson. “They tell us to stay home. How can we help our kids and grandkids at the same time?”
“Grandparents are now at risk,” he said.
Italy’s death toll climbed Thursday to 148, and its confirmed cases to 3,858.
Iran, which has registered 107 virus deaths, also closed schools and universities and introduced checkpoints to limit travel between major cities. Iranians were urged to reduce their use of paper money. Iranian state TV also reported that Hossein Sheikholeslam, a 68-year-old diplomat who was an adviser to Iran’s foreign minister, had died of the virus.
Amid the string of bad news, Iranian President Hassan Rouhani urged state television to offer “happier” programs to entertain those stuck at home.
Brian Hook, the U..S. special representative for Iran, said the United States offered humanitarian assistance to help Iran deal with its outbreak but “the regime rejected the offer.” He said the offer would stand.
Virus fears also affected the joyful Indian celebration of Holi, in which Hindu revelers celebrate the arrival of spring with bursts of color, including bright powders smeared on faces. Prime Minister Narendra Modi and other leaders said they wouldn’t attend Holi events and the Holi Moo Festival in New Delhi was canceled.
In the United States, where 12 have died from the virus, hundreds were placed in self-quarantines due to cases in a New York suburb. A suburban Seattle school district with 22,000 students announced it would close for up to two weeks because of coronavirus concerns and Seattle’s normally clogged highways were nearly vacant for Thursday’s morning commute as large tech employers like Amazon encouraged employees to work from home.
In Seattle, health officials recommended that the elderly and people with weak immune systems not attend games after an employee at the 72,000-seat football stadium tested positive for the coronavirus.
Off the coast of California, a cruise ship carrying about 3,500 people was ordered to stay put until passengers and crew could be tested because a traveler from its previous voyage died and another three were infected. A helicopter delivered test kits to the ship, which has people aboard with flu-like symptoms — lowering the kits by rope to the 951-foot (290-meter) Grand Princess
Financial markets remained volatile, as investors continued to weigh the size of the epidemic’s dent on the global economy. Outbreak fears led to a sharp U.S. stock selloff, with the Dow Jones Industrial Average falling 969 points, or 3.6 percent, nearly wiping out gains from a day earlier. Analysts said more yo-yo moves on global markets are likely while new infections accelerate.
The OPEC oil cartel called for a deep production cut to keep crude prices from falling further as disruption to global business from the coronavirus slashes demand from air travel and industry — deciding Thursday to push for a cut of 1.5 million barrels a day, or about 1.5% of total world supply.
Across the globe, travelers faced ever-greater disruptions, as countries sought to keep the virus out. But South Africa confirmed its first case Thursday, becoming the seventh African nation to report infections. Britain and Switzerland reported their first coronavirus deaths.
“The virus doesn’t care about race and belief or color. It is attacking us all, equally,” said Ian MacKay, who studies viruses at the University of Queensland in Australia.
The outlook for the travel industry was increasingly grim. The International Air Transport Association said the outbreak could cost airlines as much as $113 billion in lost revenue. The struggling British airline Flybe collapsed Thursday amid sinking demand.
Australia, Indonesia, and the United Arab Emirates were among the countries banning entry from people coming from countries that had outbreaks.
Germany’s Lufthansa and its subsidiaries Austrian Airlines and Swiss said they will cancel all flights to and from Israel for three weeks starting Sunday after Israeli authorities announced tough restrictions on travelers from several countries because of the new virus.
Palestinian officials closed the storied Church of the Nativity in the biblical city of Bethlehem indefinitely, weeks ahead of the busy Easter holiday.
Japan said visitors from China and South Korea would face a two-week quarantine at a government facility and be barred from public transit. Sri Lankans arriving from Italy, South Korea and Iran will be quarantined at a hospital once used for leprosy patients.
In China, where hospitals were releasing hundreds of recovered patients, officials reported 139 new infection cases and 31 more deaths. Overall, China has reported 80,409 cases and 3,012 deaths, and authorities say about 6,000 people remained hospitalized in serious condition.
A state visit to Japan by Chinese President Xi Jinping was postponed. It was to have been the first for a Chinese leader since 2008.
___
Sedensky is an AP National Writer. Leicester reported from Paris. Contributing to this report were Kim Tong-Hyung and Hyung-jin Kim in Seoul, South Korea; Mari Yamaguchi in Tokyo; Bharatha Mallawarachi in Colombo, Sri Lanka; Ken Moritsugu in Beijing; Aniruddha Ghosal and Ashok Sharma in New Delhi; Jon Gambrell in Dubai, United Arab Emirates; Nicole Winfield in Rome, Geir Moulson in Berlin; Stan Choe in New York; Jamey Keaten in Geneva; Elaine Ganley in Paris, and Danica Kirka in London.
___
The Associated Press receives support for health and science coverage from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Department of Science Education. The AP is solely responsible for all content.
Story 5: Senator Warren Withdraws From Race Blames Sexism — Nonsense — American People Have Their Own Plans That Do Not Include Warren — Will She Endorse Male Progressive Bernie Sanders — Too Little — Too Late — Videos
Elizabeth Warren drops out of U.S. presidential race, offers no endorsement | FULL
‘Not today’: Elizabeth Warren declines to endorse Joe Biden or Bernie Sanders after she finally quits presidential race but says she WILL have more to say about ‘sexism’
Massachusetts senator pulls the plug on her campaign
But she did not immediately endorse either Joe Biden or Bernie Sanders
‘Not today. I need some space around this, and I want to take a little time to think a little more,’ she said outsider her home in Massachusetts
Warren had been in talks with both campaigns since her dismal Super Tuesday showing when she even failed to win Massachusetts
Warren led the field early on but saw her star slowly fade as Pete Buttigieg won Iowa, Sanders took New Hampshire and Biden won South Carolina
Her biggest prize was effectively driving Mike Bloomberg out of the race by tearing into him at the two debates he took part in
Trump mocked her throughout her campaign as Pocahontas over her claims to have Native American heritage
Elizabeth Warren ended her presidential campaign on Thursday but is not endorsing either of the two remaining candidates – Joe Biden or Bernie Sanders – at least not yet.
‘Not today. I need some space around this, and I want to take a little time to think a little more. I’ve been spending a lot of time right now on the question of suspending and also making sure that this works as best we can for our staff, for our team, for our volunteers,’ she told reporters outside her home in Cambridge, Mass.
‘We don’t have to decide that this minute,’ she noted, saying she would advise her supporters to ‘take a deep breath’ and think about who they would want to give their blessing.
Warren bowed out after failing to win any states in the Democratic primary process – even losing her home state of Massachusetts.
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Elizabeth Warren declined to endorse either Joe Biden or Bernie Sanders after she dropped out of the Democratic presidential race
Elizabeth Warren also said she’d have more to say about the role gender and sexism played in the Democratic primary process
She acknowledged the role gender played in the race.
‘Gender in this race, you know that is the big question for everyone. If you say, yeah, there was sexism in this race, everyone says, whiner. And if you say, no, there was no sexism, about a bazillion women think, what planet do you live on? I promise you this, I’ll have a lot more to say on that subject later on,’ she said.
She also referenced the ‘pinkie’ promises she made with little girls on the campaign trail about a woman being in the contest.
‘I take those pinkie promises seriously,’ she said.
Her decision means there will be a female will not win the presidential nomination after women expressed their fury at President Trump’s election.
‘The hardest part of this is all those little girls who are going to have to wait four more years. That’s going to be hard,’ she said.
She choked up a few times when she talked to the press about her decision with her husband Bruce and dog Bailey at her side.
‘I stood in that voting booth and I looked down and saw my name on the ballot. And I thought, wow, kiddo, you’re not in Oklahoma anymore. That it really was a moment of thinking about how my mother and dad, if they were still here, would feel about this,’ she said.
‘It was a long time standing in that booth. I miss my mommy and my daddy,’ she added.
Elizabeth Warren choked up a few times when she talked about her decision to exit the race
Elizabeth Warren exits her Massachusetts home with her husband Bruce to face a crowd of reporters and discuss the end of her presidential campaign
Warren announced her decision Thursday morning in a call with her staff, thanking them for their work.
‘I know that when we set out, this was not the call you ever wanted to hear. It is not the call I ever wanted to make. But I refuse to let disappointment blind me – or you – to what we’ve accomplished. We didn’t reach our goal, but what we have done together – what you have done – has made a lasting difference. It’s not the scale of the difference we wanted to make, but it matters – and the changes will have ripples for years to come,’ she said.
She also vowed that ‘our place in this fight has not ended.’
‘The fight may take a new form, but I will be in that fight, and I want you in this fight with me. We will persist,’ she said.
Her decision means that the contest is a simple two horse race between Biden, 77, and Sanders, 78, with Biden currently ahead thanks to his dramatic Super Tuesday come back.
President Trump, who called her ‘very selfish,’ for staying the race, claiming she was doing so to keep Sanders from winning the nomination, slammed her exiting the contest ‘THREE DAYS TOO LATE.’
‘Elizabeth “Pocahontas” Warren, who was going nowhere except into Mini Mike’s head, just dropped out of the Democrat Primary…THREE DAYS TOO LATE. She cost Crazy Bernie, at least, Massachusetts, Minnesota and Texas. Probably cost him the nomination! Came in third in Mass,’ he wrote on Twitter.
Warren, who led the field early on, saw her star slowly fade as Pete Buttigieg won Iowa, Sanders took New Hampshire and Biden won South Carolina.
Out at last: Elizabeth Warren took 36 hours to bow to the inevitable, finally quitting the presidential race Thursday morning after a disastrous Super Tuesday
Boost? Joe Biden and Bernie Sanders are now clear to go against each other – and both were in talks with Elizabeth Warren for her endorsement
She has reportedly been in talks with both Biden and Sanders about her endorsement, a value that will could make her the kingmaker in the Democratic primary, particularly if she bestows it on the former vice president.
Biden has already sealed endorsements from Buttigieg, Amy Klobuchar, Beto O’Rourke, and Mike Bloomberg.
Warren, a favorite of the progressives, was never able to capture the liberal left like Sanders did.
Her blessing to him would rally the left flank of the party to his side and boost his battle against Biden.
Sanders said on Wednesday he had spoken to Warren that day and she was assessing her campaign.
‘It is important, I think, for all of us… to respect the time and the space that she needs to make her decision,’ he said.
She and Sanders saw their friendship suffer during the campaign when she claimed he told her in a December 2018 meeting that a woman could not be president. He denied the charge.
Warren also spoke with Biden on Wednesday.
President Trump had attacked Warren as ‘selfish’ for not dropping out of the race, claiming her presence was a move by the party to keep Sanders from becoming the nominee since they both appeal to the same voting block.
He accused her of playing a spoiler role in the primary process.
‘So Elizabeth Warren was the single biggest factor in that election last night and it would have been a very different thing and not in a positive way for her,’ Trump said at the White House Wednesday.
Trump had made her the subject of attacks as ‘Pocahontas’ after her botched defense of claims she had Native American heritage, which ended in a DNA test showing that she was likely to be 1,064th Indian.
Tulsi Gabbard remains the lone female candidate in the primary race but her campaign has faltered. She has not appeared on the debate stage in months, barely makes the polls, and only netted a single delegate on Super Tuesday – from American Samoa where she was born.
Warren was the last surviving woman among the major candidates however, staying in long past Kirsten Gillibrand, Kamala Harris, and Klobuchar.
Last woman running: Tulsi Gabbard, the Hawaii congresswoman, remains in the race but has garnered just one delegate – from American Samoa
President Trump repeatedly attacked Elizabeth Warren as ‘Pocahontas,’ based on her claim of Native American DNA, which a test proved false
Her departure will likely raise questions about how Democrats – who brag about their diversity – came down to having two white males as their final contenders for the nomination.
Warren did, in effect, drive Mike Bloomberg from the race.
She decimated him on the debate stage, demanding to know why he wouldn’t release women from the disclosures they signed after complaints about a hostile work environment.
She demanded to know how many women and why he wouldn’t release them, leaving Bloomberg fumbling for an answer and damaging his campaign prospects.
Bloomberg exited the race on Wednesday after pouring nearly a billion dollars in trying to sweep the Super Tuesday contests – only to win American Samoa. He also endorsed Biden.
Warren was known for her policy proposals – ‘I have a plan for that’ was practically her campaign slogan – and her long lines of supporters wanting selfies.
But her many proposals also became part of her down fall. Her rivals pummeled her on her Medicare for All universal health care plan, demanding to how she would pay for it and why people who liked their insurance should give it up.
WHO ARE THE 3 DEMOCRATS RUNNING FOR PRESIDENT IN 2020?
JOE BIDEN
Age on Inauguration Day 2021: 78
Entered race: April 25, 2019
Career: No current role. A University of Delaware and Syracuse Law graduate, he was first elected to Newcastle City Council in 1969, then won upset election to Senate in 1972, aged 29. Was talked out of quitting before being sworn in when his wife and daughter died in a car crash and served total of six terms. Chaired Judiciary Committee’s notorious Clarence Thomas confirmation hearings. Ran for president in 1988, pulled out after plagiarism scandal, ran again in 2008, withdrew after placing fifth in the Iowa Caucuses. Tapped by Obama as his running mate and served two terms as vice president. Contemplated third run in 2016 but decided against it after his son died of brain cancer.
Family: Eldest of four siblings born to Joe Biden Sr. and Catherine Finnegan. First wife Neilia Hunter and their one-year-old daughter Naomi died in car crash which their two sons, Joseph ‘Beau’ and Robert Hunter survived. Married Jill Jacobs in 1976, with whom he has daughter Ashley. Beau died of brain cancer in 2015. Hunter’s marriage to Kathleen Buhle, with whom he has three children, ended in 2016 when it emerged Hunter was in a relationship with Beau’s widow Hallie, mother of their two children. Hunter admitted cocaine use; his estranged wife accused him of blowing their savings on drugs and prostitutes
Religion: Catholic
Views on key issues: Ultra-moderate who will emphasize bipartisan record. Will come under fire over record, having voted: to stop desegregation bussing in 1975; to overturn Roe v Wade in 1981; for now controversial 1994 Violent Crime Act; for 2003 Iraq War; and for banking deregulation. Says he is ‘most progressive’ Democrat. New positions include free college, tax reform, $15 minimum wage. No public position yet on Green New Deal and healthcare. Pro-gun control. Has already apologized to women who say he touched them inappropriately
Would make history as: Oldest person elected president
Slogan: Our Best Days Still Lie Ahead
TULSI GABBARD
Age on Inauguration Day: 39
Entered race: Still to formally file any papers but said she would run on January 11 2019
Career: Currently Hawaii congresswoman. Born on American Samoa, a territory. Raised largely in Hawaii, she co-founded an environmental non-profit with her father as a teenager and was elected to the State Legislature aged 21, its youngest member in history. Enlisted in the National Guard and served two tours, one in Iraq 2004-2006, then as an officer in Kuwait in 2009. Ran for Honolulu City Council in 2011, and House of Representatives in 2012
Family: Married to her second husband, Abraham Williams, a cinematographer since 2015. First marriage to childhood sweetheart Eduardo Tamayo in 2002 ended in 2006. Father Mike Gabbard is a Democratic Hawaii state senator, mother Carol Porter runs a non-profit.
Religion: Hindu
Views on key issues: Has apologized for anti-abortion and anti-gay marriage views; wants marijuana federally legalized; opposed to most U.S. foreign interventions; backs $15 minimum wage and universal health care; was the second elected Democrat to meet Trump after his 2016 victory
Would make history as: First female, Hindu and Samoan-American president; youngest president ever
Slogan: Lead with Love
BERNIE SANDERS
Age on Inauguration Day: 79
Entered race: Sources said on January 25, 2019, that he would form exploratory committee. Officially announced February 19
Career: Currently Vermont senator. Student civil rights and anti-Vietnam activist who moved to Vermont and worked as a carpenter and radical film-maker. Serial failed political candidate in the 1970s, he ran as a socialist for mayor of Burlington in 1980 and served two terms ending in 1989, and win a seat in Congress as an independent in 1990. Ran for Senate in 2006 elections as an independent with Democratic endorsement and won third term in 2018. Challenged Hillary Clinton for the Democratic nomination in 2016 but lost. Campaign has since been hit by allegations of sexual harassment – for which he has apologized – and criticized for its ‘Bernie bro’ culture
Family: Born to a Jewish immigrant father and the daughter of Jewish immigrant parents in Brooklyn, New York. First marriage to college sweetheart Deborah Shiling Messing in 1964 ended in divorce in 1966; had son Levi in 1969 with then girlfriend Susan Cambell Mott. Married Jone O’Meara in 1988 and considers her three children, all adults, his own. The couple have seven grandchildren. His older brother Larry is a former Green Party councilor in Oxfordshire, England.
Religion: Secular Jewish
Views on key issues: Openly socialist and standard bearer for the Democratic party’s left-turn. Wants federal $15 minimum wage; banks broken up; union membership encouraged; free college tuition; universal health care; re-distributive taxation; he opposed Iraq War and also U.S. leading the fight against ISIS and wants troops largely out of Afghanistan and the Middle East
Would make history as: Oldest person elected president; first Jewish president
Slogan: Not me. Us.
AND THE 26 WHO HAVE WITHDRAWN
MICHAEL BENNET, Colorado senator
Entered race: May 2, 2019
Quit: February 12, 2019, evening of New Hampshire primary
MIKE BLOOMBERG
Entered race: November 24, 2019
Quit: March 4, 2020, day after Super Tuesday primaries
CORY BOOKER, New Jersey Senator
Entered race: February 1, 2019
Quit: January 13, 2020
STEVE BULLOCK, Montana governor
Entered race: May 14, 2019
Quit: December 2, 2019
PETE BUTTIGIEG, former mayor of South Bend, Indiana
Entered race: January 23, 2019
Quit: March 1, 2020, day after South Carolina primary
JULIÁN CASTRO, former Housing Secretary
Entered race: January 18, 2019
Quit: January 2, 2020
BILL DE BLASIO, New York City mayor
Entered race: May 16, 2019
Quit: September 20, 2020
JOHN DELANEY, former Maryland Congressman
Entered race: July 8, 2017
Quit: January 31, 2019
KIRSTEN GILLIBRAND, New York senator
Entered race: January 16, 2019
Quit: August 28, 2019
MIKE GRAVEL, Former Alaska governor
Entered race: April 2,2019
Quit: August 2, 2019
KAMALA HARRIS,California senator
Entered race: January 21, 2019
Quit: December 3, 2019
JOHN HICKENLOOPER, Former Colorado governor
Entered race: March 4, 2019
Quit: August 15, 2019
JAY INSLEE, Washington governor
Entered race: March 1, 2019
Quit: August 21, 2019
AMY KLOBUCHAR, Minnesota senator
Entered race: February 19, 2019
Quit: March 2, 2020
WAYNE MESSAM, mayor of Miramar, Florida
Entered race: March 28, 2019
Quit: November 20, 2019
SETH MOULTON, Massachusetts congressman
Entered race: April 22,2019
Quit: August 23, 2019
RICHARD OJEDA, former West Virginia state senator
Entered race: November 12, 2018
Quit: January 25, 2019
BETO O’ROURKE, former Texas congressman
Entered race: March 14, 2019
Quit: November 1, 2019
DEVAL PATRICK, former Massachusetts governor
Entered race: November 13, 2019
Quit: February 13, 2019, morning after New Hampshire primary
TIM RYAN, Ohio congressman
Entered race: April 4, 2019
Quit: October 24, 2019
JOE SESTAK, former Pennsylvania congressman
Entered race: June 23, 2019
Quit: December 1, 2019
TOM STEYER, billionaire activist
Entered race: July 9, 2019
Quit: February 29, 2020
ERIC SWALWELL, California congressman
Entered race: April 8, 2019
Quit: July 8, 2019
ELIZABETH WARREN, Massachusetts senator
Entered race: December 31, 2018
Quit: March 5, 2020, two days after Super Tuesday
MARIANNE WILLIAMSON, author
Entered race: November 15, 2018
Quit: January 10, 2020
ANDREW YANG, entrepreneur
Entered race: November 6, 2018
Quit: February 12, 2019, evening of New Hampshire primary
Story 1: President Trump Wins All 14 States and Over 740 Delegates On Super Tuesday and Has Total Delegates of 859 With 1,276 Delegates Needed To Win Republican Nomination for President — Americans Love A Winner — Videos
Patton (1/5) Movie CLIP – Americans Love a Winner (1970) HD
President Trump delivers remarks at CPAC
President Trump speaks at the Conservative Political Action Conference.
President Donald Trump Sweeps Super Tuesday
The president picked up hundreds of delegates in an unsurprising victory in more than a dozen states.
By Alexa Lardieri, Staff WriterMarch 4, 2020, at 11:13 a.m.
AS DEMOCRATS BATTLED IT out in 14 states on Super Tuesday, President Donald Trump easily won the Republican primaries, defeating challengers in a much-expected outcome.
The president won all 14 states, picking up more than 740 delegates. Candidates need at least 1,276 delegates to win the Republican party’s nomination and Trump’s victory brings his count to 859. His opponent, former Massachusetts Gov. Bill Weld has picked up one delegate so far.
AS DEMOCRATS BATTLED IT out in 14 states on Super Tuesday, President Donald Trump easily won the Republican primaries, defeating challengers in a much-expected outcome.
While it was expected Trump would face no competition on the delegate-packed Election Day, Democrats saw varying, and some unexpected, results. Former Vice President Joe Biden won at least nine states, while Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont won at least four, with Maine still too close to call.
Former New York City Mayor Mike Bloomberg, who dropped out of the race Wednesday, won American Samoa. Sen. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts had a disappointing night, failing to win any state, including her home state of Massachusetts, which went to Biden.
Trump tweeted as the results came in, exclaiming that the “Democrat establishment came together and crushed Bernie Sanders, AGAIN!” He added that it was “selfish for Elizabeth Warren to stay in the race.”
The president’s campaign argued Super Tuesday only caused more chaos in the Democratic Party and that, while voters may be excited about Biden, he is a “terrible candidate.”
“The results only increase the likelihood that no candidate will have enough delegates for a first ballot victory at their convention, which only means more chaos! The media is hyperventilating about Joe Biden but everyone should remember that he is just as terrible a candidate right now as he was a few days ago,” the campaign said in a statement.
“President Trump will wipe the floor with whatever Democrat is unlucky enough to be the nominee,” the campaign added.
Story 2: Democrats Deeply Divided — Democratic Establishment Candidate Creepy Sleepy Dopey Joey Biden vs. Radical Extremist Democratic Socialist (REDS) Bernie Sanders — Lying Lunatic Leftist Losers vs. Trump The Winner — Americans Love A Winner — Videos
Super Tuesday results show clear two-man race for Democratic nomination
Rubio on Biden vs. Sanders: It’s either old Obama policies or Marxism
Trump calls Warren ‘selfish’ for staying in 2020 race
Mike Bloomberg drops out of the 2020 race
Gowdy: Biden only looks moderate because he is next to Bernie
NOT A JOKE: Biden Has Dementia?! | Louder with Crowder
Mike Bloomberg QUITS 2020 race after disastrous Super Tuesday saying winning is ‘impossible’ after spending $1 BILLION for just 44 delegates – and immediately endorses Joe Biden, while Elizabeth Warren ‘assesses her path forward’
Mike Bloomberg and Elizabeth Warren are the dramatic losers on Super Tuesday
Bloomberg quit at 10.11am having spent $1 billion to only win 44 delegates
Warren came in third in her own state of Massachusetts and came in third in nearby Maine too; aides said she was ‘assessing the path forward’
Dramatic count in Texas ends with Joe Biden winning the state – securing a sensational comeback from the political dead after he joked: ‘They don’t call it Super Tuesday for nothing.’
Bernie Sanders seized a victory in California in the last act of a dramatic Super Tuesday which saw Joe Biden win state after state in landslides across the nation – only for his rival to take the biggest prize of all
Biden started Super Tuesday off strong, sweeping a swath of the south after first winning Virginia then picking up North Carolina, Alabama, Oklahoma, Tennessee, Minnesota, Arkansas, Massachusetts and Texas
Sanders currently has four states under his belt: California, Vermont, Utah and Colorado
Both Sanders and Biden claimed victory, and both said they will take the nomination
The path to the nomination in Milwaukee now runs through a mini-Super Tuesday on March 10, when Missouri, Michigan, Washington and Mississippi vote
Mike Bloomberg dramatically quit the presidential race Wednesday morning after a disastrous Super Tuesday and immediately backed Joe Biden.
The billionaire gained just 44 delegates by 10.11am, the time he announced his departure – but ran up a bill of $1 billion.
He immediately and whole-heartedly backed Biden, the night’s big winner, hinting that his vast fortune is now at the former vice-president’s disposal.
‘I’ve always believed that defeating Donald Trump starts with uniting behind the candidate with the best shot to do it,’ he said.
‘After yesterday’s vote, it is clear that candidate is my friend and a great American, Joe Biden.
‘I’ve known Joe for a very long time. I know his decency, his honesty, and his commitment to the issues that are so important to our country – including gun safety, health care, climate change, and good jobs.
‘Today I am glad to endorse him – and I will work to make him the next President of the United States.’
Democrats are also urging Elizabeth Warren to drop out after further pulling votes from frontrunners Biden and Bernie Sanders without winning any states – including her home of Massachusetts.
She was reported by NBC News to he holding talks with aides about ‘the path forward,’ suggesting that she too is on the brink.
And in yet another blow to Warren early Wednesday morning, Biden was declared winner in Maine, the last of the 14 Super Tuesday states to declare – and Warren did not even get the 15 per cent threshold to pick up delegates there.
In the White House Donald Trump took time out of the coronavirus crisis to send a string of mocking tweets about his richer would-be rival and notably about Bloomberg’s campaign aide Tim O’Brien. Trump had tried and failed to sue O’Brien for libel for writing in 2006 that he was not a real billionaire.
Bloomberg had been a late bloomer to the race.
Seeing the relative weakness of frontrunner Biden, and after first saying he would not run for the White House in 2020 the billionaire decided to jump in after all around Thanksgiving.
Out: Mike Bloomberg quit the race hours after a drubbing, saying: ‘After yesterday’s results, the delegate math has become virtually impossible – and a viable path to the nomination no longer exists.’
Still not out: Elizabeth Warren – who lost her home state of Massachusetts to both Joe Biden and Bernie Sanders Tuesday night
I’M ALL IN FOR JOE – HOW BLOOMBERG QUIT
This is Bloomberg’s statement as he left the race
Three months ago, I entered the race for President to defeat Donald Trump.
Today, I am leaving the race for the same reason: to defeat Donald Trump – because it is clear to me that staying in would make achieving that goal more difficult.
I’m a believer in using data to inform decisions. After yesterday’s results, the delegate math has become virtually impossible – and a viable path to the nomination no longer exists.
But I remain clear-eyed about my overriding objective: victory in November.
Not for me, but for our country. And so while I will not be the nominee, I will not walk away from the most important political fight of my life.
I’ve always believed that defeating Donald Trump starts with uniting behind the candidate with the best shot to do it.
After yesterday’s vote, it is clear that candidate is my friend and a great American, Joe Biden.
I’ve known Joe for a very long time. I know his decency, his honesty, and his commitment to the issues that are so important to our country – including gun safety, health care, climate change, and good jobs.
I’ve had the chance to work with Joe on those issues over the years, and Joe has fought for working people his whole life.
Today I am glad to endorse him – and I will work to make him the next President of the United States.
Like another former New York City Mayor, Rudy Giuliani, who ran for the White House in 2008, Bloomberg decided to skip the first states that held primaries – Iowa, New Hampshire, Nevada and South Carolina.
But a change in the Democratic National Committee rules allowed for Bloomberg to still make the Las Vegas debate stage last month.
It was the first time for American voters to see Bloomberg the candidate outside the flurry of television ads his hundreds of millions had bought.
And while the expectation was for Sanders, a democratic socialist, to push back on Bloomberg being there, within the first 10 minutes Warren brought up some of the alleged sexist behavior from the ex-mayor’s past.
‘I’d like to talk about who we’re running against: A billionaire who calls women ‘fat broads’ and ‘horse-faced lesbians.’ And no, I’m not talking about Donald Trump. I’m talking about Mayor Bloomberg,’ Warren said. ‘Democrats are not going to win if we have a nominee who has a history of hiding his tax returns, of harassing women, and of supporting racist policies like redlining and stop and frisk.’
Warren’s debate performance was the beginning of the end.
The results of the single-biggest primary contest night essentially narrowed the field to a two-horse race with Biden edging Sanders.
On Super Tuesday, 14 states and the U.S. territory of American Samoa voted, and Bloomberg only walked away with a win in Samoa – where six delegates were up for grabs.
Every other state was won by either the former vice president or senator from Vermont.
The scale of Biden’s comeback is not in doubt – and neither is Sanders’ ability to keep going, possibly even to the convention in Milwaukee in July.
Biden began by winning state after state, and appeared to stumble when California went to Sanders just after the polls closed there at 8pm – 11pm Eastern.
For the two frontrunners, Sanders’ win in California initially threatened to upend the narrative of the night being a sensational comeback for Biden.
However, the state may yet deliver the kind of resounding win or delegate haul for Sanders that had been forecast.
Sanders had a strong lead, with 87 per cent of the vote in, Biden was running nearly 9 points ahead, and the Vermont senator had garnered over a million votes. In California, Bloomberg also slipped below the 15 per cent threshold he would need to hit in order to collect delegates.
There was a dramatic race playing out through the night in Texas, the night’s second biggest prize. Biden opened up a lead over Sanders early Wednesday morning.
By the time the race was called around 2 am, he was leading Sanders by 50,000 votes, with 89 per cent reporting. Biden was at 33 percent, Sanders was at 30 per cent, and Bloomberg was at 15 per cent – just enough to earn delegates.
As votes continued to come in Wednesday morning, Bloomberg had slipped below that 15 per cent.
There were long lines in Harris County, home to Houston, where Biden was running up strong margins. As in southern states, Biden was running up big margins with the state’s African American voters, but Sanders heavily targeted Latino voters in the state. Biden’s margin, however was bigger.
Some voters were online for six hours, in a state that had pared back polling locations. Biden cleaned up among those who decided who to back late – winning the group 49 to 20 per cent in the state.
Virginia Gov. Terry McAuliffe called it ‘astounding,’ noting that Biden didn’t spend ‘a penny’ there, speaking on CNN.
Biden staged a dramatic rally in Dallas Monday where he secured endorsements from former presidential rivals Amy Klobuchar and Beto O’Rourke. Earlier Monday, Pete Buttigieg had also endorsed the former vice president.
O’Rourke later took Biden out to a Whataburger, a regional chain, for a milkshake.
Across the map there were signs of Biden’s sudden revival.
Biden dealt a humiliating blow to Warren in her home state of Massachusetts – snagging at least 28 delegates out of the state and beating her in her backyard. She vowed to stay in the race all the way to the conventions even as more centrist candidates flocked to 77-year-old former vice president.
He also denied the prize to Sanders, who hails from a neighboring state.
Bloomberg was born there, and had actor Michael Douglas stumping for him in Boston.
But the region where he dominated was the south, with wins stretching from Virginia to Tennessee, Arkansas, Alabama, North Carolina, and Oklahoma. Biden scored a surprise win in Minnesota.
Warren, hosting a rally in downtown Detroit, called herself ‘the woman who’s going to beat Donald Trump.’
The final details of delegate distribution were yet to be determined as the night wore on. But Biden’s overwhelming performance, and the collapse of Bloomberg and Warren, immediately reset the race, with the prospect that Sanders and his political ‘revolution’ would be up against a long slog against the Demoratic establishment-backed candidate as he was against Hillary Clinton in 2016.
Biden rushed to win after win early in the night, with Virginia, North Carolina and Alabama falling in rapid succession.
He took Minnesota without spending a dime on advertising and despite being third in the polls until Amy Klobuchar dropped out on Sunday. She endorsed Biden on Monday.
‘Prediction has been a terrible business and pundits have gotten it wrong over and over,’ she said. ‘Here’s my advice. Cast a vote that will make you proud.’
Then Sanders took some western wins in Utah and Colorado and snared the biggest state of all.
Bernie Sanders seized a victory in California in the last act of a dramatic Super Tuesday which saw Joe Biden win state after state in landslides across the nation – only for his rival to take the biggest prize of all
ling in rapid succession. He took Minnesota without spending a dime on advertising and despite being third in the polls until Amy Klobuchar dropped out on Sunday
s Biden raced to a series of state victories, Mike Bloomberg’s campaign said he plans to ‘reassess’ whether he should stay in the race tomorrow. His aides said his campaign chiefs were considering their next move. Dropping out would hand a huge victory to Biden and also the potential for Bloomberg’s almost unlimited resources to be thrown behind him immediately
TRUMP ROASTS HIS RIVALS AND TOASTS HIS OWN SUCCESS
Donald Trump skewered his critics while toasting his own successes on Twitter as results rolled in from Super Tuesday ballots across the country.
The President reserved most of his ire for ‘Mini’ Mike Bloomberg and Elizabeth ‘Pocahontas’ Warren, who both had poor showings in the polls.
Hitting out at fellow New York billionaire Bloomberg, Trump branded him ‘the biggest loser of the night, by far’.
‘His ‘political’ consultants took him for a ride,’ Trump tweeted.
‘$700 million washed down the drain, and he got nothing for it but the nickname Mini Mike, and the complete destruction of his reputation. Way to go Mike!’
Trump also took aim at Warren after she failed to win her home state of Massachusetts, landing her a distant third in the delegate stakes.
‘Elizabeth ‘Pocahontas’ Warren, other than Mini Mike, was the loser of the night. She didn’t even come close to winning her home state of Massachusetts,’ he wrote.
While Trump made sure to put down his rivals, he donated most of his energy to cheering his own successes – albeit while facing token opposition.
As each win rolled in he tweeted out a message of thanks to his supporters, while vowing to retake the presidency in November.
In Los Angeles, before California was called for Sanders, Biden took to the stage and cast himself the victor, regardless if Sanders took both California and Texas.
First, he mixed up his wife Jill and sister Valerie, a characteristic gaffe which has clearly done nothing to put off Democratic voters.
Biden declared: ‘It’s a great night and it seems to be getting even better. They don’t call it Super Tuesday for nothing!’
The former vice president recalled how just days ago the suggestion was that Super Tuesday would mark the end of his campaign.
‘Well it may be over for the other guy,’ Biden said, a clear shot at Sanders.
Energized, coherent and not put off even by two militant vegan protesters who ran onto the stage to protest against the dairy industry, he painted himself as the one Democrat who can take on Trump.
‘A lifelong Democrat, an Obama-Biden Democrat,’ he said to cheers – a pointed way to contrast himself to Sanders, who is an independent senator.
Jill Biden was captured in a photograph grabbing the protester by the arm and grimacing. Symone Sanders, Sanders’ former press secretary who’s not a top Biden adviser, had rushed across the stage to pull a protester off.
It was a return in part to the early days of the race, when Biden held a strong polling lead before the first states voted and caucused. With Sanders on the rise days ago and party leaders warning the democratic socialist could seize the nomination Tuesday, forces coalesced around Biden in South Carolina.
A key factor was the endorsement there of James C. Clyburn, the state’s most senior African American elected official.
In Vermont, Sanders pinned his hopes on California, pivoting to a victory speech and a string of attacks on Biden.
‘Tonight I tell you with absolute confidence we are going to win the Democratic nomination,’ he said.
The path to the nomination in Milwaukee now runs through a mini-Super Tuesday on March 10, when Missouri, Michigan, Washington and Mississippi vote.
Sanders had appeared to be ahead in Michigan but Biden’s upset in Minnesota is likely to weigh heavily there, and the combined demographic of African-Americans and disaffected blue collar voters could play to Biden’s strengths.
The following Tuesday, March 17, offers another selection of massive delegate counts when Florida, Illinois and Ohio all vote, along with Arizona.
The following week, March 24, sees Georgia vote, which Biden’s southern firewall should make a surefire victory.
For Sanders, the loss of momentum from a rocky Super Tuesday could be critical.
In 2016 he stayed in by rallying his base and railing against an ‘establishment’ determined not to give him the nomination and to install an ‘inevitable’ candidate in Hillary Clinton.
That may be more difficult as he faces in Biden an opponent whose comeback narrative offers him some of the advantages of the underdog, and whose narrative of empathy and standing up for those who were left behind overlaps with Sanders’ more radical rhetoric.
The string of endorsements Biden has garnered in the last few days from centrist party figures, including three of his former rivals, have been crucial in driving momentum.
In Los Angeles, before California was called for Sanders’, Biden took to the stage and cast himself the victor, regardless if Sanders took California and Texas
Energized, coherent and not put off even by two militant vegan protesters (pictured) who ran onto the stage to protest against the dairy industry, Biden painted himself as the one Democrat who can take on Trump
Biden’s early lead caused a dramatic shift and left Sanders, until last week the frontrunner, clinging to the hope of doing well in California before polls closed in the nation’s most populous state. Shortly after polls in California closed, he was named the winner
Biden’s campaign had suggested that the key to Super Tuesday was to minimize Sanders’ lead and a Virginia victory appeared to put them on the path to that goal. The sign of momentum for the former vice president came as he saw a boost in last-minute opinion polls despite having trailed Sanders in recent weeks
WARREN LOSES HER HOME STATE
Elizabeth Warren’s campaign for president fell flat on Super Tuesday as she was unable to win even her home state of Massachusetts.
Warren lost to both Joe Biden – whose South Carolina win Saturday night restored his frontrunner status – and Bernie Sanders, who represents neighboring state Vermont. Warren was in third place with 22 per cent of the vote with 70 per cent of the votes counted.
But Warren’s persistance had her looking ahead, as she campaigned in Detroit, Michigan Tuesday as votes were trickling in – a state that doesn’t vote until next Tuesday – and telling supporters in an email that she needed their help ‘to keep up the momentum.’
‘Predictions are a terrible business. Pundits have gotten it wrong over and over,’ Warren told the Michigan crowd. ‘Cast a vote that will make you proud. Vote from your heart. And vote for the person who you think will make the best president of the United States.’
During her final rally in California Monday night, Warren dismissed the surging Biden as a same-old, same-old Washington politician.
Supporters of Democratic U.S. presidential candidate Senator Bernie Sanders cheer for early results at his Super Tuesday night rally in Essex Junction, Vermont
Sanders supporters cheer as they hear election results during a party held at Central Machine Works Brewery in Austin, Texas
Sanders supporters cheer as they hear election results during a watch party held at Central Machine Works Brewery in Austin, Texas – a state he eventually lost to Biden
Supporters of Bernie Sanders look over Super Tuesday election results at a campaign center in Denver, Colorado
Supporters of Democratic Presidential hopeful Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren attend a rally in Detroit
Tulsi Gabbard, a congresswoman from Hawaii, remains in the race though has only campaigned sporadically. She did make a pitch to voters in American Samoa, where she was born, to vote for her Tuesday
People wait to vote during the presidential primary in Santa Monica, California on Super Tuesday
Voters cast their ballots in the Democratic presidential primary election at a polling place in Armstrong Elementary School o in Herndon, Virginia
Rochelle Marks, 77, votes at a polling station on Super Tuesday in Beverly Hills, California
People line up to vote at a polling station on Super Tuesday in Beverly Hills, California
Students at the University of Vermont Franklin fill out voter registration forms at a polling place on Super Tuesday in Burlington, Vermont. At the close of the polls on Tuesday night, Sanders won his home state
Voters cast their ballots at a polling location inside an elementary school in Minneapolis, Minnesota
Those included former Senate Democratic Leader Harry Reid, former Virginia Gov. Terry McAuliffe, Rep. Veronica Escobar of Texas, Sen. Tammy Duckworth of Illinois, Rep. Don Beyer of Virginia, Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz of Florida, former Sen. Barbara Boxer of California and Rep. Jennifer Wexton of Virginia, among others.
Now Biden will have Bloomberg out of his way in order to capture more moderate voters – and Bloomberg’s commitment to help him remove Trump from office.
President Trump, for his part, touted his string of Republican primary victories Tuesday night, tweeting his thanks after state after state was called in his favor.
The president only had token competition – former Massachusetts Gov. Bill Weld – in the Super Tuesday contests and one state, Virginia, canceled its GOP primary as Trump, like most incumbent presidents, is easily expected to win his party’s nomination.
Trump has played armchair pundit on Twitter as he’s watched the shake-up on the Democratic side.
‘Elizabeth “Pocahontas” Warren, other than Mini Mike, was the loser of the night. She didn’t even come close to winning her home state of Massachusetts. Well, now she can just sit back with her husband and have a nice cold beer!’ Trump tweeted early Wednesday.
The president relished the news that Bloomberg had bowed out.
‘Mini Mike Bloomberg just “quit” the race for President. I could have told him long ago that he didn’t have what it takes, and he would have saved himself a billion dollars, the real cost,’ Trump wrote. ‘Now he will pour money into Sleepy Joe’s campaign, hoping to save face.’
‘It won’t work!’ Trump said.
Biden talks with actor and comedian Keegan-Michael Key as he campaigns before his evening rally on Super Tuesday in LA
Meanwhile Bernie Sanders, who was earning frontrunner status, spoke to thousands at his rallies in Super Tuesday states including one Monday night in Minneapolis. With Amy Klobuchar out, her state is up for grabs
On Monday night at a really in Los Angeles Warren pitched herself as the candidate who could split the difference between Biden and Sanders. ‘Voters deserve a choice of someone with unshakeable values who can also get things done and bring all kinds of Democrats along with her,’ she argued
Voters from 14 states head to the polls on ‘Super Tuesday,’ with about a third of Democratic delegates at stake in a single day
WHO ARE THE 4 DEMOCRATS RUNNING FOR PRESIDENT IN 2020?
JOE BIDEN
Age on Inauguration Day 2021: 78
Entered race: April 25, 2019
Career: No current role. A University of Delaware and Syracuse Law graduate, he was first elected to Newcastle City Council in 1969, then won upset election to Senate in 1972, aged 29. Was talked out of quitting before being sworn in when his wife and daughter died in a car crash and served total of six terms. Chaired Judiciary Committee’s notorious Clarence Thomas confirmation hearings. Ran for president in 1988, pulled out after plagiarism scandal, ran again in 2008, withdrew after placing fifth in the Iowa Caucuses. Tapped by Obama as his running mate and served two terms as vice president. Contemplated third run in 2016 but decided against it after his son died of brain cancer.
Family: Eldest of four siblings born to Joe Biden Sr. and Catherine Finnegan. First wife Neilia Hunter and their one-year-old daughter Naomi died in car crash which their two sons, Joseph ‘Beau’ and Robert Hunter survived. Married Jill Jacobs in 1976, with whom he has daughter Ashley. Beau died of brain cancer in 2015. Hunter’s marriage to Kathleen Buhle, with whom he has three children, ended in 2016 when it emerged Hunter was in a relationship with Beau’s widow Hallie, mother of their two children. Hunter admitted cocaine use; his estranged wife accused him of blowing their savings on drugs and prostitutes
Religion: Catholic
Views on key issues: Ultra-moderate who will emphasize bipartisan record. Will come under fire over record, having voted: to stop desegregation bussing in 1975; to overturn Roe v Wade in 1981; for now controversial 1994 Violent Crime Act; for 2003 Iraq War; and for banking deregulation. Says he is ‘most progressive’ Democrat. New positions include free college, tax reform, $15 minimum wage. No public position yet on Green New Deal and healthcare. Pro-gun control. Has already apologized to women who say he touched them inappropriately
Would make history as: Oldest person elected president
Slogan: Our Best Days Still Lie Ahead
TULSI GABBARD
Age on Inauguration Day: 39
Entered race: Still to formally file any papers but said she would run on January 11 2019
Career: Currently Hawaii congresswoman. Born on American Samoa, a territory. Raised largely in Hawaii, she co-founded an environmental non-profit with her father as a teenager and was elected to the State Legislature aged 21, its youngest member in history. Enlisted in the National Guard and served two tours, one in Iraq 2004-2006, then as an officer in Kuwait in 2009. Ran for Honolulu City Council in 2011, and House of Representatives in 2012
Family: Married to her second husband, Abraham Williams, a cinematographer since 2015. First marriage to childhood sweetheart Eduardo Tamayo in 2002 ended in 2006. Father Mike Gabbard is a Democratic Hawaii state senator, mother Carol Porter runs a non-profit.
