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Joe Biden has been officially anointed the Democratic
presidential candidate at the party's convention, helped over the line
with some glowing testimonials from elder statesmen.
Two
Democratic former presidents, Bill Clinton and Jimmy Carter, and former
Secretary of State Colin Powell, a Republican, endorsed Mr Biden.
Mr Clinton said President Donald Trump had brought "chaos" to the Oval Office.
Mr Trump trails Mr Biden in opinion polls ahead of November's election.
The
convention is largely virtual, amid the coronavirus pandemic, and it is
unclear whether a format of pre-recorded speeches and no live audience
will generate the same levels of enthusiasm as the traditional party
gatherings. Next week's Republican convention will also be mostly
online.
Mr Biden, the former vice-president under President Barack
Obama, became his party's nominee on Tuesday night in a pre-recorded
roll call vote from delegates in all 50 states.
This is Mr Biden's
third White House bid, having formerly run in 1988 and 2008. The
77-year-old's campaign appeared to be in danger of collapse back in
February this year.
On the second night of the party convention on
Tuesday, with the theme "leadership matters," Mr Clinton delivered the
key address.
Media captionJoe Biden: Will it be third time lucky in 2020?
"Donald Trump says we're leading the world," Mr Clinton said
in his five-minute message pre-recorded from his home in Chappaqua, New
York. "Well, we are the only major industrial economy to have its
unemployment rate triple.
"At a time like this, the Oval Office should be a command centre. Instead, it's a storm centre. There's only chaos."
Following
addresses from former First Lady Michelle Obama and Senator Bernie
Sanders on Monday, Tuesday's speeches aimed to persuade voters the
Democratic party is the best suited to repair problems at home and
abroad.
Mr Powell said Mr Biden shared "the values I learned growing up in the south Bronx and serving in uniform".
Media captionWhat happens at the US conventions?
The decorated four-star general said he supported him for
president because "we need to restore those values to the White House".
In
June, Mr Powell - who served under President George W Bush and has
appeared at multiple Republican conventions in previous years - called
President Trump a liar and endorsed Mr Biden.
He joins several
Republicans who have endorsed Mr Biden, including former Ohio Governor
John Kasich during the first night of the convention.
Cindy
McCain, the widow of Republican Senator John McCain, also spoke about
the friendship between her late husband and Mr Biden, though she stopped
short of a formal endorsement.
Former Secretary of State John Kerry addressed the convention virtually to assail Mr Trump's leadership.
"When this president goes overseas, it isn't a goodwill mission, it's a blooper reel," he said.
"He
breaks up with our allies and writes love letters to dictators. America
deserves a president who is looked up to, not laughed at."
Media captionWhat do young Democrats think of Joe Biden?The freshly minted Democratic nominee's wife, Jill Biden,
potentially the next US first lady, delivered the night's headline
address, standing in an empty classroom at the Delaware high school
where she taught English in the 1990s.
Urging everyone to vote for
her husband, who joined her, she said: "The burdens we carry are heavy,
and we need someone with strong shoulders.
"I know that if we
entrust this nation to Joe, he will do for your family what he did for
ours: bring us together and make us whole."
Democrats' big tent
Jill Biden's speech wasn't as polished as Michelle
Obama's, but it had a raw emotion of its own. She stood in an empty
classroom and spoke of students in the autumn whose learning would be
confined to boxes on a computer screen, not bustling schools.
She talked about the fears - economic and health-related - created by the coronavirus pandemic.
The evening began with a keynote address delivered by a rotating collection of up-and-coming Democratic politicians.
It
was a format that only works in a virtual convention, but as a joint
affair, it's unlikely to be the kind of launching pad enjoyed by past
keynotes Mario Cuomo, Julian Castro and, most notably, Barack Obama.
As
on Monday night, there was once again a concerted effort to reach out
to disaffected Republicans by using members of their party - this time,
former Secretary of State Colin Powell and Cindy McCain, wife of former
Senator John McCain. Meanwhile, younger Democrats often billed as rising
stars within the party, such as former Georgia lawmaker Stacey Abrams,
were given just a few moments in the spotlight on Tuesday.
New
York congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez used her 90 seconds to
highlight the policies of the so-called progressive wing of the party,
without mentioning Mr Biden.
She also used the procedural roll
call to second the nomination of fellow left-winger Vermont Senator
Sanders for president, although she later tweeted her "deepest
congratulations" to Mr Biden, adding "let's go win in November". Mr Trump is continuing to paint Mr Biden as a puppet
of left-wing radicals. Earlier on Tuesday, the president was in
Arizona, his latest stop on a week-long campaign tour of key
battleground states.
Most polls show Mr Biden in the lead thus
far, though Mr Trump has tightened the margin in recent weeks and the
election is still months away.
Media captionDemocratic National Convention: What you missed on day one
The Democratic convention, originally planned for Milwaukee,
Wisconsin, will continue on Wednesday and Thursday, with speeches from
vice-presidential pick Senator Kamala Harris, the party's 2016 nominee
Hillary Clinton and former President Obama.
The four nights will end with an acceptance speech from Mr Biden.
At
next week's Republican convention, Mr Trump will give his acceptance
speech from the White House, brushing aside accusations that in doing so
he is politicising the presidential seat of power.
Trump
and the White House repeatedly denied Monday that the president had
been briefed on the efforts against coalition forces in Afghanistan,
which are believed to have led to the deaths of several U.S. service
members. White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany said Trump had not been told of the intelligence
because it had not been verified and declined to say if the president
had been briefed since news of the bounties became public.
But on
Capitol Hill, Republican senators demanded more information from the
administration and called for Russia to be punished if reports from the
New York Times, The Washington Post
and other media outlets were deemed accurate. The Republicans took a
notably tougher public tone than Trump did, although they mostly avoided
the question of whether the president should have been aware of the
intelligence.
While the Trump administration has taken some
aggressive measures against Russia, the president’s conciliatory tone
toward Russian President Vladmir Putin continues to be a thorny
political problem for Republicans who have advocated a more hawkish
approach toward the authoritarian leader.
The latest reports
that the Russian bounties may have resulted in the deaths of several
U.S. service members only increase the potential problems for
Republicans looking to take a tougher stance toward Moscow without
appearing to be at odds with a president who has considerable sway with
the party’s voters.
