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When Oregon Republicans fled the Capitol a week ago, much of the news coverage and social media discussion in the state focused on the walkout and the climate cap-and-trade bill the GOP sought to kill or have referred to voters.

That began to shift late last week, with news that the first Oregon case of presumptive coronavirus was diagnosed on Friday in the states populous Portland metropolitan area. By Monday there were three Oregon adults with the diagnosis, including one who attended a youth basketball game in Umatilla County.

Oregon has yet to follow Washington, where the coronavirus has so far caused more fatalities, in declaring a state of emergency. The Oregon Health Authority had the resources it needed to work with local health agencies and medical providers as of Sunday, The Oregonian/OregonLive reported. But Brown also was ready to declare an emergency if and when necessary, her spokesman said.

Washington also has something Oregon doesnt right now: a full Legislature, meeting and voting on bills. This includes a $100 million emergency funding request from that states health secretary, the Northwest News Network reported.

The increased interest in Oregon leaders response to the spreading virus could pose a quandary for Republicans, most of whom remain out of state in order to block Democrats from passing cap-and-trade or any other bills.

On Monday afternoon, Rep. Greg Barreto, R-Cove, said he was on the phone with the House Republican caucus when a reporter called. Barreto represents the town of Weston, where the basketball game took place in a local school gym.

Quite frankly, I dont know if I can do anything if I was back that I couldnt do over the phone, Barreto said. Really, (Oregon Health Authority) has got the lead on that and I would think the commissioners here in Umatilla County are right there beside them.

Sen. Bill Hansell, R-Athena, also represents Weston. He could not be reached for comment Monday afternoon regarding whether the spread of coronavirus is impacting his decision to stay away from the Capitol and likely outside Oregon.

Meanwhile, one of the two Republicans who has remained at the Capitol, Rep. Cheri Helt of Bend, scheduled a roundtable at a library in her district tonight to discuss preparations for coronavirus.

It is important that we efficiently and effectively communicate with our community to tell our neighbors about the work that is being done to prevent a public health crisis, Helt said in a statement. She invited local government leaders and health professionals to join her for the discussion.

Democrats, who have continued to hold committee meetings this week on climate change, budget bills and other legislation, are also turning their attention to Oregons response to the virus. Senate Human Services Chair Sara Gelser, D-Corvallis, scheduled a Wednesday afternoon briefing on how the state is handling care for high-risk populations including older Oregonians, people with intellectual and developmental disabilities, people living in institutional settings and people experiencing homelessness.

The governor also used the campaign apparatus she built for her 2018 reelection to contact her supporters directly with an emailed update.

We are working day and night to contain this disease, Gov. Kate Brown wrote in the email. And as we tackle this challenge, we will be open with the public and share information as quickly as possible. In fact, we announced the first confirmed case within just a few hours of learning the test results.

Christopher McKnight Nichols, a history professor and director of the Oregon State University Center for the Humanities, has written about how governments responded to the 1918 flu pandemic and is closely following the legislative Republican walkouts. He said most Republicans absence from the state during this critical time could bear consequences in this years general election.

In November, one of the cudgels that Democrats have to brandish against Republicans is they walked out at a critical time for Oregonians, McKnight Nichols said. You can imagine this will have a pretty long tail.

Hillary Borrud | hborrud@oregonian.com | 503-294-4034 | @hborrud

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With coronavirus spreading in Oregon, will Republicans rethink their Capitol boycott? - OregonLive

Republican lawmakers under pressure to address the climate crisis are trying to move beyond denying the problem and start proposing solutions. But they still refuse to commit to what scientists say is necessary if the US is to rapidly cut back on burning fossil fuels.

A recent package of legislation proposed by House Republican leader Kevin McCarthy would encourage capturing climate pollutants from power plants but use them to drill for oil.

It would also lead to the planting of a trillion trees to absorb carbon emissions but also ramp up logging, an idea Donald Trump has endorsed.

