Chris Hedges's Blog, page 10

President Evo Morales won re-election in Bolivia’s presidential election last October 20, as pre-election polls predicted. He received 47% of the vote in an election with 88% turnout. He beat his nearest rival by just over 10 percentage points, which meant a second round was not required.

But the day after the election, the Organization of American States (OAS), whom Morales had allowed to monitor the election, put out a press release claiming there had been a “drastic and hard-to-explain change in the trend of the preliminary results.” It was an obviously false claim (FAIR.org, 12/19/19).

Even though the Washington, DC-based Center for Economic and Policy Research (CEPR) immediately put out a statement (10/22/19) pointing out the basic flaw in the OAS’s analysis—it overlooks that precincts that report early can be different from ones that report late—the OAS continued to claim that the change in trend was evidence of fraud. CEPR persisted in exposing the OAS deception—for example, in a paper the think tank published on November 8 and an op-ed in MarketWatch (11/19/19) by CEPR co-founder Mark Weisbrot.  On December 12, at a permanent council meeting, the OAS—which gets 60% of its funding from the US government—refused to allow Jake Johnston to present CEPR’s preliminary response to the OAS’s final report on the election.

In the meantime, the OAS’s disparagement of the election ignited violent protests that (combined with the treasonous behavior of Bolivia’s military and police) forced Morales to flee Bolivia on November 10 to avoid being lynched. Bolivia’s security forces “suggested” Morales resign, allowing him to be run out of the country (with his house ransacked), but then sprung murderously into action to consolidate the coup. Within two weeks, 32 people were killed protesting against the dictatorship that took over after he fled. The dictatorship openly says it will arrest Morales if he returns to Bolivia.

Late last month, MIT Election Data and ScienceLab researchers John Curiel and Jack R. Williams published an analysis of the election results in the Washington Post (2/27/20). The study was commissioned by CEPR to show that its analysis could be independently verified. The MIT researchers concluded that there “is not any statistical evidence of fraud that we can find,” and that “the OAS’s statistical analysis and conclusions would appear deeply flawed.”

That’s a scholarly but overly polite way to put it. The OAS repeatedly made statistical claims about Bolivia’s election that were clearly false. In layperson terms, that’s called lying.

The OAS’s lies proved lethal to Bolivians and devastating to their democracy, but the OAS evaded all accountability because, when it mattered most, corporate media shielded it from scrutiny. Between the October election and December 26, Reuters published 128 articles about the political situation in Bolivia that all failed to mention the efforts to get the OAS to retract its bogus statistical claim. Instead, Reuters regurgitated that claim many times without a trace of skepticism (FAIR.org, 12/19/19).

Days after the election, the Washington Post editorial board (10/24/19) uncritically quoted the OAS expressing “worry and surprise about the drastic and hard-to-justify change in the tendency of the preliminary results.” The editorial added that “the [US] State Department issued a similar message,” as if that boosted OAS credibility. The day after Morales fled, the Post (11/11/19) followed up with another editorial headlined “Bolivia Is in Danger of Slipping Into Anarchy. It’s Evo Morales’s Fault.”

If the Post editorial board knew anything at all about the scathing criticism the OAS had received, it kept completely quiet about it. And it’s actually quite possible the editorial board members knew nothing, if they relied on their paper’s own reporting. The Post’s search engine turns up only ten articles since the October 20 election that contain the terms “Bolivia,” “Morales” and “OAS.” Only two of those mention any criticism of the OAS: One is a November 19 op-ed by Gabriel Hetland (11/19/19), the other is the piece the Post just published by the MIT researchers (2/27/20).

On December 2, the Guardian published a letter signed by 98 economists and statisticians asking the OAS to retract its false statistical claims. Such breaks with the silence over the CEPR’s efforts to hold the OAS accountable were all too rare. Even a Guardian oped by Hetland that opposed the coup (11/13/19) mentioned OAS claims about the election without saying anything about the criticism they had received from CEPR.

Just like the Post, the day after Morales fled Bolivia, the New York Times editorial board (11/11/19) described the coup as a risky but necessary step towards restoring democracy:

The forced ouster of an elected leader is by definition a setback to democracy, and so a moment of risk. But when a leader resorts to brazenly abusing the power and institutions put in his care by the electorate, as President Evo Morales did in Bolivia, it is he who sheds his legitimacy, and forcing him out often becomes the only remaining option. That is what the Bolivians have done, and what remains is to hope that Mr. Morales goes peacefully into exile in Mexico and to help Bolivia restore its wounded democracy.

Like the Post, the Times editorial board members were breezily ignorant (or unconcerned) about the OAS repeatedly lying about the election. The Times recently published a news article (2/28/20) about the MIT researchers who rejected the OAS lies. The article said that the researchers “waded into a fierce domestic and international debate over Mr. Morales’s legitimacy.” That “fierce” debate was essentially buried by the corporate media when it might have prevented a coup. Incidentally, now even Reuters (3/1/20) has prominently reported the MIT study.

Stung by its lies belatedly getting some high-profile criticism, the OAS responded angrily to the study. The researchers looked at only one of the allegations it made, the OAS complained, saying other “irregularities” validated its assessment of the election. Amazingly, the OAS also said it continues to “stand by” its bogus statistical analysis.

All elections have some “irregularities” and “vulnerabilities,” as any US voter should be well aware. That does not automatically justify throwing the results in the garbage. If it did, any election could be unjustly discredited by unscrupulous monitors. Moreover, CEPR did address other allegations, in the presentation the OAS refused to allow it to make (FAIR.org, 12/19/19).

