Claim: Theres An Approved Treatment For Covid
The president has promoted an anti-malaria drug as an approved treatment for COVID-19, the disease caused by the coronavirus.
The hydroxychloroquine and the Z-pack, I think, as a combination, probably, its looking very, very good, Trump said during a news briefing March 23. He called the pair of medicines a drug that got approved in record-setting time.
Theres some early evidence that chloroquine and hydroxychloroquine decades-old drugs used to prevent malaria and treat rheumatic diseases might help patients fight off the virus, particularly when paired with the antibiotic azithromycin, commonly known as a Z-Pack.
But its not an approved treatment for the coronavirus, according to the Food and Drug Administration, or even a fully vetted option, according to one of Trumps top scientists.
The information that youre referring to specifically is anecdotal. It was not done in a controlled clinical trial. So, you really cant make any definitive statement about it, the nations leading infectious diseases expert, Dr. Anthony Fauci, said during the same news conference.
Dr. Stephen Hahn, commissioner of the FDA, also said in March that the agency wants a large, pragmatic clinical trial to see whether the drug actually benefits patients.
A nationwide trial to determine whether hydroxychloroquine can prevent the disease in exposed persons is underway, NPR reported March 31.
What Are President Bidens Challenges At The Border
Since taking office in January, US President Joe Biden has been beset by a string of crises at the southern US border.
From criticism over deportations and the treatment of Haitian immigrants to an influx of unaccompanied children and concerns about Covid, theres been no end to the challenges the administration faces along the border with Mexico.
Despite those challenges, Mr Biden has vowed to make good on sweeping promises to reform US immigration, vowing to take urgent action to undo the policies of Donald Trump.
Heres what we know.
People Who Cross The Border Regularly Would Be Stuck
Everyday, thousands of people cross the border between the United States and Mexico simply as part of their commute. There are Mexican students who go to American schools, for example, U.S. citizens who live in Mexico but work in the States, or simply people who live in one country and often visit family in the other. If Trump closes the border, he would immediately be throwing these peoples lives into turmoil.
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Border Detentions Spike To 21
While the number of migrants at the border had been steadily increasing since April 2020, the numbers spiked sharply after Mr Biden took office.
Migrants continue to cross the border in one of two ways. Those who have suffered persecution or fear that they will suffer persecution in their home country are eligible for asylum when they present themselves at a port of entry for admission into the US.
Others may evade immigration inspectors and border patrol by hiding in vehicles or travelling undetected across unprotected and often treacherous sections of the US-Mexico border.
According to the Pew Research Center, at least 40% of unauthorised migrants in the country entered legally on short-term visas and overstayed.
While Mr Biden has avoided the harsh rhetoric of Donald Trump, his predecessor, he has still repeatedly called on migrants to not attempt the journey to the US.
In August, over 208,800 people were detained crossing the border. The figure marked a reduction from July, when 212,672 people were taken into custody a 21-year high.
Despite the August slight decline, the number of migrant encounters still represents about a 45% increase from the 144,000 recorded in May 2019 the highest total during the Trump administration.
Theres also been a sharp increase in the number of children crossing the border. Of Augusts total, 18,847 were teens and children not travelling with a legal guardian, about in line with figures from the previous month.
Trump Closes Us Borders Immigration Grinds To A Halt
President Trump plans to seal off the U.S-Mexico border to migrants under a law intended to protect the country from communicable disease. The border with Canada is closed to non-essential travel.
DAVID GREENE, HOST:
Borders across the world are closing because of the coronavirus pandemic. The European Union this week all but walled off the continent from the rest of the world. Now the Trump administration is taking extreme measures, sharply limiting travelers from Canada. The U.S. government has also slowed the processing of immigrants who are already here. NPRs John Burnett covers immigration. He is with us from Austin, Texas. Good morning, John.
JOHN BURNETT, BYLINE: Good morning, David.
GREENE: Can we start with the northern border between the United States and Canada? What is the latest there?
BURNETT: Well, President Trump said yesterday that, by mutual consent, the U.S. and Canada will halt all nonessential traffic across the worlds longest international border. Both governments are now saying citizens should return home as soon as possible. So it looks like cross-border visits to family and friends or zipping over to see Niagara Falls from the Canadian side are over for the time being. Heres the president at a midday press conference yesterday.
GREENE: Well, I mean, weve been hearing for months about asylum-seekers who are stuck in Mexico waiting for their asylum cases to be resolved. How will this affect them and their lives here?
YAMALI: .
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Trump’s Attacks On The Legal Immigration System Explained
| By Peniel Ibe, Apr 23, 2020
Learn more: “Biden’s changes to the immigration system explained.”
The Trump administration continues to make harmful changes to U.S. immigration policies. While the administrations cruel policies at the border and ramping up of deportations and immigration raids have garnered the most attention, its other efforts to transform legal immigration have been no less radicaland no less devastating on immigrant communities.
