CORONAVIRUS UPDATE: March 17th

March 17, 2020

WRITER

Glenn gives the latest coronavirus numbers, updating YOU on everything needed to know as Americans and officials monitor China's new COVID-19 virus:

Daily Stats as of 5:30 AM CT (from John's Hopkins)

Total Confirmed Cases Worldwide: 185,461 (up from 171,105 yesterday)
Total Confirmed Deaths Worldwide: 7,332 (up from 6,531 yesterday)
Total Confirmed Recovered Worldwide: 79,935 (up from 77,783 yesterday)
162 Countries have confirmed cases (up from 158 yesterday) 3 more have suspected cases
6% of Active Cases are considered serious (requiring hospitalization), down from 7% yesterday and down from 19% just 3 weeks ago
US has 4,743 Confirmed Cases and 93 Deaths, up from 3,802 cases and 69 deaths yesterday
In the US, only West Virginia does not have at least 1 Active Case https://www.axios.com/coronavirus-west-virginia-only-state-no-case-ac32ce6d-5523-4310-a219-7d1d1dcb6b44.html

The Economy or Lives: You Can Only Pick Onehttps://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/15/business/economy/coronavirus-economy-impact.html

In a script that is playing out in similar fashion all over the world, Governments are forced to pick between saving lives and economic activity.
US and Western economies are particularly impacted...in the US, 70% of total economic activity is generated via Consumer spending.
Across the US, Small Businesses appear to be the hardest hit, especially those that directly serve consumers such as bars, restaurants, dry cleaners, etc.
A study from Case Western University estimates that nearly 50% of service jobs in the US will be impacted, with as many as 1 million jobs lost in the next 30 days.
Experiences from other countries seem to leave governments little choice: either shut down activities where people congregate, or risk COVID-19 deaths to skyrocket.
In Italy, Iran and Wuhan, China, the Case Fatality Rate was 6%, 9% and 3.5%, respectively, compared to an estimated 1% or lower Case Fatality Rate in countries that practiced active social distancing and extreme isolation.
By limiting human to human interaction through Social Distancing and Non-Pharmaceutical Interventions such as wearing masks to prevent shedding virus through respiration, washing hands, people can help "Flatten The Curve" to ensure a total Case Fatality Rate of 1% or less.

US Testing First of Its Kind Vaccinehttps://news.yahoo.com/participants-receive-first-dose-experimental-191933437.html

As TheBlaze reported nearly two weeks ago, a new kind of experimental Vaccine is now entering human trials.
The vaccine is unique in that it does NOT use the live virus as are used in traditional vaccines.
Rather the new approach was to synthetically construct an RNA strand that copies the genetic code of the Virus to teach human cells to produce antibodies.
Viruses work by taking over human cells and turning each cell into a virus-producing factory, which is how they replicate.
The synthetically-produced RNA strand used in the new Vaccine does not self-replicate, but should still activate antibody production.
Researchers warned that even if the human trials started this week are successful, it may still be 18 months before the new Vaccine could be widely distributed. The Trump administration vowed on Monday that 'all barriers' would be removed to accelerate testing and production if successful.

Shut Down All Non-Essential Businesses - Who Defines What Is Essential?https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/policy/energy/extraordinary-measures-tom-cotton-calls-for-shutting-down-all-nonessential-business

Sen. Tom Cotton, an Arkansas Republican, said the United States must shut down all but essential businesses and government agencies to stop the spread of the novel coronavirus.
"The time has come for extraordinary measures to combat the Chinese coronavirus," Cotton tweeted Monday. "What seems extreme today will seem obvious tomorrow."
Cotton, chairman of the economic policy subcommittee of the Senate Banking Committee, said he is drafting legislation that would give "cash stipends" to workers and their families affected by COVID-19, "so they can buy food and pay the bills during this crisis," Cotton said.
So far, 'an essential business' definition has varied by state but does seem to include Grocery stores, pharmacies, medical facilities and, in some markets restaurants for pick up.

Shelter in Place Order in 6 Counties in California, More Expected Todayhttps://www.cnbc.com/2020/03/16/san-francisco-orders-residents-to-stay-inside-except-for-essential-needs.html

Over 7 Million Californians have been ordered to shelter in place at home for 3 weeks.
Order is effective as of Midnight last night. Residents are allowed outside for walks, to acquire food/medicine from local stores, or to travel to medical appointments.
All non-essential activity outside the home is effectively illegal, although law enforcement are being asked to practice patience and provide guidance and warnings rather than arrest people who refuse to comply.
Similar "house-arrest" orders are being considered throughout the country and elsewhere in California, including Alameda Country, LA County and Orange Country, officials indicated.
In total, including similar activity restrictions in Washington, New York, Pennsylvania and other locations, an estimated 30 million Americans are currently experiencing some degree of travel or activity restrictions.
So far, the ACLU's only response to COVID-19 is a strongly anti-Trump landing page indicating that Trump will help "Lead" the Panic and asking for Donations to defeat him in November 2020. https://www.aclu.org/news/privacy-technology/what-you-need-to-know-about-the-coronavirus-outbreak-a-civil-liberties-perspective/

