Wave of New Polling Suggests an Erosion of Trump’s Support

NY TIMES

The coronavirus pandemic, a severe economic downturn and the widespread demonstrations in the aftermath of the death of George Floyd in police custody have posed severe challenges for Trump. His approval rating has fallen to 13.2 percentage points among registered or likely voters, down from 6.7 points on April 15, according to FiveThirtyEight estimates. And now a wave of new polls shows Joe Biden with a significant national lead, placing him in a stronger position to oust an incumbent president than any challenger since Bill Clinton in the summer of 1992.

He leads the president by around 10 percentage points in an average of recent live-interview telephone surveys of registered voters. It’s a four-point improvement over the six-point lead he held in a similar series of polls in late March and early April. Since then, Bernie Sanders has left the Democratic race, the severity of the coronavirus pandemic has become fully evident, and the president’s standing has gradually eroded.

The erosion has been fairly broad, spanning virtually all demographic groups. But in a longer-term context, the president’s weakness is most stark in one respect: his deficit among women. He trails Mr. Biden by 25 points among them, far worse than his 14-point deficit four years ago. He still leads among men by six points in the most recent polls, about the same margin as he led by in the final polls of registered voters in 2016.

Over the shorter term, the decline in the president’s standing has been particularly pronounced among white voters without a college degree, helping to explain why the Trump campaign has felt compelled to air advertisements in Ohio and Iowa, two mostly white working-class battleground states where Mr. Trump won by nearly 10 points four years ago.

In the most recent polls, white voters without a college degree back the president by 21 points, down from 31 points in March and April and down from the 29-point lead Mr. Trump held in the final polls of registered voters in 2016.

Mr. Trump didn’t just lose support to the undecided column; Mr. Biden ticked up to an average of 37 percent among white voters without a degree. The figure would be enough to assure Mr. Biden the presidency, given his considerable strength among white college graduates. 

Mr. Biden has also made some progress toward redressing his weakness among younger voters. Voters ages 18 to 34 now back Mr. Biden by a 22-point margin, up six points from the spring and now somewhat ahead of Hillary Clinton’s lead in the final polls of 2016. Young voters will probably never be a strength for Mr. Biden — a septuagenarian who promised a return to normal, rather than fundamental change during the Democratic primary — but for now his margin is not so small as to constitute a grave threat to his prospects.

BUT five months remain until the presidential election. There is plenty of time for the race to swing in Mr. Trump’s favor, just as it did in the final stretch of the 2016 campaign. Indeed, the 2016 race was characterized by a predictable, mean-reverting oscillation between nearly double-digit leads for Mrs. Clinton — as in August and October — and a tighter race in which Mr. Trump trailed in national polls but remained highly competitive — as in July, September and November.

Mr. Biden’s lead in the polls today is not vastly different from the leads Mrs. Clinton claimed at her peaks after the “Access Hollywood” tape was revealed or when Mr. Trump became embroiled in a feud with a Muslim Gold Star military family.

If the race does revert toward the president, as it did on so many occasions four years ago, he could quickly find himself back within striking distance of squeaking out a narrow win. His relative advantage in the Electoral College compared with the nation as a whole, or possibly among likely voters compared with registered voters, means that he doesn’t need to gain anywhere near 10 points to get back within striking distance of re-election. In the final national polls of registered voters in 2016, Mr. Trump trailed by around an average of five points. It was close enough.

If the election were held today, the Electoral College would pose no serious obstacle to Mr. Biden, thanks to his strength compared with Mrs. Clinton among white voters and particularly those without a college degree. He would win even if the polls were exactly as wrong as they were four years ago.

Trump's campaign announced he will restart his “Keep America Great” rallies with a rally in Tulsa Oklahoma 0n June 19.

