Saturday, April 04, 2020

Alarm, Denial, Blame: The Pro-Trump Media's Coronavirus Distortion
Jeremy W. Peters,The New York Times•April 2, 2020
Candace Owens, center, speaks during a meeting with 
President Donald Trump in the White House in Washington, 
Feb. 27, 2020. (Gabriella Demczuk/The New York Times)

On Feb. 27, two days after the first reported case of the coronavirus spreading inside a community in the United States, Candace Owens was underwhelmed. “Now we’re all going to die from Coronavirus,” she wrote sarcastically to her 2 million Twitter followers, blaming a “doomsday cult” of liberal paranoia for the growing anxiety over the outbreak.

One month later, on the day the United States reached the grim milestone of having more documented coronavirus cases than anywhere in the world, Owens — a conservative commentator whom President Donald Trump has called “a real star” — was back at it, offering what she said was “a little perspective” on the 1,000 American deaths so far. “The 2009 swine flu infected 1.4 Billion people around the world, and killed 575,000 people,” she wrote. “There was no media panic, and societies did not shut down.”

In the weeks leading up to the escalation of the coronavirus pandemic in the United States, tens of millions of Americans who get their information from media personalities like Owens heard that this once-in-a-lifetime global health crisis was actually downright ordinary.

The president’s backers sometimes seemed to take their cues from him. On Feb. 26, the day before Owens was a guest at the White House for an African American History Month reception, Trump denied it would spread further. “I don’t think it’s inevitable,” he said.- ADV

At other times, the president echoed right-wing media stars. When he declared at a campaign rally two days later that criticism of his halting response was a “new hoax,” commentators like Laura Ingraham of Fox News had already been accusing his opponents of exploiting the crisis. “A coronavirus,” she said on Feb. 25, “that’s a new pathway for hitting President Trump.” And when he falsely asserted that he had treated the outbreak as a pandemic all along, Fox hosts like Sean Hannity backed him up, saying that Trump’s decision to restrict travel from China and Europe would “go down as the single most consequential decision in history.”

A review of hundreds of hours of programming and social media traffic from Jan. 1 through mid-March — when the White House started urging people to stay home and limit their exposure to others — shows that doubt, cynicism and misinformation about the virus took root among many of Trump’s boosters in the right-wing media as the number of confirmed cases in the United States grew.

It was during this lull — before the human and economic toll became undeniable — when the story of the coronavirus among the president’s most stalwart defenders evolved into the kind of us-versus-them clash that Trump has waged for much of his life.

Now, with the nation’s economic and physical health in clear peril, Trump and many of his allies on the airwaves and online are blaming familiar enemies in the Democratic Party and the news media.

The pervasiveness of the denial among many of Trump’s followers from early in the outbreak, and their sharp pivot to finding fault with an old foe once the crisis deepened, is a pattern that one expert in the spread of misinformation said resembled a textbook propaganda campaign.

Yochai Benkler, a professor at Harvard Law School and co-author of a book on political manipulation called “Network Propaganda,” said that as the magnitude of the virus’s effects grew and the coverage on the right shifted, Trump’s loyalists benefited from having told people not to believe what they were hearing. “The same media that’s been producing this intentional ignorance is saying what they’ve always been saying: ‘We’re right. They’re wrong,’” he said. “But it also permits them to turn on a dime.”

“We can look at that and get whiplashed,” he added. “But from the inside it doesn’t look like whiplash.”

Step 1: Blame China

In January and early February, when the virus ravaged China and doubts grew about how forthcoming Chinese officials were being, some pundits on the right warned that the country couldn’t be trusted to contain the outbreak or share accurate information about where it originated.

Starting in late January, Tucker Carlson’s prime-time Fox News show became an early outlier in conservative media, sounding the alarm about a “mysterious” sickness spreading in Wuhan, China, that had killed about two dozen people. According to Carlson, speaking on Jan. 23, it was “believed to have jumped from bats and snakes — which are commonly eaten in this part of China — to people.”

Fox News became a launching pad for the idea of halting travel from China, which guests like Sen. Tom Cotton, R-Ark., urged while also at times suggesting that the virus had been created in a Chinese government laboratory not far from the epicenter of the outbreak. On Jan. 31, the Trump administration said it would bar entry by most foreign citizens who had recently visited China.

Some of Carlson’s Fox colleagues were less convinced of the threat. “Do I look nervous? No. I’m not afraid of this coronavirus at all,” Jesse Watters, a co-host of “The Five,” said on Jan. 30 as he teased another host for “shaking in his shoes.”

Fox News declined to comment.

Step 2: Play down the risks

In the weeks that followed, thousands would die from the virus around the world, thousands more would be sickened across Europe and the first cases would emerge in the United States. But the tone of the coverage from Fox, talk radio and the commentators who make up the president’s zealous online army remained dismissive.

Talk show hosts and prominent right-wing writers criticized other conservatives who took the threat seriously. “Drudge has a screaming headline,” Rush Limbaugh announced on Feb. 26, referring to Matt Drudge and his website. “Flight attendant working LAX tests positive. Oh, my God, 58 cases! Oh, my God. Oh, my God.” For years, Limbaugh has encouraged his audience to be suspicious of science as one of his so-called Four Corners of Deceit, which also include government, academia and media.

On Feb. 27, Hannity opened his show in a rage. “The apocalypse is imminent and you’re going to all die, all of you in the next 48 hours. And it’s all President Trump’s fault,” he said, adding, “Or at least that’s what the media mob and the Democratic extreme radical socialist party would like you to think.” His program would be one of many platforms with large audiences of conservatives — 5.6 million people watched Hannity interview the president on Fox last week — to misleadingly highlight statistics on deaths from the seasonal flu as a comparison.

On Feb. 28, Limbaugh read from an article from The Western Journal, a website that was blacklisted by Apple News last year for promoting articles Apple determined were “overwhelmingly rejected by the scientific community.” The coronavirus, Limbaugh said, “appears far less deadly” than the flu, but the government and the media “keep promoting panic.”

Joel Pollak, an editor at Breitbart News whose work on the virus has been cited by Hannity, published several articles in February and early March that highlighted the least severe symptoms and best possible outcomes. On Feb. 28, he urged people to “chill out.”

