Category Archives: Republican

Donald Trump admitted on Monday that making it easier to vote in America would hurt the Republican party.

The president made the comments as he dismissed a Democratic-led push for reforms such as vote-by-mail, same-day registration and early voting as states seek to safely run elections amid the Covid-19 pandemic. Democrats had proposed the measures as part of the coronavirus stimulus. They ultimately were not included in the $2.2tn final package, which included only $400m to states to help them run elections.

The things they had in there were crazy. They had things, levels of voting that if youd ever agreed to it, youd never have a Republican elected in this country again, Trump said during an appearance on Fox & Friends. They had things in there about election days and what you do and all sorts of clawbacks. They had things that were just totally crazy and had nothing to do with workers that lost their jobs and companies that we have to save.

Democrats often accuse Republicans of deliberately making it hard to vote in order to keep minorities, immigrants, young people and other groups from the polls. And Republicans often say they oppose voting reforms because of concerns of voter fraud which is extremely rare or concerns over having the federal government run elections. But Trumps remarks reveal how at least some Republicans have long understood voting barriers to be a necessary part of their political self-preservation.

I dont want everybody to vote, Paul Weyrich, an influential conservative activist, said in 1980. As a matter of fact, our leverage in the elections quite candidly goes up as the voting populace goes down.

Trumps Monday comments showed he saw voter suppression as part of his re-election strategy, the Democratic National Committee (DNC) said in a statement Monday. Ensuring that Americans can vote during the Covid-19 crisis is fundamental to maintaining our democracy. It is shocking that Trump is essentially admitting that when the American people vote, Republican lose, said Xochitl Hinojosa, a DNC spokeswoman. Trump knows that suppressing the vote is the only way he and Republicans win in November.

Shortly after he was elected, Trump falsely claimed he would have won the popular vote had it not been for millions of illegal votes. There is no credible evidence to support the claim. In December, a Trump campaign aide was recorded saying: Traditionally its always been Republicans suppressing votes in places. The aide later told the Associated Press he was saying that Republicans have traditionally been accused of voter suppression.

The $400m that Congress allocated so far is just a small fraction of what the Brennan Center for Justice estimated election officials need to run elections in November if coronavirus still lingers. Officials need that money to pay for postage, personnel and equipment to process an influx of mail-in ballots.

The urgency of getting election officials those resources should not be lost in the political fighting, said Myrna Perez, director of the Brennan Centers voting rights and elections program.

What cannot be lost in all the back and forth among politicians is that election administrators at the state and local level need substantial resources now to ensure that the elections in November go off smoothly and safely, she said.

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Trump says Republicans would never be elected again if it was easier to vote - The Guardian

Republican governors and states with more Donald Trump voters were slower to take up social distancing policies amid the coronavirus outbreak, according to a new study.

The University of Washington report published on Saturday said the average delay on enforcing social distancing measures in those states was 2.7 days, adding that the two-day wait was "likely to produce significant, on-going harm" to public health.

It also found that "political variables" were a stronger predictor of how soon a state would adopt social distancing measures than other factors, including state per capita income and the number of confirmed COVID-19 cases in a state.

One of the study's authors, University of Washington Associate Professor Christopher Adolph, confirmed that the study was still waiting to be peer-reviewed by a group of experts to evaluate the findings.

Researchers studied five social distancing measures and the dates on which state authorities enacted the policiesincluding school closures, non-essential business closures and stay-at-home orders.

They found that the combination of a Republican governor and a greater proportion of Trump voters in a state delayed social distancing measures by 2.7 days on average.

Taken on its own, the effect of having a Republican governor delayed measures by a little more than 1.5 days, according to the research.

"Our findings are unambiguous: political variables are the strongest predictor of the early adoption of social distancing policies," the paper reads. "All else equal, states with Republican governors and Republican electorates delayed each social distancing measure by an average of 2.70 days."

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It adds that the "electoral motivations" and career ambitions of GOP governors had to be considered when explaining the cause of the average delays.

"Elected officials, regardless of party, must be responsive to the concerns of their voters and party leaders," the study said.

Speaking to Newsweek about his research, Adolph explained that states with Republican governors may have been slower to implement social distancing measures because "partisans tend to minimize their own leaders' mistakes."

"It's telling that Republican voters were more concerned about Ebola in Obama's administration than they were about COVID-19 in the middle of March 2020," he added.

"Second, presidential leadership matters: when Trump downplayed the coronavirus threat, and his message was echoed in Republican-leaning media, it magnified many Republican voters' suspicions that the virus was a hoax."

He added that the combination of "voter skepticism and presidential opposition" might have made it "much harder" for Republican governors to introduce measures sooner.

Giving his assessment of the white paper, political science lecturer Dr. Thomas Gift of University College London told Newsweek by email: "The study is carefully designed and provides a convincing analysis of how partisan politics appears to shape the timing of state-level responses to COVID-19.

"Its key findingthat Republican states have, all else equal, been slower to respond to the outbreak than Democratic states in announcing social distancing policiesprovides a useful attempt at isolating the impact of politics, apart from other variables that might influence this outcome, such as the percentage of elderly in the state, average income levels, and the extent of confirmed COVID-19 cases in different localities."