Campaign manager Brad Parscale previously said the rallies would probably resume in late summer, but Trump has been increasingly determined to get back out on the road as he slips in the polls. (Josh Dawsey and Felicia Sonmez)

Trump campaign officials are unlikely to put into place any social distancing measures for rally attendees, or require them to wear masks, people familiar with the decision-making process said, adding that it would be unnecessary because the state is so far along in its reopening.

Mr. Trump has also made it clear he doesn’t want to speak in front of gatherings that look empty because of social distancing, or to look out on a sea of covered faces as he tries to project a positive message about the country returning to normal life and the economy roaring back, even as his top health advisers have warned the pandemic is far from over. “Oh my goodness,” Dr. Anthony S. Fauci, the federal government’s top infectious disease expert, said Tuesday. “Where is it going to end? We’re still at the beginning of it.”

Campaign officials said they were considering some modest attempts at reducing risk by providing hand sanitizer on site, but said no final decisions had been made about how to safely bring together a large group of people.

As of Wednesday afternoon, Oklahoma had recorded 7,480 cases of the coronavirus and 355 deaths, according to its health department.

Mr. Trump will return to the campaign trail on Juneteenth, an annual holiday commemorating the end of slavery in the United States and celebrated as African-Americans’ Independence Day. After weeks of protests over the killing of George Floyd in police custody, protests and marches are already planned this year for the holiday in many states.

In 1921, Tulsa was the site of one of the country’s bloodiest outbreaks of racial violence, when white mobs attacked black citizens and businesses with guns and explosives dropped from airplanes.

For years now, Mr. Trump’s rallies have not shocked, awed and driven news cycles the way they did during the 2016 election, when he was an unknown political entity

.

And during the 2018 midterm election cycle, aides and advisers unsuccessfully pinned their hopes on rallies to improve the president’s mood over his lackluster polls and the special counsel’s investigation. But they did little to stabilize his frame of mind, or keep him less active on Twitter.

Why Mayor De Blasio Is Hemorrhaging Support

In the week or so since Mayor Bill de Blasio first defended the NYPD's response to protests against police brutality — and instituted the city's first curfew since 1943 — more than 1,000 current and former staff members have signed a letter saying the mayor is failing at his job. A senior aide resigned, as Politico put it, over "de Blasio’s near-unconditional defense of the NYPD amid incidents of violence against protesters." And yesterday, hundreds of employees from the mayor's office gathered at City Hill to express opposition to their boss.

"We came to this administration because we saw someone who was listening," Catherine Almonte, who has served in various roles in the administration, told Gothamist. "We saw someone who shared our values and we showed up to do the work. And we are not happy right now. This is not what we signed up for."

One of the boldest public rebukes yet has come from Public Advocate Jumaane Williams, who accused the mayor last week of "hiding behind your black wife and children."
"I don’t know if they give out F-minuses," Williams added, "but he deserves one, at least for this entire year, in how he responded to the pandemic and how he’s responding to the protests. We’re probably better off with no mayor at all, to be honest."

George Arzt, who was Mayor Ed Koch’s press secretary and has spent years working in city government, told Gothamist that it's "unprecedented" in city history "to have employees protest the policies of the current mayor en masse."

"He’s the first person from the progressive wing of the [Democratic] party to have become mayor, and so within that wing of the party, there was great hope," Arzt said. "And the results haven’t been there."

There are other reasons why liberals rag on the mayor — he takes an SUV to the gym, he hasn't turned the city into a cyclist's paradise, his affordable housing expansion hasn't gone far enough. But some see the root of this current backlash not just in his shortcomings as a progressive, but in his futile attempt to appease the police — and conservative police unions — who never liked him in the first place.

To recap: De Blasio originally ran on ending Bloomberg's stop-and-frisk policing strategy (his son Dante highlighted the point in that famous ad from 2013). Then, after a Staten Island grand jury failed to indict an NYPD officer for killing Eric Garner in 2014, de Blasio said he "couldn’t help but immediately think what it would mean to me to lose Dante." At a subsequent funeral for two officers who were gunned down in their squad car, police officers turned their backs on him.

