Every day, a team of public health officials turns up in the White House briefing room to lay out measures being taken to contain the coronavirus pandemic. A different team, expected to be formally announced as early as Tuesday, has begun meeting behind closed doors in the West Wing to tackle another matter paramount to President Donald Trump: how to begin reopening the American economy.The council, which is not expected to include health officials, could bring to the forefront the push-pull tensions within the White House between economists and public health officials over how quickly to reopen the economy vs. proceeding cautiously to ensure the virus doesn’t spike again.With the country barreling toward a likely recession ahead of November’s election, Trump is eager to spur an economic revival, hoping to steady financial markets and restore some of the 16 million jobs already lost due to the pandemic. He originally hoped to have the country stirring again by Easter but now wants at least a partial reopening by the end of the month.   FILE – Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, speaks about the coronavirus in the James Brady Press Briefing Room of the White House, April 7, 2020, in Washington.Many medical experts in the government, including Dr. Anthony Fauci and Dr. Deborah Birx, have cautioned that easing up on social distancing too soon could lead a new wave of the disease that would require shuttering the economy again, with disastrous results.As for the new council, Trump said he expected “they will give us some also good advice but no, we want to be very, very safe. At the same time we’ve got to get our country open.”Some ethics experts and participants in past councils created by Trump voiced concerned that the president may not be open to using the new panel to explore diverse viewpoints and hard truths about the best path forward.”It doesn’t work if you bring in the hallelujah chorus,” said Thea Lee, president of the Economic Policy Institute, a left-leaning Washington think tank. Lee served on a short-lived manufacturing council that Trump established early in his presidency.FILE – President Donald Trump listens as Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin speaks about the coronavirus at the White House, April 2, 2020, in Washington.Among those expected to be part of the new team: Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin, Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross, Housing and Urban Development Secretary Ben Carson and White House economic advisers, past and present, Kevin Hassett and Larry Kudlow. New White House chief of staff Mark Meadows is expected to chair the effort.Senior White House aides Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trump had been expected to be part of the team, but Trump, who previously declared the group would be comprised of “the greatest minds,” said Monday they would not be included. It would work separately from the coronavirus task force led by Vice President Mike Pence, though there could be some overlap of participants.Some outside business leaders and perhaps governors also may join the group of administration officials who already are informally meeting and holding conference calls with the president.The new council is expected to act as an internal West Wing counterbalance to health experts who want Trump to go slow in reopening the nation. The president said Monday the new panel would seek counsel from various industries and include committees representing fields like manufacturing, transportation and religious interests.Arthur Laffer, an economist Trump has praised, acknowledged that the economy was severely damaged but said it was difficult to tell when it should reopen.”There’s nothing smart about doing it too early,” said Laffer.The expected new group, so far, largely resembles the upper echelon of the Trump administration: white and wealthy. Carson is the council’s most prominent African American.The U.S. economy is so vast that the council will need to consider the needs of workers in food services, health care, transportation, construction and other sectors in which a diverse workforce that often makes lower wages will be on the front lines of a re-opened economy.   “You do need a range of opinions and a range of experiences,” said Jay Shambaugh, an economist at George Washington University and director of the Hamilton Project at the Brookings Institution. “This is one of those cases where the minority report is really important — you need people who aren’t all thinking the same thing.”   Danielle Brian, executive director of the Washington watchdog group Project on Government Oversight, said she is concerned that Trump may not be open to contrary opinions, citing his recent ouster of government inspectors general who had criticized administration actions.”We’ve seen very starkly recently how, even when it comes to the sort of the fundamental questions of oversight, people are discounted or fired when they say something that he doesn’t want to hear,” said Brian.Donald Sherman, deputy director for the oversight group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, said Trump’s track record of “choosing patrons and sycophants to run significant parts of his government” leaves him skeptical the council will be much more than a rubber stamp.The White House said Trump’s decision-making process would be measured and involve consultation with the public health officials.”The President wants to see this economy open again so people can get back to work, but scientific data will drive the timeline on those decisions because his number one priority is to protect the safety and well-being of the American people,” said deputy press secretary Judd Deere.During his first year in office, Trump put together several high-profile advisory economic groups, which included Intel’s Brian Krzanich, Tesla’s Elon Musk and AFL-CIO leader Richard Trumka. Those panels fell apart as executives resigned in protest against Trump’s response to violent, race-infused protests in Charlottesville, Virginia, and his decision to pull the U.S. out of the Paris climate accord.Scott Paul, president of the Alliance for American Manufacturing, served on Trump’s now-defunct manufacturing council. He said the administration used the advisory group in a “self-congratulatory” manner meant to spotlight “a bunch of CEOs talking to the president about something that was important to him.”There were “a lot serious people on the advisory council,” Paul said, “but I didn’t see it as doing serious work.” 
