The Patriot Post® · Wednesday News Executive Summary
Above the Fold
First-quarter GDP contracted 4.8% — the first sub-growth figure in six years. It’s also the largest contraction in 12 years. The U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis explains: “The decline … was, in part, due to the response to the spread of COVID-19, as governments issued ‘stay-at-home’ orders in March.” Which is all the more reason to began relaxing those orders.
“President Donald Trump signed an executive order Tuesday that compels slaughterhouses to remain open,” Bloomberg reports. As we explained yesterday on the news that, as John Tyson put it, “The food supply chain is breaking,” processing facilities that are folding create major supply-chain bottlenecks. Tyson may have been softening the ground for Trump’s extremely necessary EO — the rhetoric of Obama lackeys notwithstanding.
Joe “Handsy” Biden
“The Biden campaign circulated talking points among top Democratic supporters shortly after the New York Times published a story earlier this month about the allegation by Tara Reade,” BuzzFeed News reveals. One talking point matter-of-factly reads: “a thorough review by the New York Times has led to the truth: this incident did not happen.” Well, there you go — he was cleared by the same New York Times his campaign helped edit!
Politico adds that the allegation “has metastasized into a serious campaign liability, entering the political mainstream just as Biden seeks to unite a fractious Democratic Party behind him.” Of course, it only just now entered the political mainstream because it was politically ignored for so long.
Responding to Hillary Clinton’s endorsement of Joe Biden, Reade yesterday remarked: “I voted for Hillary Clinton in 2016. I voted for her in the primary. I’m a lifelong Democrat. But yet, what I see now is someone enabling a sexual predator, and it was my former boss, Joe Biden, who raped me.” Frankly, Hillary is an old pro at backing sex deviants.
Government & Politics
The Washington Examiner reports that “House and Senate Democrats are escalating calls for an historic federal bailout of state and local governments coping with significant revenue losses due to the coronavirus outbreak.” However, “Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin said states that had poorly managed budgets before the Covid-19 outbreak sent their economies reeling should not be rescued by the federal government,” according to Bloomberg.
A Phase 5 relief bill will soon be in the works. But Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell is pledging: “We can’t pass another bill unless we have liability protections. That’s the only way we’re going to ultimately begin to get past this.”
Other Notables
The Trump administration asks intelligence agencies to find out whether China and WHO hid info on coronavirus pandemic (Fox News)
RIP: At least 80 coronavirus-infected veterans dead in the Invisible War at Massachusetts facility (Fox News)
Even the nation’s largest health systems are laying off healthcare workers amid proscriptions on elective surgeries (ABC News)
U.S. marriage rate dropped to the lowest level on record in 2018 (The Daily Beast)
In France, according to The New York Times, “Local governments are now challenging the primacy of the centralized state, the foundation of French society, after it allowed supplies of virus-fighting masks and test kits to be depleted.” Statism never bodes well — especially in a crisis.
Closing Arguments
Policy: The debt clean-up that awaits us (RealClearPolicy)
Policy: The path ahead for K-12 education (E21)
Satire: Biden assures voters, “It’s not sexual assault; it’s democratic sexual assault” (Genesius Times)
For more of today’s editors’ choice headlines, visit In Our Sights.
The Patriot Post is a certified ad-free news service, unlike third-party commercial news sites linked on this page, which may also require a paid subscription.