Chris Hedges's Blog, page 7

Coronavirus Exposes the Cracks in Globalization

The coronavirus will eventually pass, but the same cannot be said for the Panglossian phenomenon known as “globalization.” Stripped of the romantic notion of a global village, the ugly process we’ve experienced over the past 40 years has been a case of governmental institutions being eclipsed by multinational corporations, acting to maximize profit in support of shareholders. To billions of us, it has resembled a looting process, of our social wealth, and political meaning. Governments that wanted to stay on top would have to learn to master soft power to learn to be relevant in a globalized world, mostly acting to smooth transactions and otherwise stay out of the way.

In a globalized world, nation-states were supposedly becoming relics. To the extent that they were needed, small national governments were said to equate to good government. This hollow philosophy’s main claims now appear badly exposed, as the supply chains wither, and the very interconnectedness of our global economy is becoming a vector of contagion. In the words of author David Goodhart, “We no longer need the help of rats or fleas to spread disease—we can do it ourselves thanks to mass international travel and supply chains.”

To be sure, there were many warning signs that called into question our hitherto benign assumptions about globalization: the Asian financial crisis of 1997-98 (during which the Asian tiger economies were decimated by unconstrained speculative capital flows), the vast swaths of the Rust Belt’s industrial heartlands created by outsourcing to China’s export juggernaut, the concomitant rise in economic inequality and decline in quality of life in industrialized societies and, of course, the 2008 global financial crisis. Nobel laureate Joseph Stiglitz described many of these pathologies in his book Globalization and Its Discontents, as did economist Barry Eichengreen, who lamented that “the nation state has fundamentally lost control of its destiny, surrendering to anonymous global forces.” Both noted that globalization was severing a working social contract between national governments and their citizens that had previously delivered rising prosperity for all.

Those who would argue that the inexorable march of globalization cannot be reversed should consider the parallel during the early 20th century. Globalized economic activity and free trade were dominant before the onset of World War I; in 1914, trade as a proportion of global GDP stood at 14 percent. Needless to say, two world wars, and the Great Depression (which brought us the Smoot-Hawley tariffs), reversed this trend. The Cold War sustained regionalization and bifurcated trading blocs. Its end, and China’s accession into the World Trade Organization (WTO), ushered in a new high-water mark in globalized trade.

But while it is true that viruses do not respect national boundaries, nothing has blown apart the pretensions of this New World Order as dramatically as the coronavirus, a pandemic now assuming global import, as international supply chains are severed, and global economic activity is brought to a screeching halt. We are increasingly seeing the hollow political content at the core of supranational entities such as the EU, structured more to comfort merged investor groups than strengthen public health systems.

Speaking of Europe, while the coronavirus started in China, its most long-lasting impact might be in the EU, as it has dramatically exposed the shortcomings of the latter’s institutional structures. Take Italy as the most vivid illustration: The spread of COVID-19 has been particularly acute there. Being a user of the euro (as opposed to an issuer of the currency) the Italian national government risks exposing itself to potential national bankruptcy (and the vicissitudes of the volatile private capital markets) if it responds with a robust fiscal response, absent the institutional support of Brussels and the European Central Bank (which is the sole issuer of the euro). According to MarketWatch, “Italy needs a €500 to €700 billion ($572 billion to $801 billion) precautionary bailout package to help reassure financial markets that the Italian government and banks can meet their debt payment obligations as [the] country’s economic and financial crisis becomes more fearsome.”

The tragic case of Italy (where the entire country is now in full quarantined lockdown) provides a particularly poignant example of the gaping lacunae at the heart of the eurozone. There is no supranational fiscal authority, so the Italian government has been largely left to fend for itself, as it is trying to do now, for example, providing income relief by suspending payments on mortgages across the entire country. Here is a perfect example of where European Central Bank support for the Italian banking system would go a long way toward mitigating any resultant financial contagion. But so far, as Wolfgang Munchau of the Financial Times has noted, the ECB remains in “monitoring” mode. Indeed, the eurozone as a whole lacks the institutional mechanisms to mobilize on a massive, coordinated scale, in contrast to the U.S. and UK, and eurozone finance ministers remain incapable of agreeing on a coordinated policy response.

Other eurozone countries may no longer be complacent about the threat posed by COVID-19, but their national governments are more focused on the need to stockpile their own national resources to protect their populations. Italy remains particularly vulnerable to the ravages of this virus, as it has an aging population, so if coronavirus runs rampant through the country, it could potentially crash the nation’s entire hospital system, as this account by an Italian doctor suggests.

EU solidarity, showing cracks on issues ranging from finance to immigration, increasingly resembles every country for itself.

Defenders of the EU may well retort that health care is designated as a “national competency” under the Treaty of Maastricht. But how does one expect national competencies to be carried out competently in an economic grouping devoid of national currencies (the key variable as far as supporting unconstrained fiscal capacity goes)? Additionally, the evil of decades of Brussels-imposed austerity has meant there aren’t enough hospital beds, materials and staff anywhere in Europe, let alone Italy. This might well represent the death knell for a European project based on aspirations for an “ever closer union.”

In spite of the manifest incompetence of the Trump administration, the U.S. at least has institutional mechanisms in place via the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) and the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) to provide Americans with clear, credible instructions devoid of political spin. As Professor James Galbraith has persuasively argued, the U.S. government has the capacity to “establish a Health Finance Corporation on the model of the Depression-era Reconstruction Finance Corporation. Like the RFC, which built munitions factories and hospitals during and after World War II, the HFC should have broad powers to create public corporations, lend to private companies (to fund necessary production), and cover other emergency costs. Even more quickly, the National Guard can be deployed to deal with critical supply issues and to establish emergency facilities such as field hospitals and quarantine centers.” Likewise, Senator Marco Rubio has “sought to expand what’s called the Economic Injury Disaster Loan program, which allows the Small Business Administration to start lending money directly instead of just encouraging banks to do so,” as Matt Stoller has written. Parenthetically, this represents a marked break with historic GOP policy, which for the most part has accepted the embedded assumptions inherent in globalization.

And while traditional monetary policy tools such as interest rate cuts are hardly adequate to stem a supply shock, Galbraith also points to the ability of the Federal Reserve to offer emergency financial support to help American companies through the worst of the coronavirus outbreak, by “buy[ing] up debt issued by hospitals and other health-care providers, as well as working to stabilize credit markets, as it did in 2008-09.” Andrew Bailey of the Bank of England has made similar recommendations to the UK government.

Even with the measures proposed by Galbraith, Bailey and Rubio, virtually all Western economies, having largely succumbed to the logic of globalization, are now vulnerable, as supply chains wither. China, the apex of these offshored manufacturing supply chains, is in shutdown mode. Likewise South Korea and Italy. Worse, there appears to be a singular lack of understanding on the part of many multinational companies as to how far these supply chains go: “Peter Guarraia, who leads the global supply chain practice at Bain & Co, estimated that up to 60 per cent of executives have no knowledge of the items in their supply chain beyond the tier one group,” reports the Financial Times.

A “tier one” company supplies components directly to the original equipment manufacturer (OEM) that sets up a global supply chain. But as is now becoming increasingly recognized, there are secondary-tier companies, which supply components or materials to those tier-one companies. When goods are widely dispersed geographically (instead of centered in a localized industrial ecosystem), it is harder for executives to have full knowledge of all of the items in their respective companies’ supply chains, so the deficiencies of the model only become apparent by the time it is too late to rectify.

In the U.S. specifically, the mass migration of manufacturing has seriously eroded the domestic capabilities needed to turn inventions into high-end products, damaging America’s ability to retain a lead in many sectors, let alone continue to manufacture products. The country has evolved from being a nation of industrialists to a nation of financial rentiers. And now the model has exposed the U.S. to significant risk during a time of national crisis, as the coronavirus potentially represents.

There is no national redundancy built into current supply networks, with the most problematic consequences now evident in the pharmaceutical markets. Countries such as China or India are beginning to restrict core components of important generic drugs to deal with their own domestic health crisis. This has the potential to create a major crisis, given that the U.S. “depend[s] on China for 80 percent of the core components to make our generic medicines,” writes Rosemary Gibson in the American Conservative. She also notes that “generic drugs are 90 percent of the medicines Americans take. Thousands of them, sold at corner drug stores, grocery store pharmacies, and big box stores, contain ingredients made in China.” Constraints on production, therefore, intensify as more and more of the manufacturing process pertaining to the drugs themselves is geographically globalized. And in regard specifically to research-intensive industries, such as pharmaceuticals or biotech, the value of closely integrating the R&D with manufacturing is extremely high, and the risks of separating them are enormous.

These are by no means new problems. We’ve been dealing with supply-side shocks emanating from hyper-globalization for decades, and the response of Western policymakers has largely been in the form of fiscal or monetary palliatives that seldom address the underlying structural challenges raised by these shortages. To the contrary: democratic caveats to globalization have been characterized as inefficient frictions that hinder consumer choice.

For now, we should start by reducing our supply chain vulnerabilities by building into our systems more of what engineers call redundancy—different ways of doing the same things—so as to mitigate undue reliance on foreign suppliers for strategically important industries. We need to mobilize national resources in a manner akin to the way a country does during wartime or during massive economic dislocation (such as the Great Depression)—comprehensive government-led actions (which runs in the face of much of today’s prevailing and increasingly outdated economic and political theology). In other words, the revival of a coherent national industrial policy.

To save the global economy, paradoxically, we need less of it. Not only does the private/public sector balance have to shift in favor of the latter, but so too does the multinational/national matrix in manufacturing. Otherwise, the coronavirus will simply represent yet another in a chain of catastrophes for global capitalism, rather than an opportunity to rethink our entire model of economic development.

