By Dan Crenshaw More than 22 million jobless claims have been filed in the aftermath of a purposeful economic shutdown to contain the coronavirus pandemic. Here at home, more Texans -- roughly 760,000 of our neighbors -- have applied for unemployment in the last four weeks than in all of 2019. These stark numbers are deeply troubling, as each represents a different family or individual facing economic distress. A thoughtful article in this newspaper recently highlighted the story of two Houstonians -- Erin and Patrick -- who own a small barbecue joint in Harris County. Like countless small business owners across America currently struggling to stay afloat, Erin and Patrick have furloughed their staff, stopped paying rent and paused food orders for their restaurant. "It's hopefully temporary," Erin told the Houston Chronicle of her dire situation. "I guess we'll know when we get through this." That disquieting combination of hopeful optimism and smothering anxiety is something I've heard frequently from constituents in my district. People understandably want to know how long the pause on the economy will last and when they can get back to work or open their business. We must provide real answers to these questions. When I was in the Navy SEALs, if we were ambushed, we'd take what's called a "tactical retreat." It is a strategic effort to regroup, analyze our enemy, bolster our capacity to respond and then go on offense. That last part is key -- we never stayed in a perpetual retreat. To do so would mean defeat. Understandably, we made a tactical retreat when confronted with the invisible enemy known as COVID-19. But locking down society has wreaked havoc on our economy and upended livelihoods, a consequence that may have its own public health consequences: suicides, mental health problems and delayed medical procedures. It's time to go back on offense. Recently, I spoke with Harvard professor Danielle Allen, who argues that we should take a "mobilize and transition" approach to battling this pandemic. The approach can be summed up as mobilizing "to transition to a society with pandemic resilience that permits maximal mobility for as large a portion of the population as possible even when the pandemic is ongoing." What would that look like practically? First, we must continue to expand diagnostic testing. 3.3 million tests have been given thus far and the administration expects millions more to come online shortly. Antibody serology tests also must be deployed in the millions, as they are easier to produce and administer. These can determine who has contracted the virus, subsequently recovered, and thus, gained immunity. To expand the capacity of our health care system, we must take a granular approach at the county level, like Harris County has already done. A national-level focus on PPE and ventilator production is already underway, and we must direct capacity to hotspots that need it most. Additionally, we must focus on mass producing the most promising treatments for coronavirus. As former FDA Commissioner Dr. Scott Gottlieb recently noted, promising antibody tests and antiviral treatments are in development right now, and the FDA should increase the pace of safe approval of these treatments. Treatments do not replace the urgent need for a vaccine, but they can help bridge the months-long gap that will exist before a viable vaccine is developed. Finally, public education must be part of our strategy. Americans must recognize the need to wear masks, limit large gatherings, practice proper personal hygiene and maintain a safe distance from one another. Businesses, restaurants and sporting events may have to implement various levels of risk mitigation and social distancing. Such measures may differ between locales, but they will allow for a structured return to regular operations with proper precaution. This approach is not a panacea. Cases may re-emerge, but we must accept that as an inevitability and not a failure of our efforts. A mobilization strategy will help us be prepared for an uptick in cases and handle them appropriately, alongside a functioning economy and society. Critically, we must engage in a debate about how to do this without the political opportunism that has infected our country alongside coronavirus, as I wrote recently. We need to stop offering the American people a false choice: save lives or save the economy. Such a claim is both disingenuous and counterproductive. There is a balance between reopening the economy and battling the public health crisis. Doing so will allow us to stop our retreat and begin our attack against the coronavirus that has already cost countless livelihoods.

By Dan Crenshaw The massive number of unemployment applications in March -- more than 10 million -- was a stark reminder to policymakers that an indefinite pause on the economy is not an option. At a certain point, in the near future, Americans have to start working again and spending money. The debate over when and how this will happen will be fierce. The primary challenge will not be setting the policy itself but avoiding the temptation to take political potshots at those who imperfectly try. Such restraint requires discipline, grace, and a willingness to give each other the benefit of the doubt. Unfortunately, such qualities have been severely lacking in our media and politics. There is a reasonable way to discuss balancing our health concerns with the reopening of society. How and when will we move from a risk containment strategy of shelter-in-place orders to a more sustainable risk management strategy? Do we really believe we can contain all risk indefinitely? At what cost? At what point will local authorities feel comfortable with the level of preparedness in their public health system -- sufficient testing, ventilators, and hospital capacity -- and allow a safe return to work? Shouldn't there be reasonable timelines for our citizens, given that the entire purpose of lockdowns is to slow the spread and allow the health system to catch up to the pandemic? What metrics are we using assess preparedness? Given what we know about the most vulnerable populations and the nature of the virus, which restrictions will remain in place for a longer time and for whom? Such questions will, and should, be answered differently by each state, city, and town. An indefinite federally imposed national lockdown is just as foolish as an immediate federal reopening. But these questions need to be asked-- and answered-- in good faith. Sadly, the simple task of giving each other the space to have this discussion has proven elusive. Tragic news has become political ammunition. As the United States surpassed other nations in total coronavirus cases (likely due to more testing and our nation's vast size), high-profile figures like Hillary Clinton jumped to the chance to blame the president, as she snidely wrote on Twitter, "He did promise "America First.'" Over-the-top, bad faith accusations are repeated breathlessly as uncontested fact by prominent journalists. A recent NBC News column asserted that President Trump is "putting the health of the stock market over that of millions of Americans." Washington Post columnist Jennifer Rubin hyperbolically stated that "many of these deaths will be the minimum price we pay for Trump's utter incompetence and willful blindness." Even expressing optimism about potential treatments such as chloroquine is off-limits, as major media outlets (here and here) went as far as to blame President Trump for a man's death after he ingested chloroquine phosphate, confusing the substance for the anti-malarial drug touted by Trump. The media stunningly left out that the man actually ingested fishbowl cleaner. These bad faith takes are the new normal in politics, but they have no place in a global crisis. This rhetoric destroys our ability to have the difficult conversations needed to properly address the pandemic. Going forward, it will be easy to claim moral righteousness by insisting on indefinite lockdowns in order to save lives. But such suggestions are also unrealistic and ignore the lives being ruined by an economic freefall. Many will sanctimoniously ask "how many lives is it worth to save some jobs?" This is a terribly disingenuous, bad-faith question, presuming that anyone concerned about American's livelihoods -- itself a public health concern -- is somehow a heartless robot. There will be strong temptation to moralize breathlessly how a given decision caused harm or death. These accusations will be impossible to counter because the counterfactual is impossible to prove. The accusers will know this but will partake in the political opportunism anyway. Resisting this blame game requires an understanding that everyone is doing the best they can. These are extraordinary circumstances, and we are all making judgements with limited information. As coronavirus spreads through our cities and towns, we must address the contagion spreading through our public discourse. Fierce debate should be expected, but we must engage in it without the partisan, petty finger pointing that has infected our country. No leader, from a small-town mayor to the president, wishes harm upon our country. Examples of American grit and resilience have been prolific. Companies are stepping up to manufacture personal protective equipment (PPE) and ventilators. Doctors are coming out of retirement. Congress injected over $2 trillion into the economy to keep it from collapse. Everyone wants America to succeed. If we start from that common understanding, we might avail ourselves of the tools to beat this pandemic together.

