Mainstream media web traffic slumped by 20 percent after President Trump left office, with the press writing three times fewer stories about Biden than they did about Trump in the same month after he took office in 2017.
According to analytics firm SimilarWeb, there was at least a one fifth decline in traffic in February compared to the previous month.
Politics consumption also dropped by 28 per cent as people lost interest in the presidency after Biden’s inauguration.
“There were three times as many stories written about about Trump in February of 2017 than about Biden last month, according to data from NewsWhip,” reports Axios.
“Biden was discussed on cable news for an estimated 1,836 minutes last month, according to the Stanford Cable TV News Analyzer. In February of Trump’s first year, he commanded an estimated 4,669 minutes on cable news.”
The media is seemingly uninterested in the fact that Biden hasn’t given a single major press conference or any form of public address since taking office.
Nor are they that bothered about the fact that Kamala Harris appears to be pulling the strings behind the scenes while Biden is trotted out for the odd limited appearance during which he stumbles through his sentences.
“What some mainstream media take away from this is that people are now used to the “drama” from politics that was present during the Trump presidency,” writes Didi Rankovic
” However, much of that drama, producing polarization and divisions, may have actually come from the media themselves, rather than politics per se; after all, the current sharp dip in traffic shows they had incentive to keep whipping up that drama for financial reasons, beyond any preferred politics and ideologies.”
Republican Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky on Tuesday urged fully vaccinated people to ignore new public health directives and to “live free” from virus mitigation measures.
Paul, who is a doctor with a practice in Bowling Green, Kentucky, shared a CNN article about the CDC guidelines on Twitter.
“Rather than listening to government scolds, look to the science of immunology: and once you’re 2 weeks out from the vaccine, or have recovered from the actual infection, trash your mask and live free again,” tweeted Paul.
Rather than listening to government scolds, look to the science of immunology: and once you’re 2 weeks out from the vaccine, or have recovered from the actual infection, trash your mask and live free again. https://t.co/ZegA9os9DN
Paul was one of the first lawmakers to contract the coronavirus last year when he tested positive in March. After a quick recovery, he volunteered at a Kentucky hospital and has made headlines since on several occasions for refusing to wear a mask.
“I have immunity. I’ve already had the virus, so I can’t get it again and I can’t give it to anybody,” Paul told reporters in Washington last May, NBC News reported. “I can’t get it again, nor can I transmit. So of all the people you’ll meet here, I’m about the only safe person in Washington.”
Paul a week later challenged Dr. Anthony Fauci at a Senate committee hearing on re-opening the economy in which he appeared without a mask.
“I think we ought to have a little bit of humility in our belief that we know what’s best for the economy. And as much as I respect you, Dr. Fauci, I don’t think you’re the end-all. I don’t think you’re the one person that gets to make a decision,” Paul said.
Sen. Rand Paul: "I don't think you're the end all. I don't think you're the one person that gets to make a decision."
Dr. Anthony Fauci: "I have never made myself out to be the end all and only voice in this. I'm a scientist, a physician and a public health official." pic.twitter.com/Nqlg3zOqn3
Paul has since been critical of public health mandates over their potential to erode individual liberties. He has found himself targeted numerous times since he recovered over not wearing a mask in public.
In a packed Senate chamber with stenographers and colleagues just feet away from him, @RandPaul refuses to put on a mask – and puts the health of everyone around him at risk.
Despite conventional wisdom surrounding vaccines and illnesses, the CDC is not advising people who are fully vaccinated to return to their normal lives.
In directives released this week, which Paul was referring to, the agency advised vaccinated people to wear a mask and social distance when around unvaccinated people who are considered at risk. Those who are fully vaccinated are also asked to refrain from traveling and to wear masks when shopping or engaging in other activities while in congregant settings.
“Until more is known and vaccination coverage increases, some prevention measures will continue to be necessary for all people, regardless of vaccination status,” the CDC stated. “However, the benefits of reducing social isolation and relaxing some measures such as quarantine requirements may outweigh the residual risk of fully vaccinated people becoming ill with COVID-19 or transmitting SARS-CoV-2 to others.”
