The Morning Dispatch: We’ve Got a Stimulus Deal

Happy Wednesday! Wake up and smell the stimulus: Trump, Schumer, McConnell, and Joe Manchin all finally have a $2 trillion deal they can all live with, which means the floodgates are about to open wide—assuming nothing too crazy derails things today. But when has that ever been known to happen!?

Quick Hits: Today’s Top Stories

• As of Tuesday night, there are now 55,222 confirmed cases of COVID-19 in the United States (a 19 percent increase from yesterday) and 797 deaths (a 36 percent increase from yesterday), according to the Johns Hopkins University COVID-19 Dashboard, leading to a mortality rate among confirmed cases of 1.4 percent. About 15 percent of all coronavirus tests in the United States have come back positive, per the COVID Tracking Project, a separate dataset with slightly different topline numbers.

• Congressional negotiators at last struck a deal on a $2 trillion coronavirus stimulus package shortly before 1 a.m. this morning. (As we were set to hit “publish” on TMD this morning, the text of the deal had not yet been released.)

• President Trump has landed on a target date for lifting nationwide social distancing measures, saying he “would love to have the country opened up and just raring to go by Easter,” April 12.

• As the coronavirus situation continues to worsen in New York City, the White House is calling on anyone leaving the metro area to self-quarantine at their destination for 14 days.

• Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi has put the country into a three-week “complete” lockdown, announcing “a total ban on venturing out of your homes” except for essential services like groceries and health care.

• Scientists studying the novel coronavirus’s genetic code have some good news: The virus appears to be mutating very slowly, giving hope that once a vaccine arrives it will provide a long-lasting solution to the problem.

• Prince Charles announced this morning he has tested positive for coronavirus.

The Stimulus Checks Are Coming

We were just about to sign off on this newsletter when we heard the big news: The coronavirus stimulus package is finally ready to go. “Ladies and gentlemen, we are done,” announced Eric Ueland, Trump’s legislative affairs director, as he left Mitch McConnell’s office near 1 a.m. 

The package’s full details have yet to be released, and we’ll be sure to dig into them more tomorrow. But the basic structure seems to be much the same as that of the package McConnell and the Senate GOP have been pushing for days.

The Democrats did score one substantial concession in Tuesday’s negotiations: Republicans agreed to incorporate an independent inspector general and an oversight board into their plans for a $500 billion loan package to American businesses and state and local governments. The current legislation also includes an increase in funding to hospitals, a Democratic priority. Sen. Marco Rubio said that small business assistance has increased to $367 billion and now includes a six-month delay on loan payments, and Sen. Schumer has stated that the bill will contain “unemployment insurance on steroids.”

House Democrats had previously been working on their own bill, which included similar elements as the Senate bill to offer relief to companies and provide economic support to Americans, alongside funding for pet causes such as $33 million in additional funds to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, $35 million for the John F. Kennedy Performing Arts Center, and a $15 minimum wage requirement for companies that receive bailouts. 

The Economy “Raring to Go” Again by Easter? We’ll See.

In Tuesday’s edition of the Morning Dispatch, we focused on the growing divide between public health officials pushing continued social distancing measures to slow the spread of the coronavirus, and those who would loosen such restrictions to start getting people back to work in the hope of lessening the pandemic’s economic fallout.

President Trump had signaled in recent days he was leaning toward the latter camp:

The sentiment—backed up by some of the loudest voices in conservative media—understandably rattled many in the medical community, as COVID-19 continues to explode.

As our colleague David French wrote yesterday, the president cannot, by himself, simply “open up” the economy. “If, on March 31, Trump declares ‘mission accomplished’ and tweets that America should be open for business again, each and every governor could simply say no.” 

If he did so, there would be immense political pressure—particularly in red states with relatively few cases (for now)—on those governors to follow Trump’s lead.

So all eyes were on the president on Tuesday as he was expected to lay out his vision for a return to normalcy. And lay out his vision he did—sort of.

“I would love to have it open by Easter,” Trump said in a virtual town hall with Fox News. “It’s such an important day for other reasons, but I’ll make it an important day for this too. I would love to have the country opened up and just raring to go by Easter.”

Easter Sunday—April 12, or 18 days away—is “just about the timeline that I think is right,” Trump told Bill Hemmer in a follow-up interview. “It gives us more chance to work on what we’re doing, and I’m not sure that’s going to be the day, but I would love to aim it right at Easter Sunday so we’re open for church service, and services generally.”

Trump was asked at a press briefing later in the evening if the public health officials on his task force approved of this approach. “We’re looking at a timeline, we’re discussing it,” he said. “We’ll only do it if it’s good. And maybe we do sections of the country; we do large sections of the country. That could be, too. But, no, we’re very much in touch with [Dr.] Tony [Fauci] and with [Dr.] Deborah [Birx] on everything we’re doing.”

“I will be guided very much by Dr. Fauci and by Deborah,” Trump added. 

Fauci went on to make clear that leaders should be willing to adjust their timelines based on the latest data. “You can look at a date, but you’ve got to be very flexible,” he said. “And on a literally day-by-day and week-by-week basis, you need to evaluate the feasibility of what you’re trying to do.”

