Attorney General William Barr said Tuesday that the need for strong restrictions to stop the spread of the coronavirus may be passing and that the Justice Department might consider taking legal action against states that go too far.

“There are very, very burdensome impingements on liberty,” he told radio talk show host Hugh Hewitt, “and we adopted them for the limited purpose of slowing down the spread. We didn’t adopt them as the comprehensive way of dealing with this disease. We are now seeing that these are bending the curve, and we have to come up with more targeted approaches.”

Read the rest of the story at NBC News.

Medical officials in California’s Santa Clara County, in the heart of Silicon Valley, indicated late Tuesday that the first U.S. death connected to the coronavirus happened weeks earlier than previously believed.

Two deaths on Feb. 6 and Feb. 17 were not initially thought to have been COVID-19-related, but further testing has revealed that they were, the county medical examiner said Tuesday.

“Today, the Medical Examiner-Coroner received confirmation from the CDC that tissue samples from both cases are positive for SARS-CoV-2 (the virus that causes COVID-19),” the Santa Clara County Medical Examiner-Coroner said in a statement.

Read the rest of the story at NBC News.

Congressional Democrats slammed President Donald Trump after he announced that he plans to suspend immigration to the United States, arguing that such a move does nothing to protect Americans from the coronavirus and deflects attention away from his handling of the outbreak.

House Democratic Caucus Chairman Hakeem Jeffries, D-N.Y., tweeted that Trump is the “xenophobe. In. chief.”

“This action is not only an attempt to divert attention away from Trump’s failure to stop the spread of the coronavirus and save lives, but an authoritarian-like move to take advantage of a crisis and advance his anti-immigrant agenda. We must come together to reject his division,” tweeted Rep. Joaquin Castro, D-Texas, chairman of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus.

Read the rest of the story at NBC News

Some governors in the South have begun loosening restrictions put in place to contain the spread of coronavirus.

Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp on Monday granted businesses across the state permission to reopen later this week, an announcement echoed by a handful of other Republican governors who are beginning to lift stay-at-home orders.

Kemp’s decision, which will apply to barbershops, gyms and other businesses that include close contact, comes days after President Donald Trump issued guidelines to reopen state economies. Protesters across the country have been gathering at rallies outside state capitals demanding an end to shutdown orders.

Read the rest of the story at NBC News.

Airlines, restaurants, retailers, farmers and a slew of other industries are getting billions of dollars in bailouts as the U.S. economy contracts because of the coronavirus pandemic — but America’s oil companies are hitting a dry hole.

U.S. oil futures prices fell to their lowest-ever level by far on Monday, at -$37.63 per barrel, meaning owners of the futures contracts were paying to offload them. It broke the previous low price record near $10 a barrel set in 1986 and comes as policymakers struggled to address the glut of crude that has seen the industry reverse a decade-long boom and sink into a deep recession that threatens to push dozens of companies into bankruptcy.

Read the rest of the story at Politico.

The World Health Organization chief warned Monday that “the worst is yet ahead of us” in the coronavirus outbreak, reviving the alarm just as many countries ease restrictive measures aimed at reducing its spread.

WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus didn’t specify why he believes the outbreak that has infected some 2.5 million people and killed over 166,000 could get worse. He and others, however, have previously pointed to the likely future spread of the illness through Africa, where health systems are far less developed.

Read the rest of the story at NBC News.

Opposition to COVID-19 stay-at-home orders has continued to build from coast to coast, with at least five states the site of protests Sunday.

Protesters sporting masks and signs took to their state capitols, while others honked their car horns during gridlock demonstrations calling on their governors to open up their states.

Almost 60 percent of American voters are worried that lifting restrictions on public behavior too soon will lead to a spike in coronavirus cases and deaths.

According to an NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll released Sunday, 58 percent of registered voters expressed concern about a loosening of restrictions, compared with 32 percent who worried that the restrictions would stay in place for too long. Three percent said they were concerned about both scenarios.