The agency does state that small groups of fully vaccinated people can gather without masks.
People are considered to be fully vaccinated two weeks after their second dose.
Canadian Pastor James Coates called into GraceLife Church’s indoor Sunday worship service from inside the Edmonton Remand Centre correctional facility.
Associate Pastor Jacob Spenst, who ran the service Sunday in Coates’ absence, said the jailed pastor was joining them via phone but Coates didn’t speak.
This past Sunday marked the third straight worship service Pastor Coates has missed due to being locked up for disregarding pandemic-related health orders, and he will remain in the correction facility until his May trial. Sunday’s indoor service marked the sixth time GraceLife Church violated their closure order for not adhering to capacity restrictions and ignoring social distancing mandates.
Authorities were on site during Sunday’s worship service that had congregants singing without masks but Royal Canadian Mounted Police’s Cpl. Curtis Peters said he was unaware of any needed enforcement that resulted from Sunday’s service.
A Canadian pastor has spent the last two weeks in jail for ignoring pandemic-related health orders. Parkland County’s GraceLife Church’s Pastor James Coates turned himself over to the authorities after holding an in-person worship service on February 14, 2021, despite a closure order for violating COVID-19 health orders.
A ruling on Friday from Alberta Court of Queen’s Bench Justice Peter Michalyshyn will keep him in jail until his May 3, 2021 trial which is scheduled to run through May 5, 2021.
His lawyer said Pastor Coates’ “obedience is to his Lord, is to his God. And normally, obeying Jesus and obeying the government go right in hand…but the government’s forcing him into a position where he has to choose between disobeying God and obeying government, or obeying God and disobeying government.”
Justice Peter Michalyshyn dismissed Pastor Coates’ appeal and said that the pastor remained unrepentant and plans to continue violating public health orders. “The law that Mr. Coates clearly intends not to be bound by remains valid and enforceable against him.” The justice continued to say, ” Mr. Coates’ strongly held religious beliefs and convictions do not overcome those valid and enforceable laws.”
Justice Michalyshyn said Pastor Coates “drives home even more clearly and personally the depth of his conviction not be bound by the law.” The justice explained that Coates’ clear intent is to not adhere to public health orders because Coates said he could not abide by the conditions of his release if he was granted bail.
Coates’ lawyer John Carplay said, “Pastor Coates is a peaceful Christian minister. He should never have been required to violate his conscience and effectively stop pastoring his church as a condition to be released. Charter freedoms do not disappear because the government declares regular church services to be outlawed while allowing hundreds of people to fill their local Walmarts.”
Although GraceLife Church’s pastor is in jail, the church has continued holding weekend services despite Alberta Health Services’ close watch for violations. It was reported by authorities that the indoor worship services are beyond ordered capacity, yet it is unknown if any further fines have been issued.
People gathered outside of the courthouse on Thursday with banners reading #freejamescoates.
Similar to California’s Grace Community Church’s Pastor John MacArthur, Pastor Coates addressed the area’s COVID-19 restrictions during sermons telling his congregants that “governments exist as instruments of God and there should be unfettered freedom of worship.”
President Joe Biden differs sharply from his predecessor when it comes to how the federal government should treat Americans who identify as transgender.
Biden is a progressive leveler. He embraces the transgender ideology unreservedly, demanding that society accept and normalize transgender people, whereas former President Donald Trump was more restrained, respecting the right of transgender people to exist without rearranging society to accommodate them or supporting the radical socially transformative goals of the left-wing transgender movement.
Trump banned some transgender individuals from military service; Biden welcomes them. Trump opposed letting transgender persons use school bathrooms corresponding to their gender identity; Biden does not. Trump opposed expanding civil-rights protections for transgender people in employment; Biden favors expanding such protections, not just in employment, but also in other realms. Biden supports sex-change operations for 8-year-olds; Trump did not. Biden has nominated the first transgender person for a post requiring U.S. Senate confirmation. Trump sought to protect religious freedom against possible claims made on behalf of newly recognized gender rights.
Legal Changes
Biden’s quest for radical egalitarianism is aided by a changing legal environment.