As the world continues to grapples with the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic, President Trump announced on April 20 that he would sign an executive order to suspend immigration to the United States. The administration continues to exploit the pandemic to implement its anti-immigrant agenda.
This order follows a series of attacks on legal immigration pathways including an expanded travel ban from African and Muslim majority countries, and a rapid dismantling of the asylum system. The administration also issued an order to allow an increased, systemic rapid expulsion of asylum seekers including migrants found at the border and children.
What’s more, the Trump administration has bypassed Congresss lawmaking authority and used its executive powers to rewrite immigration policywith little or no pushback from Congress itself.
Here is a running list of Trumps attacks on the legal immigration system.
Claim: New York Hospital Staff Are Stealing Lots Of Ppe There’s No Evidence Of This
During multiple news conferences, Trump has questioned the rate at which a hospital in New York is using personal protective equipment , suggesting that theft is why the unnamed facility needs 300,000 masks a week.
At one point, he claimed a distributor told him that a New York hospital’s mask purchases were far too high to reflect actual need.
“There’s only a couple of things that could happen is it going out the back door? And I’ve reported it to the city and let the city take a look at it. But when you go from 10,000 masks to 300,000 masks … there’s something going on,” Trump said during a coronavirus task force briefing at the White House on March 30.
While there were anecdotal reports of mask theft, theres no indication this has driven up supply needs dramatically and officials from New York state and the city, as well as hospitals, strongly disputed Trump. New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo skewered the suggestion of rampant theft, explaining that the state has been preparing for the apex of the pandemic that is coming soon. The state is the epicenter of the pandemic in the U.S., with 83,712 confirmed cases as of April 1.
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Quality Journalism Doesn’t Come Free
Perhaps it goes without saying but producing quality journalism isn’t cheap. At a time when newsroom resources and revenue across the country are declining, The Texas Tribune remains committed to sustaining our mission: creating a more engaged and informed Texas with every story we cover, every event we convene and every newsletter we send. As a nonprofit newsroom, we rely on members to help keep our stories free and our events open to the public. Do you value our journalism? Show us with your support.
Explainer: How Trump Has Sealed Off The United States During Coronavirus Outbreak
4 Min Read
NEW YORK/WASHINGTON – President Donald Trump has taken drastic steps to curb the entry of foreigners into the United States since his administration declared a public health emergency over the new coronavirus outbreak.
Here are some of the most significant additional immigration changes the U.S. government has made in response to the pandemic.
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Claim: Closing The Border To Chinese Nationals Early Saved Lives Trump Gets Credit For Travel Ban But Effectiveness Is Hard To Measure
Something we did very well is, when we stopped the inflow from China at a very early level, that was a good thing to do, a great thing to do. We would have had thousands and thousands of more deaths. And we also stopped the inflow from Europe at a very early level, Trump said on March 29. We had never done anything like it, where we closed our borders to a country like that.
The U.S. barred entry by foreigners who had travelled in China in the past two weeks, with some exceptions, starting on February 2. But it’s hard to know the impact of one decision amid a rolling, nationwide response on mortality.
One expert, Dr. Irwin Redlener, the director of the Columbia University National Center for Disaster Preparedness and a public health analyst for NBC News and MSNBC, called the travel bans a mixed bag” in terms of effectiveness.
Stopping travel from China was coupled with inconsistent messaging from the White House on the potential severity of the threat. On Jan. 30, Trump said the U.S. has “very little problem,” and through February, Trump was comparing the coronavirus to a flu.
There was value in closing the border to Chinese nationals coming to the U.S. in the early weeks of this situation. Closing the borders to Europeans later? It was too late to make much difference. Its a mixed bag, he told NBC News.
Trump On Closing Border: Security Is More Important Than Trade
The disagreement between the top two Republicans in Washington illustrates again the ongoing tension between the president and his own party in Congress as lawmakers try to bat down Trump proposals they believe are ill-advised politically, on policy grounds or both.
McConnell also said Tuesday that he and Trump now see eye to eye on waiting until after the 2020 election to work on health care legislation following Trumps promise to move earlier. McConnell had balked at that idea. And last week, Trump quickly retreated on two of his own budget proposals cuts for the Special Olympics and Great Lakes restoration after hearing criticism from GOP members of Congress.
But it remains to be seen whether he will back off on the border, a signature issue for him that he views as critically important both as a policy matter and in terms of fulfilling a key promise from his 2016 campaign. Increasingly, Trump has shown a willingness to go it alone when Congress rejects his immigration and border-control plans.
