Politics

The doctor at the center of a New York Times story alleging Jared Kushner bungled the administration's attempts to procure medical supplies is pushing back on the negative tone of the piece, indicating that the Times’s reporting 'did not fully reflect my experience.' Dr Jeffrey Hendricks is quoted in a Times article from May 5 expressing frustration with Kushner's assembled team of coronavirus volunteers, whose job it was to identify potential sources of medical equipment. 'When I offered them viable leads at viable prices from an approved vendor, they kept passing me down the line and made terrible deals instead,' Hendricks said of dealing with the volunteer team, adding that getting responses at all was difficult.

Inequality is the price we pay for civilization. Property rights, inheritance customs and unequal gains from technological innovation have long divided us into haves and have-nots. Because stability favors such disparities, it usually took powerful shocks to flatten them. The collapse of states wiped out elites. The World Wars slashed returns on capital and imposed heavy-handed regulation and confiscatory taxation. Communist regimes equalized by force and fiat.The greatest plagues also turned into levelers, by killing so many that labor became dear and land cheap. For a while, the rich became less rich and the poor less poor: Europe after the Black Death is the best-known example.

Gov. Kristi Noem has taken an unconventional approach to the COVID-19 outbreak in South Dakota, avoiding issuing a state-wide shelter-in-place order and instead affording her constituents the freedom to socially distance as appropriate. The strategy has seemingly paid off: with the exception of a large outbreak at a Smithfield meat processing plant, South Dakota has been relatively effective in flattening its curve to prevent overcrowding at hospitals while avoiding shutting down the entire economy. For her ingenuity, Noem has been rewarded with a cynical media that's questioned her motives and desperately tried to prove that her approach is a failure.

One of the most eye-popping coronavirus containment measures instituted anywhere in the country can currently be found in the small, oft-neglected state of Delaware. For most Americans, if they’re familiar with it at all, Delaware is experienced only as either a pass-through for travelers on I-95 or as a domestic tax haven referenced obliquely in the text of corporate fine-print. However, there are some hidden charms: quaint little beaches and such. A pandemic would not be the most advisable time to familiarize yourself with these subtle Delawarean glories, though, because you might get pulled over for having an out-of-state license plate. As of March 30, pursuant to an Emergency Order issued by Gov.

Justin Amash has announced that he's running for president as a Libertarian. The sitting five-term congressman from Michigan quit the Republican party on July 4 last year and was the sole non-Democratic vote to impeach Donald Trump in December. Amash won't win in the fall, but like Gov. Gary Johnson, the LP’s 2016 candidate who earned 4.5 million votes, his presence could easily throw the election to either Donald Trump or Joe Biden.Far more important, especially to the plurality of Americans who consider themselves politically independent, the 40-year-old son of Middle Eastern immigrants from Palestine and Syria has the potential to radically change what Americans expect — or demand — from their national politicians.

Everyone in Kentucky knows what five o’clock means. It means it’s time for Andy.Andy, of course, is Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear, a mild mannered Democrat who defeated incumbent Matt Bevin in November by only 5,000 votes in a heavily red state. At the time, I wrote in The Spectator why that happened, but it certainly didn’t hurt that his father was the two-term governor before Bevin.Likely no governor in the nation has thrived the way Andy Beshear has during this time of pandemic lockdowns. Every day, seven days a week, Beshear speaks to Kentuckians from the state Capitol at 5 o’clock. His presentations have been compared to fireside chats and he to Mister Rogers.

Tara Reade, a former Senate staffer for Joe Biden, claimed in an interview last month that the former vice president had put his hand up her skirt and digitally penetrated her in 1993. Since the March 25 interview, new evidence has emerged that seems to corroborate Reade's story: her mother called into Larry King's radio show about the incident in 1993, and her brother, a friend, and a neighbor all recall being told the story by Reade. Nonetheless, despite making multiple media appearances in the month since the allegation, Biden has not addressed Reade's claim directly, though his spokespeople have denied it on his behalf. The former VP is nonetheless holding a 'Virtual Women’s Town Hall' on Tuesday.