Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) unveiled a new plan to tackle America's affordable housing crisis Wednesday, just one day after President Trump made headlines when he criticized the problem of homelessness in California.
Sanders, who hopes to challenge Trump in 2020 as the Democratic presidential nominee, laid out a series of ideas to rehabilitate America's public housing, make rent more affordable, strengthen tenant rights, end homelessness, and make it easier for people to purchase a home. He also carved out a section dedicated to combating gentrification.
"While we expand and build new housing, we must ensure that current tenants and homeowners are not forced out of their homes or neighborhoods," the plan reads. "We must also ensure that wealthy and exclusionary neighborhoods do no not prevent new development, forcing gentrification and displacement in low-income and minority areas."
Some of the ways Sanders would go about this, if elected, include supporting new zoning ordinances that encourage "racial, economic, and disability integration that makes housing more affordable." But there are also more specific proposals aimed at speculators within the plan. That includes a 25 percent "House Flipping tax" that would be levied against people who sell a non-owner occupied property at a profit within five years of purchase, and a 2 percent "Empty Homes tax" on the property value of vacant, owned homes in the hopes of bringing more units into the market and discouraging speculative real estate investments. Read the full plan here. Tim O'Donnell
The White House sent a letter to congressional leaders on Monday night, asking for $1.8 billion to spend on its response to the global coronavirus outbreak.
The White House is requesting $1.25 billion in new funding for the Department of Health and Human Services and $535 million that had been set aside to fight Ebola, The Washington Post reports. In the letter, White House Office of Management and Budget Director Russell Vought wrote, "To this point, no agency has been inhibited in response efforts due to resources or authorities. However, much is still unknown about this virus and the disease it causes. The administration believes additional federal resources are necessary to take steps to prepare for a potential worsening of the situation in the United States."
In response, House Appropriations Chairwoman Nita Lowey (D-N.Y.) said the request was "woefully insufficient." The White House had previously said it did not think it needed any additional funding to fight coronavirus. There are now more than 50 cases in the United States, and organizations representing state and local public health officials have asked for money to buy protective equipment, expand outreach to the public, and fund mobile home-testing teams, the Post reports. Catherine Garcia
The National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases is expected to soon launch a clinical trial of an experimental coronavirus vaccine.
The vaccine was developed by the drugmaker Moderna, and researchers hope to begin testing it on humans in late April. The first trial will involve 20 to 25 healthy volunteers, with results expected by July or August. If that round is successful, a second trial will include hundreds or thousands of subjects. The vaccine was created after the coronavirus' genetic sequence was determined in January.
"Going into a Phase One trial within three months of getting the sequence is unquestionably the world indoor record," NIAID Director Anthony Fauci told The Wall Street Journal on Monday. "Nothing has ever gone that fast."
Gene-based technology has yet to result in an approved vaccine for humans, the Journal reports. If this vaccine does work, it will still have to go through regulatory measures, and likely won't be widely available until 2021. Fauci said the virus might not spread as quickly in the summer due to the heat, but could roar back in the winter. More than 2,600 people have died in this coronavirus outbreak, and there are more than 79,000 confirmed cases worldwide, with most in China. Catherine Garcia
If you're one of President Trump's former national security advisers, you're doing a lot of waiting these days — either for your book to be published or for your prison sentence to be decided.
Lt. Gen. H.R. McMaster was Trump's second national security adviser, serving from March 2017 to April 2018. He came on board after Trump's first national security adviser, Michael Flynn, resigned; Flynn later pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI about his interactions with the former Russian ambassador to the United States.
McMaster has written a book, Battlegrounds: The Fight to Defend the Free World, set to be published on April 28. HarperCollins says it is a "groundbreaking reassessment of America's place in the world, drawing from McMaster's long engagement with these issues, including 34 years of service in the U.S. Army with multiple tours of duty in battlegrounds overseas." It will also include information on McMaster's "13 months as national security adviser in the Trump White House."
Unlike other former members of the administration, McMaster, now a fellow at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University, has not given many interviews about his experience with Trump. One of his aides was quoted in the book A Very Stable Genius as saying, "The president doesn't fire people. He just tortures them until they're willing to quit."
Trump's third national security adviser, John Bolton, finished writing his book, The Room Where It Happened, last year. It is supposed to come out in March, but the White House is reportedly trying to block its release. Bolton, who served from April 2018 to September 2019, is said to have included damaging information in the book, including that Trump attempted to get him to engage in a quid pro quo with Ukraine. Catherine Garcia