The first of more than 4,500 American deaths to date would occur the next day. Two days later, Pollak wrote another article criticizing a doctor from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention who warned that the coronavirus was likely to spread. The doctor was the sister of Rod Rosenstein, the former deputy attorney general, he noted, “who was once suspected of trying to help remove the president from office.” He assured his readers that he saw “no conspiracy” — only “the ordinary problem of scientists not being very good at communicating to the public.”

Pollak, whose articles were breezier in tone than much of the coverage elsewhere on Breitbart, declined to comment.

Faced with the inescapable fact that the virus was killing people, many conservatives started sounding fatalistic. Yes it’s deadly, they acknowledged, but so are a lot of other things. “How many people have died this year in the United States from snake bites?” conservative radio host Dennis Prager asked in an online “fireside chat” posted March 12 to his website, PragerU, where it has been viewed more than 600,000 times.

On March 10, the day that Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, warned every American to adopt an “all hands on deck” mindset, Owens scoffed at what she called “the mass global mental breakdown” as financial markets plunged. “People think it’s novel that 80-year-olds are dying at a high rate from a flu,” she wrote, adding that when future generations study the world’s coronavirus response, “This tweet will age well.”

Owens is the kind of influential conservative — she has a huge online audience as well as sway with the White House and top cable news and radio producers — who has been central to spreading doubt about the seriousness of the virus to Trump’s most loyal supporters.

In an interview, Owens said she did not believe that her tweets were irresponsible. “Do I think it’s irresponsible to say the economic impact will be the legacy?” she said. “It’s not about being responsible. It’s about being honest.”

Step 3: Share ‘survivor’ stories

After playing down the risks, some broadcasters turned to coronavirus survivor stories.

On March 13th, “Fox & Friends” ran a segment featuring a 65-year-old woman who said she caught the virus and barely had any symptoms. During the interview, host Steve Doocy asked about the “absolute panic” and noted the concern about older people in particular. “Well look at that,” he said to the woman. “But you are over 60, and it doesn’t seem to have been a big deal to you, right?” Doocy said.

The interview was picked up that afternoon by Limbaugh, where its reach grew considerably given his 15.5 million listeners each week. Earlier that week, when a caller said that he and his wife believed they might have been infected before the virus was known to be widespread, Limbaugh dismissed him. “Let me ask you a question,” the host said. “Did you two die, and you are speaking to me from beyond the grave?”

On social media, people often responded with ridicule. They called the virus a “bad cold” and circulated memes of a red T-shirt that said “I survived Coronavirus 2020.”

Step 4: Blame the left

By the middle of March, the story of the virus on the right was one of how Trump’s enemies had weaponized “the flu” and preyed on the insecurities of an emasculated America.

Limbaugh blamed “wimp politics — which is liberalism.” Pollak, whose tone grew more serious, said the virus had spread while Democrats stretched out the president’s impeachment. “We now know the cost of impeachment,” he wrote.

Frank Luntz, a veteran political strategist who advises Republican leaders, said many on the right were applying the scornful, “own the libs” mentality of social media to a deadly and frightening health crisis.

Trump has also cast himself as a victim. “It’s so unfair. It’s so unfair,” he said last week to Hannity on Fox News. “If we could only have a fair media in this country, our country.”

Hannity and his fans may see criticism of the president as a histrionic meltdown of an anti-Trump mob, but the broadcaster has dialed back some denial. Elsewhere at Fox, Trish Regan, a Fox Business host, left the network after expressing doubt about the severity of the situation.

The criticism seemed to catch Hannity and other pro-Trump personalities at Fox off guard, according to people who work at the network, if only because they did not believe that their remarks on the coronavirus were any different from how they have defended the president as the victim of an orchestrated smear during other crises.

Hannity recently published a timeline of his own comments on the virus, which creates a revisionist impression that he was consistently raising concerns. The examples Hannity cites include his praise of the Trump administration’s response and declarations that the “greatest” and “best” scientists are working on the virus.

And in his interview with the president last week, Hannity cast blame on President Barack Obama for the deaths during the swine flu outbreak of 2009, saying Trump had been “very gracious” by not focusing on his predecessor’s failings, which he accused the news media of ignoring.

Stoking a sense of victimization, according to the president’s critics, is what has always worked for him.

“It’s a hoax, it’s a Democratic plot — that’s the degree to which Trump and Trumpism is fueled by grievance and a sense of constantly having to fight for survival,” said Steve Schmidt, a Republican strategist who advised John McCain’s 2008 presidential campaign and is now a consultant for an anti-Trump group and an analyst for NBC News.

But treating a pandemic as politics as usual, Schmidt added, could have an extraordinary cost. “All the bombast and the delusional statements and the embrace of ignorance,” he said, “stand singularly alone at the top of a previously unreachable pyramid.”

There can be little doubt that many of the president’s supporters did not consider it bombast or delusion.

Calling into Rush Limbaugh’s program on March 13 — the day Trump declared a national emergency — Brian from Richmond, Virginia, urged the president to tell the nation to take a deep breath. “Wash your hands. Take precautions,” Brian said. “And don’t believe the fake news and the media hype. It’s not that serious.”

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.

© 2020 The New York Times Company

U.S. exported millions in masks and ventilators ahead of the coronavirus crisis

Dian Zhang, Erin Mansfield, Dinah Voyles Pulver,USA TODAY•April 3, 2020


U.S. exports of surgical masks, ventilators and other personal protective gear to China skyrocketed in January and February, when the coronavirus was wreaking havoc in the country where it began and as U.S. intelligence agencies warned it would soon spread.

American companies sold more than $17.5 million worth of face masks, more than $13.6 million in surgical garments and more than $27.2 million in ventilators to China during the first two months of the year, far exceeding that of any other similar period in the past decade, according to the most recent foreign trade data available from the U.S. Census Bureau.

USA TODAY’s analysis of the trade numbers comes as medical professionals on the front lines of the nationwide crisis say they are being forced to reuse or go without personal protective equipment like surgical masks and face shields to account for a shortage. Some states also are scrambling to find ventilators to prepare for a crush of patients expected to need them.

The White House and congressional intelligence committees were briefed on the scope and threat of the coronavirus in January and February, but President Donald Trump has not stopped exports of key medical equipment – a move taken by at least 54 other countries so far.

The data show how U.S. manufacturers stepped up production and cleared out inventory to supply protective medical equipment to China for weeks, even as the threat of the coronavirus became clear. The CDC reported its first case in the United States on Jan. 20. Within the next two weeks, the World Health Organization and the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services had declared the disease a public health emergency.

