A president at the hospital. Key quarantined advisors. Lawmakers paint remotely. COVID-19 hit federal government degrees.
So far, the government’s operation is moving forward, but what if the virus continues to spread to the upper echelons of the Trump administration and into Congress on the eve of a national election, in a debatable fight for a Supreme Court seat that could help in these elections, and when the economy is desperately waiting for a lifeline? Congress?
Trump’s hospitalization due to COVID-19 has amplified deep questions about the federal government’s ability to fully serve with its CEO fighting a potentially fatal virus at a time for a politically fractured country.
This has been compounded by positive COVID testing from his most sensitive advisers, his crusader manager, and three senators over the next two days: Republicans Ron Johnson of Wisconsin, Mike Lee of Utah, and Thom Tillis of North Carolina, whose diagnoses have worried other lawmakers. be next.
Nils Gilman, vice president of systems at the Berggruen Institute, a Los Angeles-based group of experts, is not involved in the day-to-day operations of the federal government being compromised. Social Security checks will continue to be mailed. for visitors. The country’s borders will continue to be patrolled.
“Can the government’s political operations continue?” He said, “It’s very risky. “
More: Trump’s condition was ‘very worrying’ on the last day, according to a source, while the White House says the president is ”very well”
The country has already discovered a way to succeed over political crises.
The death of President Franklin Delano Roosevelt in 1945 while World War II was still at its peak The Assassination of President John F. Kennedy in 1963 that surprised and devastated the country President Reagan nearly died of a gunshot wound shortly after his endowment in 1981.
Woodrow Wilson put a severe case of Spanish influenza into the pandemic a century ago, six months before suffering a stroke that left him partially paralyzed and blind and well unworthy in the last year of his presidency.
But that sounds like another since it’s in the middle of a pandemic that has already killed more than 209,000 Americans, the maximum of all countries, and that also infects congressional leaders, and that the Supreme Court has only 8 members, with only one. one month before an election, you may be asked to resolve it.
“If there’s some kind of crisis, what will happen?Gilman asked, referring to the provision that allowed the vice president to succeed an unfit president. “Are there conflicting parties in the world that can simply verify something while Trump is in the hospital?”
FORMER DEFENSE SECRETARY: Trump hospitalization has a serious effect on national security
Trump’s doctor, Sean Conley, tried to quench the panic and said at a news convention Saturday that the president “is doing very well” at Walter Reed Medical Center in Bethesda, Maryland, contrasting with an initial diagnosis that “is very troubling,” according to a White House source wisely of his condition.
More: Positive evidence from Trump’s COVID-19 and considerations from 2 senators about Amy Coney Barrett’s confirmation, but the Republican Party is still advancing
Trump himself has been out of sight since the diagnosis was announced, and White House officials tried to express his business acumen like the previous Friday. Smithsonian Institution.
So far, Vice President Mike Pence and key cabinet officials, such as Attorney General William Barr, tested negative for the virus despite attending a rite in the rose garden on September 27 showing Trump’s selection to replace Ruth Bader Ginsburg on the Supreme Court: Amy Coney Barrett.
More: President Trump Has COVID-19: A Timeline Of His Travels Leading To A Coronavirus Test
Most of the more than a hundred participants sat side by side and did not wear masks. At least six participants, along with Trump, Lee and Tillis, tested positive ever since, leading Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky. , Saturday to claim a two-week suspension after action on the floor.
McConnell said the suspension does not apply to the Judicial Committee conducting hearings on Barrett’s appointment as of October 12, there are questions about regulations that allow senators to practically commit due to COVID voting on his appointment to the committee.
TRUMP VOYAGE: a timeline of the president’s travels leading to a coronavirus test
The decision to hold hearings on a Supreme Court candidate has been criticized by Democrats who are constantly opposed to their confirmation.
“If it’s too damaging to have the Senate in session, it’s also too damaging for committee hearings to continue,” according to a joint statement by Senate minority leader Chuck Schumer, DN. Y. , and Dianne Feinstein of California, the top Democrat on the Judiciary Committee.
More: Positive evidence from Trump’s COVID-19 and considerations from 2 senators about Amy Coney Barrett’s confirmation, but the Republican Party is still advancing
Republicans have a 53-47 merit in the Senate and the senses. Republican Lisa Murkowski of Alaska and Susan Collins of Maine have opposed a vote to update Ginsburg before the election. Ninth member of the high court in time to rule on instances involving the election of the president or members of Congress.
More than three hundred lawsuits have been filed in almost every state, largely due to COVID-19-related disorders and the expansion of mail voting. Republicans, adding President Donald Trump’s re-election campaign, are not easy. while Democrats are pushing for new opportunities.
The nation’s growing political polarization and reckless claims on social media make it even more likely that local, state, and federal elections will end up in court, only in the weeks leading up to Election Day, but in the days and weeks that follow.
More: The Supreme Court is at a numerical disadvantage, but could play a role in elections
If they go 4-4, they can postpone the case for the next term, in the hope of ninth justice. This happened in July 2020, when Deputy Judge Neil Gorsuch voted with a ruling that placed the east side of Oklahoma native Americans. Jurisdiction.
And the court simply commits itself, which makes its resolution to the fullest pointless. The tie in the vote leaves intact the recent maximum ruling of a declining court. There is no new national precedent created through the country’s highest court.
Trump has broadly questioned the legitimacy of mail ballots that many states use during the pandemic and has made Barrett’s post an imperative should judges have to rule on the effects of their own presidential election.
“I think it’s going to end up on the Supreme Court, and I think it’s very vital that we have nine judges,” Trump told reporters last month.
All of this fuels the GOP’s efforts in the Senate to move forward with Barrett’s confirmation, regardless of the dangers to physical fitness that have permeated the government.
“There is intense political tension on the part of Republicans to do that,” Gilman said. “But is this the hill on which you must die?”
Contribution: John Fritze, Rich Wolf, Doug Stanglin and David Jackson