Religion: Hindu
Views on key issues: Has apologized for anti-abortion and anti-gay marriage views; wants marijuana federally legalized; opposed to most U.S. foreign interventions; backs $15 minimum wage and universal health care; was the second elected Democrat to meet Trump after his 2016 victory
Would make history as: First female, Hindu and Samoan-American president; youngest president ever
Slogan: Lead with Love
BERNIE SANDERS
Age on Inauguration Day: 79
Entered race: Sources said on January 25, 2019, that he would form exploratory committee. Officially announced February 19
Career: Currently Vermont senator. Student civil rights and anti-Vietnam activist who moved to Vermont and worked as a carpenter and radical film-maker. Serial failed political candidate in the 1970s, he ran as a socialist for mayor of Burlington in 1980 and served two terms ending in 1989, and win a seat in Congress as an independent in 1990. Ran for Senate in 2006 elections as an independent with Democratic endorsement and won third term in 2018. Challenged Hillary Clinton for the Democratic nomination in 2016 but lost. Campaign has since been hit by allegations of sexual harassment – for which he has apologized – and criticized for its ‘Bernie bro’ culture
Family: Born to a Jewish immigrant father and the daughter of Jewish immigrant parents in Brooklyn, New York. First marriage to college sweetheart Deborah Shiling Messing in 1964 ended in divorce in 1966; had son Levi in 1969 with then girlfriend Susan Cambell Mott. Married Jone O’Meara in 1988 and considers her three children, all adults, his own. The couple have seven grandchildren. His older brother Larry is a former Green Party councilor in Oxfordshire, England.
Religion: Secular Jewish
Views on key issues: Openly socialist and standard bearer for the Democratic party’s left-turn. Wants federal $15 minimum wage; banks broken up; union membership encouraged; free college tuition; universal health care; re-distributive taxation; he opposed Iraq War and also U.S. leading the fight against ISIS and wants troops largely out of Afghanistan and the Middle East
Would make history as: Oldest person elected president; first Jewish president
Slogan: Not me. Us.
ELIZABETH WARREN
Age on Inauguration Day: 71
Entered race: Set up exploratory committee December 31, 2018
Career: Currently Massachusetts senator. Law lecturer and academic who became an expert on bankruptcy law and tenured Harvard professor. Ran for Senate and won in 2012, defeating sitting Republican Scott Brown, held it in 2018 60% to 36%. Was short-listed to be Hillary’s running mate and campaigned hard for her in 2016
Family: Twice-married mother of two and grandmother of three. First husband and father of her children was her high-school sweetheart. Second husband Bruce Mann is Harvard law professor. Daughter Amelia Tyagi and son Alex Warren have both been involved in her campaigns. Has controversially claimed Native American roots; DNA test suggested she is as little as 1,064th Native American
Religion: Raised Methodist, now described as Christian with no fixed church
Views on key issues: Was a registered Republican who voted for the party but registered as a Democrat in 1996. Pro: higher taxes on rich; banking regulation; Dream Act path to citizenship for ‘dreamers’; abortion and gay rights; campaign finance restrictions; and expansion of public provision of healthcare – although still to spell out exactly how that would happen. Against: U.S. presence in Afghanistan and Syria; liberalization of gambling
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10 Things to Know About CORONAVIRUS COVID-19 + TOP 3 SOURCES to Follow—For
Family & Friends
These are the 10 things you MUST KNOW about CORONAVIRUS COVID-19 to keep your family safe. The video also explains why you should take this outbreak seriously and where to go for CREDIBLE INFORMATION to help you stay ahead of the news curve.
1) Coronavirus Covid-19 is not the flu, it’s not SARS, and it’s not MERS. It’s a completely new virus.
2) Coronavirus Covid-19 is 20x deadlier than the flu.
3) Although 81% of people experience mild symptoms, Coronavirus Covid-19 has a high complication rate.
4) If you contract the virus and you’re older, your chances of dying are higher. But young people in their 20’s and 30’s have died too, so don’t be complacent.
5) Coronavirus Covid-19 can have a very long incubation period, and it spreads asymptomatically.
6) Coronavirus Covid-19 spreads via droplets in the air and AEROSOL!
7) The R0 factor of this virus is incredibly high.
8) There have been reports out of Asia of people getting Covid-19 again, so recovering once does not guarantee immunity afterward.
9) In the United States, we are in the early part of the curve, where it looks like nothing much is happening.
10) Vaccines are not yet available and probably won’t be for 6-18 months, no matter what you read in the headlines.
World health officials say the mortality rate for COVID-19 is 3.4% globally, higher than previous estimates of about 2%.
“Globally, about 3.4% of reported COVID-19 cases have died,” WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said during a press briefing at the agency’s headquarters in Geneva.
World health officials said Tuesday the mortality rate for COVID-19 is 3.4% globally, higher than previous estimates of about 2%.
“Globally, about 3.4% of reported COVID-19 cases have died,” WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said during a press briefing at the agency’s headquarters in Geneva. In comparison, seasonal flu generally kills far fewer than 1% of those infected, he said.
The World Health Organization had said last week that the mortality rate of COVID-19 can differ, ranging from 0.7% to up to 4%, depending on the quality of the health-care system where it’s treated. Early in the outbreak, scientists had concluded the death rate was around 2.3%.
During a press briefing Monday, WHO officials said they don’t know how COVID-19 behaves, saying it’s not like influenza. They added that while much is known about the seasonal flu, such as how it’s transmitted and what treatments work to suppress the disease, that same information is still in question when it comes to the coronavirus.
“This is a unique virus, with unique features. This virus is not influenza,” Tedros said Monday. “We are in uncharted territory.”
Dr. Mike Ryan, executive director of WHO’s health emergencies program, said Monday that the coronavirus isn’t transmitting the same exact way as the flu and health officials have been given a “glimmer, a chink of light” that the virus could be contained.
“Here we have a disease for which we have no vaccine, no treatment, we don’t fully understand transmission, we don’t fully understand case mortality, but what we have been genuinely heartened by is that unlike influenza, where countries have fought back, where they’ve put in place strong measures, we’ve remarkably seen that the virus is suppressed,” Ryan said.
Epidemiologists and infectious disease experts have been at pains to emphasize against an unwarranted scramble for face masks in recent weeks.
South Korea, Italy and Iran have all recorded sharp upticks in cases of the coronavirus in recent days, with many other countries imposing travel restrictions on virus-hit areas worldwide.
Infections have now been reported in every continent except Antarctica.
This photo taken on February 28, 2020 shows workers producing face masks at a factory in Handan in China’s northern Hebei province.
STR | AFP via Getty Images
Medical experts have urged people to stop panic buying face masks, warning that such equipment is not an effective way to protect yourself from the fast-spreading coronavirus.
The outbreak was first identified in Hubei province, China, where over 90% of the deaths have been reported. More recently, the virus has been spreading at a faster rate outside China than inside the country.
WATCH NOW
VIDEO02:38
Face mask shortage sparks global race to fulfill orders
The WHO has declared the outbreak a global health emergency, with almost 60 countries reporting cases of the coronavirus.
Epidemiologists and infectious disease experts have been at pains to emphasize against an unwarranted scramble for face masks in recent weeks, particularly because such hoarding behavior elevates the prospect of an equipment shortage for medical workers.
“Seriously people — STOP BUYING MASKS!” U.S. Surgeon General Jerome Adams said via Twitter over the weekend.
“They are NOT effective in preventing general public from catching coronavirus, but if healthcare providers can’t get them to care for sick patients, it puts them and our communities at risk!”
U.S. Surgeon General
✔@Surgeon_General
Seriously people- STOP BUYING MASKS!
They are NOT effective in preventing general public from catching #Coronavirus, but if healthcare providers can’t get them to care for sick patients, it puts them and our communities at risk! http://bit.ly/37Ay6Cm
Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19)
Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) is a virus (more specifically, a coronavirus) identified as the cause of an outbreak of respiratory illness first detected in Wuhan, China.
The warning from America’s top doctor is consistent with medical advice from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which has said there is no evidence to support wearing face masks.
Instead, Adams said “the best way to protect yourself and your community is with everyday preventative actions, like staying home when you are sick and washing hands with soap and water, to help slow the spread of the respiratory illness.”
‘Not a lot of evidence’ to support wearing face masks
It has been suggested wearing face masks could be useful if you’re sick in order to prevent you from sneezing or coughing into somebody’s face, David Heymann, who led WHO’s infectious disease unit at the time of the SARS epidemic in 2002-2003, said at a Chatham House press briefing last month.
But, “a mask that is used to stop getting an infection is sometimes not very effective because people take it off to eat, many times they are worn improperly (and) if they get wet and somebody sneezes on that mask it could pass through.
So, there is really not a lot of evidence (to support wearing masks).”
Children with face masks wash their hands before prayer at Erawan shrine, a popular spritual landmark in Bangkok on January 27, 2020.
MLADEN ANTONOV | AFP via Getty Images
“One of the most important ways of stopping respiratory outbreaks such as this is washing hands,” Heymann continued.
That’s because “if you touch a patient, if you shake hands, if you touch a door that has a droplet on it — which could theoretically happen — then you touch your face (or) your mouth and you become infected.”
“So, handwashing is the most important. And second is, people who are suspected as being patients, be very careful when you are dealing with them. Avoid face-to-face contact and wash hands when you’re treating,” Heymann said.
“It is very important that people understand that they can prevent themselves from being infected if they follow a few simple measures,” he added.
‘Don’t touch your face’
South Korea, Italy and Iran have all recorded sharp upticks in cases of the coronavirus in recent days, with many other countries imposing travel restrictions on virus-hit areas worldwide.
Infections have now been reported in every continent except Antarctica.
Emily Landon, medical director for infection control at the University of Chicago Medical Center, told CNBC late last week that face masks were “not a great choice” for everyday use.
“First of all, there are multiple different kind of face masks. There is the surgical mask that people wear that doesn’t really seal up very well. That’s super good if you put it on the patient who’s sick because that will contain their secretions and protect everyone around them.”
“However, if you are the one who wants to protect yourself, those N95 masks … are much better,” Landon said.
Face masks should be worn by people who show symptoms: University of Chicago Medical Director
“You need to be fit-tested in order to know exactly which size you should be wearing, you have to be trained on how to wear it properly and they can get pretty uncomfortable, so they are not a great choice for just going out in the public,” she continued.
“Keeping your hands clean so that you don’t touch your face no matter what things you are touching with your hands is a really important piece of preventing infection in hospitals, in schools and everywhere you go.”
“Soap and water works really well. It can dry your hands out a little bit more but when you do it, you want to do it right. That means getting your hands wet with warm water, cleaning them, getting all of the surfaces with soap for 20 seconds — that’s a full time through ‘Happy Birthday’ — and then also rinsing them off afterwards,” Landon said.
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Dow soars more than 1,100 points as market rallies off Biden win, UnitedHealth pops 10%
Stocks surged on Wednesday as major victories from former Vice President Joe Biden during Super Tuesday sparked a massive rally within the health-care sector.
The Dow Jones Industrial Average soared 1,173.45 points higher, or 4.5%, to 27,090.86. The S&P 500 jumped 4.2% to 3,130.12, while the Nasdaq Composite advanced 3.8% to 9,018.09. The Dow posted its second-highest point gain ever, and it was the second time in three days that the 30-stock average swung 1,000 points or higher.
With Wednesday’s rally, all three major averages moved out of correction territory, meaning they are now less than 10% down from their 52-week highs. The tech-heavy Nasdaq also turned positive on the year, up 0.5% in 2020.
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The top moments in business and politics – wrapped with exclusive color and context – right in your ears
Biden scored key primary victories in states including North Carolina, Texas and Arkansas, giving his campaign momentum and increasing his odds of being the Democratic Party’s presidential nominee. Many investors applaud Biden for his middle-of-the-road tack in contrast to the more progressive policies of Sanders, I-Vt., and Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass.
Tuesday’s primary results sent health-care stocks flying. The S&P health care sector surged 5.8%, posting its best day since 2008. UnitedHealth and Centene jumped 10.7% and 15.6%, respectively. Shares of UnitedHealth had their biggest one-day gain since 2008.
“Investors fear Bernie because he wants to cut off the head of capitalism by raising taxes significantly on the rich and using the funds to provide free everything to everybody else,” said Ed Yardeni, president and chief investment strategist at Yardeni Research, in a note. “Getting everything for free trumps freedom, according to Bernie. No wonder investors are reacting to him as though he is going to infect us all with the virus of socialism.”
Warren, a former law school professor who specialized in bankruptcy law, is not a favorite on Wall Street as she proposes detailed plans to break up big banks and technology companies and raise taxes.
“Stocks will be even more relieved at Warren’s coming concession as they are at Biden’s big showing,” Ritholtz Wealth Management CEO Josh Brown tweeted. “Wall Streeters have always secretly been more afraid of her than anyone else given her domain expertise.”
Wednesday’s moves come after yet another volatile session for U.S. investors as the Federal Reserve announced Tuesday an emergency interest rate cut in an effort to help pacify investors worried about the economic consequences of the coronavirus.
The decision to cut rates by half a percentage point came two weeks before the Fed’s next scheduled meeting and reflected the central bank’s belief that quick action would be most effective to combat the dampening impact of the virus.
Though stocks initially traded higher, the Dow, S&P 500 and Nasdaq Composite all reversed course to end Tuesday’s session markedly lower. The Dow fell more than 780 points, or 2.9%, and the S&P 500 dropped 2.8% with both indexes back in correction.
The Fed’s “Beige Book” report on Wednesday showed the U.S. economic activity expanded at a “modest to moderate” rate over the past week, citing coronavirus as a risk to the outlook.
“We’re trying to reprice the entire stock market based on an unknown, the coronavirus,” said JJ Kinahan, chief market strategist at TD Ameritrade. “When we have such a large unknown, it’s going to affect people in different ways.”
Impeachment couldn’t stop President Donald Trump’s job approval from rising, but the coronavirus might. As Americans’ near-term view of the economy soured in February, amid worry over the coronavirus and a Dow Jones correction, Trump’s job approval rating relapsed.
President Trump Job Approval
Just 41% of Americans approve of how President Trump is handling his job, while 54% disapprove, the March IBD/TIPP Poll finds. That negative 13-point differential has nearly doubled in the past month. In late January, Trump’s job approval registered 44% and disapproval 51%.
Now just 37% of independents give Trump positive reviews, while 57% disapprove. That’s down from 39%-53% in late January.
Trump Job Approval Slumps With Economic Outlook
The drop in Trump’s job approval coincides with a sudden shift in the economic outlook. The U.S. economic outlook just suffered its biggest one-month drop since October 2013 amid spread of the coronavirus, the March IBD/TIPP Poll finds.
The six-month economic outlook index fell to a modestly pessimistic 47.8 from a strongly optimistic 57. Readings above the neutral 50 level reflect optimism.
Trump continues to get positive ratings for his handling of the economy, with 47% approving and 35% disapproving. Still, that’s a big comedown from late January. Back then, 53% of Americans rated his handling of the U.S. economy as good or excellent, while just 28% give him a negative rating.
Trump Slips In Matchups Vs. Democrats
Joe Biden leads Trump 49% to 46%, the March IBD/TIPP Poll finds, after Trump had cut the margin to 49%-48% in late January.
Sanders now leads Trump 49% to 47%, having trailed 47%-49% a month earlier. Warren leads Trump 48% to 46%, a reversal of her 46%-50% deficit.
Still, a narrow popular vote edge would not necessarily translate into an Electoral College victory for Democrats.
Trump leads all Democrats among self-described investors, with a four-point lead over Biden. He leads Sanders by seven points.
The IBD/TIPP Poll reflects responses from 908 adults contacted via mobile phones and landlines from Feb. 20-29 and carries a 3.3-point margin of error.
Please follow Jed Graham on Twitter at @IBD_JGraham for coverage of economic policy and financial markets.
Story 1: President Trump Wins All 14 States and Over 740 Delegates On Super Tuesday and Has Total Delegates of 859 With 1,276 Delegates Needed To Win Republican Nomination for President — Videos
President Donald Trump Sweeps Super Tuesday
The president picked up hundreds of delegates in an unsurprising victory in more than a dozen states.
By Alexa Lardieri, Staff WriterMarch 4, 2020, at 11:13 a.m.
AS DEMOCRATS BATTLED IT out in 14 states on Super Tuesday, President Donald Trump easily won the Republican primaries, defeating challengers in a much-expected outcome.
The president won all 14 states, picking up more than 740 delegates. Candidates need at least 1,276 delegates to win the Republican party’s nomination and Trump’s victory brings his count to 859. His opponent, former Massachusetts Gov. Bill Weld has picked up one delegate so far.
AS DEMOCRATS BATTLED IT out in 14 states on Super Tuesday, President Donald Trump easily won the Republican primaries, defeating challengers in a much-expected outcome.
The president won all 14 states, picking up more than 740 delegates. Candidates need at least 1,276 delegates to win the Republican party’s nomination and Trump’s victory brings his count to 859. His opponent, former Massachusetts Gov. Bill Weld has picked up one delegate so far.
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Sanders and Bloomberg come under attack in Democratic debate
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Democrats shout at each other, turn on ‘racist’ Mike Bloomberg and gang up on ‘unelectable’ Bernie Sanders in messy debate – while the CBS moderators lose control so badly even Gayle King and Norah O’Donnell start arguing
The debate in South Carolina on Tuesday night kicked off at 8pm, as candidates Bernie Sanders, Joe Biden, Mike Bloomberg, Pete Buttigieg, Elizabeth Warren, Amy Klobuchar and Tom Steyer took the stage
Right off the bat, the candidates began targeting Sanders, arguing he is backed by Vladimir Putin, is unelectable and is divisive
Moderators Gayle King and Norah O’Donnell quickly lost control with the candidates shouting over another
At various points, the crowd booed the notion of billionaires, which includes Bloomberg and Steyer
The blows went in all directions. Joe Biden, who said he intends to win in South Carolina, blasted Sanders for voting against the Brady bill gun control measure, and referenced the Charleston church shootings
Bloomberg was labelled a ‘racist’ and Warren blasted him for NDAs at his media company, claiming he told an employee to ‘kill it’ after she informed him she was pregnant
Once the candidates wrapped up, O’Donnell tried to shut down the debate prematurely, but King had to quickly correct her, saying it wasn’t quite over yet
Democratic presidential candidates got into a series of angry and personal exchanges at Tuesday night’s debate in Charleston – with Bernie Sanders attacking Mike Bloomberg for being a billionaire, Bloomberg labeling Sanders as Vladimir Putin’s favorite and a trio of candidates blasting Bloomberg for his ‘racist’ stop-and-frisk policy.
It was the kind of full-on circular firing squad that commentators had warned might be coming in South Carolina, with Joe Biden’s ‘firewall’ claims on the line and Sanders having the potential to pad his delegate lead in the rush to Super Tuesday.
The debate featured chaotic exchanges where multiple candidates sought to talk over each other, with CBS moderators Norah O’Donnell and Gayle King losing all control of the discussion about 40 minutes into the debate, either failing to referee or being completely ignored by the over-eager candidates.
Candidates flouted 75-second response times, cut each other off, and yelled out retorts out of turn. ‘Not true,’ interjected Sanders when Amy Klobuchar questioned how he’ll pay for his programs. ‘Can I say something?’ pleaded hedge funder Tom Steyer later in the heated exchange. ‘Let me go,’ he demanded.
‘Excuse me, can I respond to the attack?’ Sanders inquired when Pete Buttigieg went after him. ‘Listen to the moderator, guys,’ Sanders schooled the group. ‘Hello?’ chimed in Biden.
Then the former vice president complained when he finally got called on. ‘Whoa. Whoa. Whoa,’ he said. ‘I guess the only way you do this is jump in and speak twice as long as you should.’ Later, he boiled over and announced he would defy the unenforced rules. ‘I’m not out of time. You spoke over time and I’m going to talk,’ Biden said.
Sanders proved to be the Democrat to take down, as he joined his six primary rivals – including Biden, Bloomberg, Pete Buttigieg, Elizabeth Warren, Amy Klobuchar and Steyer – onstage at Charleston’s Gaillard Center.
Democratic presidential candidates got into a series of angry and personal exchanges at Tuesday night’s debate in Charleston – with Bernie Sanders attacking Mike Bloomberg for being a billionaire
The candidates repeatedly talked over each other – with CBS moderators losing all control of the discussion about 40 minutes into the debate
Moderators Gayle King and Norah O’Donnell quickly lost control with the candidates shouting over another. Once the candidates wrapped up, O’Donnell tried to shut down the debate prematurely, but King had to quickly correct her, saying it wasn’t quite over yet
Bloomberg quickly labeled Sanders as Vladimir Putin’s favorite and a trio of candidates blasted Bloomberg for his ‘racist’ stop-and-frisk policy while he was mayor of New York City
At various points, the crowd loudly booed the notion of billionaires, which includes candidates Bloomberg and Tom Steyer
The debate in South Carolina on Tuesday night kicked off at 8pm, as candidates (l-r) Mike Bloomberg, Pete Buttigieg, Elizabeth Warren, Bernie Sanders, Joe Biden, Amy Klobuchar and Tom Steyer took the stage. It was the kind of full-on circular firing squad that commentators had warned might be coming, where Sanders’ rise is being put to the test in a diverse state
Warren attacked Sanders early, saying his plan doesn’t show ‘how to get’ to universal health care like hers does.
‘I dug in. I did the work. And then Bernie’s team trashed me for it,’ she vented.
With South Carolina’s primary just four days away, candidates who might have needed break-out performances didn’t get them.
Sanders avoided enduring an all-out pile-on, despite having a path to the nomination that would only accelerate with a strong showing here and on Super Tuesday. He was put on the defensive several times for his socialist background, the cost of his programs, and his statements about left-wing leaders. Sanders got to explain that the greatest misconception about him ‘is that the ideas I’m talking about are radical.’
Biden, who predicted a win in South Carolina, delivered forceful defenses of his record, tied himself to Barack Obama, and avoided serious stumbles.
No longer the front-runner, he was forced to plead for time from the moderators. He won laughs when he was one of the few to honor a time limit. ‘Why am I stopping? No one else stops. Catholic school training,’ he quipped.
Bloomberg performed better than when he got pummeled in Las Vegas, but some of his remarks fell flat, as when he took a stab at a self-deprecating joke.
‘I really am surprised that all of these, my fellow contestants up here I guess would be the right word for it… I’m surprised they show up because I would’ve thought after I did such a good job in beating him last week that they’d be a little afraid to do that,’ Bloomberg said, in a remark that didn’t play in the room.
Klobuchar was mostly on the sidelines, though she kept up her argument that she is ‘Donald Trump’s worst nightmare’ and that the party doesn’t want a nominee who proposes $60 trillion in new spending.
Buttigieg kept his cool, but wasn’t a major player in many of the most dramatic exchanges. He said he would raise taxes on billionaires, needled Bloomberg by saying he released his own tax returns, and made the case against Sanders’ electability.
Joe Biden, who said he intends to win in South Carolina, blasted Sanders for voting against the Brady bill gun control measure, and referenced the Charleston church shootings
Bloomberg drew fire for stop-and-frisk, a policy he has apologized for in stark terms despite thousands of arrests during his tenure as New York City mayor
Since New Hampshire primary night, which Biden left the Granite State for to instead kick off campaigning in South Carolina, Biden has argued that the states that truly matter are the ones that have a more diverse population, which reflect the makeup of the Democratic Party
Proving to be the night’s punching bag, Sanders was slammed and accused of being backed by Putin, unelectable and divisive.
Sanders got the first question in recognition of his new status as the favorite to become the party’s candidate. He was asked by CBS News’ Norah O’Donnell how he could justify being a socialist at a time of booming employment.
The Vermont senator quickly pivoted and attacked Bloomberg, saying that the economy was only doing well for ‘billionaires,’ but the former New York mayor was ready with a dig of his own.
Bloomberg said: ‘I think that Donald Trump thinks it would be better if he’s president. I do not think so.
‘Vladimir Putin thinks that Donald Trump should be president of the United States. And that’s why Russia is helping you get elected, so you will lose to him.’
Sanders shot back: ‘Oh, Mr. Bloomberg. Let me tell Mr. Putin, OK, I’m not a good friend of President Xi of China. I think President Xi is an authoritarian leader.
‘And let me tell Mr. Putin, who interfered in the 2016 election, try to bring Americans against Americans, hey, Mr. Putin, if I’m president of the United States, trust me, you’re not going to interfere in any more American elections.’
A question to Bloomberg about his past comments that China’s Xi Jinping wasn’t a dictator provoked a vigorous exchange about authoritarianism – and Sanders’ past positive comments about Fidel Castro’s Cuba and other left-leaning regimes.
‘We have to deal with China if we’re ever going to solve the climate crisis,’ said Bloomberg, who made billions through his global media and financial company.
‘He does serve at the behest of the Politburo,’ Bloomberg said, defending Xi’s political accountability.
‘They must play by the rules, period, period, period,’ said Biden, who Republicans immediately accused of being soft on China.
‘I have opposed authoritarianism,’ said Sanders, defending comments running through his career about Cuba, Nicaragua, El Salvador, Russia, and Venezuela.
‘But who the hell is the Politburo responsive to?’ Sanders continued. ‘What I said is what Barack Obama said in terms of Cuba,’ Sanders insisted, defending his comments that Cuba had a ‘massive literacy program’ under Castro.
At various points, the crowd loudly booed the notion of billionaires, which includes candidates Bloomberg and Tom Steyer, with estimated personal fortunes of $60 billion and $1.6 billion, respectively
There were angry exchanges early-on in the debate between Bloomberg and Warren, who brought up a woman who sued his media company, Bloomberg LP, and reached a settlement after claiming Bloomberg told her to ‘kill it’ after she informed him she was pregnant
‘Never said that!’ Bloomberg exclaimed. ‘Oh, come on!’ From there the conversation turned back to Bloomberg’s company’s previous use of non-disclosure agreements, something that Warren hammered him for on the debate stage last week in Las Vegas. It was ‘probably wrong to make the jokes, I don’t remember what they were, but if it bothered them, I was wrong and I apologize and I’m sorry for that’
At various points, the crowd loudly booed at the notion of billionaires, which includes candidates Bloomberg and Tom Steyer
‘Really? Really?’ Biden responded, saying Obama had merely been acknowledging Cuban gains while speaking overseas.
‘Authoritarianism of any stripe is bad,’ said Sanders. ‘But that is different than saying the governments occasionally do things that are good.’
Buttigieg issued a warning about running a candidate with ‘nostalgia for the revolutionary politics of the 1960s.’
The blows went in all directions.
Biden, who said he intends to win in South Carolina, blasted Sanders for voting against the Brady bill gun control measure and referenced the Charleston church shootings.
The city is still grieving from the 2015 killings at Mother Emanuel AME Baptist Church when gunman Dylann Roof entered the church and gunned down nine members of the congregation.
‘Bernie voted five times against the Brady bill … I’m not saying he’s responsible for the nine deaths, but… [Roof] would not have been able to get that weapon with the waiting period’ of the Brady bill, Biden said.
Biden is trying to gain back lost ground after coming in fourth place in Iowa and fifth place in New Hampshire. He then came in a distant second to Sanders in Saturday’s Nevada caucuses.
Sanders later attacked former South Bend mayor Pete Buttigieg for accepting contributions from billionaires.
‘I can’t allow this to stand because it’s just untrue,’ the former South Bend mayor shot back. He said he got more money out of 2,000 small contributors in Charleston than he did from bigwigs.
The early hits on Sanders, who has called himself the frontrunner, followed last week’s Las Vegas debate, which featured a multi-candidate pile-on on Bloomberg.
Asked directly by O’Donnell if Bloomberg’s use of stop-and-frisk in New York was racist, Klobuchar answered: ‘Yes’. Buttigieg, who has been criticized for failing to attract black supporters, agreed the policy was racist
Joe Biden, who said he intends to win in South Carolina, blasted Sanders for voting against the Brady bill gun control measure, and referenced the Charleston church shootings. ‘Bernie voted five times against the Brady bill … I’m not saying he’s responsible for the nine deaths, but that would not have been able to get that weapon with the waiting period’ of the Brady bill, Biden said
Democratic frontrunner Bernie Sanders became an instant punching bag for his presidential rivals on Tuesday night as they lined up to slam him at the debate before the South Carolina primary – accusing him of being backed by Vladimir Putin, unelectable and divisive
There were angry exchanges early-on in Tuesday’s debate between Bloomberg and Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren, who brought up a woman who sued his media company, Bloomberg LP, and reached a settlement after claiming Bloomberg told her to ‘kill it’ after she informed him she was pregnant.
‘Never said that!’ Bloomberg exclaimed. ‘Oh, come on!’
From there the conversation turned back to Bloomberg’s company’s previous use of non-disclosure agreements, something that Warren hammered him for on the debate stage last week in Las Vegas.
On Friday, Bloomberg announced that he would release three female former employees from NDAs that were specifically about complaints made about Bloomberg, as he’s been accused of making insensitive jokes.
It was ‘probably wrong to make the jokes, I don’t remember what they were, but if it bothered them, I was wrong and I apologize and I’m sorry for that,’ Bloomberg said on Tuesday night.
Nevertheless, Warren persisted, continuing to go after Bloomberg for the NDAs.
‘I don’t know what else she wants us to do,’ Bloomberg said. ‘The trouble is with this senator, enough is never enough.’
He added: ‘I never said it, period, end of story. Categorically never said it. When I was accused of doing it, we couldn’t figure out what she was talking about.
‘But right now I’m sorry if she heard what she thought she heard, whatever happened, but I didn’t take pleasure in any of that.’
Bloomberg continued to draw fire for stop-and-frisk, a policy he has apologized for in stark terms despite thousands of arrests during his tenure.
Asked directly by O’Donnell if Bloomberg’s use of stop-and-frisk in New York was racist, Klobuchar answered: ‘Yes.’
Warren went straight for Sanders at the start of the debate, saying she would be a better president than him because she’ll be able to get more progressive policies passed. She said she’s ‘dug in’ when it comes to fighting big banks and actually explaining how she’d enact universal health care
Biden said he would also go after those trying to gentrify neighborhoods traditionally occupied by minority residents. Following up on Biden’s comments, Steyer said he would work toward trying to ‘correct injustice’ in the loan service industry. He then launched into his common campaign trail theme of arguing his support for a conversation on reparations
The early hits on Sanders, who has called himself the frontrunner, followed last week’s Las Vegas debate, which featured a multi-candidate pile-on on Bloomberg
Buttigieg, who has been criticized for failing to attract black supporters, agreed the policy was racist.
‘I am conscious of the fact that there’s seven white people on this stage talking about racial justice,’ he added, in the first primary state where African-Americans make up a big share of the electorate.
Since the New Hampshire primary, which Biden left to instead kick off campaigning in South Carolina, Biden has argued that the states that truly matter are the ones that have a more diverse population, which reflect the makeup of the Democratic Party.
But in Nevada, the Latino population propelled Sanders to an overwhelming victory, as he bested Biden by 26.6. points, with 100 percent reporting.
Now Biden is looking to black voters in South Carolina to keep him in the race. On Tuesday, he declared that he’s the candidate best situated to appeal to black voters, citing his commitment to equitable wealth creation and housing opportunities.
Biden said he would also go after those trying to gentrify neighborhoods traditionally occupied by minority residents.
It follows his Monday roll out of a $640 billion national housing policy, which would prevent mortgage servers from foreclosing during loan modification and set up a timely notification system for such changes.
Following up on Biden’s comments, Steyer said he would work toward trying to ‘correct injustice’ in the loan service industry.
He then launched into his common campaign trail theme of arguing his support for a conversation on reparations and the creation of a commission to study race relations in America.
As the debate clock wound down, the candidates were asked by CBS This Morning host Gayle King to name the biggest misconception about themselves – and to state their personal motto.
Biden took the opportunity to pander more to black South Carolina voters.
As the debate clock wound down, the candidates were asked by CBS This Morning host Gayle King to name the biggest misconception about themselves – and to state their personal motto
Bloomberg used the opportunity to turn one of Trump’s favorite insults against him – that he’s short – into a joke. ‘The misconception is that I’m six-feet tall,’ the ex-mayor said. Given the same opportunity, Klobuchar argued that she wasn’t boring
Once the candidates wrapped up, moderator Norah O’Donnell tried to shut down the debate prematurely. ‘That concludes our debate,’ O’Donnell told the audience. King then had to correct her, saying it wasn’t quite over yet. ‘No, we have time for one more break,’ King said. ‘Times flies when you’re having fun,’ she said, as the debate truly ended after the next commercial break
‘I’m looking forward to making sure there’s a black woman on the Supreme Court,’ he said, which was a segue from him talking about his embrace of equality. ‘And no one is better than me and I’m not better than anybody else.’
He cracked a joke about his receded hairline when asked what his biggest misconception is. ‘I have more hair than I think I do,’ he said.
Given the same opportunity, Klobuchar argued that she wasn’t boring, while Warren said she actually eats – a lot.
‘In fact, I eat all the time,’ Warren said, adding, ‘because I get teased about this,’ if the comment seemed to come out of thin air.
Buttigieg used the opportunity to tell the audience he is indeed passionate. ‘I get kind of level, some say I’m unflappable,’ the 38-year-old said. ‘I don’t think you want a president who’s flappable,’ he added.
Steyer volunteered that ‘everyday I write a cross on my hand to remind myself to tell the truth and do what’s right, no matter what,’ explaining that’s his ‘motto.’
Sanders stayed on brand. ‘Misconception and you’re hearing it here tonight is that ideas I’m talking about are radical. They’re not. In one form or another they exist in countries all over the world,’ the democratic socialist said.
He then quoted Nelson Mandela, ‘Everything is impossible until it happens,’ Sanders said.
Bloomberg used the opportunity to turn one of Trump’s favorite insults against him – that he’s short – into a joke.
‘The misconception is that I’m six-feet tall,’ the ex-mayor said.
Once the candidates wrapped up, moderator Norah O’Donnell tried to shut down the debate prematurely.
‘That concludes our debate,’ O’Donnell told the audience. King then had to correct her, saying it wasn’t quite over yet.
‘No, we have time for one more break,’ King said. ‘Times flies when you’re having fun,’ she said, as the debate truly ended after the next commercial break.
Joe Biden says he WILL win in South Carolina with the African-American vote making Saturday’s primary a do-or-die – then talks about his ‘friend’ former segregationist Fritz Hollings
Joe Biden went all in on winning South Carolina on Tuesday night, saying he will secure victory there – then mentioned his friendship with one of the state’s most infamous segregationists.
The former vice-president was just four points ahead of Bernie Sanders in the latest poll in the Palmetto state ahead of Saturday’s primary.
He used the CBS News debate to say that he will win in South Carolina, by winning the African-American vote – meaning by extension that he will have to drop out if he loses.
But then he offered a potentially spectacular gaffe, talking about his friendship with Fritz Hollings, who was a committed segregationist Dixiecrat until he shifted his positions.
Joe Biden went all in on winning South Carolina on Tuesday night, saying he will secure victory there – then mentioned his friendship with one of the state’s most infamous segregationists
Friends: Fritz Hollings was a segregationist in the Dixiecrat moved who ‘evolved,’ his friend Biden said at his 2019 funeral
Asked by moderator Gayle King about his ability to secure the black vote, which is critical in South Carolina, he said: ‘I’ve earned the vote, I’ve worked like the devil to earn the vote of the African-American community, not just here but across the country.
‘I’ve been coming here for years and years, creating jobs here, making sure that the port, for example, that employs one in 11 people, we put $500 million, in our administration, just into this county.
‘We’ve created jobs for people. The people know me. My entire career has been wrapped up in dealing with civil rights and civil liberties. I don’t expect anything. I plan to earn the vote.
‘I’m here to ask. I’m here to earn it. But, folks, I intend to win in South Carolina, and I will win the African-American vote here in South Carolina.’
King then asked: ‘Mr. Biden, will you continue if you do not win South Carolina? You have said that South Carolina will determine the outcome of this presidential race. If you don’t win South Carolina, will you continue in this race?’
He replied: ‘I will win South Carolina.’
But later in the debate he raised Hollings’ name – an echo of a string of gaffes in which he was hammered for speaking about his friendship with segregationist senators, Mississippi’s James Eastland and Georgia’s Herman Talmadge.
Making an appearance ahead of the debate was Reverend’s Jesse Jackson (left) and Al Sharpton (right). Remarking on the performances during Las Vegas’ debate last week, Sharpton said it was overall lackluster and he couldn’t see anyone beating Trump at the moment because no candidate was taking charge
Biden has been counting on strong support among African-American voters in South Carolina to recharge his flagging campaign
A climate change activist dressed as a polar bear demonstrates while Trump supporter in a MAGA hat is interviewed outside of the Charleston Gaillard Center
‘Look, a guy who’s a friend of mine down here named Fritz Hollings – he passed away – he said, you want to know what a woman will do, look what they have done. Look what they have done,’ he said.
Hollings’ biography is more complicated than other Dixiecrats.
He was South Carolina governor from 1959 to 1963 and a vocal backer of keeping segregation in place when he was a member of the state’s House.
He was elected to the Senate in 1966 and became a close friend of Biden when the 29-year-old ran for the upper chamber, helping him when he lost his first wife and daughter in a car crash.
Biden eulogized Hollings at his funeral in April 2019, a week before his entry into the race, and said: ‘People can change.
‘We can learn from the past and build a better future.’
WHO ARE THE 8 DEMOCRATS RUNNING FOR PRESIDENT IN 2020?
JOE BIDEN
Age on Inauguration Day 2021: 78
Entered race: April 25, 2019
Career: No current role. A University of Delaware and Syracuse Law graduate, he was first elected to Newcastle City Council in 1969, then won upset election to Senate in 1972, aged 29. Was talked out of quitting before being sworn in when his wife and daughter died in a car crash and served total of six terms. Chaired Judiciary Committee’s notorious Clarence Thomas confirmation hearings. Ran for president in 1988, pulled out after plagiarism scandal, ran again in 2008, withdrew after placing fifth in the Iowa Caucuses. Tapped by Obama as his running mate and served two terms as vice president. Contemplated third run in 2016 but decided against it after his son died of brain cancer.
Family: Eldest of four siblings born to Joe Biden Sr. and Catherine Finnegan. First wife Neilia Hunter and their one-year-old daughter Naomi died in car crash which their two sons, Joseph ‘Beau’ and Robert Hunter survived. Married Jill Jacobs in 1976, with whom he has daughter Ashley. Beau died of brain cancer in 2015. Hunter’s marriage to Kathleen Buhle, with whom he has three children, ended in 2016 when it emerged Hunter was in a relationship with Beau’s widow Hallie, mother of their two children. Hunter admitted cocaine use; his estranged wife accused him of blowing their savings on drugs and prostitutes
Religion: Catholic
Views on key issues: Ultra-moderate who will emphasize bipartisan record. Will come under fire over record, having voted: to stop desegregation bussing in 1975; to overturn Roe v Wade in 1981; for now controversial 1994 Violent Crime Act; for 2003 Iraq War; and for banking deregulation. Says he is ‘most progressive’ Democrat. New positions include free college, tax reform, $15 minimum wage. No public position yet on Green New Deal and healthcare. Pro-gun control. Has already apologized to women who say he touched them inappropriately
Would make history as: Oldest person elected president
Slogan: Our Best Days Still Lie Ahead
MIKE BLOOMBERG
Age on Inauguration Day: 78
Entered race: November 24, 2019
Career: Currently multi-billionaire CEO of Bloomberg PL, the financial information firm he founded in 1981 and which remains a private company. Educated at Johns Hopkins and Harvard, he became a Wall Street trader at investment bank Salomon Brothers and was laid off in 1981, walking away with $10m in stock which he used to set up his own financial information firm, now one of the world’s largest. Three times mayor of New York 2002 to 2013, running first as Republican then as independent; had to get term limits suspended for final term. Once flirted with running for mayor of London where he has a home; holds an honorary knighthood from Queen Elizabeth. Has spent large amounts on philanthropy in line with his political views as well as on political campaigns
Family: Born in Brookline, MA, to first-generation Jewish immigrant parents whose own parents had fled Russia. Divorced wife of 18 years, Susan Brown-Meyer, in 1993; former couple have daughters Emma, who has a son with her former boyfriend, and Georgina, who has daughter Zelda with her husband Chris Fissora. The child has a portmanteau surname, Frissberg. Partner since 2000 is Diana Taylor, former New York state banking commissioner, 13 years his junior
Religion: Jewish
Views on key issues: Self-professed fiscal conservative, although painted as a Democratic moderate by other conservative groups. Opposed to Medicare for all. Social progressive who backed gay marriage early, but has flip-flopped on marijuana legalization, most recently opposing it.. Wants firm action on climate change. Fiercely in favor of gun control. As New York mayor banned smoking in public places and tried to outlaw large sugary drinks. Backs increased immigration. Apologized for his stop-and-frisk policing strategy as mayor
Would make history as: Oldest person elected president; first Jewish president; richest president ever; first New York mayor to become president
Slogan: Fighting For Our Future
PETE BUTTIGIEG
Age on Inauguration Day: 39
Entered race: Announced formation of exploratory committee January 23, 2019. Formally entered race April 14, 2019
Career: Currently mayor of Sound Bend, Indiana. Harvard grad and Rhodes scholar who got a second degree from Oxford before working as a McKinsey management consultant and being commissioned as a Navy Reserve intelligence officer. Elected South Bend mayor in 2011 and served in combat in 2013, won re-election in 2015
Family: Came out as gay during second mayoral run and married husband Chasten Glezman, a middle school teacher in 2018. Parents were University of Notre Dame academics; his father was Maltese-American. Surname is pronounced BOOT-edge-edge
Religion: Raised as a Catholic, now Episcopalian
Views on key issues: Has said Democratic party needs a ‘fresh start’; wrote an essay in praise of Bernie Sanders aged 17; backed paid parental leave for city employees; other policies unknown
Would make history as: First openly gay and youngest-ever president. First veteran of post-World War II conflict
Slogan: A Fresh Start For America
TULSI GABBARD
Age on Inauguration Day: 39
Entered race: Still to formally file any papers but said she would run on January 11 2019
Career: Currently Hawaii congresswoman. Born on American Samoa, a territory. Raised largely in Hawaii, she co-founded an environmental non-profit with her father as a teenager and was elected to the State Legislature aged 21, its youngest member in history. Enlisted in the National Guard and served two tours, one in Iraq 2004-2006, then as an officer in Kuwait in 2009. Ran for Honolulu City Council in 2011, and House of Representatives in 2012
Family: Married to her second husband, Abraham Williams, a cinematographer since 2015. First marriage to childhood sweetheart Eduardo Tamayo in 2002 ended in 2006. Father Mike Gabbard is a Democratic Hawaii state senator, mother Carol Porter runs a non-profit.
Religion: Hindu
Views on key issues: Has apologized for anti-abortion and anti-gay marriage views; wants marijuana federally legalized; opposed to most U.S. foreign interventions; backs $15 minimum wage and universal health care; was the second elected Democrat to meet Trump after his 2016 victory
Would make history as: First female, Hindu and Samoan-American president; youngest president ever
Slogan: Lead with Love
AMY KLOBUCHAR
Age on Inauguration Day: 60
Entered race: Announced candidacy February 10, 2019 at snow-drenched rally in her native Minneapolis
Career: Currently Minnesota senator. Yale and University of Chicago law graduate who became a corporate lawyer. First ran unsuccessfully for office in 1994 as Hennepin, MI, county attorney, and won same race in 1998, then in 2002, without opposition. Ran for Senate in 2006 and won 58-38; re-elected in 2012 and 2018
Family: Married to John Bessler, law professor at University of Baltimore and expert on capital punishment. Daughter Abigail Bessler, 23, works fora Democratic member of New York City council. Father Jim, 90, was a veteran newspaper columnist who has written a memoir of how his alcoholism hurt his family; mom Rose is a retired grade school teacher
Religion: Congregationalist (United Church of Christ)
Views on key issues: Seen as a mainstream liberal: says she wants ‘universal health care’ but has not spelled out how; pro-gun control; pro-choice; backs $15 minimum wage; no public statements on federal marijuana legalization; has backed pro-Israel law banning the ‘boycott, divestment and sanctions’ movement; spoke out against abolishing ICE
Would make history as: First female president
Slogan: Let’s Get To Work
BERNIE SANDERS
Age on Inauguration Day: 79
Entered race: Sources said on January 25, 2019, that he would form exploratory committee. Officially announced February 19
Career: Currently Vermont senator. Student civil rights and anti-Vietnam activist who moved to Vermont and worked as a carpenter and radical film-maker. Serial failed political candidate in the 1970s, he ran as a socialist for mayor of Burlington in 1980 and served two terms ending in 1989, and win a seat in Congress as an independent in 1990. Ran for Senate in 2006 elections as an independent with Democratic endorsement and won third term in 2018. Challenged Hillary Clinton for the Democratic nomination in 2016 but lost. Campaign has since been hit by allegations of sexual harassment – for which he has apologized – and criticized for its ‘Bernie bro’ culture
Family: Born to a Jewish immigrant father and the daughter of Jewish immigrant parents in Brooklyn, New York. First marriage to college sweetheart Deborah Shiling Messing in 1964 ended in divorce in 1966; had son Levi in 1969 with then girlfriend Susan Cambell Mott. Married Jone O’Meara in 1988 and considers her three children, all adults, his own. The couple have seven grandchildren. His older brother Larry is a former Green Party councilor in Oxfordshire, England.
