Congress still at odds over small business aid

AIMING FIRE AT FAUCI -- President Donald Trump and his allies seem to be turning on Anthony Fauci, the nation's top infectious diseases expert who has been the trusted face of the coronavirus task force. Take this op-ed in the Washington Examiner from GOP Reps. Andy Biggs and Ken Buck, which was titled: "Is Anthony Fauci helping or hurting?" More from their piece that ran over the weekend: "Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, recently said, ‘It's inconvenient from a societal standpoint, from an economic standpoint to go through this.' It is interesting sometimes that a brief comment can reveal the heart and mind — and in this instance, a special degree of tone deafness.

"For Fauci, is it merely a societal or economic inconvenience that about 17 million workers are unemployed because of the government's response to the coronavirus pandemic, with many more to come in the weeks and months ahead? … We have heard Fauci say the economic cost and societal impacts of his policies were not considered when he devised his epidemic response plan. But the question is whether the medicine he prescribed will prove to be more harmful than the disease in the long term."

And then there's Trump, who shared a tweet yesterday with a "#fireFauci" hashtag. The president has given Fauci a lot of leeway, despite some public policy disagreements. But that retweet certainly raised some eyebrows, especially since Trump is itching to reopen the country and has reportedly grown frustrated with some of his own public health experts.