"The mayor was clearly so deeply affected by the NYPD backlash in 2014," said City Councilmember Ritchie Torres, "that he has been governing in a state of fear of his own police department ever since. . . . He went from a reformer of the police to an enabler of the police and the culture of silence and indifference to black and brown lives."

New York City began to reopen. 

“Monday marked the first, limited phase of a four-part reopening plan. Wholesale sellers and manufacturers were allowed to resume business, and the construction industry made its noisy return. Many businesses remained closed. In Lower Manhattan, where City Hall and most city agencies are based, lunch spots were still closed or boarded up. Vehicle traffic was light and there was a fraction of the foot traffic that would normally clog sidewalks.”

NYC Transit officials on Tuesday said that subways and buses saw an additional 213,548 riders on Monday, the first day of the city's reopening, compared to the same day last week.

It was the first time that subway ridership reached 800,000 since before the coronavirus crisis began. Manhattan, which had seen the largest drop in ridership during the pandemic, saw a 20 percent increase on Monday.

Overall, bus ridership has fared better, reaching 40 percent of pre-pandemic levels. Ridership on subways on Monday was 15 percent of its level one year ago.

The fraction of New York City residents tested for coronavirus and found to be positive is now 1 percent, the lowest it has been since the coronavirus crisis began,

Although the infection rate is based on the number of city residents getting tested, the city has significantly ramped up testing to nearly 34,000 people tested in one one day. Governor Andrew Cuomo on Monday said that going forward, the city would test a minimum of 35,000 people a day to ensure that health officials receive a reliable snapshot of the daily infection rate.
On Monday, the state recorded 40 new deaths from the prior day.


A new Washington Post-Schar School poll finds Americans’ move toward acknowledging racism as a top problem in the United States has been remarkably fast. The issue in the context of police brutality isn’t new, but the iteration of this debate made national news in 2014 in Ferguson, Mo. At that time, less than half the country, 43 percent, saw police killings of black men as a sign of a broader problem, The Post reports. Today 69 percent say as much.

Perhaps the only other issue to move public opinion so quickly in recent years has been same-sex marriage.

Mnuchin arrives for a Presidential Recognition Ceremony in the Rose Garden[/caption]

Following messy start, enormous Paycheck Protection Program shows signs of buttressing economy

New jobs report suggests PPP helped prevent broader economic collapse, but its overall effectiveness remains unknown

The government’s giant corporate loan forgiveness program initially ran dry, prompting outrage. The new problem: Now not enough businesses are taking advantage.

The economy remains extremely weak, with a high unemployment rate and a surge in Americans seeking assistance. Many economists say conditions will remain shaky for at least another year.

But they also say things would be even worse without the giant loan forgiveness program, which Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) shepherded through Congress and then helped defend during chaotic weeks of implementation.

Getting to this point strained the government, the banking industry and small businesses, with many missteps and pivots along the way as they tried to build a program from scratch. And the Trump administration vacillated wildly between trying to rush money out the door and then trying to tighten rules, enraging lawmakers such as Rubio, confusing borrowers and nearly overwhelming banks, even those with small-business expertise.

Two months later, the PPP has directed more than $530 billion to 4.5 million companies, and economists, business leaders, White House officials and lawmakers from both parties think it helped stabilize the economy. Because the government has released no detailed information about how many jobs the program has saved, it’s still unclear whether it achieved its primary goal of apportioning the lion’s share of the money to workers.

People are sawing through and climbing over Trump’s border wall. Now contractors are being asked for ideas to make it less vulnerable.

U.S. Customs and Border Protection has asked contractors for help making President Trump’s border wall more difficult to climb over and cut through, an acknowledgment that the design currently being installed along hundreds of miles of the U.S.-Mexico boundary remains vulnerable.

The notice of the request for information that CBP posted gives federal contractors until June 12 to suggest new anti-breaching and anti-climbing technology and tools, while also inviting proposals for “private party construction” that would allow investors and activists to acquire land, build a barrier on it and sell the whole thing to the government.