More than 213,000 people have been infected and more than 5,600 have died in the U.S. as of Thursday, the CDC reported.

“Clearly there was a surge in demand going on in China, and fundamentally this was a free market" decision, said Michelle Connolly, a Duke University economist. “What was in the U.S. was clearly going out, and specifically to China.”

The U.S. exported more than $1.7 million worth of surgical masks to China in January alone – more than double the previous January. In February, shipments surged to $15.8 million, the data show.

Jesse Wang, co-founder of LuggEasy, a company that provides shipping services to Chinese residents in the U.S., confirmed the surge of masks exports in February. His company exported 14,000 to 15,000 pounds of masks from the U.S. to China in early 2020 alone.

At a retail price of roughly 50 cents a mask – which is likely higher than what wholesale customers would have paid – that meant more than 31.6 million surgical masks were shipped to China during the second month of the year, based on the trade data.
Boxes of donated medical face masks and gloves are seen before a press conference held by Texas Gov. Greg Abbott discussing the coronavirus on Tuesday, March 24, 2020, in Austin, Texas.

Taken together, the numbers add up to well over the 28.5 million face masks that mayors of nearly 200 U.S. cities told a trade organization they need to combat the coronavirus outbreak.

Ventilators, too, saw a spike. The U.S. exported $11.4 million worth of the breathing machines to China in the first two month of last year compared with $27.2 million in the first two months of this year, just weeks before states and hospitals started begging the federal government to send them more.

The price of ventilators vary from about $20,000 to $50,000 depending on the model, meaning the U.S. sent anywhere from 540 to 1,360 of them to China in January and February alone.

The U.S. Department of State also donated 17.8 tons of medical equipment to China in February. The mass donation included “masks, gowns, gauze, respirators, and other vital materials.”

The Census Bureau collects the data as a dollar value representing the product’s sale price. The total exports of these items could be greater, because the Census data does not capture small, private shipments that family members may have sent to China, or small packages that are exempt from certain filing requirements.

The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Domestic demand soars

Health care professionals across the nation have said on social media and in news reports that they fear for their lives because they are being forced to ration disposable protective equipment for the entire week.

Private citizens are sewing masks themselves to donate to local hospitals as a makeshift solution so workers don’t have to tie bandanas around their faces. On Wednesday, a New Jersey man was the first emergency room doctor to die from the coronavirus since the outbreak. A nurse in Houston is also fighting the infection.

Exports of other protective garments, like surgical suits, skyrocketed, too. The U.S. shipped more than $271,000 worth of such supplies to China in January – nine times more than the previous January, the data show. In February, those shipments reached $13.4 million.




Jared Moskowitz, Florida’s emergency management director, said his team started placing orders for respirators, masks, gowns and other supplies from private vendors more than a month ago but received only about 10% of what it ordered as of Thursday.

“I’m now hearing from distributors that foreign governments are showing up with cash at these factories and bumping everybody else down the line who had orders pending,” Moskowitz told USA TODAY, referencing conversations with brokers who serve as supply chain middlemen.

"This is going to have to be looked at to figure out how we allowed a U.S. company, the maker of perhaps the most important pieces of personal protective equipment, to feed the globe but not their home country,” Moskowitz said.

Moskowitz is not alone. The mayors of 192 cities across the country said in a survey released Friday that they do not have sufficient face masks for their first responders and medical personnel, and 186 cities said they faced a shortage of other personal protective equipment.
Completed face masks are packaged for shipping at the Tom Bihn
 factory in Seattle in March. Tom Bihn is a travel bag company 
that shifted production to face masks because of the COVID-19 outbreak.

The survey said the cities need 28.5 million face masks, 24.4 million other types of personal protective equipment and 139,000 ventilators. The respondents did not include mayors of some of the nation’s largest cities, like New York and Chicago.

On Wednesday, Trump said the Strategic National Stockpile – a collection of vaccines and various medical supplies kept for emergencies – is almost out of personal protective equipment.

“We’re giving massive amounts of medical equipment and supplies to the 50 states,” Trump said Wednesday. “We also are holding back quite a bit,” he said, referring to ventilators that are being saved to meet peak demand.

“We will fairly soon be at a point where we have far more than we can use, even after we stockpile for some future catastrophe, which we hope doesn’t happen,” Trump said. “We’re going to be distributing to countries around the world. We’ll go to Italy, we’ll go to France, we’ll go to Spain.”

Vice President Mike Pence said Wednesday that the U.S. has distributed across the country “more than 11.6 million N95 masks, more than 8,100 ventilators around the nation, and millions of face shields, surgical masks and gloves.”
Trade issues

As domestic firms kept exporting lifesaving equipment elsewhere, the Trump administration kept putting barriers on similar imports.

According to Chad Bown, a senior researcher at the Peterson Institute for International Economics, the government continued placing tariffs on Chinese imports of many medical products into the U.S. even as the coronavirus reached our shores.

The Trump administration announced on March 10 and March 12 that they would relax those tariffs.

Bown called the move an acknowledgement that the administration’s trade policies were endangering public health. By the time they were relaxed, he said, tariffs already affected “nearly $5 billion of U.S. imports of medical goods from China, about 26% of all medical goods imported from all countries.”

A week later, Trump issued an executive order invoking the Defense Production Act that gives the federal government the power to force companies to produce medical equipment and fulfill needs related to national defense before any other contracts.

The language in the order also allows the administration to control distribution in civilian markets of “personal protective equipment and ventilators.” It’s not clear what the president will do with this authority.

Economists are now warning that countries are using protectionist trade policies such as export bans and tariffs in an effort to keep medical supplies in their countries, and that these could backfire for hospitals and health professionals who need the supplies.

A team at the University of St. Gallen in Switzerland said in a March 23 study that any tariffs on items will increase the prices that hospitals and health professionals pay for these products. The team recommended that governments reassess their restrictions to meet the social challenge of COVID-19.

Bown generally supports free trade as an economic policy, but he also said it will benefit the public health response. There is too much uncertainty, he said, about which parts of the world will be hit hard by the coronavirus to cut off any areas of the world from production.

“What the pandemic has revealed to the world is that nowhere is safe,” Bown said. “Keeping open to international trade right now, in a time of pandemic, gives you many, many more options about where you might be able to source this kind of material from.”

USA TODAY used the latest trade data published by the U.S. Census Bureau for the analysis and looked at each commodity’s trade value based on its Harmonized System Code, known as HS code. The HS codes for personal protective equipment and ventilators are from a reference document for COVID-19 medical supplies published by the World Customs Organization.