Its greenwashing, said Randi Spivak, public lands director at the Center for Biological Diversity, which organized a letter of opposition on the tree bill from dozens of environment groups to the House natural resources committee.

The science is very clear, Spivak said. We need to slash our carbon pollution by 50% over the next 10 years if we want to avert the worst impacts of global warming and keep global warming to a 1.5C increase.

The Republican party has seen a pendulum swing. In 2008, its election platform emphasized the importance of cutting emissions. By 2016, Donald Trump ran on a campaign of climate denial.

Now at least some prominent Republicans are breaking from the president and veering away from questioning the science and toward efforts that do not directly attack the coal, oil and gas industries. Facing pushback from the far right, on the other side of the aisle they are criticized by some Democrats who believe they are not proposing legislation in good faith.

Even someone whos not a forester should be able to recognize an olive branch when they see one

Alex Flint, executive director of the Alliance for Market Solutions a right-of-center organization that advocates reducing carbon pollution while growing the US economy said the House bills were directionally correct but need to grow to address the scale of our climate problem.

Flints group backs revenue-neutral carbon tax and deregulation.

I give [House Republicans] a great deal of credit for acknowledging the problem and stepping forward with proposals and recognizing that the politics of this has changed, he said. But also acknowledging that they are in the early stages of really substantive climate proposals.

Bruce Westerman, an Arkansas Republican who introduced the trees bill, insisted his proposal would curb emissions even as it promotes logging.

When trees are cut down, they stop absorbing carbon. Westerman, a forester who worked for an engineering consulting firm in the timber, pulp and paper business, said forest managers would just plant them again.

Products made from the trees would pay for continual planting, he said, and the wood would be used for sustainable buildings with lower emissions footprints.

A scientist called to testify by Democrats, Yale ecology professor Carla Staver, strongly disagreed with Westermans proposals.

Forest management is an important way to fight climate change but it is not enough and it must be done properly, experts agree. A bill from Democrats would aim to conserve forests without increasing logging and by banning oil and gas drilling on public lands if climate emissions exceed targets.

Westerman told the Guardian Democrats should be working with Republicans who want to address climate change.

Even someone whos not a forester should be able to recognize an olive branch when they see one, he said.

Even as Westerman defended his bill, the top Republican on his committee seemed to dismiss the overall effort.

At the beginning of the meeting, to which he was late, Rob Bishop of Utah suggested the elevators in House office buildings would be more timely under the rule of Benito Mussolini than they are with Democrats in charge. Democratic climate proposals, he said, offered not a silver bullet to fix the problem but another bullet that is going to be used to shoot ourselves in the foot.

He then showed a graph demonstrating how US heat-trapping emissions have declined over time.

While the Republican bills are far from aggressive, the right of the party is pushing back. The conservative Club for Growth Pac painted the package as stifling liberal environmental taxes, regulations, and subsidies and vowed to withhold support from any backers.

At the annual CPAC gathering near Washington, the climate change denial group the Heartland Institute presented a German teen activist who calls herself a climate sceptic as a foil to Greta Thunberg.

In Oregon, Republican state senators fled the state capitol in order to derail a climate change bill.

Despite that backdrop, the top Democrat on the House natural resources committee welcomed Westermans proposal. Ral Grijalva said he hoped for a new chapter, focusing on solutions not denial.

He said: For too long my friends on the other side of aisle denied that this was even a real issue. They would reject or even mock the overwhelming scientific consensus that climate is warming humans are responsible and urgent action needs to be taken.