“If we do the kind of testing that we’re doing … and you find, after a period of time, that there are areas that are very different from other areas of the country, you may not want to essentially treat it as it—just one force for the entire country, but look at flexibility in different areas. So I think people might get the misinterpretation you’re just going to lift everything up and … that’s not going to happen. It’s going to be looking at the data.”

Republican Lawmakers on the Tradeoff

You’ve probably seen certain Republicans making the aforementioned case for prioritizing economic stability over containment of the coronavirus—we pointed you to one of the bleaker examples yesterday. But that calculation is far from a consensus position within the GOP. Here’s what some leading Republicans have had to say on the debate in the past 24 hours or so.

• Rep. Liz Cheney: “There will be no normally functioning economy if our hospitals are overwhelmed and thousands of Americans of all ages, including our doctors and nurses, lay dying because we have failed to do what’s necessary to stop the virus.”

• Sen. Joni Ernst: “I think we do need to follow CDC guidelines and watch what our experts are saying. I would love to see the economy up and going as soon as possible, but let’s make sure we’re taking care of people first.”

• Sen. Tom Cotton: “This is the stark truth: We have to arrest the spread of the China virus to get the economy back on its feet & get life back to something like normal.”

• Gov. Greg Abbott: “The primary obligation we all have is public health and safety. We must do all we can to ensure the health and safety of everyone, to save every life, to get everyone through COVID-19 minimizing the loss of life … If the goal is to get the economy going, the best thing we can do to get the economy going is to get COVID-19 behind us, we must bend the curve on the growth of the coronavirus in Texas.”

• Gov. Henry McMaster: “At this time, students, parents, and families should plan for South Carolina’s schools to remain closed through the month of April … Rest assured, if there is any way to safely open our schools earlier, we will do that, but schools must remain closed to protect the health and safety of South Carolinians.”

• Sen. Lindsey Graham: “When it comes to how to fight #CoronavirusPandemic, I’m making my decisions based on healthcare professionals like Dr. Fauci and others, not political punditry.” And: “If most Americans heard from Dr. Birx and Dr. Fauci that it was not safe to go back to work, no matter what the president said, most would not go back to work.”

• Gov. Mike DeWine: “The truth is that protecting people and protecting the economy are not mutually exclusive. In fact, one depends on the other. We save our economy by first saving lives. And we have to do it in that order.”

• Gov. Larry Hogan: “This is not over by any stretch of the imagination—we need the federal, state and local levels, the private sector, and every individual to help fight this battle.”

• Rep. Kevin Brady: “CAN WE ‘LOCK DOWN VIRUS, NOT ECONOMY’? Yes, but must be smart: – Health threat still growing. Max response NOW – Crowds kill – Defer to state/local leaders – Businesses can operate responsibly Common sense: Sooner we lock down #cornoravirus [sic], sooner U.S. economy rebounds.”

• Sen. Ted Cruz: “On this, @andrewcuomo is right. We must protect public health & work together to defeat this pandemic. But we also can’t let our response destroy every job in America. At some point—hopefully sooner rather than later—people need to get back to work.”

• Sen. Chuck Grassley: “Appreciated @realDonaldTrump’s comments 2nite about putting health & well being of Americans 1st. Using data to decide how to fight health crisis + plan for American ppl to go back to work when time is right is GOOD LEADERSHIP”

• Sen. Deb Fischer: “I believe that we should be following the advice of medical professionals … I think this next week is going to be tough … I anticipate that is going to continue to grow, and we should be listening to medical professionals.”

And just for fun, NCAA basketball legend Dickie Vitale:

Coronavirus Laboratories of Democracy

In 1932, Justice Louis Brandeis wrote that a “state may, if its citizens choose, serve as a laboratory; and try novel social and economic experiments without risk to the rest of the country.”

Roughly two weeks into the COVID-19 pandemic, quite a few states are conducting different experiments. Let’s dive into some of the different approaches we’re seeing play out across the country.

Stay-at-home orders

Broadly speaking, “shelter-in-place” orders “prohibit in-person work that is not necessary to sustain or protect life.” While 17 governors have issued such statewide orders and 11 other states have counties that have done so, other states are holding off in an attempt to limit the economic cost of the pandemic. 

Gretchen Whitmer, the governor of Michigan—which as of Tuesday had confirmed 1,800 cases or about 3 percent of the nation’s confirmed infections—issued a stay-at-home order that took effect yesterday. Ron DeSantis, the governor of Florida—which has a similar number of confirmed cases—has so far resisted calls for a statewide shelter-in-place order, opting instead to limit statewide shutdown orders to beaches, movie theaters, concert halls, gymnasiums, and similar businesses, requiring restaurants to shift to takeout only. Following the lead of those conservatives who have called for the easing of such orders, DeSantis argued on Monday that “when you are ordering people to shelter in place, you are consigning probably hundreds-of-thousands of Floridians to lose their jobs.”

Travel restrictions

Some states are attempting to institute their own travel bans to slow the spread of infection within their borders.

