Friday afternoon President Trump declared a National Emergency on the Chinese Coronavirus. This action frees up as much as $50 billion in funding for hard hit communities. The president urged each state to establish their own State Centers of Emergency.

His action also gives the HHS Secretary the power to wave bureaucratic regulations.

He announced new tests for the virus have been authorized and over four million will be available next week. Working with Google the administration has also developed an online process to locate the best place for a citizen to go to access a test.

He again tried to calm the public and reiterated that “this will pass.”

The press conference itself included major U.S. corporations such as CVS, Quest Labs and others, demonstrating a private/ public partnership.

The president also waived current interest on student loans. He announced the U.S. will start buying oil for the strategic reserve to help our energy industry currently under pressure from the Russian/ Saudi price war.

In short, Trump hit a grand slam home run Friday afternoon.

Getting Back to Basics

The coronavirus is dominating the news again Friday. The outbreak has caused real pain. Sadly, some people have lost loved ones, and the financial markets are in turmoil.

There’s a lot of debate in Washington about how best to combat the outbreak. But one thing each of us can do is to get back to basics — to remember that God’s in charge and that this, too, shall pass.

When I woke up Friday morning, I found myself thinking about something I used to include in most of my speeches. The thoughts expressed in it are still relevant today, and I want to share them with you.

For most people, life is not about judicial decisions and executive decrees. It’s helping hands and good neighbors. It’s nighttime prayers and lovingly packed lunchboxes. It’s hard work and a little put away for the future.

No government can command these things. They’re done naturally, out of love and a commitment to the future.

Believe in these things. Fight for these things. Teach your children about these things. If you will do that, it will serve you well in life. And if enough of us do it, this great country, with all of its challenges – next year, and five years and 100 years from now – will still be a shining city up on a hill.

The Sickness Infecting America’s Body Politic

In the midst of the coronavirus outbreak, there are many stories of people doing very noble things for one another. But there are also stories that can’t help but astonish you. Unbelievably Thursday, Joe Biden tried to exploit people’s fears for personal gain, sending an email warning Americans about coronavirus and soliciting donations for his presidential campaign. It’s cynical and exploitative — and it’s beyond the pale.

Later, Biden gave a speech outlining his plan to combat the coronavirus should he become president. Of course, by the time Biden would actually take the oath of office, the outbreak will almost certainly have ended. But that didn’t stop Biden from releasing a detailed plan.

But much of it involved implementing ideas that the Trump-Pence administration is already acting on. And Biden didn’t mention the one thing that has probably done more to keep infection rates lower here than in other countries: international travel restrictions.

In fact, earlier this week House Democrats introduced legislation that would have rescinded limitations the administration placed on the number of individuals entering the U.S. from countries that have faced widespread outbreaks of coronavirus. (That legislation was pulled yesterday.)

Democrats always claim that Republicans don’t respect science. But the first thing the nation’s top public health experts advised the president to do was shut off travel from China, the epicenter of the outbreak. And that’s exactly what Trump did.

House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy sent an innocuous tweet this week in which he referred to the virus as the “Chinese coronavirus.”

Can you guess how the left responded? House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and other Democratic lawmakers lined up to demand that McCarthy apologize for what they called a “xenophobic” and “bigoted” tweet.

Meanwhile, Chinese propagandists across the world have been spreading the conspiracy theory that coronavirus was brought to China by the U.S. military.

At a time when Pelosi should be defending our nation against the communist Chinese, she’s been attacking her colleagues for simply noting that the coronavirus originated in China.

The left’s conduct is a symptom of a sickness in our body politic that’s much more harmful than any respiratory virus.

Speaking of Sick

Speaker Nancy Pelosi tried to put abortion funding into the Coronavirus relief legislation moving through the House Friday. You read that correctly. In legislation intended to help save lives, Pelosi and her pro-abortion colleagues tried to use your tax money to snuff out more lives through abortion on demand.

GOP leaders discovered the provision which was hidden in the massive bill. It is not clear whether it is in the final version of the legislation which passed Friday night.