U.S. Senators Kevin Cramer (R-N.D.) and Dan Sullivan (R-Alaska) and Congressmen Don Young (R-Alaska) and Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.) led a letter to President Donald J. Trump urging the administration to take action against large American financial institutions that discriminate against American energy companies and their workers—who are being hit very hard during the coronavirus pandemic.

“As every sector of our economy struggles to survive the COVID-19 pandemic and seeks financial stability from the federal government, environmental extremists are using the pandemic to accelerate their goal of putting America’s energy jobs in the grave,” the members of Congress wrote to President Trump. “We urge you and your Administration to use every administrative and regulatory tool at your disposal to prevent America’s financial institutions from discriminating against America’s energy sector while they simultaneously enjoy the benefits of federal government programs.”

The letter is also signed by Senators Ted Cruz (R-Texas), John Barrasso (R-Wyo.), John Cornyn (R-Texas), Jim Inhofe (R-Okla.), Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska), John Hoeven (R-N.D.), Bill Cassidy (R-La.), Steve Daines (R-Mont.), James Lankford (R-Okla.), John Kennedy (R-La.), Shelley Moore Capito (R-W.Va.), and Mike Enzi (R-Wyo.), and Congressmen Greg Walden (R-Ore.), Rob Bishop (R-Utah), Fred Upton (R-Mich.), Pete Olson (R-Texas), Dan Newhouse (R-Wash.), Ben Cline (R-Va.), Paul Gosar (R-Ariz.), Bruce Westerman (R-Ark.), John Shimkus (R-Ill.), Doug LaMalfa (R-Calif.), Cathy McMorris Rodgers (R-Wa.), Bill Flores (R-Texas), Jeff Duncan (R-S.C.), David B. McKinley (R-W.Va.), Greg Gianforte (R-Mont.), Doug Lamborn (R-Colo.), Jody Hice (R-Ga.), Michael C. Burgess (R-Texas), Greg Pence (R-Ind.), and Louie Gohmert (R-Texas).

Governor bans jailing citizens for lockdown violations; Texas Republican Rep. Michael Burgess reacts.

President Trump is increasingly dismissing the consensus of health experts, scientists and some of his Republican allies that widespread testing is key to the safe end of restrictions meant to slow the spread of the deadly coronavirus, saying Friday that “testing isn’t necessary” and is an imperfect guide.

The president has played down the need for testing as he overrides public health recommendations that would prolong the closures of schools, businesses and much of daily life. Although he is now tested every day with a rapid-result machine, Trump has questioned the value of extensive testing as the gap between available capacity and the amount that would be required to meet public health benchmarks has become clearer.

Trump’s comments came as a second employee in the White House complex tested positive for the coronavirus, a development that prompted increased testing for staff and other precautions not generally available to most Americans.

“This is why the whole concept of tests aren’t necessarily great,” Trump said at the White House, as he confirmed a positive test result “out of the blue” for a top staffer, Vice President Pence’s press secretary, Katie Miller.

During a Friday morning interview on Fox News, Trump ticked approvingly through the current testing figures but did not say what level he thinks is optimal or safe to use as a national benchmark for economic reopening.

Asked about the positive test result for one of his Navy valets, the president said that he himself remains negative but that the valet’s experience is instructive.

“And this is why testing isn’t necessary. We have the best testing in the world, but testing’s not necessarily the answer because they were testing them,” Trump said of the staff members.

Data shows that the country has slowly ramped up testing. Since late April, the nation has tested about 250,000 people per day on average, according to the COVID Tracking Project. On Thursday, that number hit a high of 318,720 reported tests.

Still, many public health experts say those numbers are far below what will be necessary before schools and businesses can reopen with confidence, and before Americans can return en masse to travel, work and social gatherings.

On Thursday, Harvard University researchers published new estimates, showing that the United States needs to be conducting at least 900,000 tests daily by May 15 — roughly triple the current rate — to have a better grasp of the outbreak. They found that fewer than a dozen states are currently testing enough to get ahead of the virus that has claimed the lives of more than 76,000 Americans with nearly 1.3 million cases reported.

“The bottom line remains: We need a lot more testing,” the researchers wrote.

Other researchers have estimated that the United States will need to scale up testing far more dramatically — conducting anywhere from 3 million to 25 million tests a week — to understand the true scope of the pandemic and to be able to quickly identify and snuff out localized outbreaks.

Ashish Jha, director of the Harvard Global Health Institute, has also said that the volume of tests alone is not the only worthwhile metric. It also matters what populations are — or aren’t — getting tests and whether the government can put in place adequate contact tracing for those who are infected.