…

Seventy-five years ago, the United States and much of the world was thrown into shock and grief at the news that U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt unexpectedly died. Roosevelt was at his retreat in Warm Springs, Georgia on April 12, having his portrait painted when he blurted “I have a terrific headache.” That was the last thing he ever said. Aides carried the unconscious president into the bedroom. A doctor pronounced him dead of a cerebral hemorrhage. He was just 63 years old. Children were the first to learn about the president’s death when the news bulletins broke into the radio adventure serials “Captain Midnight,” and “The Tom Mix Ralston Straightshooters.” The news quickly spread. Men and women in stores, in offices, on buses, and in the streets cried openly. Hitler and the crumbling Nazi regime saw FDR’s death as a sign from heaven that the war was about to turn into Germany’s favor. U.S. forces fighting in Europe said it was like losing their own father. But they had little time to grieve and Roosevelt’s death made them even more determined to pound the final nails into the Nazi coffin. Thousands lined the railroad tracks that brought his body from Warm Springs to Washington for the funeral on April 14 and from Washington to Hyde Park, New York for burial on the 15th. Radio brought the sounds of the funeral march into millions of homes. Roosevelt had been president for a little more than 12 years and an entire generation could not recall a time when there was anyone else sitting in the Oval Office. Marist College history professor David Woolner is the author of “The Last 100 Days: FDR at War and at Peace.” “Franklin Roosevelt transformed the relationship between the American people and their government and between the United States and the rest of the world,” Woolner said.  What made Roosevelt’s death especially tragic was if he had lived just four more weeks, he would have seen the unconditional surrender of Nazi Germany.  “It wasn’t uncommon to see people in foreign countries, in London and Paris and even in Moscow to be weeping in the street when they learned the news that Roosevelt had died…in countries around the world, certainly in Europe and in Russia and in parts of Asia they remember Roosevelt with great respect and affection,” Woolner said. And Woolner believes if Roosevelt had not been elected president during the very depth of the Great Depression, the United States as we know it today, may not exist.  “Roosevelt essentially saved capitalism…before Franklin Roosevelt took office in 1933, we didn’t have unemployment insurance, we didn’t have Social Security, we didn’t have federal deposit insurance, we didn’t have the regulation of the stock market, we didn’t have the right of working men and women to join unions, we didn’t have a minimum wage.” Although his legacy has been questioned, with some believing he did little to advance civil rights in the U.S. and others saying he ignored pleas to save more European Jews from the Nazis, Woolner says to those who lived through the depression and World War Two, Roosevelt will always be universally revered.  
