5 Stories to Watch Next Week | May 8, 2020

States slowly reopen as COVID-19 ravages economy — The coronavirus continues to kill Americans across the country, even if the curve seems to be flattening. President Trump said Friday that America’s death toll, which is currently at 77,000 people, could climb to 100,000 to 110,000. Beyond public health, the economic fallout from the pandemic has been devastating. According to the latest figures from the Labor Department, the American economy shed more than 20.5 million jobs in April, sending the unemployment rate to 14.7 percent. Some states , such as Georgia, Texas, and South Carolina, are slowly easing their virus-related restrictions to reopen their communities and stop the bleeding. Michigan, Nevada, and California are other states that have begun to take mild steps to reopen certain businesses. Many of these initiatives begin next week, so we’ll need to watch how the process unfolds to see the consequences. Amid COVID-19, Trump administration pushes to extend immigration limits — The Trump administration has already closed the country’s borders and effectively suspended immigration because of the coronavirus. Now, the administration is moving to expand these restrictions while President Trump’s advisers push to keep them in place for months or even years. Operating on the assumption that the public will accept the restrictions amid a pandemic, the president’s advisers are, according to the Wall Street Journal, “drawing up plans for a coming executive order, expected this month, that would ban the issuance of some new temporary, work-based visas. The order is expected to focus on visa categories including H-1B, designed for highly skilled workers, and H-2B, for seasonal migrant workers, as well as student visas and the work authorization that accompanies them.” President Trump could possibly announce the executive order next week. We’ll need to monitor this issue and wait for the details of the plan. Fallout from explosive Michael Flynn disclosures — Top FBI officials openly questioned if their “goal” was to get then-national security adviser Michael Flynn to lie or admit to breaking the Logan Act in order to “prosecute him or get him fired” when they interviewed him in January 2017, according to internal bureau documents unsealed last week. The disclosures ultimately led to the Justice Department dropping the criminal case against Flynn, who pled guilty to a single charge of lying to federal authorities before accusing the FBI of “egregious misconduct” and seeking to withdraw his guilty plea and seek exoneration. Many observers felt the FBI had tried to lure Flynn into making misstatements that the bureau could portray as lies. Now President Trump sounds uncertain about his FBI director, Christopher Wray. “It’s disappointing,” the president said Friday when asked about Wray’s role in the ongoing reviews of the FBI’s handling of the investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election. “Let’s see what happens with him. Look, the jury’s still out.” It’s quite possible that President Trump could fire Wray at any time in the coming weeks. We’ll have to watch for that and additional fallout from the revelations about Flynn’s case. Whether Trump implements or nixes US-China trade deal — President Trump confirmed that, on Friday, the top trade negotiators for the US and China talked on the phone. Both sides pledged to create favorable conditions for the first phase of a trade deal between both countries. But the coronavirus has raised tensions between Beijing and Washington because of the former’s dishonesty about and mismanagement of the initial outbreak. “I feel differently than I did,” the president said after confirming the call took place. “I’m having a very hard time with China. I made a great trade deal months before this whole thing happened.” When asked Thursday about the status of the deal, President Trump said, “I have not decided yet, if you want to know the truth.” Given the coronavirus and the hostility that it has fostered between the US and China, don’t be that surprised if the president decides to nix the deal. China had agreed to purchase an additional $200 billion in American products and services over two years compared with the amount in 2017. In the first four months of this year, however, China’s imports from the US plummeted by 5.9 percent compared to the same period a year ago, in large part because of the virus. Senate moving to pass bill on China’s crackdown on Muslim minorities — Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R., Ky.) said Thursday that he expects the chamber to move “soon” to pass a bill that would call on the Trump administration to toughen its response to the Chinese government’s crackdown on Uyghur Muslims. China has forced about one million Uyghurs into concentration camps, where the Chinese Communist Party is abusing and, according to some, “brainwashing” them. In response to China’s actions, Sen. Marco Rubio (R., Fla.) introduced the Uyghur Human Rights Policy Act. McConnell said the bill would urge President Trump “to use targeted sanctions against those responsible for the repression.” An anonymous source told Reuters that a vote could happen as soon as next week but might be delayed. The bill is sure to anger China as tensions grow between Beijing and Washington over the coronavirus pandemic. Newt's Latest Podcasts: