Despite weeks of increases in coronavirus cases and hospitalizations, U.S. air travel hit a pandemic record this weekend as Americans crisscrossed the country for the holidays, the Washington Post reported. The Transportation Security Administration said yesterday that it had screened 1,284,599 passengers on Sunday. Travel is down 55 to 65 percent compared with before the coronavirus pandemic, but Sunday marked the highest number of travelers since mid-March and the sixth time in 10 days the daily volume exceeded 1 million. At the same time, about 200,000 new coronavirus cases have been reported daily in recent weeks, with a record high of 252,431 on Dec. 17. The nation’s overall caseload surpassed 19 million Sunday, even as the holidays were expected to cause a lag in reporting. Hospitalizations have exceeded 100,000 since the start of December and hit a peak of 119,000 on Dec. 23. Deaths are averaging more than 2,000 a day, with the most ever reported — 3,406 fatalities — on Dec. 17.
President Trump unexpectedly capitulated yesterday and signed the stimulus bill into law, releasing $900 billion in emergency relief funds into the economy and averting a Tuesday government shutdown, the Washington Post reported. White House officials didn’t explain why the president decided to suddenly back down and sign into law a bill he had held up for nearly a week and had referred to as a “disgrace” just days earlier. Trump signed the bill while vacationing in Florida and on a weekend when he had allowed unemployment benefits for 14 million Americans to expire. He had demanded changes to the stimulus and spending package for a week, suggesting he would refuse to sign it until these demands were met. This continued defiance caused lawmakers from both parties to panic over the weekend, worried about the implications of a government shutdown during a pandemic. It was unclear what prompted him to change his mind late Sunday, but he was under tremendous pressure from Republicans to acquiesce. The package will extend aid to millions of struggling households through stimulus checks, enhanced federal unemployment benefits, and money for small businesses, schools and child care, as well as for vaccine distribution. It also repurposes $429 billion in unused funding provided by the Cares Act for emergency lending programs run by the Federal Reserve. Read more.
As the coronavirus pandemic and low oil prices walloped U.S. frackers this spring, Texas billionaires Dan and Farris Wilks got a $35 million relief loan to help one of their fracking companies stay afloat. At the same time, they were on a buying spree in the country’s oil patch, the Wall Street Journal reported. Since spring, businesses controlled by the Wilks brothers have hunted for deals among fracking firms going through bankruptcy and taken or increased stakes in at least six other companies, corporate filings show. But when it looked like the oil-and-gas industry would be shut out of a key pandemic lending program, they and others in the industry turned their attention to Washington, D.C., making an appeal for help in meetings with home-state senator Ted Cruz. The twin dynamics of acquisitions and government rescue show how the economic tumult caused by the pandemic has reshaped the landscape for a key U.S. industry. One result: The Wilkses have expanded their presence in a still-youthful industry where they first invested in 2002, soon to become billionaires as fracking flourished. But the industry was already under pressure from international competition and a sagging oil price by the time the pandemic hit, and its mounting woes prompted the Wilkses and others to turn to allies in Washington, D.C., including Cruz. The Republican senator helped convince the Trump administration and the Federal Reserve to change the rules for pandemic loans to ensure oil and gas firms could participate. Soon after the U.S. government changed the rules of its lending program in April, a Wilks family company, ProFrac Holdings LLC, applied for and received a $35 million loan, federal records show. ProFrac, a supplier of pumping equipment and services, is just one slice of the sprawling portfolio of fracking businesses that the Wilks family owns in part or outright across the American West and Canada. The Wilks brothers are longtime financial backers of Mr. Cruz. The brothers donated $15 million to a super PAC called Keeping the Promise that championed Cruz’s 2016 presidential campaign, making them the largest financial backers of his political career. Cruz “worked to ensure small and medium-sized businesses directly harmed by the economic impacts of this pandemic had access to emergency liquidity,” said Lauren Blair Aronson, a spokeswoman for the senator. “The result of his leadership was a program that has helped about 25 U.S. energy producers, including roughly a dozen in Texas, and helped protect over 300,000 oil and gas jobs in Texas.”
K&W Cafeteria Inc. has received federal Bankruptcy Court permission to delay filing its next proposed reorganization plan by three months to March 31, the Winston-Salem (N.C.) Journal reported. Judge Benjamin Kahn also approved giving the Winston-Salem restaurant chain three additional months, or until May 30, to gain confirmation of the plan. Approval of the delays come as K&W's owners and management say they want to change course on its future after saying it did not attract an adequate bid for its assets. K&W, a staple of Southern comfort foods for 83 years, filed for bankruptcy protection Sept. 2 as the latest step in a corporate downsizing that began before the COVID-19 pandemic. Judge Kahn separately approved the sale of two company-owned properties in Cornelius for a combined $1.47 million.
