White House Press Secretary Kaleigh McEnany said that she “naively” believed some of CNN’s headlines in 2015 when she called out Donald Trump’s comments about Mexican immigrants as “racist.”
In a press briefing on Friday, PBS Newshour’s Yamiche Alcindor asked McEnany about her prior disparaging remarks about Trump, made as he was starting his presidential campaign.
“For about the first four weeks of the election, I was watching CNN and I was naively believing some of the headlines I saw on CNN,” McEnany said.
She said that she was not going to read the headlines, but added, “I very quickly came around to supporting the president. CNN hired me. I was on many eight one one panels where I proudly supported this president, who I think is one of the best presidents, if not the best president this country will ever have.”
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On Thursday, CNN’s K File aired her prior comments. “To me a racist statement is a racist statement. I don’t like what Donald Trump said. I don’t like what Al Sharpton said,” McEnany said. She had been commenting on Trump’s remarks labelling some Mexican immigrants as criminals and rapists.
She later came around to supporting Trump and became a CNN contributor.
McEnany then suggested that CNN’s K File track down past comments made by James Clapper, the former director of national intelligence; Samantha Power, the former ambassador to the United Nations; and Susan Rice, the former national security adviser. She suggested that what they were saying on the air was different from what they were telling the House Intelligence Committee. Transcripts of witness interviews were released on Thursday.
“Those individuals were saying much different things publicly than they were saying privately,” she said.
Alcindor then asked again whether she was walking back her 2015 comments about Trump.
“I support this president. There is no questioning that. So honored to work for him,” McEnany responded.
The briefing started with McEnany running through a list of reasons why the Justice Department made the right decision in deciding to drop the case against Michael Flynn, Trump’s first national security adviser, who had earlier pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI. But most of the questions she was posed had to do with the economy, given the announcement earlier on Friday of Depression-era levels of unemployment.
The White House is pushing a return to its failed experiment in relying on temperature screening of air travelers to detect coronavirus despite vehement objections from the nation’s top public health agency, internal documents obtained by USA TODAY show.
The discord underscores the administration’s disregard for science and the diminished standing of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention at a moment when local governments, businesses and community leaders are seeking direction on how to reopen safely.
Recent emails show CDC scientists, who have begun owning up to initial missteps in the federal response, trying to persuade the administration to reconsider.
The White House directive to check travelers in 20 U.S. airports for fever comes after earlier efforts by the CDC to screen travelers returning from China failed to stop the global pandemic from reaching the United States.
“Thermal scanning as proposed is a poorly designed control and detection strategy as we have learned very clearly,” Dr. Martin Cetron, the CDC’s director of global mitigation and quarantine, wrote in an email to Department of Homeland Security officials on Thursday. “We should be concentrating our CDC resources where there is impact and a probability of mission success.”
Cetron questioned his agency’s legal authority to execute the airport plan, ending the email: “Please kindly strike out CDC from this role.”
White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows pressed ahead anyway, directing the DHS to announce the airport screenings, which would be visible and instill confidence in travelers, according to meeting notes.
Passengers with fever, Meadows said, would be referred to the CDC for clearance. The full plan has not yet been finalized.
The exchange follows two weeks of internal skirmishes between the CDC and the Office of Management and Budget over how to safely reopen the nation’s schools, restaurants and churches.
Separate emails show the public health agency’s recommendations that bars install sneeze shields and teachers space student desks six feet apart were dismissed as overly prescriptive.
As a result, detailed plans – which CDC Director Dr. Robert Redfield personally approved – have idled in administration officials’ email inboxes since late April. The Associated Press has reported on the draft guidelines since last Tuesday, but an official plan has not been released.
At the height of restrictions in late March and early April, more than 310 million Americans were under directives ranging from “shelter in place” to “stay at home.” Now governors across the United States are rolling out a patchwork of plans to relax social-distancing restrictions.
“The number one public health agency is completely ineffective in the most important of moments,” said Dr. Ashish Jha, director of the Harvard Global Health Institute. “It’s so absurd.”
CDC spokesman Benjamin Haynes said in a statement that Redfield has had a seat at the table throughout the crisis.