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: US exports of masks, PPE to China surged in early phase of coronavirus
Human impact on environment raises risk of pandemics

Jeff Berardelli,CBS News•April 1, 2020



About two-thirds of all infectious diseases in humans have their origins in animals. Scientists say the ability of a virus to mutate and adapt from animals to the human system is very rare, but the expansion of the human footprint is making that rare event much more likely.

For most people, up until the novel coronavirus took over the headlines, the possibility of a new disease emerging out of nowhere and spreading around the world at a breakneck pace seemed like something out of a science fiction movie. But some members of the scientific community have been sounding the alarm for decades, warning that it was land and livestock farms — is associated with around 30% of known emerging diseases," said Daszak.

The reasons why this disruption of the natural habitat helps spread disease are multifaceted. "Perhaps the most obvious is habitat disturbance can cause the animals to move greater distances, carrying their pathogens with them, explains Ostfeld, adding, "Habitat destruction and degradation can reduce the health of these animal hosts which in turn compromises their immunity and allows pathogens to spread."

Jones is also concerned about the clearing of land and the rise in large-scale factory farms. "We now have huge, intensive farms of domestic species which are then interacting with wildlife and those wildlife could be acting as amplifying hosts for many pathogens," said Jones.

"When we house these animals in unsanitary conditions with many other species of animals, we can create ideal conditions for these pathogens to jump to us," Ostfeld added.

How do we reduce the risk of future outbreaks?

Now that humanity is unfortunately acquainted with how dangerous and disruptive a pandemic virus can be, the question is, will we learn from this experience, change our ways and put protective measures in place?

Daszak has a three-point plan he says could help minimize the threat going forward.

First, he suggests launching a global effort to identify viruses in wildlife that could likely emerge in the future. "We estimate there are 1.7 million of them, and we could discover the vast majority (>70%) in a 'Global Virome Project' costing $120 million per year over 10 years," he said. He has already created a 501c3 nonprofit to help fund the project.

Secondly, work with communities in emerging disease hotspots that are on the front lines. Identify the risk behaviors that lead to viruses spilling over from wildlife into the human population and work with these communities to reduce their risk, test for evidence of viruses and stop outbreaks dead in their tracks in the earliest stages. Lastly, he urges working to develop vaccines to prevent not just the diseases we already know about, but also new viruses we discover in wildlife. Ideally, Daszak would like to see a universal coronavirus vaccine to protect against the whole family of viruses.

Ostfeld would like to see a vast increase in the amount of protected land, to help preserve the ability of natural areas to protect us from infectious diseases. He also supports funding for scientists work on the question of how to better use already developed areas to provide food, fiber, and other resources needed by people.

"Habitat destruction and climate change pose myriad threats to our health and well-being. It's not just viruses," explains Ostfeld. "We continue these destructive practices because we prioritize the short-term gains for relatively few of us and ignore the long-term suffering by all the rest of us. It is not impossible to change this false calculus, but we don't have endless time to get it right."

Iowa governor got 2nd chance; she thinks felons should, too
DAVID PITT, Associated Press•April 1, 2020

Iowa Gov. Kim Reynolds Gives Coronavirus Update
What Reynolds said about rising numbers across the state.



DES MOINES, Iowa (AP) — Iowa's Republican governor, Kim Reynolds, will never forget the summer night 20 years ago when a state trooper stopped her minivan on Interstate 35 and found a nearly empty bottle of Black Velvet whisky on the seat behind her.

What followed was a sometimes humiliating series of hearings and counseling sessions as Reynolds pleaded guilty to her second drunken driving offense in less than a year and committed herself to treatment. It was a personal turning point for her, and now, so long afterward, it has also become the motivation for a stubborn campaign that has divided her from many in her own party.

After her treatment for alcoholism, Reynolds went on to build a career that saw her become Iowa's first female governor. Now she's pushing her GOP-controlled Legislature to end Iowa's status as the only state that permanently bars felons from voting unless the governor personally restores their rights.

Reynolds acknowledges that her painful experience gave her a different perspective from many of her colleagues.

“I am a firm believer that you can make a mistake but that shouldn’t define you," she said in an interview. “Everybody deserves a second chance."

In nearly every other respect, Reynolds is fully in tune with her fellow Republicans in the Legislature, where she served as a state senator before becoming governor in 2017. She supports making abortion illegal, loosening Iowa's gun laws and restricting public employee union bargaining rights. She's an outspoken supporter of President Donald Trump.

But the GOP here and elsewhere generally opposes efforts to expand felons' voting rights except in limited circumstances, holding with a tough-on-crime policy. The cause is considered a Democratic Party issue that would likely add more Democratic than Republican votes to the rolls.

However, to Reynolds the issue is personal. She unsuccessfully pushed her proposal last year to restore felons voting rights, and is trying again.

“It’s really important to me that I received that grace, and it’s important for me to pay that forward," she said.

After recent changes in Kentucky, Virginia and Florida, Iowa is the only state with broad constitutional language that revokes voting for all felons and requires a petition to the governor for restoration individually.

In Maine and Vermont felons can even vote while they’re in prison. Sixteen states restore the vote upon release, and another 21 automatically restore it after the sentence is served, including parole and probation. Other states attach conditions for certain crimes.

It's unclear how many people in Iowa have felony records and could vote if the governor's plan is implemented, but it's likely in the tens of thousands.

Republicans in the Legislature are backing a separate bill that would require felons to pay all their victim compensation orders before becoming eligible to vote again. A federal court rejected a similar Florida law, which opponents argued amounted to a poll tax.

Republican Sen. Dan Dawson, who opposes Reynolds' proposal, said those who commit the worst crimes including murder and rape should have to appeal individually for voting rights restoration. He said victims must be considered first.

“Folks I got news for you, the felon is not the victim in this," he said.

Rep. Steven Holt said he supports giving people a second chance but victims must first be paid restitution.

“If you don’t want to repay the victim don’t do the crime,” he said.

The Legislature has suspended its session because of the coronavirus, and it's unclear whether lawmakers will return to the issue.

Reynolds, 60, is a mother of three with 10 grandchildren. She's an energetic woman who often perches reading glasses on the end of her nose when she signs bills or reads statements.