World Health Organization advice for avoiding spread of coronavirus disease (COVID-19)

Hygiene advice

Medical advice

Mask and glove usage

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States with Republican Governors Delayed Action on Social Distancing Measures, Study Finds - Newsweek

For indispensable reporting on the coronavirus crisis and more, subscribe to Mother Jones' newsletters.

In the middle of March, as millions of people across the country started to practice social distancing measures to stem the spread of the coronavirus, Floridas Spring Breakers did the opposite. Thousands of people, seemingly unfazed by the pandemic, took to the states coastline after the Republican governor, Ron DeSantis, decided not to order the beaches closed.

DeSantis still hasnt enacted statewide stay-at-home orders, garnering plenty of criticism from local leaders and public health officials. The governors resistance probably isnt just about the number of cases of the virus in his state. A new white paper shows that states with Republican governors, along with states with higher number of supporters of President Donald Trump, were slower to adopt social distancing policiesand those delays are likely to produce significant ongoing harm to public health.

The biggest influence in how states acted was not the number of confirmed cases, but rather politics, according to new research by a group of professors at the University of Washington. They focused on five measures taken directly from state government websites: restrictions on gatherings, school closures, restaurant restrictions, non-essential business closures, and stay-at-home orders. Trump initially downplayed the threat of the virus, and numerous surveys have found significant partisan divides in public opinion about the severity of the coronavirus threat, the researchers point out.

Their research showed that states with Republican governors and more Trump voters introduced social distancing policies 2.7 days later than more liberal states. Does a 2.7 day delay matter? the researchers write, concluding: Given the quick doubling time of COVID-19, these delays have the potential to cause a dramatic increase in the peak volume of cases.

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New Research Shows States With Republican Governors Were Slower to Adopt Social Distancing Policies - Mother Jones

Posted: Mar 30, 2020 / 02:47 PM UTC / Updated: Mar 30, 2020 / 02:47 PM UTC

FRom the office of Claudia Tenney, Republican candidate for NY-22:

Todays action will hopefully be a boost to the people of our region.As a local small business owner and someone who fought hard in Congress to pass middle-class tax cuts, Ive seen first-hand how our workers and small businesses are struggling here in Upstate New York.Speaker Pelosi and the Democrats wrongly tried to leverage the urgency of the passage of this bill by inserting a left wing Democrat wish list of poison pills. Rather than helping our local first responders, workers, businesses and families, they prioritized provisions that would undermine the integrity of our election laws and other left wing pork in the first version of this legislation. Ultimately, the worst provisions were removed. However, $75 million dollars will go to the National Endowment of the Arts and not to hospitals and first responders.Watching our very own representative, Anthony Brindisi, sit silently while Speaker Pelosi tried to derail this much needed aid for a left-wing agenda is not the leadership we deserve and expect.His lack of leadership stands in stark contrast to that of President Trump and his team who continue to work with everyone, regardless of party, to quickly help heal our nation and jumpstart our economy.

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Claudia Tenney, Republican candidate for NY-22, released the following statement on passage of the CARES Act: - WIVT - NewsChannel 34

In early January last year, the Fox News host Tucker Carlson took to the airwaves with a 15-minute rant about the way that American capitalism was crushing families and decimating white working-class communities. He blamed small government conservatives and liberal elites alike for ignoring the economic cause of the collapse of the working class. Conservatives, he complained, blame the problem solely on the breakdown of the traditional family. Like the libertarians they claim to oppose, many social conservatives also consider markets sacrosanct, Carlson said. The idea that families are being crushed by market forces seems never to occur to them. They refuse to consider it.

His indictment of American capitalism went viral and set off a familiar, if heated, debate, mostly on the right, where conservatives werent used to hearing such an assault on free market economics from one of their own. Yet Carlsons assessment was rooted in solid academic research. In fact, his monologue could have served as the prologue forDeaths ofDespair, a new book written by the married Princeton economics duo Anne Case and Nobel Prize winner Angus Deaton. Theyre the academics who first shocked the country in 2015 with a new study finding that the mortality rates of white people, particularly those without college degrees, had spiked, after nearly a century of sustained decline.

At the time, they were hard pressed to explain exactly why white people were suddenly dying in such large numbers when everyone elseAfrican Americans, Hispanics, and white working-class people in other countriesseemed to be doing better. Five years later, withDeaths of Despair, theyve returned with a book-length investigation of the trends they first identified in 2015. Their updated data points are stark: Deaths from suicide, drug overdoses, and alcohol-related disease among middle-aged white men and women skyrocketed from 30 per 100,000 in 1990 to 92 per 100,000 in 2017. The spike in these deaths is almost exclusively confined to white Americans, both men and women, without a college degree. Mortality rates among college-educated Americans have continued to fall. Mortality rates for white-working class people in other wealthy countries are similarly in decline.

Case and Deaton note that these premature deaths are the reason that American life expectancy at birth has fallen for three straight years. Such a drop is unparalleled in modern U.S. history. The only comparable disaster came during the First World War and the flu epidemic that followed. The authors compare whats happening with the American white working class to what happened after the collapse of the former Soviet Union, where the resulting countries saw radical change and dire economic straits. It is no exaggeration to compare the long-standing misery of these Eastern Europeans with the wave of despair that is driving suicides, alcohol, and drug abuse among less educated white Americans, they write.