Religion: Secular Jewish
Views on key issues: Openly socialist and standard bearer for the Democratic party’s left-turn. Wants federal $15 minimum wage; banks broken up; union membership encouraged; free college tuition; universal health care; re-distributive taxation; he opposed Iraq War and also U.S. leading the fight against ISIS and wants troops largely out of Afghanistan and the Middle East
Would make history as: Oldest person elected president; first Jewish president
Slogan: Not me. Us.
TOM STEYER
Age on Inauguration Day 2021: 63
Entered race: July 9, 2019
Career: Currently retired. New York-born to wealthy family, he was educated at elite Phillips Exeter Academy, and Yale, then Stanford Business School. Morgan Stanley and Goldman Sachs banker who founded his own hedge fund in 1986 and made himself a billionaire; investments included subprime lenders, private prisons and coal mines. Stepped down in 2012 to focus on advocating for alternative energy. Longtime Democratic activist and donor who started campaign to impeach Trump in October 2017. Net worth of $1.6 billion has made him one of the Democrats’ biggest single donors
Family: Married Kathryn Taylor in 1986; they have four adult children who have been told they will not inherit the bulk of his fortune. Announced last November he and his wife would live apart. Father Roy was a Nuremberg trials prosecutor
Religion: Episcopalian
Views on key issues: On the left of the field despite being a hedge fund tycoon. Backs single-payer health care, minimum wage rises and free public college. Previously spoke in favor of Bernie Sanders’ agenda. Aggressive backer of climate change action, including ditching fossil fuels
Would make history as: Richest Democratic president ever
Slogan: Actions Speak Louder Than Words
ELIZABETH WARREN
Age on Inauguration Day: 71
Entered race: Set up exploratory committee December 31, 2018
Career: Currently Massachusetts senator. Law lecturer and academic who became an expert on bankruptcy law and tenured Harvard professor. Ran for Senate and won in 2012, defeating sitting Republican Scott Brown, held it in 2018 60% to 36%. Was short-listed to be Hillary’s running mate and campaigned hard for her in 2016
Family: Twice-married mother of two and grandmother of three. First husband and father of her children was her high-school sweetheart. Second husband Bruce Mann is Harvard law professor. Daughter Amelia Tyagi and son Alex Warren have both been involved in her campaigns. Has controversially claimed Native American roots; DNA test suggested she is as little as 1,064th Native American
Religion: Raised Methodist, now described as Christian with no fixed church
Views on key issues: Was a registered Republican who voted for the party but registered as a Democrat in 1996. Pro: higher taxes on rich; banking regulation; Dream Act path to citizenship for ‘dreamers’; abortion and gay rights; campaign finance restrictions; and expansion of public provision of healthcare – although still to spell out exactly how that would happen. Against: U.S. presence in Afghanistan and Syria; liberalization of gambling
Would make history as: First female president
Slogan: Warren Has A Plan For That
AND THE 21 WHO HAVE WITHDRAWN
MICHAEL BENNET, Colorado senator
Entered race: May 2, 2019
Quit: February 12, 2019, evening of New Hampshire primary
CORY BOOKER, New Jersey Senator
Entered race: February 1, 2019
Quit: January 13, 2020
STEVE BULLOCK, Montana governor
Entered race: May 14, 2019
Quit: December 2, 2019
JULIÁN CASTRO, former Housing Secretary
Entered race: January 18, 2019
Quit: January 2, 2020
KIRSTEN GILLIBRAND, New York senator
Entered race: January 16, 2019
Quit: August 28, 2019
BILL DE BLASIO, New York City mayor
Entered race: May 16, 2019
Quit: September 20, 2020
JOHN DELANEY, former Maryland Congressman
Entered race: July 8, 2017
Quit: January 31, 2019
MIKE GRAVEL, Former Alaska governor
Entered race: April 2,2019
Quit: August 2, 2019
KAMALA HARRIS,California senator
Entered race: January 21, 2019
Quit: December 3, 2019
JOHN HICKENLOOPER, Former Colorado governor
Entered race: March 4, 2019
Quit: August 15, 2019
JAY INSLEE, Washington governor
Entered race: March 1, 2019
Quit: August 21, 2019
WAYNE MESSAM, mayor of Miramar, Florida
Entered race: March 28, 2019
Quit: November 20, 2019
SETH MOULTON, Massachusetts congressman
Entered race: April 22,2019
Quit: August 23, 2019
RICHARD OJEDA, former West Virginia state senator
Entered race: November 12, 2018
Quit: January 25, 2019
BETO O’ROURKE, former Texas congressman
Entered race: March 14, 2019
Quit: November 1, 2019
DEVAL PATRICK, former Massachusetts governor
Entered race: November 13, 2019
Quit: February 13, 2019, morning after New Hampshire primary
TIM RYAN, Ohio congressman
Entered race: April 4, 2019
Quit: October 24, 2019
JOE SESTAK, former Pennsylvania congressman
Entered race: June 23, 2019
Quit: December 1, 2019
ERIC SWALWELL, California congressman
Entered race: April 8, 2019
Quit: July 8, 2019
MARIANNE WILLIAMSON, author
Entered race: November 15, 2018
Quit: January 10, 2020
ANDREW YANG, entrepreneur
Entered race: November 6, 2018
Quit: February 12, 2019, evening of New Hampshire primary
Story 1: Progressive Panic Pandering Propaganda — Chinese Communist Coronavirus SARS CoV-2 or (COVID-19) Goes Global — What Doesn’t Kill You Makes You Stronger — Are You In Fear of Your Life — If — Videos
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US continues fearmongering as China battles coronavirus
An outbreak of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) has spread throughout China and to 31 other countries and territories, including the United States.
What is added by this report?
Fourteen cases have been diagnosed in the United States, in addition to 39 cases among repatriated persons from high-risk settings, for a current total of 53 cases within the United States. The U.S. government and public health partners are implementing aggressive measures to slow and contain transmission of COVID-19 in the United States.
What are the implications for public health practice?
Interim guidance is available at https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/index.html. As more is learned about this virus and the outbreak, CDC will rapidly incorporate new knowledge into guidance for action.
An outbreak of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) caused by the 2019 novel coronavirus (SARS-CoV-2) began in Wuhan, Hubei Province, China in December 2019, and has spread throughout China and to 31 other countries and territories, including the United States (1). As of February 23, 2020, there were 76,936 reported cases in mainland China and 1,875 cases in locations outside mainland China (1). There have been 2,462 associated deaths worldwide; no deaths have been reported in the United States. Fourteen cases have been diagnosed in the United States, and an additional 39 cases have occurred among repatriated persons from high-risk settings, for a current total of 53 cases within the United States. This report summarizes the aggressive measures (2,3) that CDC, state and local health departments, multiple other federal agencies, and other partners are implementing to slow and try to contain transmission of COVID-19 in the United States. These measures require the identification of cases and contacts of persons with COVID-19 in the United States and the recommended assessment, monitoring, and care of travelers arriving from areas with substantial COVID-19 transmission. Although these measures might not prevent widespread transmission of the virus in the United States, they are being implemented to 1) slow the spread of illness; 2) provide time to better prepare state and local health departments, health care systems, businesses, educational organizations, and the general public in the event that widespread transmission occurs; and 3) better characterize COVID-19 to guide public health recommendations and the development and deployment of medical countermeasures, including diagnostics, therapeutics, and vaccines. U.S. public health authorities are monitoring the situation closely, and CDC is coordinating efforts with the World Health Organization (WHO) and other global partners. Interim guidance is available at https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/index.html. As more is learned about this novel virus and this outbreak, CDC will rapidly incorporate new knowledge into guidance for action by CDC, state and local health departments, health care providers, and communities.
Person-to-person spread of COVID-19 appears to occur mainly by respiratory transmission. How easily the virus is transmitted between persons is currently unclear. Signs and symptoms of COVID-19 include fever, cough, and shortness of breath (4). Based on the incubation period of illness for Middle East respiratory syndrome (MERS) and severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) coronaviruses, as well as observational data from reports of travel-related COVID-19, CDC estimates that symptoms of COVID-19 occur within 2–14 days after exposure. Preliminary data suggest that older adults and persons with underlying health conditions or compromised immune systems might be at greater risk for severe illness from this virus (5).
As of February 23, 14 COVID-19 cases had been diagnosed in the following six states: Arizona (one case), California (eight), Illinois (two), Massachusetts (one), Washington (one), and Wisconsin (one). Twelve of these 14 cases were related to travel to China, and two cases occurred through person-to-person transmission to close household contacts of a person with confirmed COVID-19. An additional 39 cases were reported among repatriated U.S. citizens, residents, and their families returning from Hubei province, China (three), and from the Diamond Princess cruise ship that was docked in Yokohama, Japan (36). Thus, there have been 53 cases within the United States. No deaths have been reported in the United States.
As of February 24, 2020, a total of 1,336 CDC staff members have been involved in the COVID-19 response, including clinicians (i.e., physicians, nurses, and pharmacists), epidemiologists, veterinarians, laboratorians, communicators, data scientists and modelers, and coordination staff members. Of these CDC staff members, 497 (37%) have been deployed to 39 locations in the United States and internationally, including CDC quarantine stations at U.S. ports of entry, state and local health departments, hospitals, and U.S. military bases that are housing quarantined persons, as well as WHO and ministries of health around the world. CDC staff members are working with state, local, tribal, and territorial health departments and other public health authorities to assist with case identification, contact tracing, evaluation of persons under investigation (PUI) for COVID-19,* and medical management of cases; and with academic partners to understand the virulence, risk for transmission, and other characteristics of this novel virus.
CDC teams are working with the Department of Homeland Security at 11 airports where all flights from China are being directed to screen travelers returning to the United States, and to refer them to U.S. health departments for oversight of self-monitoring. CDC is also working with other agencies of the U.S. government including the U.S. Department of Defense; multiple operational divisions with the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, including the Assistant Secretary for Preparedness and Response and the Administration for Children and Families; and the U.S. Department of State to safely evacuate U.S. citizens, residents, and their families to the United States from international locations where there is substantial, sustained transmission of COVID-19, and to house them and monitor their health during a 14-day quarantine period.
Specific guidance has been developed and posted online for health care settings, including for patient management; infection control and prevention; laboratory testing; environmental cleaning; worker safety; and international travel.† Guidance is updated as more is learned. To prepare for the possibility of community spread of COVID-19, CDC has developed tailored guidance and communications materials for communities, health care settings, public health, laboratories, schools, and businesses. Chinese and Spanish versions of certain documents are available.
Information for travelers. Several recent travel notices have been posted by CDC to inform travelers and clinicians about current health issues that could affect travelers’ health.§ A Level 3 travel notice (avoid all nonessential travel) for China has been in effect since January 27. On February 19, Level 1 travel notices (practice usual precautions) for travelers to Hong Kong and Japan were posted. On February 22, the Level 1 travel notice for Japan was raised to Level 2 (practice enhanced precautions). A Level 2 travel notice was posted for South Korea on February 22, which was updated to Level 3 on February 24. Level 1 travel notices were posted for Iran and Italy on February 23, and then updated to Level 2 on February 24. In addition, CDC has posted information for travelers regarding apparent community transmission in Singapore, Taiwan, Thailand, and Vietnam, and recommendations for persons to reconsider cruise ship voyages in Asia.
Airport screening. As of February 23, a total of 46,016 air travelers had been screened at the 11 U.S. airports to which all flights from China are being directed. Since February 2, travelers to the United States who have been in China in the preceding 14 days have been limited to U.S. citizens and lawful permanent residents and others as outlined in a presidential proclamation.¶ Incoming passengers are screened for fever, cough, and shortness of breath. Any travelers with signs or symptoms of illness receive a more comprehensive public health assessment. As of February 23, 11 travelers were referred to a hospital and tested for infection; one tested positive and was isolated and managed medically. Seventeen travelers were quarantined for 14 days because of travel from Hubei Province, China, an area that was designated as high risk for exposure to COVID-19**; 13 of these 17 have completed their quarantine period.
Persons under investigation (PUIs). Recognizing persons at risk for COVID-19 is a critical component of identifying cases and preventing further transmission. CDC has responded to clinical inquiries from public health officials, health care providers, and repatriation teams to evaluate and test PUIs in the United States for COVID-19 following CDC guidance. As of February 23, 479 persons from 43 states and territories had been or are being tested for COVID-19; 14 (3%) had a positive test, 412 (86%) had a negative test, and 53 (11%) test results are pending.
Laboratory testing. As part of laboratory surge capacity for the response, CDC laboratories are testing for SARS-CoV-2 to assist with diagnosis of COVID-19. During January 18–February 23, CDC laboratories used real-time reverse transcription–polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR) to test 2,620 specimens from 1,007 persons for SARS-CoV-2. Some additional testing is performed at selected state and other public health laboratories, with confirmatory testing at CDC. CDC is developing a serologic test to assist with surveillance for SARS-CoV-2 circulation in the U.S. population. The test detects antibodies (immunoglobulin [Ig]G, IgA, and IgM) indicating SARS-COV-2 virus exposure or past infection. In addition, CDC laboratories are developing assays to detect SARS-CoV-2 viral RNA and antigens in tissue specimens. Finally, following CDC’s establishment of SARS-CoV-2 in cell culture, CDC shared virus isolates with the Biodefense and Emerging Infections Research Resources Repository to securely distribute isolates to U.S. public health and academic institutions for additional research, including vaccine development.
Repatriation flights from areas with substantial COVID-19 transmission. During January 29–February 6, the U.S. government repatriated 808 U.S. citizens, residents, and their families from Hubei Province, China, on five chartered flights. At the time of departure, all travelers were free of symptoms for COVID-19 (fever or feverishness, cough, difficulty breathing). After arriving in the United States, the repatriated travelers were quarantined for 14 days at one of five U.S. military bases. CDC and U.S. government staff members monitored these travelers’ health. As of February 23, 28 (3%) of these persons developed COVID-19-related symptoms and were evaluated for infection; three were found to be positive for SARS-CoV-2 and were referred for medical care and isolation. As of February 24, the remaining 805 travelers had completed their 14-day quarantine.
On February 3, passengers and crew of the Diamond Princess cruise ship were quarantined off Yokohama, Japan; a passenger who had recently disembarked in Hong Kong was confirmed to have COVID-19, and ongoing transmission was identified on the ship. By February 16, a total of 355 cases of COVID-19 had been identified among passengers and crew,†† including 67 U.S. citizens or residents. As a result, during February 16–17, the U.S. government assisted in the repatriation of 329 U.S. citizens or residents from the ship. These travelers returned on two chartered flights. As of February 23, 36 (11%) of these repatriated persons had tested positive for SARS-CoV-2 and are under appropriate medical supervision. The remaining repatriated persons are in quarantine for 14 days. CDC is working with the U.S. embassy in Japan and the Japanese government to support U.S. passengers and crew who remained in Japan.
COVID-19 is a serious public health threat. Cases of COVID-19 have been diagnosed in the United States, primarily in travelers from China and quarantined repatriates, and also in two close contacts of COVID-19 patients. Currently, COVID-19 is not recognized to be spreading in U.S. communities. If sustained transmission in U.S. communities is identified, the U.S. response strategy will enhance implementation of actions to slow spread in communities (2,6). Implementation of basic precautions of infection control and prevention, including staying home when ill and practicing respiratory and hand hygiene will become increasingly important.
Community-level nonpharmaceutical intervention might include school dismissals and social distancing in other settings (e.g., postponement or cancellation of mass gatherings and telework and remote-meeting options in workplaces). These measures can be disruptive and might have societal and economic impact on individual persons and communities (6). However, studies have shown that early layered implementation of these interventions can reduce the community spread and impact of infectious pathogens such as pandemic influenza, even when specific pharmaceutical treatments and vaccines are not available (7,8). These measures might be critical to avert widespread COVID-19 transmission in U.S. communities (2,6). Mitigation measures implemented in China have included the closing of major transport hubs and preventing exit from certain cities with widespread transmission, cancellation of Chinese New Year celebrations, and prohibition of attendance at school and work (5). However, the impact of these measures in China has not yet been evaluated.
In the United States, the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and their collaborators are working on development of candidate vaccines and therapeutics for COVID-19. In China, multiple clinical trials of investigational therapeutics have been implemented, including two clinical trials of remdesivir, an investigational antiviral drug.§§ An NIH randomized controlled clinical trial of investigational therapeutics for hospitalized COVID-19 patients in the United States was approved by the Food and Drug Administration; the first investigational therapeutic to be studied is remdesivir.¶¶ In the absence of a vaccine or therapeutic, community mitigation measures are the primary method to respond to widespread transmission and supportive care is the current medical treatment.
COVID-19 symptoms are similar to those of influenza (e.g., fever, cough, and shortness of breath), and the current outbreak is occurring during a time of year when respiratory illnesses from influenza and other viruses, including other coronaviruses that cause the “common cold,” are highly prevalent. To prevent influenza and possible unnecessary evaluation for COVID-19, all persons aged ≥6 months should receive an annual influenza vaccine; vaccination is still available and effective in helping to prevent influenza (9). To decrease risk for respiratory disease, persons can practice recommended preventive measures.*** Persons ill with symptoms of COVID-19 who have had contact with a person with COVID-19 or recent travel to countries with apparent community spread††† should communicate with their health care provider. Before seeking medical care, they should consult with their provider to make arrangements to prevent possible transmission in the health care setting. In a medical emergency, they should inform emergency medical personnel about possible COVID-19 exposure.
Areas for additional COVID-19 investigation include 1) further clarifying the incubation period and duration of virus shedding, which have implications for duration of quarantine and other mitigation measures; 2) studying the relative importance of various modes of transmission, including the role of droplets, aerosols, and fomites; understanding these transmission modes has major implications for infection control and prevention, including the use of personal protective equipment; 3) determining the severity and case-fatality rate of COVD-19 among cases in the U.S. health care system, as well as more fully describing the spectrum of illness and risk factors for infection and severe disease; 4) determining the role of asymptomatic infection in ongoing transmission; and 5) assessing the immunologic response to infection to aid in the development of vaccines and therapeutics. Public health authorities are monitoring the situation closely. As more is learned about this novel virus and this outbreak, CDC will rapidly incorporate new knowledge into guidance for action.
The author has completed and submitted the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors form for disclosure of potential conflicts of interest. No potential conflicts of interest were disclosed.
* Criteria to guide evaluation and testing of patients under investigation for SARS-CoV-2 include 1) fever or signs or symptoms of lower respiratory tract illness (e.g., cough or shortness of breath) in any person, including a health care worker, who has had close contact with a patient with laboratory-confirmed SARS-CoV-2 infection within 14 days of symptom onset; 2) fever and signs or symptoms of lower respiratory tract illness (e.g., cough or shortness of breath) in any person with a history of travel from Hubei Province, China, within 14 days of symptom onset; or 3) fever and signs or symptoms of lower respiratory tract illness (e.g., cough or shortness of breath) requiring hospitalization in any person with a history of travel from mainland China within 14 days of symptom onset. Additional information is available at https://emergency.cdc.gov/han/han00427.asp and https://emergency.cdc.gov/han/han00426.asp.
Holloway R, Rasmussen SA, Zaza S, Cox NJ, Jernigan DB. Updated preparedness and response framework for influenza pandemics. MMWR Recomm Rep 2014;63(No. RR-6). PubMedexternal icon
Reed C, Biggerstaff M, Finelli L, et al. Novel framework for assessing epidemiologic effects of influenza epidemics and pandemics. Emerg Infect Dis 2013;19:85–91. CrossRefexternal iconPubMedexternal icon
Chen N, Zhou M, Dong X, et al. Epidemiological and clinical characteristics of 99 cases of 2019 novel coronavirus pneumonia in Wuhan, China: a descriptive study. Lancet 2020;395:507–13. CrossRefexternal iconPubMedexternal icon
The Novel Coronavirus Pneumonia Emergency Response Epidemiology Team. The epidemiological characteristics of an outbreak of 2019 novel coronavirus diseases (COVID-19)—China, 2020. China CDC Weekly 2020. Epub February 17, 2020.
Qualls N, Levitt A, Kanade N, et al.; CDC Community Mitigation Guidelines Work Group. Community mitigation guidelines to prevent pandemic influenza—United States, 2017. MMWR Recomm Rep 2017;66(No. RR-1). CrossRefexternal iconPubMedexternal icon
Hatchett RJ, Mecher CE, Lipsitch M. Public health interventions and epidemic intensity during the 1918 influenza pandemic. Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A 2007;104:7582–7. CrossRefexternal iconPubMedexternal icon
Markel H, Lipman HB, Navarro JA, et al. Nonpharmaceutical interventions implemented by US cities during the 1918–1919 influenza pandemic. JAMA 2007;298:644–54. CrossRefexternal iconPubMedexternal icon
Dawood FS, Chung JR, Kim SS, et al. Interim estimates of 2019–20 seasonal influenza vaccine effectiveness—United States, February 2020. MMWR Morb Mortal Wkly Rep 2020;69:177–82. CrossRefexternal iconPubMedexternal icon
Suggested citation for this article: Jernigan DB. Update: Public Health Response to the Coronavirus Disease 2019 Outbreak — United States, February 24, 2020. MMWR Morb Mortal Wkly Rep. ePub: 25 February 2020. DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.15585/mmwr.mm6908e1external icon.
SARS-CoV-2 Viral Load in Upper Respiratory Specimens of Infected Patients
TO THE EDITOR:
Figure 1.Viral Load Detected in Nasal and Throat Swabs Obtained from Patients Infected with SARS-CoV-2.
The 2019 novel coronavirus (SARS-CoV-2) epidemic, which was first reported in December 2019 in Wuhan, China, and has been declared a public health emergency of international concern by the World Health Organization, may progress to a pandemic associated with substantial morbidity and mortality. SARS-CoV-2 is genetically related to SARS-CoV, which caused a global epidemic with 8096 confirmed cases in more than 25 countries in 2002–2003.1 The epidemic of SARS-CoV was successfully contained through public health interventions, including case detection and isolation. Transmission of SARS-CoV occurred mainly after days of illness2 and was associated with modest viral loads in the respiratory tract early in the illness, with viral loads peaking approximately 10 days after symptom onset.3 We monitored SARS-CoV-2 viral loads in upper respiratory specimens obtained from 18 patients (9 men and 9 women; median age, 59 years; range, 26 to 76) in Zhuhai, Guangdong, China, including 4 patients with secondary infections (1 of whom never had symptoms) within two family clusters (Table S1 in the Supplementary Appendix, available with the full text of this letter at NEJM.org). The patient who never had symptoms was a close contact of a patient with a known case and was therefore monitored. A total of 72 nasal swabs (sampled from the mid-turbinate and nasopharynx) (Figure 1A) and 72 throat swabs (Figure 1B) were analyzed, with 1 to 9 sequential samples obtained from each patient. Polyester flock swabs were used for all the patients.
From January 7 through January 26, 2020, a total of 14 patients who had recently returned from Wuhan and had fever (≥37.3°C) received a diagnosis of Covid-19 (the illness caused by SARS-CoV-2) by means of reverse-transcriptase–polymerase-chain-reaction assay with primers and probes targeting the N and Orf1b genes of SARS-CoV-2; the assay was developed by the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention. Samples were tested at the Guangdong Provincial Center for Disease Control and Prevention. Thirteen of 14 patients with imported cases had evidence of pneumonia on computed tomography (CT). None of them had visited the Huanan Seafood Wholesale Market in Wuhan within 14 days before symptom onset. Patients E, I, and P required admission to intensive care units, whereas the others had mild-to-moderate illness. Secondary infections were detected in close contacts of Patients E, I, and P. Patient E worked in Wuhan and visited his wife (Patient L), mother (Patient D), and a friend (Patient Z) in Zhuhai on January 17. Symptoms developed in Patients L and D on January 20 and January 22, respectively, with viral RNA detected in their nasal and throat swabs soon after symptom onset. Patient Z reported no clinical symptoms, but his nasal swabs (cycle threshold [Ct] values, 22 to 28) and throat swabs (Ct values, 30 to 32) tested positive on days 7, 10, and 11 after contact. A CT scan of Patient Z that was obtained on February 6 was unremarkable. Patients I and P lived in Wuhan and visited their daughter (Patient H) in Zhuhai on January 11 when their symptoms first developed. Fever developed in Patient H on January 17, with viral RNA detected in nasal and throat swabs on day 1 after symptom onset.
We analyzed the viral load in nasal and throat swabs obtained from the 17 symptomatic patients in relation to day of onset of any symptoms (Figure 1C). Higher viral loads (inversely related to Ct value) were detected soon after symptom onset, with higher viral loads detected in the nose than in the throat. Our analysis suggests that the viral nucleic acid shedding pattern of patients infected with SARS-CoV-2 resembles that of patients with influenza4 and appears different from that seen in patients infected with SARS-CoV.3 The viral load that was detected in the asymptomatic patient was similar to that in the symptomatic patients, which suggests the transmission potential of asymptomatic or minimally symptomatic patients. These findings are in concordance with reports that transmission may occur early in the course of infection5 and suggest that case detection and isolation may require strategies different from those required for the control of SARS-CoV. How SARS-CoV-2 viral load correlates with culturable virus needs to be determined. Identification of patients with few or no symptoms and with modest levels of detectable viral RNA in the oropharynx for at least 5 days suggests that we need better data to determine transmission dynamics and inform our screening practices.
Lirong Zou, M.Sc.
Guangdong Provincial Center for Disease Control and Prevention, Guangzhou, China
Feng Ruan, M.Med.
Zhuhai Center for Disease Control and Prevention, Zhuhai, China
Mingxing Huang, Ph.D.
Fifth Affiliated Hospital of Sun Yat-Sen University, Zhuhai, China
Lijun Liang, Ph.D.
Guangdong Provincial Center for Disease Control and Prevention, Guangzhou, China
Huitao Huang, B.Sc.
Zhuhai Center for Disease Control and Prevention, Zhuhai, China
Zhongsi Hong, M.D.
Fifth Affiliated Hospital of Sun Yat-Sen University, Zhuhai, China
Jianxiang Yu, B.Sc.
Min Kang, M.Sc.
Yingchao Song, B.Sc.
Guangdong Provincial Center for Disease Control and Prevention, Guangzhou, China
Jinyu Xia, M.D.
Fifth Affiliated Hospital of Sun Yat-Sen University, Zhuhai, China
Qianfang Guo, M.Sc.
Tie Song, M.Sc.
Jianfeng He, B.Sc.
Guangdong Provincial Center for Disease Control and Prevention, Guangzhou, China
Hui-Ling Yen, Ph.D.
Malik Peiris, Ph.D.
University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong, China
Jie Wu, Ph.D.
Guangdong Provincial Center for Disease Control and Prevention, Guangzhou, China 771276998@qq.com
Disclosure forms provided by the authors are available with the full text of this letter at NEJM.org.
This letter was published on February 19, 2020, and updated on February 20, 2020, at NEJM.org.
Ms. Zou, Mr. Ruan, and Dr. Huang contributed equally to this letter.
To assist health workers and researchers working under challenging conditions to bring this outbreak to a close, The Lancet has created a Coronavirus Resource Centre. This resource brings together new 2019 novel coronavirus disease (COVID-19) content from across The Lancet journals as it is published. All content listed on this page is free to access.
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Focus
A modelling study published in The Lancet estimates that Egypt, Algeria and South Africa are at the highest risk of importing new coronavirus cases in Africa. The three countries are estimated to have the most prepared health systems in the continent and be least vulnerable. However, the authors call for increased resources, surveillance, and capacity building to be urgently prioritised in countries with a moderate risk which are more likely to be ill-prepared to detect cases and limit transmission.
Marius Gilbert, Giulia Pullano, Francesco Pinotti, Eugenio Valdano, Chiara Poletto, Pierre-Yves Boëlle, Eric D’Ortenzio, Yazdan Yazdanpanah, Serge Paul Eholie, Mathias Altmann, Bernardo Gutierrez, Moritz U G Kraemer, Vittoria Colizza
The Lancet journals endorse the Wellcome Trust Statement on sharing research data and findings relevant to the 2019 novel coronavirus disease (COVID-19) outbreak.
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Infographics
Explore our infographics on the first published information on COVID-19 cases in Wuhan.
Welcome to Elsevier’s Novel Coronavirus Information Center. Here you will find expert, curated information for the research and health community on Novel Coronavirus (also referred to as COVID-19 and its temporary title 2019-nCoV). All resources are free to access and include guidelines for clinicians and patients. Under the ‘Research’ tab you will find the latest early stage and peer-reviewed research from journals including The Lancet and Cell Press, as well as a link to the Coronavirus hub on ScienceDirect, where you will find every article relevant article to Coronavirus, SARS, and MERS freely available. Under the Clinical Solutions tab you will find resources for nurses, clinicians and patients, including FAQs on symptoms.
Introduction
Margaret Trexler Hessen, MD, Director, Point of Care, Elsevier
Recent events have shown us (again) how rapidly a new disease can take root and spread. Such events are accompanied by an explosion of clinical and epidemiological information and research. The goal of this website is to open whatever resources we can to help public health authorities, researchers and clinicians contain and manage this disease. We will provide continually updated resources from Elsevier’s content and experts. Our resources span scientific and medical journals and textbooks, educational products, and a variety of other resources, like travel precautions from the CDC and media posts of interest to our community. We have also created a interactive global map of experts based on Scopus data.
Read more
Expert guidance and commentary
COVID-19: Seeking reliable information amid uncertainty
By Ian Chuang, MD, Chief Medical Officer, Elsevier
Medicine is continuously evolving in terms of refining, revising and discovering new knowledge. This is heightened in importance and compressed in timeframe during a crisis such as the current viral outbreak of the COVID-19.
The COVID-19 that originated in Wuhan, China, has exceeded more than 71,000 confirmed cases and over 1,700 deaths since the first case was detected in December 2019. As of February 18, the number of confirmed cases in Singapore has risen to 77. The World Health Organization (WHO) has termed this current epidemic as a global emergency, and it is a public health responsibility at a massive scale.
Read more
JAMA Medical News Podcast: Coronavirus and Beyond: Responding to Biological Threats
The 2019 novel coronavirus outbreak exemplifies ongoing biothreats to global security, as each new threat tests principles of preparation and response at national, regional, and clinical levels. Tom Inglesby, MD, director of the Center for Health Security at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, discusses biosecurity with Angel Desai, MD, JAMA Fishbein fellow. Listen to the interview
6 of the most common coronavirus questions the media is asking
By Rodney E. Rohde, PhD, Professor and Chair, Clinical Laboratory Program, Texas State University | Feb 6, 2020
As an infectious disease and clinical microbiology expert, Prof. Rodney E. Rohde of the Texas State University College of Health Professions receives daily calls from the media, government and university officials, and public health and professional organizations asking him about the emerging novel coronavirus outbreak. In this article, he shares some of the most common questions and his responses.
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Interactive map: global disease outbreak experts
The map represents the most active institutions researching disease outbreak and control. We ran a search in Scopus — a source-neutral abstract and citation database of over 75 million records — for publications researching the coronavirus and related diseases such as SARS from 1996 to the present (Feb 6, 2020). We then used the resulting ~22,000 publications to identify the researchers and institutions that are working in these areas. The map shows the 500 most prolific global institutions, along with the 200 most prolific Chinese institutions by publication count.
Click on a pin to see more about the institution, the numbers of researchers and their publications. Then link through to the researcher’s profiles in Scopus to learn more about their areas of expertise.
JAMA Editor-in-Chief Howard Baucher, MD, interviews Anthony Fauci, MD, Director of the NIH National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases.
Key facts for clinicians
By Margaret Trexler Hessen, MD, Director, Point of Care, Elsevier | Updated Feb 21, 2020
Background: In December, China notified the World Health Organization of several cases of human respiratory illness, which appeared to be linked to an open seafood and livestock market in the city of Wuhan. The infecting agent has since been identified as a novel coronavirus, now called SARS–CoV-2 (initially called 2019-nCoV). Although the virus is presumed zoonotic in origin, person-to-person spread is evident. Novel Coronavirus associated infection is now designated as COVID-19. Cases have now been reported in many parts of mainland China and in other countries in Asia, Europe, the eastern Mediterranean, Australia, Asia Pacific and North America. Travel within China has been restricted and travel to and from China markedly reduced. Screening of travelers is being implemented in other countries and quarantine measures have been enacted under some circumstances. Despite these precautions, it is anticipated that more cases will be seen both inside China and internationally.
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Clinicians need reliable and current information to combat novel coronavirus
By Jonathan Temte, MD, PhD, Consultant, PracticeUpdate, Elsevier
Coronaviruses are incredibly diverse, found in many animal species, and are commonly encountered in clinical practice during the cold and flu season, yet many primary care clinicians are not familiar with these respiratory pathogens. We rarely test for them, and when we do it’s usually when we’re looking for something else. Moreover, we have no specific treatments for these viruses.
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Elsevier Clinical Solutions
We’ve selected content from ClinicalKey, Clinical Solutions Nursing, Interprofessional Practice and Patient Education collections to share what we know to date about the novel coronavirus.
Clinical Overviews on ClinicalKey
Clinical Overviews are easy-to-scan clinically focused medical topic summaries designed to match the clinician workflow. Elsevier’s Point-of-Care Editorial team develops Clinical Overviews through a process that includes review and revision by a medical editor; peer reviews performed by subject matter experts; a production review to ensure consistency in style, grammar, and punctuation; and a final evaluation by the editor-in-chief.
Clinical Skills for Nursing provides the highest quality evidence for nursing practice procedures for nurses to care for patients. Our Isolation Precautions and Personal Protective Equipment checklists align with CDC and OSHA guidelines:
These Interprofessional Care Plans provide an evidence-based and individualizable Interprofessional plan of care to manage fever and the possible development of pneumonia, which is consistent with the presentation of this virus. Using an interprofessional approach to patient care that aligns current evidence with the individual needs of the patient results in improved patient care outcomes.
Patient engagement resources use plain language to support shared decision-making between patients and healthcare providers. The goal is to deliver the right message in the right way at the time the patient is most ready to learn. The following resources provide an overview of the novel coronavirus to help patients and their families understand their risk, identify signs and symptoms, and prevent it from spreading:
SARS coronavirus (SARS-CoV) – virus identified in 2003. SARS-CoV is thought to be an animal virus from an as-yet-uncertain animal reservoir, perhaps bats, that spread to other animals (civet cats) and first infected humans in the Guangdong province of southern China in 2002.
Transmission
An epidemic of SARS affected 26 countries and resulted in more than 8000 cases in 2003. Since then, a small number of cases have occurred as a result of laboratory accidents or, possibly, through animal-to-human transmission (Guangdong, China).
Transmission of SARS-CoV is primarily from person to person. It appears to have occurred mainly during the second week of illness, which corresponds to the peak of virus excretion in respiratory secretions and stool, and when cases with severe disease start to deteriorate clinically. Most cases of human-to-human transmission occurred in the health care setting, in the absence of adequate infection control precautions. Implementation of appropriate infection control practices brought the global outbreak to an end.
Nature of the disease
Symptoms are influenza-like and include fever, malaise, myalgia, headache, diarrhoea, and shivering (rigors). No individual symptom or cluster of symptoms has proved to be specific for a diagnosis of SARS. Although fever is the most frequently reported symptom, it is sometimes absent on initial measurement, especially in elderly and immunosuppressed patients.
Cough (initially dry), shortness of breath, and diarrhoea are present in the first and/or second week of illness. Severe cases often evolve rapidly, progressing to respiratory distress and requiring intensive care.
Geographical distribution
The distribution is based on the 2002–2003 epidemic. The disease appeared in November 2002 in the Guangdong province of southern China. This area is considered as a potential zone of re-emergence of SARS-CoV.
Other countries/areas in which chains of human-to-human transmission occurred after early importation of cases were Toronto in Canada, Hong Kong Special Administrative Region of China, Chinese Taipei, Singapore, and Hanoi in Viet Nam.
Risk for travellers
Currently, no areas of the world are reporting transmission of SARS. Since the end of the global epidemic in July 2003, SARS has reappeared four times – three times from laboratory accidents (Singapore and Chinese Taipei), and once in southern China where the source of infection remains undetermined although there is circumstantial evidence of animal-to-human transmission.
Should SARS re-emerge in epidemic form, WHO will provide guidance on the risk of travel to affected areas. Travellers should stay informed about current travel recommendations. However, even during the height of the 2003 epidemic, the overall risk of SARS-CoV transmission to travellers was low.
Prophylaxis
None. Experimental vaccines are under development.
Precautions
Follow any travel recommendations and health advice issued by WHO.
China’s early warning system didn’t work on covid-19. Here’s the story.
Lies and coverups halted vital information.
By Dali L. Yang
Feb. 24, 2020 at 4:13 a.m. CST
Chinese authorities have placed an estimated 760 million people into lockdown as part of an epic campaign to contain the spread of covid-19, the disease caused by the novel coronavirus. As of Sunday, there were over 77,000 confirmed cases and more than 2,500 deaths in China, mostly in Hubei province. Wuhan, the provincial capital and the epicenter of the outbreak, has been hard hit.
Why did China’s CDC system, once touted as among the world’s best disease control programs, fail to help contain the virus early on? And what has the crisis exposed about China’s system of governance? Here’s what you need to know.
China built a system to prevent another SARS crisis
In the aftermath of the 2003 SARS crisis, China invested heavily to improve its system for infectious disease control and prevention. These measures included new laboratories and a nationwide Infectious Diseases Reporting System, as well as new laws on infectious diseases control and public health emergencies. The reporting system is extensive, covering all of China’s more than 2,800 county-level jurisdictions.
In a country known for its bureaucratic hierarchy, this information system is designed for attention escalation — and rapid response. Hospitals with infectious disease cases input the cases into the info system, and this information needs to reach the China CDC within hours. A dedicated team at the China CDC headquarters monitors the information flows 24/7 and reports to the CDC leadership at least once a day.
This sentinel system for infectious diseases helped China tackle various outbreaks — including H1N1, avian flu and malaria. Successive China CDC directors have taken great pride in this system. In a March 2019 interview, Gao Fu, the China CDC director general, said he was “very confident that the SARS incident will not recur. This is due to our country’s well-built infectious disease surveillance network; we can block the virus when it appears.”
The system worked, according to local authorities
The official story in Hubei and Wuhan is that, after identifying atypical pneumonia cases, the Wuhan and Hubei CDCs forwarded the information on a timely basis to the national CDC at the end of December. To drive home this message, the Hubei authorities on Feb. 4 announced a merit award to Zhang Jixian for getting her hospital to report several cases to municipal and provincial authorities on Dec. 29, 2019.
The Wuhan Health Commission (WHC) began to release information on its website on the atypical pneumonia cases on Dec. 31, 2019.
But local authorities didn’t tell the full story
The China CDC official line, however, suggests a different timeline. According to Feng Zijian, deputy director general of the China CDC, the direct reporting system was “not activated that expeditiously.” In fact, the award to Zhang for reporting on Dec. 29 reminds us that the pre-Dec. 29 cases were not reported, let alone filed into the disease reporting system in real time.
Two separatesources reveal that Gao himself was the real sentinel of the coronavirus outbreak. In the evening of Dec. 30, Gao Fu noticed from scanning group-chats that the WHC had just issued two internal notices on atypical pneumonia cases. Alarmed that such information had not been submitted to the national reporting system, he called the Wuhan CDC head and learned that the number of cases was well above the threshold for reporting. Troubled by what he heard — and didn’t hear — Gao immediately alerted the National Health Commission (NHC) leadership. The following day, Dec. 31, the NHC dispatched a national team of experts to Wuhan to investigate.
Local authorities also silenced whistleblowers
As the national team was on its way to Wuhan, the WHC issued its first public statement about the atypical pneumonia outbreak, reassuring the public that the health administrations and hospitals were managing the situation well. Of the 27 cases, “seven were critical, but the rest were stable and controllable, including two that … are expected to be discharged.” In fact, the latest retrospective study by China CDC reveals there were already 104 cases, including 15 deaths, in December.
What ensued in Wuhan has received enormous coverage. As Wuhan and Hubei political leaders met in Wuhan for annual meetings, WHC kept the number of the infected artificially low, and repeatedly downplayed the risks of contagion. Wuhan officials also pushed ahead with large public gatherings ahead of the Lunar New Year, which helped spread the virus.
In contrast, on Jan. 2, health authorities in Singapore and other countries began to screen passengers from Wuhan.
The case of Li Wenliang has captured global attention. Early on Dec. 31, the Chinese doctor was reprimanded by WHC and the Wuhan Central Hospital he worked at for spreading false rumors about SARS-like cases on Dec. 30. Police later forced him to sign a document promising not to spread “false rumors” again. Other doctors were also admonished for “irresponsible behavior that caused social panic and disrupted Wuhan’s development and stability.”
Systemic fissures contributed to further delays
Local officials, including Wuhan’s mayor, blamed their inadequate public disclosure on the need to secure approval from above. But the truth is more complicated. We now know that on Dec. 30, a joint Hubei-Wuhan CDC investigation team concluded that there were no clusters of cases but there were nonetheless a family of several members that became infected.
Had China CDC experts seen this report — or engaged with the infectious disease doctors at the major Wuhan hospitals — they would likely have recognized earlier that the virus was spreading from human to human. Three crucial weeks would elapse before a new national experts team, including Zhong Nanshan and Gao, finally concluded that the coronavirus was highly contagious.
The infectious diseases sentinel system only works if the hospitals and local health administrations actively engage with it and contribute to the information. In Wuhan, the system failed, monumentally. The failure has laid bare the inherent tensions of a reporting system that is also beholden to the political imperatives of provincial and municipal Communist Party bosses.
For now, President Xi Jinping has replaced the top leaders of Hubei and Wuhan. China remains in the midst of an unprecedented and enormously costly effort to contain covid-19. While the Chinese leadership can lay some of the blame for the crisis on local missteps, a more effective public health emergency response system will depend on encouraging information flows and realigning institutional interests.
Dali L. Yang is the William C. Reavis Professor of Political Science at the University of Chicago.His researchhas emphasized governance and regulation in China.
COVID-19 (Coronavirus) is the number 1 issue facing investors at the moment. Given issues with data from China, we have put together these charts (updating throughout the day) to highlight the data from outside of China. Often the final data point will only include countries which have reported that day and so will change throughout the day.
NOTE: China has re-classified statistics at least three times. There are also numerous revisions to prior numbers. We have made some adjustments to the charts below to normalise these statistics where possible, but treat China and Hubei data with scepticism. We now use both suspected and confirmed cases in Chinese ratios.
COVID-19 cases caught outside of China
Whilst at first most cases of COVID-19 outside China were people who had flown from China to another country, we now seeing transmission of the virus outside of China taking off:
Given that a single cruise ship made up the bulk of cases outside China in early February, it is still useful to look at cases with and without that ship.
The average incubation period of COVID-19 probably less than a week (but could be as much as 24 days), and then an additional 3-4 days before diagnosis. So, you would expect measures like quarantines and travel restrictions to take around 10 days before showing up in statistics.
Time to doubling
This is an examination of how long it takes for cases or deaths to double.
Winter is here
If we limit cases to only those caught in a particular country, exclude China, and then split countries into:
Winter countries: Northern Hemisphere Countries currently in winter (including Vietnam as the domestic transmission cases are in the north)
Summer/Equatorial countries: Southern Hemisphere countries currently in summer or Countries near the equator where temperatures are relatively high all year
Note: Countries near China are more likely to have contact with Chinese citizens and these countries are in winter which probably distorts this data.
New and total COVID-19 case numbers in Hubei, the rest of China
Our analysis (and the analysis of many others) suggests reporting of COVID-19 cases in Hubei province were under-reported.