At this point, the OAS report on Bolivia’s election should be discarded, except for the purpose of a credible investigation into how such appalling work ever came to be done—and promulgated uncritically, and turned to such devastating effect. In a just world, jobs would be lost, and OAS General Secretary Luis Almagro would resign. But when you have election monitors beholden to the US government, and a corporate media willing to cover for them, it is only duly elected officials in poor countries that need fear those kinds of consequences—and much worse.

For the second time (after the heart attack last fall), the Bernie Sanders movement is on life support. Let us not sugarcoat this: last night was worse than the worst-case scenario any Bernie supporter had imagined. The drastic slippage in Texas, Massachusetts, Maine, Minnesota, and even Vermont, let alone Oklahoma, Tennessee, Virginia, and North Carolina, represents a mortal threat to the movement. But there’s a glimmer of hope yet, because it was only three days ago that Biden had been written off, so things can change quickly. Of course, we now have the irrefutable fact on the ground of Biden’s delegate haul and his victory in a whole bunch of states, prompted by support from African Americans, older voters, and suburbanites, so it won’t be easy.

But with continued backing from younger and Latino voters, Bernie needs to quickly figure out a counter-strategy to come roaring back. And come back he can, despite the terrain in the rest of March being quite unfavorable to him, as well as the danger of the media narrative going past the point of reversibility.

Though it’s not in Bernie’s nature to follow a game plan of the sort I’m suggesting, I hope his advisers will convince him that at stake is the fate of the movement, and the enthusiasm of the millions of engaged voters he’s inspired, and that he must rapidly shift his approach. Bernie should demand one-on-one debates with Biden, which would certainly be facilitated by Warren dropping out and not sniping at him, but it’s something he should ask for even if the field isn’t cleared.

The gloves must immediately come off when it comes to treating Joe Biden. He’s been let off all too easily this entire campaign, given his atrocious fifty-year anti-liberal record. Blanketing the airwaves to the extent the campaign can, and picking strategic spots to maintain some momentum through the rest of March (probably Ohio, Washington, Michigan, and Arizona), Sanders needs to do to Biden what he should have done to Elizabeth Warren long ago—that is, make his opponent appear ridiculously unelectable, which in fact he is.

1. Press hard on Biden’s record beyond support for the Iraq War, unfavorable trade bills, Social Security cuts, and the bankruptcy bill, all of which Bernie did bring up on Tuesday night. But why does it feel like Bernie’s critique of Biden only starts after 2003? What about Biden’s disqualifying record on the war on drugs, the promotion of mass incarceration, and Patriot Act-like attacks on civil liberties, going back to the 1980s and 1990s? What about his opposition to busing and desegregation? What about his horrible treatment of Anita Hill? What about his complicity with Obama’s barbarous deportation policy? What about his advocacy of the kinds of financial deregulation that led to the economic crash?

Bernie did make a start Tuesday evening, but he has been all too reluctant to go after Biden, even when numerous opportunities to draw distinctions have presented themselves. This lack of appetite to engage almost killed his campaign by way of Warren in the fall, until she was questioned by the media and failed to stand firmly behind Medicare for All. If Bernie keeps calling Biden “my good friend Joe,” he just adds to the impression in voters’ minds that while Biden may have lost a few marbles he is still fundamentally a decent guy and deserves a shot as Barack Obama’s legitimate successor.

2. We’ve heard Bernie’s stump speech, with its completely warranted emphasis on the fossil fuel, pharmaceutical, and other industries that are the culprits in our economic serfdom, but for now Bernie needs to come up with a brand-new script. Clearly, voters across the country on Super Tuesday rejected association with “democratic socialism” the way it’s been misrepresented in the media, and bought into the reactionary idea that, for example, getting rid of  private insurance would be too disruptive and not even doable in any future political scenario. But Bernie’s dreams for economic equality seem fantastical only by comparison to the utterly false impression of Biden as a capable executive who’s always stood by the little guy.

Bernie needs to zero in on the astonishing aspects of Biden’s resume we haven’t heard enough about throughout this campaign. Biden not only supported the Iraq War but was one of its most enthusiastic cheerleaders. His own president didn’t go for Biden’s advice on Iraq, Afghanistan, and elsewhere, so while he may have been a boisterous speechmaker in the Senate his actual record consists of a half-century of gross misjudgments. The same goes for mass incarceration, where he was not just a passive supporter but one of the leading articulators of the whole apparatus of imprisonment that came into being and still exists. He should be challenged on unjustifiable votes in these areas—from wholehearted support for neoliberal trade agreements to Bush/Cheney-like civil rights violations to the persistent aura of misogyny and racism throughout his career—without any regard for his feelings.

3. Change the discourse from “Trump is the most existential threat we face” to “Biden will herald the return of everything that caused Trump in the first place and help bring about something even worse than Trump.” I’ve always been against Bernie taking up the theme of Trump as the worst modern president because each time he does so he makes Biden’s superficial case for electability all the stronger. If Trump really is the greatest threat to the republic, then why take a chance with Bernie who promises a political revolution? Why not go with Obama’s vice president who looks like he might restore dignity and take us back to some semblance of normality?

Bernie hasn’t wanted to go anywhere near that, but I don’t think he can win the nomination without taking on Obama’s horrendous record on domestic and foreign policy, from drones and assassinations to deficit hawkery and deportations. What Bernie has wanted to do so far is to somehow bypass the sad truth about the last Democratic president and not give the electorate too much to absorb, since Obama remains popular, certainly among those who turned out in droves to support Biden on Super Tuesday.

How, then, to break the link between Biden and Obama? It can only be done by making the desire to go back to Obama less appealing. And by pointing out example after example of where Biden made errors of judgment by standing with Obama on the wrong things, such as cutting Social Security and Medicaid in pursuit of an elusive grand bargain with Republican deficit hawks, or by going along with the continuation of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan despite his own doubts. I know this is a lot to ask for from Bernie, and harder still for not having been attempted before, but I don’t see a way around it.