Alaska and Hawaii are mandating a 14-day quarantine for all visitors and residents arriving at state airports. Florida issued a similar order but limited it to those arriving from New York, New Jersey, and Connecticut—which together currently account for more than half of all U.S. infections. In his Tuesday press conference, President Trump also called on all those who have recently left New York City to self-quarantine for 14 days.

Gun stores

As non-essential businesses have been required to close across many states, the Second Amendment has become an increasingly hot topic.

In Pennsylvania, the governor initially mandated the closure of all gun retailers, deeming such stores “non-life-sustaining.” Although the order was narrowly upheld by the Pennsylvania Supreme Court on Sunday night, Gov. Tom Wolf reversed course on Tuesday and announced that he would allow gun shops to reopen on a limited basis. On Monday, a similar lawsuit was filed in New Jersey challenging the state’s temporary shuttering of gun stores and its online background check portal. Illinois, on the other hand, specifically exempted gun stores from its mandated closures, deeming them “essential businesses” that serve the purposes of “safety and security.”

Abortion

Last Wednesday, Vice President Pence called for a delay on all “elective procedures across the country in our health care system to ensure that medical supplies and medical capacity go where they’re needed most.”

Following up on orders from their governors delaying such elective procedures, the attorneys general in both Ohio and Texas issued guidance stating that any abortions that are not required to save the health or life of the mother are non-essential and therefore must be delayed under threat of criminal penalty.

Maryland, Massachusetts, and Washington have all issued the opposite guidance. The head of the Massachusetts Bureau of Health Care Safety and Quality clarified their state’s order to say that “terminating a pregnancy is not considered a nonessential, elective invasive procedure for the purpose of this guidance.” 

Worth Your Time

• The Taliban went from being a potential economic partner for the U.S. in the 1990s to an international pariah for nearly 20 years. Now, that potential partnership is back again, and Frud Bezhan has written an article exploring the tumultuous history between the Taliban and America and how we reached this current stage of their relationship.

• New York Times photographers went out and captured images of areas of international life that are normally bustling; a fair in New Delhi, a subway station in Munich, Times Square in New York City—The resulting photo series is unsettling and fascinating.

• AEI’s Director of Economic Policy Studies Michael Strain’s latest article for Bloomberg warns that relaxing coronavirus protections prematurely, as Trump has indicated he may, will do more to harm than help the economy. “People will feel comfortable resuming economic activity when the facts — importantly, from more and better testing — suggest that it is reasonable to do so,” Strain writes. “Trump can’t substitute his pronouncements for those facts, because many people, not to mention state and local officials, simply wouldn’t respond to his message.”

Presented Without Comment

Something Fun

The ongoing epidemic and corresponding social distancing efforts are forcing many of the less tech-savvy among us to brush up quickly on our digital engagement skills. This learning curve can be steeper for some of us than others.

Toeing the Company Line

• Remnant fans, rejoice: The latest episode sees Jonah reunited with his erstwhile National Review colleague and “Eisenhower libertarian” Kevin D. Williamson for a conversation on the role of government in a public crisis.

• We’ve talked a lot in recent days about the unsettling possibility of America reopening itself for business too early. In his latest French Press, David lays out the possibility of another, equally alarming scenario: one in which, in the absence of clear, evidence-based guidance from the top, our nation’s governors clash in their disparate responses to the outbreak going forward. “We may well see both the blessings and the curses of federalism,” he writes. “The blessing is clear—state governors are best-equipped to assess conditions in their states and act accordingly… The curse may also become clear, with red and blue states pitted against each other in a patchwork of public health measures that may make us more aware of state boundaries than any time since the Civil War.”

• Over on the site today, we’ve got a piece from Bill Wirtz looking into the way Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán is using the coronavirus crisis to cement his authoritarian grip on the country: “[Orbán’s party] Fidesz has proposed an open-ended extension of the current state of emergency, which would authorize the government to rule by decree until further notice. This means that parliament is suspended, that the executive rules without checks and balances, that no referendums or elections will be allowed, and that the government can censor anyone believed to spread ‘fake news’ about the virus. With a government as paranoid as Orbán’s, we can only imagine how the interpretation of ‘fake news’ will play out in reality.”

Let Us Know

With an economic relief package in place, it’s reasonable to hope we’re close to leaving behind the “all terrible news all the time” part of our economic calendar—at least for a little while—and getting back into the “insane, unpredictable swings” space we were in a few weeks ago. In these uncharted waters, have you settled on your financial strategy? 

• I’ve been waiting for a short-term market crash like this for years! Time to get in on the ground floor!

• A short-term federal cash infusion that doesn’t help the underlying economic weakness doesn’t sound like my cup of tea. I’m gritting my teeth and staying the course. 

• Screw the stock market. I’ve got all my hard-earned lucre squirreled away in precious commodities, like gold and scratch-offs.

Reporting by Declan Garvey (@declanpgarvey), Andrew Egger (@EggerDC), Alec Dent (@Alec_Dent), Sarah Isgur (@whignewtons), and Steve Hayes (@stephenfhayes).