Sen. Cory Gardner (R-Colo.) called the reports
“deeply troubling” and said he wanted the Senate to pass his
legislation that would require the State Department to consider naming
Russia a state sponsor of terrorism. Sen. Thom Tillis (R-N.C.), who like
Gardner is in a tough reelection race this fall, similarly called for
the U.S. government to treat Russia as a state sponsor of terrorism.
“From
propping up the murderous Assad regime (in Syria) and our enemies in
Afghanistan, Putin’s Russia has made clear they are no friend to the
United States,” Gardner wrote Monday on Twitter. “They’ve targeted our institutions and our troops — the US must respond.”
Sen.
Todd C. Young (R-Ind.), a former intelligence officer in the Marines,
said the Russia-financed bounty effort, if confirmed, “deserves a strong
and immediate response from our government.”
Young, who also
heads the Senate Republicans’ campaign arm, called for hearings and for
Trump to rescind any invitation for Russia to rejoin the Group of Seven,
which is composed of the world’s major industrialized nations, as well
as direct sanctions on Putin.
Sen. Ben Sasse (R-Neb.) also called for an aggressive response if the information from U.S. intelligence agencies holds up.
“If
true, what we’re talking about here is putting the target crosshairs on
the backs of American servicemen and women in uniform, and I have heard
from a lot of Nebraskan military families this weekend, and they’re
livid. They have a right to be livid,” he said.
He said Congress needs to find out what Trump was or was not told.
“Who
knew what, when, and did the commander in chief know? And if not, how
the hell not? What is going on in that process?” he asked, adding: “What
are we going to do to impose proportional cost in response? In a
situation like this, that would mean Taliban and GRU body bags.” GRU is
the abbreviation for the Russian military spy unit.
The reaction from congressional Republicans on Monday was markedly different than the comments from Trump, who dismissed
the reports as “possibly another fabricated Russia Hoax” — his
reference to the probe earlier in his presidency led by special counsel
Robert S. Mueller III that examined potential collusion between Trump
associates and Russia. The president has continued to dismiss the
conclusion of U.S. intelligence officials that Moscow interfered in the
2016 presidential election in his favor.
Left largely unaddressed
in many GOP senators’ public comments, however, was Trump’s role in the
matter and what he should do now, with few questions from Senate
Republicans on Monday about the White House’s contention that the
president was left in the dark about an intelligence issue that had
prompted a restricted high-level White House meeting in late March.
Russia and the Taliban have denied the existence of the program.
“Well,
I think the president can’t single-handedly remember everything, I’m
sure, that he’s briefed on, but the intelligence officials are familiar
with it and briefed him,” said Sen. John Cornyn (R-Tex.). “But again
somebody’s leaking classified information and then trying to further a
narrative that isn’t necessarily supported by the facts.”
McEnany
repeatedly said at a White House briefing Monday that there was not a
consensus among intelligence officials about the accuracy of the
information on the bounties.
“When our adversaries have directly
targeted U.S. or coalition partners, the president has not hesitated to
act,” McEnany said. “But this was not briefed up to the president
because it was not, in fact, verified.”
Congressional Democrats
raised alarm about the reports, published over the weekend, and both
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) and Senate Minority Leader Charles
E. Schumer (D-N.Y.) called for briefings of their full chambers by
intelligence officials.
A group of House Democrats, led by
Majority Leader Steny H. Hoyer, will be briefed on the issue at the
White House at 8 a.m. Tuesday, according to an aide to the Maryland
Democrat. Hoyer has asked that the following Democrats be included:
Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Eliot L. Engel (N.Y.), Armed Services
Committee Chairman Adam Smith (Wash.), Intelligence Committee Chairman
Adam B. Schiff (Calif.), Gregory W. Meeks (N.Y.), Brad Sherman (Calif.),
William R. Keating (Mass.), Ruben Gallego (Ariz.), Abigail Spanberger
(Va.) and Elissa Slotkin (Mich.).
But the briefing will not be an
adequate substitute for an all-member briefing, said the aide, who spoke
on the condition of anonymity to discuss a national security matter.
Schumer
suggested that lawmakers should use the national defense authorization
bill, the annual legislation detailing policy priorities for the
Pentagon that senators are working on this week, to punish the Russian
government.
“President Trump, you lose either way,” Schumer said
Monday during a speech on the Senate floor. “If you weren’t briefed on
this important report, how can you run an administration where something
this important is not brought to your level?
“If you were told about the report and did nothing, that’s even worse.”
Some
of the president’s closest allies in the House GOP ranks took a
different stance after a briefing at the White House, with at least one
emerging from the closed-door session and accusing journalists of
damaging an ongoing intelligence investigation.
Rep. Jim Banks
(R-Ind.) lashed out at the New York Times, which first published the
report, by accusing the newspaper of compromising a national security
probe.
“The blood is on their hands,” Banks tweeted.
“Having served in Afghanistan during the time the alleged bounties were
placed, no one is angrier about this than me. Now it’s impossible to
finish the investigation.”
But two Republicans who received the
briefing — Reps. Michael McCaul (Tex.) and Adam Kinzinger (Ill.) —
called for the administration to take “swift and serious action” against
Putin should the intelligence bear out to be true.
Senior Senate
Republican leaders and heads of key committees did not disclose how
much, if at all, they were aware of the intelligence.
Senate
Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) declined to respond when asked
whether he had been briefed on the matter. Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.),
the acting chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, declined to
comment on specifics but said that the “targeting of our troops by
foreign adversaries via proxies is a well-established threat.”
Senate
Armed Services Committee Chairman James M. Inhofe (R-Okla.) signaled
that he was unaware of the intelligence, saying Monday that he had
“asked the administration to share what it knows” and that he expected
to have more information in the coming days.
“We’ve known for a
long time that Putin is a thug and a murderer, and if the allegations
reported in the New York Times are true, I will work with President
Trump on a strong response,” Inhofe said. “My number one priority is the
safety of our troops.”
Michigan official replies voters getting applications, not absentee ballots
President Donald Trump
Getty Images
President Donald Trump on Wednesday threatened federal funding
to Michigan and Nevada, as those two Democratic-led states pursue
mail-in voting.