Deaths of Despairis an academic book, laden with charts and facts and figures, and the authors devote a significant amount of ink to shooting down things they think are not causing the crisisproblems like obesity, for instance. But after dismissing a variety of possible causes for increasing mortality rates, they essentially come to the same conclusion Carlson did: that rapacious capitalism and predatory corporations, protected by politicians indebted to them, have destroyed the white working class. American capitalism, they write, is uniquely toxic and often looks more like a racket for redistributing upward than an engine of general prosperity. They believe that the way capitalism has run amok in the U.S., without much regulation or a safety net for those caught up in its creative destruction, is literally killing people.

Deaths of Despairfeatures a battery of distressing statistics about the state of the white working class. For white men without a college degree, the average growth in median wages between 1979 and 2017 was a negative number (0.2 percent a year), even as median hourly earnings for all white workers grew by 11 percent in the same period. This wage deflation has had well-documented cultural ripple effects, depressing marriage rates as mens appeal as partners fell along with their earnings. Without a stable family life, these men are more isolated, with fewer of the sorts of social buffers that might inoculate them against suicide or drug abuse. As a result, the rates for both have gone up.

Women without college degrees are also suffering. Both men and women are now experiencing record levels of disability and stalled progress against heart disease. Women have always had lower rates of suicide, alcoholic liver disease, and drug overdoses, whether or not they have a four-year degree. But that has changed since the late 1990s. Working-class women without college degrees are dying from despair in about equal numbers as men. Case and Deaton dont tease this out, but recent data suggests that white middle-aged women are now drinking themselves to death at a shocking rate. Between 1999 and 2015, alcohol-related deaths in this group soared by 130 percent.

But Case and Deaton argue that the deaths are far more than a product of stagnant wages or economic distress. If that were the case, African Americans would surely be leading the uptick, but they arent. White working-class people are much less likely to be poor than black Americans are, and while African Americans still have higher overall mortality rates, those rates have been falling for the past 20 years even as theyve risen for white people without college degrees.

Instead, Case and Deaton point to something much broader at work in these numbers: the collapse of communities and the end of a way of life. Black communities experienced the ravages of deindustrialization decades before white communities did, along with an increase in mortality. These groups have since stabilized. But now, as rapid technological change and globalization have more thoroughly destroyed U.S. manufacturing, the community networks that kept the white working class together are collapsing.

That means that, just as 1980s Detroit or Baltimore was a ripe environment for the crack epidemic, white working-class areas of Kentucky or Ohio were uniquely primed for the opioid epidemic. Of the drug overdose deaths since the introduction of OxyContin, 90 percent have been among those without college degrees. The people who used the opioids, the many millions who became opioid abusers or became addicted, who became zombies walking the streets of once-prosperous towns, were those whose lives had already come apart, whose economic and social lives were no longer supporting them, the authors write.

But Case and Deaton also offer a harsh indictment of the pharmaceutical industry, which made obscene profits from getting vulnerable people hooked on deadly drugs. Indeed, they offer a harsh indictment of the health care system in general. American health care is stripping away fully 18 percent of the gross domestic productnearly $11,000 per person in 2017. They describe the system as a cancer at the heart of the economy, one that has widely metastasized, bringing down wages, destroying good jobs, and making it harder and harder for state and federal governments to afford what their constituents need.

Out-of-control health care costs have helped turn good jobs into bad ones as companies outsource work to shift the cost of care elsewhere, keep wages down to compensate for rising health care costs, or eliminate many jobs entirely. Once, it was possible for janitors to work their way up into C-suite positions at major companies. Thats no longer true, because janitors now rarely work for the same company as the people in the offices they clean. Corporate managers have shunted these workers off to contractors that offer low wages, few benefits, and little opportunities for advancement. Meanwhile, all that health care spending is draining public investment on other important things, like education and infrastructure. It shows. U.S. roads are so dilapidated that FedEx trucks need new tires twice as often as they did 20 years ago, Case and Deaton write.

One key policy question that the authors dont address is whether or not the Affordable Care Act has impacted mortality rates, which seems like a glaring oversight for a book like this. It would stand to reason that a law that extended decent health insurance to millions of people, many of them white working class, might have staunched the bleeding. But from the national numbers they present, Obamacare doesnt seem to have been much of a salve. In fact, the death rate has accelerated since Obamacare passed in 2010. The problem with American health care, Case and Deaton say, is less insurance coverage than the enormous cost of the system thats dragging the economy down with it. The industry is not very good at promoting health, but it excels at promoting wealth among healthcare providers, they write.

But while Obamacare may not have helped prevent deaths of despair, Case and Deatons research suggests that attacks on social safety programs have made the problem worse. The authors steer clear of partisan politics, but the death trends theyve identified dovetail almost perfectly with conservatives decades-long assault on the nations social programs. Starting with the 1994 Republican revolution in Congress, both the federal government and many GOP-dominated states have made it much harder for people suffering a job loss or other calamity to access everything from Medicaid to food stamps, a trend that has likely exacerbated the current misery of white working-class people today. Thirty percent of people living on an income thats half the poverty lineabout $12,000 a year for a family of four with two kidsget no help from the government of any sort.

The lack of a safety net is one reason why Case and Deaton suggest that the working class in the U.S. is suffering in a way that those in other wealthy countries are not, even though the same forces of globalization and inequality are buffeting their citizens as well. Without a cushion for their fall in the midst of massive change, Americas white working-class communities are coming apart.