Read the rest of the story at Politico

While mom-and-pops struggle to get a loan through the Payroll Protection Program (PPP), a number of sizable restaurant chains are cashing multimillion-dollar checks from the relief initiative, a cornerstone of federal efforts to help small businesses through the COVID-19 crisis.

The parent of the Ruth’s Chris steakhouse chain collected $20 million by applying through each of two subsidiaries. Taco Cabana qualified for a $10 million loan, and Potbelly Sandwich Shop landed a $10 million loan, the largest advance permitted per applicant under the PPP.

Kura Sushi, a 25-unit sushi chain, qualified for a loan of just under $6 million. CEO Hajime Uba told investors Tuesday that a portion of the money will be used for owed rent, as permitted under the PPP program.

Read the rest of the story at Restaurant Business Online.

On two phone calls with President Donald Trump, congressional Democrats on Thursday pressed him to wait until widespread coronavirus testing is available before issuing federal guidance to reopen the country economically, two lawmakers on the teleconferences told NBC News.

But the president insisted that the economy would have to be reopened before broad testing can be available, Sen. Mike Braun, R-Ind., told NBC News.

Read the rest of the story at NBC News.

U.S. retail sales plummeted 8.7% in March, an unprecedented decline, as the viral outbreak forces an almost complete lock down of commerce nationwide.

The deterioration of sales far outpaces the previous record decline of 3.9% that took place during the depths of the Great Recession in November 2008.

President Trump directs halt to payments to World Health Organization while US reviews virus warnings regarding China.

Read the rest of the story at The Washington Post.

President Donald Trump’s grievances with the media and his political opponents took center stage Monday during the daily White House coronavirus briefing after a weekend of tough reporting on his administration’s handling of the pandemic.

“Everything we did was right,” Trump told reporters after playing a campaign-style video defending the White House’s response to the crisis.

Read the rest of the story at NBC News.

Gov. Gavin Newsom and his counterparts in Washington and Oregon announced “a regional pact to recovery” from the coronavirus crisis on Monday and agreed to work together to develop a plan to lift restrictions on daily life and reopen economies along the West Coast.

The announcement comes as six states in the Northeast — New York, New Jersey, Connecticut, Delaware, Pennsylvania and Rhode Island — also agreed to coordinate regional efforts to gradually ease restrictions adopted to prevent the spread of the virus.

Read the rest of the story at The Los Angeles Times.

President Donald Trump was clearly annoyed by Dr. Anthony Fauci‘s comments on CNN today regarding the ongoing coronavirus pandemic, retweeting a former congressional candidate’s post that criticized Fauci and used the hashtag “#FireFauci.”

Earlier in the day, Fauci had appeared on CNN’s State of the Union with Jake Tapper, and made several comments that may have raised Trump’s ire, including saying that if America had adopted coronavirus mitigation measures earlier, we could have saved lives, and that he had doubts that the pandemic would be sufficiently resolved by November in order for voters to be able to safely go to polling stations in person.

Read the rest of the story at Mediaite.

Dr. Anthony Fauci, the nation’s top infectious diseases expert, said Sunday that earlier efforts to stop the spread of the coronavirus in the U.S. “obviously” could have saved lives but that top health officials faced “a lot of pushback about shutting things down.”

Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, was responding on CNN’s “State of the Union” to a New York Times report saying President Donald Trump’s top public health officials concluded by the third week of February that they should recommend to the president a new approach to COVID-19that included social distancing steps. But according to The Times, the White House “focused instead on messaging and crucial additional weeks went by before their views were reluctantly accepted by the president — time when the virus spread largely unimpeded.”

Read the rest of the story at NBC News.

U.S. spy agencies collected raw intelligence hinting at a public health crisis in Wuhan, China, in November, two current and one former U.S. official told NBC News, but the information was not understood as the first warning signs of an impending global pandemic.