…

Former U.S. Vice President Joe Biden has won last week’s Democratic primary in the state of Wisconsin. Results released Monday showed Biden capturing about twice the votes of Senator Bernie Sanders, his final opponent in a once very crowded field contending to face off against Republican President Donald Trump in the November general election. Wisconsin turned out to be the last contested state in the series of elections the party uses to allocate pledged delegates on the way to picking the nominee. The day after the voting took place, Sanders dropped out of the race, leaving Biden as the presumptive nominee.  Sanders went further Monday, endorsing Biden in a show of unity aimed at rallying his supporters to help defeat Trump. Supporters of Democratic presidential hopeful former Vice President Joe Biden cheers as he speaks at the National Constitution Center in Philadelphia, on March 10, 2020.Wisconsin, like in the 2016 presidential election, is expected to play a key role in the outcome in November.  Trump narrowly won the state four years ago over Democrat Hillary Clinton, the first time a Republican presidential candidate had won the state since 1984.  The U.S. does not conduct its presidential elections by popular vote, instead by the Electoral College, in which the outcomes in each of the 50 states help determine the national winner, with the biggest states holding the most votes. While Wisconsin held its primary election last week, the results were delayed by a legal battle that saw Democratic Governor Tony Evers try to postpone voting due to the coronavirus outbreak, only to have his decision overturned by the state’s conservative-dominated supreme court.  Those who opposed going ahead with the vote said it made little public health sense to have people show up to polling places in the midst of the coronavirus pandemic. Hundreds of would-be Election Day workers refused to keep their promise to show up at polling stations to check in voters off registration lists.    In Milwaukee, the state’s biggest city, only five of 180 polling stations were opened, with some voters forced to stand in line for up to 2 ½ hours to cast ballots. Health care workers handed out face masks to the voters, who mostly stayed at least two meters apart from others waiting in line.  The Republican-led legislature advocated holding the vote because many state and local offices were on the ballot and, absent a vote, would have left the positions vacant if the vote were postponed to June as Evers wanted to do.    Judges said voters could submit ballots by mail if they were postmarked by election day and received by Monday for counting. 
…

Severe storms that moved across the southeastern United States on Sunday into Monday killed more than 30 people.The storms brought heavy rain and strong winds, with 34 reported tornadoes in Texas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Georgia and Tennessee leaving hundreds of homes ripped to shreds and at least 1.3 million customers without electricity from Texas to Maine.”We are used to tornadoes in Mississippi,” Gov. Tate Reeves told The Associated Press. “No one is used to this.”Dozens of people were hospitalized. The Chattanooga, Tennessee, area was particularly hard hit. At least 150 homes and commercial buildings were damaged, according to the AP.Drone footage shows Emma Pritchett’s home after a tornado hit in Chatsworth, Ga., April 13, 2020.In all, 10 states were under flash flood, tornado and thunderstorm warnings and watches overnight.Eleven of the deaths were in Mississippi.”This is not how anyone wants to spend Easter,” Reeves said in a statement. “The state and our first responders are working around the clock and will not rest until this is over. We are mobilizing all resources available to protect our people and their property.”The threat spread north through the mid-Atlantic coastal states on Monday. The National Weather Service again warned of the potential for strong tornadoes, damaging winds and flash flooding. 
…

The U.S. Treasury Department is holding firm on the terms of a $25 billion offer for government aid to airlines to help them meet payroll during the coronavirus downturn, officials said on Monday, and the plan could give the government more than 3% of American Airlines Group Inc.Some airlines are increasingly resigned to the terms, which would require 30% of the funds — roughly based on six months of each carrier’s payroll — to be repaid and give the government warrants equal to 10% of the loan amount, the officials said, noting that agreements could be reached within the coming days.Under those terms, the government could end up with the largest equity stake in American Airlines, which has the most employees of the U.S. carriers and has said it was seeking about $6 billion in payroll support.It also has the lowest market capitalization of the four main U.S. carriers at about $5.3 billion, less than the amount it would receive in aid.One airline official said the warrant price had been locked before Monday, when airline shares fell sharply.According to airlines’ market capitalization on Friday, the government could end up owning about 2.3% of United Airlines Holdings Inc, 1% of Delta Air Lines Inc, 1.3% of JetBlue Airways Corp, and 0.6% of Southwest Airlines Co .Raymond James analyst Savanthi Syth reached similar calculations, which assume that each carrier gets the amount it requested and that the government exercises the warrants, which allow purchase of shares at a set price, to the full extent possible. It is likely, however, that the government simply cashes them out by getting the appreciation in share price at a date in future.Based on wages and benefits in the second and third quarters of 2019, United was eligible for about $6 billion in grants, Delta about $5.6 billion and Southwest about $4 billion.The potential equity dilution is lower than many analysts had feared. Still, airline shares fell on Monday on disappointment that a portion of a $25 billion payroll support package would have to be repaid.This is causing a dilemma for some airlines worried about adding more debt to their balance sheets before a recovery in travel demand is more certain, said Syth.”In a quick recovery it makes sense to take this grant. But if you’re not expecting a quick recovery and you expect operational levels to remain low next winter, you don’t want to be so laden with debt that might harm more people at the end of it,” said Syth.”That’s the calculation that they have to make: do you say OK, for the long-term health of the company does it make sense to take this money and make furlough decisions later where you might be in a worse debt position, or to maybe walk away from this money and take some of the pain early and then be in a better position once we’re out of the worst of this to try to recover.”If things do not improve, airlines may need this summer to file notices of impending mass layoffs that could come soon after Sept. 30 — the date by which they are required to keep employees on staff if they accept payroll support.The prospect of layoffs could prompt Congress to take another look at the issue, either in a new round of support for airlines or by forgiving the loans attached to the grants, some people said.Those layoffs could come just weeks before the 2020 presidential election.On Sunday, just 90,510 travelers went through security checkpoints – another new low – down from nearly 2.5 million a year earlier.
