Some U.S. schools begin to reopen with fraught results. With a focus on the coronavirus, other deadly diseases are making a comeback.
White House officials have been told they will be randomly screened for the coronavirus starting Monday, according to a person who received the email. The policy is a change for the White House, where testing had previously been required only for people in proximity to President Trump.
Trump derides Democrats as lawmakers and administration officials try to break stimulus impasse.
President Trump on Monday hurled insults at Democratic leaders who were huddling with his top advisers in search of a compromise economic recovery package, threatening to act on his own to ban evictions as he again undercut negotiations to reach a broader deal.
Mr. Trump floated the possibility of using an executive order to address an expired federal moratorium on evictions, even though a $1 trillion Republican aid proposal did not include such a pause. He said he remained “totally involved” in stimulus talks, even though he wasn’t “over there with Crazy Nancy,” a reference to Speaker Nancy Pelosi of California.
But the president has been notably absent from the negotiations on a sweeping economic stabilization package, even as tens of millions of Americans have been cut off from enhanced jobless benefits they have depended on for months.
At the same moment that Mr. Trump was blasting her, Ms. Pelosi met on Capitol Hill with Senator Chuck Schumer of New York, the minority leader, Mark Meadows, the White House chief of staff, and Steven Mnuchin, the Treasury secretary, in search of a compromise. It was the fifth such meeting in eight days, following a staff policy call on Sunday and a rare Saturday session with the four negotiators.
At the White House, Mr. Trump accused Democrats of being single-mindedly focused on getting “bailout money” for states controlled by Democrats, and unconcerned with extending unemployment benefits.
“All they’re really interested in is bailout money to bail out radical left governors and radical left mayors like in Portland and places that are so badly run — Chicago, New York City,” Mr. Trump said.
Democrats have proposed providing more than $900 billion to cash-strapped states and cities whose budgets have been devastated in the recession, but it is Republicans who have proposed slashing the jobless aid. Democrats have refused to do so, feeding the stalemate.
While White House officials and Democratic leaders reported some progress over the weekend in their talks, they still have substantial differences. Democrats are pushing a $3 trillion rescue plan that would include restoring $600-per-week jobless aid payments that expired on Friday and extending them through January, while Republicans have proposed a $1 trillion package that would slash the unemployment payments considerably.
As the impasse drags on, outside advisers are also trying to get the president to bypass Congress and unilaterally impose a temporary payroll tax cut, an idea that Mr. Trump has championed but his negotiators dropped amid opposition from both parties.