Trump continues to campaign for reelection on a promise to complete nearly 500 miles of new barrier along the border with Mexico by the end of 2020, but administration officials have scaled back that goal in recent weeks. The president has ceased promoting the $15 billion barrier as “impenetrable” in the months since The Washington Post reported that smuggling crews have been cutting through new sections of the structure using inexpensive power tools.

“We have an adaptive adversary; regardless of materials, nothing is impenetrable if given unlimited time and tools,” the agency said. “Walls provide the U.S. Border Patrol (USBP) the ability to slow and stop potential crossings. That means building wall will deter some people from attempting to cross, while slowing the efforts of those who still try.”

The public notice is the first indication that CBP officials do not think the steel bollard design they selected from prototypes in 2017 is sufficiently formidable to achieve that goal.

Smuggling crews have managed to saw through the steel bollards using commercially available demolition tools such as reciprocating saws with inexpensive metal-cutting blades. Others have fashioned long, improvised ladders out of cheap rebar. More-athletic fence jumpers have been seen using rope ladders to climb up the barrier, sliding down the other side by gripping a bollard like a firehouse pole.

Trump is expected to attend a ceremony in Yuma, Ariz., next week to mark the completion of the barrier’s 200th mile, according to officials who were not authorized to describe the plans.

16 Million Unemployed as 6 Million More Americans File for Unemployment. UPDATES

Virus Throws Millions More Out of Work, and Washington Struggles to Keep Pace
Federal efforts to keep businesses operating and workers employed have so far failed to stop the bleeding as the coronavirus tears through the economy in devastating ways.

When the federal government began rushing trillions of dollars of assistance to Americans crushed by the coronavirus pandemic, the hope was that some of the aid would allow businesses to keep workers on the payroll and cushion employees against job losses.

But so far, a staggering number of Americans — more than 16 million — have lost their jobs amid the outbreak. Businesses continue to fail as retailers, restaurants, nail salons and other companies across the country run out of cash and close up shop as their customers are forced to stay at home.

The Labor Department report pushed to more than 16 million the number of workers who have lost their jobs over the past three weeks, which is more job losses than the most recent recession produced over two years.


There is a growing agreement among many economists that the government’s efforts were too small and came too late in the fast-moving pandemic to prevent businesses from abandoning their workers. Federal agencies, working in a prescribed partnership with Wall Street, have proved ill equipped to move money quickly to the places it is needed most. The response came too late to save many of the businesses that now face bankruptcy.

An analysis by University of Chicago economists of data from Homebase, which supplies scheduling software for tens of thousands of small businesses that employ hourly workers in dining, retail and other sectors, suggests more than 40 percent of those firms have closed since the crisis began.

As the coronavirus shuts businesses across the United States, fresh evidence of the economic devastation came from a government report on Thursday that showed that 6.6 million more workers had lost their jobs.

Small-business aid from an initial $349 billion pot has been slow to arrive for many companies already staring down the possibility of bankruptcy, with bureaucratic and technological hurdles bedeviling the program. The Paycheck Protection Program — which offers companies forgivable loans to continue covering their payroll — began taking applications only on April 3, weeks after many merchants had been ordered to close their doors. Very little of the more than $100 billion committed through it so far has actually made it into borrowers’ hands.

Flooded by requests for help like never before, a federal disaster loan program that was supposed to deliver emergency relief to small businesses in just three days has run low on funding and nearly frozen up entirely. Now, business owners who applied are desperate for cash and answers about what aid, if any, they are going to receive.

The initiative, known as the Economic Injury Disaster Loan program, is an expansion of an emergency system run by the Small Business Administration that has for years helped companies after natural disasters like hurricanes, floods and tornadoes. To speed billions of dollars in aid along, the government directly funds the loans, sparing applicants the step of finding a lender willing to work with them.