Then, on the 7th of February, China changed its definition of how it is reporting new cases to exclude patients who test positive for the virus but have no symptoms will no longer be regarded as confirmed. This means up to 80% of cases might no longer be reported. On the 13th of February Hubei reclassified how it classifies cases. On 20th February Hubei reclassified again. All changes affect the quality of the data. Confirmed + suspected cases in China are our key measure.
We are tracking data from Hubei and the rest of China separately. We are sceptical of the China data, but there is some information in the series.
On 7 Feb China made some adjustments to how they report data. Below we have made an estimate of what the case count might look like if China did not make this adjustment:
New and total Coronavirus death toll in Hubei, the rest of China, and the rest of the world
COVID-19 Mortality Rate using lag periods
The mortality rate is where we can see distinct differences in data. Dividing the number of deaths by the number of cases during the early stages of an outbreak is very misleading. People who were diagnosed today with the disease are still alive, but they still might die from the disease in the coming days.
A better way is to compare the current deaths to the number of cases from “x” days ago. We still don’t know how many days we should be looking back. The stats so far suggest that the median days from the first symptom to death is 14. But with a broad range from 6 to 41. And, we don’t know how long on average after the first symptom a person would take to become a case.
The below charts show the death rate if the right period to look back is 4, 8 or 12 days. Using data without Hubei, a mortality rate of somewhere between 0.5% and 3% is likely.
In recent days, data from Iran has skewed the results. There is likely a significantly larger outbreak in Iran than what is being reported. We have started showing our mortality rates for the rest of the world excluding Iran.
For more on what this means, see our article on understanding COVID-19 statistics
More Analysis
See our latest investment view and here for our latest podcast. Keep in mind that the economic impact is not particularly related to the number of deaths, more important is the disruption to business which already looks to be significant.
Data sources
This is a list of some of the main data sources we use:
http://wjw.hubei.gov.cn/fbjd/tzgg/ Official source for Hubei Data. Usually comes out a few hours before the China data. Doesn’t always explain adjustments.
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Civil forfeiture in the United States, also called civil asset forfeiture or civil judicial forfeiture,[1] is a process in which law enforcement officers take assets from persons suspected of involvement with crime or illegal activity without necessarily charging the owners with wrongdoing. While civil procedure, as opposed to criminal procedure, generally involves a dispute between two private citizens, civil forfeiture involves a dispute between law enforcement and property such as a pile of cash or a house or a boat, such that the thing is suspected of being involved in a crime. To get back the seized property, owners must prove it was not involved in criminal activity. Sometimes it can mean a threat to seize property as well as the act of seizure itself.[2] Civil forfeiture is not considered to be an example of a criminal justice financial obligation.
Proponents see civil forfeiture as a powerful tool to thwart criminal organizations involved in the illegal drug trade, with $12 billion annual profits,[3] since it allows authorities to seize cash and other assets from suspected narcotics traffickers. They also argue that it is an efficient method since it allows law enforcement agencies to use these seized proceeds to further battle illegal activity, that is, directly converting value obtained for law enforcement purposes by harming suspected criminals economically while helping law enforcement financially.
Critics argue that innocent owners can become entangled in the process to the extent that their 4th Amendment and 5th Amendment rights are violated, in situations where they are presumed guilty instead of being presumed innocent. It has been described as unconstitutional by a judge in South Carolina[4][5]. Further, critics argue that the incentives lead to corruption and law enforcement misbehavior. There is consensus that abuses have happened but disagreement about their extent as well as whether the overall benefits to society are worth the cost of the instances of abuse.
Civil forfeitures are subject to the “excessive fines” clause of the U.S. Constitution‘s 8th amendment, both at a federal level and, as determined by the 2019 Supreme Court case, Timbs v. Indiana, at the state and local level.[6]
Contents
History
Legal origins
The idea of going at people through their property has a long history. The theories are quite old. The prevalence of the practice is comparatively recent.
Civil forfeiture has a history dating back several hundred years with roots in British maritime law to the British Navigation Acts around the middle 1600s. These laws required ships importing or exporting goods from British ports to fly the British flag; ships that failed to do this could be seized regardless of whether the ship’s owner was guilty of doing any wrongdoing.[8] It was easier to seize a vessel than try to apprehend an owner on the other side of the ocean,[9] as explained by Supreme Court justice Joseph Story:
… (A) vessel which commits the aggression is treated as the offender, as the guilty instrument or thing to which the forfeiture attaches, without any reference whatsoever to the character or conduct of the owner. (The seizure of the ship is justified by …) the necessity of the case, as the only adequate means of suppressing the offense or wrong, or insuring an indemnity to the injured party.
During the later Colonial years, forfeiture practices by the Crown officials using writs of assistance were one of the many activities that angered colonists, who saw the writs as “unreasonable searches and seizures” that deprived persons of “life, liberty, or property, without due process”.[9] The early Congress wrote forfeiture laws based on British maritime law to help federal tax collectors collect customs duties, which financed most of the expenses of the federal government in the early days of the republic.[8] Seizures allowed government to confiscate property from citizens who failed to pay taxes or customs duties.[7] The Supreme Court upheld these forfeiture statutes in situations where it was virtually impossible to get hold of guilty persons on the high seas while possible to get hold of their property.[8] During much of the 19th century there was not much attention paid to forfeiture laws.[8]
Prohibition era
During Prohibition, Detroit police inspect equipment suspected of being used to make alcohol; under civil forfeiture laws, police could seize the equipment without having to charge any owners with a crime.
Government used forfeiture during the Prohibition years 1920–1933.[8] Police seized vehicles and equipment and cash and other property from bootleggers.[7] When Prohibition ended in 1933, much of the forfeiture activity ended as well, and modern forfeiture was an “infrequent resort” until the last few decades.[9]
War on Drugs (1980–present)
Civil forfeiture activity increased substantially in the past thirty years.[10] It stepped up forfeiture during the War on Drugs during the early 1980s and onwards.[8] It became harder for criminal organizations to launder dirty money by means of the financial system, so drug cartels preferred bulk payments of cash.[11] Illegal drugs are a big business; one estimate was that the annual profit from selling illegal drugs was $12 billion, according to the United States Drug Enforcement Administration.[8] The initial intent, similar to methods used to try to fight alcohol trafficking and use during the Prohibition era, was to use civil forfeitures as a weapon against drug kingpins.[12]
According to journalist Sarah Stillman, a major turning point in forfeiture activity was the passage of the Comprehensive Crime Control Act of 1984.[13] This law permitted local and federal law enforcement agencies to share the seized assets and cash.[9] Civil forfeiture allowed federal and local governments to “extract swift penalties from white-collar criminals and offer restitution to victims of fraud”, according to Stillman.[9] From 1985 to 1993, authorities confiscated $3 billion of cash and other property based on the federal Asset Forfeiture Program, which included both civil and criminal forfeitures.[13] The methods were supported by the Reagan administration as a crime fighting strategy.
It’s now possible for a drug dealer to serve time in a forfeiture-financed prison after being arrested by agents driving a forfeiture-provided automobile while working in a forfeiture-funded sting operation.
The politics of civil forfeiture were somewhat unusual. The federal forfeiture laws were introduced and pushed through by Republicans in the 1980s, with support from some Democrats; but efforts to reform forfeiture laws have also come from the right,[14] as libertarians in Congress have focused on the basic idea as offensive to property rights.[14] In many areas civil forfeiture adversely affects persons from minorities and low-income communities, in which the typical seizure is less than $500, and Democrats have also been critical of civil forfeiture programs.[14] The ACLU has also been a long time opponent.[14]
Forfeiture was used for purposes other than trying to discourage illegal drug activity, such as attempts in New York City to discourage drunk driving. Forfeiture rules were used to confiscate cars of intoxicated motorists.[7] In such instances, there are two types of cases: a criminal case against the drunk driver as a person, and a civil case against the property used to facilitate the drunk driving, specifically their car.[7] Critics contend that the punishment can be “deemed out of proportion with the offense”; for example, after a drunk driver is arrested and convicted and possibly imprisoned, is it proper to punish him or her additionally by civil forfeiture means by confiscating a $50,000 car?[7] Civil forfeiture has been used to discourage illegal activities such as cockfighting, drag racing, gambling in basements, poaching of endangered fish, securities fraud, and other illegal activity.[9]
A chart showing that payouts are growing, according to the equitable sharing arrangement. Source: United States Justice and Treasury Departments.
Courts helped set up the legal framework to help law enforcement stem the drug tide while sometimes trying to rein in abuses. A 1984 law set up the equitable sharing arrangement in which state and local police can share the seizures with federal agents.[15] While the 1993 Supreme Court case Austin v. United States ruled that a forfeiture could be considered as an excessive fine,[16] the court upheld the principle of civil forfeiture generally.[8] A 1996 Supreme Court decision ruled that prosecuting a person for a crime and seizing his or her property via civil forfeiture did not constitute double jeopardy, and therefore did not violate the Constitution.[16] However, in 1999, the Supreme Court ruled that civil forfeiture was not permitted if the amount seized was “grossly disproportional” to the gravity of the offense.[7]
Legislatures played a role as well. Since the 1990s, the number of federal statutes permitting government forfeiture doubled from 200 to 400.[15] In 2000, lawmakers passed the Civil Asset Forfeiture Reform Act, or CAFRA, which stipulated protections for individuals and increased the level of proof required.[15] Critics said that the new guidelines did not require poor persons to have free access to legal services.[15] CAFRA guidelines suggest that if a claimant wins a civil-forfeiture case, that some of the legal fees paid to recover the property are partially payable by the government.[15] CAFRA was supposed to raise government’s burden of proof before seizing property.[17] CAFRA meant if government loses a forfeiture challenge, government must pay the victim’s attorney costs, but often victims are unaware of this fact, so they fail to hire lawyers thinking the cost will be prohibitive.[17]
Police forces heeded instruction from a law enforcement consultant named Joe David who had an “uncanny talent for finding cocaine and cash in cars and trucks”, according to one report.[18] Officers trained in David’s so-called Desert Snow stop-and-seizure techniques raked in $427 million from highway encounters during a five-year period.[18] A contract allowed David’s consulting firm to keep 25% of the seized cash.[18]
But when innocent owners were sometimes ensnarled in seizure proceedings, it spurred criticism. In the early 1990s, San Francisco-based defense attorney Brenda Grantland organized a group called Forfeiture Endangers American Rights (which spells the letters FEAR), with branches in New Jersey, Virginia, California, and Massachusetts.[13] Debate about reforming civil forfeiture procedures happened in the late 1990s but after public scrutiny died down, lawmakers quietly relaxed the reforms at the behest of police groups and prosecutors without much public debate.[10]
Civil forfeiture was used successfully on many occasions. For example, it was used to seize assets by corrupt foreigners, such as against Teodoro Nguema Obiang Mangue, who stole money from the African nation of Equatorial Guinea and was convicted.[19] Overall, the pattern in recent decades has been a substantial increase in forfeiture activity. According to government records, Justice department seizures went from $27 million in 1985 to $556 million in 1993 and $4.2 billion in 2012.[9]
In 2015, Eric Holder ended the policy of “adoptive forfeiture”, which occurred “when a state or local law enforcement agency seizes property pursuant to state law and requests that a federal agency take the seized asset and forfeit it under federal law” due to abuse.[20] Although states proceeded to curtail the powers of police to seize assets, actions by the Justice Department in July 2017 have sought to reinstate police seizure powers that simultaneously raise funding for federal agencies and local law enforcement.[21]
Civil procedure cases generally involve disputes between two private citizens, often about money or property, while criminal procedure involves a dispute between a private citizen and the state, usually because a law has been broken. In legal systems based on British law such as that of the United States, civil and criminal law cases are handled differently, with different tests and standards and procedures, and this is true of forfeiture proceedings as well. Both civil and criminal forfeiture involve the taking of assets by police.
In civil forfeiture, assets are seized by police based on a suspicion of wrongdoing, and without having to charge a person with specific wrongdoing, with the case being between police and the thing itself, sometimes referred to by the Latin term in rem, meaning “against the property”; the property itself is the defendant and no criminal charge against the owner is needed.[1]
In contrast, criminal forfeiture is a legal action brought as “part of the criminal prosecution of a defendant”, described by the Latin term in personam, meaning “against the person”, and happens when government indicts or charges the property that is either used in connection with a crime, or derived from a crime, that is suspected of being committed by the defendant;[1] the seized assets are temporarily held and become government property officially after an accused person has been convicted by a court of law; if the person is found to be not guilty, the seized property must be returned.
If property is seized in a civil forfeiture, it is “up to the owner to prove that his cash is clean”.[3] Normally both civil and criminal forfeiture require involvement by the judiciary; however, there is a variant of civil forfeiture called administrative forfeiture, which is essentially a civil forfeiture that does not require involvement by the judiciary, which derives its powers from the Tariff Act of 1930, and empowers police to seize banned imported merchandise, as well as things used to import or transport or store a controlled substance, money, or other property that is less than $500,000 value.[1]
Justification
The Supreme Court has generally upheld the principle of civil forfeiture.
According to the Justice Department, there are three main justifications for civil forfeitures:
Punishment and deterrence. To punish and deter criminal activity by depriving criminals of property used or acquired through illegal activities.[22]
Enhance police cooperation. To enhance cooperation among foreign, federal, state, and local law enforcement agencies, through the equitable sharing of assets recovered through this program.[22]
Revenue for law enforcement. As a byproduct, to produce revenues to enhance forfeitures and strengthen law enforcement.[22]
Since a prosecutor can charge a person with a crime in a criminal case and charge his or her things in a civil case, issues such as double jeopardy have been raised. Further, there has been debate about whether seizures of property are considered as a fine or as a punishment in a legal sense. The distinction was clarified by the Supreme Court in United States v. Bajakajian, which decreed that a criminal forfeiture could be considered as both a type of fine and a punishment, while a civil forfeiture was not intended as a punishment of a person but rather a “legal fiction of punishing the property”.[24] As a result, the court decreed that civil forfeitures that served as remedial were not considered as a type of fine.[24][25]
In addition, there are more than 400 federal statutes that empower police to take assets from convicted criminals, as well as from persons not charged with criminality.[15] Sometimes the seizures happen as a result of different government agencies working together, such as the Internal Revenue Service and the Department of Justice.[29] Police at national and state levels cooperate in many instances according to procedural laws known as equitable sharing. In addition, there are laws that make it difficult for criminals to get dirty money clean by methods of money laundering; for example, law requires that cash deposits greater than $10,000 to a bank account be reported by the bank to the federal government,[30] and there have been instances in which repeated cash deposits under this amount have looked suspicious to authorities even though they were done legitimately, leading to civil forfeiture seizures directly from a bank account. What has caused controversy is when the property of innocent persons is seized by police who believe that the seized items were involved in criminal activity.
A June 2019 study found that more equitable sharing funds do not translate into more crimes solved, not improving overall police effectiveness. Such funds also do not lead to less drug use. And forfeiture rates are linked to local economic performance, increasing when the local economy suffers, suggesting that such tactics are more geared towards raising revenue, not fighting crime.[31]
Prevalence
Although there are accessible statistics of seizures at the federal level, it often happens that the totals of forfeitures from both criminals and innocent owners are combined; for example, one report was that in 2010, government seized $2.5 billion in assets from criminals and innocent owners by forfeiture methods,[15] and the totals of assets seized incorrectly from innocent owners was not separated statistically. Further, since the United States is a federal republic with governments at both the national and state level, there are civil forfeiture seizures at the state level, which are not tracked and recorded in any central database,[11] which make it difficult to make assessments, since state laws and procedures vary widely. According to The Washington Post, federal asset forfeiture in 2014 accounted for over $5 billion going into Justice and Treasury Department coffers, while in comparison, official statistics show that the amount stolen from citizens by burglars during that same year was a mere $3.5 billion.[32]
Methods
Civil forfeiture begins when government suspects that a property is connected with illegal drug activity, and files a civil action:[22]
The government simply files a civil action in rem against the property itself, and then generally must prove, by a preponderance of the evidence, that the property is forfeitable under the applicable forfeiture statute. Civil forfeiture is independent of any criminal case, and because of this, the forfeiture action may be filed before indictment, after indictment, or even if there is no indictment. Likewise, civil forfeiture may be sought in cases in which the owner is criminally acquitted of the underlying crimes …
— Craig Gaumer, Assistant United States Attorney, 2007[22]
Properties that can be confiscated include real estate property such as a house or motel, cars, cash, jewelry, boats, and almost anything[15] suspected of being related to the manufacture and sale and transportation of illegal controlled substances, such as:
In a civil forfeiture case in the United States, the state is the plaintiff and a thing is the defendant—in this case, the thing is $25,180 cash that was seized by police under suspicion of being involved in illegal activity. In legal terms, it is an in rem case (against a thing) as opposed to an in personam case (against a person). Here is the docket for a real case that happened after police seized money.
One method of intercepting funds is by highway interdictions, typically along highway routes suspected to be used regularly by drug smugglers, often between Mexico and the United States.
News media have reported many examples:
Mandrel Stuart was not charged with a crime and there was no evidence of illegal activity but police seized his money because they assumed it was drug-related:[34]
Mandrel Stuart and his girlfriend were on a date driving on Interstate 66 … The traffic stop on that balmy afternoon in August 2012 was the beginning of a dizzying encounter that would leave Stuart shaken and wondering whether he had been singled out because he was black and had a police record. Over the next two hours, he would be detained without charges, handcuffed and taken to a nearby police station … stripped of $17,550 in cash … earned through … a small barbecue restaurant … he was going to use the money that night for supplies and equipment.
Javier Gonzalez was carrying $10,000 cash in a briefcase and got pulled over in Texas; deputies handed Gonzalez a waiver, that if he signed over the money and did not claim it later, he would not be arrested, but if he refused to sign the waiver, Gonzalez would be arrested for money-laundering.[17] Gonzalez signed the waiver wondering if the officers were real “officers of law” and wondering if he got robbed, but later sued the county, which lost, and returned his cash plus paid him $110,000 in damages plus attorney’s fees.[17]
Matt Lee of Clare, Michigan, was driving to California with $2,500 cash when pulled over by police in Nevada, who seized almost all of the cash under suspicion that it was a “drug run”; Lee hired an attorney who took half as his fee, leaving Lee with only $1130 remaining.[34]
I just couldn’t believe that police could do that to anyone … It’s like they are at war with innocent people.
Tan Nguyen. In 2008, a federal judge ordered $50,000 returned to a man after police seized the money during a traffic stop in Nebraska, after reviewing a recording of the seizure in which a sheriff’s deputy suggested that we “take his money and, um, count it as a drug seizure”.[15] Tan Nguyen’s $50,000 was confiscated by police during a traffic stop, and the county agreed to return the funds after a legal challenge.[35]
In May 2010 a couple was driving from New York to Florida and they were stopped by police because of a cracked windshield.[34] During questioning, the officer decided that $32,000 cash in the van was “probably involved in criminal or drug-related activity”, seized it, shared it with federal authorities under equitable sharing.[34] The victim hired a lawyer to get back the seized money who urged settling for half of the seized amount, and after the lawyer’s fees, the victim got back only $7,000.[34]
A 2013 The New Yorker piece detailed abuses in Tenaha, Texas, where police would target out-of-state drivers using rental cars, often not issuing traffic tickets, and disproportionately pulling over African Americans and Latino-Americans.[9] Police sometimes ask stopped motorists to sign “roadside property waivers”, which, unless signed, threaten criminal charges unless valuables are handed over; the waivers say, in effect, that victims will not contest the seizure in exchange for not being arrested.[9]
If a passing motorist does not sign a waiver and it becomes recorded as a legal case, the case names are often unusual.[9] In a civil forfeiture case, the asset itself is listed as the “defendant”.[15] For example, one case was titled State of Texas v. One Gold Crucifix, based on a traffic stop in which a woman was pulled over, no charges were filed, but this item of jewelry was seized.[9] Another case name was United States v. $35,651.11 in U.S. Currency.[30]
The Washington Post analyzed 400 seizures in 17 states that were examples of equitable sharing arrangements.[34] Police stop motorists under the pretext of a minor traffic infraction, and “analyze” the intentions of motorists by assessing nervousness, and request permission to search the vehicle without a warrant; however, of the 400 seizures studied by The Washington Post, police did not make any arrests.[34]
Other cash seizures
Cash has been seized in peculiar circumstances. For example, New York businessman James Lieto’s $392,000 in cash was seized by federal authorities, since his legitimate funds mixed up with illegal funds in an armored car that was seized by an FBI probe.[15] Lieto had to wait until the government’s criminal case was finished before he could get his money back, which took considerable time, and caused considerable financial hardship and stress.[15]
Police have broken into homes. In March 2012, in the middle of the night, without a warrant, New York City police burst into the home of Gerald Bryan, ransacked his belongings, ripped out light fixtures, arrested him, and seized $4,800 of his cash, but after a year, the case against him was dropped.[10] When Bryan tried to get back his money, he was told it was “too late” since the money had already been put into the police pension fund.[10] Victims of forfeiture often find themselves faced with fighting in a “labyrinthine” procedure to get their money back.[10]
In May, 2013, IRS agents seized $32,821 from the account of a restaurant owner in Arnolds Park, Iowa, on suspicion of tax evasion,[36] but the seizure was contested by lawyers from the Institute for Justice.[37][38]
The IRS is increasingly taking money from legitimate businesspeople who … run an honest cash business and make frequent cash deposits … The government doesn’t allege that she evaded taxes. The government doesn’t allege that she was depositing money from an illicit source. She’s simply depositing her own lawfully-earned money … that she gets from customers in her restaurant …
The U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration has been seizing cash from passengers on domestic flights. Agents seized $209 million in cash from travelers at the 15 busiest airports from 2006 to 2016, according to an investigation by USA Today.[39] Agents seized $82,373 from a passenger, transporting her father’s life savings, while boarding a domestic flight, despite any indication of criminal activity or drug use or charges, leading to a lawsuit to get the funds returned.[39]
Seizures of real estate
Prosecutors threatened to seize a motel, similar to this one owned by the Caswell family, when there was illegal drug use on the premises in Chelmsford, Massachusetts.
Police can seize not only cash from cars but real estate such as a person’s home. For example, homes have been seized even if someone other than the homeowner on the premises committed drug crimes without the owner’s awareness.[10] If the IRS suspects that property is involved with crime, or has been produced as a result of crime, then it has a pretext with which to seize it.[30] From 2010 to 2013, two motel owners were under constant threat of their property being seized after there were incidents of drug selling on the motel premises.[2] A judge ruled in 2013 that the owners could keep their motel since the owners did not know about the illegal activity and took all reasonable steps to prevent it.[2]
I’d like to see this law done away with, or heavily modified … This law, where you are presumed guilty and have to prove yourself innocent, is completely backward from any other law I’ve ever heard of. It’s hard to believe the government has that kind of power. It’s ridiculous. Prosecutors abuse it, and the average person can’t afford to fight it.
Police seized a house on the pretext that it was being used for selling drugs, after a couple’s son was arrested for selling $40 worth of illegal drugs.[12] In another case, homeowners Carl and Mary Shelden sold their house to a man who was later convicted of fraud, but because of the real estate transaction, the Sheldens got caught up in a 10-year legal battle that left them “virtually bankrupt”; after years, they finally got back their house but it was in badly damaged condition; the Sheldens had done nothing wrong.[13]
Seizures of vehicles
In Detroit, men suspected of hiring prostitutes had their automobiles seized.[10][13] An owner’s sailboat was taken after he was caught with a negligible amount of marijuana.[13] Members of the Bergen County Prosecutor’s Office were charged with fraud after knowingly selling counterfeit goods at an asset forfeiture auction.[40]
Seizures of firearms
Five states (California, Connecticut, Indiana, New York, and Oregon) have statutes that allow law enforcement officials to seize a person’s firearms without a warrant or court order if there is probable cause the individual is mentally unstable or may use the weapons to commit a crime. The weapons are to be held in the custody of the law enforcement agency until the case against the individual is dispositioned in a court of law; or the weapons must be returned to the owner if no criminal charges are filed within the timeframe specified by law. In practice, some law enforcement agencies in these states have been known to either sell or destroy seized firearms without compensating the owner after the legal matter that led to the initial seizure has been settled.[citation needed]
Seizures of funds in a bank account
The government can seize money directly from a bank account. One way this happens is when there are large numbers of cash deposits that government investigators suspect are structured as a way to avoid deposits exceeding $10,000, since deposits greater than that amount must be reported to the federal government. But it can happen that legitimate businesses have regular large deposits of cash. In one instance, the Internal Revenue Service waited for large deposits to be placed into an owner’s bank account, and then forced the bank by legal means to surrender it to the agency by means of a secret warrant;[30] authorities took $135,000 from Michigan restaurant owners, named the Cheung family, who made cash deposits from their Chinese restaurant.[29] In another instance, a businessman in New Jersey made repeated cash deposits to save for purchasing a house; each payment was below the $10,000 threshold for reporting to the government, but there were 21 deposits over a period of four months, which caused government to suspect that criminal activity was involved; as a result, the IRS seized $157,000 and the businessman was forced to hire an attorney to get his funds returned.[15] Officials seized $35,000 from the bank account of a grocery store “without any warning or explanation” in 2013.[29]
Contested seizures
After police and authorities have possession of cash or other seized property, there are two ways in which the seized assets become permanently theirs: first, if a prosecutor can prove that seized assets were connected to criminal activity in a courtroom, or second, if nobody tries to claim the seized assets.[41]What happens in many instances is that the assets revert to police ownership by default. If a victim challenges the seizure, prosecutors sometimes offer to return half of the seized funds as part of a deal in exchange for not suing.[17] Sometimes police, challenged by lawyers or by victims, volunteer to return all of the money provided that the victim promises not to sue police or prosecutors; according to The Washington Post, many victims sign simply to get some or all of their money back.[34] Victims often have “long legal struggles to get their money back”.[34] One estimate was that only one percent of federally taken property is ever returned to their former owners.[42]
Statistical evidence suggests a strong upward trend in recent years towards greater seizure activity. In 1986, the Department of Justice’s Asset Forfeiture Fund took in $93.7 million; in 2008, it took in $1 billion.[8] Much of this growth happened in the past decade; one analysis suggested that seizures had grown 600 percent from 2002 to 2012.[42] From 2005 to 2010, government seizures of assets from both criminals as well as innocent citizens went from $1.25 billion to $2.50 billion.[15] Federal authorities seized over $4 billion in 2013 through forfeiture, with some of the money being taken from innocent victims.[29] In 2010, there were 15,000 cases of forfeitures.[15] Over 12 years, agencies have taken $20 billion in cash, securities, other property from drug bosses and Wall Street tycoons as well as “ordinary Americans who have not committed crimes”.[42] One estimate was that in 85% of civil forfeiture instances, the property owner was never charged with a crime.[10] In 2010, there were 11,000 noncriminal forfeiture cases.[15] In 2010, claimants challenged 1,800 civil forfeiture seizures in federal court.[15]
States
The factual accuracy of parts of this article (those related to the States section) may be compromised due to out-of-date information. Please update this article to reflect recent events or newly available information.(July 2017)
Standards of proof in state forfeiture laws
Source: Institute for Justice[43]
Note: “9” means most protection for citizens
Civil forfeiture varies greatly state by state. An analysis by Sarah Stillman in The New Yorker suggested that states that place seized funds in neutral accounts, such as Maine, Missouri (which puts seized funds in accounts for public education), North Dakota, and Vermont, have been much less likely to have major scandals involving forfeiture abuse.[9] States like Texas and Virginia and Georgia, which have few restrictions on how police use the seized funds have had more scandals, as have states that allow the Equitable sharing program. With Equitable Sharing, state police can “skirt state restrictions on the use of funds”, according to Stillman.[9] In Florida, using Equitable Sharing, the small village of Bal Harbour raked in at least $71.5 million in three years by its vice squad by carrying out an undercover money laundering sting operation, but in the end, made no arrests.[9] In 2019, Arkansas enacted a new law that requires felony conviction before forfeiture of related assets with few exceptions.[50]
There are few restrictions on how police use seized assets.[9] Georgia investigators found more than $700,000 in “questionable expenses” by Camden County’s sheriff between 2004 and 2008, including a $90,000 Dodge Viper and a $79,000 boat.[14]
In Maryland, police forfeitures were $6 million in 2012 and $2.8 million in 2013.[41]
Minnesota
Minnesota passed a law in 2014 forbidding authorities from confiscating a suspect’s property unless they have been convicted of a crime or plead guilty to committing it.[51]
Missouri
Seized funds go into accounts earmarked for public education.[9]
Montana
In June 2015, governor Steve Bullock signed a law requiring authorities to first get a criminal conviction before seizing property through civil forfeiture.[48]
Nebraska
State civil forfeiture standard was beyond a reasonable doubt[8] but in 2016 it was changed to require a criminal conviction first before any assets could be seized.[49]
Nevada
There were allegations that Nevada police unlawfully took tens of thousands of dollars from motorists.[35]
New Mexico
Government took $800,000 from a used car dealer in Albuquerque, New Mexico, and held his money for many months before giving it back, but the seizure had an adverse effect on his business and on the owner’s health.[29] In 2015, New Mexico Governor Susana Martinez signed a bill into law making Civil Forfeiture illegal in New Mexico. The prohibition does not apply to property directly connected to the commission of a crime (e.g., money or property obtained through drug trafficking, or stolen property)[48][52]
New York
New York City ransacked a home, seized cash, but it was later returned.[10]
Seized funds or property are forfeited if any connection to any drug crime is proved by a preponderance of the evidence. Once forfeited, the seizing agency can keep and use the funds largely at its discretion. Due to the lack of any state reporting or centralized accounting, no accurate total of seizures is available, but estimates tend to run in the tens of millions each year, much from known drug trafficking corridors such as Interstate 40.[53] Notable abuses of forfeiture funds include prosecutors paying off student loans and living in seized houses rent free.[54]
Pennsylvania
In Philadelphia, it is often the homes of African-Americans and Hispanics who are targeted by civil forfeiture abuses; what happens in many instances is that a child or grandchild who doesn’t own the home is nabbed on a drug-related offense, and police use this as a pretext to seize the entire home.[9] In Philadelphia, authorities made thousands of “small-dollar seizures”; in 2010, the city filed 8,000 forfeiture cases, which amounted to $550 for the average take.[12] From 2002 to 2012, Philadelphia seized $64 million by means of its forfeiture program, a total that was more than that seized by Brooklyn and Los Angeles combined.[12]
Texas
In Texas, in Jim Wells County, authorities seized more than $1.5 million during a four-year period mostly off of U.S. Route 281, described as a “prime smuggling route for drugs going north and money coming south”.[17] Seized cash is a third of the budget of the sheriff’s department, allowing it to buy more equipment, high-powered rifles, and police vehicles.[17] There are few restrictions on how police use seized funds.[9] In some counties in Texas, 40% of police revenue comes from forfeitures.[9] Texas, with many smuggling corridors to Mexico, and police seized $125 million in 2007.[3]
Few restrictions on how police use seized assets.[9]
Washington, D.C.
Victims seeking to get their seized property back in Washington, D.C., may be charged up to $2500 for the right to challenge a police seizure in court, and it can take months or years for a decision to finally happen.[9]
Civil forfeiture has generated substantial controversy.
Proponents
FBIspecial agent Douglas Leff argues that civil forfeiture is a necessary tool for law enforcement to combat money laundering by criminal operatives.
Proponents argue that civil forfeiture tactics are necessary to help police fight serious crime.[42] It is seen as a vital and powerful weapon in the continuing battle against illegal drugs,[13][26] and effective at discouraging criminal activity.[15][30] It makes it easier for law enforcement to fight organized crime when they had trouble imprisoning offenders, since they could deprive them of their property and income when it is much harder to prove their guilt in a court of law.[10]
Prosecutors choose civil forfeiture not because of the standard of proof, but because it is often the only way to confiscate the instrumentalities of crime. The alternative, criminal forfeiture, requires a criminal trial and a conviction. Without civil forfeiture, we could not confiscate the assets of drug cartels whose leaders remain beyond the reach of United States extradition laws and who cannot be brought to trial. Moreover, criminal forfeiture reaches only a defendant’s own property. Without civil forfeiture, an airplane used to smuggle drugs could not be seized, even if the pilot was arrested, because the pilot invariably is not the owner of the plane. Nor could law enforcement agencies confiscate cash carried by a drug courier who doesn’t own it, or a building turned into a “crack house” by tenants with the knowing approval of the landlord.
— Gerald E. Mcdowell Chief, Asset Forfeiture & Money Laundering Section, Dept. of Justice, 1996, writing in The New York Times[26]
The head of the asset forfeiture section of the Department of Justice said that civil forfeiture of cash from innocents was insignificant compared to the “thousands of traffic stops” that bust major drug money couriers.[17]
What’s troubling to you? That a drug trafficker who’s bringing money from the U.S. to Mexico, who’s carrying hundreds of thousands of millions of dollars in cash in their pickup truck, who just sold dope and crack and cocaine to children in your playgrounds, and his money is being taken away? That troubles you?
Police used civil forfeiture laws to help return swindled funds to their owners. Photo: Convicted swindler Bernard Madoff.
Civil forfeiture has been used to restore money stolen by fraud and other schemes by corrupt politicians.[55] Civil forfeiture targets cybercrime, fraud, and scams in high finance at Wall Street, and money-laundering on a global scale.[42] It enables police to have sufficient power to “return money to crime victims” in instances of swindling or fraud.[15] Civil forfeiture laws were helpful in enabling authorities to seize and return swindled funds by the Bernard Madoff fraud.[15]
Proponents argue that government has sufficient safeguards in place so that individuals can challenge seizures if the need arises.[17] Justice William H. Rehnquist said in a Supreme Court decision that federal forfeiture in drug-related cases was not a punishment but served nonpunitive purposes such as encouraging people to be careful that their property was not used illegally.[16] A lobbyist for the Maryland State Police named Thomas Williams argued that bills to require police to keep better records of seized property would cost law enforcement more time and money, and that trying to track seizures by multi-agency task forces would not be easy.[41] Proponents say that when claimants contest the seizures, they rarely win back their money, suggesting that the “system is working properly”.[15] Proponents say the system is monitored to make sure seizures are properly done.[15] In addition, the funds enable police forces to equip themselves further for more effective crime prevention; for example, a $3.8 million drug bust let officers equip their cars with $1,700 video cameras and heat-sensing equipment for a seven-member force.[13]
Critics
Critics include citizens, defense attorneys, and advocates for civil rights.[13] They point to serious instances of abuse in which innocent owners have been victimized.[42] Critics are from both sides of the political spectrum, from left-leaning groups such as the American Civil Liberties Union and right-leaning groups such as The Heritage Foundation.[15] The main criticisms of civil forfeiture proceedings are as follows:
Flawed judicial process. Critics suggest that civil forfeitures are mostly “devoid of due process”.[30] Arguments have been made that the seizures violate the Due Process Clause of the Constitution since owners have few means to challenge the seizures.[51] They see some seizures as assaults against individual rights.[29] Critics argue that criminals are treated better in the courts than innocent owners who have property seized, since criminals are often told they have a right to an attorney, and that the beyond a reasonable doubt standard of proof is much higher in criminal trials than in civil trials.[30] Burden of proof is shifted to victims to prove innocence.[8] Victims of civil forfeiture are considered guilty until proven innocent, thereby turning the principle of innocent until proven guilty on its head.[12][29][30] Because it is part of the civil justice system, there are no attorneys provided for defendants as can happen in some criminal trials; people who can not afford an attorney have slim chances of recovering their property.[12] Most cases are never heard by a jury or judge since victims are unable to fight the seizures by hiring a lawyer.[29] In contrast to principles of open justice, seizures are often done through sealed documents with a lack of transparency.[42] Clinical law professor Louis Rulli of the University of Pennsylvania said that a piece of property does not have the same rights as a human: no right to an attorney, no presumption of innocence.[9]
Excessive punishment. Justice John Paul Stevens said in a single dissenting vote in 1996 that civil forfeiture of a house, in which marijuana had been illegally processed, was an example of an excessive fine, and a violation of the Eighth Amendment, although the majority of the court disagreed.[16]
Critics contend that the lure of cash tempts police towards subverting the rules for personal gain.
Motivates police misbehavior. Critics contend that the system is set up in a way as to incentivize “perverse behavior” by “predatory government agencies”.[30] It makes it possible for government officials to seize property such as cash, vehicles, houses, and jewelry from people without ever convicting them for wrongdoing in a court or even charging them with a crime.[29] The cash and assets are a major temptation for police to presume that activity is illegal. Critics say the huge amount of money involved have a distorting effect on police, such that they are more interested in seizing cash rather than illegal drugs.[3] Seized assets can be used for police office expenses, new equipment, vehicles.[3] The profit motive, in which police can keep 90% or more of profits, “forms the rotten core of forfeiture abuse”.[8] Prosecutors and police have a strong incentive to seize property since the funds can be used to pay expenses of the District Attorney’s office, including salaries. Over a ten-year period, the forfeiture money collected was $25 million in Philadelphia, with seized funds being used to pay salaries for people working in the District Attorney’s office.[12] When funds are returned to the victim, it can happen that the funds come out of taxpayer money, not out of police funds such as a pension fund.[10] Seized amounts of money have gone for new police equipment, parties, travel expenses, training seminars, sometimes held in distant locations such as Las Vegas or Hawaii.[10] A Texas prosecutor used $25,000 in seized cash to take his office staff including spouses and a judge on a vacation to Hawaii.[10] There are no penalties for wrongful seizures, particularly when taxpayers pay when ill-gotten gains from innocent citizens must be returned, so there is an incentive to “find” a drug-related issue when police come across cash.[10] The incentives work against police seizing drugs but push them to seize cash instead:
If a cop stops a car going north with a trunk full of cocaine, that makes great press coverage, makes a great photo. Then they destroy the cocaine … If they catch ’em going south with a suitcase full of cash, the police department just paid for its budget for the year.
— Jack Fishman, former IRS agent, criminal defense attorney, 2008[3]
Innocent owners ensnared. Critics argue that innocent owners suffer emotionally and financially.[34]
Difficult to challenge seizures. The process forces property owners with limited financial abilities to have to hire attorneys and take time and money simply to “prove their innocence”.[30] Victims must actively fight to recover their seized property; if they do nothing, or wait, then they will lose everything.[30] If victims do not seek help from sympathetic lawyers such as those of the Institute for Justice, they can sometimes be offered to have a fraction of their property returned as part of a deal; critics have described the IRS as “bullies” practicing “extortion” against innocent citizens.[30] Procedures to get money back are often fraught with difficulty.[10] Retrieving seized property can be a “bureaucratic nightmare” where victims meet not with a judge or jury but with a prosecutor.[12]
Arbitrary punishments. Critics suggest that civil forfeitures can be arbitrary, varying significantly from one case to another; for example, Alan Finder in The New York Times wondered whether it was “fair that one driver loses a car worth $45,000 and another loses one worth $700?”, if each situation resulted from drunk driving arrests.[7]
Unfairly targets poor and politically weak persons. Many victims of civil forfeiture are “poor and politically weak” and unable to mount a sustained battle in the courts to get their property returned.[51]
Subverts state law. Local and state police often cooperate with federal authorities in what has been called equitable sharing agreements.[14] Since many states have laws restricting or limiting civil forfeitures, as well as requiring higher standards of proof before property can be taken, local police can sidestep these rules by treating the suspected criminal activity as a federal crime, and bringing in federal authorities.[14] As a result, after the seizure, local and federal agencies share the proceeds with 10% to 20% of it going to the federal agency and the remainder to the local police force.[14] Accordingly, equitable sharing “effectively subverts the will and intent of the state legislatures” and has been criticized by prominent civil rights attorney and property rights advocate Scott Bullock as being a “complete violation” of the principle of federalism.[14]
Extent of abuse. Proponents and critics differ about the extent of cases in which innocent persons had their property seized. Proponents argue that the cases are few in number, while critics contend that many instances of abuse happen without awareness by the public as a result of the signing of waivers, victims not challenging seizures for lack of knowledge, and other reasons related to a general lack of judicial transparency. The Baltimore Sun made reports that in 2012, half of victims with seized assets were not convicted of a crime.[41]
Efforts at reform
Comedian and political commentator John Oliver did a sixteen-minute segment on his show Last Week Tonight in 2014 discussing civil forfeiture.
There have been numerous reports in the media about systemic abuse of civil forfeiture. USA Today described it as “an increasingly common—and utterly outrageous—practice that can amount to legalized theft by police”.[56] Reporter Sarah Stillman writing in The New Yorker interviewed numerous police officers, lawyers, prosecutors, justices and plaintiffs around the United States and found that many had reservations that innocent Americans were being abused.[9]The New Yorker published a “sprawling investigation” about how cities abuse civil forfeiture to “bolster their cash-strapped coffers by seizing the assets of the poor, often on trumped up charges”.[10] Comedian John Oliver devoted a presentation to a satirical exposure of civil forfeiture in 2014.
Organizations working for reform, as well as helping individual victims, include the Institute for Justice, a libertariannonprofit law firm in Washington, D.C., which works to end civil forfeiture abuse.[30] It has helped numerous clients recover property seized by the government.[30] The Institute of Justice is helping one forfeiture victim sue the federal district court as well as the mayor, district attorney, and police commissioner in Philadelphia.[12] Scott Bullock, senior attorney at the Institute for Justice, advocates that civil forfeiture should be abolished except for use in enforcing maritime and customs laws, and require that any seizures be linked to criminal convictions of specific people.[57] If that is not possible, Bullock recommends that seized revenues be placed in neutral funds such as drug treatment efforts, that standards of proof for law enforcement be raised to ensure that police provide “clear and convincing evidence” of wrongdoing, that the burden of proof should be moved to government to prove wrongdoing, that seized assets should be tracked such that information is easily accessible by the public, and that the equitable sharing arrangement be abolished.[57] Sometimes victims turn to the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) for legal assistance in winning back their seized property.[42]
There has been opposition to civil forfeiture in some lower courts.[16] There have been attempts by lawmakers to introduce legislation to prevent abuses based on civil forfeiture procedures; one proposal was to raise the standard of proof necessary before property could be seized, and require government to prove that an owner of property was involved in an illegal criminal activity before such seizures could happen.[14] There have been class action lawsuits against authorities, such as one in East Texas by black and Latino drivers; the suit alleges that police took $3 million from 2006 to 2008 in 140 separate incidents.[35] One reform effort is to require authorities to keep better records about seized assets.[41]
In 2015, the New Mexico legislature outlawed civil forfeiture.[52] Also in 2015 a number of criminal justice reformers, including the Koch family foundations and the ACLU, announced plans to advocate the reduction of asset forfeitures due to the disproportionate penalty it places on low-income wrongdoers; the forfeiture of private property in such cases often results in the deprivation of the majority of an individual’s wealth.[58]
As civil forfeiture may not be allowed a new practice has emerged. By classifying valuables such as cars, cellphones, and wallets with cash as evidence the police can keep them and by making it very difficult and time consuming to get them back. After 120 days the police can sell the items.[59]
Marijuana legalization and forfeiture
The Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) has been using civil forfeiture as one way of funding their efforts to combat the use of illegal drugs, including marijuana, which continues to be illegal to possess under Federal law as of 2019.[60][61] According to government figures, the DEA collected $18 million in 2013 as part of its Cannabis Eradication Program.[62] Proponents in favor of legalizing marijuana have objected to this practice, which includes DEA seizures of properties in which marijuana is used and sold. A bill has been proposed in the United States Congress to eliminate this source of funding.[63][64] As more states progress towards legalizing marijuana for medical use and for recreational use, there are more businesses to sell marijuana, sometimes called dispensaries or “weed shops”. A report in The Guardian in 2015 suggested that such shops operated in a “tricky gray zone”, so that even in the 23 states where medicinal cannabis is legal, such dispensaries can be “wiped out by a single visit from law enforcement”.[65] While state law may recognize such establishments as having a legal purpose, federal law does not recognize this, and conflicting interpretations can emerge, which can result in properties being confiscated.[65] It has sparked controversy and, in some instances, public outrage.
Story 3: Neither Government Dependency Nor Country Dependency Are Reliable When A Real Crisis Hits and Countries Commence Hoarding of Medicines, Medical Supplies and Equipment — United States Gets Most of Its Medicines and Ingredients for Drugs From Communist China — Wake Up Americas — Competition Not More Government or Country Dependence Is The Answer — Videos
New warning issued about US dependence on Chinese medicine
Health Scare Threat Over Dependence On Chinese Medicine
Warning: China’s control of generic drugs could be a threat to your life!