She grew up in a conservative rural community south of Des Moines, dropped out of college, got married at age 23 and raised her children with her husband while working as a grocery checker and in the county treasurer's office. She later became treasurer herself and held the office for 14 years.

It was during this time that her drinking problem became apparent. In August 2000, she pulled onto the highway and almost plowed into another vehicle, then drove onto the grass median before returning to the road. A trooper summoned by a 911 call pulled her over. She was taken to the Clark County jail, where her blood alcohol content was measured at .228, more than double the legal driving limit at the time.

She was first charged with an aggravated misdemeanor because it was a second offense, which could have disqualified her from voting or holding public office, but she later pleaded guilty to a lesser charge.

Longtime friend Peggy Weitl said the arrest spurred Reynolds to face her addiction.

“She identified and accepted the consequences for her actions and her behavior and did the necessary things to move forward for the sake of her friends, her family, her constituents and everybody who supported her through those difficult times,” Weitl said.

Besides rebuilding her life, Weitl said, Reynolds gained a greater sense of empathy for others in the criminal justice system.

“That’s where she creates the second chances deal," Weitl said. “Look at where she’s come from.”

Reynolds said voting can help felons return successfully to society. Previous Democratic governors used executive orders to automatically restore prisoner voting rights after their release, but Republican Gov. Terry Branstad, Reynolds' predecessor, reversed that action when he was elected in 2010.

Reynolds has simplified the process for petitioning the governor and has restored rights to more than 543 felons since becoming governor in 2017. That compares with about 200 restored by Branstad in nearly seven years.

Some Democrats say Reynolds should issue a blanket executive order now rather than pushing for a constitutional amendment that would take several years.

But Reynolds said she wants to ensure the voting rights won't be reversed again by a future governor.

“I’m going to continue to work with them and we’re going to get this done,” she said.

How coronavirus could be the ‘final straw’ for the U.S Postal Service
Ben Werschkul DC Producer, Yahoo Finance•April 1, 2020

NOT APRIL FOOLS
A U.S.Postal Service worker wears a face mask and gloves while delivering mail amid the coronavirus pandemic. (Mario Tama/Getty Images)

The U.S. Postal Service has been in trouble for some time. Now, the coronavirus crisis has come along and made everything much worse.

Mail volume (and the accompanying revenue) could be down 50% this year, according to some estimates. The already teetering Postal Service could run out of money soon. That fear, combined with widespread concerns about letter carriers exposed to the virus, has put some lawmakers into a fatalistic mindset.

Rep. Gerry Connolly (D-Va.) put it bluntly: “We need to start thinking in those apocalyptic terms,” he said in an interview with Yahoo Finance Tuesday, “because we are about to face the apocalypse.”


The current crisis is “in many ways the final straw,” said Connolly, who is chairman of the House subcommittee that oversees the Postal Service. He believes that without some sort of intervention it will run out of cash in June.

Rep. Gerry Connolly (D-Va.), talks to reporters on Capitol Hill. 
(Caroline Brehman/CQ-Roll Call, Inc via Getty Images)

‘There's a growing anxiety’

Questions of safety are now dogging the service. “There's a growing anxiety that they're at risk and that there's not sufficient resources to protect them even in the most minimal of ways like hand sanitizers or gloves or the like,” Connolly said.

Two weeks ago, ProPublica published a report saying that some postal employees were continuing to work after displaying COVID-19 symptoms, and seemingly healthy employees had insufficient protection against the virus.

Postmaster General Megan J. Brennan responded to some of the concerns on Wednesday during a Board of Governors session. "We are promoting healthy behaviors and protocols and encouraging any employee who feels sick to stay home,” she said. “In order to further encourage this behavior, we have updated our leave policies to allow liberal use of leave."

Brennan also acknowledged some supply problems in the recent past saying, "we are continuing to work to overcome gaps in the supply chain to insure that our employees have access to hand sanitizer masks and gloves."

But questions are likely to keep coming. Sen. Cory Booker and other New Jersey Democrats wrote a letter to Postmaster General Brennan last week expressing a series of concerns and questions. On Tuesday, Sen. Bernie Sanders sent another letter raising similar questions.

Our postal workers already had one of the most important jobs in America.Now they are putting themselves at risk to deliver everything our country needs.I am asking the Postal Service to do much, much more to protect their safety and wellbeing right now. pic.twitter.com/L4Gj9iF4p2— Bernie Sanders (@SenSanders) March 31, 2020

A spokesperson for Booker told Yahoo Finance that his office has not received an answer but remains hopeful that we can work with the service “to implement stronger workplace protections for the safety and well-being of USPS employees as well as the millions of Americans who depend on their services.”

"The health and well-being of our employees is always our first thought in facing the COVID challenge," the Postmaster General said on Wednesday. She also underlined that the CDC, WHO, and Surgeon General all “have all said that there is very low risk that this virus is spread through mail which should be a comfort to us all and to the public.”

Connolly agreed the risk of transmission via mail is low, but “if we made sure that all of our postal workers had access to hand sanitizers and gloves, we could come close to eliminating the risk.” A lack of guidance or protection for letter carriers “is very imprudent and puts people at some risk. Not a high risk, but a risk.”

The USPS has made one change: it no longer requires customer signatures. Letter carriers will instead – from a distance – request the customer’s information and enter it themselves.
‘They're going to run out of cash in June’

The USPS operates as a self-supporting, independent federal agency – sort of halfway between an independent business and a government agency. It likes to tout that the service “receives no tax dollars,” instead paying for itself from the sale of postage, products and services.
A postal worker in Los Angeles.
 (Stephen Albanese/Michael Ochs Archives/Getty Images)

During the phase 3 negotiations, Connolly and other House Democrats proposed changing that by eliminating outstanding debt and allotting $25 billion to further shore up USPS finances. They even wrote a letter to Sen. Mitch McConnell “to seek your urgent help.”

They also want to repeal a mandate imposed in the Postal Act of 2006, which they say denies the USPS a chance to be profitable, arguing that the rule requires the Postal Service to pre-fund retirement health benefits for its employees. It’s a financial burden that puts “the Postal Service in a straight jacket,” according to Connolly, and has been the focus of repeal attempts for years.

The push didn’t work. The final package, signed into law by President Trump last Friday, included $10 billion in additional borrowing authority with strings attached.

The National Association of Letter Carriers, a union representing postal employees, responded: “That is woefully inadequate.”


Connolly says that some of the conditions on the $10 billion (including more of a Treasury role in management) was “an unacceptable condition for everybody,” and he still sees the USPS going out of business within months if nothing is done.