This article was produced by Economy for All, a project of the Independent Media Institute.

Marshall Auerback is a market analyst and commentator.

Progressives Warn Biden Is Anything but a Safe Choice

“This is no time to take a risk. We need our strongest candidate. So let’s nominate the Democrat Trump fears the most.”

That was Joe Biden’s message in an ad released in January ahead of the Iowa caucuses, and it is an electability argument that Biden has made central to his White House bid.

But, as voters in six states headed to the polls Tuesday, progressives and supporters of Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) argued that nominating the former vice president would be a massive risk for the Democratic Party, given Biden’s voting record and current policy positions.

“You know, I keep hearing this thing about Joe Biden being ‘a safe candidate.’ Safe for who?” asked environmentalist and author Naomi Klein, who endorsed Sanders for president, said in a video released Monday. “I know he goes to corporate fundraisers and tells people that nothing’s going to change. So he’s clearly telling them that he’s a safe candidate for them. What’s safe for the ultra-rich is incredibly dangerous for everybody else.”

Klein added that Sanders’ support for Medicare for All, a Green New Deal, and other transformational policies make the Vermont senator the most electable 2020 Democrat.

“Policies that don’t challenge the status quo right now are incredibly dangerous,” said Klein. “Bernie Sanders is the only candidate whose policies are bold enough to actually keep us safe… Bernie Sanders is not a risky candidate against Donald Trump. He is, in fact, the safest candidate.”

“Joe Biden is not safe. Not safe for the planet. Not safe for our health. Not safe to run against Trump,” Klein tweeted.

Current Affairs editor Nathan Robinson, an outspoken Sanders supporter, wrote Saturday that a Biden nomination could represent a repeat of 2016, which saw the supposedly safe establishment candidate Hillary Clinton lose to reality television star Donald Trump.

Robinson accurately predicted in a February 2016 article that Clinton would lose to Trump in a head-to-head matchup and made the case for Sanders as the more electable candidate.

On Saturday, Robinson echoed that case, pointing to Biden’s past support for Social Security cuts, votes in favor of the 1994 North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) and 2003 invasion of, and other elements of his record.

“It is Biden, not Sanders, who would be the risky bet,” Robinson wrote. “A Sanders presidency is nothing to fear, but a Biden nomination certainly is.”

Biden is leading Sanders by just under 100 delegates—670 to 574—heading in to Tuesday’s primaries in Idaho, Michigan, Mississippi, Missouri, North Dakota, and Washington. A total of 365 pledged delegates are up for grabs Tuesday, and 1,991 delegates are needed to secure the nomination on the first ballot.

“Bernie Sanders is the safe choice,” pro-Sanders group People for Bernie tweeted Tuesday. “Today is the day to #VoteForBernie.”

Jeet Heer, national affairs correspondent for The Nation, argued in a column Monday that nominating Biden is a risk not only because of his potential vulnerabilities in a general election matchup with Trump, but also because of how the former vice president has promised to govern should he win the presidency.

“Given already low interest rates, a stalling global economy, and the need for new infrastructure (both for its own sake and also to prepare for climate change), this is the ideal time for a president who isn’t afraid to argue for big structural changes and to go full Keynesian,” Heer wrote. “But that’s exactly the president that Joe Biden would not be. He’s running to be a business-as-usual president. Given the real problems facing the world, that’s a dangerous risk.”

Would Reinstating the Draft End Our Forever Wars?

Bizarrely enough, the spate of phone calls from recruiters began a couple of years ago. The first ones came from the Army, next the Marines, and then other branches of the military. I’m decades past enlistment age. I’ve been publicly antiwar for most of that time and come from a family that was last involved with a military when my grandfather ran out the back door to avoid Russian army recruiters at the front door and kept running until he reached America.

The calls with recruitment offers eventually died away. Someone had probably been punking me, but I remain intrigued by the messages the recruiters left, always focusing on the special “opportunities” the Army (Navy, Marines, Air Force) were ready to offer me.

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What often came to mind when I listened to them was a sweltering afternoon in the Vietnam War years. A bunch of us college kids were slouching around the only fan in someone’s apartment telling “funny” stories about how people we knew avoided the draft. There was the guy who stripped at his physical to reveal a Superman costume under his street clothes; there was the officer at the hearing test who shouted in frustration, “I know you’re not all deaf!” There was my housemate with a low draft lottery number, which made him extremely draftable. He then substituted coffee for sleep, raising his blood pressure so successfully that the examining doctor said, “Do you know you’re near death?” And there were the friends who got letters from therapists testifying to their instability. (I don’t think any of them had “bone spurs,” though.) I like to think that we recognized our luck in being able to afford college and excuses from shrinks to keep a highly unpopular war at arm’s length, but I can’t say for sure.

Those episodes from different eras probably stick in my mind today because there’s no longer a draft — it ended nearly 50 years ago — and so many Americans have no experience with military recruitment, or with war, American-style. That, I think, is a problem.

As much as Americans love their military — it’s consistently the part of the government in which they have the most confidence, according to multiple polls — the majority of them don’t want to join it or be made to join it. Active-duty personnel currently account for a mere 0.4% of the population and only about 7% of us have ever been in uniform (more than half of those are over 60 years old). If we consider a tour in the armed forces a burden — as we must, despite all that thankful hand-shaking of people in uniform and their celebration everywhere — shouldn’t we also consider the effects on the country of relying on an all-volunteer force (AVF) to carry that burden? One of those effects is surely that so many of the rest of us are allowed to ignore the endless wars and other conflicts “our” military has sparked and is still involved in around the world in our name.

And what to make of the often-repeated claim that if only we did have a draft, this country might be far less eager to march into war? Is that, in fact, true?

Who’s for Selective Service?

Conscription in the United States dates back to 1863, after the Confederacy needed to ensure that it had a large army continually in the field and the North soon followed suit. There was, however, an active federal draft for less than 40 years total, mostly in the twentieth century. It ended as the Vietnam War was ending in 1973, a time when for every 100 men inducted into that military, 131 others got exemptions.

Antiwar resistance, however fierce at the time, was only part of the story of its ending. A 2006 RAND study cited moral concerns on the left and right; the cost of the system; demographics (too few soldiers were needed to make the draft genuinely universal); and a desire for change on the part of the U.S. military because draftees in the Vietnam years, when antiwar protest flourished within the military, were often a pain in the ass.

For these and other reasons, almost no one is advocating the return of the draft any time soon. Except for a short period in the early 1980s, sizeable majorities of Americans have opposed reinstating it. Recent polls put those figures at five against for every citizen who wants it.

Still, as long as men are required to register with the Selective Service System (SSS) on turning 18 and the Defense Department views it “as a low-cost insurance policy against unforeseen threats,” a draft exists as a possibility. In the wake of the assassination of Iranian Major General Qassem Suleimani, the SSS website crashed for a day when young American men panicked that the Trump administration might be starting a new war and would need cannon fodder to fight it. (After a federal district court ruling in Texas last February that it is unconstitutional to require only men to register for a possible future draft, women have reason to feel vulnerable, too.)

It turns out that a draft is expensive, even when we don’t have one. Keeping the Selective Service System afloat will cost about $27 million this year. In 2016, libertarian Republican Senator Rand Paul introduced legislation to get rid of it and, after the death of former boxing champion Muhammad Ali, a prominent Vietnam-era draft resister, renamed the bill in his honor. Paul said then, “If a war is worth fighting for, people will volunteer,” but not enough senators agreed and the amendment died. Congressman and Air Force veteran Peter DeFazio has recently tried again, introducing a bill to repeal draft registration and eliminate the SSS, which he called “an unnecessary, unwanted, archaic, wasteful, and potentially unconstitutional program.” The site Govtrack gives his bill a 3% chance of passing.

A Poor Man’s Draft?

Of course, no conscription system is as fair as we would like it to be. Those with the wherewithal always find ways to avoid military service, as they have since the Civil War when it was possible to pay to get out of the military or fund someone else to go in your place. It comes as little surprise then that an ABC News survey found that “the elites are almost six times more likely than those in the military to say they would be ‘disappointed if a child of mine decided to serve.'”

That bias reinforces the assumption that the AVF is a poor man’s draft. In reality, though, the poorest Americans don’t enlist or fight in our current wars disproportionately. A recent demographic study of the military divides its personnel into five income groups. As it turns out, the poorest fifth (with fewer qualified candidates) and the richest fifth (so many of whom go to college instead) are slightly underrepresented. Statistically, three-fifths of the military comes from middle-class neighborhoods.

There are imbalances: enlistment runs in families and the most fertile recruiting grounds are in the southern states and rural areas, as well as in communities with military installations where potential recruits interact with, or at least see, people in uniform while growing up.

Today’s military has many more women, proportionately more blacks, somewhat less racism and sexism, and clearly offers more benefits to its members than the military of the Vietnam-draft era. Still, the current all-volunteer force comes from a population remarkably similar to the conscripted-and-volunteer force who fought there. Recent recruits are also descriptively like the demographic that significantly voted for Donald Trump in 2016. That’s not to imply that such recruits are all Trump voters, just to suggest that the scribbling classes, who see a volunteer military as grossly unfair, may understand as little about the reasons people enlist in it as they did about the reasons people voted for Trump.

Enlistment is influenced by a number of factors, including inequalities that are increasingly basic to this society, as well as where military recruitment efforts are focused. It is, however, difficult to quantify motives for enlisting. Of the nearly 100 veterans and active-duty personnel from conflicts in Iraq, Afghanistan, and earlier with whom I’ve discussed the reasons they enlisted — admittedly a skewed sample since most of them had come to oppose their wars — economic necessity wasn’t mentioned much more often than patriotism.

