Sept. 10, 2020
Permission to republish original opeds and cartoons granted.
Covid state lockdowns disproportionately knocked millions of women out of the workforce—now they’re leading the jobs rebound
COVID-19’s drastic economic impact has stripped away decades of women’s
advancement in the workplace. Although women make up a smaller portion of the
workforce, more women lost their jobs at the height of the state-led
coronavirus shutdowns than men, Bureau of Labor Statistics data shows. According
to the Bureau, 13.4 million women and 11.9 million men lost their jobs at the
peak of the lockdown in April. The female labor participation rate, those
working or looking for work, dropped from 57.8 percent in February to just 54.7
percent in April, the lowest since 1986. Put another way, despite only being 47.2
percent of the workforce pre-shutdown, women accounted for more than 52 percent
the job losses from the pandemic. Now, as the economy is reopening, almost 13.8
million Americans have returned to work, including 7.5 million women who are
leading the way. That is why states should support President Trump’s emphasis
on safely reopening states and schools — so everyone can get back to work.
Video: Who Handled Covid Better, Florida or New York?
With the initial surge of COVID-19 cases in the rearview mirror –
thankfully - for both New York and Florida, we finally have a clearer picture
of the outcomes in states that took very different policy approaches. New York Democratic Gov. Cuomo's policies of
forcing nursing homes to take COVID-19 patients killed far more people, with
nearly four times as many senior deaths per capita in New York versus Florida.
Trump protects religious freedom as Navy reverses course on Catholic priest cuts
President Donald Trump is praising the Navy’s top brass for
making a rare course reversal in a case of religious freedom that had many on
the right outraged. It’s the latest success for the administration in a long
record of fighting to protect religious liberty. Over the Labor Day weekend,
according to Military.com, Catholic masses at San Diego-area Navy bases were
canceled, because the Navy, in what it called a cost-cutting move, declined to
renew its contracts with Catholic priests. The Navy noted that there are not
enough Catholic chaplains on active duty to fill the void. A Navy spokesman said protestant services on
bases, which are led by active duty chaplains, were unaffected by the cost
cuts. On Wednesday, President Trump took to Twitter to declare victory in this
most recent skirmish to protect religious freedom for our military, writing,
“The United States Navy, or the Department of Defense, will NOT be cancelling
its contract with Catholic Priests who serve our men and women in the Armed
Forces so well, and with such great compassion & skill. This will no longer
be even a point of discussion!”
Video: Trump gets a big bounce from the Republican convention as race for 2020 narrows in September
President Donald Trump has received a definite bump in polls
following the presidential nominating conventions as the President’s standing
has improved just like that. And, not unlike 2016 when polls had Hillary
Clinton leading by double digits over the summer that turned out to all be
wrong, in the post-convention environment, Biden and Trump are in a veritable
horse race, neck-in-neck — right on schedule — as the nation rapidly approaches
the first debate on Sept. 29.
Trump was right, took strong actions to prevent Covid panic, save lives
Americans for Limited Government President Rick Manning: “President
Trump has taken unprecedented action since the beginning of the year to slow
down the Chinese coronavirus pandemic and save hundreds of thousands of lives,
including barring travel from China in late January, from Europe in March, and
declaring a national emergency and announcing a national testing solution on
March 13 to quell public fears. No President should want to create a national
panic, and his stated desire to avoid that to Bob Woodward in a candid
interview, while publicly taking strong measures to meet the crisis is what
leadership looks like. The more we know about the virus itself, the more it's
clear engaging in quarantines for vulnerable populations makes sense, but for
those who are not vulnerable, the President is right to assuage their fears so
that America as much as possible can get back to normal.”
Fauci says Trump did not 'distort' impact of the pandemic
Dr. Anthony Fauci tells Fox News’ John Roberts: “I didn't see any
discrepancies between what he told us and what we told him and what he
ultimately came out publicly and said… He really didn't say anything different
than we discussed when we were with him… [Trump would] want to make sure the
country wouldn't get down and out about things… [but] I don't recall anything
that was a gross distortion in anything I spoke to him about."
Covid state lockdowns disproportionately knocked millions of women out of the workforce—now they’re leading the jobs rebound
By Megan Marzzacco
COVID-19’s drastic economic impact has stripped away decades of women’s advancement in the workplace. Although women make up a smaller portion of the workforce, more women lost their jobs at the height of the state-led coronavirus shutdowns than men, Bureau of Labor Statistics data shows.