The intelligence came in the form of communications intercepts and overhead images showing increased activity at health facilities, the officials said. The intelligence was distributed to some federal public health officials in the form of a “situation report” in late November, a former official briefed on the matter said. But there was no assessment that a lethal global outbreak was brewing at that time, a defense official said.

Read the rest of the story at NBC News.

The White House’s Office of Management and Budget is working on a possible plan to cut U.S. aid to the World Health Organization, administration officials said Wednesday, as President Donald Trump tries to deflect blame for his handling of the coronavirus pandemic.

Administration officials said they also plan to look into the timeline of the WHO’s reaction to the coronavirus after it first appeared in China, as well as “links” to China.

“What the WHO knew and how it reacted to that knowledge is relevant to the U.S. government’s response to the crisis,” a senior administration official said.

Read the rest of the story at NBC News

After less than a year on the job, White House press secretary and communications director Stephanie Grisham is stepping down, according to senior Trump administration officials.

Grisham is returning to the East Wing to start immediately as first lady Melania Trump’s chief of staff and spokesperson, her office announced Tuesday. She previously served in the East Wing as communications director and deputy chief of staff.

Acting Navy Secretary Thomas Modly has resigned, two defense officials said, a day after he ridiculed and then apologized to a captain he had ousted for raising concerns about a coronavirus outbreak on his aircraft carrier.

Modly offered to quit in a Tuesday morning conversation with Defense Secretary Mark Esper, the officials said. Esper accepted his resignation and has selected Under Secretary of the Army James McPherson to replace Modly as acting Navy secretary, according to the officials.

Read the rest of the story at NBC News

President Donald Trump has upended the panel of federal watchdogs overseeing implementation of the $2 trillion coronavirus law, tapping a replacement for the Pentagon official who was supposed to lead the effort.

A panel of inspectors general had named Glenn Fine — the acting Pentagon watchdog — to lead the group charged with monitoring the coronavirus relief effort. But Trump on Monday removed Fine from his post, instead naming the EPA inspector general to serve as the temporary Pentagon watchdog in addition to his other responsibilities.

Read the rest of the story at Politico

Wisconsin’s controversial election is back on for Tuesday, and voters will get no extension on the deadline to return absentee ballots despite the coronavirus crisis, thanks to two top courts that sided with Republicans on Monday.

Wisconsin Gov. Tony Evers, a Democrat, issued an executive order Monday afternoon postponing the election to June 9, citing the public health risk. But the state Supreme Court hours later overturned the governor, siding with the Republican-controlled Legislature, which had challenged his order.

Read the rest of the story at NBC News.

President Donald Trump on Friday said new guidance from the Centers for Disease and Prevention urges Americans to wear cloth face coverings in public to prevent the spread of the virus.

“The CDC is advising the use of nonmedical cloth face covering as a voluntary health measure,” Trump said during his Friday briefing. “It is voluntary. They suggested for a period of time. This is voluntary.”

“The CDC is not recommending the use of medical grade or surgical grade masks,” he added, noting things such as the N95 respirators need to be saved for medical professionals.

Read the rest of the story at NBC News.

President Donald Trump has fired Michael Atkinson, the Intelligence Community Inspector General, who brought forward the whistleblower complaint to Congress in light of President Donald Trump’s conversation with Ukraine’s president – which later led to the impeachment proceedings.

The news comes late Friday night, in a letter obtained by CNN, which states Atkinson is set to be booted in 30 days from his post.

Read the rest of the story at Mediaite.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., announced Thursday that a bipartisan House committee will investigate the federal response to coronavirus pandemic and ensure that congressional funding is spent wisely.

“The committee will be empowered to examine all aspects of the federal response to the coronavirus, and to assure that the taxpayer dollars are being wisely and efficiently spent to save lives, deliver relief and benefit our economy,” Pelosi said during a conference call with reporters.

Read the rest of the story at NBC News.