By Dan Crenshaw China's lies about coronavirus are just the latest round of anti-American propaganda. We should stop falling for it. "…It might be US army who brought the epidemic to Wuhan. Be transparent! Make public your data! US owe us an explanation!" This excerpt of a tweet, from a spokesman for China's Foreign Ministry, captures the communist regime's newest public relations strategy in the fallout of the COVID-19 crisis that began inside its borders: shift blame to the West and portray China as the victim. Just last week, China's Ministry of Foreign Affairs announced that it would be pulling the credentials of American journalists from the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal and the Washington Post, no doubt due to fears they would report the situation in China in a manner unfavorable to the regime. Recently, Chinese state media began declaring that U.S. officials were spreading a "political virus" by daring to criticize the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) for its gross mismanagement of the coronavirus outbreak, failing to restrict its spread and lying to the world about it. In January the CCP even succeeded in getting the World Health Organization to parrot their lies, with false claims that the virus could not be spread by human-to-human contact. The coronavirus is just another chapter in the misinformation campaigns run against America, where our society's freedoms -- and divisions -- are manipulated to the benefit of our enemies. Our media seemingly takes the bait each time and unwittingly repeats the propaganda in the form of "good-faith" criticisms against Americans and America's government. However, the critiques reach such a preposterous degree that they ultimately mirror the state media of our adversaries. Take the CCP's most recent crowning achievement, which consisted of convincing American media that calling COVID-19 the "Wuhan virus" is racist. In other words, the CCP has managed to convince Americans to obsess over the name of the virus, rather than Beijing's inexcusable mishandling of it. Never mind that the naming of the virus follows the standard geographical tagging of most major viruses that have emerged in the last two decades, like MERS (Middle East Respiratory Syndrome), Ebola, or Zika. This convention hasn't stopped media pundits and opportunistic politicians from sowing inordinate discord and piously lecturing those who dare to rebuff the CCP's latest talking point. What's worse, such handwringing distracts from the real discussion about the responsibility of the CCP. A recent study out of the University of Southampton found that if China had responded three weeks earlier to the virus, instead of working actively to cover it up, the number of COVID-19 infected could have been reduced by 95 percent and the global proliferation of the disease seriously thwarted. Our society thankfully allows for the free exchange of information. But such freedom demands responsibility, which our outrage culture has gradually undermined. Instead of partaking in the responsible sharing of information, many immediately hit "share" or "retweet." And in lieu of engaging with the substantive arguments of the opposition, many simply reduce the argument to some variation of an "-ism." This behavior makes our society exceedingly vulnerable to propaganda campaigns whose explicit mission is to create division. Put more simply, our enemies succeed when they get us to hate each other. Russia knew this when they bought thousands of Facebook ads during the 2016 campaign designed to exacerbate election tensions and increase political polarization. Russia also knew it when they teamed up with environmental groups to generate anti-fracking material designed to disrupt U.S. energy initiatives and further sustain American dependency on Russian energy. In both scenarios, they exploited our political fractures and worked diligently to worsen them. More recently, recall the level of hysteria that followed the death of Iranian terrorist Qasem Soleimani. The American media quickly sprang into action, portraying the man responsible for the death of nearly 600 U.S. soldiers as a mere "political" figure and bemoaning his death as an "assassination" of a "foreign official." One New York Times writer even posted images of the terrorist reciting poetry. The death of such an evil man should have been a moment of somber national unity, but with the temptation of political opportunism, it sadly was not. Instead, the president's political opposition adopted the talking points of Iranian state media. These misinformation campaigns will continue to reap rewards for our enemies in China, Russia and Iran unless we start acting more like Americans and less like partisans seeking to play a perpetual (and truthfully, tiresome) game of "gotcha!" Our adversaries' tactics aren't the haphazard machinations of some random trolls -- these are well-planned operations with explicit and malevolent purposes. And through our political hatred, we are making their jobs exceedingly easy. Coronavirus doesn't discriminate between political parties. If there ever were a time to resist misinformation campaigns, now would be it. We all have an interest in confronting our current public health and economic challenges with clear heads and unified resolve. Better late than never.