European Union To Close All Boarders to Non-EU Citizenshttps://www.scmp.com/news/china/society/article/3075467/europe-shut-border-month-unprecedented-response-coronavirus

For the next 15 Days at least, all travel will be restricted into the EU, with all non-EU residents requiring special travel permits for medical reasons to enter any EU member state.
The ban on travel to the EU does include bans on travel from Asia, Africa, The Middle East and S America.
So far, The EU has yet to accuse itself of racism or bigotry for enacting a travel ban, although officials in Brussels officially rebuked The US for it's travel-restrictions just last Thursday and that official rebuke has yet to be rescinded.

National Supply Chain Fine, But How to Balance Local Needshttps://mynbc15.com/news/local/baldwin-county-stores-struggle-to-keep-shelves-stocked-amid-coronavirus-pandemic, https://finance.yahoo.com/news/grocery-store-supply-chain-shocked-202411516.html

Overall, there is plenty of food & medical supplies to stock America's store shelves...when measured Nationally.
The challenge for some markets is ensuring regional supply chains can keep up with "surge" buying caused by local orders for residents to stay put for 2-3 weeks or longer.
While stores like Kroger, Wal-mart, etc do have regionally located warehouses, localized buying sprees as residents stock up for long-stints at home can empty regional logistics facilities, requiring retailers to shift stock from one region to another.
Further disruptions may be caused by lack of labor itself, as residents are ordered to 'shelter in place', warehouse workers, truck drivers and stocking clerks may fail to show up for shifts.
Suddenly, Doctors and Nurses aren't the only "essential workers" in the US.... In a shelter-at -home economy, The Stockboy at your local grocer may be just as important.

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Glenn: Pay attention to what the State Department's RADICAL reset is signaling

John McDonnell / Stringer | Getty Images

For years, the U.S. State Department operated on inertia—an institution locked into a cycle of caution, consensus, and risk aversion.

Speeches were careful, strategies were diluted by committees, and action was often defined by what couldn’t be done. The language was always the same: "nuance," "complexity," "stakeholders." Rarely was it about results.

That has changed.

What’s come out of the State Department in the last hundred days is a complete departure—not just in tone, but in structure.

Under Secretary Rubio, the department isn’t just adjusting tactics. It’s undergoing a philosophical reset.

The most telling shift is this: the department is no longer preoccupied with managing decline or defending abstractions. It’s operating from the premise that U.S. foreign policy must serve actual national interests, not vague global norms or ideological missions.

Look at the key decisions. The Global Engagement Center—an office that claimed to combat disinformation but increasingly acted as an internal censorship tool—is gone. Not repurposed. Not renamed. Eliminated. Aid programs that masked themselves as diplomacy while undermining core U.S. positions have been cut. Contracts to NGOs with open hostility toward U.S. policy goals? Revoked.

This isn’t cosmetic. It’s structural.

The department’s reorganization is consolidating power downward—removing bureaucratic silos, emphasizing merit over ideology, and restoring clarity to diplomatic goals. This isn’t about optics. It’s about removing friction between strategy and implementation. On immigration and border enforcement, there’s now a foreign policy posture that treats visa privileges as exactly that—privileges, not entitlements. Visa holders who break laws or support terrorist groups lose their status. Period. No press conference required. Just enforcement.

Regional partnerships are now framed by expectations, not entanglements.

Countries that allow mass illegal migration into the U.S. are being held accountable. Agreements are being structured around reciprocity. When those agreements are ignored, consequences follow. China’s influence in the Western Hemisphere, long treated as inevitable, has been directly challenged. Beijing’s role in Panama, particularly regarding the canal, has been dismantled through diplomacy backed by leverage, not lectures. That wasn’t done through press statements—it required statecraft, pressure, and the willingness to say no.

In Europe, there’s been a reframing of NATO obligations. Not as symbolic unity, but as measurable responsibility. The benchmark is no longer two percent. The conversation is now five. That changes the nature of the alliance. In Africa, the posture is shifting from dependency to commercial engagement. Trade, not aid. Access, not assistance. Diplomacy with terms, not with guilt.

The contrast is stark.

This isn’t a matter of tone or branding. This is a systemic shift away from a model that rewarded process over outcomes, toward one that is rediscovering the purpose of diplomacy: to secure advantage, resolve conflict, and protect national interests.