WhileDeaths of Despairdoes an admirable job of describing the scope of this epidemic and some of its causes, apparently not even a Nobel Prizewinning economist can figure out what to do about it. Case and Deaton throw up one or the other idea kicking around in politics in recent yearsa universal basic income or higher marginal tax rates on the richonly to dismiss the proposed solutions as ineffective, too expensive, or politically unpalatable.

Take the safety netthe same thing they identified as being helpful in protecting European people during the Great Recession and through 40 years of globalization. They argue that a bigger welfare state might have helped Americans when globalization first exploded, but that it would now be too little, too late. Thats especially true so long as the well-being of Americans is dependent on whether or not they have a college degree. The safety net is something of a Band-Aid, they write, useful but incapable of addressing the fundamental problemthe loss of good jobs for people without college degrees.

So if a college degree protects against much that ails the working class, maybe the government should embrace Bernie Sanderss idea of free college for everyone? Eh, sorry, they declare. That would be too expensive, and most of the benefits would go to people who dont need them. Besides, unless the American form of capitalism is reformed in a meaningful way, Case and Deaton warn, a bachelors degree is not a suit of armor that protects you against change. Just as African Americans suffered mass casualties 50 years ago with the decline in manufacturing jobs, and the white working class is suffering now, the authors conclude that it is entirely possible that many of those with a college degree will be next in line.

They see universal health care as critical, but only if its accompanied by significant cost controls, something likely to be stiffly opposed by big monied interests in the health care system, like doctors and pharmaceutical companies. To get around that problem, they advise giving some of the richest people in America the sort of soft landing that has never been available to the subjects of their book. The healthcare lobby is the most powerful in Washington, and it is almost certainly impossible to have reform without paying them off at the time of the reform, they note. The alternative is to keep paying them off forever, and a well-designed reform, with cost control, will slowly reduce the tribute we have to pay them.

Case and Deaton do suggest some simpler, more palatable solutions, such as increasing the minimum wage and expanding apprenticeship programs like those in Germany to help train workers who dont go to college. And they champion better antitrust enforcement to increase competition and level the business playing field. But they lament that such efforts would require a functioning democracy, which the U.S. currently does not have, strangled as it is by lobbying and by legislators need for deep-pocketed backers.

In a rare moment of optimism, the authors argue that these political problems are solvable. Democracy can rise to the challenge, they write. Democracy in America is not working well, but it is far from dead and it can work again if people push hard enough, just as it was made to work better in the Progressive Era a century ago and in the New Deal of the 1930s.

But theres not much evidence that the ship of American democracy can be turned in time to save working-class people, in large part because they themselves dont think its possible. In 2016, the enterprisingWashington Postreporter Jeff Guo discovered that in counties where white people were dying the fastest, Trump performed best in the GOP primary. Since assuming office, President Trump and the GOP-controlled Senate have single-mindedly pursued policies that will harm white working-class voters, through cuts in social welfare programs like food stamps and Medicaid and by allowing huge corporate mergers. Yet these same sick and dying white working-class voters want nothing to do with the Democratic Party, whose platform at least offers some meaningful assistance.

It is easy to be pessimistic, Case and Deaton concede. The election of Donald Trump is understandable in the circumstances, but it is a gesture of frustration and rage that will make things worse, not better. Working-class whites do not believe that democracy can help them; in 2016, more than two-thirds of white working-class Americans believed that elections are controlled by the rich and by big corporations, so that it does not matter if they vote.

Theyre probably right. Even Tucker Carlson sees that the problem goes far beyond Trump. In his viral monologue last year, he said, At some point, Donald Trump will be gone. The rest of us will be gone, too. The country will remain. What kind of country will it be then? How do we want our grandchildren to live? These are the only questions that matter.

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The Republican Party continues to push policies that are devastating its base - AlterNet

When the World Health Organization declared the novel coronavirus outbreak a pandemic on March 11, about half of the U.S. population said COVID-19 was a "major threat" to the health of the country, but more Democrats felt this way than Republicans, according to polling from Pew Research Center.

While the partisan divide still exists, new polling from Pew Research out Thursday shows that across the board, on both ends of the political spectrum, more Americans now consider it a "major threat" to health as the pandemic continues to rapidly spread across the United States.

According to the first Pew poll, conducted between March 10 and March 16, 59% of Democrats and independents who lean Democratic said the outbreak was a major threat to the population's health, but only 33% of Republicans and Republican-leaning independents said the same.

A desolate Copley Square, March 26, 2020, in Boston.

An NPR/PBS NewsHour/Marist College poll conducted within the same time frame, from March 13 to March 14, showed a similar, stark partisan gap: While 56% of Americans thought coronavirus was a "real threat," 76% of Democrats said it was, but only 40% of Republicans said the same.

Gary Langer, longtime polling director for ABC News, said partisan identity is formed by "who people are."

"That's why it's pretty durable, and it's also pretty persuasive. It's persuasive because it works as a shortcut," he said.

On March 13, President Donald Trump declared a national emergency, but while he had started to ramp up his rhetoric round the seriousness of the virus, even as he announced this significant step to respond to the outbreak, his words and actions seemed at times at odds with the declaration.

Despite having come in contact with someone who tested positive for the virus, Trump shook hands with company CEOs in the Rose Garden; he doubted the country would "need anywhere near" 5 million COVID-19 tests; and he asserted "it's totally unnecessary" for asymptomatic people to be tested.

