Consider This from NPR - Testing Labs Falling Behind; SCOTUS Rules On Trump Taxes

Episode Date: July 9, 2020

With so many new coronavirus cases, testing labs are falling behind and people are waiting days for results. On Thursday, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled President Trump was not immune from a grand jury subpoena for his financial records. But Americans are not likely to see the president's taxes before Election Day. There were nearly 2.4 million new applications for state and federal unemployment benefits last week, according to the Labor Department. After four straight months of people applying for unemployment by the millions, NPR's Scott Horsley reports there are growing signs it won't be getting better anytime soon. Find and support your local public radio station.Email us at [e-mail] more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

Hey, before we get to the show, we want to ask you a quick favor. We want to know what you like about this show and what you think we could do better. So if you have about 10 minutes, help us out by taking a short anonymous survey at npr.org slash consider this survey. We'd really appreciate it. Again, it's npr.org slash consider this survey. Okay, here's the show. It took months for the United States to hit 1 million confirmed cases of the coronavirus. It took 43 days to get to 2 million.

This week we hit 3 million. And that took 28 days. With so many cases happening so fast, people are now waiting days for test results. Some labs are behind or running low on supplies. We've had trouble identifying who has those supplies in each state and how our labs can access that, how it's being allocated. Mark Bierenbaum, executive director of the National Independent Laboratory Association, told NPR that community and regional labs still don't have reliable supplies, which are supposed to be sent from the federal government to a single site in each state. We asked the task force to give us the name of each state contact that the supplies were sent to, and we can't get that list.

Coming up, the Supreme Court's historic ruling against President Trump and how long it could be until the economy starts to look better. This is Consider This from NPR. I'm Kelly McEvers. It's Thursday, July 9th. The Supreme Court ruled today that no president is above the law. And that decision was not a close call. My colleague and PR host Elsa Chang is going to take it from here. Remember when the president said this in 2016? I could stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot somebody and I wouldn't lose any voters, okay?

It's like incredible. Well, the president essentially turned that idea into a legal argument in cases where state and congressional investigators wanted his tax returns and other financial information. And what Trump's legal argument was, was this. Investigators should not get those records because the president of the United States is immune from any prosecution for any crime. And what's your view on the Fifth Avenue example? Here's President Trump's lawyer, William Concevoy. He's responding to a question from Judge Denny Chin during oral argument before the Second Circuit Court of Appeals last October. Local authorities couldn't investigate. They couldn't do anything about it. I think once a president is removed from office, any local authority, this is not a permanent immunity.

Well, I'm talking about while in office. No. That's the hypo. Nothing could be done. That's your position. That is correct. That is correct. Well, the Supreme Court did not buy that argument. We're coming on the air right now with breaking news from the Supreme Court and its final decisions. Instead, the court ruled that the president was not immune from a grand jury subpoena issued by the Manhattan district attorney for financial information. That district attorney, Cy Vance, is investigating, among other things, hush money payments the president allegedly made during the 2016 presidential

campaign. These are payments to Stephanie Clifford, better known as Stormy Daniels, an adult film actor, and to another woman. What the court has decided sweepingly is that a president does not have absolute immunity from these kind of grand jury proceedings. Exactly. That's the headline first. A unanimous Supreme Court says no president is above the law. They have to answer a subpoena. Significantly, the court rejected the Department of Justice's narrower argument that a higher standard must be met to get information from a sitting president. The important principle here is should a president be able to refuse to comply with subpoenas that every other American citizen would have to comply with. David Cole is national legal director for the ACLU,

which filed supporting briefs in today's cases. And that was President Trump's argument, very forcefully made, and it was very forcefully rejected by the Supreme Court, including by the two justices that he appointed, Justice Gorsuch and Justice Kavanaugh. So that case involving the Manhattan district attorney now goes back to a lower court where the president's lawyers can try a narrower argument. The court also ruled in a second related case today, one about an effort by congressional Democrats to get the president's