Then USPS and ‘Phase 4’ negotiations

The Postal Service has been gradually shrinking for years as outfits like UPS and Fedex Express (not to mention email) encroach further on its business. Total mail volume has shrunk from 170.9 billion pieces of mail in 2010 to 146.4 billion in 2018.


Yet advocates note the USPS still serves important functions, from delivering prescription drugs to Social Security checks. It also remains the only option in some rural areas where; as the National Association of Letter Carriers points out, “private companies rely on the USPS for last-mile delivery.”


The USPS is also how millions of Americans who don’t have direct deposit information on file with the IRS will receive their $1,200 stimulus checks.
And then there’s perhaps the most politically fraught factor: “We're also counting on the Postal Service to save our election process,” Connolly said amid questions about whether November’s elections will need to be done through the mail given concerns about voting in person. “What if there's no Postal Service?” he said. ”Well, that could affect the outcome of an election.”

Trump has not discussed the Postal Service at length since the coronavirus crisis began. On March 23 he thanked “the hardworking men and women of Federal Express, UPS, the United States Postal Service, and the truckers who are maintaining our supply chains and supply lines.”

But Connolly claims that, behind the scenes, Trump himself was instrumental in killing aid to the USPS. He said Trump personally axed direct aid to the service. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi “said this came directly from Trump and she has reiterated that more than once,” Connolly said.

The White House did not offer comment on Connolly’s claim.


On Tuesday, during an appearance on MSNBC, Pelosi reiterated that Postal Service funding is crucial in a phase 4 deal largely to keep voting by mail as a viable option.

“I'm going to continue like a dog and a bone on this issue,” said Connolly, “because we won't appreciate the criticality of it until the worst happens, and I'm trying to prevent the worst from happening.”

Ben Werschkul is a producer for Yahoo Finance in Washington, DC.
The US Army warned 2 months ago that the coronavirus could kill as many as 150,000 Americans

(Ryan Pickrell),Business Insider•April 2, 2020
Members of the US Army stack medical supplies.
Photo by Jessica Rinaldi/The Boston Globe via Getty Images


The US Army assessed in early February that the coronavirus could kill as many as 150,000 Americans, the Daily Beast reported Thursday, citing an unclassified briefing document.


The "black swan" or worst-case scenario assessment has become nearly the best-case scenario for the US as the White House warns that the virus may kill 100,000 to 240,000 Americans.


The number of coronavirus cases in the US has already topped 200,000, and more than 5,000 people have died.


The US Army assessed in early February that the coronavirus could kill as many as 150,000 Americans, the Daily Beast reported Thursday, citing an unclassified briefing document.

The document put together on Feb. 3 by US Army North had a "black swan" assessment that 80 million Americans could be infected, 15 to 25 million could require care, 300,000 to 500,000 could require hospitalization, and 80,000 to 150,000 could die.

While the Army briefing document was reportedly seen by the heads of US Northern Command and US Army North and sent to senior Army leadership, it is unclear if the document was passed further up the chain, the Daily Beast reported.

A "black swan" assessment is basically a worst-case scenario projection.


"The reality of it is that you want us planning for the worst-case scenarios, you want us planning for the what ifs—us thinking ahead into all those things that might and could possibly happen and that's what we've been doing, not only on this particular effort but on a myriad of different threats we face to the homeland," NORTHCOM commander Gen. Terrence O'Shaughnessy explained at the Pentagon Wednesday.

This worst-case scenario, as the Daily Beast's James LaPorta and Spencer Ackerman noted, is becoming a best-case scenario for the US.

The White House coronavirus task force has assessed that 100,000 to 240,000 Americans could die from the virus, even with ongoing steps to mitigate its effects. The president called the numbers "sobering," as did others on the task force.

"We, as sobering a number as that is, we should be prepared for it. Is it going to be that much? I hope not," Dr. Anthony Fauci, a top infectious disease expert and an important member of the task force, said Wednesday of the possibility of 100,000 Americans dying from the virus. "Being realistic, we need to prepare ourselves that that is a possibility, that that's what we will see."

Throughout February and March, President Donald Trump repeatedly downplayed the threat posed by the coronavirus.

In late February, Trump tweeted that "the Coronavirus is very much under control in the USA." A few days later, he said the number of cases in the US was going down and would be "close to zero" in a few days.

The president admitted Tuesday that he had been downplaying the outbreak in the US. "I knew everything. I knew it could be horrible," he said, explaining that he just didn't "want to be a negative person."

There are, according to latest statistics, more than 200,000 cases in the US, and more than 5,000 people have died as a result of the coronavirus. The coronavirus has spread to more than 900,000 people worldwide and claimed over 46,000 lives.

China declared whistleblower doctor Li Wenliang a 'martyr' following a local campaign to silence him for speaking out about the coronavirus

(Bill Bostock),Business Insider•April 3, 2020
Li Wenliang, the Wuhan doctor who sounded an early alarm about the coronavirus.
AP Photo


China on Thursday awarded Li Wenliang, the doctor who sounded an early alarm about the novel coronavirus, the title of "martyr."

In December, police in Wuhan made Li admit to lying about the existence of a worrying new virus discovered in the city. Li died on February 7 after contracting the virus.

An investigation by the Chinese Communist Party found on March 19 that the actions of law enforcement in Wuhan was "irregular" and "improper."

"Martyr" is the highest honor the Communist Party of China can bestow on a citizen killed working to serve the country. The country will honor him with three minutes of silence on Saturday.

China named Li Wenliang — the doctor who sounded the alarm about the coronavirus that later killed him — a "martyr" following a campaign to silence him by police in Wuhan.


Li was among 12 dead medics given the official honor by the Chinese Communist Party on Thursday, according to state media outlet CCTV.

"Martyr" is the highest honor the Communist Party can bestow on a citizen killed working to serve China, according to the state-run Global Times tabloid.
Li on February 3, 2020 — four days before his death.
LI WENLIANG/GAN EN FUND via REUTERS


Li was an ophthalmologist working at Wuhan Central Hospital. In late December, he shared with his colleagues on popular instant-messaging service WeChat a worrying diagnostics report that identified a new illness which looked much like severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS).

That turned out to be the novel coronavirus which has now infected more than 1 million people around the world.

Authorities in Wuhan immediately pounced on Li, and made him sign a letter admitting he was "spreading rumors" and "making false comments."

