Friday, April 24, 2020
Contact: Carter Christensen, [email protected]
by Arielle Kane, Director of Health Care

The presence of uncertainty in the country’s largest economic sector should be a call to action. Only the federal government has the national reach and resources to do the job and eliminate most of this uncertainty. The emergency legislative actions taken by Congress so far are not enough.
by Will Marshall, PPI President

Come November, U.S. voters will have an opportunity to fire Trump for rank incompetence. But Americans should be rooting for the EU to raise its game. Otherwise, Europe could emerge from the COVID-19 crisis fatally weakened in every way — broke, politically fractured and unable to resume its role as America’s main partner in world affairs. 

PPI, R Street Institute, and the Alliance for Connected Care discuss the potential of telehealth to reach patients where they are — at home. Courtney Joslin, Krista Drobac and Michael Mandel shared how the Trump administration has reduced barriers to accessing telehealth, and what states can do to increase access to telehealth services during the COVID-19 pandemic.
by Michael Mandel, Chief Economic Strategist

In the middle of the pandemic-caused economic crisis, companies like Amazon, Walmart, and Target continue to hire hundreds of thousands of workers to provide and deliver essential goods. As they add new workers, they also find themselves grappling with the ever-changing medical landscape of how the virus spreads and manifests itself in order to reduce the risks for workers and customers.
by Colin Mortimer, Director of the Neoliberal Project

Despite the bipartisanship coronavirus stimulus negotiations, Democrats’ desire to shore up the USPS as a part of the coronavirus relief has hit a partisan roadblock.
by Ben Ritz, Director of the Center for Funding America's Future

The presumptive nominee is right to seek common ground with the left in building a big-tent coalition to defeat Donald Trump, but these efforts should prioritize forward-thinking public investments instead of backwards promises to expand programs like Medicare and Social Security for affluent retirees. Doing so would be both good policy and good politics.

The COVID-19 pandemic is already a world-historic event, both in terms of health and economics. For Brazil, no one knows how far the disease will go and how bad the damage will be.

(A Brazillian Portuguese version is available for download here/Versão em português do brasil)

Yet as people around the world engage in “social distancing” in order to stem the virus, the importance of connectivity and in particular wireless connectivity stand out. Mobile phones enable people and business to communicate and be productive even when they have to stay physically apart. In particular, mobile apps are becoming even more embedded into daily life.
In this paper, we focus on Brazil’s App Economy: Those app developers and other workers who create, maintain, and support an ever-expanding range of apps for health, communications, ecommerce, education, transportation, banking, and smart homes.
by David Osborne, Director of the Reinventing America's Schools Project

Every public school building in Washington D.C. stands empty today. But some have stood empty for years, because elected officials are defying a law that requires that they offer the buildings to charter school operators. The human cost of their intransigence: hundreds, perhaps thousands of D.C. children who fail to graduate from high school and never go on to college.
by Bruce Arao, PPI Intern

The transition to distance learning has caused unprecedented disruption to our education system. Many low-income students do not have internet access necessary for taking classes online. While some districts and charter schools are distributing devices and hotspots, in others, students are making do with paper packets.

RAS Deputy Director, Curtis Valentine, moderated an hour-long interactive discussion with leaders from four of America's most successful parent advocacy organizations.

Watch and share the full conversation of these education leaders by going to our Facebook page.
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