This recalibration will not be popular in foreign capitals used to ambiguity, or in institutions comfortable with drift. It’s also not universally admirable. It’s direct. It’s unambiguous. And it signals something rare in modern American foreign policy: conviction.

That alone is worth paying attention to.

Glenn: Why Memorial Day is not just another holiday

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They wore the uniform so you could live free. This holiday, ask yourself if you're living in a way that honors that sacrifice — or cheapens it.

Your son has been a Marine for what feels like an eternity. Only those who have watched their children deploy into war zones can truly understand why time seems to freeze in worry. What begins as concern turns to panic, then helplessness. You live suspended in a silent winter, where days blur and dread becomes your constant companion.

Then, in an instant, it happens. What you don’t know yet is that your child — your most precious gift — fell in combat 60 seconds ago.

This is a day for sacred remembrance, for honoring those who laid down their lives.

While you go about your day, unaware, military protocol kicks into motion. Notification must happen within eight hours. Officers are dispatched. A chaplain joins them. A medic may accompany them in case the grief is too much to bear.

Three figures arrive at your door. One asks your name. Then, by protocol, they ask to enter your home. You already know what’s coming. You sit down. He looks you in the eye and says:

The commandant of the Marine Corps has entrusted me to express his deep regret that your son John was killed in action on Friday, March 28. The commandant and the United States Marine Corps extend their deepest sympathy to you and your family in your loss.

This moment has played out thousands of times across American soil. In 2003 alone — just two years after 9/11 — 312 families endured it. In 2007, 847 American service members died in combat. In 2008, 352. In 2009, 346. The list goes on. And with every name, a family became a Gold Star family.

Honor the fallen

For most Americans, Memorial Day means backyard barbecues, family gatherings, maybe a trip to the lake or a sweet Airbnb. There’s nothing wrong with enjoying these things. But we must never forget why we can.

Ask any veteran who lived when others did not, and you’ll understand: Memorial Day is not just another holiday. It is a solemn day set apart for reverence.

So this weekend, reach out to a Gold Star family. Acknowledge their pain. Ask about their son or daughter. Let them know they’re not alone.

This is a day for sacred remembrance, for honoring those who laid down their lives — not for accolades but for love of country and the preservation of liberty. “Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends” (John 15:13).

They died for the Constitution, for our shared American ideals, and the worst thing we could do now would be to betray those ideals in a spirit of rage or division.

We cannot dishonor their sacrifice by abandoning the very principles they died to protect — equal justice, the rule of law, the enduring promise of liberty.

This Memorial Day, let us remember the fallen. Let us honor their families. Let us recommit ourselves to the cause they gave everything for: the American way of life.

They are the best of us.

This article originally appeared on TheBlaze.com.

Trump exposes Left’s habeas corpus hijack in border crisis

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Democrats accused the president of declaring war on civil rights. In reality, he’s defending habeas corpus while they drown it in delays and legal loopholes.

Tuesday’s congressional testimony from Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem turned heads for all the wrong reasons. Pressed to define “habeas corpus,” she stumbled. And while I respect Noem, this moment revealed just how dangerously misunderstood one of our most vital legal protections has become — especially as it’s weaponized in the immigration debate.

Habeas corpus is not a loophole. It’s a shield. It’s the constitutional protection that prevents a government from detaining a person — any person — without first justifying the detention before a neutral judge. It doesn’t guarantee freedom. It demands due process. Prove it or release them.

Bureaucratic inertia, activist judges, and political cowardice have turned due process into a slow-motion invasion. And the left knows it.

And yet, this doctrine — so essential to our liberty — is now being twisted by the political left into something it was never meant to be: a free pass for illegal immigration.

The left wants to frame this as a matter of compassion and rights. Leftists ask: “What about habeas corpus for migrants?” The implication is clear: They see any attempt to enforce immigration law as an attack on civil liberties.

But that’s a lie. Habeas corpus is not an excuse for indefinite presence. It doesn’t guarantee that every person who crosses the border gets to stay. It simply requires that we follow a process — a just process.

And that’s exactly what President Donald Trump has proposed.

Habeas corpus, rightly understood

Habeas corpus is the front door to the courtroom. It simply requires the government to justify why someone is being held or detained. It’s not about citizenship. It’s about human dignity.

America’s founders knew this — and that’s why they extended the right to persons, not just citizens. Habeas corpus isn’t a pass to stay in America forever — it’s a demand for legal clarity: “Why are you holding me?” That’s it.

If the government has a lawful reason — such as illegal entry — then deportation is a legitimate outcome. And yet, the left treats any enforcement of immigration law as a betrayal of American ideals.

The danger today isn’t that habeas corpus is being ignored; it’s that it’s being hijacked. The system is being overwhelmed with bad-faith cases, endless appeals, and delays that stretch for years. Right now, the immigration courts are buried under 3.3 million pending cases. The average wait time to have your case heard is four years. In some places, people are being scheduled for court dates as far out in 2032. Where is the justice in that?