The Effects of a Draft

Arguments over the influence and value of a draft revolve around economics, self-interest, the consequences of an isolated military, and the effects of such a military on war policy. The evidence can be bent in various directions to bolster our predilections and beliefs, and yet it’s hard to let go of a nagging feeling that hiring a small, increasingly isolated subset of the population to go to war, while the rest of us go shopping isn’t quite… well, American.

Clearly, a draft would redistribute the burden of America’s forever wars: deployments would be shorter and less frequent, national security a more evenly shared task. A draft could offer more people the social benefits found in military service, including participating in a rite of passage; learning new skills, cooperation, and leadership; and spending an extended time in a place where different populations mix, work, and live together. On the other hand, militaries are still havens of hyper-masculinity and there are other — and dare I suggest, better — ways to make a man out of a boy. Just add political will and a portion of the staggering sums of money now lavished on the military and stir.

A draft could also increase public awareness of war, American-style, to some degree, as happened during the Vietnam era when soldiers circulating in and out of civilian society brought news of their war home with them. So the general public was then far better informed about how that war was being fought and reacted to it in significant ways, including with a large-scale antiwar movement, which in the end would involve many active-duty and retired soldiers.

In comparison, awareness of America’s never-ending wars across the Greater Middle East and parts of Africa could hardly be lower (and the response hardly less striking). For instance, a Gallup poll taken monthly asks respondents to name the most important problem the country faces. This past February, no one answered, “war/wars/fear of war,” although it did register a high of 2% the month before. Meanwhile, the only presidential candidate who consistently talks about war policy, Tulsi Gabbard, has been polling in the low single digits.

Not that the current all-volunteer military is doing a particularly noteworthy job of fighting its twenty-first-century forever wars without significant public attention — something else that, in a draft-less America, we get to ignore. The Washington Post recently documented more than 18 years of lies about the prospective odds of victory in Afghanistan, a war most Americans probably do know we’ve been involved in. Two thousand pages of interviews with 400-plus “insiders” conducted by the Office of the Special Inspector Generalfor AfghanistanReconstruction showed those in charge of that war to have been as clueless as the public about what victory would look like. (To readers of TomDispatch, the only possible response is: duh.)

If a draft doesn’t necessarily produce a fairer military, that still leaves a primary question for our era of unending wars. Could a draft lead to fewer conflicts? And the answer to that is: possibly, but not certainly. Post-Vietnam research seems to show that conscription decreases widespread public support for going to war — with a host of contingencies and caveats. Researchers don’t argue, however, that reinstating the draft would ultimately keep this country from wars or even from continuing those it’s now involved in. A draft can also escalate wars. After all, if you need more soldiers, you just call them up.

Probably the most significant influence of conscription would be on how the U.S. fights its wars. “The logical extension of a draft would be to make the use of war so much more violent,” Peter Feaver, a scholar of military-civilian relations, told me. A conscripted military would be less efficient than the current all-volunteer one, which is highly trained for modern, technology-driven warfare. So while wars might be fewer, he maintained, they could also be bigger, longer, and bloodier. If true, that would be a significant caveat. So would an observation of Benjamin Fordham about the present situation in his historical study of support for the draft: “The horrors of war have not disappeared simply because Americans have lost touch with them.”

A Conclusion of Sorts  

When it became ever more difficult to ignore just which Americans were involved in the horrors of our wars, Congress did what deliberative bodies often do when they don’t want to deal with an issue: created a commission to study it. The National Commission for Military, National, and Public Service was launched in 2017 and tasked with, among other things, reconsidering the nature and operations of the Selective Service System, the agency that would oversee any draft, if it were brought back. Among the subjects to be considered was a requirement for women to register for a potential draft and permission for conscientious objectors not to.

An interim report issued last year was not particularly enlightening, other than to note that only three in 10 young Americans are even eligible to enlist. The other seven are either too fat or have criminal convictions (many for drug use), too little education, or too many tattoos. The commission’s final report is due on March 25th and early indications are that it will favor a program to encourage but not require some sort of national service, including the military but not necessarily being drafted into it.

My fingers are crossed that the report won’t opt for the resurrection of the draft because — just speaking personally — I don’t want anyone dragooned into the military, age, gender, or body fat aside. Yet I doubt this will be the last we hear of it. Admittedly, a draft may be a fairer way to distribute one kind of public service, though only if it were fine-tuned to allow few exemptions and defined conscientious objection more generously. But armies exist to fight wars and when U.S. “national security interests” are so broadly defined as to create a continual state of war, that (in this country) passes for peace; when you have a sizable standing military, repeatedly called the best in the history of the world, at bases on every continent except Antarctica; when militarism is bred into our national bones and the military remains the only part of government still widely admired; when we fund it with well over half of all federal discretionary spending; when military operations are increasingly carried out by special operations forces and drone operators in places we’re distinctly under- or uninformed about, and we generally prefer it that way, then you’re going to be using that military for endless war-making. So I can’t see what a revived draft would accomplish, save to salve the guilty consciences of people who would probably avoid it anyway.

A theatrical costumer I knew used to joke that when she wrote her memoir, she would title it, “If the song doesn’t work, change the dress.” Maybe the real conclusion should be that, as long as war is this country’s default option and peace the aberration, reinstating the draft would amount to little more than a change of wardrobe.

Coachella Festival Postponed Amid Virus Concerns

The Latest on the coronavirus outbreak sweeping the globe:

The Coachella music festival in Southern California has been postponed amid virus concerns.

The festival is organized by concert promoter Goldenvoice, which released a statement Tuesday saying it will be rescheduled for two weekends in October.

Rage Against the Machine, Travis Scott and Frank Ocean had been scheduled to headline the April festival, which attracts tens of thousands to the desert community of Indio, California, and the nearby cities of Palm Springs and Rancho Mirage.

The festival is held over two weekends has a reputation for eye-popping performances, including Beyoncé’s 2018 set that became the Netflix film “Homecoming,” and the 2012 debut of a “hologram” of late rapper Tupac Shakur. This year’s festival was set to reunite Rage Against the Machine — which performed at the first Coachella festival in 1999.

Goldenvoice also puts on the country music festival Stagecoach in Indio. This year’s Stagecoach will move from April 24-26 to Oct. 23-25. The festival’s headliners are Thomas Rhett, Carrie Underwood and Eric Church.

Two people infected with COVID-19 have died in California.

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Authorities in Washington state have reported two new coronavirus deaths, bringing the total there to at least 24.

A statement Tuesday from Public Health – Seattle & King County also said officials are working with 10 long-term care facilities where residents or employees have tested positive for COVID-19. The new deaths reported were a woman in her 80s, a resident of a nursing and rehabilitation center in Issaquah, Washington, who died Sunday and a man in his 80s, a resident of a Seattle senior center, who died Monday.

Of the deaths in Washington state at least 19 have been tied to another nursing home, the Life Care Center of Kirkland, Washington.

The virus has infected more than 800 people in the U.S. and killed at least 29. New Jersey reported its first coronavirus death Tuesday.

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This item has been corrected to reflect that at least 29 have died in the U.S., not 30.

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German Chancellor Angela Merkel said she talked to other top leaders of EU member states and the European Commission at a video conference Tuesday evening and explained what her country is doing to contain the spread of the virus and also how the government is financially supporting companies that have been especially hard hit by the outbreak.

She stressed that a coordinated fight against the outbreak among the Europeans is of big significance as well as an international effort to find and develop vaccines against the virus.

A written statement said that the other leaders also stressed that European cooperation in the battle against the coronavirus was much needed.

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Fearing a significant increase of the number of COVID-19 cases, Albanian authorities on Tuesday took rigid measures closing all centers where people may gather.

Albania has had 10 COVID-19 cases so far, all resulting from two people visiting Italy. All flights and ferries to and from Italy have been suspended but those for commercial purposes.

People gatherings are prohibited. Social assisting centers will limit the staff while cultural and entertaining centers, gyms and pools will close. Many public employees will work from home. Football league matches will be held without fans.

All discos, pubs, gyms and other people gathering centers will be closed until April 3 while bars and restaurants should keep tables 2 meters apart.

All schools have been shut down for two weeks.

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Air Canada is suspending flights to and from Italy.

The airline’s last flight to Rome is scheduled to take off from Toronto on Tuesday, with the final return flight departing Rome for Montreal on Wednesday. Air Canada hopes to restart service May 1. Meanwhile, it says affected customers will be notified and offered a full refund.

Air Canada says regulations and “ongoing health and safety concerns” prompted the decision.

Italy is the center of Europe’s epidemic.

Italian authorities say the number of infections has topped 10,000. More than 600 people with the virus have died there.

In January, Canada’s largest airline halted all direct flights to China — the epicenter of the virus — as it braced for a hit to revenues. Its shares have fallen about 40% in the past seven weeks.

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El Salvador’s government says Guatemalans, Hondurans and Nicaraguans will no longer be able to enter the country without a passport due to fears of the new coronavirus, despite an agreement by four Central American nations allowing their citizens free transit.

There have been no confirmed coronavirus cases in El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras or Nicaragua.

El Salvador President Nayib Bukele said via Twitter that the decision was spurred by Salvadorans trying to avoid government quarantines by flying into Guatemala from overseas and then traveling overland to El Salvador, where they would not have to show their passports.