In short, though the situation is critical, all is not lost because Bernie’s hardcore base is not going away. The problem lies in expanding that base, and if we are to be honest about Super Tuesday we must admit that across the country voters rejected the way Sanders was said to be describing the change he promises to bring about in favor of a do-nothing restoration. Though I’ve always supported Bernie’s use of “democratic socialist” to label himself, I would not go out of my way to do so for the time being. Rather, a ferocious attack, including paid advertising, must bring to the surface Biden’s half-century of reactionary stances, of the kind that should make Democratic voters ashamed to be aligned with him. The fact that Biden has reached a palpable level of senility should also not be off the table.

Those of us who have been with this unprecedented social justice movement with our heart and soul for the last many years expect that Bernie goes to this climactic fight with Biden with nothing left unsaid. No punches pulled, no recourse to the affable civility that comes naturally to Bernie, just a tenacious enunciation of the policies that Biden so enthusiastically supported and that led to the very rise of Trump.

BANGKOK — Crossing more borders, the new coronavirus hit a milestone Friday, infecting more than 100,000 people worldwide as it wove itself deeper into the daily lives of millions, infecting the powerful, the unprotected poor and vast masses in between.

The virus, which has killed more than 3,400 people, edged into more U.S. states, emerged in at least four new countries and even breached the halls of the Vatican. It forced mosques in Iran and beyond to halt weekly Muslim prayers, blocked pilgrims from Jesus’ birthplace in Bethlehem and upended Japan’s plans for the Olympic torch parade.

As financial markets dived again, repercussions from the virus also rattled livelihoods in the real economy.

“Who is going to feed their families?” asked Elias al-Arja, head of a hotel owners’ union in Bethlehem in the Israeli-occupied West Bank, where tourists have been banned and the storied Church of the Nativity was shuttered.

At the White House, President Donald Trump signed a $8.3 billion bill to fight the coronavirus and an official said Trump’s administration was considering some type of support to hard-hit industries like travel and tourism.

In Geneva, the U.N. health agency said it had received applications for 40 possible virus tests, had 20 vaccine candidates in development and reported that numerous clinical trials of experimental drugs for the new coronavirus were under way.

“We’re all in this together. We all have a role to play,” said Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, chief of the World Health Organization, urging more global cooperation from the business world and solidarity with the poorest.

Yet even as COVID-19, the disease caused by the virus, reached 90 countries, more than half of those who contracted the virus have now recovered. And it’s retreating in China, where it first emerged, and nearby South Korea.

Questions swirled around whether Iran could control its outbreak, as the number of reported infections jumped beyond 4,700 on Friday, with 124 deaths. Iran set up checkpoints to limit travel, urging people to stop using paper money and had firefighters spray disinfectant on an 18-kilometer (11-mile) stretch of Tehran’s most famous avenue.

“It would be great if they did it every day,” grocery store owner Reza Razaienejad said after the spraying. “It should not be just a one-time thing.”

The 100,000 figure of global infections is largely symbolic, but dwarfs other major outbreaks in recent decades, such as SARS, MERS and Ebola. The virus is still much less widespread than annual flu epidemics, which result in up to 5 million annual severe cases around the world and from 290,000 to 650,000 deaths annually, according to WHO.

But there was no denying that the epidemic’s economic impact was snowballing. World stocks and the price of oil dropped sharply again Friday.

A sharp drop in travel and a broader economic downturn linked to the outbreak threatened to hit already-struggling communities for months. In response to plummeting demand, German airline Lufthansa announced it would reduce its capacity in coming weeks by as much as 50% of pre-coronavirus outbreak levels.

The head of the U.N.’s food agency, the World Food Program, warned of the potential for “absolute devastation” as the outbreak’s effects ripple through Africa and the Middle East. India scrambled to stave off an epidemic that could overwhelm its under-funded, under-staffed health care system, which does not have nearly enough labs or hospitals for its 1.3 billion people.

“We’re seeing more countries affected with lower incomes, with weaker health systems and that’s more concerning,” WHO chief Ghebreyesus said.

White collar workers can log onto laptops from home, but health care workers, waiters, delivery workers, cashiers, drivers, museum attendants and others don’t have that option. And sick leave policies or health insurance coverage are inconsistent around the world, putting millions of workers’ earnings at risk. In the U.S. the AFL-CIO labor federation urged the government to issue emergency regulations outlining employers’ responsibilities to protect workers from infectious diseases.

The fear and the crackdowns that swept through China are now shifting westward, as workers in Europe and the U.S. stay home, authorities vigorously sanitize public places and consumers flock to stores for household staples.

Nation after nation put some travel restrictions into place, blocking visitors from hard-hit areas like China, South Korea, Italy and Iran. And the United Nations’ top climate change official said her agency won’t hold any physical meetings at its headquarters in Germany or elsewhere until the end of April.

“The Western world is now following some of China’s playbook,” said Chris Beauchamp, a market analyst at the financial firm IG.

Off California’s coast, the spectacle of a Grand Princess cruise ship ordered to stay at sea over virus fears replicated ones weeks ago on the other side of the globe in which hundreds of people on the Diamond Princess cruise ship were infected even during a quarantine.

Thailand on Friday blocked a separate cruise ship from docking, worried because it carried dozens of passengers from Italy, which with 148 virus deaths is the center of Europe’s epidemic.

In the U.S. the number of cases surpassed 230, scattered across 18 states. The University of Washington announced Friday it would stop holding holding classes at its three Seattle-area campuses and teach students online, a decision affecting some 57,000 students. The state has at least 70 confirmed COVID-19 cases, most in the Seattle area.