In addition, he and other public health experts say, if communities relax social distancing too early or too aggressively, more tests might be necessary quickly in case the virus begins its spread again.

“The moment you relax, the number of cases will start climbing,” Jha said in an announcement about Harvard’s latest estimates. “And therefore, the number of tests you need to keep your society, your state, from having large outbreaks will also start climbing.”

More than 40 states are in some phase of lifting restrictions, most with Trump’s blessing and none in full accordance with guidelines developed by the White House coronavirus task force he empaneled.

Georges Benjamin, executive director of the American Public Health Association, said that without widespread testing, the nation faces a “recovery that is fraught with enormous hazards. You cannot have public confidence that people can go out and be around one another. You’ll have to repeatedly close things down.”

Congress provided $25 billion for testing in the most recent emergency relief bill, and House Democrats are expected to unveil a massive new measure as soon as next week with testing-related provisions.

A recent House Democratic memo identified a need for a “public comprehensive testing plan” with firm benchmarks and timelines for test frequency, supply availability and laboratory capacity, as well as a mandate to require public reporting on all testing results. Many Democrats are pressing for even more aggressive action to federalize the medical supply chain.

“Congress should develop a national program to track, identify, and isolate all possible traces of this disease. If we attempt to reopen this country without a sweeping approach that matches the magnitude of the crisis, more Americans will unnecessarily die,” said the memo, prepared by the House Energy and Commerce Committee.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) said on a Wednesday call with reporters that the next House coronavirus relief bill would be focused on “testing, tracing, treatment and isolation.”

The concern about the lack of testing has crossed party lines.

“We can’t continue to pump federal dollars and print federal dollars to keep the economy afloat if we’re not allowing the engine of the economy to begin to spin again. But we can’t do that without adequate testing,” said Rep. Michael C. Burgess (R-Tex.), a conservative physician, during a Friday House committee briefing.

The House Democratic proposal is the first step in the process, and it is unclear what final measure will emerge from Congress.

Sen. Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn.), chairman of the Senate health committee, has been one of the most outspoken members of Congress in calling for more testing, but he has assiduously avoided criticizing the Trump administration for its handling of the issue.

“The United States, according to Johns Hopkins and President Trump, has tested 7 million Americans — more than any country; more per capita, for example, than South Korea, which we often admire for the way it has dealt with covid–19,” Alexander said on the Senate floor Thursday.

“So we are testing a lot of people. But if we want to go back to work and we want to go back to school, we are going to need to have quick, reliable tests for everybody in the nursing home, everybody in the meatpacking plant, everybody maybe on the college campus, everybody in a graded school,” Alexander said.

In an op-ed last month with Sen. Roy Blunt (R-Mo.), Alexander said efforts to ramp up testing capacity in the United States were impressive but far from adequate. They proposed a “Shark Tank”-like competition for testing.

“There is no safe path forward to combat the novel coronavirus without adequate testing,” they wrote in The Washington Post.

The emergency bill that Trump signed on April 24 mandated that Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar had 30 days to report to Congress on a “strategic testing plan” — one that must include, among other things, a blueprint for increasing U.S. testing capacity, including the supplies needed to collect specimens and process them, and an outline of all federal resources available to states and local jurisdictions.

A spokesman for HHS said Friday that the department intends to deliver a testing plan as requested by Congress within the time frame allotted.

In appearances this week, Trump has defended the U.S. record on testing, calling it the “greatest testing in the world,” while playing down the importance of testing for the disease.

The president said he didn’t think “you need that kind of testing or that much testing,” he called testing “somewhat overrated,” and he told reporters that “in a way, by doing all of this testing, we make ourselves look bad.”

During a White House event with admiring Republican House members, Trump also returned to a widely criticized prediction that the coronavirus pandemic will disappear on its own.

“I feel about vaccines like I feel about tests. This is going to go away without a vaccine,” Trump said, a statement at direct odds with the physicians on his coronavirus task force. “It’s going to go away and it’s, we’re not going to see it again, hopefully, after a period of time. You may have some, some flare-ups,” in the fall or later, the president said.

“They die too,” Trump said of viruses.

U.S. Sen. John Hoeven (R-ND) on May 4 introduced a bipartisan bill that would provide $3 billion in funding to purchase crude oil produced in the United States for the Strategic Petroleum Reserve (SPR).

“I’m leading this bipartisan, bicameral legislation because it will not only support our energy industry but benefit American taxpayers with greater economic and national security,” Sen. Hoeven said. “We need to pass this legislation to fund the purchase of U.S. crude for the SPR, which will help relieve supply pressures and support a vital U.S. industry and its workers.”