The agency’s public health expertise is “helping shape our nation’s response, as well as the response by our state and local health department partners who continue to be on the front line fighting this war,” Haynes said.
He said the CDC is revising its reopening guidance, based on White House feedback, but did not address the records that show the agency sparring with administration officials over the airport screenings, referring questions to the White House.
White House spokesman Judd Deere downplayed any discord, noting the administration has been “encouraging all Americans to follow the CDC guidelines from the very beginning of this pandemic.”
He said the CDC never cleared the reopening instructions it wanted to issue, and that standardized guidance would be inappropriate across all states. Deere did not answer questions about the airport screening proposal.
In an Oval Office meeting last week, Trump signaled support for some form of increased health screenings, which airlines hope will convince travelers it’s safe to fly again.
The White House coronavirus task force also has requested evidence of results from the screenings after the President’s China travel ban early in the U.S. outbreak, in late January, emails show.
Scientists, including those at the CDC, have repeatedly insisted that those measures miss the large percentage of people infected with COVID-19 who display no symptoms or can infect others before or without spiking a fever. And fever can be a sign of a wide range of illnesses.
In Nevada, public health officials struggled to get basic details from the CDC about contact information for the early travelers it was supposed to track, according to records obtained by USA TODAY under a public records request.
The head of the state’s Department of Health and Human Services sent an alarmed letter to Redfield on Feb. 11.
“I am concerned about the breakdown between the communication the states have received from the CDC,” Nevada public health director Richard Whitley wrote. “The lack of communication in this circumstance created frustration and confusion for all those involved.”
CDC spokesman Haynes said issues were addressed “as quickly and efficiently as possible,” calling the airport screenings starting in January unprecedented.
Taking stock of past failures and disease spread
Recently, the CDC has begun both a public and private reckoning of its early mistakes, putting it at odds with a White House that has steadfastly defended the federal response.
An internal CDC memo, commissioned at the request of Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar and obtained by USA TODAY, reviews how the federal government missed early warning signs as the virus spread undetected around Washington state and California as early as late-January.
The federal government’s coronavirus failures may have started with the first case documented in the United States, the CDC acknowledges in the internal memo documenting the disease’s spread.
Viral genetic sequencing now suggests a link from the first case detected in late January in Washington state, involving a man who had traveled to China, to a chain of some 300 infections, although numbers vary widely.
The same viral line also circulated on a Grand Princess cruise ship that departed several weeks later out of California, the first in a set of voyages that ended with with evacuation and quarantine of passengers.
That explosion of infections occurred despite the CDC’s leadership of a vigorous public health response. The Washington state resident’s close contacts were carefully tracked and monitored.
In the internal memo, the agency speculates that its efforts nonetheless could have missed people who were infectious but only later, or never, showed symptoms. Large numbers of those infected with the virus now are known to be such asymptomatic cases, although at the time that had not yet been fully recognized.
“The virus could have spread from this case, despite the thorough investigation and response,” the CDC memo notes, adding a concerning conclusion for a country facing a likely second wave of the virus: The origin of the Washington cluster “will probably always be unknown.”
In the memo, the CDC says early transmission occurred during a period of “limited availability of testing.” But instead of highlighting its own delays in developing a reliable test, the agency described a Food and Drug Administration policy that blocked the scaling up of testing through commercial laboratories until late February.
Consequences of testing delays still coming to light.
Public health officials in Santa Clara County, California, recently learned from autopsies that two people who died in their homes in early and mid-February were infected with the new coronavirus – suggesting the virus was spreading locally much earlier than previously recognized.
These deaths occurred “during a time when very limited testing was available only through the CDC,” the California health officials said in a news release, noting that the agency’s guidance on testing then excluded people without a travel history or specific symptoms.
The CDC’s internal memo, however, minimizes the agency’s authority in those situations.
“CDC guidelines emphasized that they were just that – ‘guidelines’ – and that decisions about testing needed to be made on a case-by-case basis,” the document stated, adding that the discoveries in Santa Clara County, which the agency confirmed in late April, were still “preliminary and could easily change.”