COVID-19 is a flu-like illness that for most people causes mild or moderate symptoms such as fever and cough but can hit elderly or sick people much harder. French President Emmanuel Macron visited a retirement home in Paris on Friday to reassure the elderly and health care workers about France’s readiness to combat the virus, which has infected nearly 600 of its citizens.

China reported 143 new cases Friday and South Korea had 505 more cases, down from earlier daily tallies. But the numbers kept growing in Europe and the death toll in hard hit Italy reached 197. Serbia threatened to deploy the army to keep the virus at bay, and Hungary used virus fears to tighten its doors against migrants.

The Netherlands reported its first virus death Friday while Serbia, Slovakia, Peru and Cameroon announced their first infections. Even Vatican City was hit, with the tiny city-state confirming its first case Friday. The Vatican has insisted that 83-year-old Pope Francis, who has been sick, only has a cold.

WHO officials warned against having “false hopes” that the virus could fade away when warmer summer temperatures come to northern countries.

“Every day we slow down the epidemic is another day governments can prepare their health workers to detect, test, treat and care for patients,” the WHO chief told reporters. “Every day we slow down the epidemic is another day closer to having vaccines and therapeutics, which can, in turn, prevent infections and save lives.”

___

Charlton reported from Paris. Contributing to this report were Jamey Keaten in Geneva; Kim Tong-Hyung and Hyung-jin Kim in Seoul, South Korea; Aya Batrawy and Jon Gambrell in Dubai, United Arab Emirates; Nicole Winfield in Rome; Colleen Barry in Milan, Italy; Dusan Stojanovic in Belgrade; Sylvie Corbet in Paris; Gene Johnson in Seattle; Olga Rodriguez in San Francisco; and Mohammed Daraghmeh in Bethlehem, West Bank.

Prosecutions of white-collar criminals by the U.S. Justice Department plunged to an all-time low in January, according to a study published just days after President Donald Trump proclaimed his commitment to “safeguarding the American consumer” and “strengthening our efforts to prevent and prosecute fraud.”

The analysis released Tuesday by Syracuse University’s Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse (TRAC) found that the Justice Department prosecuted just 359 white-collar criminals in January, a decline of 25% from five years ago. TRAC has been recording data on white-collar prosecutions since 1986.

“Federal white-collar prosecutions have fallen from their peak of over 1,000 in June 2010 and February 2011,” the study found. “During the Obama administration in [fiscal year] 2011, they reached over 10,000. If prosecutions continue at the same pace for the remainder of FY 2020, they are projected to fall to 5,175—almost half the level of their Obama-era peak.”

David Sklansky, a former assistant district attorney and co-director of the Stanford Criminal Justice Center, called the decline “disturbing.”

“It’s a matter of concern that federal prosecutions of white-collar fraud have declined so precipitously,” Sklansky told MarketWatch. “When the U.S. Attorney’s offices file fewer of these cases, that slack is unlikely to be picked up by district attorneys or state prosecutors.”

After digging into data on prosecutions from the @TheJusticeDept, TRAC discovered that white-collar and corporate prosecutions are at their lowest point in modern US history. Never has white-collar crime gone so ignored.

Read the report here: https://t.co/XtMjYSJYi1 pic.twitter.com/szLm3AKMuY

— TRAC Reports (@TRACReports) March 3, 2020

The study came in the middle of National Consumer Protection Week, which began March 1 and ends on Saturday, March 7. President Donald Trump marked the occasion with a statement vowing to prosecute “bad actors seeking to harm and exploit honest and hardworking people through deception and other nefarious tactics.”

“It’s a strange claim, given that federal white-collar crime prosecutions are at an all-time low,” Washington Post columnist Catherine Rampell tweeted in response to Trump’s statement.

It’s a strange claim, given that federal white-collar crime prosecutions are at an all-time low https://t.co/Z1PcvfqRdK pic.twitter.com/MIDjNdcKkf

— Catherine Rampell (@crampell) March 4, 2020

Last month, as Common Dreams reported, Trump granted clemency to several high-profile white-collar criminals, including “junk bond king” Michael Milken and former Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich.

“White-collar crimes, in Trump’s worldview, are not ‘real crimes,'” MarketWatch columnist Paul Brandus wrote at the time.

KABUL, Afghanistan — Gunmen opened fire Friday at a ceremony in Afghanistan’s capital attended by prominent political leaders, killing at least 32 people and wounding dozens more before the two attackers were slain by police, officials said.

The Islamic State group claimed responsibility for the attack in a statement on its website.

Militants from IS have declared war on Afghanistan’s Shiites, and many of those at the ceremony were from the minority Shiite sect. The ceremony commemorated the 1995 slaying of Abdul Ali Mazari, the leader of Afghanistan’s ethnic Hazaras, who are mostly Shiite Muslims.

The Taliban said they were not involved in the attack, which came less than a week after the U.S. and the group signed an ambitious peace deal that lays out a path for the withdrawal of American forces from the country.

Interior Ministry spokesman Nasrat Rahimi said 32 people were killed and 81 wounded in the attack in the Dasht-e-Barchi neighborhood of Kabul. The Health Ministry gave the same death toll but said 58 were wounded. All of the casualties were civilians, Rahimi said.

Opposition leader Abdullah Abdullah, who is the country’s chief executive and was a top contender in last year’s presidential election, was among several prominent political officials who attended the ceremony but left before the attack and were unhurt.

Several TV journalists were covering the ceremony inside a walled compound when the gunmen began shooting, and a reporter and a cameraman for a local broadcaster were among the wounded.