Sen. Hoeven sponsored S. 3597 with nine original cosponsors, including U.S. Sens. Roger Wicker (R-MS) and Doug Jones (D-AL). The measure is the U.S. Senate version of H.R. 6580, introduced on April 21 by U.S. Reps. Lizzie Fletcher (D-TX) and Michael Burgess (R-TX).

“As oil prices continue to be wracked by this crisis and production disputes overseas, we have the opportunity to replenish our Strategic Petroleum Reserve at a low cost to taxpayers,” Sen. Jones said. “This bill will help ensure that we as a country are ready and prepared for future crises, and will aid in stabilizing our national economy.”

Rep. Burgess added that filling the SPR is “a targeted, prudent action” that would help address a temporary oversupply of oil in the market.

“This legislation would improve the energy security of the United States, save taxpayer money, and address the shortage of storage for crude oil, while also giving American producers a brief window of relief to make plans for the new realities in the marketplace,” he added.

The Senate bill is under consideration by the Senate Appropriations Committee while H.R. 6580 is being reviewed by the House Appropriations Committee and the House Budget Committee.

Citing unemployment levels not seen since the Great Depression, U.S. Senate and House Republicans sent letters Thursday urging President Trump to "suspend" guest worker visa programs until the economy recovers or for at least one year -- whichever comes first.

"There is no reason why unemployed Americans and recent college graduates should have to compete in such a limited job market against an influx of additional H-1B workers, most of whom work in business, technology, or STEM fields," wrote Republican Senators Tom Cotton of Arkansas, Ted Cruz of Texas, Chuck Grassley of Iowa and Josh Hawley of Missouri, in their letter to Trump.

Trump's H-1B position opened the door for these two letters late last month after announcing a "pause" on immigration in the U.S. He excluded H-1B workers from his initial executive order pending a report by his administration on ways to "prioritize Americans."

The letters, along with a new study on H-1B wage levels, may renew fierce debate over the future of the H-1B visa program. The wage study by the Economic Policy Institute (EPI), a think tank based in Washington, D.C., argues that the government is allowing employers to undercut U.S. workers on pay.

House lawmakers referenced the visa pay issue in their letter: "The workers enrolled in these programs hold no unique skills relative to those held by American college graduates, but the cost of their services is significantly less," wrote Republican House members Lance Gooden, Louie Gohmert, Michael Burgess, all of Texas; Paul Gosar of Arizona; Matt Gaetz of Florida and Mo Brooks of Alabama.

The senators want all guest worker visas suspended for 60 days, and after that, all new nonimmigrant guest workers suspended for one year or until national unemployment figures return to normal levels, whichever comes first. Along with H-1B visas, the lawmakers argue the suspension should include H-2B visas and the Optional Practical Training (OPT), which allows students to get anywhere from one to three years of job experience on a student visa.

Whether the White House has the legal authority to suspend guest worker visa programs remains to be seen. Court challenges by industry are all but certain.

Lawmakers in both the House and Senate called on President Trump to suspend nonimmigrant guest worker programs in two letters circulated today. These letters ask the president to consider the effects of allowing hundreds of thousands of guest workers to continue working in the United States, while 33 million Americans have been added to unemployment as a result of the response to the coronavirus pandemic.

Senators Tom Cotton (R-Ark.), Ted Cruz (R-Texas), Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa), and Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) called on President Trump to “keep the American worker in mind and limit the importation of unnecessary guest workers while American families and businesses get back on their feet.”

Their letter notes that the president’s April 22, 2020 proclamation suspending some forms of immigration did not go far enough in accomplishing its purported goal of lessening the economic effects of immigration. They charge that suspending guest worker programs – particularly H-2B, H-1B, and Optional Practical Training (OPT) – would protect American workers far better than the April 22 proclamation.

The senators also took aim at the controversial EB-5 investor visa program. FAIR opposes the existence of this program and has done so for years. They correctly describe EB-5 as a program “long plagued by scandal and fraud, and has been effectively functioning as a pay-for-citizenship scheme in many cases.” President Trump’s earlier proclamation suspending some immigration curiously exempted EB-5 applicants.