Haynes, the CDC spokesman, confirmed the government made decisions in January and February based on available data of likely exposures by those who had traveled to Wuhan, China. In addition, he said, “CDC guidance has always allowed for clinical discretion on who should be tested.”
Dr. Alison Roxby, a University of Washington epidemiologist who has been testing nursing home patients in the Seattle area, said she has been consistently let down by the federal response. She compared her recent experiences — vying for testing supplies daily with little clear direction from the federal government — with her time working in developing African countries.
“The leadership vacuum is tremendous,” said Roxby, noting that inconsistent public health messages have contributed to people mistakenly believing the crisis has passed.
“It’s not over,” Roxby said. “It’s the eye of the hurricane.”
Reporter Kenny Jacoby contributed to this report.
Brett Murphy and Letitia Stein are reporters on the USA TODAY investigation desk. Contact Brett at brett.murphy@usatoday.com or @brettMmurphy and Letitia at lstein@usatoday.com, @LetitiaStein, by phone or Signal at 813-524-0673.
At least 25,600 residents and workers have died from the coronavirus at nursing homes and other long-term care facilities for older adults in the United States, according to a New York Times database. The virus so far has infected more than 143,000 at some 7,500 facilities.
Long-term care facilities with at least one coronavirus case
States that provide some facility data
States that provide no facility data
Nursing home populations are at a high risk of being infected by — and dying from — the coronavirus, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Covid-19, the disease caused by the coronavirus, is known to be particularly lethal to older adults with underlying health conditions, and can spread more easily through congregate facilities, where many people live in a confined environment and workers move from room to room.
While just about 10 percent of the country’s cases have occurred in long-term care facilities, deaths related to Covid-19 in these facilities account for a third of the country’s pandemic fatalities.
A third of U.S. coronavirus deaths are linked to long-term care facilities.
Cases in long-term care facilities
All other U.S. cases
Deaths in long-term care facilities
All other U.S. deaths
In the absence of comprehensive data from some states and the federal government, The Times has been assembling its own database of coronavirus cases and deaths at long-term care facilities for older adults. These include nursing homes, assisted-living facilities, memory care facilities, retirement and senior communities and rehabilitation facilities.
Some states, including Colorado, Illinois, Maryland, Nevada, New Jersey and South Carolina, regularly release cumulative data on cases and deaths at specific facilities. California, Massachusetts, Michigan and Ohio, among others, provide some details on the number of cases — but not on deaths. Others report aggregate totals for their state but provide no information on where the infections or deaths have occurred. About a dozen report very little or nothing at all.
The share of deaths tied to long-term care facilities for older adults is even more stark at the state level. In about a dozen states, the number of residents and workers who have died accounts for more than half of all deaths from the virus.
The Times’s numbers are based on official confirmations from states, counties and the facilities themselves. They include residents and, in cases where reporting is available, employees of the facilities. Given the wide variability in the type of information available, the totals shown here almost certainly represent an undercount of the true toll.
Cases and deaths in long-term care facilities, by state
State reporting comprehensive aggregate data
Based on The Times’s analysis, some 800 of the country’s 3,100 counties have at least one coronavirus case related to a long-term care facility for older adults.
Hover overTap on each county to see the number of coronavirus cases at long-term care facilities, as well as the total number of cases in that county.
Cases in long-term care facilities in each county
No cases
50
100
500
The New York Times is tracking the coronavirus at nursing homes and long-term care centers. Do you or a family member live or work in one of these facilities? If so, we’d like to hear from you.
Here is a list of cases and deaths at long-term care facilities that have had at least 50 cases. We update the numbers as we are able to confirm them with state, county and facility officials.
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Katie Miller’s positive diagnosis raises the risk that, through both her and her husband’s daily work, a large swath of the West Wing’s senior aides may also have been exposed to the novel coronavirus.
“She’s a wonderful young woman, Katie, she tested very good for a long period of time,” President Donald Trump said on Friday during a meeting with congressional Republicans at the White House. “And then all of the sudden today she tested positive. She hasn’t come into contact with me. She’s spent some time with the vice president.”