The president said foreigners coming from seven countries with a high number of new coronavirus cases will not be admitted. The countries are Spain, Italy, France, Germany, China, South Korea and Iran. Salvadorans coming from those countries are subjected to a 30-day quarantine. As of Sunday, El Salvador had placed 90 people in quarantine who had arrived from the restricted countries. None had tested positive.

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Slovenia’s acting prime minister says he has ordered the closure of the border with EU neighbor Italy.

Tuesday’s measure does not apply for freight transport.

Austria also introduced a ban on people arriving from Italy, with exception for citizens returning home and persons carrying doctor’s note certifying they are healthy.

Malta shut down the border to the south, turning away an Italian cruise ship on Tuesday.

Italy is the center of Europe’s epidemic.

Italian authorities say the number of infections has topped 10,000. The number of people with the virus who have died rose to 631.

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New York’s governor is sending the National Guard into a New York suburb to help fight what appears to be the nation’s biggest known cluster of coronavirus cases.

New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo said Tuesday that schools, houses of worship and large gathering places will be shuttered for two weeks in a “containment area” centered in suburban New Rochelle.

He told reporters that National Guard troops will help clean surfaces and deliver food in the area, a 1-mile-radius (1.6 km) around a point near a synagogue.

The state and a private health system are setting up a testing facility in the area.

Cuomo says “It’s a dramatic action, but it is the largest cluster of cases in the country.”

New Rochelle is at the center of an outbreak of 108 cases in Westchester County, out of 173 statewide.

___

New Jersey is reporting its first case of a death in a coronavirus patient.

Judith Persichilli, commissioner of the state health department, said Tuesday the patient who died was a 69-year-old Bergen County man with underlying medical conditions.

The man had no travel outside of the United States but had gone to New York, where there are more than 150 cases of the new coronavirus. New Jersey has 15 cases of the virus.

___

Stocks are higher on Wall Street after another bout of volatile trading took the Dow Jones Industrial Average up 945 points in the early going and then briefly into the red by late morning.

Markets bumped up again just around midday after Vice President Mike Pence said the nation’s big health insurers would cover co-pays for coronavirus testing. The Dow was up 190 points, or 0.8%, to 24,040 as of 1:05 p.m. Eastern Time.

Investors are likely to see more big swings until the number of infections from the new coronavirus decelerate, market watchers say, and they also want a big, coordinated response from governments and central banks.

___

The United Nations says it will close its headquarters complex in New York to the general public and temporarily suspend all guided tours starting Tuesday evening as a precaution against the spread of the new coronavirus.

U.N. spokesman Stephane Dujarric said the United Nations has not been advised of any COVID-19 cases among its 3,000 staff. He said about 1,000 people visit U.N. headquarters every day.

Dujarric said the U.N. has recommended to U.N. personnel who have recently returned from countries where the virus is common should remain at home and self-monitor for 14 days. He said telecommuting and flexible work arrangements are also being recommended for U.N. personnel.

He says further measures could be taken.

___

Washington Gov. Jay Inslee has announced new policies to support workers impacted by the new coronavirus and new rules for long-term care centers, including placing limits on visitors and screening workers for symptoms.

At a news conference Tuesday, Inslee said the state is preparing for many more cases than have been reported, potentially tens of thousands, based on estimates of the spread of the disease.

The state has the worst outbreak of COVID-19 in the U.S, with 160 cases and at least 22 deaths. Nineteen of those deaths are linked to the Life Care Center, a nursing home in Kirkland.

He says it’s very disturbing that “the number of people who are infected will double in five to eight days. Inslee said the state is still considering banning large gatherings like sporting events.

The governor said the state will require that long-term care facilities limit residents to one adult visitor per day unless residents are near death. Visitors would have to wear protective clothing.

___

The environmental group Fridays for Future says it is canceling planned demonstrations in Germany at the end of this week because of the virus outbreak.

The group has become a powerful voice in the youth movement demanding that world leaders take action to tackle climate change. Its Friday protests sometimes have drawn tens of thousands of students nationwide.

In a tweet Tuesday citing the hashtag #FlattenTheCurve, the group said it wanted to “take responsibility” by helping slow the spread of the new coronavirus, which has infected 116,000 people worldwide and killed over 4,000. It said the move was made “with a heavy heart.”

The group said it would instead take its protest online.

The idea of slowing the spread of COVID-19 to prevent more serious consequences later echoes the theory that reducing carbon emissions sooner can help the world avoid some of the more catastrophic impacts of climate change.

___

Congo has confirmed its first case of the new coronavirus — a Belgian citizen who tested positive at the airport and who is in quarantine — bringing the number of infections in Africa to 105 in 11 countries.

Burkina Faso late Monday confirmed its first two cases — a husband and wife who returned from a trip to France.

South Africa announced four more cases, bringing its total to seven, all part of a group that returned from Italy.

In North Africa, there have been two deaths, one each in Morocco and Egypt. Egypt now has 59 cases, Algeria has 20, Tunisia has five and Morocco now has one remaining case.

Although Africa’s numbers are low compared to Asia, Europe and the U.S., experts warn that COVID-19 spreading across the continent could be catastrophic given the poor health systems in many African countries.

___

Spaniards spooked by a big jump in coronavirus infections have rushed into supermarkets in Madrid, a day after virus cases nearly tripled in the capital.

One supermarket in Madrid saw long lines with dozens of customers in each waiting to pay for carts packed with food and household products.

“There is a huge panic,” said 59-year-old shopper Ángeles Gómez. “There are people queuing from the cash register to the other end of the supermarket.”

Spanish Health Minister Salvador Illa says the country has not seen any food shortages. Nearly half of Spain’s over 1,600 infections are in the capital and the country has seen 35 deaths.

Regional authorities in Madrid and in two regions in northern Spain are closing schools and universities for two weeks to try to slow the spread. But some folks thought that was a bad idea.

“We leave our children with the grandparents? They are the ones who are most at risk,” said Toni Flix, a parent of two, in Madrid. “They should close other things but not schools.”

___

UNESCO says the coronavirus outbreak has interrupted schooling for nearly 363 million students worldwide and is urging nations to work harder to make sure affected students are still learning.

The U.N. education agency has set up an emergency group to help nations implement better remote education practices as the spread of COVID-19 continues to severely impact schools and universities.

On Tuesday, the Paris-based agency held a global video conference of education officials in 72 countries, including 27 education ministers, to share strategy on minimizing disruptions due to the epidemic. The agency has published a list of free learning applications and platforms for use by teachers.

UNESCO says 15 countries have ordered nationwide school closures and 14 have implemented localized closures, spanning Asia, Europe, the Middle East and North America.

Greece and Macedonia on Tuesday announced all schools, universities and kindergartens will be shut for the next 14 days.

___

Trips and conferences are being canceled due to the new coronavirus in all corners of the globe.

U.S. Defense Secretary Mark Esper has postponed a trip to India, Pakistan and Uzbekistan that was to begin Monday due to the coronavirus crisis. Pentagon press secretary Alyssa Farah said Tuesday the move was done “out of an abundance of caution.”

Bangladesh’s Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina canceled plans for a two-day official visit to Japan starting March 30 because of the global outbreak. The foreign minister says the visit will be rescheduled.

The Endocrine Society, whose members are doctors that treat diabetes, obesity and other hormone-related conditions, has canceled its annual conference, which was to be March 28-31 in San Francisco. The meeting was expected to draw nearly 10,000 people. It’s the first time the scientific conference has not been held since World War II.

Census Bureau Site Goes Live as Counting Begins in Earnest

ORLANDO, Fla. — The 2020 census is off and running for much of America now.

The U.S. Census Bureau made a soft launch of the 2020 census website on Monday, making its form available online. On Thursday, the Census Bureau will begin mailing out notices far and wide.

For the bureau, the once-a-decade head count is akin to running a sprint and marathon at the same time. It takes a while, but there’s plenty of action throughout.

“It is that intense …. counting up to 330 million people in a very diverse, very mobile population, and over 140 million housing units,” Stephen Buckner, a senior Census Bureau executive, said during a recent visit to Miami.

The bureau had an official in-person launch in January in Toksook Bay, Alaska. Mail service is spotty and internet connectivity is unreliable in remote Alaska, making door-to-door canvassing the best way to gather responses. The Alaska villages get a head start over the rest of the nation because many residents scatter each spring to subsistence hunting and fishing grounds.

There has been a U.S. census every decade since 1790. The results determine how many congressional seats each state gets and how $1.5 trillion in federal spending is distributed.

The 2020 census is the first in which most people are being encouraged to answer the questions online, though people can still answer the questionnaire by telephone or by mailing back a paper form if they prefer.

The notices mailed out starting this week will include a census ID that matches addresses. People filling out the form via the internet are encouraged to use the ID, but those who answer the questions online before getting their IDs still will be counted.

“The best user experience is provided with a Census ID,” the bureau said in a statement Monday evening.

About 80% of households receiving mailings will get notices about how to answer the questions online, and about 20% of households automatically will receive a paper ballot if there are large numbers of seniors in their neighborhood or levels of internet connectivity are low.

Census workers won’t begin going door-to-door in earnest until May, when they’ll approach homes that haven’t responded and ask the questions in person. Bureau officials are monitoring the spread of the novel coronavirus, which could disrupt the door-to-door phase. If there is a major disaster, such as an epidemic, census workers instead can drop off the questionnaires at homes, with the hope that people will respond on their own, according to the bureau’s operational plan.

Testifying before a U.S. Senate appropriations subcommittee on Tuesday, U.S. Secretary Wilbur Ross, whose department oversees the Census Bureau, said the emphasis on getting people to respond online is minimizing physical contact that could spread the virus.

“We will just have to play it by ear,” Ross said. “We are ready to make responses and we will deal with the situation as it evolves.”

