New York House Republicans are urging President Trump’s top health officials, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and Dr. Mehmet Oz, to determine whether ex-Gov. Andrew Cuomo violated federal safety guidance by sending COVID-infected elderly patients released from hospitals into nursing homes during the worst of the pandemic.
The appeal centers on the then-Cuomo administration’s controversial March 25, 2020, directive prodding nursing homes to accept treated COVID patients discharged from hospitals.
“More than 15,000 New York nursing home residents died of COVID during the early part of the pandemic. We just passed the grim five-year anniversary of New York’s infamous March 25, 2020, directive, which forced ill-prepared nursing homes to accept 9,056 COVID-19 patients over a six-week period,” said the letter drafted by Congressman Mike Lawler.
“We are seeking a written determination from your agencies as to whether the New York State Department of Health’s March 25th directive was in compliance with CMS [Centers for Medicare and Medicaid] and CDC [Centers for Disease Control] guidance,” said the Sept. 29 letter sent to Kennedy, secretary of Health and Human Services, CMS Administrator Oz and Acting CDC Director Jim O’Neill.
The letter was co-signed by GOP Reps. Elise Stefanik, Claudia Tenney, Andrew Garbarino and Nick LaLota.
The letter comes as Cuomo seeks a comeback bid for New York City mayor, running on an independent “Fight and Deliver” ballot line after losing the Democratic primary to democratic socialist Queens Assemblyman Zohran Mamdani.
His handling of COVID as governor continues to haunt him.
Earlier Wednesday, Cuomo released a video explicitly apologizing to the ultra-orthodox Jewish community for imposing lockdowns during the pandemic that barred large gatherings, including religious services.
The lawmakers expressed displeasure with Trump’s health team for blowing off a similar letter requesting a ruling on the Cuomo administration’s nursing order on March 6. --->READ MORE HERE
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| Illustration: Eddie Marshall | Midjourney |
The good news is that the first 20 years of the millennium saw overall increases in economic freedom around the world—with continuous improvement through the second decade. The bad news is that not just the United States but most of the world lost ground during the massive government interventions of the COVID-19 pandemic. That's unfortunate for individual liberty, but also for prosperity since the economic freedom of a country strongly correlates with higher incomes and lower poverty. The world appears to be recovering freedom and wealth, but it lost years of progress to government meddling.
The World Starts To Regain Lost Ground
The latest edition of the Economic Freedom of the World report, published by Canada's Fraser Institute, the Cato Institute, "and more than 70 think tanks around the world" is out, and it finds the world digging itself out of a hole that started in 2020.
"Overall, the index shows that economic freedom has increased since 2000, but fell precipitously following the coronavirus pandemic, erasing nearly a decade of progress," the authors note. "We take no position on the efficacy of the various public-health policies designed to deal with the coronavirus pandemic; they very well may have saved millions of lives, or they may have been completely ineffectual….Our concern is economic freedom, and on that margin, there is no question that government policies responding to the coronavirus pandemic have reduced economic freedom."
While global economic freedom has started to improve again as the pandemic and its interventions fade into memory, the average across nations is back to where it was in 2012. Weighted for population, which accounts for large countries with statist governments including China, the world's economic freedom is just a hair better than it was in 2013 and has yet to start recovery from the COVID-era dip.
The index shows North America experiencing the largest decline over the measured period, with Latin America, the Caribbean, the Middle East, and North Africa following. "The latter region's decline is especially tragic given its low starting point," comment the authors.
"In 2023—the latest year for which data are available—the 10 highest scoring nations were Hong Kong, Singapore, New Zealand, Switzerland, the United States, Ireland, Australia and Taiwan (tied for 7th), Denmark, and the Netherlands."
Even High-Scoring Jurisdictions Suffer From Interference
Hong Kong has consistently been at or near the top of the index for economic freedom, but that's a sign of a relative position rather than an absolute one. The Chinese government's growing interference in the territory's civil and economic life is doing real damage. "The deterioration in the territory's regulation and legal system and property rights areas is no doubt due to a notorious 2020 security law that seems to have ended China's promise of 'one country, two systems,'" per the report. --->READ MORE HEREFollow links below to relevant/related stories and resources:
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