…

The sick who still go to work because they have no paid leave.
Families who face ruin from even a temporary layoff.
Front-line workers risking infection as they drive buses, bag takeout meals and mop hospital floors.
For years, financial inequality has widened in the United States and elsewhere as wealth and income have become increasingly concentrated among the most affluent while millions struggle to get by. Now, the coronavirus outbreak has laid bear the human cost of that inequality, making it more visible and potentially worse.
Congress, the Trump administration and the Federal Reserve have mounted the largest financial intervention in history — a full-scale drive that includes mandating sick leave for some, distributing $1,200 checks to individuals, allocating rescue aid to employers and expanding unemployment benefits to try to help America survive the crisis.  
Yet those measures are only temporary. And for millions of newly unemployed, they may not be enough.
The disaster that is igniting what’s likely to be a deep recession also raises the question of what happens once life begins to edge back to normal. Will the U.S. remain an outlier among wealthy countries in providing limited protections for the financially vulnerable? Or will it expand the social safety net, as it did after the Great Depression of the 1930s but largely did not after the Great Recession that ended in 2009?
“Maybe there will be a cultural shift,” said Elise Gould, senior economist at the progressive Economic Policy Institute. “I see it as a great opening to try to (provide) those labor protections that low-wage workers didn’t have before.”  
Gould notes that the government’s suddenly expanded role now in distributing relief checks, expanding health benefits and sick leave and supplementing state unemployment aid would make it easier to extend such programs even after a recession has ended. Doing so could have the longer-term effect of reducing financial inequalities.
Whether the government ends up adopting any long-lasting policy reforms will depend in part on which party controls the White House and Congress beginning in January. In the meantime, the topic is sure to drive much of the campaign rhetoric as the presidential race moves toward the November election.
Alone among advanced economies, the United States doesn’t require employers to grant sick leave and paid time off. America’s system for providing unemployment aid, a patchwork of state programs, isn’t as generous or efficient as European government programs that subsidize wages or provide safeguards to limit layoffs.
America’s minimum wages also lag far behind those in most of Europe, though many states have raised their minimums in recent years. In 2018, the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development concluded that the U.S. national minimum wage paid 33 cents for every $1 earned by workers in the middle of the earnings spectrum. That contrasted with 46 cents in Germany, 54 cents in the United Kingdom and 62 cents in France.
The coronavirus has struck at the most vulnerable. African-Americans account for 42% of the nearly 3,300 COVID-19 deaths that The Associated Press reviewed — twice their share of the population in the areas covered by the analysis. Blacks as a group earn less, endure higher rates of unemployment and have less access to health care than other Americans. They also suffer disproportionately from the underlying conditions that make them more vulnerable to COVID-19: Diabetes, obesity, asthma.
The financial pain, too, has landed hardest on the neediest as the economy locks down to fight the outbreak. The United States last month lost 713,000 private sector jobs. Jobs in leisure and hospitality (mostly restaurants and hotels) accounted for 64% of the losses. And those workers earn an average of just $16.83 an hour, 41% less than the average American.
They are people like Alexi Ajoste, who worked at a Panera Bread shop for three years before being furloughed late last month. Ajoste, a 20-year-old from Tempe, Arizona, has filed for unemployment benefits.
