Murphy asks Trump for Military and Army Corp Assistance To Build Hospitals

NJ Gov Phil Murphy

Stating that New Jersey faces a potential hospital bed shortage of anywhere from 123,000 to 313,000 sometime between May and October, and that there could be a critical care bed shortage of 2000 within the next two weeks,  New Jersey Governor Phil Murphy wrote to President Donald Trump on Tuesday to request that the federal government provide Military and U.S. Army Corp of Engineers assistance in expanding the state’s hospital and intensive care unit capacity.

Murphy wrote that failing to expand NJ’s medical capacity could results in medical professionals being “forced the make the agonizing decisions the world has seen in Northern Italy–they will have no choice but to deny lifesaving care, including ventilators to those in need of it.”

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President Donald Trump tests negative for coronavirus, his doctor says

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump has tested negative for the new coronavirus, according to the president’s personal physician.

The White House released the test results Saturday night after Trump told reporters hours earlier that he had taken the coronavirus test, following days of resisting being screened despite the fact that he had been in recent contact with three people who have tested positive for the virus.

Trump told reporters at a White House briefing on Saturday that he had his temperature taken and it was “totally normal,” shortly before stepping into the room to discuss the g… Read the rest of this entry »

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What Trump’s national emergency and new legislation for coronavirus will mean for N.J.

WASHINGTON— Two new pools of federal money will flow to New Jersey to help the state cope with the coronavirus.

President Donald Trump’s national emergency will free up $50 billion in federal funds for New Jersey and other states to tap to help cover their costs of responding to the virus. The president called it “a large amount of money for states and territories and localities in our shared fight against this disease.”

And bipartisan legislation that passed the House early Saturday could mean $810 million in new Medicaid funding for the state, according to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorit… Read the rest of this entry »

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Trump: Google building self-check website for coronavirus

President Donald Trump announced Friday that internet giant Alphabet is creating a website where people will be able to check whether they have  symptoms of the novel coronavirus.

Verily Life Sciences, once a project in a Google X lab devoted to “moonshot” projects and now its own health business unit, is testing a “tool to help triage individuals for COVID-19 testing,” Google confirmed on Twitter.”Verily is in the early stages of development, and planning to roll testing out in the Bay Area, with the hope of expanding more broadly over time,” the tweet said, referring to San Francisco and s… Read the rest of this entry »

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Trump says widespread coronavirus testing to begin ‘soon’ as administration cuts red tape

(USA Features) President Donald Trump said Friday that thanks to reductions in regulatory burdens widespread testing of Americans for COVID-19 are set to begin “soon.”

“The changes have been made and testing will soon happen on a very large scale basis. All Red Tape has been cut, ready to go!” he wrote in a tweet Friday morning.

The president also criticized the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the lead organization in the health fight against the virus, for having a testing system in place he said would “always be inadequate and slow for a large pandemic.” It wasn’t clear what syst… Read the rest of this entry »

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Trump’s reelection betting odds dropping amid pandemic handling

President Trump was considered a lock for reelection by odds makers for the last several months.  After the chaos of the COVID-19 pandemic this week, gamblers now consider the 2020 presidential election a toss up between Trump and former Vice President Joe Biden, according to sportsbetting.ag

Last week the odds of Trump being reelected were -200, meaning a $20 bet would return only $10 if the President wins on November 3.  The odds are -11o today, meaning an $11 bet will return $10 if Trump gets another term. Read the rest of this entry »

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First coronavirus death on US soil confirmed, Trump calls for calm

Los Angeles (AFP) – The first fatality from the novel coronavirus has been confirmed on US soil, a woman in her late 50s who was “medically high-risk,” President Donald Trump said Saturday, as he urged Americans not to panic.Health officials said the woman in Washington state was one of a handful with no known links to global hot zones to have contracted the virus — indicating that the pathogen was now likely spreading in communities.The death occurred in King county, the most populous in the state and home to Seattle, a city of more than 700,000 people, officials in the state told AFP.The vi… Read the rest of this entry »

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Smith statement on coronavirus threat

Congressman Chris Smith, the ranking member of the House global health subcommittee, today called on Congress to immediately act on President Donald Trump’s  request for emergency funding for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s (CDC) and other agencies’ response to the threat from the coronavirus.

“This week, the Trump administration is requesting at least $2.5 billion in additional funding to combat the coronavirus,” said Smith.  “The President, Secretary Azar, and others have moved swiftly to identify comprehensive ways to protect US citizens and prepare for a potential pandemic.”  Read the rest of this entry »

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Bloomberg’s betting odds of winning the nomination plunged after the debate.

Former NY Mayor Mike Bloomberg’s odds of winning the Democrat nomination for president took at big hit after his awful performance during the debate this week, according to sportsbetting.ag

Bloomberg’s odd’s of winning the nomination were 2-1 before the debate.  After the widely panned performance the betting line is 4-1. Read the rest of this entry »

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Trump Administration Sues Murphy and Grewal over Sanctuary State Policies

The U.S. Justice Department sued the State of New Jersey, Governor Phil Murphy and NJ Attorney General Gurbir Grewal yesterday, seeking to halt the elements of Grewal’s Immigrant Trust Directive which 1) prohibit law enforcement officers from honoring ICE detention requests on illegal aliens in custody for other crimes and 2) require law enforcement officers to give those aliens written notice in their native language that ICE is looking for them.

“Jurisdictions that adopt sanctuary policies and instead release these criminals put all of Americans in harm’s way,” President Donald Trump said during remarks to the National Governors Association on Monday according to The Washington Post. “I know we have different policies, different feelings, different everything. But sanctuary cities are causing us a tremendous problem in this country. We have stone-cold killers that they don’t want to hand over to us and then they escape into communities and they cause, in some cases, tremendous havoc.” Read the rest of this entry »

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