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Republicans are making noises on climate action. Some say it's just greenwashing - The Guardian

Senator Susan Collins, here applauding Trump during his State of the Union address on February 4, absurdly claimed after the Senates acquittal of him that Trump had learned from his impeachment and that he will be much more cautious in the future. (Drew Angerer / Getty Images)

Trumps attacks on the federal judiciary are the domestic Signal this week. Freed from all accountability by the Senate, the realtors inner autocrat is on full display, with a pressure campaign on the Justice Department to back off on its sentencing recommendations for his convicted friend Roger Stone, and with an extraordinary flurry of tweets personally attacking the judge in Stones case.Ad Policy

Trumps actions got so extreme that, amazingly, even Attorney General Barr finally had enough. On Thursday evening, in an extraordinary exchange, Barr, who has done more than anyone else to protect and enable this lawless presidency, said that Trumps tweets were making it impossible for him to do his job. Trump wasnt humbled. By Friday, he was on the attack once again, claiming that he had the legal right to interfere in federal criminal cases.

For Senator Susan Collins, who absurdly claimed that Trump had learned his lesson after being impeached by the House, and for the other moderate Republicans who voted to acquit, this week has been a nightmare. Sure, they can dismiss it as simply more Trumpian Noise, but when the attorney general of the United States personally undermines his own career prosecutors to do a solid for the president, thats far more serious than mere chatter.

And theres no indication things will get better anytime soon. To the contrary, between now and November we are likely to see Trump fully unleashed.More Signal:Noise

We are heading into election season led by a president consumed with personal vendettas and convinced that he is surrounded by conspirators. Paranoid and narcissistic, he is firing anyone who stands in his way, demanding ever more craven demonstrations of loyalty from his courtiers. In Tennessee, legislators are debating a resolution to declare CNN and The Washington Post fake news because of their critical coverage of Trump.

Trump himself attacks the press on a daily basis, spending the wee hours of the morning tweeting insults and ignoring major developments that require his attention.

That would be bad enough in normal times. But these arent normal times.Current Issue

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The threat of a coronavirus pandemic highlights the vital importance of properly funding public health initiatives and bringing primary health care access to as many Americans as possible. But theres no one left in the Trump inner circle willing to question the defunding of Medicaid, the Centers for Disease Control, the National Institutes of Health; of international efforts to monitor and track diseases; of foreign aid and international relief efforts.

For three years, former CDC officials have warned that the agency is catastrophically underfunded and not prepared to handle a public health emergency. They have been ignoredas have scientists working on climate change, pollution impacts, workplace contaminants, and so on. In Trumpland, only short-term profits matter, so the countrys long-term strategic planning in these areas has taken a series of grievous hits.

Meanwhile, Turkeya NATO member that could invoke Article V of NATOs charter were it to come under attackis in a direct shooting match with Syrian forces inside Syria. The risk of a clash with Russia, which is supporting the Syrian government, is growing by the day.

These are truly perilous times. The rule of law is being corroded; public health is endangered; the international situation grows ever more chaotic.

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Republicans Have Made It Clear They Will Let Trump Become a Dictator. Will We? - The Nation

Eric Trump, the son of Donald Trump, said the president will win reelection by a landslide, partly because of what he calls miscalculations by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi.

If you want to talk about the gift that keeps on giving, thats Nancy Pelosi, Eric Trump said late Thursday night at the Dallas County Republican Partys Reagan Day Dinner.

Trump said that from the start of the impeachment of the president pushed by Pelosi and Democrats, his fathers campaign raised $117 million dollars, much of it from 1.4 million new donors.

President Trump was acquitted by the Republican-controlled Senate on charges of abuse of power and obstruction of Congress.

I want to thank Nancy Pelosi on behalf of the entire Trump family. Keep doing it, Trump said. We are huge fans of yours. You will get my father reelected.

Eric Trump was the keynote speaker at the Dallas County Republicans annual fundraising dinner. On hand was Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick, a key figure in President Trumps reelection campaign, and former Texas governor and former Energy Secretary Rick Perry.

Dallas County Republicans have suffered steep losses here since Democrats took control of countywide politics in 2006. Trump didnt speak about the local Republican Partys predicament, but instead assured them that President Trump would get reelected, as well as most of the candidates that were in the room.