“This is why the whole concept of tests aren’t necessarily great,” the president continued. “The tests are perfect, but something can happen between a test where it’s good and then something happens and all of the sudden. She was tested very recently and tested negative, and then today I guess for some reason she tested positive. So Mike knows about it and Mike has done what he has to do. I think he is on an airplane, going to some far away place, but you’ll be able to ask him later on. But they’ve taken all of the necessary precautions. I understand Mike has been tested, vice president, and he tested negative.”
President Trump is so close to the Miller couple that he attended their wedding in February 2020 at the Trump International Hotel, where he stayed at the party for roughly two hours and delivered a short speech to toast them.
He has worked closely with Stephen Miller – one of the key architects of his administration’s immigration policy – since the 2016 campaign.
Katie Miller’s positive diagnosis of Covid-19 comes as the president promotes the re-opening of the economy in more than a dozen states and as he has started to travel outside of the White House again. This past week, he visited a Honeywell factory in Arizona where he toured the plant without wearing a face mask.
White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany earlier on Friday confirmed that a member of the vice president’s team had tested positive for coronavirus — just one day after one of the president’s personal valets contracted the illness — although she did not specify who the person was.
The vice president’s trip to Iowa on Friday was delayed by more than an hour as six other Pence staffers who had been in contact with Miller were removed from Air Force Two.
The White House said that the Pence staffer had tested negative on Thursday before receiving positive test results Friday morning. A senior administration official told reporters that the president and vice president had not been in contact with the person recently.
Pence was tested on Friday and has been tested daily, according to a senior administration official who briefed reporters traveling with the vice president.
“We have put in place the guidelines that our experts have put forward to keep this building safe, which means contact tracing,” McEnany told reporters during Friday’s news briefing. “All of the recommended guidelines we have for businesses that have essential workers, we are now putting them in place here in the White House. So as America reopens safely, the White House is continuing to operate safely.”
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommends anyone who has been exposed to a person with the coronavirus should “stay home until 14 days after last exposure and maintain social distance (at least 6 feet) from others at all times.”
The vice president is scheduled to meet with faith leaders in Des Moines, Iowa, on Friday to discuss responsible religious gatherings, followed by a roundtable on securing food supply. Agriculture Secretary Sonny Perdue and Iowa Sens. Chuck Grassley and Joni Ernst also accompanied Pence on the trip.
While staff in the West Wing are tested regularly, according to the pool report, staff members in the Executive Office Building are not tested as frequently. About 10 people on Pence’s staff are tested daily.
Both the president and vice president have avoided wearing masks at White House events and during travel. Just last week, Pence faced backlash for breaking the Mayo Clinic’s mask policy when he toured the medical facility and met with patients. Citing how frequently he’s tested for Covid-19 during a Fox News town hall over the weekend, Pence said, “I didn’t think it was necessary, but I should’ve worn the mask at the Mayo Clinic.”
During his meeting with GOP members of Congress on Friday, Trump was pressed on not wearing a mask when visiting with elderly WWII veterans earlier in the day. The president said he was not concerned because he was “very far away from them.”
“I would have loved to have gone up and hugged them because they are great. I had a conversation with every one, but we were very far away. You saw,” Trump continued. “Plus the wind was blowing so hard in such a direction that if the plague ever reached them, I’d be very surprised. It could have reached me, too. You didn’t worry about me, you only worried about them, and that’s OK because I think they’re so pure, it will never happen. Alright? They’ve lived a great life. But no, the wind was howling. And I didn’t see anybody with masks, I don’t know, maybe there were. But they were great.”
Trump on Thursday said both he and Pence had tested negative for coronavirus after they were informed that a member of the U.S. military who works at the White House had tested positive. That individual is one of the president’s valets, military members who assist the president with personal tasks.
Judd Deere, a White House spokesman, said in a statement: “The president’s physician and White House Operations continue to work closely to ensure every precaution is taken to keep the president, First Family and the entire White House complex safe and healthy at all times. In addition to social distancing, daily temperature checks and symptom histories, hand sanitizer, and regular deep cleaning of all work spaces.”
DOJ moves to drop case against former Trump aide; reaction and analysis on ‘The Five.’
Jesse Watters said on “The Five” Friday that the prosecution of former National Security Adviser Michael Flynn was an “Obama scandal” that went “all the way to the top” of the 44th president’s administration.