But in the face of the pandemic, the loan program is drowning in requests. Many applicants have waited weeks for approval, with little to no information about where they stand, and others are being told they’ll get a fraction of what they expected.

The program is supposed to offer loans of up to $2 million, but many recent applicants said the S.B.A. help line had told them that loans would be capped at $15,000 per borrower. That was backed up by a message from the agency that one applicant shared with The New York Times.

The CARES Act, the $2 trillion relief bill signed by President Trump last month, also authorized the S.B.A. to hand out the first $10,000 as a grant that didn’t have to be paid back. Those funds were supposed to be available to applicants within three days of their application, even if they weren’t approved for a loan. That hasn’t happened, according to more than 400 applicants who contacted The Times.

Banks, which are expected to front the money for the program, are still battling bottlenecks at the overwhelmed Small Business Administration and are waiting for technical information they need to close and fund the loans.

Efforts to pass $250 billion in small-business loans stalled in the Senate after Republicans and Democrats clashed over what to include. Senators and advocacy groups have begun to push additional measures to bolster companies through the pandemic. Senator Josh Hawley, Republican of Missouri, wrote on Thursday that “the federal government should cover 80 percent of wages for workers at any U.S. business, up to the national median wage, until this emergency is over.”

Senators and advocacy groups have begun to push additional measures to bolster companies through the pandemic. Senator Josh Hawley, Republican of Missouri, wrote on Thursday that “the federal government should cover 80 percent of wages for workers at any U.S. business, up to the national median wage, until this emergency is over.”

Congress seems unlikely to adopt a similar program, or even something akin to what Mr. Hawley proposed on Thursday. And while Mr. Trump has promised a “boom” in the economy in the weeks to come — foreshadowing a push to lift the restrictions officials have placed on activity — many economists disagree.

Forecasters at Moody’s Analytics warned on Thursday that some 45 million Americans were at risk of losing their jobs amid the pandemic, including three-quarters of the workers in the hospitality and construction industries. They warned it was a “conservative estimate.”

Here’s what else is happening in the U.S.:

New York State reported that the number of patients hospitalized with the virus rose by only 200, the smallest one-day increase since a statewide lockdown. But the daily death toll remained grim: 799, bringing the total to 7,067.

The number of confirmed coronavirus cases worldwide has surged past 1.5 million, according to data collected by The New York Times and Johns Hopkins University. As of Friday morning, at least 95,000 people had died, and the virus had been detected in at least 177 countries.

Trump forges ahead with broader agenda even as coronavirus upends the country
as the coronavirus pandemic has ravaged the country, President Trump’s administration has ousted two key inspectors general, moved to weaken federal gas mileage standards, nominated a young conservative for a powerful appeals court and sent scores of immigrants back across the southern border without a customary hearing.

It’s a whirlwind of activity taking place away from the spotlight that highlights how the twin crises of a viral outbreak and an economic slowdown have not slowed Trump’s aggressive push to advance his broader agenda in the months before he faces voters.

In some cases, Trump is continuing to do what he had been doing, pushing policies that have won him plaudits among his conservative supporters. In others, he is using the broad powers granted to the executive branch amid a national crisis to pursue policy goals he has long sought and in some cases struggled to achieve.

Trump Keeps Talking. Some Republicans Don’t Like What They’re Hearing.
Aides and allies increasingly believe the president’s daily briefings are hurting him more than helping, and are urging him to let his medical experts take center stage.

In his daily briefings on the coronavirus, President Trump has brandished all the familiar tools in his rhetorical arsenal: belittling Democratic governors, demonizing the media, trading in innuendo and bulldozing over the guidance of experts.

It’s the kind of performance the president relishes, but one that has his advisers and Republican allies worried.

As unemployment soars and the death toll skyrockets, and new polls show support for the president’s handling of the crisis sagging, White House allies and Republican lawmakers increasingly believe the briefings are hurting the president more than helping him. Many view the sessions as a kind of original sin from which all of his missteps flow, once he gets through his prepared script and turns to his preferred style of extemporaneous bluster and invective.