Karim Khalili, the chief of Afghanistan’s high peace council, was delivering a speech when the gunfire interrupted him. He was not hurt and later went on TV to denounce the violence.

Several witnesses said that, amid the panic, members of the security forces at the event had fired on civilians in the crowd.

“Individuals with military uniforms who were there targeted people, there were casualties, dead and wounded,” said witness Ghulam Mohammad, according to Associated Press video.

Another survivor, Noor Mohammad, said: “Everyone was running. Three casualties were on the ground in front of me. I ran out of there to save my life.”

After opening fire, the two gunmen holed up in a half-finished apartment building, leading to a five-hour standoff with security forces. They were eventually killed and security forces cleared the building, Rahimi said. The area was cordoned off by dozens of security forces.

U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres condemned the violence and reiterated “that attacks against civilians are unacceptable and those who carry out such crimes must be held accountable,” according to U.N. spokesman Stephane Dujarric.

“The United Nations stands with all Afghans in solidarity and remains committed to an Afghan-led peace process that will end the conflict,” Dujarric said.

The Islamic State group claimed responsibility for the deadliest attack in Kabul last year, when a suicide bomber killed 63 people and wounded 182 at a wedding. All were from the Shiite Hazara community.

Any U.S. troop pullout from Afghanistan would be tied in part to promises by the Taliban to fight terrorism and IS. During the withdrawal, the U.S. would retain the right to continue its counter-terrorism operations in the country.

The Taliban have been fighting Islamic State militants in its headquarters in eastern Afghanistan. U.S. military officials have said IS has been degraded because of U.S. and Afghan operations but also by Taliban assaults. A U.S. Defense Department official told the AP that they worried IS was expanding its footprint into Kunar province, where the Taliban knows the terrain and could be an asset in tracking down IS.

___

Associated Press writer Edith M. Lederer at the United Nations contributed.

WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump on Friday signed an $8.3 billion measure to help tackle the coronavirus outbreak that has killed more than a dozen people in the U.S. and infected more than 200.

The legislation provides federal public health agencies with money for vaccines, tests and potential treatments and helps state and local governments prepare and respond to the threat. The rapid spread of the virus has rocked financial markets, interrupted travel and threatens to affect everyday life in the United States.

Trump had planned to sign the bill during a visit to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta. But he told reporters Friday that concerns were raised about “one person who was potentially infected” who worked at the CDC. Trump said the person has since tested negative for the new virus, and the CDC was added to his schedule on Friday.

The Senate passed the $8.3 billion measure Thursday to help tackle the outbreak in hopes of reassuring a fearful public and accelerating the government’s response to the virus. Its rapid spread is threatening to upend everyday life in the U.S. and across the globe.

The money would pay for a multifaceted attack on a virus that is spreading more widely every day, sending financial markets spiraling again Thursday, disrupting travel and potentially threatening the U.S. economy’s decade-long expansion.

Thursday’s sweeping 96-1 vote sends the bill to the White House for President Donald Trump’s signature. Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., cast the sole “no” vote. The House passed the bill Wednesday by a 415-2 vote.

The plan would more than triple the $2.5 billion amount outlined by the White House 10 days ago. The Trump proposal was immediately discarded by members of Congress from both parties. Instead, the bipartisan leadership of the House and Senate Appropriations committees negotiated the increased figure and other provisions of the legislation in a burst of bipartisan cooperation that’s common on the panel but increasingly rare elsewhere in Washington.

“In situations like this, I believe no expense should be spared to protect the American people, and in crafting this package none was,” said Appropriations Committee Chairman Richard Shelby, R-Ala. “It’s an aggressive plan, a vigorous plan that has received an overwhelming positive reaction.”

Trump was sure to sign the measure, which has almost universal support. It is intended to project confidence and calm as anxiety builds over the impact of the virus, which has claimed more than a dozen lives in the U.S.

“The American people are looking for leadership and want assurance that their government is up to the task of protecting their health and safety,” said Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt.

The impact of the outbreak continues to mount. The British government is considering suspending Parliament for five months in hope of limiting the spread of the virus in the United Kingdom.

The legislation would provide federal public health agencies money for vaccines, tests and potential treatments, including $300 million to deliver such drugs to those who need it. More than $2 billion would go to help federal, state and local governments prepare for and respond to the coronavirus threat. An additional $1.3 billion would be used to help fight the virus overseas. There’s also funding to subsidize $7 billion in small business loans.

Other dollars would be directed to help local officials prepare for the potential worsening of the outbreak and subsidize treatment by community health centers. Medicare rules would be loosened to enable remote “telehealth” consultations whereby sick people could to get treatment without visiting a doctor.

Sen. Maria Cantwell, D-Wash., whose state is at the center of the crisis, praised the bill because it “will increase access for public lab testing, help pay for isolation and quarantine, help pay for sanitizing in public areas, better track the virus and those who might come into contact with it, help labs who are trying to identify hot spots, and limit exposure.”

The legislation contains a hard-won compromise that aims to protect against potential price gouging by drug manufacturers for vaccines and other medicines developed with taxpayer funds. Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar would have the power to make sure commercial prices are reasonable. Azar is a former drug industry lobbyist.

Democrats said other steps may be needed if the outbreak continues to worsen.

“This may be a first step because we have issues that relate to unemployment insurance for people who are put out of work.” Pelosi said as she signed the bill to send it to Trump.

“We have only about 27% of people in this country who have paid sick days. So if they have to go home what is going to happen to them and their families?” said Rep. Rosa DeLauro, D-Conn.

DeLauro said Pence responded that he would raise the issue with the president.

The bill seeks to restore $136 million that the Department of Health and Human Services cut from other accounts such as heating subsidies for the poor to battle the virus.