Addressing Our Perilous Dependence on Chinese Manufactured Drugs – Rosemary Gibson
Rosemary Gibson, “China Rx”
Rosemary Gibson, China Rx Author, speech at Made In America Event. “Our medicine is not made here.”
Growing Concerns Over China’s Control Of American Drug Supply | NBC Nightly News
Rising concern over safety of generic prescription drugs
Fentanyl: China’s Drug War Against the US | America Uncovered
Joe Rogan – The History of Fentanyl
U.S. policymakers worry about China ‘weaponizing’ drug exports
President Donald Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping (right) so far have left pharmaceuticals out of the bilateral trade war. | Thomas Peter-Pool/Getty Images
By DOUG PALMER and FINBARR BERMINGHAM | SOUTH CHINA MORNING POST
Story 1: President Trump “America Loves India” — Videos
Trump speaks at massive rally during India visit: ‘America loves India’
Trump Takes On Motera Stage, Thanks India For Grand Welcome | Watch Full Speech
US President Trump Discusses Military Deal, Trade Pact with India at Rally
PM, Trump Get To Business, Crucial Bilateral & Trade Talks Today
Donald Trump visits the REAL Taj Mahal (as opposed to his old Atlantic City casino namesake): The Trumps hold hands in front of world famous ‘monument of love’
Donald and Melania Trump capped off their first day in India with a visit to the Taj Mahal
President Trump called the Taj Mahal ‘incredible’ while Melania Trump said it was ‘beautiful’
Earlier, President Trump and Prime Minister Narendra Modi got a raucous welcome when they held a rally at the world’s largest cricket stadium
‘You have done a great honor to the American people. Melania, my family, we will always remember this remarkable hospitality,’ President Trump said
Modi praised the ‘new history’ being created in U.S.-Indian relations
Donald Trump hugged Prime Minister Narendra Modi when he arrived in India in a rare display of affection from president
The Trumps also joined Modi to visit Gandhi’s home where Trump tried his hand at a loom similar to that Gandhi used
Donald and Melania Trump stopped by the Taj Mahal Monday evening, capping off their first day in India with a sunset visit to the world’s most famous monument to love.
They held hands as they posed for photographers and spent a few minutes staring at the white marble tomb as the sun started to dip below the horizon.
Melania also weighed in: ‘Lovely, beautiful,’ she said.
The couple signed the guest book and walked through the gardens as part of their tour of the tomb, built by a 16th century emperor for his deceased wife.
‘Taj Mahal inspires awe, a timeless testament to the rich and diverse beauty of Indian culture! Thank you, India,’ the president wrote in the guest book. Melania Trump signed her name under her husband’s.
It is not the president’s first experience of a Taj Mahal; one of his Atlantic City casinos also held the name and after a checkered history of corporate bankruptcy, was sold to Carl Icahn in 2016, closed, and bought for just $50 million by the Seminole Indian tribe of Florida who have re-opened it as a Hard Rock casino and stripped it of its minarets and dome.
One thing appeared to be missing from the visit to the real Taj: monkeys.
There was no sign of the nearly 1,000 rhesus monkeys who live around the tomb and who sparked fears of a diplomatic incident should they act out. India put extra ‘monkey police’ – guards with sling shots – on duty to keep away the animals.
Donald and Melania Trump stopped by the Taj Mahal to cap off their first day in India
Birds fly in front of the Taj Mahal during President Trump and Melania Trump’s visit
The Trumps visited the famous monument at sunset
President Trump and Melania Trump pose in front of Taj Mahal
President Trump called the Taj Mahal ‘incredible’ while Melania Trump said it was ‘beautiful’
The president and first lady ended their first day in India at its most famous monument
The Trumps were given a photo of themselves in front of the Taj Mahal
President Trump and Melania Trump walk into the Taj Mahal to tour the tomb
White House senior advisors Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner pose in front of the Taj Mahal
President Trump and Melania Trump arrived in Delhi Monday night to spend the night
Melania Trump waves from the Beast as the president limo makes it way toward their hotel
Not to be confused with…: Donald Trump had his own Taj Mahal, an Atlantic City casino whose fate ended in being sold to Carl Icahn in 2016 after a checkered career
Inspired by: The Trump Taj Mahal is now a Hard Rock casino which was stripped of its minarets and domes – and Trump branding – after being soold to the Seminole Indian tribe of Florida in 2016
Landmark: The Trump Taj Mahal was designed to invoke the grandeur of the original with a distinct gold theme inside and out. It was opened in 1988 by Trump who brought along Michael Jackson
Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner also posed in front of the famous monument to love and then Kushner moved aside so Ivanka could get solo shots in front of the tomb.
Built by a Mughal Emperor Shah Jahan in 1643, the Taj Mahal is a tomb for his wife Mumtaz Mahal. He built it for his favorite wife after she died giving birth to their 14th child. He is also buried there.
President Trump could have a special interest in the Taj. During his building days in the 1980s, he built the Trump Taj Mahal hotel and casino in Atlantic City. It opened in 1990 and cost nearly $1 billion to construct.
It came to closing in 2014 as its parent company went through bankruptcy, but ultimately remained open under the new ownership. It was sold again in October 2016 to the Hard Rock Cafe and reopened under that name.
The Trumps were given a framed photo of themselves in front of the monument when they returned to Air Force One to leave Agra for New Delhi, where they will spend the night.
The sunset trip to India’s most famous location came after the Trumps’ spent the day with Narendra Modi in his home state of Ahmedabad, where the president and prime minister got a raucous welcome when they entered the world’s largest cricket stadium.
The day gave the president the kind of pageantry and adoration he likes to see.
The 110,000 stadium was filled to capacity and Trump acknowledged the spectacle when he addressed the Indian people.
‘America loves India. America respects India. And America will always be faithful and loyal friends to the Indian people,’ the president said to cheers.
‘You have done a great honor to the American people. Melania, my family, we will always remember this remarkable hospitality,’ he said.
He later told reporters it was a ‘fantastic event.’
‘I thought it was fantastic,’ he said on his way to Agra to visit the Taj Mahal. ‘They worked really hard.’
President Trump received the welcome he wanted when he touched down in India Monday morning – a spectacle of Indians lining the streets cheering on his motorcade, guards on camels standing by, and native dancers in bright costumes moving to live music and the beat of the drum.
Modi designed the day to appeal to an audience of one: Trump, wooing the president as the two nations struggle to end a trade war that has damped relations between them.
President Donald Trump, first lady Melania Trump, and Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi arrive for a ‘Namaste Trump’ event at Sardar Patel Stadium
President Donald Trump hugged Prime Minister Narendra Modi when he and Melania arrived in India, which was a rare display of affection from the president and spoke of his affection for Modi
President Trump and Melania Trump – who donned prayer shawls and removed their shoes – visited the home of Gandhi where Trump tried his hand at the loom
The stadium, which was filled with capacity saw people sitting in the sun head out as the two leaders wrapped up their remarks
Melania Trump and President Trump exit Sardar Patel Stadium – the world’s largest cricket stadium – after Trump’s remarks
The colorful and festive arrival ceremony in India featured dancers and live music as the Trumps and Modi walked the red carpet
Security forces and their camels greet President Donald Trump and Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi as they arrive at the Namaste Trump event
Thousands lined the streets to welcome the Trumps but it was not the million people the president predicted would come out to greet him
Ivanka Trump and Jared Trump, the president’s daughter and son-in-law who serve as White House advisers, joined the president on the trip
President Trump’s motorcade moves through Ahmedabad as Indians lined the streets to cheer him on one said and the other side shows a wall officials built to cover the nation’s infamous slums
President Trump, for his part, hugged Modi upon his arrival in the country in a rare display of affection that spoke volumes for his fondness for the prime minister.
Their three hours on the ground in Modi’s home state of Ahmedabad brought out thousands of cheering Indians, but not the millions Trump predicted would come out to greet him. Officials estimated about 100,000 people lined the 14-mile route the Trumps took through the city.
The Trumps were headed to the Taj Mahal after their time in Ahmedabad.
In their first stop in India, President Trump and Melania joined Modi for a visit to the home of Mohandas Gandhi, where the president donned a prayer shawl and removed his shoes to learn about the life of the famed independence leader.
Then it was on to the main event – the massive rally Modi had promised Trump, held at the biggest cricket stadium in the world.
Trump, who loves a large crowd, added on to the 110,000 capacity size when he thanked the crowd for its warm welcome.
‘To the hundreds of thousands of everyday citizens who come out and line the streets in a stunning display of Indian culture and kindness, and to the 125,000 people in this great stadium today, thank you for the spectacular welcome,’ he said.
Sardar Patel Stadium was packed to capacity, with thousands wearing white ‘Namaste Trump’ hats and waving masks of Trumps and Modi, cheering as the two leaders entered to the Village Men song ‘Macho Man.’
But the sections of the stadium facing the sun emptied out as the leaders wrapped up their remarks. The day was hot and baking.
Seats in Sardar Patel Stadium started to empty as President Trump and Prime Minister Modi wrapped up their remarks as the day was hot and baking
Prime Minister Modi welcomed President Trump to the world’s largest cricket stadium
President Trump and Prime Minister Modi enter the stadium to a warm welcome and 110,000 cheering supporters
Prime Minister Modi and first lady Melania Trump – seated on stage – listen as President Trump addresses the crowd
First lady Melania Trump, President Trump and Prime Minister Modi stand as the national anthems are played
President Trump praised Prime Minister Modi and American-Indian relations in his remarks
In his remarks at the stadium, Trump praised Modi’s leadership of the country.
‘India will soon be the home of the biggest middle class anywhere in the world, and within less than ten years, extreme poverty in your country is projected to completely disappear,’ Trump said.
Trump India Schedule
Monday: Trumps arrive in Ahmedabad
They visit the Gandhi Ashram
Event with Prime Minister Narendra Modi at Motera Stadium, the world’s largest cricket stadium
Then the first couple will travel to Agra to visit the Taj Mahal
First couple then travels to Delhi, where they will stay the night
Tuesday will include ceremonial events, bilateral meetings, and business event with Indian investors
Trump will have a meet-and-greet with embassy staff
He will have a one-on-one meeting with Prime Minister Modi
He will meet with Ram Nath Kovind, the president of India
First couple will attend a state dinner at the presidential palace, called Rashtrapati Bhavan
Trumps depart for the United States on Tuesday evening
He stumbled over Indian names, including over one of their spiritual gurus and famous cricket player Sachin Tendulkar.
The president also hit upon some of the talking points he uses in his campaign rallies, touting the strong U.S. economy, advocating for stronger border control, and bragging about the killing of Iranian General Qasem Soleimani.
‘Every nation has the right to secure and patrol borders,’ Trump said.
He also discussed relations with Pakistan, India’s neighbor and rival, and said the U.S. was working with them to fight terrorism.
The president also mentioned the trade war that has aggravated relations between Delhi and Washington.
Trade talks are at the top of the agenda even as American officials down played expectations a deal would be reached during Trump’s two-days on the ground.
‘Modi and I will discuss the efforts to expand the economic ties,’ President Trump said. ‘We will be making very very major, the biggest ever trade deals.’
‘I am optimistic that working together the prime minister can reach a fantastic deal that would be good – even great – for both countries,’ he noted and then added: ‘Except he’s a very tough negotiator.’
Modi rallied the crowd by calling out ‘Namaste Trump.’
He praised the U.S.-Indian friendship, saying ‘new history is being created.’
‘Welcome all of you to the world’s biggest democracy,’ Modi said, telling Trump all of India welcomed him, adding that U.S. India relationships are ‘no longer just another partnership.’
The rally was designed to appeal to Trump’s love of big events, a crowd of thousands cheering him on as he and first lady Melania Trump came in.
Modi lavished on the praise to the president and his entire family, calling out the accomplishments of Melania Trump, Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner. He even mentioned the first lady’s ‘Be Best’ campaign by name and praised the work she has done with children.
Trump has touted his friendship with Modi and he hugged the prime minister when he touched down in India, a rare display of affection.
Indian officials rolled out the red carpet for the Trumps and have dubbed the visit as ‘two dynamic personalities, one momentous occasion.’
Modi was on hand to greet the first couple as they stepped off Air Force One as were an array of dancers in colorful native costumes, who gave a festive start to the visit.
They danced alongside the red carpet amid live music as the prime minister led the Trumps to their car.
Melania Trump wore white pants with a long-sleeved white shirt and green sash around her waist for the arrival.
Trump hugged Modi, a rare display of affection that showed his friendship for the prime minister
It was a festive arrival ceremony with music and dancers in native costume greeting the party as they walked the red carpet
Melania and Donald Trump descend the steps of Air Force One for their two-day visit
Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trump are also on the trip; they spoke with Prime Minister Modi at the airport
President Trump gives his daughter Ivanka a kiss
A woman explains about a charkha, or spinning wheel, to President Donald Trump and First Lady Melania Trump as India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi looks on
Trump tried his hand at spinning during his visit to Gandhi’s home
The area where President Trump and Prime Minister Narendra Modi will speak in the stadium
The stadium holds 110,000 and will be the largest cricket stadium in the world
Indian people arriving at stadium
Trump sent a tweet in Hindi saying he was on his way
A few protesters were on hand as Indian activists shout slogans against President Donald Trump during his India visit
Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner, who serve as White House advisers, were also on the trip and watched the arrival festivities from the sidelines.
And the president showed his enthusiasm for the state visit, sending a tweet from Air Force One in Hindi while he was in route that read: ‘We are ready to come to India, we are on our way, we will be meeting everyone in a few hours.’
Modi and the Trumps first stopped at the home of Mahatma Gandhi, where the president tried his hand at a loom – the same type used by the revered Indian leader.
The Trumps took a tour of the small complex made of a series of small houses. Modi explained to them how to use a charkha, a traditional spinning wheel used by Gandhi.
While the Trumps made their way through the city, thousands filled Motera Stadium – which will be the world’s largest cricket stadium after Trump formally opens it Monday – to greet the president.
The massive rally was dubbed ‘Namaste Trump,’ which translates into ‘Greetings Trump.’
The president loves a big show and has bragged this could be the biggest event India has ever seen with millions in attendance. The stadium, which is still under construction, holds 110,000 although many more Indians are expected to line the 14-mile route Trump will traverse from the airport to the rally site.
‘I hear it’s going to be a big event. Some people say the biggest event they’ve ever had in India. that’s what the prime minister told me – this’ll be the biggest event they’ve ever had. So it’s going to be very exciting,’ he told reporters at the White House Sunday as he prepared to leave for India.
President Donald Trump and first lady Melania Trump attend a welcoming ceremony with Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi at the airport
A cow walks past a banner welcoming President Trump to India
Air Force One arrived in Modi’s home state of Ahmedabad
Native dancers were on hand to greet the president
President Donald Trump and first lady Melania Trump depart the White House for a two-day trip to India
Rapid Action Force (RAF) personnel stand guard at the cricket stadium ahead of Trump’s visit
Billboards welcoming the Trumps have been hoisted around the towns of India they will be visiting
A monkey sits on a billboard featuring Prime Minister Narendra Modi and President Donald Trump
A road is fumigated in Ahmedabad ahead of Trump’s visit
And the place will be spick and span for the president.
Workers cleaned the roads and erected billboards welcoming the first couple. And a four-foot wall has been built to hide the nation’s infamous slums, which house more than 2,000 people, from the Trumps’ view.
Modi loyalists and police will line the road side in Ahmedabad – where the Trumps land Monday – to greet the first couple in the kind of pomp and circumstance the president adores – providing a grand lead-up to the world’s largest largest cricket stadium where Trump will hold the biggest rally of his presidential career.
Trump’s campaign rallies average between 10,000 and 20,000 depending on the venue size.
Trump said last week 7 million people in total would be out to welcome him, which would include the 14-mile route from the Ahmedabad airport to Motera Stadium.
‘He told me we’ll have seven million people between the airport and the event,’ Trump said last Tuesday.
Two days later, he raised crowd estimates.
‘I hear they’re going to have 10 million people,’ he said at a campaign rally. ‘They say anywhere from six to 10 million people are going to be showing up along the route to one of the largest stadiums in the world.’
It’s unclear how many will actually appear to cheer the president on his route but it is unlikely to be 10 million and may not hit six digits.
Ahmedabad has a population of eight million.
Modi’s government is dropping more than $14 million, according to the Associated Press, to woo President Trump as the two countries are embroiled in a trade war that shows no signs of abating.
That includes four-foot brick wall that has been quickly erected close to the stadium with some saying it is being built to block the view of a slum area inhabited by more than 2,000 people.
It will shield the President as he arrives at the event.
The stadium, which was built for $100 million, is a perfectly round venue that promises unobstructed views from every angle. It seats 110,000.
When Modi visited the United States last year, he and President Trump attended a ‘Howdy Modi’ rally in Houston that drew a crowd of 50,000 Indian Americans. Trump compared Modi to Elvis Presley at that event.
Story 2: Radical Extremist Democratic Socialist (REDS) Bernie Sanders Wins in Nevada with 46.6% of Vote On Way To Losing To President Trump in November 2020 —
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Bernie celebrates huge Nevada caucuses win with ‘future first lady’ Jane: Donald Trump congratulates ‘Crazy’ Sanders for landslide victory and mocks ‘weak’ Democratic opponents struggling to catch the front-runner
Bernie Sanders has won the Nevada caucuses with 46.64% of the vote – a resounding victory
President Trump congratulated ‘Crazy Bernie’ for his performance, with Fox News calling the caucuses for Sanders early
Trump also said, ‘Biden & the rest look weak,’ and made fun of Mike Bloomberg’s Nevada debate performance
Early results showed Biden in a distant second place, and he maintained that with 23.78% of the vote
The Nevada Democratic caucuses kicked off at noon Saturday where Sanders was leading in entrance polls
Democratic presidential candidates were campaigning in the state all week and participated in a debate in Las Vegas on Wednesday
Bernie Sanders was declared the winner of the Nevada caucuses Saturday despite only a fraction of the vote in.
Sanders had a formidable lead, taking 46.6 per cent of the delegates with 22 per cent of precincts reporting.
‘I’m delighted to bring you some very good news,’ a jovial Sanders announced to a crowd of supporters at his rally in San Antonio, Texas Saturday evening, alongside his wife Jane.
‘I think all of you know we won the popular vote in Iowa. We won the New Hampshire primary. And, according to three networks and the AP, we have now won the Nevada caucus,’ Sanders said as audience members erupted in chants and cheers.
Sanders then predicted he would go on to ‘sweep’ the primary elections in the rest of the states.
Trump went ahead and congratulated Sanders before most networks had called the race.
‘Looks like Crazy Bernie is doing well in the Great State of Nevada. Biden & the rest look weak, & no way Mini Mike can restart his campaign after the worst debate performance in the history of Presidential Debates,’ Trump said.
‘Congratulations Bernie, & don’t let them take it away from you!’ the president wrote.
In response to the president’s tweet, Sanders told rally-goers not to reveal how much support he had in the country’s most populous red state.
‘Don’t tell anybody, I don’t want to get them nervous, we are going to win the Democratic primary in Texas. And you know, this is also important the president gets very, very upset easily, so don’t tell him we’re going to beat him here in Texas,’ Sanders said.
Bernie Sanders won Nevada, taking 46.6 per cent of the delegates with 22 per cent of precincts reporting. He was pictured with his wife Jane, who he introduced as ‘the future first lady’
Joe Biden, who came in second with 19.25 per cent of the vote, claimed his second place finish was enough to reboot his struggling campaign. In Iowa, Buttigieg beat Sanders in the delegate count by a hair, but placed third in Nevada with 15.38 per cent of the vote
Elizabeth Warren, whose debate performance against newbie Mike Bloomberg dominated the headlines in Nevada all week after Wednesday night’s Democratic debate, took 10.27 per cent of the vote. Amy Klobuchar, who took 4.5 per cent of the vote, headed back to her home state of Minnesota soon after the results were called
Sanders left Nevada before precinct locations had adjourned their caucuses and headed to Texas for two rallies Saturday.
Texas is a state Sanders will likely struggle to gain support in the Democratic primary, since voters are generally more moderate in the Lone Star State.
During his first rally Saturday in border city of El Paso, Texas, Sanders did not bring up his jarring lead.
As Trump tweeted, NBC News said the race was ‘too early to call.’ The network then called the race as Sanders’ rival Joe Biden was speaking in Nevada, claiming his second place finish, with 19.25 per cent of the vote, was enough to reboot his struggling campaign.
‘I know the press is ready to declare people quickly dead,’ Biden told his supporters. ‘We’re alive and we’re coming back and we’re going to win.’
One person loudly yelled that Biden was the ‘comeback kid,’ while Biden boasted he would go on to win South Carolina, where voters will head to the polls in a week.
Sanders is coming off a win in New Hampshire, with Pete Buttigieg coming in a close second in the Granite State. He came third in Nevada, with 15.38 per cent of the vote. In Iowa, Buttigieg beat Sanders in the delegate count by a hair, while the Vermont senator won the popular vote. Biden finished in fourth place in Iowa and fifth place in New Hampshire.
Reporting for Nevada started to filter in the early afternoon Saturday, though stayed at 3 per cent for more than an hour, as Democrats tried to avoid having reporting problems like they did in Iowa thanks to a malfunctioning app. CNN reported that some precinct chairs had trouble calling in and reporting the results.
Despite the major momentum for the Vermont senator in the Silver State, the candidate had already left to campaign in Texas before the Nevada caucus sites adjourned.
Sanders is holding two campaign rallies in the Lone Star State Saturday, where a more moderate Democratic electorate could spell trouble for the democratic socialist. He’ll also hold a Houston rally Sunday. Texas votes on March 3, with 13 other ‘Super Tuesday’ states.
Bernie Sanders declared victory in the Nevada caucuses as he rallied supporters in San Antonio, Texas on Saturday evening
Although only 4 per cent of reporting was in by the time of Sanders’ rally, several networks had called the caucus for Sanders as he took a substantial lead with more than 50 per cent
Sanders claimed at his rally in Texas, and on Twitter, that Donald Trump would get ‘nervous’ if he found out how much support he has in Texas – the most populous red state
Buttigieg and Biden stayed in Las Vegas, while Amy Klobuchar – who came fifth with 4.51% of the vote – headed back to her home state of Minnesota for a rally. Minnesota is one of the 14 so-called ‘Super Tuesday’ states.
Buttigieg used his event to both congratulate Sanders and warn Democratic voters about the victor.
‘I congratulate Senator Sanders on a strong showing today, and we certainly celebrate many of the same ideals,’ Buttigieig admitted, although he rarely likens himself to the Democratic socialist candidate.
‘But before we rush to nominate Senator Sanders, in our one shot to take on this president, let’s take a sober look at the consequences – for our party, for our values, and for those with the most at stake,’ he urged.
The former mayor of South Bend, Indiana also reminded the 300 or so audience members that he won against Sanders in Iowa.
‘Ours is the only campaign that has beaten Senator Sanders anywhere in the country,’ he said to a cheering crowd gathered at a the Spring Preservation nature area just five miles from the Vegas strip.
Mike Bloomberg, the billionaire 2020 hopeful who decided to skip the four opening states, had his campaign manager send out a statement also warning of what Sanders win could mean.
‘The Nevada results reinforce the reality that this fragmented field is putting Bernie Sanders on pace to amass an insurmountable delegate lead,’ Bloomberg’s campaign manager Kevin Sheekey said. ‘We are going to need Independents AND Republicans to defeat Trump – attacking your own party is no way to get started. As Mike says, if we choose a candidate who appeals to a small base – like Senator Sanders – it will be a fatal error.’
Bernie Sanders easily won Saturday’s Nevada caucuses, with networks reporting the double-digit win with only a small percentage of precincts reporting
Sanders, however, left Nevada before caucus sites adjourned Saturday for two rallies in Texas, a state where he struggles among more moderate Democratic voters
President Trump sent a back-handed congratulatory tweet to Bernie Sanders before most networks had called the race for the Vermont senator. Trump said Biden and the other Democratic hopefuls looked ‘weak’
The caucuses kicked off at noon on Saturday, though 75,000 Nevada Democrats had participated in early voting.
At the Bellagio Hotel on the iconic Las Vegas strip, 123 people participated in the caucuses, with the room breaking out into chants for Sanders and Biden – as the vast majority only supported those two candidates.
The site consisted of residents from a 2.5 mile radius as well as shift workers from the hotel who wanted to participate in the middle of the work day.
There was a small showing for Elizabeth Warren – who came fourth, with 10.27% – as well, whose debate performance against newbie Bloomberg dominated the headlines in Nevada all week after Wednesday night’s Democratic debate.
At the Bellagio, for candidates to be ‘viable’ at least 19 caucus participants had to back them.
Only Sanders and Biden qualified during the first counting, while seven people came out for Warren.
s to address supporters. At his event, Buttigieg congratulated Sanders though warned the party against nominating the democratic socialist
Bernie Sanders, alongside his wife Jane Sanders, held a rally in El Paso, Texas Saturday before the full results of the Nevada caucuses were in
Bernie Sanders supporters in El Paso, Texas cheer on the Nevada caucus result. Sanders moved ahead to Texas, which holds its Democratic primary on March 3, along with 13 other ‘Super Tuesday’ states
Bernie Sanders supporters hold up a bumper sticker at the Bellagio, one of the large caucus sites on the iconic Las Vegas strip
Bernie Sanders’ supporters at the Bellagio hotel cheered for their candidate, who won that particular caucus site
Bellagio hotel workers check in because caucusing Saturday in Las Vegas, Nevada for Democratic presidential hopefuls
Bernie Sanders’ supporters raise their hands at the Liberty High School in Henderson, Nevada Saturday afternoon
Sen. Bernie Sanders held a final Get Out the Caucus Rally at the Springs Preserve Ampitheater in Las Vegas Friday night
Vice President Joe Biden greets Democratic caucus-goers Saturday at Cheyenne High School in North Las Vegas
Joe Biden looked poised to have a stronger showing in Nevada than he did in Iowa and New Hamsphire, coming in a disappionting fourth and fifth place
Elizabeth Warren only had a handful of supporters caucus for her at the Bellagio Hotel caucus site
2020 hopeful Tom Steyer talks with caucus-goers Saturday at t Cheyenne High School in North Las Vegas
Pete Buttigieg showed up to caucuses being held at Sierra Vista High School on Saturday. Buttigieg and Biden both stuck around in Nevada, while the other top candidates left
A supporter of Pete Buttigieg holds up a ‘caucus for Pete’ sign as the presidential candidate greets voters at Sierra Vista High School in Las Vegas, Nevada
us totals were reported on these paper worksheets, one for each precinct. Caucus volunteers had to factor in early vote totals along with totals on-site
The vote totals from caucus sites are being entered into an iPad. The Nevada Democrats are hoping to avoid what happened in Iowa, in which an app malfunctioned and a full counting of the vote wasn’t available for days
e early realignment was announced over the microphone, Sanders’ supporters cheered enthusiastically while Biden supporters booed.
The site only required one realignment, with Sanders ultimately earning 76 total ballots cast for him after one person moved to the senator’s camp and Biden earned support from 45 caucus-goers – earning 6 more after the realignment.
The president of the caucus-site announced that they would send 32 delegates to the county convention for Sanders and 19 for Biden.
Only two people remained uncommitted in the caucuses at Bellagio.
The Bellagio is an at-large caucus site, encompassing several hotel and casino workers, and there were tables set up outside of the ballroom where attendees could register to vote.
Ahead of the caucuses, the tables were surrounded by individuals filling out the paperwork to be able to participate.
A rideshare driver on the way to the site told DailyMail.com that he wanted to cast a ballot, but after finding out it was a bigger ordeal than pressing a button, decided he had to work and earn money instead.
At Rancho High School in north Las Vegas two precincts simultaneously caucused in a gymnasium. At both precincts, Sanders was the only viable candidate – and early voters far outnumbered those who showed up to the school.
In one precinct, just 20 people caucused in person, while another 61 had cast early votes. Sanders picked up 46 of those early votes, while another 13 caucused for him Saturday in person, during the precinct’s first alignment.
Happening directly beside that precinct was another that overwhelmingly felt the Bern.
Of the 16 Democrats who came to caucus in person, 12 were there to support the Vermont senator. Sanders was supplemented by an additional 20 early votes.
He won all 13 delegates from that precinct, while earning 24 from the adjacent precinct. No other candidate won any.
However, there were 11 precincts caucusing at Rancho High School overall, with Biden and Steyer also winning some delegates.
Nevada began caucusing in primary contests in 1981, but the state did not earn early primary status until 2008, when the Democratic National Committee made Nevada the second-in-the-nation caucuses following Iowa’s caucuses and New Hampshire’s primary election.
The final two Nevada polls that dropped Friday had shown Sanders with a comfortable lead. And he was leading in entrance polls Saturday as well.
Mike Bloomberg made his debate debut in Nevada Wednesday night, but then headed to Utah – a Super Tuesday state. The billionaire has staked his chances on competing in the 14 states that vote on March 3, instead of competing in the first four, which includes Nevada
Democratic National Committee Chairman Tom Perez told DailyMail.com earlier in the week that he couldn’t predict when the results of the Nevada caucus would come out
Democrats are hoping that Nevada’s caucuses go off without a hitch after an app glitch led to chaos in Iowa at the beginning of the month, with Sanders’ campaign still challenging the count that saw Buttigieg win by a tiny fraction.
Earlier in the week, Democratic National Committee chairman Tom Perez told DailyMail.com he couldn’t predict when results would be up for Nevada.
Perez couldn’t guarantee whether the crop of 2020 presidential candidates competing in the Democratic primary would see results by the end of Saturday.
‘I don’t know how many people are going to show up, so that’s an impossible question to answer,’ Perez said. ‘I know we’re going to try to get results as soon as possible. But we want to get results that are accurate and we want to make sure we count every vote.’
While the Nevada Democratic Party is holding its official nominating contest on Saturday, the state experienced days earlier a massive number of participants in its first-ever early voting in Nevada.
Nearly 75,000 people cast early voting ballots, the party announced Friday, which is only 10,000 voters shy of the entire caucus count from 2016, which stood around 84,000.
In the 2016 primaries, around 1.3 million of the 3 million residents in Nevada voted.
The population of the western state is mostly contained to Las Vegas, Henderson and Reno, its three largest cities.
The state ended up voting to nominate Hillary Clinton and in the primaries voted for Clinton by a margin of 2.4 per cent more than Donald Trump.
WHO ARE THE 8 DEMOCRATS RUNNING FOR PRESIDENT IN 2020?
urrent role. A University of Delaware and Syracuse Law graduate, he was first elected to Newcastle City Council in 1969, then won upset election to Senate in 1972, aged 29. Was talked out of quitting before being sworn in when his wife and daughter died in a car crash and served total of six terms. Chaired Judiciary Committee’s notorious Clarence Thomas confirmation hearings. Ran for president in 1988, pulled out after plagiarism scandal, ran again in 2008, withdrew after placing fifth in the Iowa Caucuses. Tapped by Obama as his running mate and served two terms as vice president. Contemplated third run in 2016 but decided against it after his son died of brain cancer.
Family: Eldest of four siblings born to Joe Biden Sr. and Catherine Finnegan. First wife Neilia Hunter and their one-year-old daughter Naomi died in car crash which their two sons, Joseph ‘Beau’ and Robert Hunter survived. Married Jill Jacobs in 1976, with whom he has daughter Ashley. Beau died of brain cancer in 2015. Hunter’s marriage to Kathleen Buhle, with whom he has three children, ended in 2016 when it emerged Hunter was in a relationship with Beau’s widow Hallie, mother of their two children. Hunter admitted cocaine use; his estranged wife accused him of blowing their savings on drugs and prostitutes
Religion: Catholic
Views on key issues: Ultra-moderate who will emphasize bipartisan record. Will come under fire over record, having voted: to stop desegregation bussing in 1975; to overturn Roe v Wade in 1981; for now controversial 1994 Violent Crime Act; for 2003 Iraq War; and for banking deregulation. Says he is ‘most progressive’ Democrat. New positions include free college, tax reform, $15 minimum wage. No public position yet on Green New Deal and healthcare. Pro-gun control. Has already apologized to women who say he touched them inappropriately
Would make history as: Oldest person elected president
Slogan: Our Best Days Still Lie Ahead
MIKE BLOOMBERG
Age on Inauguration Day: 78
Entered race: November 24, 2019
Career: Currently multi-billionaire CEO of Bloomberg PL, the financial information firm he founded in 1981 and which remains a private company. Educated at Johns Hopkins and Harvard, he became a Wall Street trader at investment bank Salomon Brothers and was laid off in 1981, walking away with $10m in stock which he used to set up his own financial information firm, now one of the world’s largest. Three times mayor of New York 2002 to 2013, running first as Republican then as independent; had to get term limits suspended for final term. Once flirted with running for mayor of London where he has a home; holds an honorary knighthood from Queen Elizabeth. Has spent large amounts on philanthropy in line with his political views as well as on political campaigns
Family: Born in Brookline, MA, to first-generation Jewish immigrant parents whose own parents had fled Russia. Divorced wife of 18 years, Susan Brown-Meyer, in 1993; former couple have daughters Emma, who has a son with her former boyfriend, and Georgina, who has daughter Zelda with her husband Chris Fissora. The child has a portmanteau surname, Frissberg. Partner since 2000 is Diana Taylor, former New York state banking commissioner, 13 years his junior
Religion: Jewish
Views on key issues: Self-professed fiscal conservative, although painted as a Democratic moderate by other conservative groups. Opposed to Medicare for all. Social progressive who backed gay marriage early, but has flip-flopped on marijuana legalization, most recently opposing it.. Wants firm action on climate change. Fiercely in favor of gun control. As New York mayor banned smoking in public places and tried to outlaw large sugary drinks. Backs increased immigration. Apologized for his stop-and-frisk policing strategy as mayor
Would make history as: Oldest person elected president; first Jewish president; richest president ever; first New York mayor to become president
Slogan: Fighting For Our Future
PETE BUTTIGIEG
Age on Inauguration Day: 39
Entered race: Announced formation of exploratory committee January 23, 2019. Formally entered race April 14, 2019
Career: Currently mayor of Sound Bend, Indiana. Harvard grad and Rhodes scholar who got a second degree from Oxford before working as a McKinsey management consultant and being commissioned as a Navy Reserve intelligence officer. Elected South Bend mayor in 2011 and served in combat in 2013, won re-election in 2015
Family: Came out as gay during second mayoral run and married husband Chasten Glezman, a middle school teacher in 2018. Parents were University of Notre Dame academics; his father was Maltese-American. Surname is pronounced BOOT-edge-edge
Religion: Raised as a Catholic, now Episcopalian
Views on key issues: Has said Democratic party needs a ‘fresh start’; wrote an essay in praise of Bernie Sanders aged 17; backed paid parental leave for city employees; other policies unknown
Would make history as: First openly gay and youngest-ever president. First veteran of post-World War II conflict
Slogan: A Fresh Start For America
TULSI GABBARD
Age on Inauguration Day: 39
Entered race: Still to formally file any papers but said she would run on January 11 2019
Career: Currently Hawaii congresswoman. Born on American Samoa, a territory. Raised largely in Hawaii, she co-founded an environmental non-profit with her father as a teenager and was elected to the State Legislature aged 21, its youngest member in history. Enlisted in the National Guard and served two tours, one in Iraq 2004-2006, then as an officer in Kuwait in 2009. Ran for Honolulu City Council in 2011, and House of Representatives in 2012
Family: Married to her second husband, Abraham Williams, a cinematographer since 2015. First marriage to childhood sweetheart Eduardo Tamayo in 2002 ended in 2006. Father Mike Gabbard is a Democratic Hawaii state senator, mother Carol Porter runs a non-profit.
Religion: Hindu
Views on key issues: Has apologized for anti-abortion and anti-gay marriage views; wants marijuana federally legalized; opposed to most U.S. foreign interventions; backs $15 minimum wage and universal health care; was the second elected Democrat to meet Trump after his 2016 victory
Would make history as: First female, Hindu and Samoan-American president; youngest president ever
Slogan: Lead with Love
AMY KLOBUCHAR
Age on Inauguration Day: 60
Entered race: Announced candidacy February 10, 2019 at snow-drenched rally in her native Minneapolis
Career: Currently Minnesota senator. Yale and University of Chicago law graduate who became a corporate lawyer. First ran unsuccessfully for office in 1994 as Hennepin, MI, county attorney, and won same race in 1998, then in 2002, without opposition. Ran for Senate in 2006 and won 58-38; re-elected in 2012 and 2018
Family: Married to John Bessler, law professor at University of Baltimore and expert on capital punishment. Daughter Abigail Bessler, 23, works fora Democratic member of New York City council. Father Jim, 90, was a veteran newspaper columnist who has written a memoir of how his alcoholism hurt his family; mom Rose is a retired grade school teacher
Religion: Congregationalist (United Church of Christ)
Views on key issues: Seen as a mainstream liberal: says she wants ‘universal health care’ but has not spelled out how; pro-gun control; pro-choice; backs $15 minimum wage; no public statements on federal marijuana legalization; has backed pro-Israel law banning the ‘boycott, divestment and sanctions’ movement; spoke out against abolishing ICE
Would make history as: First female president
Slogan: Let’s Get To Work
BERNIE SANDERS
Age on Inauguration Day: 79
Entered race: Sources said on January 25, 2019, that he would form exploratory committee. Officially announced February 19
Career: Currently Vermont senator. Student civil rights and anti-Vietnam activist who moved to Vermont and worked as a carpenter and radical film-maker. Serial failed political candidate in the 1970s, he ran as a socialist for mayor of Burlington in 1980 and served two terms ending in 1989, and win a seat in Congress as an independent in 1990. Ran for Senate in 2006 elections as an independent with Democratic endorsement and won third term in 2018. Challenged Hillary Clinton for the Democratic nomination in 2016 but lost. Campaign has since been hit by allegations of sexual harassment – for which he has apologized – and criticized for its ‘Bernie bro’ culture
Family: Born to a Jewish immigrant father and the daughter of Jewish immigrant parents in Brooklyn, New York. First marriage to college sweetheart Deborah Shiling Messing in 1964 ended in divorce in 1966; had son Levi in 1969 with then girlfriend Susan Cambell Mott. Married Jone O’Meara in 1988 and considers her three children, all adults, his own. The couple have seven grandchildren. His older brother Larry is a former Green Party councilor in Oxfordshire, England.
Religion: Secular Jewish
Views on key issues: Openly socialist and standard bearer for the Democratic party’s left-turn. Wants federal $15 minimum wage; banks broken up; union membership encouraged; free college tuition; universal health care; re-distributive taxation; he opposed Iraq War and also U.S. leading the fight against ISIS and wants troops largely out of Afghanistan and the Middle East
Would make history as: Oldest person elected president; first Jewish president
Slogan: Not me. Us.
TOM STEYER
Age on Inauguration Day 2021: 63
Entered race: July 9, 2019
Career: Currently retired. New York-born to wealthy family, he was educated at elite Phillips Exeter Academy, and Yale, then Stanford Business School. Morgan Stanley and Goldman Sachs banker who founded his own hedge fund in 1986 and made himself a billionaire; investments included subprime lenders, private prisons and coal mines. Stepped down in 2012 to focus on advocating for alternative energy. Longtime Democratic activist and donor who started campaign to impeach Trump in October 2017. Net worth of $1.6 billion has made him one of the Democrats’ biggest single donors
Family: Married Kathryn Taylor in 1986; they have four adult children who have been told they will not inherit the bulk of his fortune. Announced last November he and his wife would live apart. Father Roy was a Nuremberg trials prosecutor
Religion: Episcopalian
Views on key issues: On the left of the field despite being a hedge fund tycoon. Backs single-payer health care, minimum wage rises and free public college. Previously spoke in favor of Bernie Sanders’ agenda. Aggressive backer of climate change action, including ditching fossil fuels
Would make history as: Richest Democratic president ever
Slogan: Actions Speak Louder Than Words
ELIZABETH WARREN
Age on Inauguration Day: 71
Entered race: Set up exploratory committee December 31, 2018
Career: Currently Massachusetts senator. Law lecturer and academic who became an expert on bankruptcy law and tenured Harvard professor. Ran for Senate and won in 2012, defeating sitting Republican Scott Brown, held it in 2018 60% to 36%. Was short-listed to be Hillary’s running mate and campaigned hard for her in 2016
Family: Twice-married mother of two and grandmother of three. First husband and father of her children was her high-school sweetheart. Second husband Bruce Mann is Harvard law professor. Daughter Amelia Tyagi and son Alex Warren have both been involved in her campaigns. Has controversially claimed Native American roots; DNA test suggested she is as little as 1,064th Native American
Religion: Raised Methodist, now described as Christian with no fixed church
Views on key issues: Was a registered Republican who voted for the party but registered as a Democrat in 1996. Pro: higher taxes on rich; banking regulation; Dream Act path to citizenship for ‘dreamers’; abortion and gay rights; campaign finance restrictions; and expansion of public provision of healthcare – although still to spell out exactly how that would happen. Against: U.S. presence in Afghanistan and Syria; liberalization of gambling
Would make history as: First female president
Slogan: Warren Has A Plan For That
AND THE 21 WHO HAVE WITHDRAWN
MICHAEL BENNET, Colorado senator
Entered race: May 2, 2019
Quit: February 12, 2019, evening of New Hampshire primary
CORY BOOKER, New Jersey Senator
Entered race: February 1, 2019
Quit: January 13, 2020
STEVE BULLOCK, Montana governor
Entered race: May 14, 2019
Quit: December 2, 2019
JULIÁN CASTRO, former Housing Secretary
Entered race: January 18, 2019
Quit: January 2, 2020
KIRSTEN GILLIBRAND, New York senator
Entered race: January 16, 2019
Quit: August 28, 2019
BILL DE BLASIO, New York City mayor
Entered race: May 16, 2019
Quit: September 20, 2020
JOHN DELANEY, former Maryland Congressman
Entered race: July 8, 2017
Quit: January 31, 2019
MIKE GRAVEL, Former Alaska governor
Entered race: April 2,2019
Quit: August 2, 2019
KAMALA HARRIS,California senator
Entered race: January 21, 2019
Quit: December 3, 2019
JOHN HICKENLOOPER, Former Colorado governor
Entered race: March 4, 2019
Quit: August 15, 2019
JAY INSLEE, Washington governor
Entered race: March 1, 2019
Quit: August 21, 2019
WAYNE MESSAM, mayor of Miramar, Florida
Entered race: March 28, 2019
Quit: November 20, 2019
SETH MOULTON, Massachusetts congressman
Entered race: April 22,2019
Quit: August 23, 2019
RICHARD OJEDA, former West Virginia state senator
Entered race: November 12, 2018
Quit: January 25, 2019
BETO O’ROURKE, former Texas congressman
Entered race: March 14, 2019
Quit: November 1, 2019
DEVAL PATRICK, former Massachusetts governor
Entered race: November 13, 2019
Quit: February 13, 2019, morning after New Hampshire primary
TIM RYAN, Ohio congressman
Entered race: April 4, 2019
Quit: October 24, 2019
JOE SESTAK, former Pennsylvania congressman
Entered race: June 23, 2019
Quit: December 1, 2019
ERIC SWALWELL, California congressman
Entered race: April 8, 2019
Quit: July 8, 2019
MARIANNE WILLIAMSON, author
Entered race: November 15, 2018
Quit: January 10, 2020
ANDREW YANG, entrepreneur
Entered race: November 6, 2018
Quit: February 12, 2019, evening of New Hampshire primary
Delegates Needed to Win the 2020 Democratic Nomination
Summary: The math behind how the Democratic National Committee calculates the number of delegates a candidate needs to win.
First Ballot
A candidate will need 1,991 of the 3,979 pledged delegates to win the Democratic nomination on the first ballot. Per the Democratic National Committee, a candidate needs a majority of those eligible to vote on the ballot. Most importantly for the calculation, the candidate needs “a whole unit of delegate above half.”
Half of 3,979 is 1,989.5. As there are no delegates in this round with a half vote, a whole unit of delegate is one. Therefore, the requirement is 1,990.5 (1,989.5 + 1) delegates, which is rounded to 1,991.
Additional Ballots
If no candidate wins on the first ballot, all delegates become unpledged. There are 4,750 delegate votes on the second – and any subsequent – ballot. This total is comprised of the 3,979 formerly-pledged delegates from the first ballot as well as 767 automatic delegates with a full vote and 8 automatic delegates with a half vote.1 This means there are 775 automatic delegates with a total of 771 votes, with 4,750 equal to 3,979 + 771.