Trump falsely claimed on Twitter that Michigan is sending
ballots, and not ballot applications, to its voters. On Tuesday,
Michigan’s secretary of state said her office would send absentee ballot
applications to voters for elections in August and November. Nevada is
planning an all-mail election for its June 9 primary.
Accusations
of improperly using government resources have trailed the secretary of
state, but President Trump’s move to fire the State Department inspector
general has handed Democrats a new weapon.
Credit...Pool photo by Kevin Lamarque
WASHINGTON
— Secretary of State Mike Pompeo swatted away questions about his use
of government resources again and again last year.
In January, news reports
cited unnamed diplomats complaining about his wife, Susan, traveling
with him across the Middle East during a partial government shutdown.
In the summer, members of Congress began examining a whistle-blower complaint
accusing Mr. Pompeo of asking diplomatic security agents to run errands
like picking up restaurant takeout meals and retrieving the family dog,
Sherman, from a groomer.
And in October, a Democratic senator called for a special counsel
to investigate his use of State Department aircraft and funds for
frequent visits to Kansas, where he was reported to be considering a
Senate run.
In each case, Mr. Pompeo or other
department officials denied wrongdoing, and the secretary moved on
unscathed. But his record is now coming under fresh scrutiny after
President Trump told Congress on Friday night that he was firing the
State Department inspector general — at Mr. Pompeo’s private urging, a White House official said.
The inspector general, Steve A. Linick,
who leads hundreds of employees in investigating fraud and waste at the
State Department, had begun an inquiry into Mr. Pompeo’s possible
misuse of a political appointee to perform personal tasks for him and
his wife, according to Democratic aides. That included walking the dog,
picking up dry-cleaning and making restaurant reservations, one said —
an echo of the whistle-blower complaint from last year.
The
details of Mr. Linick’s investigation are not clear, and it may be
unrelated to the previous allegations. But Democrats and other critics
of Mr. Pompeo say the cloud of accusations shows a pattern of abuse of
taxpayer money — one that may mean lawmakers will be less willing to
give the administration the benefit of the doubt as congressional
Democrats begin an investigation into Mr. Linick’s dismissal.
The
investigation is aimed at determining whether the act was one of
illegal retaliation intended to shield Mr. Pompeo from accountability —
which “would undermine the foundation of our democratic institutions,”
Representative Eliot L. Engel of New York and Senator Bob Menendez of
New Jersey, leading Democrats on foreign policy committees, said in a
joint statement.
Mr. Engel stressed on Sunday that Mr.
Pompeo must turn over all requested records, and said, “What I’ve
learned about Inspector General Stephen Linick’s removal is deeply
troubling.”
Image
Credit...Erin Schaff/The New York Times
Mr.
Linick is the fourth inspector general to fall in a purge this spring
by Mr. Trump of officials he has deemed insufficiently loyal, but the
dismissal is the first to prompt a formal inquiry in Congress, and it
has also drawn criticism from a few Republicans.
“The
president has the right to fire any federal employee,” Speaker Nancy
Pelosi said on CBS’s “Face the Nation” on Sunday. “But the fact is, if
it looks like it is in retaliation for something that the I.G., the
inspector general, is doing, that could be unlawful.”
She
called the move “unsavory” — “when you take out someone who is there to
stop waste, fraud, abuse or other violations of the law that they
believe to be happening.”
Aides to Mr. Pompeo did not
reply to repeated requests for comment. The White House did not respond
to questions about whether it knew of Mr. Linick’s investigation into
Mr. Pompeo when it moved to dismiss him.
Mr. Linick’s
office has not commented on that inquiry or on Mr. Trump’s announcement,
which started a 30-day clock on the inspector general’s departure.
Employees under Mr. Linick generally view him as competent and
nonpartisan. Mr. Linick began his current job in 2013, and he held
senior posts in the Justice Department starting in the administration of
President George W. Bush.
In May 2016, Mr. Linick
issued a report sharply criticizing Hillary Clinton, the former
secretary of state, for her use of a private email server, and last fall
he played a minor role during the impeachment hearings against Mr. Trump.
A
few Republican senators, notably Mitt Romney and Charles E. Grassley,
have expressed varying degrees of disapproval of Mr. Trump’s move. But
on Sunday, Senator Ron Johnson, Republican of Wisconsin, said: “I
understand it. I don’t disagree with it.”
He told CNN
that he had spoken with White House and State Department officials about
the matter. “I’m not crying big crocodile tears over this termination,
let’s put it that way,” he said.
Since Mr. Pompeo took
up his current post in April 2018, and for more than one year before
that as the C.I.A. director, he has been peerless in his navigation of
Mr. Trump’s inner world of loyal advisers and domestic politics around
foreign policy. While sticking close to Mr. Trump, he has weathered the impeachment process involving Ukraine, questions over the decision to kill a top Iranian general and the fraught diplomacy between the president and Kim Jong-un, the unpredictable leader of North Korea.
But
the maelstrom of questions that began over the weekend could present a
formidable challenge to Mr. Pompeo’s political instincts and career
ambitions. People close to him say he is thinking of running for
president in 2024. And more immediately, the Senate majority leader,
Mitch McConnell, Republican of Kentucky, has repeatedly urged him to run
for an open Senate seat in Kansas — an important race given that the
Republicans are at risk of losing control of the Senate in the November
elections.
Mr. Pompeo knows the potential effect of a
congressional investigation on a politician’s career: As a Republican
congressman, he helped lead the charge against Mrs. Clinton, then the secretary of state, over the deaths of four Americans at a mission in Benghazi, Libya, an issue that hounded her during the 2016 presidential campaign.
For
Mr. Pompeo, the spotlight now falls on much more personal matters,
including the role of his wife. Other secretaries of state have
occasionally traveled with spouses, but some officials in the State
Department say Mrs. Pompeo, a former bank executive, has played an
unusually active role in running meetings and accompanying her husband
on official business.
“She has this quasi-official role, where my friends are called to meetings she is leading at the department,” said Brett Bruen,
a former career diplomat and director of global engagement on President
Barack Obama’s National Security Council. “They know that’s not
supposed to happen, because she isn’t in their chain of command. But
what can they do?”