He said the president would run a better funded campaign than in 2016 and win states that he narrowly lost like Minnesota and New Hampshire. And he predicted his father would again win Texas.

Democrats are hoping to win their first statewide race since 1994.

Were going to win Texas by a larger margin than we won before, he said.

He took a swipe at Democrats and Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont, a frontrunner in the Democratic presidential primary.

People talk about socialism, he said. Honestly, you should use the word communism.

Among other things, Eric Trump touted the low unemployment rate, the rising stock market and the appointment of conservative judges under his fathers watch.

Were going to keep America great, he said.

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Eric Trump tells Dallas County Republicans that his father will win reelection by landslide - The Dallas Morning News

Senate Republican sources expect President TrumpDonald John TrumpTrump declares war on hardworking Americans with new budget request Avenatti found guilty in Nike extortion trial First, we'll neuter all the judges MORE to withdraw his nomination of Judy Shelton to serve on the Federal Reserve Board following bipartisan resistance on Capitol Hill.

The White House has not made a final decision, since Trump would first need to sign off on the reversal, but Republican sources say it would be desirable for her to withdraw from consideration and that her nomination is trending in that direction.

Shes being pulled, said a Republican senator.

SenateGOP aides have indicated to colleagues privately that they expect Shelton to withdraw, according to one Senate aide familiar with the discussions.

If Shelton pulls out, she would would be Trump's third Fednominee derailed by Senate Republican opposition, and the fifth overall, counting informal picks as well.

GOP senators previously quashed Trump's selections of entrepreneur Herman CainHerman CainThe Hill's Morning Report AG Barr, GOP senators try to rein Trump in Republicans expect Trump to withdraw controversial Fed nominee On The Money: Fed chief warns Congress on deficits | Trump blames Powell after Dow dips slightly | Trump withdraws nomination of former US attorney for Treasury post MORE and conservative commentatorStephen MooreStephen MooreThe Hill's Morning Report AG Barr, GOP senators try to rein Trump in Republicans expect Trump to withdraw controversial Fed nominee On The Money: Fed chief warns Congress on deficits | Trump blames Powell after Dow dips slightly | Trump withdraws nomination of former US attorney for Treasury post MORE for the Fed in 2019 before the president could formally nominate them.

The White House press office on Thursday afternoon, however, pushed back on talk that Sheltons nomination is doomed.

The nomination of Judy Shelton and Christopher Waller are not being pulled. Both were in front of the Banking Committee today and the White House expects both to be confirmed by the Senate to the Federal Reserve, the White House said in a statement.

Trump has also tapped Christopher Waller, the research director of the St. Louis Fed, to serve as a Fed board member.

Shelton has taken bipartisan criticism over a 2009 op-ed in which she urged the United States to return to the gold standard, a policy that was abandoned by President Nixon in the early 1970s.

Her biggest backers for the Fed post are Trump and National Economic Council Director Larry KudlowLawrence (Larry) Alan KudlowMORE. But beyond Trump and Kudlow, her support within the administration is thin, according to a Senate aide briefed on the nomination.

Kudlow was also astrong supporter for Moores nomination, which the White House withdrew last year after hitting robust GOP resistance on Capitol Hill.

Shelton, a former Trump campaign adviser, was nominated to the Fed in January after the president first announced his intent to appoint her in July.

Senate Republicans on the Banking Committee were not impressed with her performance at a confirmation hearing Thursday morning, which senators said would be an important test for her nomination.

Lawmakers from both parties criticized her at the hearing for supporting the gold standard, reversing her views on interest rates after Trump's election and defending the president's attacks on the Fed and its chairman, Jerome Powell.

I don't claim to be in the mainstream of economists, Shelton said in her defense.

She vowed to strengthen the discussion and work closelywith the Fed's leaders.