Since there are delegates with a half vote, a half vote is considered a whole unit of delegate for any ballot after the first round. Half of 4,750 is 2,375. Therefore, the requirement is 2,375.5 delegates to win the nomination when all delegates are voting.
Note that since automatic delegates are specific people or positions, the number can vary slightly – up or down – over time. For example, all Democratic members of the U.S. House are automatic delegates. If there was to be a new vacancy that remained unfilled at the time of the convention, there would be one less delegate in this category.
A Fine Point
If a candidate earns pledged delegates greater than a majority of all delegate votes (i.e., 2,375.5 or greater) during the primary and caucus contests, that person’s nomination will be a foregone conclusion. In this scenario, all delegates will be able to vote on the first ballot. This outcome seems unlikely given the size of the field and the party’s proportional allocation of delegates in each contest.
Comparing the novel coronavirus to past outbreaks SARS & MERS
Dow plunges 1,000 points on coronavirus fears, 3.5% drop is worst in two years
Stocks fell sharply on Monday as the number of coronavirus cases outside China surged, stoking fears of a prolonged global economic slowdown from the virus spreading.
The Dow Jones Industrial Average closed 1,031.61 points lower, or 3.56%, at 27,960.80. The S&P 500 slid 3.35% to 3,225.89 while the Nasdaq Composite closed 3.71% lower at 9,221.28. It was the Dow’s biggest point and percentage-point drop since February 2018. The Dow also gave up its gain for 2020 and is now down 2% for the year. The S&P 500 also had its worst day in two years and wiped out its year-to-date gain as well.
“The second-largest economy in the world is completely shut down. People aren’t totally pricing that in,” said Larry Benedict, CEO of The Opportunistic Trader, adding a 10% to 15% correction in stocks may be starting. He also said some parts of the market, particularly large-cap tech stocks, appear to be over-owned. “It seems like there’s much more to come.”
close dialog
Warren Buffett answers your questions
Coronavirus-impacted names led the way lower. Airline stocks Delta and American were both down more than 6% while United closed 5.4% lower. Shares of casino operators Las Vegas Sands and Wynn Resorts dropped at least 5.2% each. MGM Resorts slid 5.4%.
Chipmakers, which are highly leveraged to the global economy, were also down broadly. Nvidia shares were down 7.1% while Dow-component Intel ended the day down 4%. AMD dipped 7.8%. The VanEck Vectors Semiconductor ETF (SMH) was down by 4.5%.
“The market had been sanguine about the spread of the coronavirus,” said Quincy Krosby, chief market strategist at Prudential Financial. “That sanguine stance is being tested today.”
“Companies are assessing their suppliers and their supply chains and seeing whether or not their revenue is going to slow,” Krosby said. “Because of that, this has become a sell-first, ask-questions later type of market.”
Apple and its suppliers took a hit as well. Shares of the iPhone maker were down by 4.8%. Skyworks Solutions and Qorvo dropped more than 1.8% each.
Overseas markets fell sharply. The European Stoxx 600 dropped more than 3% while Korea’s Kospi index slid 3.9%.In Hong Kong, the Hang Seng index fell 1.8%.
Legendary investor Warren Buffett said the coronavirus spread has softened up the U.S. economy, but noted growth is still healthy. “Business is down but it’s down from a very good level,” Buffett told CNBC’s Becky Quick on “Squawk Box.” “You look at car holdings —railcar holdings, moving goods around. And there again, that was affected by the tariffs too because people front-ended purchases, all kinds of things.” Buffett added he still recommends buying stocks for the long term.
The coronavirus outbreak that was first reported in China, but has spread rapidly in other countries especially South Korea and Italy, which reported a spike in the number of confirmed cases in recent days.
South Korea raised its coronavirus alert to the “highest level” over the weekend, with the latest spike in numbers bringing the total infected to more than 800 — making it the country with the most cases outside mainland China.
Meanwhile, outside of Asia, Italy has been the worst affected country so far, with more than 130 reported cases and three deaths.
“There remains a large degree of uncertainty surrounding the virus, and no one knows how this will ultimately play out,” said Keith Lerner, chief market strategist at Truist/SunTrust Advisory. “With stock prices and valuations still near cycle highs, the risk of a worsening virus outbreak has not been priced into the market to a great extent.”
The major averages hit record highs all hit record highs earlier this month despite lingering concerns over the coronavirus.
In the earlier days after the outbreak, many economists had predicted a V-shaped recovery, which describes downturns that see a steep fall before recovering sharply. However, traders are loading up on traditional safe havens such as U.S. Treasurys and gold.
The benchmark 10-year note yield fell to 1.369% on Monday, putting the key rate close to it all-time low closing around 1.36%. Yields move inversely to prices. Gold futures jumped 1.7% to around $1,676.60 per ounce and hit its highest level since January 2013.
The Cboe Volatility Index (VIX) — considered to be the best fear gauge on Wall Street — jumped more than 7 points, or about 46%, to 25.04.
“Simply put, the markets were not setup for where we are today,” said Gregory Faranello, head of U.S. rates trading at AmeriVet Securities, in a note. It’s an “extremely dynamic environment. And one which continues to warrant respect and caution.”
Harrvey Weinstein has been found guilty of rape in the third degree and criminal sexual acts in the first degree, bringing his seven-week New York trial to a conviction in the central criminal case of the #MeToo movement.Weinstein was remanded to custody by New York Supreme Court Judge James Burke pending sentencing on Wednesday, March 11. His defense attorney Donna Rotunno made an unsuccessful last-ditch plea to keep Weinstein free on bail due, in part, to his ill health and pain as a result of an auto accident last summer, but the judge did not grant the request. Weinstein was remanded to a medical unit, likely on Rikers Island.“But I’m innocent,” Weinstein whispered several times after the verdicts were announced, one of his attorneys later told reporters. The comment from the now-convicted rapist was inaudible to spectators in the courtroom.
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Harvey Weinstein Appeal Already Heading To New York Court
Four New York court marshals immediately surrounded Weinstein, seated at the defense table. As many as nine other officers were stationed alongside walls and doors in the Lower Manhattan courtroom as the seemingly stunned former producer was led out of the courtroom in handcuffs.
Weinstein remained immobile throughout the verdict delivery, staring forward toward the judge’s bench.
In a post-verdict press conference, Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus Vance Jr. called Weinstein “a vicious, serial sexual predator who used his power to threaten, rape, assault, trick, humiliate and silence his victims.” He praised the women who testified as “brave” and “heroic,” saying the accusers, including the trial’s primary complainants Miriam “Mimi” Haley and Jessica Mann, have “changed the course of history.”
“This is the new landscape for sexual assault survivors in America, I believe, and this is a new day, Vance said at a news conference following the verdict announcement. “It’s a new day because Harvey Weinstein has finally been held accountable for crimes he committed. The women who came forward courageously and at great risk made that happen. Weinstein is He’s been found guilty of the first degree and will face on that count a state prison sentence of no less than five years and up to 25 years.”
conviction stems from allegations by former Project Runway production assistant Haley that Weinstein forcibly performed oral sex on her at his Soho apartment in 2006. The guilty verdict could see the Miramax co-creator face up to 25 years in prison, with a minimum of four years.
The third-degree rape count, based on a 2013 rape allegation by Weinstein’s former hairstylist and aspiring actress Mann, could bring up to four years in prison, though probation on that count is possible. A third-degree rape conviction means the jury found Weinstein guilty of sexual intercourse without consent. A first-degree conviction required the use of physical force or the threat of death or physical injury.
Mann, 34, claimed Weinstein raped her on March 18, 2013 at the DoubleTree Hotel in Midtown Manhattan. Her case, like that of Haley’s, presented crucial challenges to the prosecution due to the women’s continued and seemingly affectionate contact with Weinstein following their encounter. Those challenges seem to have been me by the prosecutors, who repeatedly referenced expert testimony indicating that rape victims often maintain contact with their abusers.
Mann provided one of the lengthy trial’s most emotional and dramatic moments when she broke into sobs and left the witness stand during what she described to the judge as a panic attack. Testimony was halted for the day, and she returned to the stand the following morning carrying a squeezable stress ball.
With the 25 year maximum for the criminal sexual act conviction, the verdict could see the 67-year-old Weinstein spend the rest of his life in prison. He also faces a sexual misconduct trial in Los Angeles involving two women, one of whom – Lauren Marie Young – testified in New York to bolster the Haley and Mann cases.
The New York jury found Weinstein not guilty on two counts of predatory sexual assault, apparently dismissing or deadlocking on a rape allegation made by actress Annabella Sciorra. In order to convict on the predatory counts, the jury had to find that Weinstein was guilty in the cases of Mann and/or Haley, plus Sciorra.
If the jury had unanimously agreed on either count of the predatory charges, Weinstein could have been sentenced to life in prison.
Asked by Deadline how he read the jury’s verdicts in the charges involving Sciorra, Weinstein attorney Aidala said jurors did not find Sciorra’s allegations “credible beyond a reasonable doubt.”
The criminal sexual assault (against Haley) carries a possible prison sentence of five to 25 years; the third degree rape conviction (in the Mann case) carries a sentence from probation to four years in prison.
Haley, now 42, was a Project Runway production assistant in 2006 when, she says, Weinstein forcibly performed oral sex on her in his Soho apartment on a July night in 2006. (Haley’s account of having sex with Weinstein later that month at the TriBeCa Grand Hotel, under duress but not physically forced, did not produce criminal charges.)
Although Sciorra’s rape allegation against Weinstein couldn’t be tried due to exceeding the statute of limitations – she says the incident occurred in her Gramercy Park apartment during the winter of 1993-1994 – New York law allowed her testimony to be used in conjunction with that of Haley and Mann to establish predatory behavior.
Three other women, including Young, testified to their own accounts of sexual misconduct involving Weinstein, as the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office attempted to portray the producer as a longtime abuser who preyed on young woman attempting to gain a foothold in the film industry.
Since deliberations began Feb. 18, jurors repeatedly requested to re-hear testimony and review evidence relating to Sciorra, a possible indication the jury was focusing heavily – and disagreeing – on the predatory sexual abuse charges.
In addition to requesting to re-hear the January 24 testimony of actress Rosie Perez – including her account of a phone call in the early 1990s in which her friend Sciorra spoke of the rape – the jury requested all Sciorra-related emails, including those between Weinstein and his private investigators Black Cube and Guidepost Solutions. The Miramax co-creator hired the companies in 2017 to investigate Sciorra and other women he suspected were co-operating with Ronan Farrow for what turned out to be the journalist’s blockbuster Weinstein exposé in The New Yorker.
Once one of Hollywood’s most powerful producers of Oscar-winning fare and and critically adored indie films, Weinstein’s world was blown apart in October 2017 when exposés in The New Yorker and The New York Times reported that scores of women claimed to have been the victims of Weinstein’s sexual misconduct.
Isn’t it rich?
Are we a pair?
Me here at last on the ground,
You in mid-air,
Where are the clowns?
Isn’t it bliss?
Don’t you approve?
One who keeps tearing around,
One who can’t move,
Where are the clowns?
There ought to be clowns?
Just when I’d stopped opening doors,
Finally knowing the one that I wanted was yours
Making my entrance again with my usual flair
Sure of my lines
No one is there
Don’t you love farce?
My fault, I fear
I thought that you’d want what I want
Sorry, my dear!
But where are the clowns
Send in the clowns
Don’t bother, they’re here
Isn’t it rich?
Isn’t it queer?
Losing my timing this late in my career
But where are the clowns?
There ought to be clowns
Well, maybe next year
And now the end is near
And so I face the final curtain
My friend, I’ll say it clear,
I’ll state my case of which I’m certain.
I’ve lived a life that’s full,
I travelled each and every highway,
And more, much more than this,
I did it My Way.
Regrets, I’ve had a few,
But then again too few to mention
Did what I had to do
And saw it through without exemption
Planned each charted course
Each careful step along the byway
And more, much more than this,
I did it My Way.
Yes there were times, I’m sure you knew
When I bit off more than I could chew
But through it all when there was doubt
I ate it up and spit it out
I faced it all and I stood tall
And did it My Way.
I’ve loved,
I’ve laughed and cried,
I’ve had my fill, my share of losing
And now as tears subside
I find it all so amusing
To think I did all that
And may I say not in a shy way
Oh no, oh no not me
I did it My Way
For what is a man, what has he got?
If not himself, then he has naught.
To say the things he truly feels;
And not the words of one who kneels.
The record shows
I took the blows –
And did it my way!
Why wait to say
At least I did it my way
Lie awake, two faced
But in my heart I understand
I made my move
And it was all about you
Now I feel so far removed
You were the one thing in my way
You were the one thing in my way
You were the one thing in my way
You were the one thing in my way
You were the one thing in my way
You were the one thing in my way
My way, oh way, oh way, oh way
My way, oh way, oh way, oh way
My way, oh way, oh way, oh way
My way, oh way, oh way, oh way
My way
My way
My way
Why wait to say
At least I did it my way
Lie awake, two faced
But in my heart I understand
I made my move
And it was all about you
Now I feel so far removed
You were the one thing in my way
You were the one thing in my way
You were the one thing in my way
You were the one thing in my way
You were the one thing in my way
You were the one thing in my way
My way, oh way, oh way, oh way
My way, oh way, oh way, oh way
My way, oh way, oh way, oh way
My way, oh way, oh way, oh way
My way
You were the one thing in my way
You were the one thing in my way
You were the one thing in my way
You were the one thing in my way
You were the one thing in my way
You were the one thing in my way
My way, oh way, oh way, oh way
My way, oh way, oh way, oh way
My way, oh way, oh way, oh way
My way, oh way, oh way, oh way
My way
My way, oh way, oh way, oh way
My way, oh way, oh way, oh way
My way, oh way, oh way, oh way
My way, oh way, oh way, oh way
Mike Bloomberg is declared the LOSER of the Democratic debate after his disastrous start and relentless attacks – while Warren and Sanders come away the winners
Pundits declared Bloomberg the loser of Wednesday night’s debate in Las Vegas
Senators Warren and Sanders were declared the top two winners of the debate
Warren attacked Bloomberg over the treatment of women at his company
Sanders criticized the former NYC mayor over his past stop and frisk policy
Pete Buttigieg was also declared a winner, while Biden and Klobuchar lost out
Mike Bloomberg has been declared the loser of Democratic debate after Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders relentlessly attacked the former New York mayor over his past ‘racist’ policies and treatment of women.
Six candidates took the stage Wednesday night in Las Vegas to face-off for a 5-to-1 face-off that ended disastrously for Bloomberg.
Pundits chose Bloomberg as the loser after he became the object of scorn, ridicule and contempt within the first five minutes of the debate.
What is becoming an increasingly bitter nomination fight, the Democratic presidential candidates focused their attacks on Bloomberg on the debate stage.
He has spent more than $400 million so far on advertising that in turn has given him strong standing in state and national polls.
Sanders recalled Bloomberg’s support of stop-and-frisk policing targeting minorities while Warren spoke about how Bloomberg had mocked women.
‘I’d like to talk about who we’re running against, a billionaire who calls women fat broads and horse-faced lesbians,’ Warren said.
Pundits chose Bloomberg as the loser of Wednesday night’s debate after he became the object of scorn, ridicule and contempt within the first five minutes
Six candidates took the stage Wednesday night in Las Vegas to face-off for a 5-to-1 face-off that ended disastrously for Bloomberg
‘And no I’m not talking about Donald Trump, I’m talking about Mayor Bloomberg.’
Amy Klobuchar also quipped that, ‘I don’t think you look at Donald Trump and say I think we need someone richer in the White House’.
Former Vice President Joe Biden said Bloomberg condoned racist police practices, and Pete Buttigieg, the former mayor of South Bend, Indiana, said Bloomberg was trying to ‘buy out’ the Democratic Party.
But his biggest struggle came when Warren hammered him over allegations of sexism and mistreatment of women in his company.
Bloomberg attempted to defend his record and deflect the attacks on him by turning them into attacks on President Donald Trump.
And he effectively raised questions about whether Americans would embrace a socialist like Sanders.
CNN’s Chris Cillizza compared Bloomberg’s performance to that of a pro-wrestling match where ‘everyone decided to gang up on a single wrestler in the ring – and that wrestler was totally and completely caught off-guard’
Cillizza also said the ‘first hour of the debate was an absolute and total disaster for the former mayor’ who was also the third most tweeted about candidate Wednesday night
But the glare was harsh, and the attacks landed with force. Even if you are worth $60billion it is hard to win a 5-on-1 fight.
CNN’s Chris Cillizza said the ‘first hour of the debate was an absolute and total disaster for the former mayor’.
‘He looked lost at times – and those were the best times for him! Warren dunked on him repeatedly. Sanders slammed him. Biden bashed him,’ Cillizza wrote.
Cillizza compared Bloomberg’s performance to that of a pro-wrestling match where ‘everyone decided to gang up on a single wrestler in the ring – and that wrestler was totally and completely caught off-guard’.
ELIZABETH WARREN: RETURN OF THE FIGHTER (WINNER)
Warren rose to prominence in the Democratic field with a fighting spirit that defined the early months of her campaign. But her disappointing showings in Iowa and New Hampshire left her campaign struggling.
But on Wednesday, Warren got back in the fight.
She slammed Bloomberg – which was no surprise as she’s been an antagonist of billionaires playing in politics for years.
But Warren also attacked Klobuchar, saying her health care plan was just a ‘Post-it note’.
She accused Buttigieg of being in debt to his rich campaign supporters and having a healthcare plan that was just a ‘PowerPoint’ designed by his consultants.
Warren rose to prominence in the Democratic field with a fighting spirit that defined the early months of her campaign. But her disappointing showings in Iowa and New Hampshire left her campaign struggling. But on Wednesday, Warren got back in the fight
Warren slammed also fellow liberal Sanders, accusing him of letting his supporters trash anyone with a plan. But it was her prosecutorial approach to Bloomberg over his company’s treatment of women that stood out.
She hit the former mayor hard when it came to his refusal to release women from the nondisclosure agreements with his company regarding complaints of a hostile working environment.
Warren was relentless, leaving the former mayor stumbling and fumbling for a response.
explanation.
‘Anybody that does anything wrong in our company, we investigate it and if it’s appropriate, they’re gone that day,’ Bloomberg said.
‘Let me tell you what I do at my company and my foundation and in city government when I was there. In my foundation, the person that runs it is a woman, 70 per cent of the people there are women,’ he added.
She slammed Bloomberg – which was no surprise as she’s been an antagonist of billionaires playing in politics for years. But Warren also attacked Klobuchar, saying her health care plan was just a ‘Post-it note’
‘In my company, lots and lots of women have big responsibilities. They get paid exactly the same as men. In city hall, the top person, my deputy mayor was a woman and 40 per cent of our commissioners were women,’ he said.
Warren then hit him harder.
‘I hope you heard what his defense was. I’ve been nice to some women. That just doesn’t cut it. The mayor has to stand on his record. What we need to know is exactly what’s lurking out there,’ she said.
‘He has gotten some number of women, dozens, who knows, who sign nondisclosure agreements both for sexual harassment and for gender discrimination in the workplace.
Van Jones tweeted about Warren shortly after the debate, saying: ‘Elizabeth Warren needs Bloomberg like a “lion needs an antelope.” He is the human embodiment of everything she’s against. If @ewarren is effective at landing those blows, the air could very well come out of the Bloomberg bubble.’
BERNIE SANDERS: LEADING THE PACK (WINNER)
Sanders has continuously tried to cement himself as the Democratic frontrunner, and he may have just pulled that off, according to some pundits.
‘The ganging-up on Bloomberg was just fine for Sanders, who, in case you forgot, is the clear front-runner for the Democratic nomination,’ Cillizza wrote.
Before Wednesday night, Sanders has been hammering Bloomberg for weeks for trying to buy the election, though at a CNN town hall Tuesday night he wouldn’t guarantee he wouldn’t take Bloomberg’s money, which the billionaire candidate promised to the Democratic nominee, should he not be chosen for the job himself.
‘I don’t think we’re going to need that money,’ Sanders eventually said.
Sanders has sprung to the lead for the nomination in the RealClearPolitics polling average on the race with Biden in second and Bloomberg in third.
Sanders has continuously tried to cement himself as the Democratic frontrunner, and he may have just pulled that off, according to some pundits
Sanders and Bloomberg locked horns on political philosophy during the debate, arguing over who’s a communist and who’s a socialist.
Bloomberg was defending his net worth, pointing out he earned it through ‘hard work’ and that he was giving his money away when Sanders argued the workers helped make that money.
‘Mr Bloomberg, it wasn’t you who made all that money. Maybe your workers played some role in that as well,’ Sanders said.
‘And it is important those workers are able to share the benefits also. When we have so many people who go to work every day and they feel not good about their jobs.
‘They feel like cogs in a machine. I want workers to be able to sit on corporate boards as well so they can have some say over what happens to their lives.’
MAYOR PETE BUTTIGIEG: THE GIFTED DEBATER (WINNER)
Some pundits crowned Buttigieg as one of Wednesday night’s winners.
‘Buttigieg is, without question, the most naturally gifted debater in the Democratic field, meaning he is simply not going to turn in a clunker. He was steady if not spectacular in this debate,’ Cillizza said.
According Cillizza, Buttigieg spent parts of the night taking on Sanders, which is a ‘clear effort to send a signal to voters that he is the most credible alternative to the Vermont senator’.
Buttigieg, who finished in the top two in Iowa and New Hampshire with Sanders, reserved some of his harshest criticism for Sanders.
Some pundits crowned Buttigieg as one of Wednesday night’s winners. Buttigieg, who finished in the top two in Iowa and New Hampshire with Sanders, reserved some of his harshest criticism for Sanders
He warned that Democrats could wake up after more than a dozen states vote on Super Tuesday on March 3 and have only Bloomberg and Sanders left on the ballot.
Buttigieg then quipped that the party may want to nominate ‘someone who is actually a Democrat’.
The crowd inside the Las Vegas casino hadn’t yet finished chuckling and hooting when he continued by saying Sanders ‘wants to burn this party down’ and Bloomberg ‘wants to buy this party out’.
Sanders, a senator from Vermont and avowed democratic socialist, responded by saying that Buttigieg’s campaign has been too reliant on ‘billionaire’ big donors, kicking off another intense exchange.
Their back and forth continued through criticism of Sanders supporters who have frequently been accused of bullying behavior online.
Sanders said he personally had denounced such behavior. This prompted Buttigieg to say he believed the senator but, ‘What it is it about your campaign in particular that seems to be motivating this type of behavior?’
On this night, Buttigieg had the most at stake, with Sanders standing in Nevada polls well ahead of the man who has run even with him in the first two contests.
AMY KLOBUCHAR: WHERE’S THE KLOBENTUM? (LOSER)
The last debate was rocket fuel for Klobuchar. Her strong performance vaulted her to a third-place finish in New Hampshire and onto Nevada.
But it may be hard for lightning to strike twice.
The Minnesota senator was often drowned out in the high-octane bickering Wednesday, or pulled down into the mud.
At one point she pulled from her supply of ready quips, saying of Sanders and Bloomberg as they argued over capitalism that there is ‘a boxing rematch in Vegas on Saturday and these guys should go down there’.
The last debate was rocket fuel for Klobuchar. Her strong performance vaulted her to a third-place finish in New Hampshire and onto Nevada. But it may be hard for lightning to strike twice
The most damaging exchange was between Klobuchar and Buttigieg, who have tangled before.
When asked about her embarrassing gaffe in forgetting the name of Mexico’s president, she had to fend off Buttigieg, who claimed it disproved her argument that her work in Washington has prepared her to be president.
She also alternately scrapped with and aligned with Warren.
‘Are you calling me dumb?’ Klobuchar asked Buttigieg incredulously. Later, she added: ‘I wish everyone was as perfect as you, Pete.’
A little over a week ago in New Hampshire, Klobuchar clearly stood out. This time was much harder as everyone battled for survival.
FORMER VP JOE BIDEN: THE BYSTANDER (LOSER)
Another candidate in need of a big night to reverse perceptions that his campaign was struggling was Biden.
For a good portion of the debate, he receded. He joined in the attacks on Bloomberg, but largely avoided some of the more testy exchanges.
Biden called the stop and frisks ‘abhorrent’ and the former mayor admitted that it ‘got out of control’.
‘When we discovered – I discovered – that we were doing many, many – too many – stop and frisks, we cut 95 per cent of it out,’ Bloomberg asserted.
Another candidate in need of a big night to reverse perceptions that his campaign was struggling was Biden. For a good portion of the debate, he receded. He joined in the attacks on Bloomberg, but largely avoided some of the more testy exchanges
The former mayor said he is and was trying to ‘learn’ how to change policies to help continuing reduce crime in New York City.
Biden hit back at Bloomberg, claiming he couldn’t apologize it away and said it violated every right people posses.
‘Let’s get something straight. The reason that stop and frisk changed is because Barack Obama sent moderators to see what was going on. When we sent them there to say “this practice has to stop,” the mayor thought it was a terrible idea we send them there – a terrible idea,’ Biden said, invoking the name of one of the most famous Democrats.
‘It’s not whether he apologized or not, it’s the policy. The policy was abhorrent, and it was, in fact, a violation of every right people have,’ he said, claiming Bloomberg pushed back against stopping the policies.
‘He figured out it was a bad idea after we sent in monitors and said it must stop. Even then he continued the policy,’ Biden said on stage.
When Warren said that Biden was ‘in the pocket’ of Republican Mitch McConnell, the Senate majority leader, Biden fought back.
He also tried to return to his ‘Middle Class Joe’ biography about his family’s financial struggles.
Biden did not offer voters any new rationale for voting for him.
Story 2: Roger Stone Sentenced To 40 Months in Prison For Lying To Congress in A Political Prosecution — Jury Foreperson Was Biased Trump Hating Democratic Activist — Miscarriage of Justice — Conviction Should Be Vacated — Videos —
Trump: Jury forewoman in Roger Stone case was ‘totally tainted’
Trump speaks in Las Vegas at ceremony for former prisoners, says what happened to Roger Stone was unbelievable.
Gowdy: No one believes Russia prefers Trump over ‘comrade Sanders’
Robert Ray expects it will be months before Roger Stone’s fate is settled
ROGER STONE SENTENCED: Friend of President Trump Gets 3 Years in Prison
Napolitano explains why Roger Stone is ‘absolutely entitled’ to a new trial
‘The Five’ panel gets heated over Roger Stone trial
Roger Stone gets THREE YEARS and four months but will not go straight to prison while he asks for a retrial – as federal judge rejects prosecutors’ demand for nine years but savages Donald Trump for interfering and says Stone ‘covered up for the president’
Roger Stone, 67, arrived at Washington’s federal court with his wife Nydia for sentencing hearing Thursday
Federal judge Amy Berman Jackson said his punishment for lying to Congress, witness tampering and obstruction will be 40 months in prison
But because he is asking for a retrial over claims of bias by the jury foreperson, the sentence will not take effect
Berman Jackson, an Obama appointee, said she had rejected prosecutors’ demand for nine years on her – not because of outside pressure
That was a reference to Trump, who had raged about the initial demand – and for whom a 40 month sentence can be portrayed as a win
Judge issued a stunning rebuke not just of Stone but of Donald Trump himself for trying to interfere in the case
Case has plunged attorney general Bill Barr into crisis as he pleaded with Donald Trump to stop tweeting about it – and president refused
Within an hour of his arrival, Trump was tweeting again about the case this time suggesting the prosecution was unfair
He claimed James Comey had lied to Congress but was not prosecuted
Trump called himself the nation’s ‘chief law enforcement officer,’ and Barr was reported to be considering resigning
Roger Stone swerved a federal prison cell Thursday despite a judge slapping the longtime Donald Trump ally with a 40-month sentence for lying to Congress – and savaging not just him but the president.
Stone was convicted last fall of lying to lawmakers over his efforts to procure stolen Democratic Party emails from WikiLeaks in 2016 to boost Donald Trump’s chances of becoming President.
The self-declared political dirty trickster was spared immediate incarceration Thursday while U.S. District Judge Amy Berman Jackson decides whether or not to grant his request for a retrial.
The sentence was far below the nine years demanded by the prosecution before that was over-ruled in a political tumult and furious tweets by Trump.
Trump will be able to paint that as a win, but Berman Jackson, an Obama appointee, went out of her way to say she was not affected by the president. Stone himself had asked for probation.
ROGER STONE DID A LOT WRONG: WHAT HE WAS CONVICTED OF
Roger Stone was found guilty on all charges of:
1. Obstruction of justice, lying to Congress and witness tampering by trying to get Randy Credico to lie to Congress. Sentenced to 40 months
2. Lying to Congress that he did not have emails or texts about Julian Assange. Sentenced to 12 months concurrent with the first count
3. Lying when he claimed his references to being in touch with Assange were actually about a ‘go-between’ – Randy Credico. Sentenced to 12 months concurrent with the first count
4. Lying that he didn’t ask his ‘go-between’ to communicate with Assange. Sentenced to 12 months concurrent with the first count
5. Lying that he didn’t text or email the ‘go-between’ about WikiLeaks. Sentenced to 12 months concurrent with the first count
6. Lying that he had never discussed conversation with his ‘go-between’ with anyone in the Trump campaign. Sentenced to 12 months concurrent with the first count
Instead she turned his sentencing hearing into a stunning rebuke not just of Stone but of the president himself, saying the prosecution was not brought by ‘political enemies,’ and that there was no ‘anti-Trump cabal’ at the hear of the case.
‘He was not prosecuted, as some have complained, for standing up for the president, he was prosecuted for covering up for the president,’ she said.
‘There was nothing unfair, phony or disgraceful about the investigation or the prosecution.’
Trump tweeted in rage against the prosecution accusing it of lacking ‘FAIRNESS’ as the hearing was under way in federal court in Washington D.C.
”They say Roger Stone lied to Congress.’ OH, I see, but so did Comey (and he also leaked classified information, for which almost everyone, other than Crooked Hillary Clinton, goes to jail for a long time), and so did Andy McCabe, who also lied to the FBI! FAIRNESS?’ the president tweeted.
It was unknown whether Berman Jackson was aware of his latest intervention but it came amid a case roiled by politics and mounting speculation Stone will be pardoned.
Even before she spoke, prosecutors staged their own revolt against the president calling the case ‘righteous’ and demanding a lengthy prison sentence despite their initial call for nine years being over-ruled by Attorney General Bill Barr in one of the main acts of an unfolding constitutional crisis.
Stone, 67, stood in silence as Jackson told a federal courtroom Washington, D.C. that he should spend 40 months -three years and four months – behind bars.
She had savaged him in his sentencing remarks – and rebuked the president himself, possibly for his tweet this morning which was during the first part of her hearing.
‘This case did not arise because Roger Stone was being prosecuted by his political enemies,’ Berman Jackson said.
She said Stone told ‘flat out lies,’ and that his conviction had nothing to do with whether Russia interfered in the 2016 election.
He was guilty of a ‘corrupt, unlawful,’ campaign to stop his lies being exposed when he threatened Randy Credico, who he named as his ‘go-between’ to Julian Assange, to stop Credico revealing the truth, that there was another go-between.
Stone was also guilty of withholding texts and emails from Congress, prompting Berman Jackson to again lash out at the president.
Off home: Roger Stone left court to return to Florida
Free to go – for now: Roger Stone is escorted from the Washington D.C. federal courthouse after his sentencing. He remains gagged from speaking to the press
Happy outcome: A grinning Roger Stone left the court to get into a waiting car
On his way: Roger Stone steps out of the court and into the crowd after his sentencing
Off – but not to prison: Roger Stone left court apparently cheerful after he was sentenced to 40 months, not the nine years prosecutors wanted, but not the probation he had asked for himself
Not over: Roger Stone’s case is not at an end because he has applied for a retrial, which the judge is considering. She went ahead with the sentencing and will rule later on his call for a fresh hearing
Crowd: Roger Stone walked through a crowd of waiting photographers and reporters as he left the court
Grinning: Roger Stone had shown no emotion as he was sentenced, and left the court building with a smile on his face
Lightning rod: Federal judge Amy Berman Jackson will sentence Roger Stone in a case which has caused a crisis to engulf Bill Barr who pleaded with Donald Trump to let him do his job and stop the tweeting about his Department of Justice
Stone refused to hand them over ‘not to some secret anti Trump cabal, but to Congress, to the elected representatives of both parties.’
And she pointed out that it was a Republican-led inquiry which he had initially defied.
Then she laced into the president, without naming him, saying it was right for sentencing to be done by a judge, ‘Not someone who has a longstanding friendship with the defendant, not someone whose political career was aided by the defendant.’
Stone was joined by a vast entourage led by his wife Nydia as he walked into the federal court, where his legal team has been bolstered by a Mafia lawyer who helped keep John Gotti Jr., head of the Gambino crime family and son of the ‘Teflon Don,’ out of prison.
Pro-Stone demonstrators brought a ‘pardon Roger stone’ banner which they held behind him when he arrived while counter-protesters tried to hurriedly erect an inflatable effigy of Trump as a rat as Stone arrived.
Hours before he arrived Trump launched another fusillade against Stone’s conviction, tweeting: ‘What has happened to Roger Stone should never happen to anyone in our country again.’
Trump’s tweets have plunged his own attorney general, Bill Barr, into a crisis over the rule of law, with the president declaring himself the ‘chief law enforcement officer,’ and demanding Barr ‘clean house.’
His wife Nydia was behind him in the courtroom as Stone, wearing a dark gray chalk stripe double-breasted suit, blue shirt with cutaway collar and sober gray tie, sat beside his attorneys.
Department of Justice attorneys had originally requested a far harsher punishment of seven to nine years only to see their recommendation ripped up by Attorney General William Barr, who drew praise from Trump for labeling it ‘excessive and unwarranted’.
The intervention sparked accusations of political interference, forcing Barr on the defensive as he denied bowing to White House influence and appealed for Trump to curb his explosive Twitter criticisms of Judge Jackson and the supposedly ‘tainted’ case against Stone.
More than 2,000 former justice department employees have since signed a petition calling on the Attorney General to resign.
The original prosecution foursome of Aaron Zelinsky, Jonathan Kravis, Adam Jed and Michael Marando were replaced for today’s proceedings at Washington, D.C. District Court, having all resigned in protest.
Stone’s sentencing got off to a rocky start when U.S. District Judge Amy Berman Jackson said that anyone in the court who did not have a medical reason to wear sunglasses should remove them. Stone had arrived in round sunglasses.
Jackson took the opportunity to grill prosecutors on why the Department of Justice decided last week to submit a second sentencing memorandum, a nod to Attorney General William Barr’s controversial decision to rip up the original seven to nine year recommendation submitted by his own attorneys.
It fell upon newly-assigned federal prosecutor John Crabb to apologize for the ‘miscommunication’, insisting that the original prosecution team – who resigned last week in protest – had acted in ‘good faith’.
Stone stood in silence as Jackson recalled the seven offences of which he was convicted: five counts of making false statements to Congress, a single count of obstructing a congressional proceeding and single count of witness tampering.
That final charge would be of particular significance as she warned Stone his sentence would likely be higher because it involved specific threats of violence.
Last November’s trial heard how Stone bullied the radio host Randy Credico into pleading the Fifth to avoid contradicting his 2016 testimony before Congress, branding him a ‘rat’ and threatening to take away his therapy dog.
Political point: An anti-Bill Barr protest was being made outside the federal court while Roger Stone was being sentenced – resulting in the advertising van being pulled over by D.C. cops
He’s here: Roger Stone was accompanied by his wife Nydia and an almost 20-strong entourage as he arrived at federal court in Washington D.C. to be sentenced
In front of the protest: Roger and Nydia Stone walked past the inflatable Trump rat as they made their way into court
Grin and bear it: Roger Stone kept a fixed smile as he headed into court with his wife Nydia on his arm
Raised a smile: Roger Stone’s wife Nydia reacted positively to a group of supporters’ banner calling for Donald Trump to issue the dirty trickster with a pardon
Arm-in-arm: Roger Stone wore a navy blue double-breasted topcoat with contrasting collar, blue cutaway collared shirt and sober gray tie, topped off with a black trilby as he arrived in court with Nydia, his second wife
Asked if he had anything to say, Stone, dressed immaculately in a pinstripe suit, grey tie and suspenders, told Washington, D.C. District Court: ‘Your honor I choose not to speak at this time, thank you very much.’
Jackson slammed the 67-year-old defendant as an ‘insecure person who craves and recklessly pursues attention.’
‘This case did not arise because Roger Stone was being pursued by his political enemies,’ she added.
‘It arose because Roger Stone characteristically injected himself smack into the middle of one of the most significant issues of the day.’
Judge Jackson said Stone had interfered with matters of ‘grave national importance’ and repeatedly lied under oath. She characterized his defense as: ‘So what?’
‘Nothing about this case was a joke. It wasn’t funny,’ she cautioned.
‘This was not Roger being Roger. He lied to congress, he lied to elected representatives.’
The no-nonsense judge praised the ‘professionalism’ of the original four prosecutors, saying their recommendation was ‘true to the record’ and in line with Department of Justice guidelines.
However she agreed with Barr’s revision and said she was concerned seven to nine years would be ‘greater than necessary.’
She sentenced Stone to 40 months for obstruction, 12 months each for the counts of lying to Congress and 18 months for witness tampering, all sentences to be served concurrently.
He was also fined $20,000 and will have to serve two years’ probation. Federal rules means he has to give the court his tax returns.
Judge Jackson quizzed Crabb about how she came to receive two competing sentencing memorandums, noting that the original recommendation had never been formally withdrawn.
Crabb agreed and confirmed the prosecution was still asking for a substantial prison term for Stone, insisting the Justice Department had operated ‘without fear, favor or political influence’.
‘This prosecution was and is righteous,’ he said. ‘This confusion was not caused by the original trial team. There was nothing in bad faith about the prosecution team’s recommendation.’
Quizzed over who had ordered the new memorandum and why, Crabb replied: ‘What I understand is, there was a miscommunication between the Attorney General and the United States Attorney.’
Asked to explain who wrote the second memorandum, he repeatedly declined to say.
‘I cannot engage in discussions on internal deliberations,’ he said, to Judge Jackson’s obvious displeasure.
Ginsberg told the court that Stone had a history of ‘rough, provocative and hyperbolic language’ and that his threats to Credico should not influence his sentence, given that Credico and Stone went back decades and he knew Stone was ‘all bark and no bite.’
Judge Jackson disagreed, saying the sentencing seriousness level jumped from 14 to 27 because of Stone’s threats, witness tampering and efforts to disrupt justice.
‘The defendant refers to this as banter, which it hardly is,’ Jackson added, reeling off a list of insults Stone had directed toward Credico, including ‘rat’ and ‘c**sucker’.
She also slammed Stone over his repeated outbursts during last year’s prosecution, in particular his speaking out via InfoWars host Alex Jones to relay a message to Trump pleading for a pardon the night before he was found guilty.
That was in defiance of a gag order Judge Jackson had earlier slapped on Stone after he posted a mocked up photo of her face in rifle crosshairs online.
Jackson said Stone was deliberately trying to undermine proceedings and was stoking anger towards court officials, risking a scenario in which someone with ‘even less judgment’ could actually do something violent.
‘This is intolerable to the administration of justice. The court should not sit idly by, shrug its shoulders and say, that’s just Roger being Roger,’ she said.
Ratcheting up his sentencing level another two notches, she added: ‘It wasn’t an accident he had a staff that helped him do it. Using the new social media is his sweet spot.
‘He knew exactly what he was doing and in using Twitter and Instagram he deliberately magnified his message.’
Stone’s decades-long career on the shadier margins of US politics appeared to be over last November after he was found guilty of five counts of making false statements to Congress and single counts of obstructing a congressional proceeding and witness tampering.
Jurors agreed the smooth-talking agent provocateur, who briefly served on Trump’s 2016 Presidential campaign, told a series of ‘whoppers’ when he testified before members of House Intelligence Committee investigating Russian collusion in the 2016 election.
Stone lied to lawmakers when he denied asking Julian Assange for the cache of Democratic Party messages stolen by Russian hackers and further lied about the identity of his go-between to the WikiLeaks founder.
He also concealed numerous texts, emails and telephone conversations in which he discussed WikiLeaks and Assange with then candidate-Trump and senior campaign figures including former White House chief strategist Steve Bannon, ex Campaign Chairman Paul Manafort and former campaign official Rick Gates.
In he goes: Roger Stone took off his trilby to enter court, where he will be sentenced
Acknowledgment: Roger Stone gave a salute to supporters outside court
Tailored: Roger Stone revealed he is wearing a double-breasted dark gray chalk stripe suit under his navy blue double-breasted overcoat as he got out of his car before going into court
Demand: Supporters of the disgraced dirty trickster unfurled a ‘pardon Roger Stone’ banner outside court, echoing a demand which Donald Trump says he has not considered
Counter-protest: Anti-Trump activists put up an inflatable effigy of the president as a rat in time for Roger Stone’s arrival
Publicity opportunity: The Stone spectacle has also been a magnet for a local tour company whose placard made a return to the entrance to court for the sentencing
Ready for the walk: Nydia Stone grasped her husband’s arm as they prepared to walk into court
Trump praises Bill Bar for ‘taking charge’ of Roger Stone case
The trial heard Stone was trying to procure the emails as a way to win favor with Trump and help him beat Hillary Clinton to the White House.
The net result of him lying ‘over and over and over again’ was that the House Intelligence Committee was impeded in its inquiries and its final report into Russian election inference was inaccurate because it didn’t mention Stone’s true intermediary, prosecutors said.
The tampering charge referred to his effort to bully the comedian and radio host Randy Credico into pleading the Fifth so he would avoid contradicting Stone’s sworn September 26, 2017 testimony.
Stone had told lawmakers that Credico was his ‘back channel’ to WikiLeaks when it was actually the conspiracy theorist and author Jerome Corsi.
When Credico threatened to set the record straight, Stone branded him a ‘c**ksucker’, a ‘rat’ and urged the rattled comic to do a ‘Frank Pentangeli’, referencing a character in Godfather Part II who lies to a congressional committee to help the Corleone family before committing suicide.
He also took aim at Credico’s therapy dog Bianca, a 13-year-old Coton de Tulear, writing in an text message: ‘I’m going to take that dog away from you.’
Prosecutors cited the threats of physical harm and Stone’s repeated media outbursts attacking Judge Jackson as aggravating factors against the former Nixon campaign adviser who has the disgraced former president’s face permanently tattooed on his back.
However Credico was among those who argued against incarceration, saying in a January letter to the judge: ‘I never in any way felt that Stone himself posed a direct physical threat to me or to my dog.’
Tomeka Hart, a former Memphis City Schools Board President, stoked the flames further when she outed herself last Wednesday as the jury forewoman in a Facebook post voicing support for the overruled prosecutors.
‘I have kept my silence for months. Initially, it was for my safety. Then, I decided to remain silent out of fear of politicizing the matter,’ Hart wrote.
All about Assange: Roger Stone lied about the identity of his ‘back channel’ to WikiLeaks and lied again when he denied asking its founder, Julian Assange, for the plundered trove of messages
Back channels: Stone had fraudulently told lawmakers that Randy Credico (left), a left-wing radio comedian, was his ‘back channel’ to WikiLeaks when it was actually the conspiracy theorist and author Jerome Corsi (right)
Center of case: Roger Stone also took aim at Randy Credico’s therapy dog Bianca, a 13-year-old Coton de Tulear, writing in an text message: ‘I’m going to take that dog away from you.’
‘But I can’t keep quiet any longer. I want to stand up for Aaron Zelinsky, Adam Jed, Michael Marando, and Jonathan Kravis – the prosecutors on the Roger Stone trial.
‘It pains me to see the DOJ now interfere with the hard work of the prosecutors. They acted with the utmost intelligence, integrity, and respect for our system of justice.
‘For that, I wanted to speak up for them and ask you to join me in thanking them for their service.’
Hart, it further emerged, had unsuccessfully ran for Congress as a Democrat in 2012 and had participated in anti-Trump rallies and protests.
She had frequently denounced Trump on social media, calling the President and his supporters racists, and posted emojis of hearts and fist pumps after finding Stone guilty last November.
Hart had also re-tweeted a post by pundit Bakari Sellers dismissing Stone’s claims that the FBI used excessive force when they arrested him at his Fort Lauderdale, Florida home in January 2019.