On Monday, Homeland Security Secretary Kristjen Nielsen directed Customs and Border Protection to send up to 750 additional officers to the border to assist with a policy designed to keep asylum-seekers in Mexico while they await adjudication of their cases. NBC News first reported on that decision last week. The number could be increased to 2,000, according to the department.
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Trump Escalates Threat To Close The Border Even If It Hurts The Economy
It’s often difficult to know for sure where Donald Trump’s worst ideas come from, but a week ago tonight, Lou Dobbs, one of the president’s favorite television personalities, urged Trump to shut down the border between the United States and Mexico. The next morning, the president started promoting the idea on Twitter.
Hours later, at a campaign rally, he escalated the threat. “I am telling you right now, we will close the damn border,” Trump said, adding, “It’s all very simple. People try and make it too complicated. It’s all very simple.”
Offered a chance to walk it back a day later, the Republican did the opposite, telling reporters, “Mexico is going to have to do something otherwise, I’m closing the border.” He added on Twitter that the only way Mexico could prevent this would be to “immediately stop ALL illegal immigration coming into the United States throug our Southern Border.”
For reasons no can explain, Trump isn’t backing down.
President Donald Trump said Tuesday that he is “100 percent” prepared to shut down the U.S. border with Mexico to block an influx of migrants.”If we don’t make a deal with Congress, the border’s going to be closed,” he told reporters in the Oval Office. “100 percent.”
At the same White House event, a reporter asked, “Do you worry about the impact on the U.S. economy by closing the border?” Trump replied, “Sure, it’s going to have a negative impact on the economy.”
But this story seems a little different.
Coronavirus: What You Need To Know
The latest: The CDC has loosened many of its recommendations for battling the coronavirus, a strategic shift that puts more of the onus on individuals, rather than on schools, businesses and other institutions, to limit viral spread.
Variants: BA.5 is the most recent omicron subvariant, and its quickly become the dominant strain in the U.S. Heres what to know about it, and why vaccines may only offer limited protection.
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Such Restrictions Did Little To Contain Covid
During the first presidential debate, President Trump hailed his efforts to restrict travelers from China as evidence of his administrations effective response to the covid-19 pandemic, saying the early decision saved thousands of lives. He went on to claim that his opponent, Democratic nominee Joe Biden, would have opted to close the country late, resulting in 2 million deaths a tenfold increase in lost American lives.
The president is incorrect. The United States did not implement its travel restriction early. Nor did it close the country to arrivals from China. In addition, there is little evidence that travel restrictions alone saved millions of lives in this country or any other. On the contrary: Unless the United States and other nations act, the widespread use of travel bans in this pandemic have made Americans and citizens of other countries more vulnerable to future pandemic threats.
Restricting flights from China did nothing to prevent the virus from arriving from other parts of the world. Genetic analyses have shown that the large epidemic that unfolded in New York was linked to travelers from Europe. In the early days of the U.S. epidemic, testing was restricted to people with a travel history to China, which limited the ability to detect locally the cases and infections among travelers from other countries.
Read more:
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More: Former Trump Adviser Steve Bannon Pleads Not Guilty To Defrauding Border Wall Donors
“There’s a great deal of it — hundreds of thousands of pages,” defense attorney David Schoen said. “Discovery is very detailed — bank records, witness interviews.”
Schoen, who also represented Trump during his second impeachment, asked for 10 months to file motions, a request Judge Juan Merchan said was “not in the realm of reality.”
Instead, the judge gave the defense until Feb. 6 to file motions. Prosecutors have until June 6 to reply before the judge’s rulings in September.
A few protesters greeted Bannon as he entered and left court. He made no statements.
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Trump Warns: We Will Close The Border Permanently
After chaos at the U.S.-Mexico border on Sunday forced U.S. authorities to fire tear gas into a violent crowd of angry migrants seeking to enter the United States, President Trump on Monday warned that we will close the Border permanently if need be.
The president also said that many of the so-called migrants now gathered at the U.S.-Mexico border are stone cold criminals and urged Mexico to send them back to their homes anyway you want.
Mexico should move the flag waving Migrants, many of whom are stone cold criminals, back to their countries. Do it by plane, do it by bus, do it anyway you want, but they are NOT coming into the U.S.A. We will close the Border permanently if need be. Congress, fund the WALL! Trump wrote on Twitter.
Mexico should move the flag waving Migrants, many of whom are stone cold criminals, back to their countries. Do it by plane, do it by bus, do it anyway you want, but they are NOT coming into the U.S.A. We will close the Border permanently if need be. Congress, fund the WALL!
Donald J. Trump
The presidents tweet came after hundreds of migrants charged the U.S. border near San Diego, prompting U.S. Customs and Border Protection officials to fire tear gas. That conflict led U.S. officials to shut down the San Ysidro Port of Entry between San Diego and Tijuana for more than six hours. As many as 6,000 migrants are now camping out in Tijuana.