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis on Wednesday issued a stay-at-home order for the entire state as it grapples with a rapidly spreading coronavirus outbreak.

The order goes into effect Thursday at midnight and will last for at least 30 days, DeSantis said at a briefing on Wednesday. DeSantis said at Wednesday’s briefing that the order would limit movement within the state. Unless residents are pursuing “essential” services or activities they should stay indoors, he said.

DeSantis had been previously criticized for refusing to implement statewide social distancing guidelines, particularly as beach-goers and students on spring break continued to gather in large groups. DeSantis refused to close the state’s beaches even as other states were shutting down schools and nonessential businesses.

Read the rest of the story at NBC News.

The White House will not reopen the Obamacare exchanges to allow uninsured Americans to purchase health care coverage during the coronavirus pandemic, NBC News has confirmed.

Last month, President Donald Trump signaled that he was considering a special enrollment period that would reopen federal insurance exchanges, which shuttered in December after the end of the annual open enrollment period.

“It’s something we’re talking to a lot of people about. We’ll see what happens,” Trump said in March.

Read the rest of the story at NBC News

A chorus of governors from across the political spectrum is publicly challenging the Trump administration’s assertion that the United States is well-stocked and well-prepared to test people for the coronavirus and care for the sickest patients.

In New York State — the center of the nation’s outbreak, with at least 1,550 deaths — Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo said on Tuesday that the country’s patchwork approach to the pandemic had made it harder to get desperately needed ventilators.

“You now literally will have a company call you up and say, ‘Well, California just outbid you,’” Mr. Cuomo, a Democrat, said in his daily news briefing. “It’s like being on eBay with 50 other states, bidding on a ventilator.”

Read the rest of the story at The New York Times.

Wall Street just ended one of the worst quarters in stock market history, with all three major averages reflecting the devastating economic impact of the pandemic that has ground global activity almost to a halt.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average was down by just over 400 points by the closing bell on Tuesday, a quarterly loss of 22 percent for the blue-chip index and its worst Q1 performance ever.

The S&P 500 ended the day lower by around 1.85 percent, its worst first quarter since 1938, while the tech-heavy Nasdaq closed down by just under 1 percent.

Read the rest of the story at NBC News.

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., on Tuesday suggested that the January Senate impeachment trial of President Donald Trump distracted from crucial early efforts to respond to the emerging coronavirus pandemic.

During an appearance on conservative commentator Hugh Hewitt’s radio show, McConnell was asked about a POLITICO articlepublished Monday that pointed to Sen. Tom Cotton, R-Ark., as one of the first people on Capitol Hill to sound warnings on coronavirus. The article quoted Cotton as blaming impeachment for diverting the government’s focus away from the threats.

Read the rest of the story at NBC News.

Speaker Nancy Pelosi, appearing on CNN’s State of the Union Sunday morning, said that President Donald Trump’s “denial at the beginning” with respect to coronavirus was “deadly.”

Pelosi told Jake Tapper, “The president, his denial at the beginning, was deadly. His delaying of getting equipment to where it continued — his continued delay in getting equipment to where it’s needed is deadly. Now the best thing to do would be to prevent more loss of life rather than open things up, because we just don’t know. We have to have testing, testing, testing.”

Read the rest of the story at Mediaite.

Faced with a torrent of criticism from cities and states that have been pleading for help to deal with the most critically ill coronavirus victims, President Trump announced on Friday that the federal government would buy thousands of ventilators from a variety of makers, though it appeared doubtful they could be produced in time to help hospitals that are now overwhelmed.

His announcement came shortly after authorizing the government to “use any and all authority available under the Defense Production Act,” a Korean War-era authority allowing the federal government to commandeer General Motors’ factories and supply chains, to produce ventilators.

Read the rest of the story at The New York Times

President Donald Trump intends to ignore provisions in the newly passed $2 trillion coronavirus relief bill intended to shore up Congress’ oversight of the massive rescue program.