He signed Executive Order 13988, “Preventing and Combating Discrimination on the Basis of Gender Identity or Sexual Orientation,” which builds on last year’s 6-3 Supreme Court decision in Bostock v. Clayton County. That decision read transgender people into the Civil Rights Act of 1964, holding they are protected from employment discrimination even though the statute doesn’t mention gender specifically. Biden ordered several agencies to review policies on gender identity and report back with recommendations for potential action.
That court ruling was a defeat for the Trump administration. During oral arguments, then-Solicitor General Noel Francisco said about the consolidated case, which also dealt with sexual orientation, “Sex means whether you’re male or female, not whether you’re gay or straight.”
This landmark judicial foray into the culturally contentious realm of sex versus sex roles brought an expanded meaning to the phrase “on the basis of sex” that appears in the Civil Rights Act.
Decision author Justice Neil Gorsuch wrote the ruling dealt with employment alone and did not apply to “sex-segregated bathrooms, locker rooms, and dress codes,” all of which are regulated under another law that was not at issue in the court case, Title IX of the Education Amendments Act of 1972.
But Biden’s sweeping order declares: “Children should be able to learn without worrying about whether they will be denied access to the rest room, the locker room, or school sports. …All persons should receive equal treatment under the law, no matter their gender identity or sexual orientation.”
The ACLU celebrated the executive order, writing that it was “a salve after four years of relentless attacks by the Trump administration on LGBTQ people in all aspects of life.”
“This administration is prepared to vigorously defend and enforce the legal protections that LGBTQ people enjoy under federal law,” the ACLU wrote.
At the 2016 Republican nominating convention, Trump presented himself as a defender of LGBTQ rights, saying, “As your president, I will do everything in my power to protect our LGBTQ citizens from the violence and oppression of a hateful foreign ideology.” The ideology referenced was Islamism, which does not tolerate the LGBTQ movement.
The Biden order applies the court’s reasoning in Bostock on gender identity to laws that already forbid sex discrimination: the Education Amendments Act of 1972, Fair Housing Act, and the Immigration and Nationality Act. This means, among other things, that any schools, including public high schools, that accept federal funding have to allow biological boys who self-identify as girls onto girls’ sports teams or be penalized.
Sports
If such a policy were widely enforced girls’ and women’s sports would be in jeopardy, Olympic track-and-field coach Linda Blade told the Wall Street Journal.
“Finished. Done,” Blade said. “The leadership skills, all the benefits society gets from letting girls have their protected category so that competition can be fair, all the advances of women’s rights—that’s going to be diminished.”
Pro-transgender policies hurt women, said James Shupe, who after serving as an icon of transgender activism denounced the movement and the idea that one can change one’s sex as a fraud. Shupe was the first individual in Oregon to receive legal recognition for his “non-binary” sex designation, only to ask after his epiphany to have the status rescinded and his “male” sex restored on his birth certificate.
“Females bear the brunt of the suffering in all of it and President Biden and the Democrats don’t care, all for the sake of politics,” he told The Epoch Times in an e-mail interview.
“Even worse, a lot of females are perpetuating harm against other women and girls while believing they’re doing the right thing to support these transgender policies because they think it’s the right thing to do because they’ve been led to believe that.”
“And it’s sad,” Shupe added. “If only everyone would spend more time learning about the sordid history of gender identity. If they did, they wouldn’t be so quick to celebrate having men like me in their female bathrooms.”
Military
Biden changed military policy on transgender people, accomplishing change with the stroke of a pen.
In Executive Order 14004, Biden revoked Trump’s rule that prevented some transgender individuals from serving in the armed forces.
Stating that “an inclusive military strengthens our national security,” Biden said it was his “conviction as Commander in Chief of the Armed Forces that gender identity should not be a bar to military service.”
Biden took a shot at Trump, writing that “the previous administration chose to alter” an Obama-era policy “to bar transgender persons, in almost all circumstances, from joining the Armed Forces and from being able to take steps to transition gender while serving.”