Li later contracted the coronavirus and died of it on February 7 in Wuhan Central Hospital, his place of work.
 
A woman passes a poster of President Xi Jinping in China.
REUTERS/Aly Song


Just days before his death Li told The New York Times by text: "If the officials had disclosed information about the epidemic earlier I think it would have been a lot better. There should be more openness and transparency."

His death was met with an outpouring of anger from many Chinese people, who used a number of hashtags calling for freedom of speech, an end to state censorship, and an apology to Li.

That anger appeared to have struck a nerve with the Chinese government. On March 19, the country's top anti-corruption agency, the National Supervisory Commission (NSC), ruled that Li's punishment was "irregular" and "improper."

The NSC said the police must be held responsible and that Li's punishment should be rescinded, according to Reuters.

China has proactively censored content on social media that is critical of the state's response to the coronavirus crisis. In early March, a new law came into effect which criminalized the posting of "illegal" and "negative" content critical of the government online.

At 10 a.m. local time on Saturday, the whole of China will observe a three-minute silence to honor all martyrs who died fighting the coronavirus, Xinhua reported.
Trump fire's inspector general of the intelligence community, Michael Atkinson
TRUMP IS THE STATE LIKE STALIN PURGES ANOTHER ENEMY OF THE STATE
Move sidelines an independent watchdog who handled Ukraine complaint


Michael Atkinson, Inspector General of the Intelligence Community,

leaves the U.S. Capitol October 4, 2019 in Washington, DC. Getty Images

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump on Friday abruptly fired the inspector general of the intelligence community, sidelining an independent watchdog who played a pivotal role in his impeachment even as his White House struggled with the deepening coronavirus pandemic.

Trump informed the Senate intelligence committee late Friday of his decision to fire Michael Atkinson, according to a letter obtained by The Associated Press. Atkinson handled the whistleblower complaint that triggered Trump’s impeachment last year.

Atkinson’s firing, which is part of a shakeup of the intelligence community under Trump, thrusts the president’s impeachment back into the spotlight as his administration deals with the deadly spread of coronavirus. As Trump was removing Atkinson, the number of U.S. deaths due to the virus topped 7,000.

Trump said in the letter that it is “vital” that he has confidence in the appointees serving as inspectors general, and “that is no longer the case with regard to this inspector general.”

He did not elaborate, except to say that “it is extremely important that we promote the economy, efficiency and effectiveness of federal programs and activities,” and that inspectors general are critical to those goals.

Atkinson was the first to inform Congress about an anonymous whistleblower complaint last year that described Trump’s pressure on Ukraine to investigate Democrat Joe Biden and his son. That complaint prompted a House investigation that ultimately resulted in Trump’s impeachment.

In letters to lawmakers in August and September, Atkinson said he believed the complaint was “urgent” and “credible.” But the acting Director of National Intelligence at the time, Joseph Maguire, said he did not believe it met the definition of “urgent,” and tried to withhold the complaint from Congress.

The complaint was eventually released after a firestorm, and it revealed that Trump had asked Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy in a July call to investigate Democrats. The House launched an inquiry in September, and three months later voted to impeach Trump. The Republican-led Senate acquitted Trump in February.

Trump said in the letter to the Senate that Atkinson would be removed from office in 30 days, the required amount of time he must wait after informing Congress. He wrote that he would nominate an individual “who has my full confidence” at a later date.

According to two congressional officials, Atkinson has been placed on administrative leave, meaning he will not serve out the 30 days. One of the officials said Atkinson was only informed of his removal on Friday night. The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because Atkinson’s administrative leave has not been announced.

Democrats reacted swiftly to Atkinson’s removal. The top Democrat on the Senate intelligence panel, Virginia Sen. Mark Warner, said it was “unconscionable” that Trump would fire Atkinson in the midst of the coronavirus pandemic.

“We should all be deeply disturbed by ongoing attempts to politicize the nation’s intelligence agencies,” Warner said.

House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff, D-Calif., who led the House impeachment inquiry, said “the president’s dead of night decision puts our country and national security at even greater risk.”

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., said the firing “threatens to have a chilling effect against all willing to speak truth to power.” Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., said Trump “fires people for telling the truth.”

Michael Horowitz, Chair of the Council of the Inspectors General on Integrity and Efficiency and the inspector general at the Department of Justice, criticized the removal of Atkinson and defended his handling of the Ukraine case.

“Inspector General Atkinson is known throughout the Inspector General community for his integrity, professionalism, and commitment to the rule of law and independent oversight,” Horowitz said.

Tom Monheim, a career intelligence professional, will become the acting inspector general for the intelligence community, according to an intelligence official who was not authorized to discuss personnel changes and spoke only on condition of anonymity. Monheim is currently the general counsel of the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency.

Atkinson’s firing is part of a larger shakeup in the intelligence community. Maguire, the former acting Director of National Intelligence, was also removed by Trump and replaced by a Trump loyalist, Richard Grenell.

The intelligence community, which Trump has always viewed with skepticism, has been in turmoil amid the constant turnover. Atkinson is at least the seventh intelligence official to be fired, ousted or moved aside since last summer.

The Office of the Director of National Intelligence, which was created to improve coordination of the nation’s 17 intelligence agencies after 9/11, has been in upheaval since former director Dan Coats, who had a fraught relationship with Trump, announced in July 2019 that he was stepping down.

Trump nominated Rep. John Ratcliffe, R-Texas, to replace Coats, but his selection drew sharp criticism from Democrats and a lukewarm response from some Republicans because of his lack of experience.

Trump withdrew Ratcliffe’s name from consideration shortly after he was nominated, but then re-nominated him again in February. The Senate has yet to move on the nomination.

Under the Federal Vacancies Reform Act, Grenell could only serve in his post until March 11 unless the president formally nominated someone else for the job. So by selecting Ratcliffe again, Grenell can stay for up to 210 days while Ratcliffe weaves his way through the Senate confirmation process, and for another 210 days if senators reject Ratcliffe’s nomination.