The legislation establishes a “special inspector general” to review and investigate loan decisions made by the treasury secretary as part of the coronavirus relief effort, an accountability measure that was a central part of Democrats’ demands to shore up transparency in the bill. The provision requires the inspector general to notify Congress if he or she is “unreasonably refused or not provided” any information.

Read the rest of the story at Politico

Democratic and Republican leaders were scrambling members of Congress back to Washington late Thursday because they suddenly believe the $2 trillion economic relief package might not pass by the voice vote planned for Friday and could be delayed if at least 216 members don’t show up to vote on the floor.

Members are now racing to get back to Washington by Friday morning — in the middle of the coronavirus pandemic — because leaders fear that at least one member, likely to be Rep. Thomas Massie, R-Ky., will demand a recorded vote.

The office of Majority Leader Steny Hoyer, D-Md., wrote in an advisory to members Thursday night: “Members are advised that it is possible this measure will not pass by voice vote.”

Read the rest of the story at NBC News.

A handful of Republican senators on Wednesday threatened to delay the $2 trillion coronavirus spending bill over a proposed increase to unemployment insurance.

In a statement, Sens. Tim Scott, R-S.C., Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., and Ben Sasse, R-Neb., said that the bill could provide a “strong incentive for employees to be laid off instead of going to work” because some people could theoretically make more by being unemployed.

“This isn’t an abstract, philosophical point — it’s an immediate, real-world problem,” they continued. “If the federal government accidentally incentivizes layoffs, we risk life-threatening shortages in sectors where doctors, nurses, and pharmacists are trying to care for the sick, and where growers and grocers, truckers and cooks are trying to get food to families’ tables.”

Read the rest of the story at NBC News.

Lacking a meaningful path to the Democratic nomination at a moment when the coronavirus crisis is gripping Washington and the country, Bernie Sanders stepped back from actively campaigning for president over the past week, leading some Democrats to wonder whether he would soon leave the race altogether.

But Tuesday, Sanders appeared to signal anew that he is in the race for the long haul: His campaign announced a full organizing effort ahead of New York’s scheduled April 28 primary, and a spokesman said he would participate in a debate with former Vice President Joe Biden — if there is one.

Read the rest of the story at NBC News.

Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer said that they are “very close” to an agreement on a nearly $2 trillion coronavirus economic rescue package, raising the possibility of a Senate vote on the legislation as early as Tuesday.

Following a series of late-night meetings in Schumer’s office in the Capitol — and a phone call with President Donald Trump to review the status of the discussions — Mnuchin and Schumer told reporters around midnight that they hope to have the final agreement in place in the morning.

Read the rest of the story at Politico

Senator Rand Paul, Republican of Kentucky, has tested positive for coronavirus, his office announced in a statement on Sunday. He is the first senator and the third member of Congress to test positive.

Mr. Paul “is asymptomatic and was tested out of an abundance of caution due to his extensive travel and events,” his office said on Twitter, and he has since self-quarantined. His Washington office began operating remotely 10 days ago, the statement said, and “hence virtually no staff has had contact” with him. The statement did not detail how long Mr. Paul had been in quarantine.

Read the rest of the story at The New York Times.

The Trump Department of Justice has asked Congress to craft legislation allowing chief judges to indefinitely hold people without trial and suspend other constitutionally-protected rights during coronavirus and other emergencies, according to a report by Politico’s Betsy Woodruff Swan.

While the asks from the Department of Justice will likely not come to fruition with a Democratically-controlled House of Representatives, they demonstrate how much this White House has a frightening disregard for rights enumerated in the Constitution.

Read the rest of the story at Rolling Stone.

Joe Biden, the 2020 Democratic front-runner, slammed President Donald Trump over his handling of the coronavirus pandemic Friday, accusing him of being “behind the curve through his whole response.”