Instead of “relying on the comprehensive study by a nonpartisan federally funded research center, the previous administration relied on a review that resulted in a policy that set unnecessary barriers to military service.”
Shupe said, “President Trump really had a fairer and more balanced policy concerning the gender dysphoria ban,” which was “often and unfairly called the ‘transgender ban’ for effect by media outlets and to garner public support, but in reality it was a ban on gender dysphoria: a serious mental illness, something I’m all too familiar with because I suffered from it while I served and still do.”
Trump’s policy allowed gender-dysphoric individuals to serve “if you remain mentally fit, can abstain from hormones and surgeries, and can serve in your birth sex” without embracing “a false reality” such as changing your sex on your personal identification, Shupe said.
“What you dressed up as or who you slept with off-duty was your business.”
Children
Biden endorsed sex-change operations for 8-year-olds during an October 2020 townhall meeting. Trump never endorsed such a radical position.
Peter Sprigg of Family Research Council Action said at the time Biden was “wrong to encourage gender transitions for 8-year-old children. The implementation of invasive physiological gender transition procedures … upon minors raises grave concerns.”
Biden has nominated Dr. Rachel Levine, until recently Pennsylvania’s health secretary, to be Assistant Secretary of Health, the first transgender individual to be nominated for a Senate-confirmed position.
Levine favors administering puberty-blocking drugs to children under the age of 18 if they identify as the opposite sex and reportedly is open to surgical sex-reassignment being performed on such children without parental consent.
Equality Act
Critics fear the Biden-backed proposed “Equality Act,” which they characterize as a radical assault on constitutionally protected religious freedoms, and that passed the Democratic-controlled U.S. House of Representatives on Feb. 25, will be used to force the transgender ideology on society.
His comments have not reassured critics.
“Full equality has been denied to LGBTQ+ Americans and their families for far too long,” Biden said Feb. 19 on the introduction of the Equality Act.
Despite extraordinary progress by that community, “discrimination is still rampant in many areas of our society,” Biden said. “The Equality Act provides long overdue federal civil rights protections on the basis of sexual orientation and gender identity, locking in critical safeguards in our housing, education, public services, and lending systems — and codifying the courage and resilience of the LGBTQ+ movement into enduring law.”
Former President Trump slammed the proposed Equality Act during a speech at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) Feb. 28, saying its requirement that men who identify as women be allowed to participate in women’s sports would destroy female athletic competition.
“Young girls and women are incensed that they are now being forced to compete against those who are biological males,” Trump said. “It’s not good for women, it’s not good for women’s sports, which worked so long and so hard to get where they are.”
“The records that stood for years, even decades, are now being smashed with ease,” he said. “If this is not changed women’s sports as we know it will die.” For years in weightlifting, “every ounce is like a big deal for many years,” Trump said. “All of a sudden somebody comes along and beats it by 100 pounds.”
Religious Freedom
The Trump administration took a stand against the principles articulated in the Bostock decision days before it was handed down.
In an effort to protect religious freedoms, in June 2020 Trump’s Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) finalized a rule that followed federal court rulings finding the Obama administration overreached when it issued a rule prohibiting discrimination in health care and health insurance on the basis of patients’ “internal sense of gender.”
The rule dealt with Section 1557 of the Affordable Care Act, which made it unlawful to discriminate on the basis of “race, color, national origin, sex, age, or disability in certain health programs and activities.”
Biden is widely expected to reverse the rule.
Several Democratic state attorneys general sued Trump’s HHS to block the rule in a legal action filed July 20, 2020, claiming it “arbitrarily and unlawfully strips health care rights statutorily guaranteed by Section 1557 from transgender people, women and other individuals seeking reproductive health care or with pregnancy-related conditions, LEP [i.e., limited English proficiency] individuals, individuals with disabilities, and other individuals experiencing discrimination.”
HHS asked federal district Judge Alvin Hellerstein of New York to stay the proceedings to give the department time to review the case in light of Biden’s executive actions. The litigants consented and the lawsuit will be held in abeyance until May 14.
While experts say the current gas price spike is mostly driven by demand recovering faster than the winter storm-squeezed supply, others warn “hostile” White House policies are likely to drive them even higher in the long term.