This week also poses the first true test of the Census Bureau’s new IT systems for capturing online responses. For the past three years, the Government Accountability Office has placed the census on its list of high-risk programs, mainly because it is relying on technology that has not been used before. Last month, the bureau decided to use a backup data-collection system for handling the online responses after officials grew concerned that the primary system would not be able to handle excessive traffic.

The online approach to answering the 2020 census questions causes Democratic U.S. Rep. Karen Bass of California, to worry it will lead to an undercount of blacks and other minorities in hard-to-count communities.

“Having the census online can be a way of continuously undercounting the black population,” Bass said last week.

Perhaps the most attention given the 2020 census over the past several years has been to the failed effort by the Trump administration to put a citizenship question on the form. The U.S. Supreme Court rejected those efforts, but some worry that lingering unease may scare off some Hispanics and immigrants from participating.

“It’s a challenge every 10 years to get any American to fill out the census. Some people feel you’re invading their privacy, as though it’s intrusive. Some people are fearful of giving the government more information,” said U.S. Democratic Rep. Joaquin Castro of Texas. “But every 10 years, that challenge has been especially tough in minority communities, who sometimes are more disconnected from government than other communities.”

___

Adriana Gomez Licon contributed to this report from Miami.

Mike Pence Is the Worst Person to Lead a Coronavirus Response

A year after Trump took office, “Saturday Night Live” did a sketch called “What Even Matters Anymore?”

Game show host Jessica Chastain read a list of outrageous things Trump has done and asked, “Does it even matter anymore?” Each time, the contestants thought it should, but they were wrong.

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For instance, the president had an affair with a porn star while his wife was pregnant and then had his lawyer pay her hush money. Does it matter? No, the host countered, nothing even matters anymore.

Here’s a new one: A novel virus, COVID-19, spreads around the world and Trump appoints Mike Pence to lead the U.S. response. That’s the same Pence who allowed the worst HIV outbreak in Indiana history to spread unchecked while he was governor.

Does it even matter anymore?

The outbreak was tied to intravenous drug use. Experts recommended a needle-exchange program to reduce the risk of diseases such as Hepatitis C and HIV.

Pence not only opposed needle exchanges — he also made it more difficult to even test for HIV. As a member of Congress in 2011, he voted to cut public funding for Planned Parenthood. Two years later, when Pence was governor, the Planned Parenthood clinic in Scott County, Indiana was forced to close due to public funding cuts.

Scott County turned out to be the epicenter of the outbreak. And that Planned Parenthood clinic was the only HIV testing center in the county.

The first HIV case in the outbreak was diagnosed in November 2014. The state waited another two months until 17 more people were diagnosed to begin an investigation.

Experts recommended a needle exchange program to stop new infections. Pence refused, because (after praying about it) he said he thought they enabled drug use, even though studies show they reduce disease transmission and do not increase drug use.

Pence waited yet another two months, until late March 2015, to declare a public health emergency. Only then did he allow a temporary, 30-day needle exchange in Scott County.

In May, Pence finally signed a law allowing other counties in Indiana to establish temporary needle exchange programs in cases of public health emergencies. They got no state financial support. And by that point, the outbreak had already reached its peak.

Furthermore, Pence undercut his own actions by signing a second bill on the same day. The second bill made possession of a syringe intended for drug use a felony with a prison sentence (it had previously only been a misdemeanor), potentially deterring people from using needle exchanges.

In fact, the Scott County needle exchange established in April 2015 had some initial trouble from police officers confiscating syringes from those distributing them for the program.

Pence’s refusal to put public health infrastructure in place in the first place — and then waiting months to act after an outbreak was first identified — allowed 215 people to contract HIV when it could have been limited to a fraction as many.

So…. placing an ideologue with a proven track record of botching a response to a disease outbreak in charge of handling a global pandemic? Requiring scientists and experts to clear any statements with Pence before communicating them to the public?

And all this from the same Pence who also once penned an op-ed assuring people that “smoking doesn’t kill”?

Does it even matter anymore?

The Trump administration seems to be dealing with COVID-19 more as a PR issue than a public health one. Like always, Trump is more interested in his approval ratings than the well-being of the American people.

This time around, mistakes will result in people needlessly dying. Yes, it does still matter, and we need an administration that acts as if it does.

Jeremy Scahill Makes the Definitive Case Against Joe Biden

As voters awake in anticipation of Tuesday’s primaries in six states, including Michigan, “Intercepted” podcast host and journalist Jeremy Scahill takes a deep dive into Joe Biden’s appalling record on everything from civil rights to women’s rights. In the first half of the more than hour-long episode, Scahill speaks with Current Affairs Editor in Chief Nathan Robinson, who predicted early in 2016 that Hillary Clinton would not be able to beat Donald Trump in a general election.

Robinson and Scahill both pick apart Biden’s track record, beginning with his push for a “tough on crime” stance that targeted people of color, an approach that also in part explains his friendship with one of the most notorious racist politicians in recent history, Strom Thurmond. Biden was also an outspoken supporter of the Iraq War and was credited with providing the legislative inspiration for the Patriot Act by George W. Bush’s attorney general.

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If his record is not worrying enough, the two also delve into the question of his mental condition. They note that throughout his campaign, Biden has made a series of gaffes, often repeated lies and seemed confused and incapable of articulating anything from his wife’s name to the opening lines of the Declaration of Independence. Robinson notes that all of these factors make the former vice president an extremely risky candidate for the Democratic Party to run against Donald Trump.

In the second half of the podcast episode, the Intercept journalist speaks with two feminists about the very real, inspiring alternative to Biden that still exists in Bernie Sanders and, perhaps more importantly, his movement. Organizer Astra Taylor and poet Aja Monet, who along with dozens of feminists released the statement “Rising for a Global Feminist Future with the Movement to Elect Bernie Sanders” for International Women’s Day, discuss Sanders’ policies and how they would help women and people of color. The two also examine Biden’s record on women’s rights, pointing out he’s had to be “dragged” into his current position on abortion.

Listen to the full the episode here.

Italy Locks Down Entire Country; Israel Tightens Entry

SOAVE, Italy — The battle to halt the coronavirus brought sweeping new restrictions Monday, with Italy expanding a travel ban to the entire country, Israel ordering all visitors quarantined just weeks before Passover and Easter, and Spain closing all schools in and around its capital.

Even as workers in Beijing returned to their jobs and new infections in China continued to subside, Italians struggled to navigate the rapidly changing parameters of the nation’s self-imposed lockdown.

The fears fanned by the virus sent Wall Street stocks tumbling to their biggest drop since 2008, with the Dow Jones Industrial Average down 7.8 percent. Global oil prices suffered their worst percentage losses since the start of the 1991 Gulf War.

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“Now that the virus has a foothold in so many countries, the threat of a pandemic has become very real,” said World Health Organization chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus. “The great advantage we have is the decisions we all make as governments, businesses, communities, families and individuals can influence the trajectory of this epidemic.”

More than 113,000 people have tested positive for the disease and over 3,900 people with the virus have died, most of them in China. More than 62,000 people have already recovered. But Italy’s intensifying struggle to halt the virus’ spread emerged as a cautionary tale.

“There won’t be just a red zone,” Italian Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte said, in announcing that a lockdown covering about 16 million people in the north would be expanded to the entire country starting Tuesday.

Italian doctors celebrated one small victory after the first patient diagnosed with the illness, a 38-year-old Unilever worker, was moved out of intensive care and began breathing on his own. But the virus’ rapid spread was forcing them to operate like war-time medics, triaging patients to decide who get access to scarce ICU beds.

“Unfortunately we’re only at the beginning,” said Dr. Massimo Galli, head of infectious disease at Milan’s Sacco hospital.

Travelers at Milan’s main train station had to sign police forms self-certifying that they are traveling for “proven work needs,’’ situations of necessity, health reasons or to return home.

Across Italy, museums and archaeological sites were closed, weddings were canceled and restaurants were told to keep patrons a meter (more than 3 feet) apart. Officials ordered ski lifts across the country to close after students whose classes were canceled began organizing trips to winter resorts.

Italy reported a big jump in the number of people who have tested positive for the virus, bringing the total to 9,172 cases and 463 deaths, more than any country except China.

Inmates at more than two dozen Italian prisons rioted against restrictions on family visits and other containment measures, and six died after they broke into the infirmary and overdosed on methadone.

Pope Francis celebrated Mass alone at the Vatican hotel where he lives, live-streaming the event, but he did resume some meetings.

For most people, the new coronavirus causes only mild or moderate symptoms, such as fever and cough. For some, especially older adults and people with existing health problems, it can cause more severe illness, including pneumonia.

The vast majority of people recover from the new virus. According to the WHO, people with mild illness get better in about two weeks, while those with more severe illness may take three to six weeks to recover. In mainland China, where the virus first exploded, more than 80,000 people have been diagnosed and more than 58,000 have so far recovered.

But that came only after Chinese officials put massive quarantines in place. Around the virus spreads, officials are embracing less strict, but still aggressive measures.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said his government has decided to quarantine anyone arriving from overseas for 14 days. The decision comes barely a month before Easter and Passover, typically a busy travel period.

In Ireland, officials canceled all St. Patrick’s Day parades in a bid to slow the virus’ spread, including the one on March 17 in Dublin that typically draws half a million to its streets.

Spain’s health minister on Monday announced that all schools in and around Madrid, including kindergartens and universities, will close for two weeks after a sharp spike in new virus diagnoses. The rising caseload “imply a change for the worse,” the minister, Salvador Illa, said.