Even the conservative Wall Street Journal editorial board chastised the president for his behavior at the briefings. “Covid-19 isn’t shifty Schiff,” it wrote in an editorial on Thursday, using Mr. Trump’s nickname for Representative Adam Schiff. “It’s a once-a-century threat to American life and livelihood.”

With only intermittent attempts to adapt to a moment of crisis, Mr. Trump is effectively wagering that he can win re-election in the midst of a national emergency on a platform of polarization.Three new polls this week show Mr. Biden leading the president, and the Trump campaign’s internal surveys show he has mostly lost the initial bump he received early in the crisis, according to three people briefed on the numbers. Public polls show he badly trails the nation’s governors and his own medical experts in terms of whom Americans trust most for guidance.

The White House coronavirus task force released a breakdown of testing data on Thursday, revealing that older Americans who are tested for the virus are more likely to test positive than other age groups.

Among people who were tested:

11 percent of those under 25 were positive.

17 percent of those between 25 and 45 were positive.

21 percent of those between 45 and 65 were positive.

22 percent of those between 65 and 85 were positive.

24 percent of those over 85 were positive.

One American man did not seem all that excited about wide-scale testing:  Trump.

The president expressed reluctance to wait for comprehensive national testing before reopening the country for business and social life again. While he boasted that testing has increased drastically in recent days, he said it would be implausible to expect that the whole country could be screened for the virus as a condition of restoring normal life.

“Do you need it? No,” he said at his daily briefing. “Is it nice? Yes. We’re talking 325 million people. That’s not going to happen, as you can imagine.”

Even though more than 1,000 people are now dying every day in the United States, new infections have slowed in places where stringent measures have been in place for more than two weeks, offering some hope.

Prime Minister Boris Johnson of Britain was moved out of intensive care on Thursday, as the country’s coronavirus death toll approached 8,000. The next question is when, and how, to reopen the British economy.

France’s death toll rose past 12,000 on Thursday, but the total number of patients in intensive care fell slightly for the first time since the start of the epidemic.

The Federal Reserve has also created a flurry of new programs to keep the financial system from seizing up, including one effort announced Thursday that seeks to help nearly 19,000 businesses that have not otherwise obtained federal assistance.

America’s Economy Begins to Shut Down as Pandemic Measures Take Hold. Dow Drops 2997 pts.

Markets plunge, with the Dow sinking to its worst day since 1987

The Dow was down nearly 13 percent and the Nasdaq fell more than 12 percent one day after the Fed slashed interest rates to shore up the financial system.

The fast-spreading virus has put an end to movies, date nights and other economic activity, prompting some economists to call it a U.S. recession.

Trump Urges Limits Amid Pandemic, but Stops Short of National Mandates.

President Trump issued national guidelines that included closing schools and avoiding bars, restaurants and groups of more than 10 as he prepared for months of upheaval.

Falls Short of Enacting Limits That Other Nations Required

• The measures recommended by President Trump, including avoiding gatherings of over 10 people, reflect the increasing gravity of global containment attempts.
• The European Union chief wants to seal the bloc off from almost all international travel. Italy pledged more than $28 billion for relief efforts.
• The Kentucky Derby was postponed for the first time since World War II. 

Businesses Face New Virus Threat: Shrinking Access to Credit

Large and small businesses, which borrow heavily to run their operations, will find it harder to tap credit as the outbreak curtails economic activity.

San Francisco & Bay Area millions told to 'shelter in place' to stop spread of coronavirus. Drastic  move, first of its kind in the US, comes following a 14% increase in cases in the state.

Suddenly, Fox News sings a very different tune about coronavirus

• By Paul Farhi and Sarah Ellison

The Longest American Expansion on Record: Economy has Grown for 121 Straight Months. 

NY TIMES