The average price per gallon in the United States as of Tuesday morning was $2.82, up 34 cents from a month ago, according to Gas Buddy, with experts widely believing consumers should brace for more pain at the pump.
“The national gas price average will likely hit $3 by Memorial Day and stay around that price for the majority of the summer,” Jay R. Young, Chief Executive Officer at King Operating Corporation, a Dallas-based oil and gas operator, told The Epoch Times in an emailed statement.
Young explained the rising gas price story as resurgent demand combined with squeezed supply.
“Gasoline demand rose to the highest level last week since the pandemic began as cases are dropping and more Americans are getting out more and filling up,” Young said.
Federal data from the U.S. Energy Information Administration show gas prices have mostly risen steadily since they bottomed out in early May 2020, around the peak of the lockdowns imposed to curb the spread of the CCP (Chinese Communist Party) virus. The reopening that followed into the summer months roughly tracked with rising prices at the pump, which tapered off and even dropped slightly into the fall as a second wave drove case counts higher.
Gas prices from 1995 to the present. (U.S. Energy Information Administration)
But with the vaccine rollout underway and continued reopening, demand continues to expand.
“US gasoline demand rose 4.3 [percent] on Sunday vs the prior Sunday, or 18.4 [percent] above the rolling four week average for Sunday,” wrote Patrick De Haan, a Gas Buddy analyst, in a tweet Monday.
At the same time, production can’t keep up.
“On the supply side, the number of active oil rigs in the U.S. is standing nearly 50 percent lower than this time one year ago,” Young said, arguing that the most direct impact on the current price hike is coming from February’s winter storm that took 26 refineries offline in the United States.
Further squeezing supply is the fact that the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) on Thursday agreed not to increase the level of oil production through April, with the exception of Russia and Kazakhstan. Last April, OPEC agreed to cut 10 million barrels per day of oil production in a bid to stave off an oil price collapse in the face of the pandemic-driven demand drop-off.
“Demand is recovering much faster than oil production level, which is why oil prices continue to increase rapidly,” Young said.
“Depending on which side of oil you’re on, you either hate it or love it,” Young added, commenting on the OPEC decision not to raise production. “Investors are happy, but come summertime at the pump, consumers should be prepared to pay extra premiums.”
Storage tanks at the Marathon Petroleum Corp. refinery in Detroit, on April 21, 2020. (Paul Sancya/AP Photo)
Oil prices hit above $65 per barrel intraday Tuesday, the highest in a year.
“In the long term, we could see prices between $70-80 per barrel by 3Q this year,” Young predicted.
But some, like former Shell Oil president John Hofmeister, worry that President Joe Biden’s policies may drive prices even higher.
Hofmeister confirmed in an interview on Fox Business on Thursday that the supply squeeze was having the most direct, short-term impact on gas prices.
“But there’s something else that’s going on that’s more subtle,” he said, namely that “the industry, the producers, are practicing serious capital discipline and they’re not roaring back to produce more oil. And also, they’re getting squeezed by the administration,” he said.
“So the ban on leasing—the prohibition on new leases from the Biden administration—that’s going to create a psychology in the industry of, ‘There’s going to be less available,’ and the psychology drives the pricing as well,” he argued.
“As long as we see this hostile administration, we’re going to have a problem with prices,” Hofmeister added.
De Haan said in a tweet Thursday that Biden’s policies—which include canceling the Keystone XL pipeline project and imposing a moratorium on new oil and gas leases on federal land and waters—were not having an impact on prices in the near term, but posed an increased risk in the longer term.
“Unlike state owned oil companies, Biden has no say to cut or raise production, it’s purely market based,” he wrote. “Also, pipelines don’t produce oil, and there is plenty of capacity. And last, no oil company is looking for new leases, so that’s not an impact either. Will be down road.”
Crude oil futures, a predictor of future prices, show a slow but steady drop from the April 2021 price of $64.34 per barrel through $62.25 in September, down to $58.72 in April 2022, suggesting that after a gas price peak in spring, consumers will see gradual relief.