“It’s not about FBI misbehavior. It’s about Obama. This is an Obama scandal,” Watters said. “This goes all the way to the top.”
The “Watters’ World” host then predicted that history would view former President Barack Obama as “the most corrupt politician ever.”
“Winners write history, and Donald Trump won in 2016,” Watters said. “He’s probably going to win again and each day he has his guys in there looking around, they are finding more and more evidence that this thing was the most crooked, disgusting thing that’s ever been perpetrated on a presidential campaign.”
Watters alleged that Obama had to know about the investigation into the Trump campaign on the grounds that counterintelligence investigations always are done with the knowledge or at the order of the commander-in-chief.
“They are not done for the FBI or the CIA. They are done for Barack Obama or whoever is president at the time,” he said. “They had to take Flynn out because Flynn was incoming and he was going to see all the things they had done: the dossier, the wiretapping, the spies, the leaks, the lies.
“They knew they couldn’t get [Flynn] any other way, so we now have evidence that there was an Oval Office meeting with [then-FBI Director James] Comey and Biden … and Barack Obama, and [then-Deputy Attorney General Sally Q. Yates] said that Barack Obama knew about the phone call between Flynn and the [Russian] ambassador; perfectly legal,” he continued.
Watters then ripped Comey for using the Logan Act of 1799 as a “B.S. excuse” to allegedly “sting” Flynn.
“We are going to find out more, and we have documents coming in tomorrow, next week, that show even worse things,” Watters projected. “So buckle up, everybody. It’s about to get ugly.”
Two Glynn County commissioners say District Attorney Jackie Johnson’s office refused to allow the Glynn County Police Department to make arrests immediately after the Feb. 23 shooting death of Ahmaud Arbery.
The GBI announced the arrests of Travis McMichael, 34, and his father Greg McMichael, 64, on Thursday – more than two months after the fatal shooting. They were denied bond Friday afternoon.
“The police at the scene went to her, saying they were ready to arrest both of them. These were the police at the scene who had done the investigation,” Commissioner Allen Booker, who has spoken with Glynn County police, told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution. “She shut them down to protect her friend McMichael.”
Greg McMichael, now retired, once worked as an investigator in Johnson’s office.
Commissioner Peter Murphy, who also said he spoke directly to Glynn County police about the incident, said officers at the scene concluded they had probable cause to make arrests and contacted Johnson’s office to inform the prosecutor of their decision.
“They were told not to make the arrest,” Murphy said.
Johnson recused herself from the case within days of the shooting. Her office has not responded to a request to comment on the commissioners’ account of what happened, or on the case in general.
Friday morning, GBI Director Vic Reynolds told reporters another arrest could be forthcoming. He also noted that by statute, the GBI’s involvement in a local case must be requested and declined to comment on how other agencies have handled the case.
“In a perfect world would we have liked to have been involved in February? Of course,” Reynolds said. “But it’s not a perfect world.”
Reynolds confirmed the harrowing video capturing Ahmaud Arbery’s death on Feb. 23 was made by William Bryan, who had helped Greg and Travis McMichael pursue Arbery as he ran through the Satilla Shores community just south of Brunswick.
“We’re investigating everyone involved in the case, including the individual who shot the video,” Reynolds said.
Travis and Greg McMichael, below, were arrested Thursday evening at their homes just outside of Brunswick. They were booked into the Glynn County Jail on charges of felony murder and aggravated assault.
The arrests came roughly 36 hours after the GBI opened a state investigation.
“Probable cause was clear to our agents pretty quickly,” Reynolds said. “I’m very comfortable in telling you there’s more than sufficient probable cause in charging felony murder.”
Gov. Brian Kemp offered the GBI’s services to special prosecutor Tom Durden, the third district attorney to have the case, late Tuesday afternoon. Earlier that day Durden, below, said he would ask a grand jury to consider criminal charges against the McMichaels.
The McMichaels told police they were trying to make a citizen’s arrest because they suspected Arbery of committing burglaries in the neighborhood. Friends and family have said Arbery, who was unarmed, was only on his daily jog.