Image
Credit...Pool photo by Andrew Caballero-Reynolds
Mrs. Pompeo has accompanied Mr. Pompeo on several long trips overseas. In January 2019, she went with him on an eight-day journey across the Middle East — which raised questions
among some officials because most State Department employees, including
those supporting the trip, were working without pay during a partial
government shutdown. Mrs. Pompeo has also flown with her husband on
multinight trips to Switzerland and Italy, which included a visit to the secretary’s ancestral home region of Abruzzo.
Mrs.
Pompeo, who is not paid by the State Department, has met with embassy
families and local figures on some of the trips, and Mr. Pompeo has
called her a “force multiplier.”
Mrs. Pompeo also played an unusually prominent volunteer role
at the C.I.A. when Mr. Pompeo was the director there; she traveled with
her husband, used an office space in C.I.A. headquarters and asked
employees to assist her — actions that an agency spokesman defended at the time. Their son used a C.I.A. shooting range recreationally, according to CNN.
Mr.
Pompeo’s frequent trips to Kansas last year also drew intense scrutiny.
He went four times, three on the auspices of official business and
flying in and out on State Department aircraft. To many, the trips
appeared to be part of a shadow Senate campaign
for 2020 and had little to do with foreign policy, despite Mr. Pompeo’s
denials and his refusal so far to agree to run for the seat.
On the last trip, in October, Mr. Pompeo took part in a student event with Ivanka Trump, Mr. Trump’s daughter. And he discussed the Senate race
with Charles Koch, the billionaire who is a longtime supporter of Mr.
Pompeo, and Dave Robertson, the president and chief operating officer of
Koch Industries, The Wall Street Journal reported.
The Kansas City Star ran a blistering editorial
denouncing Mr. Pompeo’s frequent trips to his adopted home state,
telling him he should quit and run for Senate or “by all means focus on
U.S. diplomacy — remember diplomacy? — and stop hanging out here every
chance he gets.”
Four days later, Mr. Menendez, the top Democrat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, sent a letter
to the U.S. Office of Special Counsel asking it to investigate Mr.
Pompeo for potential violations of the Hatch Act, which bars federal
employees from using their official positions to engage in partisan
political activities.
Separately, Democratic lawmakers
on a House committee last year began looking at a whistle-blower
complaint that Mr. Pompeo, his wife and adult son were asking diplomatic
security agents to run personal errands, including picking up Chinese
food and the family dog from a groomer. The whistle-blower said agents
had complained they were “UberEats with guns,” according to CNN, which first reported on the accusations.
Lon
Fairchild, the agent in charge of the Diplomatic Security Service, told
CNN that he had seen no wrongdoing. The Democratic lawmakers did not
open a formal inquiry.
More broadly, Mr. Pompeo has
wrestled with managing the State Department, though he was initially
hailed by many employees as a welcome change from Rex W. Tillerson, Mr.
Trump’s first secretary of state, who was perceived as aloof and
dismissive.
Last fall, current and former State Department officials criticized Mr. Pompeo for not vocally defending diplomats who were testifying in the impeachment inquiry and coming under attack from Mr. Trump, and for his own role in the earlier ouster of Marie L. Yovanovitch, a respected career diplomat, from the ambassadorship to Ukraine.
Since the winter, Mr. Pompeo has also found himself on unsteady ground on policy amid the coronavirus pandemic.
Usually
outspoken on policy matters, he seemed to play a more subdued role
early in the crisis. Then he chose to pull back from diplomacy with
China, where the outbreak began, and relentlessly criticized the Chinese
Communist Party for its actions. He pushed spy agencies
to look for evidence to support an unsubstantiated theory that the
outbreak began in a virology laboratory in the city of Wuhan, and later said
there was “enormous” and “significant” evidence behind the theory even
when many scientists and intelligence analysts argued otherwise.
On
Sunday, Mr. Pompeo warned China in a statement that he was aware “the
Chinese government has threatened to interfere with the work of American
journalists in Hong Kong,” which has semi-autonomy. He did not give
details, but said that “these journalists are members of a free press,
not propaganda cadres, and their valuable reporting informs Chinese
citizens and the world.” David E. Sanger and Emily Cochrane contributed reporting.
As the coronavirus
spreads across the country, Americans are curbing their expectations
about when it will be safe for gatherings of 10 or more people, with
about 2 in 3 adults now saying it will not be until July or later before
those events can happen, according to a Washington Post-University of Maryland poll.
The
findings provide more evidence that Americans remain worried about the
threat of the virus and cautious about efforts to lift stay-at-home
restrictions and to reopen businesses, even as many governors have begun
to move in that direction. In the face of plans in many states to
gradually ease those limitations, significant majorities of Americans
continue to emphasize the need for social distancing and other safety
measures.
Fully half of all Americans say in the poll that they
think it will not be safe for gatherings of 10 or more until midsummer,
including nearly one-quarter who say it will not be safe until 2021 or
later. Just about 1 in 5 say they believe such gatherings are safe now
or will be by the end of this month.
The timeline has shifted
substantially in just the past few weeks, as the number of covid-19
cases and deaths continue to rise. In a similar poll in mid-April,
51 percent of all Americans said they thought gatherings of 10 or more
people would be safe by the end of June. That has fallen to 32 percent
in the latest survey, with 66 percent saying it will take longer for
gatherings to be safe.
Democrats still envision a longer timetable
before safe gatherings can occur than do Republicans, with 80 percent
of Democrats and 54 percent of Republicans saying opening by the end of
July or later now seems likely. But there has been a shift in
perceptions across the political spectrum since mid-April. Among both
Democrats and Republicans, the percentages who say gatherings won’t be
safe until July or later have risen by 26 percentage points. Among
independents, the increase is 14 points.
The findings about safe
gatherings continue to be heavily shaped not just by partisanship, but
also by persistent personal concerns about contracting the virus and
becoming seriously ill as a result. Overall, 58 percent of Americans say
they are very or somewhat worried about getting the infection and
becoming seriously ill, down from 63 percent last week but similar to
57 percent three weeks ago. Among those Americans who worry about
getting the virus, 80 percent say it will not be safe for gatherings of
10 or more people before July, with most of them saying it will be later
this year or beyond. Among those not particularly worried, 51 percent
say they think gatherings of that size will be safe by the end of June,
and more than 1 in 3 say it will be safe by the end of this month.