The legislation comes as carping over the administration’s response to the outbreak is quieting down. Lawmakers in both parties had faulted a shortage of tests for the virus and contrasting messages from Trump and his subordinates. In an interview with Sean Hannity of Fox News on Wednesday, Trump downplayed the lethality of the virus, saying the World Health Organization’s updated estimate of a 3.4% death rate in coronavirus cases is “a false number.”

“Now you’re starting to see rapid deployment of tests, which makes me feel better, quite honestly,” said Rep. Raul Ruiz, D-Calif., a doctor. “I think their communications are a little better. As long as the president doesn’t contradict the experts and the scientists who know what they’re doing, things will get better.”

As much as I like Bernie Sanders and hope he prevails in the Democratic primary, I confess that there’s something gray and depressing about a crusty, seventy-something, New-Deal liberal representing the great electoral hope of the American left. There are, of course, a number of engaging young progressives in office now, but the fame and near-celebrity profiles of newcomers like Ilhan Omar, Rashida Tlaib, and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez belie the still fundamentally local power bases of these congresswomen, none of whom has yet been tested even in a statewide election. Victories at the state and local levels have been far outpaced by gains by so-called moderates and centrists, and even these barely dent the thousands of seats and offices lost to radical conservatives during the desultory administration of Barack Obama.

In the campaign for the presidential nomination, and in the aftermath of the multiple “Super Tuesday” primary contests, the Democratic race has become a two-man contest pitting the insurrectionary Sanders against the increasingly incoherent Joe Biden. In Biden, Democrats are presented with a former senator for America’s onshore but off-shore-style tax haven, Delaware, and a man who was selected as the most demographically inoffensive running mate for the then-seemingly-radical campaign of Barack Obama.

Until an eleventh-hour victory in South Carolina, the predominant narrative in the media was that Biden was cooked—a spent force whose residually strong national poll numbers reflected name recognition and reserves of nostalgia for the Obama years. Biden’s revival was buoyed by the support of the state’s relatively conservative, older African-American population, and then by his Super-Tuesday success just a few days later.  (It didn’t hurt that the vagaries of election season allowed him to avoid another crackpot debate performance or other testament to his rambling incomprehensibility in the interim.)

But that single victory and the synchronized withdrawals and endorsements by Pete Buttigieg and Amy Klobuchar, created a new narrative. Seemingly overnight, Biden had become a scrappy fighter with a never-say-die attitude, a Clintonian Comeback Kid.

This drove many older Democratic voters—an inherently timorous group conditioned by decades of “The West Wing” and MSNBC to believe they’re consultants and strategists rather than citizens and constituents—towards the more familiar, pedigreed candidate. They simply did not care that Biden has been wrong, often aggressively and outspokenly so, on every significant issue for the last forty years. After blowing half a billion dollars on a vanity campaign that won him American Samoa, Michael Bloomberg promptly bowed out and endorsed Biden as well, promising to dedicate his vast resources toward electing Joe.

Beyond the quixotic and indefatigable Tulsi Gabbard, the only candidate left standing was Elizabeth Warren—also in her 70s and running on fumes since an ill-conceived and ill-fated pivot away from “Medicare for All” that ruined her relationship with the socialist left and any chances of serving as a bridge between the activist wing of the party and its constituency of urban professionals, if one could have existed to begin with. (Editor’s note: Warren has since dropped out.)

Looming is yet another septuagenarian, Donald Trump, whose ongoing mental decompensation remains the great unspeakable truth in corporate media. Although frequently hostile to him, with the obvious exception of Fox News, mainstream outlets continue to edit his transcripts “for clarity and concision,” as the publishing saying goes, laundering the self-evident lunacy of his almost every public utterance like a gaggle of Soviets turning the somnolent ravings of an agèd commissar into readable prose for the next day’s news.

I use the Soviet metaphor very consciously. Long before I started dating and then married a scholar of Russian, I had a certain soft spot for the country, alternately maligned as an eternal basket case and an implacably cunning enemy that had sacrificed something like fifty times the number of Americans killed in every American war combined to actually defeat the Nazis. And now that I am shacked up with a Russianist and have visited the place a couple of times, I’ve come to see it not as a shadow or opposite of our own vast, weird nation but as a sibling of sorts.

The crass red-scare fantasies that characterize so many of the present narratives around election interference and the criminal Trump-Russia demimonde are as infuriating as they are baroquely silly. And yet there is a certain late-Soviet pallor hanging over America, even if on a material level our empire really does seem more robust than theirs ever was. (Once again, it bears mentioning that we never lost fifty million people in a war.) There is a sense, despite the apparent ideological contestations of our ongoing presidential elections, of a group of gerontocrats battling to run what looks less and less like a traditional state than the palace apparatus of an ancient empire that has acquired its imperium almost by accident. As the press critic and NYU journalism professor Jay Rosen observed in the fall of last year, “There is no White House. Not in the sense that journalists have always used that term. It’s just Trump— and people who work in the building. That they are reading from the same page cannot be assumed. The words, ‘the White House’ are still in use, but they have no clear referent.”

The hollowed-out nature of the American state has been evident for some time and certainly pre-dates Donald Trump, even if his simultaneously feckless and malicious administration exacerbates the sense of social and economic precariousness. Our biggest city can’t build and maintain its transit system. Our bridges collapse. We can’t marshal our resources to even pretend to do something about climate change. The few actual achievements of the Obama administration—its rapprochements with Cuba and Iran—collapsed almost immediately on the whims of his successor while his cruelest policies—the drone assassinations; the militarized border; the detentions—metastasized and grew crueler. Our municipal jails have become debtors’ prisons as strapped municipalities turn to shaking down poor people and people of color to manage shrinking tax bases. Meanwhile, our healthcare system is the worst in the developed world—an impenetrable skein of rent-seeking local monopolies that cost society trillions and bankrupt hundreds of thousands of individuals each year.