The two-month delay fueled tensions in the community that culminated Friday with a large demonstration at the Glynn County Courthouse in Brunswick.
Durden said it was unfortunate that the investigation was stalled so long. “We take what we are given and go back and look at what has been done and move forward,” he said.
Reynolds said the GBI investigation was fairly straightforward. “The video was already out, we saw it, we reviewed the rest of the file and we made an arrest,” he said.
Calls continued Friday for federal intervention into how the investigation was handled.
“We are going to ask the question why the DA did not conclude that Mr. Arbery was wrongfully killed,” said Charles Steele, president of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference. “The video was circulating within the law enforcement agencies before it surfaced in the public.”
Johnson, the Glynn County district attorney, recused herself from the case given Greg McMichael once worked in her office. In that role, he investigated a 2018 shoplifting charge against Arbery. At the time Arbery was on probation for a gun-related incident that took place when he was still in high school. His probation was revoked after McMichael’s investigation.
The Arbery case isn’t the only one Johnson has been criticized over. For more than a month, her office has known of new DNA evidence that, the Georgia Innocence Project says, proves Dennis Perry, a man who’s been in prison 20 years for murder, is innocent. Johnson hasn’t acted to free Perry — even though four legal experts say she should do so immediately.
After Johnson recused in the Arbery case, it was assigned to Waycross Judicial Circuit District Attorney George Barnhill. He would later recuse himself, but not before telling Glynn police he did not see sufficient probable cause to charge the McMichaels.
The Georgia Attorney General’s Office said there were other conflicts of interest that should’ve prompted Barnhill to withdraw from the case much earlier.
Reynolds promised a thorough probe.
“Every stone will be turned over, I promise you,” he said.
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A 4-year-old with an underlying medical condition is the first child in New Jersey to die from complications related to the coronavirus, state officials announced Friday.
“We’ve lost another blessed life,” Murphy said. “In this case, it’s unfathomable it’s a 4-year-old.”
State officials declined to reveal further information about the victim, including sex and residence. They also would not reveal which underlying medical condition the child had.
“In order to protect privacy of the child, will not release further details,” state Health Commissioner Judith Persichilli said.
The child was one of 162 new coronavirus-related deaths New Jersey officials announced Friday, bringing the statewide total to at 8,952 deaths attributed to COVID-19 in the nine weeks since the outbreak began.
The news comes days after 15 New York City children were reported to have contracted Kawasaki disease, an inflammatory illness possibly associated to COVID-19. Health officials said Thursday that at least 12 New Jersey hospitals have treated children with the rare disease.
It is unknown whether the victim announced Friday had the disease.
“I think we’ve said all we’re gonna say about the blessed 4-year-old we’ve lost,” Murphy said when asked.
Children contracting the coronavirus at all is rare. Federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention data suggested last month that children represent only 2% of all U.S. and their symptoms tend to be milder than those found in adults. COVID-19 cases and as of its April 10 Morbidity and Mortality report — the CDC’s most recent discussion on the topic — it noted only three people under the age of 18 had died from complications from the virus in the U.S.
Prior to the child’s death, the age breakdown for New Jersey’s fatal coronavirus cases has been:
29 victims ages 18 to 29
330 victims ages 30 to 49
1,155 victims ages 50 to 64
2,369 victims ages 65 to 79
3,340 victims ages 80 and older
More than half of the victims with a known medical history have had an underlying condition, including at 58% with cardiovascular disease, according to the state’s COVID-19 tracking website.
New Jersey, a densely populated state of 9 million residents, has reported at least 135,454 total coronavirus since the outbreak began March 4. That includes another 1,985 positive tests that state officials announced Friday. Only New York has more total deaths and cases among American states.
Meanwhile, coronavirus-related hospitalizations in the Garden State continue to decrease from a peak in mid-April, from more than 8,000 to 4,764 as of 10 p.m. Thursday.
“The data from our hospitals continue to move in the right direction — down,” Murphy said during Friday’s briefing. “But we also cannot overstate enough that even while we are pleased with this progress, our hospital systems are dealing with far more patients than they would be otherwise in any other year, and the stress on our health care system, while certainly lessening, is still there. Only we have the power to push these numbers down further.”