Although
Republicans and Republican-leaning independents are significantly less
worried about becoming seriously ill — 44 percent compared with
68 percent of Democrats and Democratic-leaners — those worries carve
sharp divisions within partisan groups. Among Republicans who are less
worried about becoming sick, more than 6 in 10 believe gatherings of 10
or more will be safe by the end of June. But among Republicans who are
personally worried, more than 7 in 10 expect it to take until at least
July.
Despite the visibility of angry protests over coronavirus
closures, most Americans remain cautious about reopening their state
economy. A 58 percent majority say current restrictions on restaurants,
stores and other businesses in their state are appropriate, with
20 percent saying they are not restrictive enough and 21 percent saying
they are too restrictive. In late April, 66 percent said such
restrictions were appropriate, 16 percent said they were not restrictive
enough and 17 percent called them too restrictive.
Republicans
are significantly more likely than Democrats to say the limitations on
restaurants, stores and other businesses are too restrictive, with
35 percent of self-identified Republicans and Republican-leaning
independents saying this compared with 9 percent of Democrats and
Democratic-leaning independents.
At the same time, those who fear
becoming ill from the virus are more than twice as likely to say the
limitations are not restrictive enough as those who are not worried,
27 percent compared with 12 percent.
With more than half the states moving to reopen their economies, and other data
showing more Americans on the move even in the face of shelter-at-home
orders, the poll finds widespread support for people in communities to
practice social distancing, wear masks outside and follow other
practices health officials have recommended to mitigate the spread of
the coronavirus.
Eight in 10 say it is necessary for people in
their communities to wear a mask when outside the home, and more than 8
in 10 say it is important for people to stay at least six feet apart
from one another in public. Three in 4 say people in their communities
should avoid gatherings with friends with whom they do not live, and
more than 3 in 4 say people should stay at home as much as possible.
Clear
majorities of Democrats, Republicans and independents support such
measures, although about a third or more of Republicans say wearing
masks, avoiding gatherings with friends and staying home as much as
possible are unnecessary. Just over 1 in 5 Republicans say keeping six
feet apart is unnecessary.
“The widespread belief that people
should wear masks and restrict their contact with people outside their
homes is striking,” said Michael Hanmer, a professor of government and
politics at the University of Maryland who co-directed the survey. “This
stands in stark contrast to the handful of crowds in close spaces that
have gained media attention.”
Overall, 55 percent of Americans
currently say they think people in their communities are striking the
right balance on practicing social distancing, but 33 percent say people
are not taking those practices seriously enough. Democrats are more
likely than Republicans or independents to say they do not think people
in their communities are taking social distancing practices seriously
enough, with concerns also peaking among people who are personally
worried about becoming seriously ill. The poll
was conducted by The Washington Post and the University of Maryland’s
Center for Democracy and Civic Engagement. Interviews were conducted
May 5 to 10 among a random national sample of 1,007 adults, 70 percent
of whom were reached on cellphones and 30 percent on landlines. Overall
results have a margin of sampling error of plus or minus 3.5 percentage
points.
Emily Guskin and Alauna Safarpour contributed to this report.
House
Speaker Nancy Pelosi endorsed former vice president Joe Biden’s White
House bid on Monday, citing the Democrat’s experience helping to pass
the Affordable Care Act and implementing the 2009 American Recovery and
Reinvestment Act to argue that he is well positioned to lead the country
amid a global pandemic.
“As we face coronavirus, Joe has been a
voice of reason and resilience, with a clear path to lead us out of this
crisis,” said Pelosi (Calif.).
With a prerecorded video,
Pelosi gave the latest in a well-planned string of endorsements that
Biden’s advisers have scheduled to drive attention to Biden’s campaign,
which has a far more limited reach than President Trump’s operation.
“When
our nation faced the Great Recession, it was Joe Biden who led the
implementation — and the accountability — of the Recovery Act, helping
create and save millions of jobs,” Pelosi said in the video. “When the
Democratic Congress was passing the Affordable Care Act, Joe Biden was a
partner for progress in the White House and also championed the Cancer
Moonshot.”
Although Biden remains about 600 pledged delegates
short of the 1,991 needed to win the Democratic nomination, all of his
rivals in the party have suspended their campaigns or endorsed him,
making his coronation this summer a near certainty.
As a result,
Biden has been moving to take control of the Democratic Party. Jen
O’Malley Dillon, his campaign manager, announced Friday that she had
installed a new chief executive at the Democratic National Committee and
the two organizations signed a joint fundraising agreement.
Pelosi
stayed neutral during the Democratic primary, repeatedly cautioning the
party to keep its eye on the ultimate prize of defeating Trump, despite
several House members running for president and former New York mayor
Mike Bloomberg, one of the major financial backers of the 2018
Democratic House takeover, running as well.
The last time Pelosi
endorsed a presidential nominee before the outcome of the primaries was
clear came in during the 2004 cycle, when she backed the campaign of
Rep. Richard A. Gephardt (D-Mo.).
Earlier this year, when many
moderate Democrats in the House feared Sanders would win the nomination
and jeopardize their seats, Pelosi asked for party unity, even as she
made clear that the House would not necessarily run on Sanders’s policy
platform.
“We have to win in certain particular areas,” she said
at the time. “It is not unusual for a party platform or the candidates
for president to have their own agenda that they would put forth, and
it’s not unusual for the House of Representatives to have its agenda as
well.”
Such concerns have faded with Biden’s apparent assurance of the nomination.
“I
am proud to endorse Joe Biden for president: a leader who is the
personification of hope and courage, values, authenticity and
integrity,” Pelosi said in the video Monday. “With so much at stake, we
need the enthusiasm, invigoration and participation of all Americans —
up and down the ballot, and across the country.”
Under
the best-case scenario presented on Tuesday, more Americans will die
from the coronavirus in the weeks and months to come than died in the
Korean and Vietnam Wars combined.
