Day: April 22, 2020

This week Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell suggested he might be ready to pump the breaks on any future coronavirus relief packages.

“We haven’t had much discussion about adding $2.7 trillion to the national debt, and the way that could indeed also threaten the future of the country,” McConnell recently said on The Hugh Hewitt Show.

Leaders of both parties have acknowledged that more aid is needed to address the overwhelming economic fallout that’s occurred during the pandemic, but McConnell appears increasingly reluctant to approve additional stimulus at the current scale.

With the likely passage of a $480 billion …

As the $349 billion for a federal small-business loan program has run out, an alarming pattern has emerged: Much of this money hasn’t been going to small businesses at all.

According to public filings, corporations including Ruth Chris’s Steak House, Potbelly, and Shake Shack have obtained millions in loans from the Paycheck Protection Program, a new effort intended to help small businesses that are struggling to weather the economic fallout from the coronavirus pandemic. (Shake Shack has received $10 million from the program, but it’s since returned it in the wake of the backlash.) Millions more have also gone …

In the first crucial weeks of the coronavirus spreading in the United States, Americans were instructed to wear a face mask only if they were sick. In the absence of widespread testing, that most likely meant you’d wear a face mask if you felt the symptoms of Covid-19.

But based on what we’ve learned since then about this novel coronavirus, being symptomatic shouldn’t be the sole indicator that a person is infected. Roughly 25 percent of people with coronavirus are thought to be asymptomatic, and people who catch Covid-19 usually don’t develop symptoms until four or five days after …

Millions of workers who self-employed, freelancers, or independent contractors are qualified for a new unemployment program, set up under the recently passed CARES Act. But many are still waiting to apply for those benefits.

The Pandemic Unemployment Assistance (PUA) expanded who is eligible for unemployment insurance benefits. Freelancers and independent contractors, previously excluded from these programs, now qualify through the end of July — and possibly beyond if Congress extends the program.

But it has been a challenge for states to get this money out the door. Unlike simply throwing more money at their existing unemployment insurance programs, many states …

We celebrate the 50th anniversary of Earth Day on April 22 in the midst of a pandemic, with the world slowed and hobbled by Covid-19. Yet Earth Day reminds us the planet still turns, the global climate and biodiversity crises still cry for attention, and nature still reveals its shimmering resilience. Google is honoring the occasion with a Google Doodle dedicated specifically to bees.

This Earth Day, as humans have retreated indoors to slow down the spread of the virus, we’re finding out how ecosystems respond to our absence from public spaces. Meanwhile, our planet as a whole, and …

President Donald Trump made a number of false and misleading claims on Tuesday to advance his case that the US is not only over the worst of the coronavirus outbreak, but nearing the point of being ready to reopen for business.

Most concerning was his insistence that the US has mastered what public health experts say must be step one to reopening: widespread testing. The US’s daily testing capacity has been flat for about a month, and experts say it needs to triple before it’ll be truly safe to reopen businesses.

To hear Trump tell it, however, the US …