This is not compassion. This is national sabotage.

Weaponizing due process

The left uses this legal bottleneck as a weapon, not a shield. Democrats invoke due process as if it requires the government to play a never-ending shell game with public safety. But that’s not what due process means. Due process means the state must play by the rules. It means a judge hears a case. It means the law is applied justly and equally. It does not mean an open border by procedural default.

So no, Trump is not proposing the end of habeas corpus. He’s calling out a broken system and saying, out loud, what millions of Americans already know: If we don’t fix this, we don’t have a country.

This crisis wasn’t an accident — it was engineered. It’s a Cloward-Piven playbook, designed to overwhelm the system. Bureaucratic inertia, activist judges, and political cowardice have turned due process into a slow-motion invasion. And the left knows it.

Abandon the Constitution?

Remember, the Constitution is not a suicide pact. But how do we balance the Constitution and our national survival without descending into authoritarianism? Abandon the Constitution? No. Burn the house down to get rid of the rats? Absolutely not. The Constitution itself gives us the tools to take on this crisis head on.

The federal government has clear authority over immigration. Illegal presence in the United States is not a protected right. Congress has the power to deny entry, enforce expedited removals, and reject bogus asylum claims. Much of this is already authorized by law — it’s simply not being used.

President Trump’s idea is simple: Use the tools we already have. Declare the southern border a national security emergency. Establish temporary military tribunals for triage. Process asylum claims swiftly outside the clogged court system. Restore “Remain in Mexico” so that the border is no longer a remote court room. Appoint more immigration judges, assign them to high-volume areas, and hold streamlined hearings that still respect due process.

That’s not authoritarian. That’s leadership.

The path forward

Trump is not trying to destroy habeas corpus. He’s trying to save it from being twisted into a self-destructive parody of itself. Leftists have turned due process into delay, justice into gridlock, and they’re dragging the entire country into their chaos.

It’s time to draw the line. Protect habeas corpus. Use it lawfully. Use it wisely. And yes — use it to restore order at the border. Because if we lose that firewall, we lose the republic.

This article originally appeared on TheBlaze.com.

Betrayal of trust: Medicare insurers face lawsuit over kickback scheme

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Editor's note: This article is sponsored by Chapter.

The U.S. government has filed a major lawsuit under the False Claims Act, targeting some of the biggest names in health insurance—Aetna, Elevance Health (formerly Anthem), and Humana—along with top insurance brokers eHealth, GoHealth, and SelectQuote. The allegation? From 2016 to at least 2021, these companies funneled hundreds of millions of dollars in illegal kickbacks to brokers to steer seniors into their Medicare Advantage plans.

If the allegations are true, it means many Americans may have been steered into Medicare Advantage plans that weren’t necessarily the best fit for their needs—not because the plans were better, but because brokers were incentivized by illegal kickbacks.

The Kickback Conspiracy

Navigating Medicare Advantage’s maze of plan options is daunting, so beneficiaries rely on brokers like eHealth, GoHealth, and SelectQuote, who claim to be unbiased guides. But from 2016 to 2021, insurers Aetna, Humana, and Elevance Health allegedly paid brokers millions in kickbacks to favor their plans, regardless of quality. Disguised as “co-op” or “marketing” deals, these payments were tied to enrollment targets. Internal emails revealed executives knew this violated the Anti-Kickback Statute, with one eHealth leader joking that the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) would miss a $15 million Humana deal for minimal enrollments. Brokers used call routing to prioritize high-paying insurers, betraying beneficiaries’ trust.

Discrimination Against the Vulnerable

The scheme wasn’t just about profits—it targeted vulnerable beneficiaries. Medicare Advantage must accept all eligible enrollees, including disabled people under 65. Yet Aetna and Humana allegedly pressured brokers to limit their enrollment, as these beneficiaries were deemed to be less profitable. Brokers complied, rejecting referrals and filtering calls to favor healthier enrollees, incentivized by bonuses. This violated federal anti-discrimination laws and CMS contracts, undermining the founding principles of Medicare by discriminating against the very people it was created to aid.

False Claims and the Pursuit of Justice

The schemes led to false claims to CMS, with insurers certifying enrollments as “valid” despite kickbacks and discrimination. The government paid billions, unaware of the fraud. Examples include Humana’s $12,477 for a 2016 enrollment and Aetna’s $79,047 for a 2020 case. On May 1, 2025, the U.S. filed suit, seeking treble damages and penalties under the False Claims Act. Aetna and others deny the allegations, per May 2025 reports, promising a fierce defense. The case, demanding a jury trial, seeks justice for beneficiaries and taxpayers.

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