USA
These mortgage borrowers will be ‘the first canary in the coal mine’ for a coronavirus-fueled foreclosure crisis, regulator says

April 4, 2020 By Jacob Passy

Federal Housing Finance Agency Director Mark Calabria told CNBC that ‘it is certainly possible’ the number of delinquencies caused by the coronavirus outbreak could exceed the subprime mortgage crisis in some segments of the market

During an interview with CNBC Wednesday, Federal Housing Finance Agency Director Mark Calabria warned that the U.S. mortgage industry could face significant strain if the coronavirus emergency lasts for six months or longer. Getty Images


Just before the coronavirus pandemic reached America’s shores, the U.S. saw the lowest number of foreclosure filings in over a decade. But the economic downturn the disease outbreak has since caused could lead many Americans into foreclosure, the regulator of Fannie Mae FNMA, -4.11% and Freddie Mac FMCC, -0.76% said.

During an interview with CNBC Wednesday, Federal Housing Finance Agency Director Mark Calabria warned that the U.S. mortgage industry could face significant strain in the form of delinquencies and foreclosures if the coronavirus emergency lasts for six months or longer.

“This fundamentally comes down to how long an event this is,” Calabria said.

“If this only goes on for two to three months and we see pop back in the economy and people are hired back to their old jobs by and large, then I think this will be something the industry can get through without too much stress,” he added. “But if this is something that goes on for six months or more, then I think you’re going to continue to see a lot of stress.”

Calabria said he doesn’t expect all mortgage borrowers to be affected equally by the economic downturn. He argued that borrowers with loans backed by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac are likely to be on stronger financial footing than people with loans backed by the Federal Housing Administration (FHA).

“The place to look right now is the FHA market with the credit quality of their borrowers,” Calabria said. “They are going to be the first canary in the coal mine if you will in terms about what the broader implications are going to be.”

FHA loans carry less-stringent requirements in terms of credit scores and down payments than mortgages backed by Fannie and Freddie.

Before the number of coronavirus cases began climbing in the U.S., prompting government officials to shutter non-essential businesses, foreclosure activity hit a record low. In February, there were only 48,004 properties across the U.S. with foreclosure filings such as default notices, scheduled auctions or bank repossessions across the U.S., according to real-estate data company Attom Data Solutions. That was the lowest number of filings recorded since Attom began tracking the data in April 2005.

The number of foreclosure filings will likely drop further in the coming months as many lenders have stopped foreclosure proceedings in accordance with government directives during the coronavirus crisis, said Todd Teta, chief product officer with Attom Data Solutions.

In the wake of the job losses caused by business shutdowns as a result of the coronavirus pandemic, the FHFA and the Department of Housing and Urban Development instructed mortgage lenders and servicers to extend forbearance options to borrowers facing financial hardship. These forbearance agreements can allow borrowers to reduce or stop making payments for up to 12 months.

While borrowers would receive a break, servicers would still be on the hook for making payments to investors who had purchased mortgage-backed securities.

“Even if a quarter of all borrowers request forbearance for six months or longer, cash demands on servicers could exceed $75 billion and could climb well above $100 billion,” Mike Fratantoni, chief economist for the Mortgage Bankers Association, said last week. The trade group called on the Federal Reserve and U.S. Treasury to create a liquidity facility that mortgage servicers could borrow from to remain solvent.

Calabria said most servicers would be able to make it through the crisis if it lasts only two or three months. He added that forbearance requests have “overwhelmingly” come from borrowers with strong credit scores who had never been delinquent on their home loans.
Trump Organization has laid off about 1,500 employees as pandemic hits business
The coronavirus pandemic has forced borrowers and lenders across the globe to discuss ways to pay debts
 April 4, 2020 By MarketWatch
AP

The Trump Organization has laid off or furloughed about 1,500 employees at hotels in the U.S. and Canada as the coronavirus pandemic inflicts pain on the president’s private business, the Washington Post reported late Friday.


With most of U.S. President Trump’s hotels and clubs closed amid stay-at-home orders around the world, the Trump Organization has responded by cutting costs, like other companies in the hospitality and tourism industries.

The family business of President Trump is also in informal discussions with Deutsche Bank AG about delaying some loan payments as the coronavirus forces widespread disruptions to the economy, Bloomberg reported Friday.


Trump Organization representatives reached out to the Deutsche Bank’s private banking unit in New York late last month and the talks are ongoing, according to the New York Times.

The global coronavirus pandemic has forced borrowers and lenders across the globe to discuss ways to pay debts while admitting the huge pressure on company bottom lines. But the request from the Trump Organization is especially delicate after Deutsche Bank decided to keep Trump’s business dealings at arms length when he took office.

The Trump Organization has laid off or furloughed employees at hotels in New York, the District of Columbia, Miami, Chicago, Las Vegas, Vancouver and Honolulu, according to public filings and people familiar with the properties, including union officials.

Seventeen of Trump’s clubs and hotels have closed. The remainder of Trump properties are operating at a fraction of their normal capacity: hotels running with restaurants closed, golf clubs operating with clubhouses shut down, and golfers warned not to share carts or touch the flagsticks.
All told, the closed properties generated an average of $650,000 in revenue for Trump per day, according to Trump’s past financial disclosures.

That economic strain has pushed Trump Organization officials to inquire about possible relief, at least temporarily, from the company’s financial obligations at one of its properties.

In Palm Beach County, Fla., the Trump Organization has not paid rent of $54,534.25 that was due April 1 on land it leases from the county government for the Trump International Golf Club West Palm Beach, a county representative said Friday. The Trump Organization said it has until April 10 to make the monthly payment without penalty.

“Because payment has not become due, and in light of Governor’s DeSantis’ executive order shutting down businesses throughout the State of Florida as a result of the COVID 19 pandemic, the County advised us to refrain from making payment until they have finalized their policy for the handling of their numerous leases,” Alan Garten, a Trump Organization executive, said in a statement. “As soon as the County finalizes its guidance, we will, of course, fully and timely comply with its directives as well as continue to comply with the requirements of the lease.”

Palm Beach County officials did not respond to a question about Garten’s comment that the company was advised not to make the payment.

As of Friday, 17 of Trump’s 24 clubs and hotels around the world were closed. The latest to close was Trump’s hotel in Vancouver, Canada — which announced its closure Thursday.

In Chicago, the Trump hotel told investors on Friday that it had made the “heartbreaking decision to” lay off two-thirds of its staff, required the remaining staff to work on two to three days a week, and suspended 401(k) contributions for all.

The company also has to pay an April bill to New York City, related to ice rinks, a carousel and a golf course that the company runs under city contracts. A representative of the city parks department said Friday that “they do not have a past due payment at this time” but declined to say more.

The company has been trying to sell its D.C. hotel lease since late last year, an effort that has been sidelined by the pandemic.