tax returns. And the ruling from that case was less cut and dry. But the bottom line is, while the court backed Congress's investigative powers, it said that those powers are not limitless when it comes to the president's personal information. So that case is also heading back to a lower court. Taken together, you know, one ruling outlines meaningful limits on presidential power, and the other ruling reinforces Congress's investigative role. But neither ruling is likely to allow voters to know what information the president is fighting to keep secret until after the November election. NPR host Elsa Chang. If you look at the number of jobs that people have and don't have, it's clear this pandemic is still holding the economy back. We learned from the Labor Department today there were nearly 1.3 million

new state unemployment claims last week, plus another 1 million mostly gig workers who applied for aid under the special federal pandemic program. It's been almost four straight months of this, unprecedented numbers of people looking for help every week. People are losing jobs in a bunch of different industries. This week, United Airlines warned it might have to furlough 36,000 employees in the fall. NPR's Scott Horsley reports on how long it could be until things get better. Sarah Nelson calls the warning of massive job cuts by United a gut punch, but the head of the flight attendants union says it's also the most honest assessment she's seen of the state of the airline industry and many others.

The threat to the economy is the virus itself. People don't believe that it's safe. They don't believe it's contained, and that's why people are not flying. Other industries are facing similar uncertainty. The Dursey Company in Wisconsin builds exhibits for trade shows, a business that's been decimated by the pandemic. Last month, the company notified state officials it's cutting 87 jobs in Milwaukee, the first such cuts in the company's more than 70-year history. The last of those layoffs come next week. They're devastated. This is something that I hope I never have to see again in my lifetime. Dean Wonte represents some of the affected workers who belong to the Painters Union.

He says when trade shows started getting canceled in the spring, he thought it would be a short-term problem, certainly not one that would drag this far into the summer. I thought this would be all over with. I really did. So I think a lot of other people felt the same way. But while other countries have managed to get control of the pandemic, infections in the U.S. are accelerating, with new cases now topping 60,000 a day.

Dursey CEO Brett Haney says while the trade show situation is unpredictable, some of the layoffs may last six months or more. To me, it's not a matter of if our industry comes back, it's a matter of when. And unfortunately, it probably won't happen until some point next year. To be sure, some businesses have reopened and millions of workers who were furloughed in March and April have now gone back to work. But two out of three jobs cut during the pandemic have not returned. And week after week, hundreds of thousands of new people join the unemployment rolls. I think that's a really distressing and concerning sign for the

labor market. Economist Nick Bunker is with the Indeed Hiring Lab, the research arm of the job listing website. He says while weekly unemployment claims have fallen from their springtime peak, they're still very high. And the longer this drags on, Bunker says, the more lasting the damage may be. Earlier in the crisis, there was some optimism that people would return to their job fairly quickly. What we're seeing now is more indication that lots more people who are unemployed are going to be unemployed for a longer period of time. The Verso Company, for example, is idling a paper mill in Wisconsin later this month and cutting 900 jobs. The company blames a sharp drop in demand for

advertising paper used by retailers, sports teams, and the tourist industry, all because of the pandemic. The company says the mill could be restarted if conditions improve, but it warns the shutdown may be permanent. What's more, there are few openings for people seeking new jobs. Listings on the Indeed website are down about 25 percent from this time last year. That's an improvement from the spring when listings were down nearly 40 percent. But Bunker says listings for higher paid jobs have been slow to recover, reflecting employers' uncertainty about where the economy might be six months or a year from now. The concern is that the damage starts to ripple out to other parts of the economy

that are indirectly infected by the virus. Many of the federal relief programs passed early in the pandemic assume the economy and the job market would be well on the road to recovery by now. With double-digit unemployment and infections growing by the day, policymakers may have to rethink that timeline. NPR's Scott Horsley. Additional reporting in this episode from Nina Totenberg, Richard Harris, and our colleagues at All Things Considered and Here and Now. For more news, listen to and support your local public radio station.

That support makes this podcast possible. I'm Kelly McEvers. We'll be back with more tomorrow. Whenever you face a choice, it helps to think like an economist. And this week on Planet Money Summer School, we'll start off our course in economics with a workout for your brain, how to decide what something truly costs. Listen now to Planet Money from NPR.