Trying to send a message of confidence in the economy, French President Emmanuel Macron and his wife walked on Paris’ Champs-Elysees avenue but kept a one-meter security distance from passersby. “I’m shaking hands using my heart,” he said as he waved to people from a distance.

China reported just 40 new cases of the virus, its lowest number since Jan. 20. More than three-quarters of the country’s surviving virus patients have been released from treatment. But the country’s slow re-emergence from weeks of extreme travel restrictions spotlighted the virus’ continued economic impact.

“Our business is one-fifth of what it was before,” said Cheng Sheng, who helps run a stand in Beijing that sells sausages and noodles. “There’s much less foot traffic. There are no people.”

Infections were reported in more than half the world’s countries, and flashpoints were erupting around the globe.

“We are working for valuable time, time in which scientists can research medicines and a vaccine” and in which governments can help stock up on protective equipment, said German Chancellor Angela Merkel, whose country has reported over 1,100 cases and, as of Monday, its first two deaths.

In Iran, state television said the virus had killed another 43 people, pushing the official toll to 237, with 7,161 confirmed cases. But many fear the scope of illness is far wider there. South Korea reported 165 more cases, bringing its total to 7,478.

In the United States, where more than 600 infections and 26 deaths have been reported, the Grand Princess cruise ship docked in Oakland, California, after days idling at sea while dozens of those aboard were tested.

Fleets of buses and planes were ready to whisk the more than 2,000 passengers to military bases or their home countries for a 14-day quarantine. At least 21 people aboard have been confirmed to have the infection.

In Washington, the Capitol’s attending physician’s office said “several” members of Congress had contact with a person who attended a recent political conference and subsequently developed COVID-19. They “remain in good health,” the office said. Three members of Congress, Sen. Ted Cruz and Reps. Doug Collins and Paul Gosar, said they are isolating themselves after determining they had contact with the person.

After earlier closing its land borders, Saudi Arabia cut off air and sea travel to and from Bahrain, Egypt, Iraq, Italy, Kuwait, Lebanon, South Korea, Syria and the United Arab Emirates. All Saudi schools and universities closed beginning Monday.

Qatar cut off travel to 15 countries and said it would shut down schools and universities beginning Tuesday.

Organizers of the annual Holocaust remembrance march in southern Poland postponed it this year due to coronavirus fears, and soccer authorities said at least four major matches — in France, Germany and Spain — would take place with no fans.

___

Geller reported from New York. Associated Press writers Ken Moritsugu in Beijing; Lori Hinnant in Paris; Maria Cheng and Carlo Piovano in London; Nicole Winfield in Rome; and Jon Gambrell in Dubai, United Arab Emirates, contributed to this report.

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Follow AP coverage of the virus outbreak at https://apnews.com/VirusOutbreak and https://apnews.com/UnderstandingtheOutbreak

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The Associated Press receives support for health and science coverage from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Department of Science Education. The AP is solely responsible for all content.

The Fed’s Baffling Response to the Coronavirus Explained

When the World Health Organization announced on Feb. 24 that it was time to prepare for a global pandemic, the stock market plummeted. Over the following week, the Dow Jones Industrial Average dropped by more than 3,500 points, or 10%. In an attempt to contain the damage, the Federal Reserve on March 3 slashed the fed funds rate from 1.5% to 1.0%, in its first emergency rate move and biggest one-time cut since the 2008 financial crisis. But rather than reassuring investors, the move fueled another panic sell-off.

Exasperated commentators on CNBC wondered what the Fed was thinking. They said a half-point rate cut would not stop the spread of the coronavirus or fix the broken Chinese supply chains that are driving U.S. companies to the brink. A new report by corporate data analytics firm Dun & Bradstreet calculates that some 51,000 companies around the world have one or more direct suppliers in Wuhan, the epicenter of the virus. At least 5 million companies globally have one or more tier-two suppliers in the region, meaning that their suppliers get their supplies there; and 938 of the Fortune 1,000 companies have tier-one or tier-two suppliers there. Moreover, fully 80% of U.S. pharmaceuticals are made in China. A break in the supply chain can grind businesses to a halt.

So what was the Fed’s reasoning for lowering the fed funds rate? According to some financial analysts, the fire it was trying to put out was actually in the repo market, where the Fed has lost control despite its emergency measures of the last six months. Repo market transactions come to $1 trillion to $2.2 trillion per day and keep our modern-day financial system afloat. But to follow the developments there, we first need a recap of the repo action since 2008.

Repos and the Fed

Before the 2008 banking crisis, banks in need of liquidity borrowed excess reserves from each other in the fed funds market. But after 2008, banks were reluctant to lend in that unsecured market, because they did not trust their counterparts to have the money to pay up. Banks desperate for funds could borrow at the Fed’s discount window, but it carried a stigma. It signaled that the bank must be in distress, since other banks were not willing to lend to it at a reasonable rate. So banks turned instead to the private repo market, which is anonymous and is secured with collateral (Treasuries and other acceptable securities). Repo trades, although technically “sales and repurchases” of collateral, are in effect secured short-term loans, usually repayable the next day or in two weeks.

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The risky element of these apparently secure trades is that the collateral itself may not be reliable, because it may be subject to more than one claim. For example, it may have been acquired in a swap with another party for securitized auto loans or other shaky assets — a swap that will have to be reversed at maturity. As I explained in an earlier article, the private repo market has been invaded by hedge funds, which are highly leveraged and risky; so risk-averse money market funds and other institutional lenders have been withdrawing from that market. When the normally low repo interest rate shot up to 10% in September, the Fed therefore felt compelled to step in. The action it took was to restart its former practice of injecting money short-term through its own repo agreements with its primary dealers, which then lent to banks and other players. On March 3, however, even that central bank facility was oversubscribed, with far more demand for loans than the subscription limit.

The Fed’s emergency rate cut was in response to that crisis. Lowering the fed funds rate by half a percentage point was supposed to relieve the pressure on the central bank’s repo facility by encouraging banks to lend to each other. But the rate cut had virtually no effect, and the central bank’s repo facility continued to be oversubscribed the next day and the following. As observed by Zero Hedge:

This continuing liquidity crunch is bizarre, as it means that not only did the rate cut not unlock additional funding, it actually made the problem worse, and now banks and dealers are telegraphing that they need not only more repo buffer but likely an expansion of QE [quantitative easing].

The Collateral Problem

As financial analyst George Gammon explains, however, the crunch in the private repo market is not actually due to a shortage of liquidity. Banks still have $1.5 trillion in excess reserves in their accounts with the Fed, stockpiled after multiple rounds of quantitative easing. The problem is in the collateral, which lenders no longer trust. Lowering the fed funds rate did not relieve the pressure on the Fed’s repo facility for obvious reasons: Banks that are not willing to take the risk of lending to each other unsecured at 1.5% in the fed funds market are going to be even less willing to lend at 1%. They can earn that much just by leaving their excess reserves at the safe, secure Fed, drawing on the Interest on Excess Reserves it has been doling out ever since the 2008 crisis.

But surely the Fed knew that. So why lower the fed funds rate? Perhaps because it had to do something to maintain the façade of being in control, and lowering the interest rate was the most acceptable tool it had. The alternative would be another round of quantitative easing, but the Fed has so far denied entertaining that controversial alternative. Those protests aside, QE is probably next after the Fed’s orthodox tools fail, as the Zero Hedge author notes.

The central bank has become the only game in town, and its hammer keeps missing the nail. A recession caused by a massive disruption in supply chains cannot be fixed through central-bank monetary easing alone. Monetary policy is a tool designed to deal with demand — the amount of money competing for goods and services, driving prices up. To fix a supply-side problem, monetary policy needs to be combined with fiscal policy, which means Congress and the Fed need to work together. There are successful contemporary models for this, and the best are in China and Japan.

The Chinese Stock Market Has Held Its Ground

While U.S. markets were crashing, the Chinese stock market actually went up by 10% in February. How could that be? China is the country hardest hit by the disruptive COVID-19 virus, yet investors are evidently confident that it will prevail against the virus and market threats.

In 2008, China beat the global financial crisis by pouring massive amounts of money into infrastructure, and that is apparently the policy it is pursuing now. Five hundred billion dollars in infrastructure projects have already been proposed for 2020 — nearly as much as was invested in the country’s huge stimulus program after 2008. The newly injected money will go into the pockets of laborers and suppliers, who will spend it on consumer goods, prompting producers to produce more goods and services, increasing productivity and jobs.

How will all this stimulus be funded? In the past, China has simply borrowed from its own state-owned banks, which can create money as deposits on their books, as all depository banks do today (see here and here). Most of the loans will be repaid with the profits from the infrastructure they create, and those that are not can be written off or carried on the books or moved off the balance sheet. The Chinese government is the regulator of its banks, and rather than putting its insolvent banks and businesses into bankruptcy, its usual practice is to let nonperforming loans just pile up on bank balance sheets. The newly created money that was not repaid adds to the money supply, but no harm is done to the consumer economy, which actually needs regular injections of new money to fill the gap between debt and the money available to repay it. In all systems in which banks create the principal but not the interest due on loans, this gap continually widens, requiring continual infusions of new money to fill the breach (see my earlier article here). In the last 20 years, China’s money supply has increased by 2,000% without driving up the consumer price index, which has averaged around 2% during those two decades. Supply has gone up with demand, keeping prices stable.

The Japanese Model

China’s experiences are instructive, but borrowing from the government’s own banks cannot be done in the U.S., because our banks have not been nationalized and our central bank is considered to be independent of government control. The Fed cannot pour money directly into infrastructure but is limited to buying bonds from its primary dealers on the open market.