U.S. retail sales rose 3 percent during this year’s expanded holiday shopping season from Oct. 11 to Dec. 24, a report by Mastercard Inc said on Saturday, powered by a pandemic-driven shift toward online shopping. U.S. ecommerce sales jumped 49% in this year’s holiday shopping season, according to Mastercard SpendingPulse report, underscoring the COVID-19 pandemic’s role in transforming customers’ shopping habits. Holiday e-commerce sales made up 19.7 percent of total retail sales this year, the data showed, noting that options such as buy online and pick-up-in-store, contactless technologies were key for retailers. The holiday shopping season can account for the majority of certain retailers’ annual sales, but the health crisis meant several retailers including Walmart Inc and Target Corp, faced with capacity constraints in certain stores, rolled out their holiday promotions early.
Alysa Gummow didn't know what to think in October when the letters from law firms arrived in the mail. She had filed for bankruptcy in 2017 to restructure nearly $50,000 in debt — mostly from an earlier hip surgery. But that was resolved. She learned that Froedtert South hospital in Kenosha, Wisconsin was suing her to recover about $1,000 in separate bills that her health insurance didn't cover, the Associated Press reported. In April, Froedtert South said it would make debt lawsuits "rare" during the pandemic. But the hospital has since filed at least 231 lawsuits in small claims court against debtors like Gummow. It filed more in 2020 than it did in 2019 — 314, compared to 282. This year's lawsuits collectively seek to recoup $1.1 million in alleged debt, according to a WPR/Wisconsin Watch analysis.
In a Florida case that could have broader implications, a federal appeals court has upheld a U.S. Small Business Administration decision that prevents businesses from receiving Paycheck Protection Program loans if they are in bankruptcy proceedings, the Orlando Sentinel reported. A three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit yesterday overturned a decision by Bankruptcy Judge Michael Williamson, who sided with Gateway Radiology Consultants, a Pinellas County medical practice that filed for chapter 11 bankruptcy in 2019 and sought a $527,710 loan under PPP, part of the CARES Act approved by Congress in response to the coronavirus pandemic. Judge Williamson ruled this summer that the Small Business Administration had exceeded its authority under federal law when it disqualified businesses in bankruptcy proceedings from the loan program. Also, he ruled that the SBA’s decision was “arbitrary and capricious.” Nevertheless, Judge Williamson on July 1 asked the Atlanta-based appeals court to take up the issue, in part saying the SBA’s stance on the issue has “spawned litigation around the country.” The judge wrote that one court had tallied more than 30 lawsuits challenging the SBA’s position. In a 44-page opinion Tuesday, the appellate court panel concluded that Congress delegated to the SBA the question of whether businesses in bankruptcy proceedings are eligible for the loans. Also, the court rejected the argument that the SBA’s handling of the issue was arbitrary and capricious. “The SBA did not exceed its authority in adopting the non-bankruptcy rule for PPP eligibility,” said the opinion, written by Chief Judge Ed Carnes and joined by Judges Robin Rosenbaum and R. Lanier Anderson III. “That rule does not violate the CARES Act, is based on a reasonable interpretation of the Act, and the SBA did not act arbitrarily and capriciously in adopting the rule.”
President Donald Trump injected confusion into the outlook for COVID-19 relief yesterday, demanding changes to the bipartisan legislation approved by Congress less than 24 hours earlier, Bloomberg News reported. In a surprise video announcement posted on his Twitter account, Trump called the bill a “disgrace” and said it was full of “wasteful and unnecessary” items. He demanded that lawmakers increase the stimulus checks due to go out to most Americans from the “ridiculously low” amount of $600 to $2,000 — or $4,000 for a couple. “I am asking Congress to amend this bill,” Trump said. “Send me a suitable bill or else the next administration will have to deliver a COVID relief package. And maybe that administration will be me, and we will get it done.” The attack on Monday’s legislation, which included $900 billion in relief along with $1.4 trillion in government funding through next September, marked a sudden change after the administration had endorsed frantic negotiations among congressional leaders to get a deal after months of stalemate. If the president doesn’t sign the legislation by Dec. 28, government funding would lapse after midnight that day, and it would suspend benefits from the previous COVID relief bill that expire at the end of the month, including a moratorium on evictions and extended unemployment insurance — all of which were addressed in the giant package approved on Monday night. Read more.
In related news, the $27 billion cash infusion for U.S. transit agencies that Congress included in year-end legislation will help avoid draconian service cuts but still leaves them facing sharp declines in ridership and gas-tax revenue for years to come, Bloomberg News reported. The measures provide $14 billion in transportation-related aid in the nearly $900 billion COVID-19 relief bill, and $13 billion in annual appropriations in the $1.4 trillion government funding measure that were both adopted on Monday. “It buys us some more time,” said Paul P. Skoutelas, president and chief executive officer of the American Public Transportation Association, which lobbies for transit agencies. “It doesn’t solve the problem by any means.” Skoutelas said that ridership on American transit systems has dropped 60 percent this year from pre-pandemic levels. He estimated that it could take several years before ridership returns to anything remotely close to normal levels, despite promising developments with COVID-19 vaccine deployment. Read more.
To view a copy of the whole COVID-19 relief and government funding package, please click here.