President
Trump at a news conference on Tuesday at the White House. His
assessment of the coronavirus has drastically changed from five weeks
ago, when he was still likening it to the flu.Credit...Erin Schaff/The New York Times
WASHINGTON — Five weeks ago, when there were 60 confirmed cases of the coronavirus in the United States, President Trump expressed little alarm. “This is a flu,” he said. “This is like a flu.” He was still likening it to an ordinary flu as late as Friday.
By Tuesday, however, with more than 187,000 recorded cases in the United States
and more Americans having been killed by the virus than by the Sept.
11, 2001, attacks, the president’s assessment had rather drastically
changed. “It’s not the flu,” he said. “It’s vicious.”
The
grim-faced president who appeared in the White House briefing room for
more than two hours on Tuesday evening beside charts showing death
projections of hellacious proportions was coming to grips with a reality
he had long refused to accept. At a minimum, the charts predicted that 100,000 to 240,000 Americans would die — and only if the nation abided by stringent social restrictions that would choke the economy and impoverish millions.
A crisis that Mr. Trump had repeatedly asserted was “under control” and hoped would “miraculously” disappear has come to consume his presidency, presenting him with a challenge that he seems only now to be seeing more clearly.
The numbers publicly outlined on Tuesday had forced him over the weekend to reverse his plan to reopen the country by Easter,
but they were hardly new or surprising. Experts have been warning of a
possibility like this for weeks. But more than ever before, Mr. Trump
seemed to acknowledge them.
“I want every American to be prepared
for the hard days that lie ahead,” the president said, the starkest such
effort he has made to prepare the country for the expected wave of
disease and death. “We’re going to go through a very tough two weeks.”
Afterward,
he added: “We’re going to start seeing some real light at the end of
the tunnel. But this is going to be a very painful — very, very painful —
two weeks.”
Under the best-case scenario presented on Tuesday,
Mr. Trump will see more Americans die from the coronavirus in the weeks
and months to come than Presidents Harry S. Truman, Dwight D.
Eisenhower, John F. Kennedy, Lyndon B. Johnson and Richard M. Nixon saw
die in the Korean and Vietnam Wars combined.
The
lowest estimate would claim nearly as many Americans as World War I
under President Woodrow Wilson and 14 times as many Americans as Iraq and Afghanistan together under Presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama.
That
is a daunting realization for any president, one that left Mr. Trump
now anticipating “the worst thing that the country has probably ever
seen.”
A pandemic is not a war, of course. Mr. Trump did not
choose to have a pandemic. But he will be judged on how he responded,
and the reviews from many quarters have been scalding even as polls have shown rising public support.
While he conceded the bleak picture more fully than before on Tuesday,
he continued to rewrite the history of his handling of it.
Despite
comparing it to the ordinary flu and saying for weeks that it would
pass, the president insisted on Tuesday that he understood all along
that it could be a killer of historic proportions. “I thought it could
be,” he said. “I knew everything. I knew it could be horrible, and I
knew it could be maybe good.”
Mr. Trump said he played down the
seriousness of the threat because he chose to be positive. “I want to
give people hope,” he said. “You know, I’m a cheerleader for the
country.”
He said his friends in business were advising him not to
react aggressively to the virus, presumably out of concern for what it
could mean for the economy, which now faces certain recession.
“I’ve
had many friends, businesspeople, people with great actually common
sense — they said, ‘Why don’t we ride it out?’” Mr. Trump said without
identifying them. “A lot of people have said, a lot of people have
thought about it, ride it out, don’t do anything, just ride it out and
think of it as the flu. But it’s not the flu. It’s vicious.”
The
president said that whatever his critics say, he himself had not been
riding it out, pointing again, as he often does, to his decision at the
end of January to limit travel from China, where the first major outbreak occurred, a move that came as airlines were already cutting back flights on their own. Experts like Dr. Anthony S. Fauci,
the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious
Diseases, have credited that decision with slowing the spread of the
virus to the United States.
But Mr. Trump cites it
as if it were the only action that was necessary when specialists said
the benefit of the travel restrictions was limited because the United
States did not use the time it bought to ramp up testing fast enough.
The president did not explain on Tuesday why testing was so slow, nor did he explain why he waited
to recommend canceling large events, closing businesses and schools and
limiting group gatherings until after governors began ordering it
themselves. Nor did he explain why he publicly declared that the country
could reopen as early as Easter, only to reverse himself days later, if he understood all along how bad the situation could get.
At
the White House briefing on Tuesday, Dr. Fauci was asked whether the
death toll could have been limited below the minimum 100,000 now
forecast if social distancing guidelines had been put in place earlier.
He said it depended on whether the virus had already arrived in the United States and spread further than was known early on.
“If
there was virus there that we didn’t know about, then the answer to
your question is probably yes,” he said. “Now, the only trouble with
that is that whenever you come out and say something like that, it
always becomes almost a sound bite that gets taken out of context.” Dr.
Fauci added, “If there was virtually nothing there, then there’s nothing
to mitigate.”
All of which is why public health experts have said
that early widespread testing would have been so important. “In a
perfect world, it would’ve been nice to know what was going on there,”
Dr. Fauci told Jim Acosta of CNN, referring to the earliest outbreaks in
Asia. “We didn’t, but I believe, Jim, that we acted very, very early in
that.”
Mr. Trump asserted that had he not blocked many travelers
from China, the United States would have most likely reached closer to
the maximum projected death toll of up to 2.2 million. “When you look at
it could have been 2.2 million people died and more if we did nothing,
if we just did nothing,” he said, then he and the country “have done a
great job.” In effect, he seemed to be setting up the argument that any
death toll below that will be a validation of his handling of the
crisis.
Whatever the eventual number will be, the pandemic of 2020 seems likely to rank with the deadliest of the past century.
The worst came in 1918-20 and killed about 675,000 Americans,
accounting for many of the deaths attributed to World War I. Another
pandemic in 1957-58 killed about 116,000 in the United States, and one
in 1968 killed about 100,000. The H1N1 virus in 2009, for which Mr.
Trump has assailed Mr. Obama for his response, killed only 12,000.
Mr.
Trump and his administration have stepped up efforts in recent weeks,
expanding testing and seeking to work with governors to address
shortages of ventilators, masks and other medical equipment. The
president has dispatched medical ships and Army engineers to help, and after flirting with an early reopening, extended social distancing guidelines until the end of April.
