WASHINGTON – The coronavirus pandemic is continuing to wreak havoc on the U.S. economy, with another 5.2 million workers claiming unemployment compensation last week, the Labor Department reported Thursday.
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Live from Music Row Thursday morning on The Tennessee Star Report with Michael Patrick Leahy – broadcast on Nashville’s Talk Radio 98.3 and 1510 WLAC weekdays from 5:00 a.m. to 8:00 a.m. – host Leahy was joined on the newsmakers line by all-star panelist Dr. Carol Swain.
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Nearly 100 Democrats in Congress are urging the Trump administration to halt construction on the U.S.-Mexico border wall during the coronavirus pandemic.
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Bill Hagerty released a television ad touting the candidate holding China accountable for what he called that nation’s deceitful actions, according to his Thursday press release.
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Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer announced on Thursday that she has joined a partnership with other Midwest states focused on working together to reopen the economy in the region.
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More than 1 million people in Michigan have filed for unemployment benefits after nearly 220,000 people asked for government assistance this past week, according to data released by the U.S. Department of Labor on Thursday.
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More than 400 Minnesotans plan to participate in a protest Friday of Gov. Tim Walz outside the Governor’s Residence in St. Paul.
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Leslie Waller, an epidemiologist with the Nashville Metro Public Health Department, discussed the use of “contact tracing” in helping contain the coronavirus during the Mayor John Cooper’s press conference.
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More than 19,000 small businesses across Tennessee have received forgivable loans from the federal government under the Paycheck Protection Program.
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Rural Tennesseans who don’t know if their local health departments test for COVID-19 can visit the Tennessee Health Department’s website to learn of their nearest testing facility, an official with that agency said Wednesday.
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Tennessee will now offer free testing for the coronavirus for all of its residents, Tennessee Gov. Bill Lee announced on Wednesday. Testing will be available even to those without “traditional symptoms.”
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As panic over the COVID-19 virus has gripped the country, the alarm has made it possible for many government officials to advance agendas that portend permanent accretions of power to themselves and diminution of others’ freedoms.
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Tennessee U.S. Senate candidate Manny Sethi laid out a plan Wednesday that would help get American companies out of China.
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Denmark reopened its kindergarten and elementary schools on Wednesday after it closed all schools on March 12, according to the BBC.
The only students that went back to class are kids that are eleven years old or younger, the BBC reported. In Denmark, kids are only required to go to school between the ages of 5 and 16.
Denmark has established certain conditions for students when they returned. For instance, children are not allowed to bring toys from home, and they must have washed their hands before coming to school, the local.dk reported.
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Thousands of protesters converged on the Michigan Capitol on Wednesday to protest the most recent stay-at-home order passed down by Gov. Gretchen Whitmer earlier this month.
The protesters were part of a rally hosted by the Michigan Conservative Coalition (MCC) called “Operation Gridlock,” which sought to fill the streets of Lansing with protesters in their cars. The rally began at noon and ran until roughly 2 p.m., according to the MCC.
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The Minnesota Legislature passed two bills Tuesday that aim to make broad changes in response to COVID-19 and to create an affordable insulin program.
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The DFL-controlled Minnesota House voted Tuesday against two resolutions that would have ended Gov. Tim Walz’s peacetime emergency declaration and voided his coronavirus-related executive orders.
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Some state lawmakers are calling on Gov. Mike DeWine to reopen the state government.
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Rep. Tom Emmer (R-MN-06) pummeled the mainstream media in a column published Tuesday, criticizing the corporate press for parroting propaganda issued by the Chinese Communist Party.
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U.S. Senate candidate Bill Hagerty of Tennessee announced Tuesday that he has been named to an advisory board that will help the president reopen the nation’s economy.
President Donald Trump is expected to make a formal announcement imminently on his plans to reopen the economy, but Hagerty revealed in a Tuesday statement that the president has asked him to help.
“I have always sought to answer the call to service, and in doing so, I’ve served my state as Commissioner of Economic and Community Development and served my country as the United States Ambassador to Japan. Now, President Trump has asked me to help on the economic advisory board. Team Hagerty will continue to volunteer in Tennessee as we fight the spread of the coronavirus and deal with its effects,” Hagerty said.
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The national media and the left never allow a crisis to go to waste in their attempts to divide our nation. A Centers for Disease Control and Prevention study of COVID-19 recently found that over 40 percent of those who have been hospitalized are African-American and Hispanic — even though these groups make up a combined percentage of less than 27 percent of the general population. The media makes the claim that these patients are dying at higher rates and contracting the virus due to discrimination.
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In two interviews on Easter Sunday, White House coronavirus task force member Dr. Anthony Fauci seemed to fault President Trump for not adopting mitigation policies for the coronavirus earlier.
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With Tennessee possibly moving toward an economic reopening in May, one looming question is what, if anything, will the state do with people who continue to test positive for COVID-19, especially ensuring that they are staying quarantined.
Tennessee Gov. Bill Lee announced Monday he will extend the state’s stay-at-home order through April 30, but he also said government and private-sector officials are working to reopen the state’s economy in May, The Tennessee Star reported.