The Garden State’s economy has also suffered during the outbreak, with more than 1 million residents having filed for unemployment since social distancing and business closings began in late March. Meanwhile, businesses has suffered untold revenue losses.
Despite pressure from some lawmakers, businesses, and residents, Murphy has said the state can’t rush reopening because that would risk cases, deaths, and hospitalizations rising again.
The governor has formed a commission to plot a strategy but has not given a definitive timeline. He has said the state must meet conditions for a broader reopening — including cases and hospitalizations dropping for 14 straight days, as well as officials expanding testing and installing contact tracing and isolations programs.
But Murphy has allowed parks and golf courses to reopen in New Jersey, with social-distancing restrictions. And with Memorial Day less than three weeks away, he said he may soon allow beaches to reopen, with similar guidelines.
Murphy also said he may allow nonessential construction and elective surgeries to resume, while also allowing some nonessential businesses to offer curbside service.
Most big California counties are not close to meeting Gov. Gavin Newsom’s strict standards that would allow a wider reopening of the economy, including dine-in restaurants and shopping malls, a Times data analysis found.
Newsom announced Thursday a series of benchmarks each of California’s 58 counties would need to reach to significantly reopen faster than the statewide standard. Can the county show that people have stopped dying from the coronavirus? Have new cases fallen to a manageable level? Can officials adequately test people? Do they have enough detectives to track down newly infected people? And do they have enough medical supplies?
The Times conducted an analysis to see which counties could pass just the first two criteria — whether deaths have stopped in the past 14 days, and whether there is no more than one case per 10,000 residents in that same time period. Most of California failed that test.
In fact, 95% of Californians live in counties that don’t meet that standard, The Times analysis found. Not a single county in Southern California nor the San Francisco Bay Area met the criteria.
The 24 counties that did meet the criteria, for the two-week period that ended Thursday, are all in Northern California and most are sparsely populated.
The three largest counties meeting both criteria are Placer County, population 380,000, northeast of Sacramento; Santa Cruz County, population 274,000, south of San Jose; and Butte County, population 227,000, in the foothills of the northern Sierra Nevada.
With the exception of Santa Cruz County, all 24 counties are north of the San Francisco Bay Area, Sacramento and the Yosemite Valley.
Only 2 million of California’s 39.1 million residents live in these counties.
The failure of most California counties to meet the criteria demonstrates just how persistent the coronavirus is in the Golden State’s most populous areas. The Times analysis found that 92% of Californians live in counties that in the last two weeks have recorded at least one death from COVID-19, the disease caused by the coronavirus.
The criteria need to be met only by counties wanting to move faster than the statewide pace of reopening. While California entered the first part of Phase 2 of Newsom’s reopening plan Friday, its effect statewide was limited — only allowing lower-risk businesses to open for curbside pickup, like florists and stores selling books, clothes, music, toys and sporting goods. The easing applied only to counties without stricter local rules.
Counties that meet the criteria in the latter part of Phase 2 could allow people to dine inside restaurants and head into malls.
Newsom suggested Friday that the guidelines would be later modified on a statewide basis, allowing larger counties hit hardest by the outbreak to also reopen more broadly.
“Over the next few weeks, we’ll be making subsequent announcements for the entire state, not just those that meet those more restrictive criteria,” Newsom said.
California has recorded more than 63,000 cases and more than 2,600 deaths. Urban areas have seen a greater toll than many smaller communities.
Los Angeles County, California’s most populous and home to one-quarter of the state’s population, has suffered the highest death toll of any county for the last two weeks. Its 622 deaths were 61% of all the deaths recorded in California from COVID-19 during that time period. Another 51 deaths were reported in L.A. County on Friday.
Riverside County comes up second, recording 92 fatalities in the past two weeks. Riverside County’s health officer, Dr. Cameron Kaiser, has been locked in a contentious standoff with some other county officials who are demanding he rescind orders requiring people to wear facial coverings in public and stay at least six feet away from others.
Nine other counties had death tolls in the double digits over the last two weeks: San Diego County, with 65; Santa Clara County, 32; Orange County, 30; San Bernardino County, 31; Alameda County, 21; San Mateo County, 17; Tulare County, 18; Stanislaus County, 14; and San Francisco, 11. In all, there were 26 counties that have reported at least one death in the past two weeks, in counties home to 36 million people.