Asked to rate Sheltons performance Thursday, Sen. Richard ShelbyRichard Craig ShelbyOn The Money: Republicans expect Trump to pull controversial Fed nominee | Inside Judy Shelton's confirmation hearing | Trump extends emergency declaration at border Republicans expect Trump to withdraw controversial Fed nominee Pentagon transferring .8 billion to border wall MORE (R-Ala.), a senior member of the Banking Committee, replied tersely: She performed.

I have a lot of concerns, especially even after the hearing. Im thinking about it, talking to some of my colleagues, he said.

Shelby said Sheltons unorthodox views on economic and monetary policy are among his primary concerns.

Im not satisfied that shes mainstream at the moment, he said. Id like to support her. Id like to support the presidents nominees. I havent always done that. I think the Fed should be independent and we should have mainstream people on there, and I dont think shes a mainstream economist, Shelby told reporters.

Shelby, however, declined to say how he would vote or speculate on what would happen to Sheltons nomination.

Asked when the nominee might receive a confirmation vote, Shelby said, I dont know.

Republicans control 15 seats on the Banking Committee, while Democrats control 13.

If two GOP lawmakers vote against Shelton,her nomination will be defeated in committee.

So far, Shelby and Sen. Pat ToomeyPatrick (Pat) Joseph ToomeyNSA improperly collected US phone records in October, new documents show Overnight Defense: Pick for South Korean envoy splits with Trump on nuclear threat | McCain blasts move to suspend Korean military exercises | White House defends Trump salute of North Korean general WH backpedals on Trump's 'due process' remark on guns MORE (R-Pa.) have raised serious concerns with her nomination. A third member of the panel, Sen. John KennedyJohn Neely KennedyMORE (R-La.), is undecided.

Toomey on Thursday warned that Sheltons advocacy for cutting interest rates to prevent the dollar from strengthening any further, which could hurt exports, is a risky strategy.

Thats a very, very dangerous path to go down. This beggar-thy-neighbor mutual currency devaluation is not in our interest, and it is not in the mandate of the Fed to pursue it, Toomey said.

Other Republican senators even lawmakers not on the Banking Committee have raised concerns about Sheltons views.

I share Sen. Shelbys concern, said Sen. Pat RobertsCharles (Pat) Patrick RobertsRepublicans expect Trump to withdraw controversial Fed nominee Celebrating and expanding upon five years of the ABLE Act The Hill's 12:30 Report: Decision day in Iowa MORE (Kan.), when asked about the prospect of returning to the gold standard.

Shelby on Wednesday said returning to the gold standard is kind of like the barter system.

Hard to get out of a recession with that, he said. Not enough gold in the world. Our [gross domestic product] GDP is worth so much more than gold.

In addition to derailing Cain and Moore before they could be nominated, Senate Republicans spiked two of Trumps other Fed nominees.

Republican lawmakers did not advance the 2017 nomination of former Carnegie Mellon economics professor Marvin Goodfriend after he faced intense scrutinyduring his confirmation hearing.

His nomination expired in 2018 and was not renewed by Trump before Goodfriend died of cancer in December 2019.

Republican senators also rejected Trump's choice of former Fed research director Nellie Liang, a Democrat who was integral to the post-crisis bank regulatory regime often criticized by Republicans.

Moore told The Hill in an interview that nominees who have unorthodox economic views face an uphill battle to win Senate confirmation.

"There is a bias at the Fed against anyone who thinks out of the box. I find that to be so troubling," he said."Whether you agree or disagree with Judys position, its healthy to have people that dont just toe the orthodox line on monetary policy."

Trump announced in May that he would not follow through on his intention to put Moore on the Fed after it became clear he did not have enough votes to win confirmation.

Moore was criticized for writing that it would be dangerous for women to earn more than men, among other controversial statements.

Jordain Carney and Brett Samuels contributed.

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Republicans expect Trump to withdraw controversial Fed nominee | TheHill - The Hill