Lee said this at a televised press conference, adding “we are not out of the woods yet, and it could be some time [before we are].”
“Until a vaccine or a therapy is widely available to Tennesseans, this virus will be a present reality to us to manage and consider whenever we are making decisions,” Lee said.
Lee said that last month he started working with leaders of industry to understand how this pandemic would impact the state’s businesses.
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The Tennessee Department of Health said 633 residents have been hospitalized with COVID-19, but that figure is a cumulative – not current – number.
“This number indicates the number of patients that were ever hospitalized during their illness, it does not indicate the number of patients currently hospitalized,” the Department of Health notes in its daily COVID-19 briefing.
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Thales Academy in Tennessee is offering free online learning coursework to families in the Franklin area to help offset the government-mandated shutdown of schools considering the coronavirus, the academy announced on Wednesday.
“Our mission at Thales Academy has always been to provide the highest quality education at the lowest possible cost for as many children as possible,” said Bob Luddy, founder of Thales Academy, in a statement. “We hope by offering remote learning free of charge that Franklin area families can help their children continue to grow academically during this time and experience our strong Thales Academy curriculum firsthand.”
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Rep. Scott DesJarlais (R-TN-04) said on The Jeff Poor Show Monday that he supports the way President Donald Trump has been dealing with the coronavirus pandemic.
“I don’t know what they could have done differently. I think they are handling it well,” DesJarlais said.
“I am impressed with the president and his team in what they’ve done and how they are trying to salvage the economy,” the representative added. “I do think things will open up and brighter times are not far away.”
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Ohio Department of Health (ODH) Director Amy Acton announced during Monday’s press conference that the state is training volunteers to help with “contact tracing,” which is a process that helps identify people who may have contacted an infected person.
The ODH has been working with medical and professional schools to help train these volunteers in an attempt to better allocate state resources for the coronavirus.
“Let’s just say we have the testing. You want to know someone is infectious the second they are. So, the quicker you can identify them is the very first step,” Acton said.
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Gov. Gretchen Whitmer has joined a coalition of 12 governors to ask President Trump to allow for a special enrollment period to allow for increased access to affordable health care.
Whitmer is joining the governors from Delaware, Illinois, Maine, Montana, New Jersey, New Mexico, North Carolina, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Virginia and Wisconsin in sending a letter to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services and the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services. The letter asks for a special enrollment period of at least 30 days on the federal health care exchange.
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Ohio authorities plan to issue citations against residents who planned an Amish wedding reception last week, various local outlets reported over the weekend.
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Minnesota’s chief legal officers have formed a joint “COVID-19 action team” to enforce Gov. Tim Walz’s emergency executive orders.
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Ohio Attorney General Dave Yost announced on Tuesday that he had filed a lawsuit against several people selling personal protective equipment for a markup online.
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The extension of the statewide stay-at-home order until the end of April by Governor Bill Lee Monday, a #ReopenTennessee movement has started in the state.
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Several senators across the United States have called on Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and the U.S. Representative to the United Nations Kelly Craft to address concerns about free speech violations in several countries around the world.
Sens. Marsha Blackburn (R-TN), John Cornyn (R-TX), Marco Rubio (R-FL), Kelly Loeffler (R-GA) and Joni Ernst (R-IA) submitted the letter on Monday, pointing to crackdown on free speech concerning the coronavirus in China, as well as in Turkey, Bangladesh, Niger and Cambodia, as a reason for concern.
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A vast majority of Americans – 8 in 10 – now favor dramatic restrictions on immigration amid the coronavirus pandemic, a new survey has found.
American attitudes about the coronavirus and its impact on our way of life has changed dramatically over the course of one month, a USA Today/ Ipsos poll discovered. The survey had asked voters questions about their feelings on the coronavirus March, when the virus first began spreading through the U.S., and then posed the same questions roughly one month later.
With more than 95% of the country under lockdown orders, millions filing for unemployment benefits, and more than 22,000 deaths from the virus, the U.S. population is, by leaps and bounds, more willing to implement strong measures to combat the pandemic.
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A group of House Republicans led by Rep. Chip Roy (R-TX-21) are calling for a review of the “modeling platforms” the government has been using to make projections on the impacts of the coronavirus during the pandemic.
In a letter to House Oversight Committee Chairwoman Carolyn Maloney (D-NY-12), the Republicans urged her to schedule a “formal hearing” to review the “conflicting data” that led to draconian decisions like the stay-at-home orders across the country.
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The virus will teach us many things, but one lesson has already been relearned by the American people: there are two, quite different, types of wisdom.
One, and the most renowned, is a specialization in education that results in titled degrees and presumed authority. That ensuing prestige, in turn, dictates the decisions of most politicians, the media, and public officials – who for the most part share the values and confidence of the credentialed elite.
The other wisdom is not, as commonly caricatured, know-nothingism. Indeed, Americans have always believed in self-improvement and the advantages of higher education, a trust that explained broad public 19th-century support for mandatory elementary and secondary schooling and, during the postwar era, the G.I. Bill.