Sellers had listed black victims of ‘police force’, including Sandra Bland, Walter Scott and Eric Gardner, scoffing: ‘But Roger Stone!!! Think about that.’
Stone’s lawyers have already made one failed attempt to secure a re-trial, arguing that a completely different juror, an IRS employee who worked with the Justice Department on criminal tax cases, should have been struck.
The juror admitted reading news articles about Stone’s arrest but denied having any opinions about Stone when asked about it by Judge Jackson in court.
The defense had failed to demonstrate the ‘sort of inherent bias’ that would prompt a retrial, Judge Jackson ruled.
Stone entered the political arena in 1972 when he ditched his studies at George Washington University, supporting Nixon in his re-election campaign then landing a job on his administration.
In one of his first stunts he contributed $135 to one of Nixon’s Republican rivals in the name of the Young Socialist Alliance – then slipped the receipt to a journalist.
During congressional hearings into the Watergate scandal in 1973 it emerged Stone had recruited a spy to infiltrate the campaigns of several of Nixon’s Democratic rivals.
He was fired from his job with then-Senator Bob Dole but went on to work for several more presidential campaigns: those of Ronald Reagan, George H.W. Bush and, eventually, his longtime friend Donald Trump, who first hired Stone to lobby for his casino businesses in the 1990s.
The National Enquirer in 1996 revealed that Stone had placed ads on a swingers website seeking sex partners for himself and his second wife Nydia Bertran Stone, 72. Stone later referred to himself in an interview as ‘a libertarian and a libertine’ and a ‘trysexual – I’ve tried everything’.
The six Trump associates to be convicted in Mueller probe
GUILTY: ROGER STONE
Convicted in November 2019 on seven counts including obstruction of justice, witness tampering, and lying to Congress about his communications with WikiLeaks. Sentenced to 40 months in prison.
Stone was a person of interest to Mueller’s investigators long before his January 2019 indictment, thanks in part due to his public pronouncements as well as internal emails about his contacts with WikiLeks.
In campaign texts and emails, Stone communicated with associates about WikiLeaks following reports the organization had obtained a cache of Clinton-related emails.
According to the federal indictment, Stone gave ‘false and misleading’ testimony about his requests for information from WikiLeaks. He then pressured a witness, comedian Randy Credico, to take the Fifth Amendment rather than testify, and pressured him in a series of emails. Following a prolonged dispute over testimony, he called him a ‘rat’ and threatened to ‘take that dog away from you’, in reference to Credico’s therapy dog, Bianca. Stone warned him: ‘Let’s get it on. Prepare to die.’
GUILTY: MICHAEL FLYNN
Pleaded guilty to making false statements in December 2017. Awaiting sentence
Flynn was President Trump’s former National Security Advisor and Robert Mueller’s most senior scalp to date. He previously served when he was a three star general as President Obama’s director of the Defense Intelligence Agency but was fired.
He admitted to lying to special counsel investigators about his conversations with a Russian ambassador in December 2016. He has agreed to cooperate with the special counsel investigation.
GUILTY AND IN JAIL: MICHAEL COHEN
Pleaded guilty to eight counts including fraud and two campaign finance violations in August 2018. Pleaded guilty to further count of lying to Congress in November 2018. Sentenced to three years in prison and $2 million in fines and forfeitures in December 2018
Cohen was investigated by Mueller but the case was handed off to the Southern District of New York,leaving Manhattan’s ferocious and fiercely independent federal prosecutors to run his case.
Cohen was Trump’s longtime personal attorney, starting working for him and the Trump Organization in 2007. He is the longest-serving member of Trump’s inner circle to be implicated by Mueller. Cohen professed unswerving devotion to Trump – and organized payments to silence two women who alleged they had sex with the-then candidate: porn star Stormy Daniels and Playboy model Karen McDougal. He admitted that payments to both women were felony campaign finance violations – and admitted that he acted at the ‘direction’ of ‘Candidate-1’: Donald Trump.
He also admitted tax fraud by lying about his income from loans he made, money from taxi medallions he owned, and other sources of income, at a cost to the Treasury of $1.3 million.
And he admitted lying to Congress in a rare use of the offense. The judge in his case let him report for prison on March 6 and recommended he serve it in a medium-security facility close to New York City.
GUILTY AND IN JAIL: PAUL MANAFORT
Found guilty of eight charges of bank and tax fraud in August 2018. Sentenced to 47 months in March 2019. Pleaded guilty to two further charges – witness tampering and conspiracy against the United States. Jailed for total of seven and a half years in two separate sentences. Additionally indicted for mortgage fraud by Manhattan District Attorney, using evidence previously presented by Mueller. That indictment was dismissed by the DA is appealing
Manafort worked for Trump’s campaign from March 2016 and chaired it from June to August 2016, overseeing Trump being adopted as Republican candidate at the Republican National Convention in Cleveland. He is the most senior campaign official to be implicated by Mueller. Manafort was one of Washington D.C.’s longest-term and most influential lobbyists but in 2015, his money dried up and the next year he turned to Trump for help, offering to be his campaign chairman for free – in the hope of making more money afterwards. But Mueller unwound his previous finances and discovered years of tax and bank fraud as he coined in cash from pro-Russia political parties and oligarchs in Ukraine.
Manafort pleaded not guilty to 18 charges of tax and bank fraud but was convicted of eight counts in August 2018. The jury was deadlocked on the other 10 charges. A second trial on charges of failing to register as a foreign agent due in September did not happen when he pleaded guilty to conspiracy against the United States and witness tampering in a plea bargain. He was supposed to co-operate with Mueller but failed to.
Minutes after his second sentencing hearing in March 2019, he was indicted on 16 counts of fraud and conspiracy by the Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus Vance Jr., using evidence which included documents previously presented at his first federal trial. The president has no pardon power over charges by district and state attorneys.
GUILTY: RICK GATES
Pleaded guilty to conspiracy against the United States and making false statements in February 2018. Awaiting sentence
Gates, a Trump campaign official, was Manafort’s former deputy at political consulting firm DMP International. He admitted to conspiring to defraud the U.S. government on financial activity, and to lying to investigators about a meeting Manafort had with a member of congress in 2013. As a result of his guilty plea and promise of cooperation, prosecutors vacated charges against Gates on bank fraud, bank fraud conspiracy, failure to disclose foreign bank accounts, filing false tax returns, helping prepare false tax filings, and falsely amending tax returns.
GUILTY AND JAILED: GEORGE PAPADOPOLOUS
Pleaded guilty to making false statements in October 2017. Sentenced to 14 days in September 2018, and reported to prison in November. Served 12 days and released on December 7, 2018
Papadopoulos was a member of Donald Trump’s campaign foreign policy advisory committee. He admitted to lying to special counsel investigators about his contacts with London professor Josef Mifsud and Ivan Timofeev, the director of a Russian government-funded think tank.
He agreed to cooperate with the special counsel investigation but is now highly critical of it.
Some Justice Department personnel handled it questionably, but Trump’s reaction was worse.
The first thing to grasp about the Roger Stone sentencing fiasco is that Stone, even accepting the worst plausible gloss on his crimes, is a 67-year-old nonviolent first offender. If the criminal-justice “reform” fad were authentic, and not a stratagem of social-justice warriors who have taken Washington’s surfeit of useful idiots for a ride, then we could all agree that the original seven-to-nine-year sentence advocated by prosecutors was too draconian — even if it was, as we shall see, a faithful application of the federal sentencing guidelines as written.
But no. Like criminal-justice “reform,” the Stone prosecution is more politics than law enforcement. It was the Mueller probe’s last gasp at pretending there might be something to the Russia-collusion narrative – notwithstanding that, when the “gee, it sure feels like there could be some collusion here” indictment was filed, over a year and a half after special counsel Robert Mueller was appointed, it had long been manifest that there was no Trump–Russia conspiracy.
So, the Left has a quandary here: Do they hate Trump more than they love sentencing “reform”? We could have predicted the decision to go with hating Trump, and thus fomenting outrage over DOJ’s retraction of its original sentencing recommendation of about nine years’ imprisonment, now slashed to a far more reasonable range of four years or less. To be fair, though, Trump critics could not have been expected to resist the combination of DOJ missteps and Trump Twitter taunts that mark Stone’s sentencing, the combination that has managed to turn Mueller’s maulers into media martyrs.
Some background: In a ridiculously overblown, overcharged prosecution, Mueller slammed the ineffable Stone with seven felony counts of obstructing Congress’s Russia investigation. One of these involved tampering with a witness, left-wing radio host Randy Credico (through whom Stone sought a communications channel with WikiLeaks honcho Julian Assange).
At a certain point, Credico let it be known that he intended to cooperate with investigators. A ballistic Stone, when not uttering lunatic references to Watergate and Frank Pentangeli (the Mafioso character goaded into suicide when a plot to take out the Don fails in Godfather II), warned the “stoolie” “rat” Credico to “prepare to die” and vowed to steal his pet dog. Even in context, these seem to be puerile ravings, not real threats. (Stone added that his lawyers were anxious to “rip [Credico] to shreds,” so any murder and dognapping was apparently going to await cross-examination.) And though Stone is patently guilty of witness tampering, Credico himself told the court that he did not take Stone’s threats seriously.
DOJ: We Overstepped By Keeping Tabs On Trump Campaign Adviser For Too Long
Stone being the sort of Einstein who commits his obstructions in writing (the Credico contacts were mostly text messages), the jury convicted him in nothing flat. That meant DOJ would give the court its take on how the sentencing guidelines applied to the case, as it does with every convicted defendant.
In Stone’s case, the guidelines worked a severe result. In tampering cases, a guidelines enhancement calls for a drastic increase in the sentence if the defendant threatened the witness with physical injury. This drove Stone’s “offense level” from 21 to 29 on the guidelines grid, so even though he is a first offender (offense history “Category I” in guidelines-speak), his recommended sentence zoomed to 90 to 108 months — instead of 37 to 46 months, as it would have been at offense level 21 (i.e., without the threats).
With Mueller’s shop closed down, the Stone prosecution was run out of the U.S. attorney’s office for the District of Columbia. But it was still being overseen by two Mueller staffers, Aaron S. J. Zelinsky (on loan from the U.S. attorney’s office in Maryland, where he had worked for Rod Rosenstein, who, as Trump’s deputy attorney general, later appointed Mueller), and Adam C. Jed (an appellate lawyer from the Obama Justice Department who first came to public attention in 2013, arguing that the ban on same-sex marriage was unconstitutional). Also assigned to the case were Jonathan Kravis, a former associate White House counsel to Obama, and Michael Mirando, an experienced assistant U.S. attorney in the D.C. office.
This team of prosecutors filed a sentencing memorandum on Monday, laying out the guidelines and advising Judge Amy Berman Jackson that they called for a prison sentence of about seven to nine years (i.e., the offense-level guidelines range of 90 to 108 months). Like the indictment itself, the memo is gross overkill.
As the Daily Caller’s Chuck Ross notes, the prosecutors tied Stone to “foreign election interference,” breathlessly framed as the “most deadly adversary of republican government,” even though he was never charged with any such crime — underscoring yet again that the deadliest adversary of republican government is actually domestic — viz., the politicized use of executive police powers. Far from offering any theory in mitigation of the 90-to-108-months range, the prosecutors pooh-poohed Credico’s perception that Stone’s threats were not serious, factitiously insisting that the guidelines enhancement is triggered by the threat, not whether the target is actually intimidated. Plus, prosecutors maintained, Stone’s crimes were exacerbated by his flouting of Judge Berman Jackson’s gag orders during the prosecution.
All that said, the prosecutors’ submission was an accurate (if extreme and unyielding) rendition of federal sentencing law. The enhancement that inflates Stone’s sentencing range does literally apply — even if he is not the kind of violent criminal that the guidelines commissioners had in mind when they wrote it. Prosecutors are not required to argue for clemency, though they should do so when the circumstances call for it. The Justice Department’s default position in criminal cases is that the guidelines should be applied as written, and that it is up to the court to decide whether to follow them.
While Stone awaited sentence, the prosecutors were supervised, at least nominally, by Jessie Liu, the U.S. attorney for D.C. I say “nominally” because the Trump Justice Department has always been leery about being seen as interfering in Mueller-based prosecutions. Moreover, the D.C. office was in transition while court submissions pertaining to Stone’s sentencing were being prepared.
In December 2019, President Trump announced his nomination of Liu to become the Treasury Department’s undersecretary overseeing financial sanctions on terrorists. Liu continued running the U.S. attorney’s office, albeit with one foot out the door, until the end of January. With her Treasury confirmation hearing scheduled for February 13 (i.e., tomorrow), Attorney General Bill Barr appointed one of his top advisers, Timothy Shea (a well-regarded longtime prosecutor, litigator, and Capitol Hill staffer), to become acting U.S. attorney for D.C. on January 30. That was eleven days before the Stone team filed its sentencing submission.
How much participation Shea had in the recommendation is unclear. The New York Times reports that both he and Deputy Attorney General Jeffrey A. Rosen opined that the seven-to-nine-year sentencing recommendation was too severe. Yet, it does not appear that they put their foot down and instructed the Stone prosecutors to ameliorate it before the government’s submission was filed on Monday.
As is his wont, the president went bonkers on Twitter upon learning of the recommendation, calling it “horrible and very unfair” and a major “miscarriage of justice” because “the real crimes are on the other side” — i.e., the Russia-probe investigators — yet “nothing happens to them.” While the Justice Department was obviously aware of the president’s tweet, as well as press reporting about the harshness of the prosecutors’ sentencing recommendation, the DOJ and the White House have had no communications about the case, according to both the president and a spokeswoman for the attorney general.
Nevertheless, the DOJ made it known that the sentencing memo would be rescinded and a new one filed. That announcement prompted the recusals of all four prosecutors, some of whom are quitting the DOJ entirely and some apparently just stepping aside from the Stone case.
Late Tuesday, the DOJ filed a revised sentencing memo, which does not recommend a specific sentence but strongly suggests that a term calculated without the eight-point enhancement — i.e., between 37 and 46 months’ imprisonment — would be just.The new memo concedes that the prosecutors’ calculation in the original memo was “arguably” correct, but contends that it would be unreasonable under the circumstances. On that score, the memo relies on (a) Credico’s dismissal of the threat (though it acknowledges that this is not dispositive); (b) the fact that a sentence driven by the guidelines enhancement would be wildly out of proportion with prison terms imposed in cases similar to Stone’s; (c) Stone’s being a first-offender with no organized-crime or gang connections and thus not typical f the offenders the enhancement is meant to cover; and (d) Stone’s advanced age and failing health.
This is an entirely reasonable recommendation, even if the process of arriving at it has been a train wreck.
The Justice Department correctly observes that the sentence to be imposed is entirely up to the court. The DOJ’s recommendations are non-binding and frequently ignored by judges. Judge Berman Jackson has been thoroughly informed about what the non-binding guidelines say, as well as the cases for and against applying the enhancement.
Furthermore, let’s imagine that, instead of orchestrating a fiasco, DOJ had efficiently managed any internal disputes (which are not uncommon) and had filed a single memo recommending a 37-to-46-month sentence — a memo that explained both the enhancement for threatening witnesses and why applying it would be unreasonable under the circumstances. Does anyone doubt that such a recommendation would nevertheless have been panned as excessive by the president?
For now, while Trump has taken to attacking both the resigning prosecutors and Judge Berman Jackson on Twitter, it appears that former U.S. attorney Liu is taking the fall. Within hours of the prosecutors’ trumpeting their departures in grand Sally Yates style, the White House announced that the president had pulled Liu’s appointment to the Treasury Department position — even though her confirmation hearing was just two days away, and Barr had lavished praise on her upon appointing Shea as her replacement.
Liu certainly had a tumultuous tenure. Besides the thankless task of inheriting the Mueller cases against Stone and former national-security adviser Michael Flynn (the implosion of which is a story for another day), her office foolishly pursued a threadbare Mueller-generated prosecution of Greg Craig for false statements based on lobbying for Ukraine. Craig, former White House counsel to President Obama, was speedily acquitted by a jury last year. Meanwhile, there was also a mini-revolt on the Senate Judiciary Committee a few months back when the president floated the idea of elevating Liu to the No. 3 leadership slot at the DOJ — though she was vigorously defended by AG Barr, and suspicions that she lacked conservative bona fides appear overwrought (the fact that Liu may be pro-choice hardly means she would not enforce laws regulating abortion; and a claim that, 15 years ago, she opposed Justice Samuel Alito’s appointment to the Supreme Court appears to be false).
I would not suggest that Liu and others at the DOJ distinguished themselves in the Stone sentencing debacle. But at this point, the main fault lies with the president.
Yes, the Mueller probe was specious. But for his connection to Trump, Stone would never have been pursued in a collusion fever dream that Mueller’s prosecutors knew was bogus when they charged him. Yet his crimes, while exaggerated, were real. He was convicted by a jury and, under federal law, that presumptively warrants incarceration, though he could be spared by the judge (whom the president has picked a strange time to antagonize). If the president thinks that Stone and Flynn (among others) have been given a raw deal, the Constitution empowers him to pardon them, or at least commute their sentences.
If President Trump is afraid, in an election year, to take the political hit that a pardon for Stone would entail, that is understandable. But then he should bite his tongue and click out of Twitter. The Justice Department’s job is to process cases, including Mueller cases, pursuant to law. If the president wants to make those cases disappear, he has to do it himself and be accountable. His provocative running commentary only ensures that the DOJ will be accused of kowtowing to him. It also guarantees that, if the ongoing criminal probe of the Russiagate investigation eventually yields any indictments, they will be assailed as political persecutions rather than good-faith law enforcement.
Story 3: The Real Threat Is Influenza Viruses Not Novel Coronavirus- Videos
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The 1918 Flu Pandemic – Emergence – Extra History – #1
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The 2020 Flu Season So Far
Worrying about coronavirus? This other virus is the real threat.
by Liz Szabo, Kaiser Health News,Updated: January 30, 2020
There’s a deadly virus spreading from state to state. It preys on the most vulnerable, striking the sick and the old without mercy. In just the last few months, it has claimed the lives of at least 39 children.
The virus is influenza, and it poses a far greater threat to Americans than the coronavirus from China that has made headlines around the world.
“When we think about the relative danger of this new coronavirus and influenza, there’s just no comparison,” said William Schaffner, a professor of preventive medicine and health policy at Vanderbilt University Medical Center. “Coronavirus will be a blip on the horizon in comparison. The risk is trivial.”
To be sure, the coronavirus outbreak, which originated last month in the Chinese city of Wuhan, should be taken seriously. The virus can cause pneumonia and is blamed for more than 7,000 illnesses and more than 170 deaths.
The World Health Organization on Thursday declared the outbreak a global emergency requiring a coordinated international response after the number of cases spiked sharply over the last few days. But officials warn much remains unknown.
In the United States, at least six cases of the virus have been reported, including the first case of person-to-person infection. Public health workers are monitoring dozens of additional patients.
Influenza rarely gets this sort of attention, even though it kills more Americans each year than any other virus, said Peter Hotez, a professor of pediatrics, molecular virology, and microbiology at Baylor College of Medicine in Houston.
Influenza has already sickened at least 13 million Americans this winter, hospitalizing 120,000 and killing 6,600, according to the CDC. And flu season hasn’t even peaked. In a bad year, the flu kills up to 61,000 Americans.
Worldwide, the flu causes up to five million cases of severe illness worldwide and kills up to 650,000 people every year, according to the World Health Organization.
And yet, Americans aren’t particularly concerned.
Fewer than half of adults got a flu shot last season, according to the CDC. Even among children, who can be especially vulnerable to respiratory illnesses, only 62% received the vaccine.
If Americans aren’t afraid of the flu, perhaps that’s because they are inured to yearly warnings. For them, the flu is old news. Yet viruses named after foreign places — such as Ebola, Zika, and Wuhan — inspire terror.
“Familiarity breeds indifference,” Schaffner said. “Because it’s new, it’s mysterious, and comes from an exotic place, the coronavirus creates anxiety.”
Some doctors joke that the flu needs to be rebranded.
“We should rename influenza; call it XZ-47 virus or something scarier,” said Paul Offit, director of the Vaccine Education Center at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia.
Measles in the Democratic Republic of the Congo has killed 5,000 people in the last year — more than twice as many as Ebola. Yet UNICEF officials have noted that the measles, which many Americans no longer fear, has gotten little attention. Nearly all the measles victims were children under 5.
Some people may worry less about the flu because there’s a vaccine, whose protection has ranged from 19% to 60% in recent years. Simply having the choice about whether or not to receive a flu shot can give people an illusion of control, Schaffner said.
But people often feel powerless to fight novel viruses. The fact that an airplane passenger spread SARS to other passengers and flight crew made people feel especially vulnerable.
Because the Wuhan virus is new, humans have no antibodies against it. Doctors haven’t had time to develop treatments or vaccines.
The big question, so far unknown, is just how easily the virus is transmitted from an infected person to others. Officials warn much remains unknown, but each patient with the new coronavirus appears to be infecting about two other people.
By comparison, patients with SARS, or severe acute respiratory syndrome, spread the infection to an average of two to four others. Each patient with measles — one of the most contagious viruses known to science — infects 12 to 18 unvaccinated people.
Health officials worry that the new coronavirus could resemble SARS — which appeared suddenly in China in 2002 and spread to 26 countries, sickening 8,000 people and killing 774, according to the WHO.The U.S. dodged a bullet with SARS, Schaffner said. Only eight Americans became infected and none died, according to the CDC. Yet SARS caused a global panic, leading people to shutter hotels, cancel flights, and close businesses.
Coronaviruses can be unpredictable, said Michael Osterholm, director of the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy at the University of Minnesota. While some patients never infect anyone else, people who are “super-spreaders” can infect dozens of others.
At Seoul, South Korea’s Samsung Medical Center in 2015, a single emergency-room patient infected 82 people —patients, visitors, and staff — with a coronavirus called MERS, or Middle East Respiratory Syndrome. The hospital partly shut down to control the virus.
“This is one of the finest medical centers in the world, on par with the Cleveland Clinic, and they were brought to their knees,” Osterholm said.
Yet MERS has never posed much of a threat to the United States.
Only two patients in this country — health-care providers who had worked in Saudi Arabia — have ever tested positive for the virus, according to the CDC. Both patients survived.
Hotez, who is working to develop vaccines against neglected diseases, said he worries about unvaccinated children. Most kids who die from the flu haven’t been immunized against it, he said. And many were previously healthy.
“If you’re worried about your health, get your flu vaccination,” Hotez said. “It’s not too late.”
The deadly coronavirus rapidly sweeping the world kills up to 15 per cent of patients over the age of 80, scientists have revealed.
Chinese health officials carried out the biggest ever study on the never-before-seen strain of the virus, using data from 72,000 cases.
Results showed the SARS-CoV-2 virus posed the greatest threat to older patients and those with underlying conditions, such as cancer and heart disease.
Chinese Centre for Disease Control and Prevention researchers also found 80.9 per cent of infections are mild. Less than five per cent are critical.
A separate group of virologists studying the coronavirus have also claimed it is up to 20 times more infectious than its deadlier sister SARS.
More than 73,000 cases have been recorded worldwide, with 99 per cent in China. Almost 1,900 patients have already died.
Residents walk through a disinfection channel set up as a protective measure against the coronavirus at the entrance to their compound in Tongzhou, east of Beijing
A child wearing a face mask plays near a slide at a commercial and residential complex in a residential complex in Beijing
A police officer wearing a face mask patrols in front of the Sunwill factory in Foshan, China
A medical worker takes a swab for testing from a Chinese paramilitary police officer in Shenzhen, Guangdong province
Cases of a mysterious pneumonia-causing virus first emerged in the now-deserted Chinese city of Wuhan late last year.
Researchers blamed a seafood market in Hubei city that illegally sold wild animals for being the source of the virus.
The virus has no known cure and most patients who are struck down recover within a couple of weeks without needing medical treatment.
Those who develop more serious infections in their lungs, such as pneumonia, need expert medical care to stop their illness turning deadly.
They looked at 72,314 confirmed, suspected, clinically diagnosed, and asymptomatic cases of COVID-19 illness across China as of February 11.
COVID-19 is the name of the disease caused by the virus, which has effectively been named as SARS-2 by the World Health Organization.
Results showed the overall case-fatality ratio – the percentage of patients who die – was just 2.3 per cent.
Ninety-nine per cent of cases have been in China, where tens of millions of residents are in lockdown to contain the escalating crisis
And more than 73,000 patients have been struck down with the deadly SARS-CoV-2 infection, including nearly 1,000 outside of China
Almost 1,900 people have now died from the killer coronavirus rapidly sweeping the world
In comparison, SARS – which only infected a fraction of patients during the 2002/03 epidemic – killed around 10 per cent.
While the death rate for MERS, another type of coronavirus that was first reported in Saudi Arabia in 2012, is even higher (34 per cent).
One of the world’s deadliest diseases, Ebola, kills around half of all patients it strikes. Ebola is not caused by any type of coronavirus.
When data for the SARS-CoV-2 infection was broken down, researchers found over-80s had the highest fatality ratio at 14.8 per cent.
The likelihood of death was just eight per cent of patients aged between 70 and 79, and 3.6 per cent for those in their sixties.
The case-fatality ratio was less than 1.5 per cent for patients in their fifties, and less than 0.5 per cent for everyone else – meaning roughly one in 200 will die.
There were no deaths among children aged up to nine, despite at least two cases of newborn babies infected through their mothers.
In contrast, the death rate for flu is around 0.1 per cent, according to the US Centres for Disease Control (CDC).
Older adults have weaker immune systems, meaning it is harder for the body to fight off a virus such as SARS-CoV-2 or flu.
Patients with heart disease were most likely to die from the virus, followed by those with diabetes, chronic respiratory disease and hypertension.
CCDC academics also found 80.9 percent of infections were classified as mild, 13.8 percent as severe and only 4.7 percent as critical.
And men are more likely to die (2.8 per cent) than women (1.7 per cent). But experts have yet to work out why men are more vulnerable.
Nearly 86 percent of those who have contracted the illness either lived in or travelled to Wuhan.
British cruise ship passenger David Abel and his wife Sally (pictured in their cabin on the Diamond Princess) have tested positive for coronavirus in Japan
David Abel believes he is going to test negative for coronavirus
Steve Abel (pictured today) said his parents David and Sally Abel were ‘not getting any communication’ from Whitehall and were ‘feeling very unloved’
The Diamond Princess (pictured today) remains in lockdown and hundreds face a longer spell in quarantine even after the official incubation period ends tomorrow
American passenger details life on Diamond Princess ahead of evacuation
SON OF BRIT COUPLE WITH CORONAVIRUS ON CRUISE SHIP BEGS GOVERNMENT TO RESCUE THEM
The son of a British couple who caught coronavirus on a cruise ship in Japan has today savaged the government’s ‘appalling’ handling of the case.
Steve Abel said his parents David and Sally were ‘not getting any communication’ from Whitehall and were ‘feeling very unloved’ despite repeated pleas for help.
The British couple were among 88 people who tested positive for the virus in Japan today, taking the number of infections on board the ship to 542.
They are now being taken into a further quarantine on the mainland just a day before their stay on board the Diamond Princess was due to end.
The Abels will also be unable to join an evacuation flight which the British embassy is preparing today amid growing pressure after the US evacuated 340 of its citizens.
And 3,019 health workers have been diagnosed and five had died as of February 11, the report said.
The epidemic, which has seen cases in almost 30 countries, reached its ‘first peak’ between January 24 and 26, the report said.
It suggests there is has been a ‘downward trend’ in the overall epidemic curve since February 11 – meaning the spread of the disease was slowing.
A separate group of scientists published their findings about the virus on bioRxiv – an archive of papers before they have been peer-reviewed.
Scientists at the University of Texas at Austin found SARS-CoV-2 was 20 times more likely to bind to human cells than its original predecessor.
South China Morning Post reports the team said the virus shares the same host-cell receptor, angiotensin-converting enzyme 2 (ACE2), with SARS.
The researchers wrote: ‘Compared with SARS-CoV, 2019-nCoV appears to be more readily transmitted from human to human.
‘The high affinity of 2019-nCoV for human ACE2 may contribute to the apparent ease with which 2019-nCoV can spread from human to human.’
WHAT DO WE KNOW ABOUT THE DEADLY CORONAVIRUS IN CHINA?
Someone who is infected with the coronavirus can spread it with just a simple cough or a sneeze, scientists say.
Over 2,000 people with the virus are now confirmed to have died and more than 75,000 have been infected. But experts predict the true number of people with the disease could be as high as 350,000 in Wuhan alone, as they warn it may kill as many as two in 100 cases. Here’s what we know so far:
What is the coronavirus?
A coronavirus is a type of virus which can cause illness in animals and people. Viruses break into cells inside their host and use them to reproduce itself and disrupt the body’s normal functions. Coronaviruses are named after the Latin word ‘corona’, which means crown, because they are encased by a spiked shell which resembles a royal crown.
The coronavirus from Wuhan is one which has never been seen before this outbreak. It has been named SARS-CoV-2 by the International Committee on Taxonomy of Viruses. The name stands for Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome coronavirus 2.
Experts say the bug, which has killed around one in 50 patients since the outbreak began in December, is a ‘sister’ of the SARS illness which hit China in 2002, so has been named after it.
The disease that the virus causes has been named COVID-19, which stands for coronavirus disease 2019. The virus itself is called SARS-CoV-2.
Dr Helena Maier, from the Pirbright Institute, said: ‘Coronaviruses are a family of viruses that infect a wide range of different species including humans, cattle, pigs, chickens, dogs, cats and wild animals.
‘Until this new coronavirus was identified, there were only six different coronaviruses known to infect humans. Four of these cause a mild common cold-type illness, but since 2002 there has been the emergence of two new coronaviruses that can infect humans and result in more severe disease (Severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) and Middle East respiratory syndrome (MERS) coronaviruses).
‘Coronaviruses are known to be able to occasionally jump from one species to another and that is what happened in the case of SARS, MERS and the new coronavirus. The animal origin of the new coronavirus is not yet known.’
The first human cases were publicly reported from the Chinese city of Wuhan, where approximately 11million people live, after medics first started publicly reporting infections on December 31.
By January 8, 59 suspected cases had been reported and seven people were in critical condition. Tests were developed for the new virus and recorded cases started to surge.
The first person died that week and, by January 16, two were dead and 41 cases were confirmed. The next day, scientists predicted that 1,700 people had become infected, possibly up to 7,000.
Just a week after that, there had been more than 800 confirmed cases and those same scientists estimated that some 4,000 – possibly 9,700 – were infected in Wuhan alone. By that point, 26 people had died.
By January 27, more than 2,800 people were confirmed to have been infected, 81 had died, and estimates of the total number of cases ranged from 100,000 to 350,000 in Wuhan alone.
By January 29, the number of deaths had risen to 132 and cases were in excess of 6,000.
By February 5, there were more than 24,000 cases and 492 deaths.
By February 11, this had risen to more than 43,000 cases and 1,000 deaths.
A change in the way cases are confirmed on February 13 – doctors decided to start using lung scans as a formal diagnosis, as well as laboratory tests – caused a spike in the number of cases, to more than 60,000 and to 1,369 deaths.
Where does the virus come from?
According to scientists, the virus has almost certainly come from bats. Coronaviruses in general tend to originate in animals – the similar SARS and MERS viruses are believed to have originated in civet cats and camels, respectively.
The first cases of COVID-19 came from people visiting or working in a live animal market in the city, which has since been closed down for investigation.
Although the market is officially a seafood market, other dead and living animals were being sold there, including wolf cubs, salamanders, snakes, peacocks, porcupines and camel meat.
A study by the Wuhan Institute of Virology, published in February 2020 in the scientific journal Nature, found that the genetic make-up virus samples found in patients in China is 96 per cent similar to a coronavirus they found in bats.
However, there were not many bats at the market so scientists say it was likely there was an animal which acted as a middle-man, contracting it from a bat before then transmitting it to a human. It has not yet been confirmed what type of animal this was.
Dr Michael Skinner, a virologist at Imperial College London, was not involved with the research but said: ‘The discovery definitely places the origin of nCoV in bats in China.
‘We still do not know whether another species served as an intermediate host to amplify the virus, and possibly even to bring it to the market, nor what species that host might have been.’
So far the fatalities are quite low. Why are health experts so worried about it?
Experts say the international community is concerned about the virus because so little is known about it and it appears to be spreading quickly.
It is similar to SARS, which infected 8,000 people and killed nearly 800 in an outbreak in Asia in 2003, in that it is a type of coronavirus which infects humans’ lungs.
Another reason for concern is that nobody has any immunity to the virus because they’ve never encountered it before. This means it may be able to cause more damage than viruses we come across often, like the flu or common cold.
Speaking at a briefing in January, Oxford University professor, Dr Peter Horby, said: ‘Novel viruses can spread much faster through the population than viruses which circulate all the time because we have no immunity to them.
‘Most seasonal flu viruses have a case fatality rate of less than one in 1,000 people. Here we’re talking about a virus where we don’t understand fully the severity spectrum but it’s possible the case fatality rate could be as high as two per cent.’
If the death rate is truly two per cent, that means two out of every 100 patients who get it will die.
‘My feeling is it’s lower,’ Dr Horby added. ‘We’re probably missing this iceberg of milder cases. But that’s the current circumstance we’re in.
‘Two per cent case fatality rate is comparable to the Spanish Flu pandemic in 1918 so it is a significant concern globally.’
How does the virus spread?
The illness can spread between people just through coughs and sneezes, making it an extremely contagious infection. And it may also spread even before someone has symptoms.
It is believed to travel in the saliva and even through water in the eyes, therefore close contact, kissing, and sharing cutlery or utensils are all risky.
Originally, people were thought to be catching it from a live animal market in Wuhan city. But cases soon began to emerge in people who had never been there, which forced medics to realise it was spreading from person to person.
There is now evidence that it can spread third hand – to someone from a person who caught it from another person.
What does the virus do to you? What are the symptoms?
Once someone has caught the COVID-19 virus it may take between two and 14 days, or even longer, for them to show any symptoms – but they may still be contagious during this time.
If and when they do become ill, typical signs include a runny nose, a cough, sore throat and a fever (high temperature). The vast majority of patients – at least 97 per cent, based on available data – will recover from these without any issues or medical help.
In a small group of patients, who seem mainly to be the elderly or those with long-term illnesses, it can lead to pneumonia. Pneumonia is an infection in which the insides of the lungs swell up and fill with fluid. It makes it increasingly difficult to breathe and, if left untreated, can be fatal and suffocate people.
What have genetic tests revealed about the virus?
Scientists in China have recorded the genetic sequences of around 19 strains of the virus and released them to experts working around the world.
This allows others to study them, develop tests and potentially look into treating the illness they cause.
Examinations have revealed the coronavirus did not change much – changing is known as mutating – much during the early stages of its spread.
However, the director-general of China’s Center for Disease Control and Prevention, Gao Fu, said the virus was mutating and adapting as it spread through people.
This means efforts to study the virus and to potentially control it may be made extra difficult because the virus might look different every time scientists analyse it.
More study may be able to reveal whether the virus first infected a small number of people then change and spread from them, or whether there were various versions of the virus coming from animals which have developed separately.
How dangerous is the virus?
The virus has a death rate of around two per cent. This is a similar death rate to the Spanish Flu outbreak which, in 1918, went on to kill around 50million people.
However, experts say the true number of patients is likely considerably higher and therefore the death rate considerably lower. Imperial College London researchers estimate that there were 4,000 (up to 9,700) cases in Wuhan city alone up to January 18 – officially there were only 444 there to that date. If cases are in fact 100 times more common than the official figures, the virus may be far less dangerous than currently believed, but also far more widespread.
Experts say it is likely only the most seriously ill patients are seeking help and are therefore recorded – the vast majority will have only mild, cold-like symptoms. For those whose conditions do become more severe, there is a risk of developing pneumonia which can destroy the lungs and kill you.
Can the virus be cured?
The COVID-19 virus cannot currently be cured and it is proving difficult to contain.
Antibiotics do not work against viruses, so they are out of the question. Antiviral drugs can work, but the process of understanding a virus then developing and producing drugs to treat it would take years and huge amounts of money.
No vaccine exists for the coronavirus yet and it’s not likely one will be developed in time to be of any use in this outbreak, for similar reasons to the above.
The National Institutes of Health in the US, and Baylor University in Waco, Texas, say they are working on a vaccine based on what they know about coronaviruses in general, using information from the SARS outbreak. But this may take a year or more to develop, according to Pharmaceutical Technology.
Currently, governments and health authorities are working to contain the virus and to care for patients who are sick and stop them infecting other people.
People who catch the illness are being quarantined in hospitals, where their symptoms can be treated and they will be away from the uninfected public.
And airports around the world are putting in place screening measures such as having doctors on-site, taking people’s temperatures to check for fevers and using thermal screening to spot those who might be ill (infection causes a raised temperature).
However, it can take weeks for symptoms to appear, so there is only a small likelihood that patients will be spotted up in an airport.
Is this outbreak an epidemic or a pandemic?
The outbreak is an epidemic, which is when a disease takes hold of one community such as a country or region.
Although it has spread to dozens of countries, the outbreak is not yet classed as a pandemic, which is defined by the World Health Organization as the ‘worldwide spread of a new disease’.
The head of WHO’s global infectious hazard preparedness, Dr Sylvie Briand, said: ‘Currently we are not in a pandemic. We are at the phase where it is an epidemic with multiple foci, and we try to extinguish the transmission in each of these foci,’ the Guardian reported.
She said that most cases outside of Hubei had been ‘spillover’ from the epicentre, so the disease wasn’t actually spreading actively around the world.
Virus cases balloon in S. Korea as outbreak shifts, spreads
By HYUNG-JIN KIM and MATT SEDENSKY
Schools were shuttered, churches told worshipers to stay away and some mass gatherings were banned as cases of a new virus swelled Friday in South Korea, the newest front in a widening global outbreak.
The country said two people have died and 204 have been infected with the virus, quadruple the number of cases it had two days earlier, as a crisis centered in China has begun strongly reverberating elsewhere.
The multiplying caseload in South Korea showed the ease with which the illness can spread. Though initial infections were linked to China, new ones have not involved international travel.
“We have entered an emergency phase,” Prime Minister Chung Se-kyun said in televised comments at the start of a government meeting on the health emergency. “Our efforts until now had been focused on blocking the illness from entering the country. But we will now shift the focus on preventing the illness from spreading further in local communities.”
Daegu, a southeastern city of 2.5 million that is the country’s fourth largest, emerged as the focus of government efforts to contain the disease known as COVID-19, and Chung promised support to ease a shortage in hospital beds, medical personnel and equipment. Mayor Kwon Young-jin of Daegu has urged residents to stay inside, even wearing masks at home, to stem further infection.
The first case in Daegu was reported on Tuesday. By Friday, the city and its surrounding areas had 152, including South Korea’s first two fatalities from COVID-19.
Nationwide, the numbers told of a ballooning problem. There were 20 new cases reported Wednesday, 53 on Thursday and 100 on Friday.
The central government declared a “special management zone” around Daegu on Friday, which didn’t restrict movement of residents or supersede local officials’ power but served as official recognition of the problem.
Most of those cases have been linked to a single house of worship, a branch of the Shincheonji Church of Jesus, where a woman in her 60s attended two services before testing positive for the virus.
About 1,000 others who attended services with the woman have been isolated in their homes for screening, and health authorities say they’re trying to monitor thousands of other church members.
All 74 sites operated by the Shincheonji Church have been closed and worshipers have been told to instead watch services online for a sect whose leader claims to be an angel of Christ, but who is dismissed by many outsiders as a cult leader. Its teachings revolve largely around the Book of Revelation, a chapter of the New Testament known mostly for its apocalyptic foreshadowing.
Health and city officials say the woman eyed as a potential transmitter at the church had contact with some 1,160 people, both at the church and at a restaurant and a hospital where she was treated for injuries from a car accident. That raised fears that South Korea — which before Wednesday had recorded just 31 cases of the virus — should brace for a further surge.
“I hope South Korea will do everything to contain this outbreak at this early stage,” said Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, director general of the World Health Organization.
Usually bustling downtown streets of Daegu were nearly deserted Friday as people wearing face masks lined up at clinics seeking testing. Crowds formed in supermarkets where shelves of ramen and curry were nearly bare. Eight hundred area schools, due to start a new academic year on March 2, delayed their openings by a week.
“Panic is taking hold,” said Daegu resident Huh Mi-yeon. “People are scared of any situation where they would run into another person.”
Elsewhere in the country, angst grew too. In the capital of Seoul, major downtown rallies were banned, and fears of the virus led many to avoid shops and restaurants and instead eat at home and order necessities online. Buses and subways were full of mask-clad commuters.
The first three cases in the country’s 600,000-member military also sprung up on separate bases Friday, bringing added concern. A sailor on Jeju Island and an army officer in North Chungcheong province both tested positive. Both had made recent visits to Daegu, officials said. A third infection was reported in an air force officer who is based in Daegu but who had recently traveled to military headquarters in central South Korea, the defense ministry said, prompting the quarantine of 80 soldiers there.
Globally, more than 76,000 people have been infected in 27 countries, and more than 2,200 have died. Even as new alarms were sounded elsewhere in Asia, in China, where the vast majority of cases have occurred, officials have expressed optimism over the number of new infections, which has been trending downward. China said Friday 889 new cases were recorded in the preceding 24 hours and 118 additional deaths.
Story 1: Divided Democrats Decide New Hampshire’s Radical Extremist Democratic Socialist (REDS) Presidential Candidate in 2020 — The Winner Is Bernie Sanders — Videos–
Left or Liberal?
The Left Ruins Everything
Left but Really Right
Every American Needs To Hear This Speech
‘We’ve got this.’ New Hampshire state officials promise no repeat of Iowa caucus chaos as state holds first in the nation election
New Hampshire votes on Tuesday with polls closing at 8 p.m. ET
Amy Klobuchar won two of first three small towns that start voting at midnight
Candidates are making their closing arguments
Bernie Sanders leads in polls
Pete Buttigieg is searching for a win
Joe Biden is looking ahead to next round of voting in Nevada and South Carolina
Officials expect a victor Tuesday night – unlike Iowa caucuses
‘We’ve got this. We know what we’re doing here,’ Dem chair Ray Buckley said
Democrats are expected to have a winner Tuesday night after a tumulus start in their presidential primary process and officials hope a victor here offers some clarity on who the party will ultimately name to take on President Donald Trump in November.
‘We’ve got this. We know what we’re doing here. The only way it will last that long if the numbers are so close we have a virtual tie,’ New Hampshire Democratic Party chair Ray Buckley told reporters on a phone call Monday.
‘Everything here is paper ballot. Nothing is connected to the internet. The ballots are immediately impounded by the state police. There is just no question for anyone to have any fear,’ he added.
Amy Klobuchar visits a polling stop in Manchester
Elizabeth Warren brings donuts to a polling site Portsmouth
Small New Hampshire town votes for Bloomberg in primary
Polls close at 8 p.m. ET. Unlike Iowa, where party officials and volunteers run the caucuses, state officials run the New Hampshire primary. Both Republicans and Democrats are voting on Tuesday.
The real contest is among the Democrats, however, as President Trump is expected to win the Republican primary.
But one Democratic winner doesn’t mean the party will have their nomination all wrapped and ready to take on the president, who held a rally in Manchester Monday night to taunt his political rivals.
No single candidate has yet united the Democrats nationally and the current field of contenders represent all corners of the party: young, old, moderate, liberal, pragmatic, hopeful.
And where the candidates enter the field on Tuesday may not be where they exit.
Bernie Sanders held his final campaign rally with Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez Monday night
Bernie Sanders: The leader in the New Hampshire polls, Sanders wants the victory. He won the 2016 Democratic primary in New Hampshire but lost the nomination that year to Hillary Clinton. He and Pete Buttigieg are fighting over who came out on top in the Iowa caucuses (Buttigieg picked up the most delegates and Sanders is asking for a recanvass). He needs a clear cut New Hampshire victory to boost him to finish what he couldn’t in the last presidential cycle.
‘If we win here tomorrow, I think we’ve got a path to victory for the Democratic nomination,’ the Vermont senator told supporters at one of his rallies on Monday.
He closed out his campaigning Monday evening with over 7,500 attendees with Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and a performance by The Strokes.
Pete Buttigieg: Buttigieg touted himself the front runner after Iowa’s caucus debacle but now he needs to show he comes out on top when all the votes are counted. The youngest candidate in the field, he’s come under attack for his lack of experience but has argued his ability to bring out support makes up for never having held national office.