For much of Tuesday’s marathon two-hour and 11-minute briefing, the longest single public appearance of his presidency, according to Factba.se, which monitors his activities, Mr. Trump took on a more somber manner as the scale of the fatalities seemed to sink in.
He
jousted to some degree with Mr. Acosta and Yamiche Alcindor of “PBS
NewsHour,” two of his favorite foils, but he was more restrained with
them than usual and avoided some of the more incendiary language he
often uses.
Yet he could not resist for long. By the time the
briefing ended, he had lapsed back into complaints about the impeachment
“hoax” and renewed attacks on critics like James B. Comey, the former
F.B.I. director, and Mr. Comey’s onetime deputy, Andrew G. McCabe. “Did
it divert my attention?” the president asked of the impeachment. “I
think I’m getting A-pluses for the way I handled myself during a phony
impeachment.”
Still, Mr. Trump, rarely a reflective person in
public, mused about the human toll of the pandemic more than he had in
the early weeks of the crisis because apparently it has hit his own
circle. As he has in the past couple of days, he referred to an overwhelmed hospital in his childhood home of Queens and an unidentified friend he said had been hospitalized with the virus.
“When
you send a friend to the hospital and you call up to find out how is he
doing,” Mr. Trump said, “it happened to me where goes to the hospital,
he says goodbye, sort of a tough guy, a little older, a little heavier
than he’d like to be frankly and you call up the next day, how is he
doing? And he’s in a coma. This is not the flu.”
Updated March 24, 2020
How does coronavirus spread?
It seems to spread very easily from person to person,
especially in homes, hospitals and other confined spaces. The pathogen
can be carried on tiny respiratory droplets that fall as they are
coughed or sneezed out. It may also be transmitted when we touch a
contaminated surface and then touch our face.
Unlike the flu, there is no known treatment or vaccine, and little is known about this particular virus so far.
It seems to be more lethal than the flu, but the numbers are still
uncertain. And it hits the elderly and those with underlying conditions —
not just those with respiratory diseases — particularly hard.
What should I do if I feel sick?
If you’ve been exposed to the coronavirus or think you have,
and have a fever or symptoms like a cough or difficulty breathing, call
a doctor. They should give you advice on whether you should be tested,
how to get tested, and how to seek medical treatment without potentially
infecting or exposing others.
If the family member doesn’t need hospitalization and
can be cared for at home, you should help him or her with basic needs
and monitor the symptoms, while also keeping as much distance as
possible, according to guidelines issued by the C.D.C.
If there’s space, the sick family member should stay in a separate room
and use a separate bathroom. If masks are available, both the sick
person and the caregiver should wear them when the caregiver enters the
room. Make sure not to share any dishes or other household items and to
regularly clean surfaces like counters, doorknobs, toilets and tables.
Don’t forget to wash your hands frequently.
Should I wear a mask?
Experts are divided on how much protection a regular surgical mask, or even a scarf, can provide
for people who aren’t yet sick. The W.H.O. and C.D.C. say that unless
you’re already sick, or caring for someone who is, wearing a face mask
isn’t necessary. And stockpiling high-grade N95 masks will make it
harder for nurses and other workers to access the resources they need.
But researchers are also finding that there are more cases of
asymptomatic transmission than were known early on in the pandemic. And a
few experts say that masks could offer some protection in crowded
places where it is not possible to stay 6 feet away from other people.
Masks don’t replace hand-washing and social distancing.
Should I stock up on groceries?
Plan two weeks of meals if possible. But people should not hoard food or supplies. Despite the empty shelves, the supply chain remains strong. And remember to wipe the handle of the grocery cart with a disinfecting wipe and wash your hands as soon as you get home.
That’s not a good idea.
Even if you’re retired, having a balanced portfolio of stocks and bonds
so that your money keeps up with inflation, or even grows, makes sense.
But retirees may want to think about having enough cash set aside for a
year’s worth of living expenses and big payments needed over the next
five years.
Democratic
presidential hopeful Bernie Sanders addresses a ‘Future to Believe In’
rally at the Family Areana on March 14, 2016 in St. Charles, Missouri. Michael B. Thomas | AFP | Getty Images
Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., will win the North Dakota Democratic presidential caucus, NBC News projects.
North Dakota has 14 delegates at stake, the smallest prize offered on the March 10 Democratic contests.
Sanders’
victory comes after former Vice President Joe Biden, his chief
Democratic rival in the 2020 election, earned a series of early wins
Tuesday.
In the 2016 primary, the Vermont senator also won the state, sweeping Democratic rival Hillary Clinton with 64% of the vote to her 26%, according to NBC News.
Michigan, Idaho, Washington, Mississippi and Missouri were also among the states that voted Tuesday. Of those states, Michigan, which Biden won, boasts the largest pledged delegate count, with 125 on the line.
Biden also won Missouri, Mississippi and Idaho. Washington remains too close to call.
The latest round of primaries came a week after Super Tuesday, during which Biden won surprise victories and eked out a pledged delegate lead over Sen. Bernie Sanders.
Rep. Tulsi Gabbard of Hawaii remains in the race, but the contest for
the Democratic nomination has fallen largely between Biden and Sanders.
In
the last two weeks, Biden has received a slew of highly coveted
endorsements from his former Democratic rivals who have since dropped
their 2020 bids. Former South Bend, Indiana, Mayor Pete Buttigieg, along
with with Sens. Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota, Cory Booker of New Jersey
and Kamala Harris of California, endorsed him, citing him as the candidate best positioned to beat Trump in November.
Leading
Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden called a Detroit factory
worker “full of s---” in a testy exchange on gun policy Tuesday as
voters cast ballots in Michigan’s crucial primary.
Video
shared by reporters on Biden’s tour of the Detroit auto plant shows the
former vice president surrounded by workers as he argued face to face
with a man in a hard hat and an orange high-visibility vest.
The worker accused Biden of “actively trying to end our Second Amendment right.”
Biden immediately responded: “You’re full of s---.”
Biden was visiting with members of the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers who are building a new Fiat Chrysler assembly plant.
“I
support the Second Amendment,” Biden said in the clip. But “the Second
Amendment — just like right now, if you yell ‘fire,’ that’s not free
speech.”