According to the Bureau, 13.4 million women and 11.9 million men lost their jobs at the peak of the lockdown in April. The female labor participation rate, those working or looking for work, dropped from 57.8 percent in February to just 54.7 percent in April, the lowest since 1986.
Put another way, despite only being 47.2 percent of the workforce pre-shutdown, women accounted for more than 52 percent of the job losses from the pandemic.
This is one reason the Trump administration has focused on reopening states and schools, linking April’s decline in jobs to the closures as labor participation for many females, especially mothers, collapsed due to the school and childcare shutdowns from the coronavirus pandemic. Millions of parents are still staying home.
In 2018, according to Brookings Institution, over 41 million U.S. workers ages 18-64 were caring for at least one child under the age of 18. Almost 83 percent of these have at least one child under age 14 and are more likely to rely on school and childcare.
Yet, according to Education Week 73 percent of the 100 largest school districts are utilizing remote learning this fall.
Robert Romano, Vice President of Public Policy at Americans for Limited Government, said the longer states remain closed, the more it will impact women, eroding years of progress: “One of the strong points of the Trump economy was bringing unemployment to a fifty-year low of 3.5 percent, most of which was owed to 3.7 million women getting jobs starting in Jan. 2017, something the President’s advisor and daughter Ivanka Trump has emphasized.”
Romano added, “Now, thanks to the virus, those gains and more were lost. The state-led COVID-19 lockdowns cost 25 million Americans their jobs, when labor markets bottomed in April, disproportionately impacting women.”
As the country reopens and the economy begins to recover, employment numbers are increasing for both sexes, again led by females. Romano explained, “Now as states, including schools, have slowly begun reopening, almost 13.8 million Americans have returned to work, including 7.5 million women. To get everyone else back to work, states and the economy need to be safely reopened as soon as possible, including schools.”
In 1960, the female labor participation rate was just 37 percent, but as women entered the labor force, it peaked in 2000 at 60.3 percent before dipping during the Bush and Obama years, bottoming in Oct. 2015 at 56.6 percent. Then, it rebounded in the Trump years, reaching 57.9 percent in Jan. 2020 right before the pandemic hit.
Now, as the economy reopens and employment numbers are increasing for all Americans, women are again leading the way. That is why states should support President Trump’s emphasis on safely reopening states and schools — so everyone can get back to work.
Megan Marzzacco is a contributing editor at Americans for Limited Government.
Video: Who Handled Covid Better, Florida or New York?
To view online: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y1-efXmz9qg
Trump protects religious freedom as Navy reverses course on Catholic priest cuts
By Catherine Mortensen
President Donald Trump is praising the Navy’s top brass for making a rare course reversal in a case of religious freedom that had many on the right outraged. It’s the latest success for the administration in a long record of fighting to protect religious liberty.
Over the Labor Day weekend, according to Military.com, Catholic masses at San Diego-area Navy bases were canceled, because the Navy, in what it called a cost-cutting move, declined to renew its contracts with Catholic priests. The Navy noted that there are not enough Catholic chaplains on active duty to fill the void. A Navy spokesman said protestant services on bases, which are led by active duty chaplains, were unaffected by the cost cuts.
“When I read what the Navy was doing, I was outraged,” said Rick Manning, President of Americans for Limited Government. “Like many others, I immediately contacted the White House.”
Manning wasn’t the only one to sound off. According to Military.com, news of the canceled contracts led to a public outcry from religious and political leaders.
By Tuesday, the Navy reversed itself.
“I’ve been in this town long enough to know how these things work,” explained Manning. “To get the military brass to reverse themselves, it almost takes an act of God. In this case, I think the higher authority who weighed in was President Trump. Personally, I am very gratified that the president is a leader who understands religious liberty is a xxxxxx of our republic.”
On Wednesday, President Trump took to Twitter to declare victory in this most recent skirmish to protect religious freedom for our military, writing, “The United States Navy, or the Department of Defense, will NOT be cancelling its contract with Catholic Priests who serve our men and women in the Armed Forces so well, and with such great compassion & skill. This will no longer be even a point of discussion!”