"This will pass," Trump assured America, and days later, the White House released recommended guidance, titled, "15 Days to Slow the Spread."

Now 10 days after, about 75,000 Americans have tested positive for the virus, putting the country only behind China and Italy, where two of the worst outbreaks have occurred. The president has recently said he wants the country "opened up" by Easter, just over two weeks away, but at least 27 states plus the District of Columbia have active, or soon to be active, statewide closures of non-essential businesses and nearly 3.3 million Americans applied for unemployment in one week, absolutely smashing the previous record of 695,000.

President Donald Trump holds a news conference about the ongoing global coronavirus pandemic in the Rose garden at the White House, March 13, 2020 in Washington. Trump declared a national emergency.

Jay Van Bavel, an associate professor of psychology at New York University, recently warned in a Washington Post op-ed that the differences between how seriously Democrats and Republicans are taking and responding to coronavirus shouldn't be overlooked.

"The partisanship around estimating if you thought Trump's crowd sizes were bigger than Obama's, like that seems like it's absurd, but it's completely trivial," Van Bavel told ABC News in an interview. "This is the furthest thing from trivial... You can't imagine a more serious situation where partisanship and polarization could be deathly for people."

In the Marist poll noted earlier, Democrats were more likely than Republicans to report cancelling plans to avoid crowds, changing travel plans, stocking up on food and supplies and choosing to eat at home more often.

"My concern is that people are going to take more risky behavior," Van Bavel said. "I mean, if you aren't ready for this thing, within a couple weeks, it takes hold and it grows exponentially. And so, it's really hard to turn it around at that point."

"The virus doesn't care about your party affiliation or you political beliefs," said Dr. Mark Lurie, an associate professor of epidemiology at Brown University's School of Public Health. "If you don't follow the CDC recommendations, you're increasing (the chance) that you're going to get infected and that you're going to infect other people."

Lurie said that "denialism" is something that's been seen at the beginning of other epidemics, but the more coronavirus "infiltrates our daily lives, the more people are going to take it more seriously."

While the partisan gap doesn't seem to be lessening quite yet, there are signs it's headed that way, as more Americans across the board are viewing it more seriously.

In the Pew Research study published Thursday, 66% of Americans now think coronavirus is a "major threat" to the health of the U.S. population, up from 47% in the poll published a week ago. Among Americans who identify with either party, though, the percentage of people who think this has gone up 19 points.

In the course of about two weeks, Gallup saw a similar trend over three polls. Between March 13 and 15, just 12% of Republicans said they were avoiding small gatherings with friends and family, compared to 32% of Democrats who said they were doing that. Between March 20 and March 22, Gallup saw jumps of about 45 percentage points for people who identified with both parties reporting they were avoiding small gatherings. In the same time-frame, there was a similar 40 point increase among Republicans and Democrats who said they were avoiding public places, like restaurants and stores, but the 20 point partisan gap still existed.

A pedestrian strolls past a fashionable boutique in the North End neighborhood of Boston, March 24, 2020.

Notably, there's been much less of a partisan gap in some polling on coronavirus, in particular, polling about public health officials and state and local government.

In the Pew Research poll released March 18, 87% of Republicans and Republican-leaners and 81% of Democrats and Democratic-leaners said they were either very or somewhat confident that CDC public health officials were doing a good job responding to the virus. In the Marist poll, 87% of Democrats and 80% of Republicans said they trusted information from public health officials either a great deal or good amount.

"To the extent that we ask a question that's more political in nature, partisan predispositions are more likely to inform it, and as we move away from political issues, you still can have partisan influences, but they tend to subside," Langer said.

In the Pew poll out Thursday, the lack of partisanship persists.

"Clear majorities of Democrats and Republicans say public health officials like those in the CDC are doing an excellent or good job," said Jocelyn Kiley, associate director of research at Pew. Kiley added that for state and local officials, there's "very little partisan difference" in how they're evaluated, and generally, they get high marks.

This was also seen in the last Pew Research poll, when, compared to public health officials, there was even more bipartisanship agreement regarding state and local officials, with nearly the same percentage of Democrats and Republicans saying they were either very or somewhat confident in those officials. In a poll from Monmouth University released Monday, 76% of Democrats and 73% of Republicans said their state's governor has done a good job.

"People trust their local government more than their county government, their county government more than their state government, their state government more than the federal government. That's consistent across almost any measurement we can take -- the more local, the less removed, the more personal, the greater the trust," Langer explained.

However, while the partisan gap around how good the response has been at the state and local level is nearly nonexistent, there is difference in how Republican versus Democratic officials have responded.

Twenty-six states have Republican governors, but of the 27 states that have either implemented or ordered the closure of non-essential business statewide, only seven of them have a Republican as their chief executive.

The four states with the most number of cases in the United States all have Democratic governors, but in Florida, the state with the fifth most cases, according to Johns Hopkins University, Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis has resisted ordering the same closures. Excluding Massachusetts, in the two states represented by Republicans with the next highest number of cases, Georgia and Texas, the governors haven't ordered these closures yet either.

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis delivers remarks during a press conference at a coronavirus mobile testing site in The Villages, Fla., March 23, 2020.