At least, that is the Fed’s argument, but the Federal Reserve Act allows it to make three-month infrastructure loans to states, and these could be rolled over for extended periods thereafter. The repo market itself consists of short-term loans continually rolled over. If hedge funds can borrow at 1.5% in the private repo market, which is now backstopped by the Fed, states should get those low rates as well.

Alternatively, Congress could amend the Federal Reserve Act to allow it to work with the central bank in funding infrastructure and other national projects, following the path successfully blazed by Japan. Under Japanese banking law, the central bank must cooperate closely with the Ministry of Finance in setting policy. Unlike in the U.S., Japan’s prime minister can negotiate with the head of its central bank to buy the government’s bonds, ensuring that the bonds will be turned into new money that will stimulate domestic economic growth; and if the bonds are continually rolled over, this debt need never be repaid.

The Bank of Japan has already “monetized” nearly 50% of the government’s debt in this way, and it has pulled off this feat without driving up consumer prices. In fact, Japan’s inflation rate remains stubbornly below the BOJ’s 2% target. Deflation continues to be a greater concern than inflation in Japan, despite unprecedented debt monetization by its central bank.

The Independent Federal Reserve Is Obsolete

In the face of a recession caused by massive supply-chain disruption, the U.S. central bank has shown itself to be impotent. Congress needs to take a lesson from Japan and modify U.S. banking law to allow it to work with the central bank in getting the wheels of production turning again. The next time the country’s largest banks become insolvent, rather than bailing banks out, Congress should nationalize them. The banks could then be used to fund infrastructure and other government projects to stimulate the economy, following China’s model.

The American People Have Already Lost the 2020 Election

Donald Trump filed his paperwork to run for reelection only hours after his inauguration in January 2017, setting a presidential record, the first of his many dubious achievements. For a man who relished the adulation and bombast of campaigning, it should have surprised no one that he charged out of the starting gate so quickly for 2020 as well. After all, he’d already spent much of the December before his inauguration on a “thank you” tour of the swing states that had unexpectedly supported him on Election Day — Ohio, Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Wisconsin — and visited Florida for a rally only a couple of weeks after he took the oath of office. In much the same way that Russian revolutionary Leon Trotsky once embraced “permanent revolution,” Donald Trump embarked on a “permanent campaign.”

But The Donald was fixated on 2020 even before he pulled off the upset of the century on November 8, 2016. After all, no one seems to have been more surprised by his victory that day than Trump himself.

According to Michael Wolff’s Fire and Fury and his personal attorney Michael Cohen, even on election night 2016, the billionaire tycoon didn’t think he’d win his first presidential bid. His wife, Melania, assured by her husband that he’d lose, reportedly wept as the news came in that she would indeed be heading for the White House. Before his surprise victory, Trump described the election many times as “rigged” and seemed poised to declare the vote illegitimate as soon as the final returns rolled in. The attacks he’d launched on Hillary Clinton during the campaign — on her health, her integrity, her email account — were not only designed to savage an opponent but also to undermine in advance the person that everyone expected to be the next president.

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In other words, Trump was already gearing up to go after her in 2020. And this wasn’t even a commitment to run again for president. Although he reveled in all the media attention during the 2016 campaign, he was far more focused on the economic benefits to his cohort, his businesses, his family, and above all himself. He understood that attacking Clinton had real potential to become a post-election profession.

Before Election Day, for instance, Trump was already exploring the possibility of establishing his own TV network to cater to the anti-Clinton base he’d mobilized. The relentless stigmatizing of the Democratic standard bearer — the threats of legal action, the “lock her up” chants, the hints at dark conspiracies — could easily have morphed into a new “birther” movement led by Trump himself. With Clinton in the White House, he could have continued in quasi-campaign mode as a kind of shadow president, without all the onerous tasks of an actual commander-in-chief.

Thanks to 77,744 voters in three key states on November 8, 2016, the Electoral College not only catapulted a bemused Trump into the White House but eliminated his chief electoral rival. Hillary Clinton’s political career was effectively over and Donald Trump suddenly found himself alone in the boxing ring, his very identity as a boxer at risk.

As president, however, he soon discovered that a ruthless and amoral executive could wield almost unlimited power in the Oval Office. Ever since, he’s used that power to harvest a bumper crop of carrots: windfall profits at his hotels, international contracts for his son-in-law Jared Kushner’s family business, not to speak of fat consulting gigs and other goodies for his cronies. Trump is a carrot-lover from way back. But ever vengeful, he loves sticks even more. He’s used those sticks to punish his enemies, real or imagined, in the media, in business, and most saliently in politics. His tenuous sense of self requires such enemies.

Even as president, Trump thrives as an underdog, beset on all sides. Over the last three years, he turned the world of politics into a target-rich environment. He’s attacked one international leader after another — though not the autocrats — for failing to show sufficient fealty. At home, he’s blasted the Democratic-controlled House of Representatives with a special focus on Speaker Nancy Pelosi. He’s lashed out against “deep state” opponents within the government, particularly those with the temerity to speak honestly during the impeachment hearings. He typically took time at a rally in Mississippi to besmirch the reputation of Christine Blasey Ford, the woman who accused Supreme Court aspirant Brett Kavanaugh of sexual assault. He’s even regularly gone after members of his inner circle, from former Secretary of State Rex Tillerson and former Attorney General Jeff Sessions to former Pentagon chief Jim Mattis, blaming them for his own policy failures.

Those relentless attacks constitute the ambient noise of the Trump era. But a clear signal has emerged from this background chatter. Since committing to run for a second term, he’s mounted one campaign of political assassination after another against any would-be successor to Hillary Clinton. Just as he ran a unique campaign in 2016 and has governed in an unprecedented manner, Donald Trump is launching what will be a one-of-a-kind reelection effort. This is no normal primary season to be followed by run-of-the-mill party conventions and a general election like every other.

Trump isn’t just determined to destroy politics as usual with his incendiary rhetoric, his Twitter end runs around the media, or his authoritarian governing style. He wants to destroy politics itself, full stop.

Last Man Standing

Over the course of 40 seasons, the American reality show Survivor has been filmed at many different locations and in a variety of formats. Still, the basic rules have remained the same. Contestants are divided into different “tribes” that must survive in adverse conditions and face extraordinary challenges. A series of votes in Tribal Councils then determine who can stay on the island. Sometimes, tribes or individuals win temporary immunity from expulsion. As the numbers dwindle, the tribes merge and individuals begin to compete more directly against one another. A Final Tribal Council determines the winner among the two or three remaining contestants.

What makes Survivor different from typical game shows — and arguably explains its enduring success — is that contestants don’t win simply by besting their adversaries in head-to-head battles as in Jeopardy or American Idol. Instead, they have to avoid getting voted off the island by fellow contestants. You win, in other words, through persuasion, negotiation, and manipulation.

The first season’s victor, Richard Hatch, “was not the most physically able of the contestants,” psychologist Vivian Zayas once explained. “In fact, out of the twelve individual Challenges, he only won one. Richard was also not the most liked. He was perceived as arrogant and overly confident, and even picked by some to be one of the first to get voted off the island.” Ultimately, what made Hatch successful was his ability to form alliances.

To put it in Trumpian terms, you win Survivor by being best at the art of the deal. At times, this requires ruthlessness, wheedling, and outright lies. It makes perfect sense that Trump would revive his stagnant career by translating Survivor into the business world in his show, The Apprentice. Less predictable perhaps was his application of this strategy to electoral politics.

The 2020 election resembles nothing less than a political version of the Survivor franchise. Donald Trump fully intends to be the last man standing. To do so, however, he must contrive to get everyone else voted off the island. The first to go was the tribe of Republican rivals he defeated in the 2016 primary and who no longer pose a political threat. Next to exit, in the general election, was the leader of the rival tribe of Democrats, Hillary Clinton.

In 2020, having won the equivalent of Survivor’s immunity prize, Trump has earned a pass to the final round in November. He faces no significant challenge within the Republican Party. In fact, nine states — Alaska, Arizona, Georgia, Hawaii, Kansas, Minnesota, Nevada, South Carolina and Wisconsin — have scrapped their primaries altogether and pledged their delegates to him. In the remaining primaries, he’s racking up the kinds of results that only totalitarian leaders typically enjoy like the 97% of caucus delegates he captured in Iowa, the 97% of primary voters in Arkansas, and his 86% margin of victory in New Hampshire.

As befits a political survivor, Trump has excelled at forging alliances. An irreligious and profane man, he still managed to win over the evangelical community. Despite his previously liberal record on social issues, he successfully courted the anti-abortion vote. A draft dodger, he’s effectively pandered to veterans and active-duty soldiers. And though he’s a billionaire given to grossly conspicuous consumption, he even managed to woo the disenfranchised in the Rust Belt and elsewhere. After capturing the Republican Party in this way, he then purged it of just about anyone without the requisite level of sycophancy to the commander-in-chief. In 2016, he also fashioned informal alliances with disgruntled Democrats and independent voters. Since then, he’s tried to make further inroads in the Democratic Party by persuading a few politicians like New Jersey Congressman Jeff Van Drew to switch parties. His pardon of corrupt Democratic pol Rod Blagojevich might even win him some additional crossover votes in Illinois.

Trump hopes, of course, that the 2016 alliances he forged among Democratic and independent voters in key swing states will produce the same results in 2020. Indeed, those voters may well pull the lever for him again, even if they supported Democrats in the 2018 midterm elections. It’s not just his politically incorrect personality that has won them over. During his presidency, he’s used the power of the state to direct significant resources toward such constituencies.