Pete Buttigieg walks and N.H. Rep. Annie Kuster while carrying doughnuts to a poling station in Hopkinton
‘It feels good out here,’ he told reporters on Monday.
He fell behind Sanders in the latest round of New Hampshire polls and started to down play a victory in the state in its final hours.
‘Look we are competing against home region competition, two New England senators I recognize that, but I still think we’re going to have a great night,’ he told NBC News in an interview that aired on the ‘Today’ show Tuesday morning, referring to Sanders and Elizabeth Warren.
Warren promises to continue fighting ahead of NH primary
But the former mayor was up and out early Tuesday morning, bringing donuts to a polling place in Hopkinton and appearing on MSNBC’s ‘Morning Joe.’
Amy Klobuchar changes into more comfortable shoes after a rally
Amy Klobuchar: A few polls put her in third place going into Tuesday, giving her momentum in the closing hours of the primary. A bronze medal keeps her campaign viable and the cash flowing in. She’s already guaranteed a spot on the Las Vegas debate stage thanks to her coming out of Iowa with one delegate but a third place finish or higher gives her bid a big boost going into the next round of contests in Nevada and South Carolina.
‘I need your help,’ Klobuchar told a rally in Exeter, New Hampshire, her voice breaking as she spoke the words.
‘Right now we are on the cusp of something really great,’ she said, ‘but I can’t call everyone you know. So I’m asking you to do that today.’
The Minnesota senator won two out of the three small northern New Hampshire towns that gather at their polling places at midnight: Hart’s Location and Millsfield.
Joe Biden and Elizabeth Warren: Polls show them tied for fourth, which is particularly troubling for the former vice president. Both candidates spent Monday explaining why their campaigns are viable and both have announced their next round of campaign stops after Tuesday’s vote is counted.
Joe Biden is looking ahead to the next round of contests
The big question mark is money. Do they have the funds to keep their campaigns afloat until they can rack up a primary win? And when will that win come? Nevada and South Carolina are the next two contests. The pressure will be on.
Warren visited her press bus on Monday to give a rare talk about the state of her campaign. The Massachusetts senator doesn’t typically discuss strategy.
‘I just have to keep fighting. That’s, that’s what it’s all about. I cannot say to all those little girls: ‘This got hard and I quit.’ My job is to persist,’ she said.
Biden also lowered expectations for New Hampshire.
Elizabeth Warren told reporters she has to ‘keep fighting’
‘It’s an uphill race here,’ he told CNN Monday night. ‘We’re running against two senators from neighboring states, has never been a good thing to happen to any other candidates going in the race.’
And he emphasized there are more contests to come.
‘The path is South Carolina, and going into Nevada and Super Tuesday,’ he told NBC News.
Andrew Yang: It’s unclear what path forward he has if he doesn’t have a decent showing in New Hampshire, where he invested both time and money heavily early on.
But, on the other end of this round, Michael Bloomberg and his billions are waiting for which ever Democratic contender emerges from the next round of contests in Nevada and South Carolina.
The former New York City mayor skipped the four early contests to focus his time and money on the Super Tuesday states, where a huge chunk of delegates will be awarded.
But, on Tuesday, all eyes are on New Hampshire and officials claim the contest is wide open.
‘This is anyone’s race to win. I still believe that and I truly do,’ Buckley, the Democratic chair, said Monday. ‘We have multiple candidates representing the perspective of all the voters so they all have choices.’
President Trump got into the action Monday with a rally in Manchester where he suggested Republicans could cause some mischief on Tuesday.
‘I hear a lot of Republicans tomorrow will vote for the weakest candidate possible of the Democrats,’ the president said. ‘My only problem is I’m trying to figure out who is their weakest candidate. I think they’re all weak.’
But only registered Democrats and voters not registered with either party can participate in the state’s Democratic presidential primary.
The spectra of the Iowa caucuses – where problems with an app the party developed to count the votes led to a hand count of paper ballots with delayed and questionable results – has haunted New Hampshire.
The candidates have joked that – as opposed to last week’s contest New Hampshire can count – but under the laughter is the fear that even if the state has a winner, there still won’t be a clear front runner for the nomination.
And that is what worries party elders, who are harboring fears by the time a nominee emerges, that person will be so damaged politically it’ll be 2016 all over again when Donald Trump defeated Hillary Clinton.
President Trump held a rally in Manchester Monday night and suggested Republicans could make some mischief
The Strokes performed at a Bernie Sanders rally Monday night
Sanders is leading by 8 points in the RealClearPolitics polling average of New Hampshire polls but the unexpected can happen.
Polls showed a third of New Hampshire voters remain undecided, making the last 24 hours in the state crucial for the candidates ahead of Tuesday’s primary.
Almost half New Hampshire voters – 47 per cent – are independents and tend to pick their candidates late in the process.
Attendance was heavy at rallies for all the candidates in the last 24 hours, indicating voters are still shopping for a contender to support.
New Hampshire Secretary of State Bill Gardner anticipates turn out Tuesday night 420,000 voters, which would be the most votes cast in a presidential primary when an incumbent is running for re-election.
On her way to work one morning
Down the path along side the lake
A tender hearted woman saw a poor half frozen snake
His pretty colored skin had been all frosted with the dew
“Poor thing, ” she cried, “I’ll take you in and I’ll take care of you”
“Take me in tender woman
Take me in, for heaven’s sake
Take me in, tender woman, ” sighed the snake
She wrapped him up all cozy in a comforter of silk
And laid him by her fireside with some honey and some milk
She hurried home from work that night and soon as she arrived
She found that pretty snake she’d taken to had been revived
“Take me in, tender woman
Take me in, for heaven’s sake
Take me in, tender woman, ” sighed the snake
She clutched him to her bosom, “You’re so beautiful, ” she cried
“But if I hadn’t brought you in by now you might have died”
She stroked his pretty skin again and kissed and held him tight
Instead of saying thanks, the snake gave her a vicious bite
“Take me in, tender woman
Take me in, for heaven’s sake
Take me in, tender woman, ” sighed the snake
“I saved you, ” cried the woman
“And you’ve bitten me, but why?
You know your bite is poisonous and now I’m going to die”
“Oh shut up, silly woman, ” said the reptile with a grin
“You knew damn well I was a snake before you took me in
“Take me in, tender woman
Take me in, for heaven’s sake
Take me in, tender woman, ” sighed the snake
Despite their promises to the contrary, every year, politicians continue to spend hundreds of billions of dollars more than the government takes in. And every year, they put it on the national credit card and the bill grows bigger. That bill currently averages $67,000 for every single American. If you’re a family of three, that’s over $200,000. The Heritage Foundation’s Romina Boccia explains how it’s not too late to save the incredible promise that is America. But first, we have to convince leaders to end their runaway spending habits and adopt spending controls. View more: https://www.heritage.org/budget-and-s…
How to Solve America’s Spending Problem
The Bigger the Government…
Why Private Investment Works & Govt. Investment Doesn’t
Most Americans agree that the health care system in the United States is in need of an overhaul. What many are not in agreement on is how best to do it. As we weigh our options, The Heritage Foundation’s Genevieve Wood explains a few basic facts you need to know. View more: https://www.heritage.org/health-care-…
American colleges and universities are failing in one of their most basic missions: to equip students with the tools they need for a career. Many students graduate ill-prepared to earn a living and pay off the debt they’ve accumulated getting their degrees. Forty percent of those who start college don’t finish within six years. Additionally, students are often subject to indoctrination into socialist ideology. They face hostility toward opinions that don’t conform to the predominantly leftist thinking on campus. They’re also immersed in identity politics that pit students of different backgrounds against one another. Despite these problems, colleges continue to raise tuition. The Heritage Foundation’s Lindsey Burke explains how to stop the sharp rise in both college tuition and student debt by getting the federal government out of the student loan business. View more: https://www.heritage.org/education/he…
How the Liberal University Hurts the Liberal Student
When President Lyndon Johnson launched his War on Poverty in the 1960s, he pledged to eliminate poverty in America. But more than five decades, several welfare programs, and $25 trillion later, the welfare system has largely failed the poor. The Heritage Foundation’s Genevieve Wood explains that the United States currently spends about a trillion dollars a year on over 90 different federal, state, and local welfare programs. Yet around 12 percent of Americans are still considered poor. We are clearly spending a lot of money so why do we still have such a high poverty rate? View more: https://www.heritage.org/poverty-and-…
Immigration is one of the fundamental building blocks that help make America the unique nation that it is. But the debate over border security and immigration has become toxic because politicians have put politics before principles. And reasonable Americans find themselves trapped between zealots on both sides. So what does a thoughtful agenda for American immigration reform look like? The Heritage Foundation’s Genevieve Wood takes us through four guiding principles to keep us focused on what is best for the welfare of all Americans, both those of today and those of the future. View more: https://www.heritage.org/immigration/…
In the 1970s, Americans were told we were in a global cooling crisis and if something weren’t done, we’d enter a new ice age. When that didn’t happen, a few decades later we were told that entire nations could be wiped off the face of the Earth by rising sea levels if the global warming trend was not reversed by the year 2000. Despite the consistent failure of these apocalyptic warnings, that hasn’t stopped climate change alarmism. We’re now being told we only have 12 years to combat climate change and the solution is to fundamentally dismantle the system of free enterprise. That means Washington controls things like how we produce our energy, what food we eat and what type of cars we drive. The question is, even if we believed their alarmist, catastrophic predictions, would their proposals work? The Heritage Foundation’s Nick Loris helps dispel some environmental myths, and explains how America can ensure affordable, reliable, and cleaner energy by keeping our economy growing. View more: https://www.heritage.org/environment/…
Can Climate Models Predict Climate Change?
Is Climate Change Our Biggest Problem?
Climate Activists Use Kids to Fuel Hysteria
Is Climate Change an Existential Threat?
You Can’t Fix Other People, But You Can Fix Yourself
Pew Research 2019 survey: ‘Climate Change’ Still Ranks As Low Priority – 17th place out of 18
Pew Research polling found: ‘Dealing with global warming’ ended up in second last place in 2007. Between 2008 and 2013, it ranked last (select a year and then ‘Overall’ here). Here’s what happened after that:
Moral of the story: There has never been any evidence that climate change is a top concern for most Americans. This is not a crowd-pleaser or a vote-getter.
What do you think is the most important problem facing the country today?
Recent Trend
2020 Jan
2019 Dec
2019 Nov
2019 Oct
2019 Sep
2019 Aug
2019 Jul
%
%
%
%
%
%
%
ECONOMIC PROBLEMS (NET)
10
11
13
11
15
11
14
Economy in general
2
2
4
3
4
3
3
Gap between rich and poor
2
1
2
1
1
1
2
Unemployment/Jobs
1
2
2
2
3
2
2
Federal budget deficit/Federal debt
1
2
2
2
2
3
2
Taxes
1
1
1
1
1
1
1
Lack of money
1
1
1
1
1
1
1
Wage issues
1
*
1
1
1
1
1
Foreign trade/Trade deficit
—
*
*
1
1
1
*
Corporate corruption
*
*
—
*
*
*
*
High cost of living/Inflation
*
*
*
*
1
*
1
Fuel/Oil prices
—
*
—
—
—
*
*
NON-ECONOMIC PROBLEMS (NET)
82
82
85
86
84
86
85
The government/Poor leadership
28
25
33
34
23
22
23
Immigration
6
10
11
13
16
18
27
Healthcare
6
5
6
5
5
6
7
Poverty/Hunger/Homelessness
5
6
4
3
3
3
3
Unifying the country
5
4
5
5
4
4
4
Ethics/moral/religious/family decline
5
3
3
3
3
2
3
Environment/Pollution/Climate change
4
5
3
4
6
3
4
Lack of respect for each other
4
4
3
3
2
4
3
Race relations/Racism
3
6
5
6
6
8
7
Guns/Gun control
2
1
2
2
5
8
1
Foreign policy/Foreign aid/Focus overseas
2
1
1
1
1
*
1
Education
2
1
2
2
2
2
3
Wars/War (nonspecific)/Fear of war
2
*
1
1
1
1
1
Situation in Iraq/ISIS
2
—
*
*
*
—
1
Drugs
1
2
2
2
2
1
2
National security
1
2
1
*
1
1
*
Elections/Election reform
1
2
1
1
1
*
1
Crime/Violence
1
2
2
2
1
4
1
Judicial system/Courts/Laws
1
1
1
2
2
1
1
International issues, problems
1
1
1
1
1
1
1
Welfare
1
1
*
*
1
*
1
The media
1
1
1
1
1
1
1
Lack of military defense
1
1
1
*
*
1
1
Terrorism
1
*
1
1
*
1
*
Abortion
1
*
2
1
1
1
1
War/conflict between Middle East nations
1
—
—
*
*
—
—
Children’s behavior/Way they are raised
*
1
*
*
*
*
*
Advancement of Computers/Technology
*
*
*
*
—
*
*
Gay/Lesbian rights
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
Care for the elderly/Medicare
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
Situation with Russia
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
School shootings
—
1
*
*
1
—
*
Situation with China
—
*
1
*
1
*
*
Social Security
—
*
1
*
*
*
*
Situation with North Korea
—
*
—
*
—
—
1
Other non-economic
6
1
5
5
4
5
4
No opinion
7
4
3
3
3
3
6
Total
112%
108%
119%
117%
117%
117%
127%
* Less than 0.5%; Percentages total more than 100% due to multiple mentions.
GALLUP
Which political party do you think can do a better job of handling the problem you think is most important — the Republican Party or the Democratic Party?
Climate Change Still Ranks As Low Priority In Polls
by Donna Laframboise
Recently, I reported on a poll that Gallup has conducted in America every month of every year since 2001. Admirably, it makes no attempt to prompt or influence.
It asks people to name the most important problem facing the country, then it records their answers.
If one seeks honest, genuine insight into ordinary people’s lives, that’s a great approach.
Pew Research Center, another American polling outfit, conducts a different kind of survey. For 25 years (from 1994 to 2019 inclusive), it has read members of the public a long list of pre-selected topics in random order. People have been asked to attach a label to each one.
Should it be a ‘top priority’ for the President and Congress this year? Should it be a lower priority? Is it unimportant? Does it deserve no attention at all?
In 2007, Pew added ‘global warming’ to this list of potential top priorities. In 2016, it started calling it ‘climate change’ instead.
Last year, 44% of respondents told Pew that ‘Dealing with global climate change’ should be a top priority.
That sounds significant until you notice thatevery single item on the list received at least 39% support.
In such cases, raw percentages are meaningless. What matters is how a topic ranks compared to its fellows. Those results couldn’t be clearer.
In 2019, climate change ended up in 17th place out of 18.
70% of people said strengthening the economy should be a top priority.
69% said reducing healthcare costs should be.
68% said the education system needs attention.
Those are very strong numbers, involving more than two-thirds of the population. What came next?
4. ‘Defending the country from future terrorist attacks’ – 67%
5. ‘Taking steps to make the Social Security system financially sound’ – 67%
6. ‘Taking steps to make the Medicare system financially sound’ – 67%
7. ‘Dealing with the problems of poor and needy people’ – 60%
8. ‘Protecting the environment’ – 56%
9. ‘Dealing with the issue of immigration’ – 51%
10. ‘Improving the job situation’ – 50%
11. ‘Reducing crime’ – 50%
12. ‘Dealing with drug addiction’ – 49%
13. ‘Reducing the budget deficit’ – 48%
14. ‘Addressing race relations in this country’ – 46%
15. ‘Strengthening the US military’ – 45%
16. ‘Improving the country’s roads, bridges and public transportation systems’ – 45%
17. ‘Dealing with global climate change’ – 44%
18. ‘Dealing with global trade issues’ – 39%
In other words, another long-running US poll tells us the public’s climate concerns are weak. Ask people if they care about it, and many will say ‘yes.’
But they feel more urgency about a long list of other issues.
‘Dealing with global warming’ ended up in second last place in 2007. Between 2008 and 2013, it ranked last (select a year and then ‘Overall’ here). Here’s what happened after that:
Moral of the story: There has never been any evidence that climate change is a top concern for most Americans. This is not a crowd-pleaser or a vote-getter.
Story 1: Solid January 2020 Jobs Report: 225,000 New Non-farm Payroll Jobs Created in January and Labor Participation Rate Increased to 63.4% with Over 729,000 New Participants in Labor Force! — Videos —
Alternate Unemployment Charts
The seasonally-adjusted SGS Alternate Unemployment Rate reflects current unemployment reporting methodology adjusted for SGS-estimated long-term discouraged workers, who were defined out of official existence in 1994. That estimate is added to the BLS estimate of U-6 unemployment, which includes short-term discouraged workers.
The U-3 unemployment rate is the monthly headline number. The U-6 unemployment rate is the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ (BLS) broadest unemployment measure, including short-term discouraged and other marginally-attached workers as well as those forced to work part-time because they cannot find full-time employment.
President Donald Trump never misses an opportunity to plug the strong employment picture for which he takes credit, and today he earned more bragging rights:
The Labor Department’s Bureau of Labor Statistics said the economy created 225,000 in January, well above estimates. BLS says notable job gains occurred in construction, in health care, and in transportation and warehousing.
The number of employed Americans dipped in January to 158,714,000 — down 89,000 from December’s record high.
The unemployment rate ticked up a tenth of a point to 3.6 percent in January.
But the labor force participation rate reached a Trump-era high of 63.4 percent, up from 63.2 percent in December, because the civilian labor force increased by 574,000 in January, after accounting for annual adjustments to population controls, BLS said.*
In January, the civilian non-institutional population in the United States was 259,502,000. That included all people 16 and older who did not live in an institution (such as a prison, nursing home or long-term care facility).
Of that civilian non-institutional population, 164,606,000 were participating in the labor force, meaning that they either had a job or were actively seeking one during the last month. This resulted in a labor force participation rate of 63.4 percent, the highest it’s been since June 2013.
The number of Americans counted as not in the labor force — meaning they did not have a job and were not looking for one — dropped by 442,000 in January (after population control adjustments). This number hovers around 95,000,000, partly because of retiring baby boomers.
Among the major worker groups, the unemployment rates for adult men (3.3 percent), adult women (3.2 percent), teenagers (12.2 percent), Whites (3.1 percent), Blacks (6.0 percent), Asians (3.0 percent), and Hispanics (4.3 percent) showed little or no change over the month.
The change in total nonfarm payroll employment for November was revised up by 5,000 from +256,000 to +261,000, and the change for December was revised up by 2,000 from +145,000 to +147,000. With these revisions, employment gains in November and December combined were 7,000 higher than previously reported.
In January, average hourly earnings for all employees on private nonfarm payrolls rose by 7 cents to $28.44. Over the past 12 months, average hourly earnings have increased by 3.1 percent.
The current economic expansion, now in its 11th year, became the longest in U.S. history on July 1, 2019, beating the previous record that lasted from March 1991 through March 2001.
President Trump bragged about the economy Tuesday night in his State of the Union speech:
In just over two years since the election, we have launched an unprecedented economic boom — a boom that has rarely been seen before. There’s been nothing like it. We have created 5.3 million new jobs and, importantly, added 600,000 new manufacturing jobs — something which almost everyone said was impossible to do. But the fact is, we are just getting started.
Wages are rising at the fastest pace in decades and growing for blue-collar workers, who I promised to fight for. They’re growing faster than anyone else thought possible. Nearly 5 million Americans have been lifted off food stamps. The U.S. economy is growing almost twice as fast today as when I took office. And we are considered, far and away, the hottest economy anywhere in the world. Not even close.
Unemployment has reached the lowest rate in over half a century. African American, Hispanic American, and Asian American unemployment have all reached their lowest levels ever recorded. Unemployment for Americans with disabilities has also reached an all-time low. More people are working now than at any time in the history of our country — 157 million people at work.
*(BLS explained that the January 2020 data includes updated population estimates developed by the Census Bureau’s household survey. “Each year,” BLS said, “the Census Bureau updates the estimates to reflect new information and assumptions about the growth of the population since the previous decennial census. The change in population reflected in the new estimates results from adjustments for net international migration, updated vital statistics, and estimation methodology improvements.”)
Transmission of material in this news release is embargoed until USDL-20-0180
8:30 a.m. (EST) Friday, February 7, 2020
Technical information:
Household data: (202) 691-6378 * cpsinfo@bls.gov * www.bls.gov/cps
Establishment data: (202) 691-6555 * cesinfo@bls.gov * www.bls.gov/ces
Media contact: (202) 691-5902 * PressOffice@bls.gov
THE EMPLOYMENT SITUATION -- JANUARY 2020
Total nonfarm payroll employment rose by 225,000 in January, and the unemployment rate
was little changed at 3.6 percent, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reported today.
Notable job gains occurred in construction, in health care, and in transportation and
warehousing.
This news release presents statistics from two monthly surveys. The household survey
measures labor force status, including unemployment, by demographic characteristics.
The establishment survey measures nonfarm employment, hours, and earnings by industry.
For more information about the concepts and statistical methodology used in these two
surveys, see the Technical Note.
___________________________________________________________________________________
| |
| Changes to The Employment Situation Data |
| |
| Establishment survey data have been revised as a result of the annual |
| benchmarking process and the updating of seasonal adjustment factors. In |
| addition, several changes have been made to household survey data, including |
| the annual update of population estimates. See the notes at the end of the |
| news release for more information. |
|___________________________________________________________________________________|
Household Survey Data
Both the unemployment rate, at 3.6 percent, and the number of unemployed persons, at
5.9 million, changed little in January.(See table A-1. For information about annual
population adjustments to the household survey estimates, see the note at the end of
the news release and tables B and C.)
Among the major worker groups, the unemployment rates for adult men (3.3 percent),
adult women (3.2 percent), teenagers (12.2 percent), Whites (3.1 percent), Blacks
(6.0 percent), Asians (3.0 percent), and Hispanics (4.3 percent) showed little or
no change over the month. (See tables A-1, A-2, and A-3.)
Among the unemployed, the number of reentrants to the labor force increased by
183,000 in January to 1.8 million but was little changed over the year. (Reentrants
are persons who previously worked but were not in the labor force prior to beginning
their job search.) (See table A-11.)
The number of long-term unemployed (those jobless for 27 weeks or more), at 1.2 million,
was unchanged in January. These individuals accounted for 19.9 percent of the unemployed.
(See table A-12.)
After accounting for the annual adjustments to the population controls, the civilian
labor force rose by 574,000 in January, and the labor force participation rate edged
up by 0.2 percentage point to 63.4 percent. The employment-population ratio, at 61.2
percent, changed little over the month but was up by 0.5 percentage point over the year.
(See table A-1. For additional information about the effects of the population adjustments,
see table C.)
The number of persons employed part time for economic reasons, at 4.2 million, was
essentially unchanged in January. These individuals, who would have preferred full-time
employment, were working part time because their hours had been reduced or they were
unable to find full-time jobs. (See table A-8.)
The number of persons marginally attached to the labor force, at 1.3 million, changed
little in January. These individuals were not in the labor force, wanted and were available
for work, and had looked for a job sometime in the prior 12 months. They were not counted
as unemployed because they had not searched for work in the 4 weeks preceding the survey
for a variety of reasons, such as belief that no jobs are available for them (referred
to as discouraged workers), school attendance, or family responsibilities. Discouraged
workers numbered 337,000 in January, little changed over the month. (See Summary table A.)
Establishment Survey Data
Total nonfarm payroll employment increased by 225,000 in January, compared with an
average monthly gain of 175,000 in 2019.Notable job gains occurred in construction,
in health care, and in transportation and warehousing. (See table B-1. For information
about the annual benchmark process, see the note at the end of the news release and table A.)
In January, construction employment rose by 44,000. Most of the gain occurred in specialty
trade contractors, with increases in both the residential (+18,000) and nonresidential
(+17,000) components. Construction added an average of 12,000 jobs per month in 2019.
Health care added 36,000 jobs in January, with gains in ambulatory health care services
(+23,000) and hospitals (+10,000). Health care has added 361,000 jobs over the past 12 months.
Employment in transportation and warehousing increased by 28,000 in January. Job gains
occurred in couriers and messengers (+14,000) and in warehousing and storage (+6,000).
Over the year, employment in transportation and warehousing has increased by 106,000.
Employment in leisure and hospitality continued to trend up in January (+36,000). Over
the past 6 months, the industry has added 288,000 jobs.
Employment continued on an upward trend in professional and business services in January
(+21,000), increasing by 390,000 over the past 12 months.
Manufacturing employment changed little in January (-12,000) and has shown little movement,
on net, over the past 12 months. Motor vehicles and parts lost 11,000 jobs over the month.
Employment in other major industries, including mining, wholesale trade, retail trade,
information, financial activities, and government, changed little over the month.
In January, average hourly earnings for all employees on private nonfarm payrolls rose by
7 cents to $28.44. Over the past 12 months, average hourly earnings have increased by
3.1 percent. Average hourly earnings of private-sector production and nonsupervisory employees
were $23.87 in January, little changed over the month (+3 cents). (See tables B-3 and B-8.)
The average workweek for all employees on private nonfarm payrolls was unchanged at 34.3
hours in January. In manufacturing, the average workweek remained at 40.4 hours, while
overtime edged down 0.1 hour to 3.1 hours. The average workweek of private-sector production
and nonsupervisory employees edged up by 0.1 hour to 33.6 hours. (See tables B-2 and B-7.)
The change in total nonfarm payroll employment for November was revised up by 5,000 from
+256,000 to +261,000, and the change for December was revised up by 2,000 from +145,000 to
+147,000. With these revisions, employment gains in November and December combined were
7,000 higher than previously reported. (Monthly revisions result from additional reports
received from businesses and government agencies since the last published estimates and from
the recalculation of seasonal factors. The annual benchmark process also contributed to the
November and December revisions.) After revisions, job gains have averaged 211,000 over the
last 3 months.
_____________
The Employment Situation for February is scheduled to be released on
Friday, March 6, 2020, at 8:30 a.m. (EST).
____________________________________________________________________________________
| |
| Changes to Household Survey Data |
| |
| Effective with this news release, two not seasonally adjusted series previously |
| displayed in Summary table A--persons marginally attached to the labor force and |
| discouraged workers--have been replaced with new seasonally adjusted series. The |
| new seasonally adjusted series are available in the BLS online database back to |
| 1994. Not seasonally adjusted data for persons marginally attached to the labor |
| force and for discouraged workers will continue to be published in table A-16. |
| These series are also available in the BLS online database back to 1994. |
| |
| Persons marginally attached to the labor force and discouraged workers are |
| inputs into three alternative measures of labor underutilization displayed in |
| table A-15. Effective with this news release, data for U-4, U-5, and U-6 in |
| table A-15 reflect the new seasonally adjusted series. Changes to historical |
| data were negligible. Revised data back to 1994 are available in the BLS online |
| database. Not seasonally adjusted series for the alternative measures are |
| unaffected. |
| |
| Effective with data for January 2020, occupation estimates in table A-13 |
| reflect the introduction of the 2018 Census occupation classification system |
| into the household survey. This occupation classification system is derived |
| from the 2018 Standard Occupational Classification (SOC) system. Historical |
| data have not been revised. Beginning with data for January 2020, occupation |
| estimates are not strictly comparable with earlier years. |
| |
| In addition, industry estimates in table A-14 reflect the introduction of the |
| 2017 Census industry classification system, which is derived from the 2017 |
| North American Industry Classification System (NAICS). The classification |
| changes are minor and do not involve re-classification of industries between |
| the broader industry sectors. |
| |
| Beginning with data for January 2020, marital status estimates are not strictly |
| comparable with earlier years. Estimates of married persons now refer to those |
| in opposite-sex and same-sex marriages. Prior to January 2020, these estimates |
| referred only to those in opposite-sex marriages. Persons with a same-sex |
| spouse were previously classified in other marital status categories, such as |
| "women who maintain families." These changes affect marital status estimates in |
| tables A-9 and A-10. (Note that not all marital status categories are presented |
| in these tables. BLS has not separately tabulated estimates for persons with an |
| opposite-sex spouse and persons with a same-sex spouse.) Historical data have |
| not been revised. |
|____________________________________________________________________________________|
Revisions to Establishment Survey Data
In accordance with annual practice, the establishment survey data released today
have been benchmarked to reflect comprehensive counts of payroll jobs for March 2019.
These counts are derived principally from the Quarterly Census of Employment and Wages
(QCEW), which counts jobs covered by the Unemployment Insurance (UI) tax system. The
benchmark process results in revisions to not seasonally adjusted data from April 2018
forward. BLS revised seasonally adjusted data from January 2015 forward. In addition,
both seasonally adjusted and unadjusted data for some series incorporate other
revisions prior to 2015.
The total nonfarm employment level for March 2019 was revised downward by 514,000
(-505,000 on a not seasonally adjusted basis), or -0.3 percent. The absolute average
benchmark revision over the past 10 years is 0.2 percent.
The over-the-year change in total nonfarm employment for 2019 was revised from
+2,108,000 to +2,096,000 (seasonally adjusted). Table A presents revised total nonfarm
employment data on a seasonally adjusted basis from January to December 2019.
All revised historical establishment survey data are available on the BLS website at
www.bls.gov/ces/data/home.htm. In addition, an article that discusses the benchmark
and post-benchmark revisions and other technical issues is available at
www.bls.gov/web/empsit/cesbmart.htm.
Table A. Revisions to total nonfarm employment, January to December 2019, seasonally
adjusted
(Numbers in thousands)
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
| |
| Level | Over-the-month change
|---------------------------------------------------------------------
Year and month | | As | | | As |
| As |previously | Difference| As |previously| Difference
| revised |published | | revised |published |
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
| | | | | |
2019 | | | | | |
| | | | | |
January......... | 150,134 | 150,587 | -453 | 269 | 312 | -43
February........ | 150,135 | 150,643 | -508 | 1 | 56 | -55
March........... | 150,282 | 150,796 | -514 | 147 | 153 | -6
April........... | 150,492 | 151,012 | -520 | 210 | 216 | -6
May............. | 150,577 | 151,074 | -497 | 85 | 62 | 23
June............ | 150,759 | 151,252 | -493 | 182 | 178 | 4
July............ | 150,953 | 151,418 | -465 | 194 | 166 | 28
August.......... | 151,160 | 151,637 | -477 | 207 | 219 | -12
September....... | 151,368 | 151,830 | -462 | 208 | 193 | 15
October......... | 151,553 | 151,982 | -429 | 185 | 152 | 33
November........ | 151,814 | 152,238 | -424 | 261 | 256 | 5
December(p)..... | 151,961 | 152,383 | -422 | 147 | 145 | 2
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
(p) = preliminary.
Adjustments to Population Estimates for the Household Survey
Effective with data for January 2020, updated population estimates were incorporated into
the household survey. Population estimates for the household survey are developed by the
U.S. Census Bureau. Each year, the Census Bureau updates the estimates to reflect new
information and assumptions about the growth of the population since the previous decennial
census. The change in population reflected in the new estimates results from adjustments
for net international migration, updated vital statistics, and estimation methodology
improvements.
In accordance with usual practice, BLS will not revise the official household survey estimates
for December 2019 and earlier months. To show the impact of the population adjustments,
however, differences in selected December 2019 labor force series based on the old and new
population estimates are shown in table B.
The adjustments decreased the estimated size of the civilian noninstitutional population in
December by 811,000, the civilian labor force by 524,000, employment by 507,000, and
unemployment by 17,000. The number of persons not in the labor force was decreased by 287,000.
The total unemployment rate, employment-population ratio, and labor force participation rate
were unaffected.
Data users are cautioned that these annual population adjustments can affect the comparability
of household data series over time. Table C shows the effect of the introduction of new
population estimates on the comparison of selected labor force measures between December 2019
and January 2020. Additional information on the population adjustments and their effect on
national labor force estimates is available at
www.bls.gov/web/empsit/cps-pop-control-adjustments.pdf.
Population controls for veterans, which are derived from a Department of Veterans Affairs'
population model and are updated periodically, have also been updated with the release of
data for January 2020. Historical data have not been revised.
Table B. Effect of the updated population controls on December 2019 estimates by sex, race, and Hispanic or Latino ethnicity, not seasonally adjusted
(Numbers in thousands)
Category
Total
Men
Women
White
Black or
African
Ameri-
can
Asian
Hispanic or
Latino
ethnicity
Civilian noninstitutional population
-811
-403
-408
-461
-59
-273
-323
Civilian labor force
-524
-289
-235
-297
-41
-171
-219
Participation rate
0
0
0
0
0
0
-0.1
Employed
-507
-279
-227
-287
-39
-167
-210
Employment-population ratio
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
Unemployed
-17
-10
-9
-10
-2
-4
-9
Unemployment rate
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
Not in labor force
-287
-115
-172
-164
-18
-102
-104
NOTE: Detail may not sum to totals because of rounding. Estimates for the above race groups (White, Black or African American, and Asian) do not sum to totals because data are not presented for all races. Persons whose ethnicity is identified as Hispanic or Latino may be of any race.
Table C. December 2019-January 2020 changes in selected labor force measures, with adjustments for population control effects
(Numbers in thousands)
Category
Dec.-Jan.
change, as
published
2020
population
control effect
Dec.-Jan. change, after
removing the
population control
effect(1)
Civilian noninstitutional population
-679
-811
132
Civilian labor force
50
-524
574
Participation rate
0.2
0
0.2
Employed
-89
-507
418
Employment-population ratio
0.2
0
0.2
Unemployed
139
-17
156
Unemployment rate
0.1
0
0.1
Not in labor force
-729
-287
-442
(1) This Dec.-Jan. change is calculated by subtracting the population control effect from the over-the-month change in the published seasonally adjusted estimates.
Employment Situation Summary Table A. Household data, seasonally adjusted
HOUSEHOLD DATA
Summary table A. Household data, seasonally adjusted[Numbers in thousands]
Category
Jan.
2019
Nov.
2019
Dec.
2019
Jan.
2020
Change from:
Dec.
2019-
Jan.
2020
Employment status
Civilian noninstitutional population
258,239
260,020
260,181
259,502
–
Civilian labor force
163,142
164,347
164,556
164,606
–
Participation rate
63.2
63.2
63.2
63.4
–
Employed
156,627
158,536
158,803
158,714
–
Employment-population ratio
60.7
61.0
61.0
61.2
–
Unemployed
6,516
5,811
5,753
5,892
–
Unemployment rate
4.0
3.5
3.5
3.6
–
Not in labor force
95,097
95,673
95,625
94,896
–
Unemployment rates
Total, 16 years and over
4.0
3.5
3.5
3.6
–
Adult men (20 years and over)
3.7
3.2
3.1
3.3
–
Adult women (20 years and over)
3.6
3.2
3.2
3.2
–
Teenagers (16 to 19 years)
12.9
12.0
12.6
12.2
–
White
3.5
3.2
3.2
3.1
–
Black or African American
6.8
5.6
5.9
6.0
–
Asian
3.1
2.6
2.5
3.0
–
Hispanic or Latino ethnicity
4.8
4.2
4.2
4.3
–
Total, 25 years and over
3.2
2.9
2.8
2.9
–
Less than a high school diploma
5.7
5.3
5.2
5.5
–
High school graduates, no college
3.7
3.7
3.7
3.8
–
Some college or associate degree
3.4
2.9
2.7
2.8
–
Bachelor’s degree and higher
2.4
2.0
1.9
2.0
–
Reason for unemployment
Job losers and persons who completed temporary jobs
3,060
2,804
2,686
2,665
–
Job leavers
816
776
829
836
–
Reentrants
1,944
1,663
1,655
1,838
–
New entrants
607
581
551
557
–
Duration of unemployment
Less than 5 weeks
2,319
2,026
2,065
2,059
–
5 to 14 weeks
1,999
1,753
1,730
1,755
–
15 to 26 weeks
898
865
812
887
–
27 weeks and over
1,259
1,219
1,186
1,166
–
Employed persons at work part time
Part time for economic reasons
5,105
4,288
4,148
4,182
–
Slack work or business conditions
3,402
2,634
2,657
2,655
–
Could only find part-time work
1,413
1,259
1,215
1,294
–
Part time for noneconomic reasons
20,984
21,532
21,586
22,154
–
Persons not in the labor force
Marginally attached to the labor force
1,498
1,244
1,230
1,342
–
Discouraged workers
418
316
289
337
–
– December – January changes in household data are not shown due to the introduction of updated population controls.
NOTE: Persons whose ethnicity is identified as Hispanic or Latino may be of any race. Detail for the seasonally adjusted data shown in this table will not necessarily add to totals because of the independent seasonal adjustment of the various series. Updated population controls are introduced annually with the release of January data.
Footnotes
(1) Includes other industries, not shown separately.
(2) Data relate to production employees in mining and logging and manufacturing, construction employees in construction, and nonsupervisory employees in the service-providing industries.
(3) The indexes of aggregate weekly hours are calculated by dividing the current month’s estimates of aggregate hours by the corresponding annual average aggregate hours.
(4) The indexes of aggregate weekly payrolls are calculated by dividing the current month’s estimates of aggregate weekly payrolls by the corresponding annual average aggregate weekly payrolls.
(5) Figures are the percent of industries with employment increasing plus one-half of the industries with unchanged employment, where 50 percent indicates an equal balance between industries with increasing and decreasing employment.
(P) Preliminary
NOTE: Data have been revised to reflect March 2019 benchmark levels and updated seasonal adjustment factors.
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*These estimates are preliminary and based on data from CDC’s weekly influenza surveillance reports summarizing key influenza activity indicators.
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Story 1: President Trumps Declares A National Emergency — Unleashes Full Power of United States Government — $50 Billion in New Funding To Deal With COVID-19 Pandemic — Videos
BREAKING: Donald Trump declares a national emergency
Trump declares National Emergency over coronavirus
Trump declares national emergency over coronavirus pandemic
Tucker: Regular life is all but suspended
Hannity: Major businesses working with Trump on coronavirus
Trump declares virus emergency; Pelosi announces aid deal
President Donald Trump on Friday declared the coronavirus pandemic a national emergency in order to free up more money and resources. But he denied any responsibility for delays in making testing available for the new virus, whose spread has roiled markets and disrupted the lives of everyday Americans.
Speaking from the Rose Garden, Trump said, “I am officially declaring a national emergency,” unleashing as much as $50 billion for state and local governments to respond to the outbreak.
Trump also announced a range of executive actions, including a new public-private partnership to expand coronavirus testing capabilities with drive-through locations, as his administration has come under fire for being too slow in making the test available.
Trump said, “I don’t take responsibility at all” for the slow rollout of testing.
Late Friday, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi announced a deal with the Trump administration for an aid package from Congress that aims at direct relief to Americans — free testing, two weeks of sick pay for workers, enhanced unemployment benefits and bolstered food programs.
“We are proud to have reached an agreement with the Administration to resolve outstanding challenges, and now will soon pass the Families First Coronavirus Response Act,” Pelosi announced in a letter to colleagues. The House was poised to vote.
The crush of late-day activity capped a tumultuous week in Washington as the fast-moving virus shuttered the capital’s power centers, roiled financial markets and left ordinary Americans suddenly navigating through self-quarantines, school closures and a changed way of life.
The White House was under enormous pressure, dealing with the crisis on multiple fronts as it encroached ever closer on the president.
Trump has been known to flout public health advice — eagerly shaking hands during the more than hour-long afternoon event — but acknowledged he “most likely” will be tested now after having been in contact with several officials who have tested positive for the virus. “Fairly soon,” he said.
Still, Trump said officials don’t want people taking the test unless they have certain symptoms. “We don’t want people without symptoms to go and do that test,” Trump said, adding, “It’s totally unnecessary.”
Additionally, Trump took a number of other actions to bolster energy markets, ease the financial burden for Americans with student loans and give medical professionals additional “flexibility” in treating patients during the public health crisis.
“Through a very collective action and shared sacrifice, national determination, we will overcome the threat of the virus,” Trump said.
Central to the aid package from Congress, which builds on an emergency $8.3 billion measure approved last week, is the free testing and sick pay provisions.
Providing sick pay for workers is a crucial element of federal efforts to stop the rapid spread of the infection. Officials warn that the nation’s healthcare system could quickly become overwhelmed with gravely sick patients, as suddenly happened in Italy, one of the countries hardest hit by the virus.
The ability to ensure paychecks will keep flowing — for people who stay home as a preventative measure or because they’re feeling ill or caring for others — can help assure Americans they will not fall into financial hardship.
Hopes for swiftly passing the package seemed to be fading throughout the day as talks dragged on and Trump dismissed it during as “not doing enough.”
Ahead of Trump’s new conference, Pelosi delivered a statement from the speaker’s balcony at the Capitol imploring the Trump administration and congressional Republicans to “put families first” by backing the effort to provide Americans with relief.
“Our great nation has faced crisis before,” Pelosi said. “And every time, thanks to the courage and optimism of the American people, we have prevailed. Now, working together, we will once again prevail.”
Pelosi and Mnuchin engaged in days of around-the-clock negotiations with cross-town phone calls that continued even as Trump was speaking, both indicating earlier they were close to a deal.
They both promised a third coronavirus package will follow soon, with more aggressive steps to boost the U.S. economy, which economists fear has already slipped into recession.
The financial markets closed on an upswing after one of the worst nosedives since the 1987 downturn.
For most people, the new coronavirus causes only mild or moderate symptoms, such as fever and cough. For some, especially older adults and people with existing health problems, it can cause more severe illness, including pneumonia.
The vast majority of people recover. According to the World Health Organization, people with mild illness recover in about two weeks, while those with more severe illness may take three to six weeks to be over it.
Trump said he was gratified that Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro tested negative for the virus, after the pair sat next to each other for an extended period of time last weekend at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago club. A senior aide to Bolsonaro tested positive.
Trump’s daugher, Ivanka Trump, worked from home Friday after meeting with Australian Home Affairs Minister Peter Dutton, now in isolation at a hospital after testing positive for the coronavirus. White House spokesman Judd Deere said she was evaluated by the White House Medical Unit and it was determined that because she was exhibiting no symptoms she does not need to self-quarantine.
Attorney General William Barr, who also met with the Australian official, was staying home Friday, though he “felt great and wasn’t showing any symptoms,” according to his spokeswoman Kerri Kupec.
Several lawmakers, including some close to Trump, have also been exposed to people who tested positive for the virus, and are self-isolating.
Among them are Republican Sens. Lindsey Graham and Rick Scott, who were at Trump’s club on the weekend. Graham announced Friday that he also met with the Australian official who has now tested positive. And GOP Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas, who had previously isolated himself after a potential exposure at a conservative conference in Washington, said Friday he met with a Spanish official and is now self-quarantining.
Hospitals welcomed Trump’s emergency declaration, which they and lawmakers in Congress had been requesting. It allows the Health and Human Services Department to temporarily waive certain federal rules that can make it harder for hospitals and other health care facilities to respond to an emergency.
The American Medical Association said the emergency declaration would help ensure America’s health care system has sufficient resources to properly respond to the ongoing outbreak.
Trump has struggled to show he’s on top of the crisis, after giving conflicting descriptions of what the U.S. is doing to combat the virus. On Wednesday he announced he would ban travel to the U.S. from Europe, and on Friday he suggested extending that to the U.K. because of a recent rise in cases.
Dr. Anthony Fauci, infectious disease chief at the National Institutes of Health, said more tests would be available over the next week, but warned, “We still have a long way to go.”
Fauci said Friday, “There will be many more cases. But we’ll take care of that, and ultimately, as the president said, this will end.”
___
Associated Press writers Aamer Madhani, Alan Fram, Lauran Neergaard, Martin Crutsinger, Laurie Kellman, Michael Balsamo and Kevin Freking in Washington and Bill Barrow in Atlanta contributed to this report.
https://apnews.com/83b0c8e168548fd453b0c177dd1f203a
Story 2: House Expected Passes Family First Coronavirus Response Bill Supported By President Trump — Videos
House Passes Coronavirus Relief Bill
House approves coronavirus response bill supported by Trump
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi says the House will pass coronavirus legislation
Mnuchin: Trump is very interested in putting money into the economy
PBS NewsHour West live episode, March 13, 2020
Story 3: United State Stock Market Rallies — Best Day Since 2008 — Consumer Sentiment Beating Expectations At 95.9 — Videos
The Dow Is Soaring – Here’s Why the Stock Market Is Cheering Trump
Barry Sternlicht: Stock market will make a comeback from coronavirus
El-Erian on markets: ‘It’s getting less scary than it has been for a while’
Cramer’s game plan for the trading week of March 16
Jim Cramer: Not sure this stock market sell-off can be stopped
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