There will be time for an outbreak postmortem once the U.S. gets past the threat of the coronavirus  --  and the nation will move past it, just as it has countless challenges in the past. The question now is how many Americans will suffer and how many will die unnecessarily. Our goal should be to protect as many fellow citizens as possible, regardless of political affiliation, race, age, gender, etc. Viruses neither care about nor recognize these traits, nor should we when addressing a crisis. Unfortunately, our efforts to safeguard the populace have been seriously undermined by the current social and political climate, rife with division and prejudice, and this climate has been not only fostered, but furthered, by the current administration.

Abbas said he did not want Trump to be able to say that he, Abbas, had been consulted. He reiterated his “complete” rejection of the Trump plan, presented on Tuesday. “I will not have it recorded in my history that I sold Jerusalem,” he said. The blueprint also proposes U.S. recognition of Israeli settlements on occupied West Bank land and of Jerusalem as Israel’s indivisible capital. The Arab League foreign ministers meeting in Cairo said the plan did not meet the minimum aspirations of Palestinians.

Agnes Callamard, the United Nations rapporteur for extrajudicial executions, called for more action from the European Union and the United States over Khashoggi’s murder by Saudi operatives at Riyadh’s consulate in Istanbul in 2018. “I think it is important to recognize that the international community so far has failed in its duty to ensure that there cannot be immunity or impunity for the killing of Jamal Khashoggi,” Callamard told reporters in Brussels.

National Park Service areas, by mission, are to preserve and protect resources unimpeded for the future of generations yet unborn.  Hardened border walls severely impede these areas by negating movement of species within adjoining ecosystem areas in the U.S. and Mexico. Species impacted include flora and fauna, large and small, as small as the monarch butterfly.  Critical access to springs and sheltered environments will be affected. Collection and use of natural materials by the Tohono O’Odham and movement within their territorial boundary will be affected or lost.

If the Affordable Care Act (ACA) is even partially dismantled, 18 million people could become uninsured within a year, according to a new report from the Congressional Budget Office (CBO). That number could nearly double to 32 million by 2026, the CBO estimated, if the Medicaid expansion is rolled back and subsidies cut to those who paid for insurance through the marketplaces set up under the ACA.

When GOP presidential contender Donald Trump shouts that he’s the “law-and-order candidate,” he is pilfering the line that George Wallace, Barry Goldwater, Richard Nixon, and Bill Clinton worked to death during their White House bids. The law-and-order line is heavy with racially coded images of rampant black crime, and this is a surefire way to pander to fearful suburban whites.

His unapologetic race baiting is a big part of what rocket-launched him to the front of the GOP presidential pack and at a couple of points when he slid a bit, launched him right back to the front. The race-baiting is hardly new. The instant a multimillion-dollar settlement was announced in 2014 with the five young African-American and Latino youths falsely convicted and imprisoned for assault and rape of a jogger in New York's Central Park in 1989, Trump loudly ranted against the settlement and did everything possible to whip up another round of racial hysteria over the case.