After Hurricane Maria struck Puerto Rico, resulting in nearly 3,000 deaths, former acting Homeland Security Secretary Elaine Duke said Trump considered selling the US commonwealth.
Trump announced payroll tax deferments on August 8, 2020 for financial relief amid the COVID-19 pandemic. He promised to make the cuts permanent if reelected.
If I’m victorious November 3rd, I plan to forgive these taxes and make permanent cuts to the payroll tax. I’m going to make them all permanent…I may extend and terminate. In other words, I’ll extend it beyond the end of the year and terminate the tax.
The following week, Trump reiterated that if reelected, he would terminate the payroll tax entirely.
And the payroll tax — we’ll be terminating the payroll tax after I, hopefully, get elected. We’ll be terminating the payroll tax, so that will mean anywhere from $5,000 to even more per family, and also great for businesses and great for jobs. A lot of people will be very happy to hear that. A lot of the great — certainly, conservative economists will be great to have — they think that’s the greatest thing we can do. That’s better than the payments; that’s better than anything else.
Payroll taxes are responsible for funding Social Security, a monthly stipend for senior citizens instituted in 1935. As of June 2020, 64 million Americans collected Social Security. Eliminating payroll taxes, which as of 2019 funded 89% of Social Security, could be an existential threat to the program. It also contributes to Medicare, which provides healthcare to some 60 million beneficiaries.
Trump denied that he would institute any cuts to the programs, saying that instead they would be paid for through the general fund, potentially adding their cost to the deficit.
On September 17, 2020, Trump decried efforts to educate American children about the nation’s history with native and African peoples. After alleged an ongoing Marxist effort to indoctrinate children against America, he announced a commission to investigate shifting to a more “patriotic education” in schools.
Critical race theory, the 1619 Project, and the crusade against American history is toxic propaganda, ideological poison that, if not removed, will dissolve the civic bonds that tie us together. It will destroy our country.
The 1619 Project, named for year of enslaved Africans’ first arrival in North America, is a Pulitzer Prize-winning project by the New York Times. It aims to “reframe the country’s history by placing the consequences of slavery and the contributions of black Americans at the very center of [the United States’] national narrative.”
In August, 2020, Trump’s administration was nearing a deal with the pharmaceutical industry in which companies would spend $150 billion to address out-of-pocket costs and cover part of co-payments for seniors. However, the Trump administration demanded that the companies also send $100 cash cards to every senior in America ahead of the election. While the administration claimed that they wouldn’t place Trump’s signature on the cards, COVID-19 relief checks included letters with such signatures.
Source: US Bureau of Labor Statistics
The vice president of public affairs at PhRMA, the industry’s largest trade group, explained, “We could not agree to the administration’s plan to issue one-time savings cards right before a presidential election,” going on to dismiss the real effectiveness of one-time cash cards.
Trump instead issued an Executive Order requiring the Department of Health and Human Services to “immediately take appropriate steps to implement his rulemaking plan to test a payment model” that would benefit American drug prices. Opposed by the pharmaceutical industry, it was unclear how long, or whether at all, the Executive Order would have any effect.
In April 2020, the USPS planned to deliver five reusable face masks to every residence and PO box. A press release had been drafted to announce the effort, but the plan was ultimately scrapped due to intervention from the Trump administration.
Instead, the Project America Strong program was established, which sought to distributed masks “to critical infrastructure sectors, companies, healthcare facilities, and faith-based and community organizations across the country.”
An administrative official explained that “There was concern from some in the White House Domestic Policy Council and the office of the vice president that households receiving masks might create concern or panic.”
Starting on December 22, 2018, the federal government was shut down for 35 days over Trump’s promise to veto a budget that didn’t include nearly $6 billion in funding for a border wall with Mexico.
Trump claimed that most of the 800,000 federal workers affected by the shut down wanted it to continue until the wall received funding.
Throughout his presidency, Trump claimed multiple times that he was responsible for the Veteran’s Choice Program, which allows veterans to seek care outside of VA medical facilities. The bill as part of a bipartisan effort signed into law in 2014 by Barack Obama. Trump signed the Mission Act in 2018, which expanded on the Veteran’s Choice Program
During an October, 2018 rally in Tennessee, Trump said,
We just passed choice. That was 44 years, they’ve been trying to pass choice. They’ve been trying to pass that one for many many decades. They couldn’t do it. We got it passed.
At a May, 2019 rally in Pennsylvania, Trump reiterated his claims:
We passed VA Choice and VA Accountability to give our veterans the care that they deserve and they have been trying to pass these things for 45 years.
Dr. Richard Stone, Executive in Charge of the Veterans Health Administration, said Trump’s expansion was to “almost be a non-event,” as wait times were longer in private hospitals than VA facilities, and the use of private hospitals by veterans had begun to decline in response.
Trump again made the claim in an August, 2020 press conference, but when pressed on the inaccuracy of the claim, left abruptly.
As of July 15, 2020, the Trump administration issued an order demanding hospitals to report COVID-19 patient data directly to the Department of Health and Human Services, rather than the Center for Disease Control.
The White House claimed that the CDC’s collection and reporting system, which has historically been used for the collection of disease data, was too slow and ineffectual for COVID-19 reporting. CDC Director Robert Redfield has also asserted that the move would streamline data collection and reporting.
Other senior CDC officials, hospital epidemiologists, and Democrat Senators have raised concerns over the move, alleging that it puts the transparency and legitimacy of the reported numbers into question. It was considered especially alarming, as Trump previously said he asked officials to slow down testing to keep COVID-19 cases artificially low. The private company managing the new collection system, TeleTracking Technologies, Inc., was awarded the $10 million contract in a non-competitive bid.
The change came amid new record-breaking spikes in US COVID-19 cases. On the day of the change, the US totaled 3,621,637 cases and 140,155 deaths. The same week, the White House also blocked the CDC from testifying to Congress about school re-openings.
With the implementation of the Affordable Healthcare Act, the Obama administration determined that its anti-discrimination measures included matters of gender identity, which it defined as “male, female, neither, or a combination of male and female.”
In 2019, the Trump administration eliminated the provision, allowing for gender discrimination by federal law. The same week, the Trump administration also eliminated anti-discriminatory measures based on gender for federal housing.
The new healthcare rules were finalized in 2020, amid the COVID-19 pandemic.
In April 2020, Trump announced a 60-day memorandum on immigration.
In light of the attack from the Invisible Enemy, as well as the need to protect the jobs of our GREAT American Citizens, I will be signing an Executive Order to temporarily suspend immigration into the United States!
The order was limited to would-be immigrants living outside the country seeking a green card. It had some significant exceptions, like for the spouse or child of a citizen, military service members, and medical professionals. It did not affect anyone already within the United States.
Supporters of further immigration controls regarded the provisions as too limited, while immigration advocates worried that the 60-day period and those affected could be easily expanded.
A month after the order, the administration announced an expansion in an attempt to retain more jobs for citizens in the wake of COVID-19. The new regulations banned entry on certain visas through rest of the year, including including high-skilled H-1B visas. The order also had exceptions for agricultural, healthcare, and food industry workers.