Nowhere, though, is the rusty, rickety nature of America’s civic society more recently evident than in the hilariously, harrowingly inept response to the advent of the Covid-19 virus as a global contagion. Whether it is more or less dangerous and deadly than the media portrays is quite beside the point. The abject incapacity of any government, least of all the feds, to offer even simple, sensible guidance, much less mobilize national resources to examine, investigate, and ameliorate the potential threat to human health and well-being is astonishing, even to a tired old cynic like me. At present, the most proactive step has been to pressure the Federal Reserve into goosing the stock market—the sort of pagan expiation of dark spirits that you’d expect in a more primitive world, when a volcano blew or an earthquake hit.

Even elections seem beyond our capabilities at this point. In Texas, people waited for up to seven hours to cast votes on decrepit machines, and we still do not have official final results from the Iowa caucuses—a fact little mentioned now that the primary season has moved on.

On the eve of the French Revolution, the Swiss-born theorist, journalist, and politician Jean-Paul Marat wrote, “No, liberty is not made for us: we are too ignorant, too vain, too presumptuous, too cowardly, too vile, too corrupt, too attached to rest and to pleasure, too much slaves to fortune to ever know the true price of liberty. We boast of being free! To show how much we have become slaves, it is enough just to cast a glance on the capital and examine the morals of its inhabitants.”

Donald Trump is in the White House, and his allies in Congress, smarting from his impeachment and failed Senate trial, will now come out with allegations about the sketchy business dealings of one of his likely opponent’s adult sons. Well. Here we are.

BANGKOK — 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.”

As Chinese manufacturers gradually reopened their factories, anti-virus barriers went up elsewhere.

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.

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 two 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.

MOSCOW — The presidents of Russia and Turkey said they reached agreements on a cease-fire to take effect at midnight Thursday in northwestern Syria, where escalating fighting had threatened to put forces from the two countries into a direct military conflict.

Russian President Vladimir Putin and Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan also said the deal also envisions setting up a security corridor along a strategic highway in Idlib province.

Putin voiced hope the deal will serve as a “good basis for ending the fighting in the Idlib de-escalation zone, put an end to suffering of civilian population and contain a growing humanitarian crisis.”

Erdogan said he and Putin agreed to help refugees return to their homes. More than 900,000 people have been displaced by the fighting since the forces of Syrian President Bashar Assad launched an offensive in December.

Both leaders had underlined the need to reach agreement at the start of the Kremlin talks, which lasted more than six hours. One goal had been to prevent damage to their bilateral relations and blossoming Russia-Turkey trade.

The Russian and Turkish foreign ministers said the agreement involves a cease-fire that must be enforced starting at midnight along existing battle lines. The deal also envisages setting up a 12-kilometer (7-mile) -wide security corridor along the M4 highway. The corridor will be jointly patrolled by Russian and Turkish troops, starting March 15.

Until the latest crisis, Putin and Erdogan had managed to coordinate their interests in Syria even though Moscow backed Assad while Ankara supported the government’s foes throughout Syria’s nine-year war. Both Russia and Turkey were eager to avoid a showdown but the sharply conflicting interests in Idlib province made it difficult to negotiate a mutually acceptable compromise.

A Russia-backed Syrian offensive to regain control over Idlib — the last opposition-controlled region in the country — has resulted in Turkey sending thousands of troops into Idlib to repel the Syrian army. Clashes on the ground and in the air have left dozens dead on both sides. Russia, which has helped Assad reclaim most of the country’s territory, has signaled it won’t sit by while Turkey routs his troops now.

The fighting has also pushed nearly 1 million Syrian civilians toward Turkey. Erdogan responded by opening Turkey’s gateway to Europe in an apparent bid to persuade the West to offer more support to Ankara.

Just before sitting down with Erdogan, Putin discussed the situation in Idlib with European Council head Charles Michel who met the Turkish president in Ankara on Wednesday. The Kremlin said Michel informed Putin about the EU’s efforts to block the flow of migrants.

Putin offered Erdogan his condolences over Turkish losses in a Syrian airstrike, but noted that Syrian troops also suffered heavy losses. Another Turkish soldier was killed in an attack in Idlib Thursday, raising the number of Turkish soldiers killed since the beginning of February to 59.

“The world’s eyes are on us,” Erdogan had said. “The steps we will take, the right decisions we will take here today will help ease (concerns in) the region and our countries.”

After Turkey had downed several Syrian jets, Moscow warned Ankara that its aircraft would be unsafe if they enter Syrian airspace — a veiled threat to engage Russian military assets in Syria.

Russian warplanes based in Syria have provided air cover for Assad’s offensive in Idlib.

Opposition activists in Idlib blamed Russian aircraft for Thursday’s strike on a rebel-held village which they said killed at least 15 people, including children, and wounded several others. The Russian military had no immediate comment on the claim, but it has staunchly denied similar previous claims insisting it hasn’t targeted residential areas.

The fighting in Idlib is the most severe test of Russia-Turkey ties since the crisis triggered by Turkey’s downing of a Russian warplane near the Syrian border in November 2015. Russia responded then with an array of sweeping economic sanctions, cutting the flow of its tourists to Turkey and banning most Turkish exports — a punishment that eventually forced Turkey to back off and offer apologies.

Turkey can’t afford a replay of that costly crisis, far less a military conflict with a nuclear power, but it has a strong position to bargain with. Moscow needs Ankara as a partner in a Syrian settlement and Russia’s supply routes for its forces in Syria lie through the Turkish Straits.