In the House, Reps. Lance Gooden (R-Texas), Paul Gosar (R-Ariz.), Louie Gohmert (R-Texas), Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.), Michael Burgess (R-Texas), Mo Brooks (R-Ala.), Brian Babin (R-Texas), and Steve King (R-Iowa) released a similar letter, urging the President to suspend these guest worker programs until the crisis subsides and unemployment returns to normal, pre-coronavirus levels. The representatives wrote that “Americans are looking to the Federal Government for leadership. The coronavirus pandemic continues to wreak havoc to our health, economy, and society. You have cited the effect these programs have on our labor force and taken the initial steps to mitigate those negative impacts. We urge you to further use your legal authority and suspend substantially all temporary guest worker programs.”

The representatives similarly argued for the suspension of the EB-5 program, saying that “This program concentrates vast financial resources into already wealthy parts of the country, which is completely contradictory to the stated justification for the program. It does nothing to elevate struggling parts of our country, much less hire Americans looking for work.”

FAIR applauds the efforts of these lawmakers to bring this important issue to the attention of President Trump. On April 23, FAIR sent a letter to the president urging him to issue a second proclamation banning the entry of guest workers and suspending the programs. FAIR’s president Dan Stein wrote that “in the next 30 days, a new Executive Order must be issued to include all forms of immigration, including guest worker programs, which would allow hundreds of thousands of Americans out of the labor force to come back in, both now and when the economy finally starts to recover.”

Joining the efforts of the Republican lawmakers, FAIR sent an additional letter to President Trump on Monday specifying our initial request. This new letter cites the rapidly deteriorating economy, mass unemployment, and research citing that guest workers are often paid significantly less than Americans performing the same work.

FAIR’s letter also calls on the president to direct the Secretaries of Labor and Homeland Security to “review the labor certifications of thousands of pending employment-based immigrant and nonimmigrant visas to ensure that the employer requests are still justifiable, that the businesses are still viable, and that the foreign workers are still needed at this time.” This is just one additional step that the president could take that could save thousands of jobs for Americans.

The ball is now in the president’s court. Polling shows that over 65 percent of Americanswant the president to suspend immigration during the pandemic. Only time will tell if the president heeds this call to action from lawmakers and FAIR. One thing is clear – there is support from lawmakers to suspend these programs in order to save American jobs and protect vulnerable, out-of-work Americans from further competition due to guest workers at this unprecedented time in our history.

A bipartisan coalition of oil state senators led by North Dakota Republican Sen. John Hoeven and Alabama Democratic Sen. Doug Jones has introduced an emergency measure in the Senate that would provide $3 billion in funding to purchase American crude oil for the Strategic Petroleum Reserve.

Hoeven’s coalition includes Sen. Kevin Cramer, R-N.D., as well as Republican Sens. John Cornyn and Ted Cruz of Texas, Lisa Murkowski and Dan Sullivan of Alaska, Jim Inhofe of Oklahoma, John Barrasso of Wyoming, and Roger Wicker of Mississippi.

Hoeven said the benefits of the measure are two-fold.

“Oil and gas producers in North Dakota and across the nation provide essential support for our economy and are vital to our national security,” he said. “I’m leading this bipartisan, bicameral legislation because it will not only support our energy industry but benefit American taxpayers with greater economic and national security. We need to pass this legislation to fund the purchase of U.S. crude for the SPR, which will help relieve supply pressures and support a vital U.S. industry and its workers.”

Jones, meanwhile, said the pandemic has underscored the need to have adequate reserves on hand. That includes energy.

"As oil prices continue to be wracked by this crisis and production disputes overseas, we have the opportunity to replenish our Strategic Petroleum Reserve at a low cost to taxpayers,” he said. “This bill will help ensure that we as a country are ready and prepared for future crises, and will aid in stabilizing our national economy.”

The measure will be carried on the House side by Texas Representatives, Democrat Lizzie Fletcher and Republican Michael Burgess.

“Domestic production of oil and natural gas is essential to our national security, our economy, and our energy future, including our ability to drive innovation and production of cleaner energy,” Fletcher said.  “Our energy producers are facing an unprecedented challenge that will have long-term ramifications for our energy independence and our energy future. Congress has an opportunity to provide relief for those who produce the energy we use every day and to make a strategic purchase that benefits all Americans. I am proud to join with Senator Hoeven, Senator Jones, and Congressman Burgess to introduce this legislation with broad, bipartisan support to do just that.”

Burgess, meanwhile, urged that the legislation be taken up quickly.

“Filling the SPR is a targeted, prudent action that would allow the department to act quickly to address a temporary oversupply of oil in the market,” he said. “This legislation would improve the energy security of the United States, save taxpayer money, and address the shortage of storage for crude oil, while also giving American producers a brief window of relief to make plans for the new realities in the marketplace.