Manning retweeted the president with this note, stating, “Thank you President Trump. I'm not a Roman Catholic, but this proposal to deny Sailors & Marines the ability to go to mass on base was a threat to the morale of the men & women of the military. Faith matters, Thank you for your decision helps keep that basic truth intact.”
Earlier this summer, Trump had another victory for freedom of religion when the Supreme Court upheld his administration’s exemption allowing the Little Sisters, an order of nuns, to opt out of an Obama-era contraceptive mandate which violated the nuns' consciences.
When Trump took office, the Department of Health and Human Services began working on a way to ensure the contraceptive mandate did not unlawfully burden religious exercise. Their solution: broaden the original Obamacare religious exemption to create a new exemption for employers with moral-based objections. The Trump administration has made it a priority to protect life and protect the rights of faith and conscience.
Similarly, the Trump administration took decisive action to protect religious liberty from the intolerant left’s attacks on Chick-fil-A in 2019 when the Department of Transportation opened an investigation into the politically driven religious discrimination by the San Antonio International Airport and Buffalo Niagara International Airport against the company.
Chick-fil-A had come under fire from supporters of same-sex marriage in recent years after its president, Dan Cathy, said the company supported "the biblical definition of the family unit.”
“From day one, President Trump, has shown he will fight to protect our religious liberties,” added Manning. “Trump has been a stonewall in the face of repeated assaults from a well-funded, well-organized campaign on the left to eliminate our most basic freedoms.”
Catherine Mortensen is the Director of Communications at Americans for Limited Government.
To view online: http://dailytorch.com/2020/09/trump-protects-religious-freedom-as-navy-reverses-course-on-catholic-priest-cuts/
Video: Trump gets a big bounce from the Republican convention as race for 2020 narrows in September
To view online: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j2uKVngKZko
Trump was right, took strong actions to prevent Covid panic, save lives
Sept. 9, 2020, Fairfax, Va.—Americans for Limited Government President Rick manning today issued the following statement in response to Bob Woodward's March 19 out of context quote about not "creat[ing] a panic" six days after President Trump had already declared a national emergency on March 13:
“President Trump has taken unprecedented action since the beginning of the year to slow down the Chinese coronavirus pandemic and save hundreds of thousands of lives, including barring travel from China in late January, from Europe in March, and declaring a national emergency and announcing a national testing solution on March 13 to quell public fears. No President should want to create a national panic, and his stated desire to avoid that to Bob Woodward in a candid interview, while publicly taking strong measures to meet the crisis is what leadership looks like. The more we know about the virus itself, the more it's clear engaging in quarantines for vulnerable populations makes sense, but for those who are not vulnerable, the President is right to assuage their fears so that America as much as possible can get back to normal.”
To view online: https://getliberty.org/2020/09/trump-was-right-took-strong-actions-to-prevent-covid-panic-save-lives/
ALG Editor’s Note: In the following featured report from The Hill’s Nathaniel Weixel, Dr. Anthony Fauci defended President Donald Trump’s record on combating COVID-19 and said the President had not distorted the impact of the pandemic to the American people:
Fauci says Trump did not 'distort' impact of the pandemic
By Nathaniel Weixel
Anthony Fauci on Wednesday said he doesn't think President Trump was publicly distorting the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic.
During an interview with Fox News's John Roberts, Fauci said Trump's public press conferences in the early spring mostly echoed what members of the White House coronavirus task force were telling him in private.
"I didn't see any discrepancies between what he told us and what we told him and what he ultimately came out publicly and said," Fauci, the country's top infectious diseases expert and head of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, said.
"He really didn't say anything different than we discussed when we were with him," Fauci said.
During the interview, Fauci stressed that he was speaking about his own conversations and interactions with the president.
"Remember, I'm a small frame in the big picture of what goes on," Fauci said.
Fauci acknowledged that Trump would "want to make sure the country wouldn't get down and out about things," but added, "I don't recall anything that was a gross distortion in anything I spoke to him about."
Fauci was responding to a new book written by Washington Post associate editor Bob Woodward in which Trump went on the record to say he publicly downplayed the threat of the emerging coronavirus pandemic despite knowing its actual danger.
To view online: https://thehill.com/policy/healthcare/515718-fauci-says-trump-did-not-distort-impact-of-covid-pandemic