Biden, speaking on a conference call with reporters, offered a series of blunt missives for Trump, and criticized him for repeatedly providing the American people with misinformation about the virus.

“Step up and do your job, Mr. President,” Biden said.

Read the rest of the story at NBC News.

A member of Vice President Mike Pence’s staff has tested positive for the coronavirus, Pence’s office said Friday night.

The staffer’s name and exact position was not released, but Pence’s press secretary, Katie Miller, said, “Neither President Trump nor Vice President Pence had close contact with the individual.

“Further contact tracing is being conducted in accordance with CDC guidelines,” Miller said.

Read the rest of the story at NBC News.

The State Department is urging all Americans “do not travel” abroad because of the novel coronavirus pandemic and the severe travel restrictions or quarantines imposed by governments around the world.

In an unprecedented global health advisory, the department issued its highest-level alert, usually reserved for war zones or hot spots like Syria, North Korea or Somalia.

Read the rest of the story at ABC News.

Democratic presidential candidate Rep. Tulsi Gabbard has announced the end to her campaign following continued low placement in national polls, a weak finish during Super Tuesday and subsequent contests and failing to meet the thresholds to participate in the most recent series of Democratic National Committee sponsored debates.

In a letter to supporters, Gabbard cited that the outcome of those contests indicated that voters have chosen former Vice President Joe Biden for president.

Read the rest of the story at ABC News.

Joe Biden doubled his delegate lead over Bernie Sanders in Tuesday’s primaries, giving him a nearly insurmountable advantage after sweeping Florida, Illinois and Arizona, according to NBC News projections.

The former vice president now has 315 more delegates than the senator from Vermont — 1,132 to Sanders’ 817 — after having started the night with an edge of 154.

Biden has passed the halfway mark and is well on his way to the 1,991 delegates he needs to win a majority of all delegates and capture the Democratic presidential nomination.

Read the rest of the story at NBC News.

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) said the Senate would move ahead with a vote on the House’s coronavirus response bill, and urged his Republican colleagues to withhold their objections to the bill and “vote for it anyway.”

Speaking to reporters on Tuesday, McConnell said his intention was to hold a vote on the House’s bill as soon as they could, and that the Senate wouldn’t adjourn until they’ve passed legislation to expand on the House’s proposed measures.

Read the rest of the story at Mediaite.

The City That Never Sleeps could be shutting down in 48 hours.

New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio said Tuesday that he was considering whether to impose a shelter in place order which would essentially require residents to stay in their homes and keep outside social contact to a minimum to slow the spread of the coronavirus in the nation’s largest city.

“New Yorkers should be prepared right now for the possibility of a shelter-in-place order,” de Blasio. “The decision will be made in the next 48 hours.”

Read the rest of the story at NBC News

Actor Idris Elba announced Monday that he has tested positive for coronavirus, but says he has not shown symptoms.

Elba, 47, told his social media followers that he was tested after he discovered he was in close contact with someone else who tested positive, but that he is not experiencing any symptoms of COVID-19, the disease associated with coronavirus. The actor said he was alerted to the exposure on Friday.

“I quarantined myself and got tested immediately and got the results back today,” Elba said. “Look, this is serious, you know? Now is the time to really think about social distancing, washing your hands.”

Read the rest of the story at NBC News

Rep. Louie Gohmert, R-Texas, is holding up the House-passed coronavirus relief bill and preventing it from being delivered to the Senate for a vote.

The House was expected to make technical corrections Monday to the bipartisan measure, passed by the House early Saturday, but Gohmert is insisting on reading them, a Democratic leadership aide confirmed to NBC News on Monday.

Read the rest of the story at NBC News

The Federal Reserve cut interest rates to nearly zero Sunday, an emergency move that represented its second attempt to stimulate an economy that has been ravaged by the coronavirus pandemic.

By making borrowing as cheap as possible, the central bank hopes businesses and individuals will have ready access to nearly interest-free cash to invest and spend.