“I have a shotgun, I have a 20-gauge, a 12-gauge,” Biden
said. “You’re not allowed to own [just] any weapon. I’m not taking your
gun away at all. You need 100 rounds?”
The worker then claimed Biden had said he was going to take guns away.
“I did not say that! I did not say that!” Biden fired back, raising his voice.
The worker said he had heard Biden make that claim in a viral video.
“It’s a viral video like the other ones that came out” that were “lies,” Biden said.
“Don’t be such a horse’s a--,” Biden added as the exchange grew more heated.
The
National Rifle Association quickly shared the video on Twitter. “Joe:
Gun owners see through your lies,” the NRA’s official account tweeted.
But
Biden campaign spokesman Andrew Bates and other campaign figures
retweeted numerous accounts praising Biden’s stance on gun reform.
“We will literally pay them to keep promoting it,” Bates tweeted, referring to the Trump campaign.
Asked for comment on Biden’s remarks, Bates referred CNBC to his tweet.
The
clash with a worker came as Biden worked to win Michigan’s primary —
and the bulk of its 125 pledged delegates — and put more distance
between him and Sen. Bernie Sanders, who fell behind in polls and
delegates after Super Tuesday.
Biden is now considered the clear front-runner to clinch the Democratic nomination and take on President Donald Trump in November.
This
is not the first time Biden has locked horns on the campaign trail.
After a man in Iowa made baseless accusations about Biden’s son Hunter, the former vice president called the man “a damn liar” and “fat.”
A spokeswoman claimed at the time that Biden had said, “Look, facts,” not “Look, fat,” referring to the man.
Mike Bloomberg
dropped out of the presidential race Wednesday after a poor performance
in the Super Tuesday primaries, and immediately endorsed former Vice
President Joe Biden’s candidacy.
“Three months ago, I entered the race for President to defeat Donald Trump,” Bloomberg said in a statement.
“Today,
I am leaving the race for the same reason: to defeat Donald Trump –
because it is clear to me that staying in would make achieving that goal
more difficult,” said the former New York mayor and billionaire, who
had spent more than $500 million on his candidacy.
“I’ve always
believed that defeating Donald Trump starts with uniting behind the
candidate with the best shot to do it. After yesterday’s vote, it is
clear that candidate is my friend and a great American, Joe Biden,”
Bloomberg said in the statement.
“I’ve known Joe for a very long
time. I know his decency, his honesty, and his commitment to the issues
that are so important to our country – including gun safety, health
care, climate change, and good jobs.”
A campaign aide said the two
candidates talked Wednesday morning, prior to the announcement of
Bloomberg’s dropout, according to NBC News.
Biden accepted
Bloomberg’s endorsement, saying in a tweet that the focus is on
“defeating Donald Trump, and with your help, we’re gonna do it.”
Bloomberg’s
endorsement of Biden is a major boost for the former vice president’s
campaign. Biden’s efforts will get a lift from Bloomberg’s extensive
field staff and advertisements that have already been booked in future
primary states. Biden will see an assist from Bloomberg’s own technology
company Hawkfish. The campaign previously told NBC News that they will keep their operation going, even if Bloomberg was forced to drop out of the race.
Trump gloated about Bloomberg’s departure from the contest.
“Mini
Mike Bloomberg just ‘quit’ the race for President,” Trump tweeted. “I
could have told him long ago that he didn’t have what it takes, and he
would have saved himself a billion dollars, the real cost. Now he will
pour money into Sleepy Joe’s campaign, hoping to save face. It won’t
work!”
Bloomberg’s embarrassing finish Tuesday night marked the
first time he was on the ballot. Had he continued in the race, his
candidacy might have taken away votes from Biden, a fellow moderate
who’s competing for the nomination with Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont.
With his departure, there are now only four candidates in the race:
Biden, Sanders, Sen. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts, and Rep. Tulsi
Gabbard of Hawaii.
Despite his massive, unprecedented spending,
Bloomberg managed to win only American Samoa on Tuesday night when that
territory and 14 states were up for grabs.
Bloomberg jumped into the campaign for the Democratic nomination in November, following weeks of teasing a potential bid. Earlier in 2019, Bloomberg had completely ruled out the possibility of running for president.
His
late entry forced him to bypass early voting states of Iowa, New
Hampshire, South Carolina and Nevada, to focus on delegate-rich Super
Tuesday. The strategy didn’t pay off.
Bloomberg launched his bid with a $31 million
TV ad blitz, breaking former President Barack Obama’s record campaign
spending of $24 million on TV ads in one week. He ended up spending
hundreds of millions of his own dollars on his campaign.
Progressive
candidates Warren and Sanders, who have pushed for a wealth tax on
millionaires and billionaires to fund programs like Medicare for All,
accused the centrist of trying to buy the nomination.
Bloomberg’s net worth, according to Forbes, is about $60 billion.
Major
ad spending helped him gained traction in national polls, putting him
in third place in at one point, behind Sanders and Biden.
But he took a drubbing on the debate stage in February when
he was attacked by Warren for his alleged sexist behavior in the
workplace. Bloomberg had not qualified for prior debates because he did
not accept donor contributions and so did not meet the required
threshold. The Democratic National Committee changed the rules in late
January, paving the way for his participation.
Trump also made a
habit out of mocking Bloomberg’s 2020 bid, dubbing him “Mini Mike,” a
moniker that he used to taunt his potential rival as Super Tuesday
results rolled in.
“The biggest loser tonight, by far, is Mini
Mike Bloomberg,” Trump tweeted Tuesday. “His ‘political’ consultants
took him for a ride. $700 million washed down the drain, and he got
nothing for it but the nickname Mini Mike, and the complete destruction
of his reputation. Way to go Mike!”
Since leaving the mayor’s
office in 2013, the one-time Republican and former Independent has
doubled down on causes dear to the left. His anti-gun violence group
Everytown for Gun Safety, battled the powerful National Rifle
Association, helping numerous Democrats win elections at the national
and state levels during the 2018 midterms and in more recent contests.
He also launched Beyond Carbon, a coordinated campaign to fight climate change.
But he wasn’t able to translate those actions into votes.
