In other news, Trump has cited the Defense Production Act to order meat processing plants to stay open. That means sick workers returning to work where they will infect other workers who will infect their families, and so on.
The order is designed in part to give companies legal cover with more liability protection in case employees catch the virus as a result of having to go to work.
Before issuing the executive order, Trump told reporters in the Oval Office that signing the order, “... will solve any liability problems,” adding, “And we always work with the farmers. There’s plenty of supply.”
This solves "liability problems" for corporations, not workers. The latter won't be protected from the consequences.
Meanwhile, the UN's International Labor Organization now estimates that the coronavirus pandemic will eliminate 305 million full-time jobs worldwide during the second quarter of this year. If you include people who are employed through non-traditional means, like gig-workers, the numbers are far worse.
The ILO also projects that 1.6 billion workers in the “informal economy,” which includes work without proper contracts or oversight by government regulation and taxes, “stand in immediate danger of having their livelihoods destroyed.”
That’s nearly half the global workforce of 3.3 billion people.
Finally, Texas attorney general and smirking fraudster, Ken Paxton, personally intervened on behalf of a donor who was banished from his favorite vacation home because of the coronavirus according to an exclusive report from the Associated Press.
AUSTIN, Texas (AP) — When a small county in the Colorado mountains banished everyone but locals to blunt the spread of the coronavirus, an unlikely outsider raised a fuss: Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, who called it an affront to Texans who own property there and pressed health officials to soften the rules.
“The banishment of nonresident Texas homeowners is entirely unconstitutional and unacceptable,” Paxton said in a news release April 9, when his office sent a letter asking authorities in Gunnison County to reverse course.
An Associated Press review of county and campaign finance records shows Paxton’s actions stood to benefit an exclusive group of Texans, including a Dallas donor and college classmate who helped Paxton launch his run for attorney general and had spent five days trying to get a waiver to remain in his $4 million lakeside home. Robert McCarter’s neighbors in the wealthy Colorado enclave of Crested Butte are also Paxton campaign contributors, including a Texas oilman who has given Paxton and his wife, state Sen. Angela Paxton, more than $252,000.
Less than three hours after Paxton announced the letter, Gunnison County granted McCarter an exemption to stay, according to documents obtained by AP. The county says the timing was coincidental.
Uh huh