After Sunday’s move, the new borrowing rate range is between 0 percent and 0.25 percent.

Read the rest of the story at NBC News.

Joe Biden said for the first time during Sunday’s debate that he will “pick a woman to be my vice president” if he’s the Democratic nominee.

“If I’m elected president, my Cabinet, my administration will look like the country, and I committed that I will pick a woman to be my vice president,” Biden said at the CNN faceoff with Bernie Sanders in Washington.

“There are a number of women qualified to be president,” he added.

Read the rest of the story at NBC News.

Spain prepared to declare a state of emergency on Saturday and Italy tightened its lockdown by closing down parks, while Denmark and Poland became the latest countries to shut their borders to most travelers in a bid to slow the spread of the new coronavirus.

As European countries took ever more severe, though widely varying, measures to reduce contact between their citizens and slow the pandemic, China — where the virus first emerged late last year — continued to ease up lockdown measures in its hardest-hit region.

Read the rest of the story at ABC News.

The president does not need to take a test to determine if he’s positive for coronavirus because two interactions he had with known patients were “low risk,” a White House doctor said in a memo released Friday.

The memo was made public hours after Trump said he would be tested.

“Not for that reason, but because I think I will do it anyway,” the president said Friday when asked about his interaction at his Mar-a-Lago resort last weekend with an aide to Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro, Fabio Wajngarten, who turned up positive.

Read the rest of the story at NBC News

President Donald Trump on Friday announced a new series of measures to combat the coronavirus and treat those who are affected, while pushing back on criticism that his administration was unprepared to confront the pandemic.

Speaking in the White House Rose Garden, Trump declared a national emergency that could free up $50 billion to help fight the pandemic and said that he was empowering the secretary of Health and Human Services to waive certain laws and regulations to ensure the virus can be contained and patients treated.

Read the rest of the story at NBC News

U.S. financial markets fell even further on Thursday, with the Dow Jones Industrial Average losing more than 2,350 points, almost 10%, in the biggest single-day decline since one of more than 22% in 1987’s Black Monday crash.

The S&P 500 and Nasdaq similarly tumbled by 9.51% and 9.43%, with the S&P 500 joining the Dow in bear market territory.

Read the rest of the story at ABC News.

Two-thirds of Americans are concerned that they or someone they know will be infected with the novel coronavirus, but in a country with a growing partisan divide, political tribalism is having a large impact when it comes to anxiety over the disease, according to a new ABC News/Ipsos poll released Friday.

Although unease over the coronavirus is high, it also strongly breaks along partisan lines. Among Democrats, 83% are concerned about getting coronavirus, including 47% who are very concerned, and among Republicans, 56% are concerned, including only 15% who are very concerned. Only 17% of Democrats are not concerned while a larger 44% of Republicans are not concerned.

Read the rest of the story at ABC News

The next Democratic debate set to take place in Phoenix, Arizona will be held without a live audience due to concerns about the spread of the coronavirus, the Democratic National Committee and CNN announced Tuesday.
 
“At the request of both campaigns and out of an abundance of caution, there will be no live audience at the Arizona debate taking place on Sunday, March 15th,” said DNC communications director Xochitl Hinojosa in a statement. “The DNC has been in regular communication with local health officials and the mayor’s office, which advised that we could proceed as planned.”

Read the rest of the story at CBS News.

President Donald Trump headed to Capitol Hill Tuesday to push what he called a “very dramatic” economic relief plan to counter the impact of the coronavirus outbreak, and on Wall Street, the Dow Jones Industrial Average, after experiencing the biggest-ever point drop on Monday, rose close to 800 points in trading near the opening Tuesday before settling down to about 300 points up later in the day — and even in the red at one point –before closing up some 1100 points.

Before leaving the White House, Trump held a photo op with health care company executives who told him they would waive all co-pays for coronavirus testing.

Read the rest of the story at ABC News.