In the latest Pew study, while Kiley said there was "a fair amount of partisan agreement" among Americans that steps taken like limiting international travel and cancelling major sporting and entertainment events, have been necessary, by a 20-point margin, Democrats were more likely than Republicans to say that closing non-essential businesses was necessary action.

"One possibility is that Republicans will start to take it more seriously as it starts to reach into their neighborhoods... you might see that as it spreads into more and more red states and suburbs... you might see that partisan gap closes even more because then it becomes a really undeniable risk factor for people," NYU's Van Bavel told ABC News.

"I would expect in the future, that (the partisan gap) would eventually get washed away because enough people will have had enough personal experience in their families with the virus that denialism will be impossible to maintain," said Lurie, the epidemiology professor at Brown.

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Partisanship in a pandemic: Democrats more concerned about virus than Republicans, but increasing concern for all: Polls - ABC News

WASHINGTON, DC - MARCH 27: (L-R) Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin, Senate Majority Leader Mitch ... [+] McConnell (R-KY), House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-CA), Vice President Mike Pence and Rep. Kevin Brady (R-TX) applaud U.S. President Donald Trump during a bill signing ceremony for H.R. 748, the CARES Act in the Oval Office of the White House on March 27, 2020 in Washington, DC. Earlier on Friday, the U.S. House of Representatives approved the $2 trillion stimulus bill that lawmakers hope will battle the the economic effects of the COVID-19 pandemic. (Photo by Erin Schaff-Pool/Getty Images)

A recent Ipsos/Reuters poll found that 14% of Democrats said they were infected with COVID-19 or knew someone who was infected. For Republicans, this number was only 10%.

While not a huge difference, its enough to raise an eyebrow. Why might this number be higher for Democrats? And what political implications might follow? Answers to these questions are explored below.

#1: The difference in infection rate by party affiliation is very explainable.

It shouldnt come as a surprise that more Democrats are infected than Republicans. Looking at the areas that have been hardest hit by Coronavirus, it is the coastal regions of the country (New York, California, Washington, New Jersey, etc.) areas where Democrats outnumber Republicans. If the disease were centered in the South or the Midwest, it would be a different story.

But theres another factor at play, and that has to do with the demography of income. Wealthy people, who tend to vote Republican, maintain smaller social networks than lower income people. A 2016 study published in the journal Social Psychological and Personality Science found that wealthy Americans spend 6.4 fewer evenings per year in social situations. Rich people also live in less populated areas. Social distancing thus comes more naturally to them which may lower their risk of contracting the disease.

#2: It is likely that differences in infection rates are driving threat perceptions.

Not only are Democrats more likely to say they are infected or know someone who is infected, they are more concerned about the threat posed by the disease. According to a recent Pew Research Center survey, 41% of Democrats view COVID-19 as a major threat to their personal health compared to only 30% of Republicans. Furthermore, Democrats are more worried than Republicans about the threat Coronavirus poses to the economy, to the health of the nation as a whole, and to their personal financial situation.

Hispanic Americans and other minority groups (who are traditionally Democratic voting blocs) are especially concerned about the threat of Coronavirus, and it just so happens that they report higher than average infection rates. A recent article pointed out that minorities disproportionately work jobs that cant be shut down (think hospital custodial workers, delivery drivers, and warehouse workers). Nearly half of black people (49%) and Hispanics (48%) say the coronavirus is a major threat to their own health, states the team at Pew Research. Among white people, 30% say this.

#4: What political implications might we expect to see?

For one, it is Democrats who believe, more than Republicans, that people around the country arent taking the threat seriously enough and they are more likely to agree with governmental efforts to reduce the spread of the virus. For example, 81% of Democrats believe that closing businesses is a necessary step to reduce the spread of COVID-19 compared to only 61% of Republicans. Democrats are also more likely to agree with the cancelling of sporting events, entertainment events, schools, and limiting restaurants to carry-out only.

While everyone is pushing for action to contain the spread of the disease, it is likely that the Democrats will continue to be the most vocal advocates for containment in the weeks ahead. This may change as the virus penetrates the interior of the country.

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More Democrats Are Infected With Coronavirus Than Republicans, According To New Survey Research - Forbes

HARTFORD Hospitalizations due to coronavirus infection topped 500 patients Monday with tests results pending for several hundred more suspected cases.

Gov. Ned Lamont reported that hospital bed capacity is expected to increase 50% by the end of this week during an update Monday on the spread of the coronavirus disease and the states ongoing response.

The states 27 acute care hospitals have more than 6,800 beds between them, and roughly 60% were reported occupied headed into the weekend.

We currently have 517 patients hospitalized in the state of Connecticut that are COVID positive, and we have several hundred more for whom we are waiting for the result of their tests, but we presume a good proportion of them will be positive, said Jennifer Jackson, the president and CEO of the Connecticut Hospital Association.

The updated total announced Monday represented a nearly tenfold increase over the 54 hospitalizations due to COVID-19 that were reported last Monday. An additional 113 hospitalizations were recorded between Sunday and Monday.

Public health officials also reported Monday that 578 more people tested positive for COVID-19, bringing the running total to 2,571 patients. The death toll climbed to 34 as two more deaths were announced.

More than 14,600 tests for COVID-19 were reported Monday, including 2,700 more between Sunday and Monday. President Donald Trump announced Monday that more than 1 million tests have been done nationwide.