To compensate, for instance, for losses incurred in his trade war with China, he’s provided $28 billion in farm subsidies over the last two years. Even with the first part of a Sino-American trade deal in place, the president has promised critical rural voters yet more handouts in this election year. Although his tax cuts have certainly put plenty of extra money in the pockets of his wealthy supporters and affluent suburbanites, there’s evidence that those cuts have also advantaged red states over blue ones, just as job growth has favored such states, in part because of the help his administration has given to specific economic sectors like the oil, coal, and chemical industries.

All of this, however, could mean little if Donald Trump faces a popular Democrat in November. So the president has gone into overdrive to ensure that those he considers his strongest potential rivals are voted off the island before the ultimate contest begins.

Going After Biden

Joe Biden formally threw his hat into the presidential ring on April 25, 2019. But Donald Trump’s anxiety about running against him had begun much earlier. In July 2018, according to campaign advisers, the president was already fretting Biden might win back some white, working-class voters in swing states like Pennsylvania. However, the president promptly began to insist that Biden would be a “dream candidate,” resorting to his common and often effective strategy of saying the opposite of what he really thought.

That summer, Trump was well aware that, in election 2020 polls, he was seven points behind his possible future Democratic opponent. So he began to go after “sleepy Joe” (as he nicknamed him) on Twitter. He insulted Biden’s age, intelligence, and political record, but a true hatchet job required a sharper hatchet.

Trump had long sought a lawyer who could do some of his hatchet work for him, a figure akin to Roy Cohn, the anti-Communist huckster who assisted Senator Joe McCarthy and later served as The Donald’s mentor. Several people aspired to play that very role, including Michael Cohen, who became the president’s personal lawyer. But like former Attorney General Jeff Sessions, in the end, he proved insufficiently loyal in the president’s eyes.

Rudy Giuliani has emerged as the latest in this line of fixers. He endorsed Trump in 2016 and then entered his administration as an adviser on cybersecurity. In April 2018, after the FBI raided Michael Cohen’s office, Giuliani joined Trump’s legal team. He immediately went to work exploiting his past connections in Ukraine as part of an effort to shift blame to that country for Russia’s interference in the U.S. elections. At some point in the fall of 2018, hooking up with two shady operators, Lev Parnas and Igor Fruman, he began to investigate Biden, his son Hunter, and the latter’s links to the Ukrainian energy company Burisma. When Volodymyr Zelensky became that country’s president in April 2019, Trump felt emboldened, thanks to Giuliani, to press the new leader to relaunch an investigation into the Biden family even though the previous effort had produced nothing.

It was an extraordinarily risky move, coming just after Special Counsel Robert Mueller, in his long-awaited report, had described Russian interference in the 2016 election and the Trump administration’s attempts to cover up its Kremlin connections. But that’s how much Trump worried about the man he then expected to be his foremost political rival in 2020. For reelection, Giuliani and Trump knew that nothing illicit actually had to be nailed down when it came to Hunter Biden’s Ukrainian activities. They simply had to damage his father’s reputation through insinuation.

Trump was furious at the impeachment inquiry that followed his “perfect” phone call with Zelensky on July 25, 2019. In the end, however, even though the House investigation exonerated Biden and implicated Trump, it was the Democrat’s reputation that suffered the greater hit.

As Peter Beinart wrote in The Atlantic:

”By keeping Hunter Biden’s business dealings in Ukraine in the news, they have turned them into a rough analogue to Hillary Clinton’s missing emails in 2016 — a pseudo-scandal that undermines a leading Democratic candidate’s reputation for honesty. The Trump campaign and the Republican National Committee last fall launched a $10 million advertising blitz aimed at convincing Americans that Joe Biden’s behavior toward Ukraine was corrupt.”

Biden’s national poll numbers didn’t actually suffer much during the impeachment investigation, but his leads in the early state primaries did. Beginning with an ad campaign in Iowa, the president seemed determined to kneecap Biden in those very primaries. True, the Democratic candidate did himself no favors with lackluster debate performances and his usual verbal gaffes. Trump’s strategy, however, helped ensure that the residents of Iowa, New Hampshire, and Nevada nearly voted the competing tribe’s leading candidate off the island before the big Tribal Council on Super Tuesday. Only a resounding victory in South Carolina kept Biden in the race, propelling him to a surprising comeback on Super Tuesday.

Targeting the Rest

Trump deployed his traditional strategy of attack to minimize the other Democratic candidates for 2020 as well. He ridiculed Elizabeth Warren as “Pocahontas,” made fun of Mike Bloomberg’s height, and intentionally garbled Pete Buttigieg’s last name. But the candidate Trump seemed most worried about replacing Biden as the party’s nominee was Bernie Sanders.

After all, Sanders has some of the very strengths that made Trump such an attractive candidate in 2016. The Vermont independent is a political outsider who can credibly distance himself from the failings of both major parties. He has an authentically populist agenda that targets the very corporate fat cats who are Trump’s closest friends, allies, and supporters. He can potentially appeal to voters who didn’t go to the polls in 2016, those who voted for Trump but haven’t been able to stomach his performance in the White House, and young people who otherwise might not bother to turn out at all.

This profile has, for instance, attracted the endorsement of popular libertarian podcaster Joe Rogan. Former Republican Congressman Joe Walsh, who voted for Trump in 2016 before challenging the president for the party’s nomination this year, has already pledged to vote for Sanders if he becomes the nominee. Even far-right pundit Ann Coulter, once an ardent Trump supporter, declared last year that she’d consider voting for Sanders if he took a harder stance on immigration. “I don’t care about the rest of the socialist stuff,” she told PBS. “Just: can we do something for ordinary Americans?”

Trump himself has expressed concerns about taking on Sanders. “Frankly, I would rather run against Bloomberg than Bernie Sanders,” Trump told reporters last month. “Because Sanders has real followers, whether you like them or not, whether you agree with them or not — I happen to think it’s terrible what he says — but he has followers.”

A significant number of those followers in Wisconsin, Michigan, and Pennsylvania switched parties to vote for Trump in 2016. If they were to go back to Sanders in 2020 — and if the Democrats who voted for Clinton generally maintained their party loyalty — the Vermont independent could win those three states and probably the election in November.

Of course, in his worrying about Sanders, Trump could well be using his simplistic version of reverse psychology. The president could be pretending to be scared of Sanders when he really wants to run against a self-proclaimed “democratic socialist” next fall. Citing Republican Party sources, for instance, the New York Times concluded in January that “President Trump’s advisers see Senator Bernie Sanders as their ideal Democratic opponent in November and have been doing what they can to elevate his profile and bolster his chances of winning the Iowa caucuses.” These advisers are well aware that, according to a November poll by NPR/PBS and an NBC/Wall Street Journal poll last March, only 20%-25% of Americans are enthusiastic about a “socialist” candidate. For these reasons, Trump urged South Carolina Republicans to cross the aisle to back Sanders in the Democratic primary in order to shut down Biden once and for all.

To play it safe, however, the president has also begun to focus a portion of his considerable ire on Sanders. He’s already mounted vigorous attacks on his approach to health-care reform, his opposition to the assassination of the head of Iran’s Revolutionary Guards, his supposed hypocrisy as a “wealthy, fossil fuel-guzzling millionaire,” and above all that socialism of his. It’s just a taste of what’s to come. According to someone who saw the opposition research the Republicans compiled on Sanders in 2016, it “was so massive it had to be transported on a cart.”

And that’s before Trump blows all this material out of proportion through outright lies and misrepresentation.

And the Winner Is …

At the end of August, Donald Trump heads into the Republican Party’s nominating convention in Charlotte, North Carolina, with some advantages he didn’t have four years ago.

In 2016, Hillary Clinton had raised nearly twice as much money as he did. This time, the president has already collected more than $100 million. (Barack Obama had $82 million at this point in 2012.) A war chest like that supports a large ground operation eager to flip some blue states like Minnesota, New Hampshire, Nevada, and even New Mexico. Trump has the authority of incumbency, plus a reputation for invincibility that’s been enhanced by his surviving both the Mueller investigation and impeachment by the House. As long as a coronavirus pandemic doesn’t truly shut down the global economy, he will continue to claim, misleadingly, that low unemployment figures and modest growth are his personal achievements.

In a normal political contest, Trump would have to deal with a raft of negatives, including his relative unpopularity, his many policy failures, his embarrassments on the global stage, and of course, the cuts his administration has made in funds to prepare for a possible pandemic. Election 2020, however, is anything but a normal political contest. Trump has been busy gaming the system, focusing virtually all his efforts on Electoral College swing states, while Republicans do their damnedest to purge voter rolls, suppress turnout, and ignore warnings from the U.S. intelligence community of coming Russian election interference.

Donald Trump has also been hard at work stripping politics of its content, a longer-term trend for which he’s anything but the sole culprit. Still, more than any other candidate in memory, he’s boiled elections down to pissing contests and personality clashes. In addition, his nonstop barrage of lies has thoroughly confused voters about what his administration has and hasn’t done. In the process, he’s delegitimized the mainstream media, placed himself above the law, and reduced American politics to a litmus test of loyalty.

It’s not yet possible to predict the winner of the 2020 election, but the loser is already clear: the American public. Trump has sabotaged in a significant way the normal give-and-take, compromise, and negotiation once at the heart of everyday politics. He believes only in power, the more naked the better. He long ago gave up on elite opinion. Now, he doesn’t want to take any chances on the vagaries of popular choice either.

Trump believes that he already owns the island, that he’s now the survivor-in-chief. To maintain that illusion, he’ll do anything in his power to ensure that he’s never voted off the island, certainly not by something beyond his control like actual democracy.