Danielle Kurtzleben

Greg Hunnicutt has almost entirely shut down his Houston-based construction business. At his one remaining job site, he's being careful to minimize the risk of anyone being exposed to the coronavirus. So he keeps fewer workers on the job.

"My electrician is there now doing some work," he said. "It's just him and his helper. So what I'm trying to accomplish here is reducing how people interact."

Starting today, small businesses can apply for the nearly $350 billion in loans available through the economic rescue plan from Congress.

The loan program, known as the Paycheck Protection Program, is intended to support businesses so they can ride out the tough economic times and, most importantly, assist with either keeping current workers or rehire those who were laid off.

Updated 8:31 a.m. ET Thursday

First-time jobless claims hit nearly 3.3 million last week, the Labor Department reported Thursday. That's staggering when you consider that at the height of the Great Recession, initial claims topped out at just shy of 700,000.

The legislation that the Senate passed Wednesday night is set to provide $2 trillion in economic aid as the nation braces for this massive economic blow.

Politics and governing can often collide in the middle of a crisis, especially when both hinge on what message a leader is sending the public. Given that we're in the height of an election, the collision may have been inevitable.

President Trump delivered a primetime televised address about coronavirus and canceled political events, followed by a Rose Garden press conference flanked by public and private sector leaders.

Joe Biden racked up four more wins on Tuesday night, further growing his delegate lead over Bernie Sanders in what is now largely a two-person race.

Exit polls showed that several broad demographic trends that have shown up in earlier states continued to hold in Tuesday's primaries: Biden tends to perform better among women than men, for example, and Sanders tends to perform better among white voters than black voters. These results help show how Biden pulled off his wins in Idaho, Michigan, Mississippi and Missouri and continued building his momentum.

To the very end, Elizabeth Warren had a plan for that. In her last days as a candidate, she was still releasing new plans — including a coronavirus plan she outlined in Houston on Saturday night, even as disappointing results came in from South Carolina.

That focus on laying out proposals inspired devotion in her legions of supporters, like Maryanne Schuessler — who was a volunteer in Warren's Columbia, S.C., office.

"She's so well-planned," she said, sighing sharply. "God! It's — I don't think she's going to do very well in this primary. And it breaks my heart."

Updated at 1:15 p.m. ET

Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren ended her bid for the presidency on Thursday, acknowledging her place as the last major female candidate in the race "and all those little girls who are gonna have to wait four more years."

Elizabeth Warren is "talking to her team to assess the path forward," an aide told NPR on Wednesday morning. A big question now hangs over her campaign after falling short on Super Tuesday: What now?

Updated at 1:33 p.m. ET

The U.S. House has voted to remove the deadline on ratifying the Equal Rights Amendment in an attempt to revive the amendment. The 232-183 vote fell largely along party lines with five Republicans supporting the measure and zero Democrats opposing it.

Updated at 12:05 p.m. ET Thursday

Many advocates for women's rights are watching Virginia closely as the state's legislature began its session Wednesday. They're watching because the Equal Rights Amendment has a good chance of being ratified by Virginia lawmakers this year.

If the ERA passes there, Virginia would become the 38th state to ratify it; an amendment needs 38 states to be fully ratified and added to the U.S. Constitution.

There was a time when "Medicare for All" was not a part of Sen. Elizabeth Warren's presidential campaign. It was March.

The divide among Democrats over "Medicare for All" has dominated the policy conversation in the 2020 Democratic primary. But another rift has opened among Democrats, this one about college affordability. The question: Who should get to go to college for free?

South Bend, Ind., Mayor Pete Buttigieg jabbed at his more liberal opponents in a new ad airing in Iowa. It doesn't name other candidates, but it's clear he's taking aim at Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders and Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren, who have pitched plans making free public college available to all.

A few weeks ago, Elizabeth Warren made huge news with her plan to finance "Medicare for All." But as part of it, the Massachusetts senator made a big change to one of her other major policy goals: she boosted the size of the wealth tax she wants to impose on the very rich: The top rate went from 3% to 6%, giving her trillions more dollars in theoretical revenue to fund the sweeping program.

Women always make up more than half of the electorate in national elections.

Sen. Elizabeth Warren says paying for "Medicare for All" would require $20.5 trillion in new federal spending over a decade. That spending includes higher taxes on the wealthy but no new taxes on the middle class.

The Democratic presidential candidate released her plan to pay for Medicare for All on Friday after being dogged for months by questions of how she would finance such a sweeping overhaul of the health care system. That pressure has been intensified by the fact that Warren has made detailed proposals a central part of her brand as a candidate.

Bernie Sanders doesn't plan on releasing a detailed plan of how to finance his single-payer Medicare for All plan, he told CNBC's John Harwood on Tuesday.

"You're asking me to come up with an exact detailed plan of how every American — how much you're going to pay more in taxes, how much I'm going to pay," he said. "I don't think I have to do that right now."