But the other wisdom also puts a much higher premium on pragmatism and experience, values instilled by fighting nature daily and mixing it up with those who must master the physical world.
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In order to combat the Chinese coronavirus and to save as many lives as possible, 42 states have issued stay at home orders, and another three have some parts of their states closed, in order to combat the Chinese coronavirus. All 50 states have schools closed. In addition, with the national emergency declared by President Donald Trump, including the overseas travel bans to China and Europe, social distancing, private sector testing and treatments being authorized on an emergency basis, the White House coronavirus task force has credited these closures in part with helping to slowing the total number of cases, which in turn has, according to the models touted by the medical community, already saved hundreds of thousands of lives.
Countries all over the world have resorted to similar national lockdowns in order to win the war on the virus. The unfortunate side effect of the closures is the U.S. and global economies have effectively been shut down except for essential services, resulting in exceptionally high levels of unemployment. In the U.S., anywhere from 17 million to 20 million jobs have already been lost, with many more to come for every week the economy remains closed.
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Twitter suspended and then reinstated without explanation the account for “War Room: Pandemic,” a radio program founded by Steve Bannon and one of the first shows in the country to warn about the dangers of COVID-19.
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Michigan has become the first state to gain federal approval for a program that helps families feed students who were previously relying on schools for meals.
Through the Pandemic Electronic Benefit Transfer Program, food assistance benefits will be given to students ages 5 to 18 who would normally be eligible for free or reduced-price school meals.
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Amy Lynn Twyman Smith is the executive director of an assisted living network in Newark, Ohio. Her father died when she was 10 years old. Growing up, she was close with her father’s mother, who eventually developed Alzheimer’s disease. Amy saw first-hand just how important quality care was for her grandmother and her family. Her connection with her grandmother cultivated a passion in Amy that led her to work in assisted living for the entirety of her career.
“It can be hard on families,” she expressed. “I want our care to be the most wonderful experience anyone could have. And especially for our residents, I want every day to be wonderful, as if it was their last.”
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Ohio Department of Health Director Amy Acton was unable to state how many residents are currently hospitalized with the coronavirus during a Monday press briefing.
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Returning Ohio to normal following the COVID-19 outbreak will take some time, Gov. Mike DeWine said, even as it appears Ohio’s economy hasn’t yet seen the full impact of the pandemic.
It’s “not going to happen overnight. That’s not going to happen … like flipping a switch, and everything’s going to be back to normal,” DeWine said. “I wish I could do that. I wish the reality of life was that,” he said.
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Minnesota House Republicans introduced a resolution Monday that would end Gov. Tim Walz’s peacetime emergency declaration and restore power in responding to the pandemic to the State Legislature.
The resolution was introduced shortly after Walz announced that he has extended the state’s peacetime emergency for 30 days, which allows the governor to act unilaterally in adopting “necessary orders and rules.”
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While Kentucky’s governor threatened to take down the license plate numbers of residents who dared to go to church on Easter, Gov. Bill Lee said he was contemplating how involved the government should be during a pandemic.
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As the world grapples with the coronavirus pandemic, China has become infamous for its role in allowing the virus to spread. From misleading the World Health Organization about the virus’s contagious elements, restricting the access of global investigators to infected sites, and lying about their infection numbers, China single-handedly stole months of preparation from other countries that have been savaged by the disease.
China has also hoarded masks and personal protective equipment from desperate countries and threatened to withhold critical medicines relied upon by millions of Americans.
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Minnesota Democrats are pushing for several sweeping election changes to adapt to the coronavirus pandemic, including universal mail-in ballots and even ballot drop-boxes.
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As Michigan adopts a new phase of government-imposed restrictions on businesses and personal behavior to stem the spread of COVID-19, residents and politicians are registering increased opposition.
Negative reactions stem from Gov. Gretchen Whitmer’s executive orders, which declared many businesses “nonessential” and threatened $1,000 fines for people violating the six-foot social distancing rules.
Those edicts took effect on March 24, and were set to expire on April 13. On Thursday, however, the governor extended her executive orders to April 30 – and added tighter restrictions on personal travel and businesses previously declared essential.
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A group of legal organizations has sued U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) seeking the release of illegal immigrants detained in Ohio.
The ACLU National Prison Project, the ACLU of Ohio, and the lam firm Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison LLP announced Friday that they have filed a lawsuit against ICE “on behalf of immigrants detained in crowded facilities in Geauga and Seneca Counties.”
The lawsuit seeks the release of illegal immigrants who are in civil detention and at high risk of serious illness or death in the event that they contract COVID-19.
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Ohio is 44th out of 50 states in terms of the number of tests performed per capita for the Chinese coronavirus, data show.
Worldometers tracks COVID-19 test results and related data. The information, which was updated Sunday afternoon, is available here.
Looking at tests performed by 1 million, or per capita, is a method to adjust for population differences.
Based on that strategy, Ohio is 44th out of 50 states and Washington, D.C., with 5,432 tests done for every person out of 1 million people.
The national figure is 8,371 tests per million.
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Texas governor Greg Abbott said he plans to issue an executive order next week to reopen businesses in Texas, although he didn’t offer specific details.
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