Moscow also hopes to use Ankara in its standoff with the West. Last year, Turkey became the first NATO country to take delivery of sophisticated Russian air defense missile systems, angering the United States. Turkey has put its deployment on hold, however, amid the crisis in Idlib.

The talks in Moscow mark the 10th meeting in just over a year between Putin and Erdogan, who call each other “dear friend” and have polished a fine art of bargaining.

In October, they reached an agreement to deploy their forces across Syria’s northeastern border to fill the void left by President Donald Trump’s abrupt withdrawal of U.S. forces. Prior to that they had negotiated a series of accords that saw opposition fighters from various areas in Syria move into Idlib, and in 2018 carved out a de-escalation zone in Idlib.

They blamed one another for the collapse of the Idlib deal, with Moscow holding Ankara responsible for letting al-Qaida linked militants launch attacks from the area and Turkey accusing Moscow of failing to rein in Assad.

Thursday’s deal would allow Assad to secure control of the key strategic M4 and M5 highways spanning Syria, which his forces claimed in the latest offensive. The M5 links Damascus with Aleppo, the country’s commercial capital, while the M4 crosses Idlib to reach the Mediterranean province of Latakia, where Russia has its main base. The highways are essential for Assad to consolidate his rule.

In a sign that the Kremlin firmly intends to secure control of the roads, earlier this week Russian military police deployed to the strategic town of Saraqeb, sitting on the junction of the two highways, to ward off any Turkish attempt to retake it.

In return, Putin appeared to accept the presence of Turkey-backed militants in the areas alongside the border and put brakes for now on Assad’s attempts to claim full control over Idlib.

___

Fraser reported from in Ankara, Turkey.

“My co-workers make impossible choices daily because a lot of us don’t have access to affordable health insurance,” Vladimir Clairjeune, a passenger service representative at JFK airport, said at a training session Wednesday, learning to deal with the coronavirus/COVID-19 epidemic. “[We] choose not to see a doctor for a health problem because it could be the difference between paying the rent, taking care of family or getting needed care.”

Earlier in the day, Vice President Mike Pence met with airline executives to discuss the crisis. Air travel is still safe, they concluded. Yet it was reported on the same day that one of the growing number of coronavirus cases in Los Angeles county was a medical screener at Los Angeles International Airport. It wasn’t clear if the illness was contracted at work or not.

One thing remains certain: The coronavirus doesn’t care how wealthy you are or what political party you are in. The best way to be sure the person next to you isn’t sick is to make health care available to everyone. The best way to achieve that is through “Medicare for All.”

The popular Medicare program, instituted in 1965, provides no-cost medical care for those 65 and older. Medicare for All would simply drop the eligibility age from 65 to zero, covering all Americans from birth. Our current health care system of private and nonprofit hospitals and doctors’ offices would remain in place. Payments, however, would be made by the U.S. government (the “single payer”), replacing the for-profit health insurance corporations, which would essentially be put out of business. In Sen. Bernie Sanders’ Medicare for All bill, taxes would go up on middle class and the wealthy, but onerous insurance premiums, deductibles, co-pays and out-of-network expenses would go away. Health care costs would go down more than taxes would go up, except for the very wealthy.

Most of Medicare for All’s costs would be covered by eliminating the bloated overhead, profit-taking and multimillion dollar executive salaries of the health insurance industry. More savings would come from negotiating lower prescription drug prices, which Medicare is currently prevented from doing by law. Additional costs to society would be lowered or eliminated, such as the expense incurred by millions of uninsured people who resort to emergency room visits that could have been avoided with preventive care and annual doctor visits.

As the coronavirus pandemic spreads, it is in every individual’s interest to know that all people have access to preventive and diagnostic care, as well as treatment if needed. You don’t want to come down with COVID-19 because a person you were next to in some public setting couldn’t afford a deductible or co-pay, didn’t have paid sick leave or is among the 37 million in the U.S. who completely lack health insurance.

Last Monday, New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo issued a directive requiring New York health insurers to waive cost-sharing for coronavirus tests and related emergency room, urgent care and office visits — for those who already have insurance. “Containing this virus depends on us having the facts about who has it,” Gov. Cuomo said. “These measures will break down any barriers that could prevent New Yorkers from getting tested.” But what about those who are uninsured?

On Wednesday afternoon, Pence gave a press briefing, flanked by senior public health officials. At Monday’s briefing, Pence pledged daily updates and full transparency. At Tuesday’s briefing, the White House inexplicably banned video and audio recording. At the end of Wednesday’s briefing, as Pence exited, and with cameras once again allowed, this exchange took place:

Reporter 1: Can you give guidance for the uninsured? Can the uninsured get tested? Gentlemen, ladies, can the uninsured get tested?

Katie Waldman Miller, Pence’s press secretary: Scream into the camera, it ain’t going to get you anywhere.

Reporter 1: Well, how about answering the question?

Reporter 2: We would like an answer to the question.

Reporter 1: It’s a valid question; could you answer it?

The question was ignored. Katie Waldman Miller married Trump’s anti-immigrant senior adviser Stephen Miller three weeks ago.

At New York City’s major airports, workers like Vladimir Clairjeune are represented by SEIU 32BJ. Wheelchair attendants, security, cleaners and passenger service representatives are demanding state government action to improve their health care plans, which currently make health care unaffordable with high premiums and deductibles, the union said.

In 2018, Trump disbanded the White House’s pandemic response team and slashed Centers for Disease Control and Prevention funds for assisting other countries, including China, with epidemic prevention.

We need a robust public health infrastructure. Above all, a healthy populace with regular access to affordable health care is the best defense against an epidemic like we now face.

Medicare for All would give our national health care system a much needed shot in the arm.