“I have a savings account and have money backed up for emergencies, but it scares me,” Ajoste said. “I don’t know if my savings account is enough for all of this. I feel like the unemployment checks will be enough for the next couple of months….As long as it doesn’t last four or five months, I think I’ll be good.”
The same kind of anxiety plagues Kelly Singer, 29, from Denver. She had given notice in mid-March at a staffing job after signing a contract for a higher-level job at another agency. But a week before she was to start, her future employer withdrew the job offer. Now, Singer is turning to unemployment benefits. But she says she needs to keep looking for a job so she can have company-backed health insurance. She also needs to pay her rent.
“I do feel anxious,” she said. “I had the rug pulled out from under me. There’s anxiety paying the bills.”  
Congress’ rescue plans are intended to ease the pain. They require companies with fewer than 500 workers to offer paid sick leave, although employers with fewer than 50 can seek an exemption. The government is sending $1,200 checks to Americans who earn up to $75,000 and smaller checks to many who earn more.
The rescue plan extended unemployment benefits for the first time to part-time and gig workers such as Uber drivers. And it added $600 a week to existing state unemployment payments. But states have been swamped by claims for jobless benefits — nearly 17 million over the past three weeks — and are struggling to deliver the new federal aid.  
Shamira Chism, for example, who was laid off from her job as a line cook at a Nashville restaurant three weeks ago, says she’s getting by on state unemployment benefits of $275 a week. But she’s still waiting for Tennessee to upgrade its systems to deliver the additional $600 a week in federally provided benefits.
Throughout U.S. history, economic catastrophes have sometimes led to lasting programs to benefit ordinary people — and sometimes have not. President Franklin D. Roosevelt drove through a series of lasting changes to the economy after the Depression struck, to provide Social Security pensions, for instance, and to make it easier for workers to form unions and bargain for higher wages and better working conditions.
President Barack Obama countered the Great Recession with a stimulus package and pushed through legislation that provided health insurance coverage to millions of Americans. But a backlash by conservative critics, decrying what they called meddlesome and costly government programs, stymied further action. The government ended up doing less to help the economy recover from the Great Recession than it had after previous downturns.
This time, said Alexandra Cawthorne Gaines of the liberal Center for American Progress, “What we want to see are long-term structural changes,” including expanding access to health care. In light of the crisis, she said, there may be more willingness, from Republicans and Democrats alike, to better protect the neediest.
Gould at the Economic Policy Institute said the country needs to strengthen its social safety so the needy aren’t left so vulnerable in the next public health crisis.
“This is not the last time this is going to happen,” she said. “What can we learn from this?”
…

Smithfield Foods, the world’s biggest pork processor, said on Sunday it will shut a U.S. plant indefinitely due to a rash of coronavirus cases among employees and warned the country was  moving “perilously close to the edge” in supplies for grocers.Slaughterhouse shutdowns are disrupting the U.S. food supply chain, crimping availability of meat at retail stores and leaving farmers without outlets for their livestock.Smithfield extended the closure of its Sioux Falls, South Dakota, plant after initially saying it would idle temporarily for cleaning. The facility is one of the nation’s largest pork processing facilities, representing 4% to 5% of U.S. pork production, according to the company.South Dakota Governor Kristi Noem said on Saturday that 238 Smithfield employees had active cases of the new coronavirus, accounting for 55% of the state’s total. Noem and the mayor of Sioux Falls had recommended the company shut the plant, which has about 3,700 workers, for at least two weeks.”It is impossible to keep our grocery stores stocked if our plants are not running,” Smithfield Chief Executive Ken Sullivan said in a statement on Sunday. “These facility closures will also have severe, perhaps disastrous, repercussions for many in the supply chain, first and foremost our nation’s livestock farmers.”Smithfield said it will resume operations in Sioux Falls after further direction from local, state and federal officials. The company will pay employees for the next two weeks, according to the statement.The company has been running its plants to supply U.S. consumers during the outbreak, Sullivan said.”We have a stark choice as a nation: we are either going to produce food or not, even in the face of COVID-19,” he said.Other major U.S. meat and poultry processors, including Tyson Foods Inc, Cargill Inc and JBS USA have already idled plants in other states. 
…