Stephan: A global pandemic, you would think, would call for a worldwide cooperative effort to find a vaccine, much as under the Obama administration there was a worldwide effort to deal with Ebola. But under Trump, well that's a different world run on different values. So while the rest of the world cooperates and shares research on Covid-19, the U.S. is on its own. Everything that could be done incorrectly in this pandemic, under Trump, has been done incorrectly. The history of America's poor choices during this year will be studied for decades for its incompetence.
Trump at White House waving off questions from journalists. Credit: CHIP SOMODEVILLA / Getty
Trump is seeking to justify the decision by citing U.S. opposition to the World Health Organization (WHO), which is a key party to the effort. But in reality, it is an epic act of global sabotage.
The effect of this petty and punitive plan is that U.S. vaccine advances over the coming months and years won’t be a centerpiece of a coordinated plan to get new vaccines widely distributed in poor countries. It also means that, if the U.S. vaccine development program under Operation Warp Speed doesn’t bear fruit, the U.S. will be outside of the technology and vaccine-sharing agreements likely to be negotiated by most of the world’s countries. Earlier this summer, WHO […]
Stephan: I have been warning my readers for nearly a decade now that there would come a point as a result of sea rise, tornadoes, hurricanes, or fires when the real estate market would collapse in areas afflicted by those things because no insurance company would issue a policy. Well, that time is now.
The Ranch Fire in Azusa, Calif., east of Los Angeles, in August. Several years of brutal fireseasons have hit insurers hard. Credit…Apu Gomes/Agence France-Presse/Getty
As wildfires burn homes across California, the state is also grappling with a different kind of climate predicament: How to stop insurers from abandoning fire-prone areas, leaving countless homeowners at risk.
Years of megafires have caused huge losses for insurance companies, a problem so severe that, last year, California temporarily banned insurers from canceling policies on some 800,000 homes in or near risky parts of the state. However, that ban is about expire and can’t be renewed, and a recent plan to deal with the problem fell apart in a clash between insurers and consumer advocates.
Insurers are widely expected to continue their retreat, potentially devastating the housing market if homes become essentially uninsurable.
“The marketplace has largely collapsed” in those high-risk areas, said Graham Knaus, executive director of the California State Association of Counties, which has pushed state officials to address the problem. “It’s a very large geographic area of the state that is […]
Stephan: This should come as no surprise to a regular SR reader. I have been saying for several years, since Trump brought them out of the shadows, that White Supremacist militias were the real civil violence threat in America. Civil violence has almost nothing to do with socially progressive demonstrations, such as the Black Lives Matter movement, except when the militias get involved as counter-demonstrators.
White supremacists present the gravest terror threat to the United States, according to a draft report from the Department of Homeland Security.
Editor’s Note: None of the DHS drafts POLITICO reviewed referred to a threat from Antifa, the loose cohort of militant left-leaning agitators who senior Trump administration officials have described as domestic terrorists.
Two later draft versions of the same document — all of which were reviewed by POLITICO — describe the threat from white supremacists in slightly different language. But all three drafts describe the threat from white supremacists as the deadliest domestic terror threat facing the U.S., listed above the immediate danger from foreign terrorist groups.
“Foreign terrorist organizations will continue to call for Homeland attacks but probably will remain constrained in their ability to direct such plots over the next year,” all three documents say.
Russia “probably will be the primary covert foreign influence actor and purveyor of disinformation and misinformation in the Homeland,” the documents also say.
Former acting DHS Sec. Kevin McAleenan last year directed the department to start producing annual homeland threat assessments. […]
Stephan: And here are the facts about the nonviolent demonstrations, and proof that Trump is lying, in this as in nearly everything else.
NEW YORK, NEW YORK – AUGUST 24: Protesters with the Black Lives Matter (BLM) movement march through Manhattan following the shooting of a Black man by a White police officer in Kenosha, Wisconsin over the weekend, on August 24, 2020 in New York City. The Wisconsin National Guard has been deployed to Kenosha after the man was shot several times at close range in the back during an encounter with a police officer, which was caught on video. Credit: Spencer Platt/Getty
The vast majority of Black Lives Matter protests—more than 93%—have been peaceful, according to a new report published Thursday by a nonprofit that researches political violence and protests across the world.
The Armed Conflict Location & Event Data Project (ACLED) analyzed more than 7,750 Black Lives Matter demonstrations in all 50 states and Washington D.C. that took place in the wake of George Floyd’s death between May 26 and August 22.
Their report states that more than 2,400 locations reported peaceful protests, while fewer than 220 reported “violent demonstrations.” The authors define violent demonstrations […]
Stephan: Over the past week I have received half a dozen emails from Republican readers telling me Trump is much better at handling the economy than Biden could ever be. This accords with several survey polls I have read that reflect this same thinking. Republicans overwhelming give Trump higher marks on handling the economy than Biden. So what is the truth? Well, here are the facts, if you care about facts as I do, and I hope you do. The facts are Trump has been an economic disaster, just as he was a repeated bankrupt in his corporate life. Click through to see the charts that accompany this report.
As the United States suffers the worst economic downturn in nearly a century, a key question remains: How quickly can the nation recover, and who has the better track record to get us there?
The dire job losses from the spring are close to half recovered, but 13.6 million workers remain unemployed. Stocks are back near record highs, but food bank lines are long and evictions in parts of the country are growing.
The 2020 presidential election will be, at least partly, about the economy. President Trump argues the economy was soaring pre-pandemic and he can bring it back again, while former vice president Joe Biden, the Democratic nominee, argues the nation wouldn’t be in such bad shape if Trump hadn’t fumbled the handling of the pandemic. Biden says he can get people working again and points to the Obama administration’s track record after the Great Recession. Trump portrays the Obama era as sluggish.