(The Epoch Times) Several dozen House Republicans joined all Democrats in rejecting Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene’s (R-Ga.) bid to stall final passage of the $1.9 trillion COVID-19 stimulus package.
The procedural tactic failed by a 235–149 vote as 40 GOP lawmakers joined the Democrats to vote against her motion to adjourn. Greene had decried the stimulus legislation on March 9 as a “woke progressive Blue State Bailout.”
Greene also sent a warning to House Republicans that should they vote with Democrats, they would be seen as joining them.
(The Epoch Times) The House of Representatives on Wednesday passed the updated versionof President Joe Biden’s $1.9 trillion COVID-19 relief package.
The vote was 220-211, with all Democrats voting for the bill except for Rep. Jared Golden (D-Maine) and all Republicans voting against it.
The House passed a version of the bill late last month, followed by the Senate on March 4. The upper chamber removed the $15 federal minimum wage hike and changed other provisions, such as decreasing weekly supplemental unemployment aid by $100 to $300 a week. No Republicans supported the package in either vote.
Biden plans on signing the bill on Friday and “hitting the road” in the near future to try to convince Americans the package was a good idea, according to the White House. Press secretary Jen Psaki during a press conference in Washington called it “the most progressive bill in American history.”
Democrats utilized a budget process to ram the package through Congress with no bipartisan support, drawing criticism from the GOP.
“I rise in opposition to the partisan $1.9 trillion spending bill before us today. It’s shameful Democrats have disregarded their obligation to provide real COVID relief to the American people and are instead attempting to use this process to jam through partisan agenda items. This bill is not targeted, timely, or tied to COVID. We need to focus on solving the critical issues at hand: getting vaccines to Americans, providing relief to our local businesses, restaurants, and entertainment venues, and supporting those who have been seriously impacted by this pandemic. Only 9 percent of this massive $1.9 trillion package goes to fighting COVID-19. And outside of stimulus payments, nearly half won’t even be spent this year,” Rep. Ann Wagner (R-Mo.) told colleagues on the House floor on Wednesday.
Five people are being accused of various election fraud-related cases during the Nov. 3 election, according to the DuPage County State’s Attorney’s Office in Illinois.
The state’s attorney’s office said the charges stem from investigations into 32 cases of alleged election fraud, adding that most of those cases have been closed without investigation. However, the office stressed that several remain under investigation, according to a news release on Tuesday.
Those who were charged include Colleen A. Kirchoff, 60, of Naperville; Thomas E. Wojciechowski, 73, or Carol Stream; and Adam P. Butler, 51, officials said in the release.
Kirchoff was charged with forgery and perjury after she allegedly attempted to cast a ballot for someone else, officials said in a news release. Butler was charged with a count of forgery and one count of perjury in election code, while Wojciechowski was charged with one count of perjury in election code, officials said.
Two others—Darrick Kent, 43, and Amy Kent, 41—of Austin, Texas, were charged with one count of perjury in the election code.
“I would like to thank County Clerk Jean Kaczmarek and her office for their fine work in uncovering these alleged violations and bringing them to our attention,” DuPage County State’s Attorney Robert Berlin said in the release. “The charges filed today are the direct result of the cooperation and professionalism displayed by the Clerk’s Office throughout the entire investigation.”
His office did not provide any more details about the charges or the investigation.
“The very foundation of our country is built upon fair and free elections,” Berlin added. “Elections are a sacred duty and while the five defendants charged today represent an infinitesimal percentage of the 491,067 votes cast in the 2020 general election, it is important that anyone suspected of attempting to interfere in any way in the election process be investigated and charged where appropriate.”
A judge on Tuesday signed arrest warrants for the five suspects, and each person’s bail was set for $1,000, reported WBBM.
Last week, the mayor pro tem of a Northern California city resigned from office after pleading guilty to election fraud charges. Crescent City Mayor Pro Tem Alex Campbell entered the plea to making a false declaration of candidacy in Del Norte County Superior Court, local news outlet Wild Rivers Outpost reported, citing the city’s clerk’s office.