Lamont announced the formation of the Governors Health Response Team to help coordinate the allocation of needed resources, supplies and personnel among the states hospitals.

The CEOs of Hartford HealthCare, Nuvance Health, and Yale New Haven Health will co-chair the advisory group that will work with the Connecticut Hospital Association, individual hospitals, and the state Department of Public Health.

Hospital officials have been regularly consulting with the Lamont administration before the confirmation of the first positive COVID-19 case in the state on March 8, including working on expanding hospital bed capacity.

We got ahead of this curve early, and were running like hell, and the virus is right behind us, Lamont said.He said the hospital industry leaders delivered on his request to plan how to expand hospital bed capacity by 50%. He said this goal is expected to be met by the end of this week.

We plan for the worse so the hospitals are being very creative. Theyve already increased their capacity considerable, said Jackson, the head of the Connecticut Hospital Association.

Yale New Haven Health has cleared out the top three floors of its Smilow Cancer Hospital for use for intensive care patients, said Marna Borgstrom, the health providers CEO and president.

Dr. John Murphy, president and CEO of Nuvance Health Care, summed up the challenges confronting the Lamont administration and the states hospital system as the infection and hospitalization rates accelerate toward their peaks.

What were trying to do, as you all are, is to figure out when is this surge going to hit and how big will it be, and will it outstrip our capacity to manage patients who need hospitalization, he said.

The uneven pattern of infection means hospitals in parts of the state with low rates of COVID-19 will be in a position to help out hospitals in harder hit sections.

There were 276 patients reported hospitalized in Fairfield County, 176 in New Haven County, and 96 in Hartford County. There seven patients hospitalized in Litchfield County represented the fourth highest total. Only Windham County had no hospitalized patients Monday.

To the extent that there is untapped capacity elsewhere in state we want to identify it, we want to take advantage of it, Murphy said. This is what this is really about [Dash] actively sharing ideas, resources, models, personnel, and when one health system, or one hospital has a defined need we will collectively figure out how to address it.Borgstrom said hospitals do consult one another on a regular basis, but more so now amid the coronavirus pandemic.

We communicate a lot anyway, but weve been communicating a lot now, and it has been a real collaboration, she said.

Borgstrom said hospitals are also continuing to provide other needed medical care.

People unfortunately are going to have coronaries. Cancer patients need to continue their radiation therapy and chemotherapy treatments, she said. So, it is really we have to make sure we here for the people who have always needed us for the things that have afflicted them as well as these COVID-19 positive patients.

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More than 500 people hospitalized in the state due to coronavirus - Waterbury Republican American

T-R file photoAngie Paxson, YMCA-YWCA health and wellness director, talks about the importance of staying active during the COVID-19 pandemic.

The closure of the Marshalltown YMCA-YWCA and other gyms to mitigate the spread of COVID-19 has created an extra challenge for those trying to stay active.

There are still many resources, however, to aid in exercise.Angie Paxson, YMCA-YWCA health and wellness director, has some tips on how to work out while some resources are off limits.

She said equipment is not always necessary for getting exercise.

I know that it isnt the same as going to the gym to power lift or do CrossFit. But get out in nature. Go for a walk or a hike, Paxson said. Body weight exercises are still a great option for those who do not have equipment.

For those who may not work out regularly, it is still important to stay active while stuck at home. Most people are on their feet for at least part of the day while working and being at home can limit that regular activity. Exercise can be as simple as taking a walk outside.

I encourage people to get outside. Its not only good for your body but also your spirit, Paxson said.

The Y is releasing a few workout videos to members. Members can also subscribe to Mossa Move, a workout app which is free for the first two months.

Crossfit members can use Wodify to follow home workouts.

The Y has also posted some workout videos on their Facebook page for people to follow. It can be difficult to stay motivated when exercising alone, so it is helpful to have a teacher to follow.

Paxson said it is also a good idea to create accountability by exercising with friends or family.

To stay motivated, plan to virtually work out with a friend. Hop on video chat and do the same workout, she said. Or have each of you write down five or six of your favorite exercises then take turns drawing them out of a hat while on video chat whatever you pull out do for a prescribed amount of time.

Exercise does not just keep people physically healthy but can also help with mindset. Being active releases endorphins, lifting peoples moods. Paxon said this is especially important right now.

It is vital to stay active during this time. It helps to boost your immune system and it helps tremendously with mind and spirit, she said.

There are many sources for workout videos that can be accessed online. Planet Fitness is live streaming a new video every day on its Facebook page.

These videos are all 20 minutes or less and feature Planet Fitness certified trainers along with special guests including The Biggest Loser coach and fitness trainer Erica Lugo, NASCAR driver Joey Logano and actor and director Jerry OConnell.

According to Planet Fitness CMO Jeremy Tucker, the company is offering these classes to help people during this time.

Our daily routines have changed in unexpected ways and we know that people may not be able to get to the gym, he said. Thats why were offering a free, daily virtual fitness class for everyone on Planet Fitnesss Facebook page from Monday through Friday, as we know exercise has both mental and physical health benefits.

This new program is called United We Move, and Tucker hopes it will keep people feeling well.

We are calling this movement United We Move because we know that the best way to stay healthy both physically and mentally is to stay active, he said.

Contact Anna Shearer at ashearer@timesrepublican.com

DES MOINES Eighty-eight new cases of COVID-19 were confirmed in Iowa on Monday. That brings the total to 424. ...

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Keeping active during isolation key to mood | News, Sports, Jobs - Marshalltown Times Republican

The Republican support for emergency cash payments as a central part of CARES Act, the recently passed coronavirus relief package, surprised many. What could possibly be conservative about free money? In fact, the idea of direct government cash payments to the needy even on a non-emergency basis has a long lineage among conservative thinkers and policymakers. Its reappearance signifies a larger rethinking of economic policy on the right.

Today, cash grants or universal basic income (UBI) seems a classic Democratic Party idea, associated with upstart presidential contender Andrew YangAndrew YangMajority of young Americans support universal basic income, public healthcare: poll Granting cash payments is a conservative principle Solving the coronavirus economic downturn good psychology makes for good politics and policy MORE. But the first president who embraced the idea was Republican Richard Nixon. The name most associated with the reform was Milton Friedman, the face of free market economics for his generation.

Friedman came up with the idea of a minimum income during a crisis many liken to coronavirus: the Great Depression. As a young economist, Friedman struggled to reconcile his belief in markets with the suffering he saw all around him. A conversation with Swedish socialist Gunnar Myrdal suggested a way forward: a plan for guaranteeing a minimum income for all.

The idea of setting a floor under each member of society resolved several problems. First was the basic support to those who couldn't make a living, even if they worked. More broadly, the idea could ameliorate the failings of capitalism without deconstructing capitalism itself. Markets would remain intact. Theyd even be strengthened, by giving the poor money to spend.

Over time, Friedmans commitment to the idea grew. Originally conceived during hard times, Friedman maintained his support of the basic concept even during the prosperous 1960s. He came up with a new twist send the money through the IRS and called it a negative income tax. The proposal was widely debated among conservatives and liberals.

President Nixon seized upon the idea when he came into office, calling it the Family Assistance Plan (FAP). Supporters inside the administration included George Shultz, who later headed the Treasury Department and the State Department under President Ronald Reagan. But conservatives were not unanimous in their support. Although the FAP was carefully designed to avoid penalizing work, some conservatives worried it was an unearned handout. Joining them in opposition were liberals who felt the benefit was too stingy. FAP made it into Congress, but didnt make it out.

In the aftermath, Republicans came up with a modified version of the idea: the Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC). The name spoke volumes: the benefit was linked to earnings, eliminating the worry about handouts. This structure enabled the EITC to emerge as a conservative favorite, with Reagan pushing for an expansion during his presidency. Decades of social science research have found the EITC the closest the United States came to a cash grant before the passage of the CARES Act reduces poverty and increases the health of recipients and their families, particularly children.

Are todays populist conservatives aware of this history?

Strikingly, it was the newer wave of conservatives, tied closely to President TrumpDonald John TrumpCuomo grilled by brother about running for president: 'No. no' Maxine Waters unleashes over Trump COVID-19 response: 'Stop congratulating yourself! You're a failure' Meadows resigns from Congress, heads to White House MORE, who led the push for immediate and universal cash support. Unknowingly they repeated Friedmans classic argument that the best way to increase purchasing power was getting cash into the hands of individuals and families immediately. While populists invoked low-wage workers living paycheck to paycheck, cash payments also appealed to business-oriented Republicans like Sen. Mitt RomneyWillard (Mitt) Mitt RomneyGranting cash payments is a conservative principle 7 things to know about the coronavirus stimulus package Scarborough rips Trump for mocking Romney's negative coronavirus test: 'Could have been a death sentence' MORE (R-Utah), an early advocate of the idea. Romneys support echoed another Friedman theme: efficiency. In a crisis, fine tuning policy could cause unacceptable delay.

Cash bridged conservative generations because it put an individualist spin on a collective emergency. Cash payments are a way to acknowledge the importance of the crisis without growing the government in ways conservatives consider misguided. Although they seem like a big spending liberal program, they rest upon a fundamental belief in individual decision making and the power of spontaneous order over top-down planning.

True, the final CARES bill set aside a key element of UBI: universality. Instead of sending money to everyone, CARES set up a more targeted system, phasing out the $1,200 payments as incomes climb. Amid crisis, lawmakers proved wary not so much of giving money to the poor, but giving money to the rich.

Yet, even this represents a huge transformation of the debate around cash. For the first time, Republican lawmakers debated the pros and cons of universal cash grants. They pointed out the good points of universal programs: efficiency, simplicity and speed. They did it without the usual invocations of unearned or undeserved aid that have crippled previous efforts.

Most significantly, the relief program could stimulate interest in cash as part of conservative industrial policy a deliberate program of economic development keyed to the needs of Republican voters and incorporating traditional Republican principles. Trumps populist economics at least on the campaign trail was the first blow against free market thinking on the right. Since then, populist conservatives have struggled to operationalize their new loyalties to working class voters. Under pressure, they returned unexpectedly to the new old idea of cash.

Both the coronavirus crisis and the long history of UBI show how cash grants can resonate with conservative principles of individualism, efficiency and government doing more with less. In the long recovery that lies ahead, ideas like cash that can bridge both partisan and intra-party divides should be taken out of the archive and put to work.

Jennifer Burns is a research fellow at the Hoover Institution, a Stanford, Calif.-based research think tank focusing on government, private enterprise, personal freedom and foreign policy issues, and an associate professor of history at Stanford University.

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