Separately, in Aberdeen, Mississippi, a judge ordered a new runoff election for a city alderman seat after more than three-quarters of absentee ballots cast in the June 2020 Democratic runoff election were found to be invalid, while a notary involved in the election was arrested.
“[We] must make breakthroughs in combat methods and ability, and lay a sound foundation for military modernization,” he says.
China must prepare for an “inevitable” war with a “dominant power,” says the country’s top general.
General Xu Qiliang, second in command of China’s armed forces after Xi Jinping, believes a major war is “inevitable” because China is rising as a military power.
“In the face of the Thucydides Trap and border problems, the military must speed up increasing its capacity,” said Xu, who is also a member of the Politburo, the Communist Party’s inner circle.
“[We] must make breakthroughs in combat methods and ability, and lay a sound foundation for military modernization.”
A “Thucydides Trap” was a term coined by a U.S. political scientist who believed war was “inevitable” between China, an emerging military power, and the United States.
The term is a reference to the Peloponnesian War between Athens and Sparta which was ignited by Athens’ rise in power.
The “border problems” Xu refers to include its ongoing dispute with India over its shared 2100-mile-long border; however, China also has ambitions to defeat the United States if war erupts.
“Defense ministry spokesman Wu Qian said that part of the 6.8% defense budget increase this year would be spent on key projects in the next five-year plan to help the military reach its long-standing goal of catching up with the US in being able to ‘fight and win’ on the modern battlefield,” reported the South China Morning Post. “The rest would go on training, weapons procurement and salaries for the country’s two million soldiers, he said.”
The Chinese newspaper also reported that Xi Jinping said “there is no such thing as the so-called Thucydides Trap” during a 2015 speech in Seattle, which is noteworthy because if Xi actually believes that, it’s unlikely his second-in-command would openly contradict him.
A shock to the job market as massive and as sustained as the coronavirus will leave lasting change — and damage — in its wake.
The big picture: We jumped from the best labor market in 60 years, before the coronavirus, to the worst, in April. As the country comes back, millions of jobs lost during the pandemic will never come back, and there will be massive reallocations of jobs from some parts of the economy to others.
“This is the biggest thing since the Great Depression. It’s absolutely enormous and incredibly fast,” says Nicholas Bloom, an economist at Stanford.
What’s happening: Even as states start opening up, new job postings in the U.S. are still down nearly 30% compared with February, according to an analysis by research firm Gartner.
But a closerlook at which sectors of the economy are hiring tells us more about how the pandemic might alter the job market.
There’s been a surge in postings for grocery and delivery workers. Amazon, Walmart and Instacart alone have hired around 700,000 people since the pandemic began.
Look for similar surges in cleaning, sanitation and construction in the coming weeks and months, Bloom says. Public spaces will need to hire cleaning crews and construction companies to keep spaces sanitized and add barriers or other distance-enforcing features.
We could also see increased hiring in high tech because jobs in that sector can often be done remotely, he says.
There is also data on the sectors that have suffered most and that will have the toughest recoveries.
Jobs like Uber driver, flight attendant, server and chef are among those that have seen the steepest hiring slumps.
Gartner notes that hiring in some of the hardest-hit areas of the economy — like hospitality and retail — is starting to climb back up. But millions of jobs will be gone for good as many stores and restaurants permanently shutter and people remain nervous about traveling.
And there’s another longer-term — and seldom discussed — potential impact of the pandemic: So far, much of the pain has hit low-skill and low-wage jobs, but white-collar jobs will also be in jeopardy as the crisis grinds on, Bloom says.
Consider this: The bulk of job creation during the pandemic has been in low-wage jobs, like grocery and delivery, while other sectors freeze hiring altogether. If a graphic designer or a middle manager at a software company loses their job now, it’ll be very difficult to find a comparable job out there.
The deteriorating labor market could also push discouraged, laid-off older workers — who are also at greater risk of becoming seriously ill if they contract the coronavirus — into early retirement.
“There will be a number of people for whom this will be the last job they have,” says Bloom. “And waves of early retirement are really bad for the U.S. labor market.”