Eight counties — with a combined population of 1 million — have met the standard of no deaths in the last two weeks, but have rates of new cases higher than the state’s cutoff for a speedier reopening. The worst hit county in this category is Kings County in the San Joaquin Valley, with 13 new cases per 10,000 residents — just above L.A. County’s rate of almost 12 cases per 10,000 residents in the past two weeks.
Kings County is the site of a large coronavirus outbreak at a meat packing plant in Hanford, where at least 138 have been infected, according to the Fresno Bee.
The others with disease rates that exceed the state standard include Mariposa County, home of Yosemite National Park, with eight new cases per 10,000 residents. Three other counties have between two and three new cases per 10,000 people: Mono County, home to the Mammoth Mountain ski area; San Luis Obispo County on the Central Coast, and Merced County in the San Joaquin Valley.
Newsom said he understood there’s a “deep anxiety; people are feeling a desire to reopen,” but that the criteria for counties to reopen at a pace faster than the statewide standard was based on what public health experts advised. California has recorded an average of 500 deaths a week for the past four weeks.
He said officials need time to make sure authorities build up robust capacity to test people and train a workforce of disease detectives to investigate new cases — and identify their close contacts — as California reopens.
It’s no small task. In Silicon Valley, the Santa Clara County health officer, Dr. Sara Cody, this week said she foresees a need to create an expanded disease detective team twice the size of the local public health department. Cody said officials are looking at having county, city and school district employees do the work, as well as volunteers.
Currently, the Bay Area’s most populous county can investigate 25 new cases a day — and that’s adequate right now because most people are staying at home. But once shelter-in-place orders are lifted and people start leaving home more often, Santa Clara County will likely need to investigate 75 cases a day.
The manpower needed is enormous in L.A. County, where an average of 900 cases a day have been reported in the last week. Not only do each of those newly infected people need to be contacted, but so do each of their close contacts, which have averaged eight before the stay-at-home order was implemented and now average five.
Newsom said businesses and venues in a higher risk category, Phase 3 — like hair and nail salons, gyms, movie theaters, churches and weddings — could see a reopening in the coming months. Churches have been a notable site for coronavirus outbreaks worldwide, and Newsom has said a nail salon was the site of California’s first confirmed spread of the coronavirus in the community.
“Phase 3 is not a year away. It’s not six months away. It’s not even three months away. It may not even be more than a month away. We just want to make sure that we have a protocol in place to secure customer safety, employee safety and allow the businesses to thrive in a way that is sustainable,” Newsom said.
As for the rest of Phase 2, Newsom said he hoped he could move all of California into the next phase, while allowing some regions to be stricter if they decide that’s needed. “We hope to be making announcements on a consistent basis, over the next few weeks, moving everybody into this next phase,” Newsom said.
Times staff writers Phil Willon and Alexandra Wigglesworth contributed to this report.
Hurricane season is still weeks away but experts are already anticipating that this year could be more active than normal — a forecast that emergency officials may find troubling as much of the country remains in the grips of the coronavirus pandemic.
The season officially begins June 1, but some meteorologists who have been tracking ocean and atmospheric dynamics over the past few months say conditions are ripe for storms.
“I’m sure nobody wants to hear this with everything else going on, but it’s looking like it will be a relatively active season,” said Phil Klotzbach, an atmospheric scientist at Colorado State University in Fort Collins.
Klotzbach and his colleagues at Colorado State released a forecast in early April that predicts 16 named storms with winds of 39 miles per hour or higher. Of those, the researchers’ models suggest eight could become hurricanes, including four “major” hurricanes that reach Category 3 or higher.
An average season has 12 named storms, six hurricanes and three major hurricanes, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, which is expected to release its official hurricane season outlook later this month.
There are two main factors that suggest this year’s hurricane season could be busier than usual: warmer-than-average sea surface temperatures in the Atlantic Ocean and low probabilities that a climate pattern known as El Niño will return.
Researchers closely monitor conditions in the tropical and subtropical Atlantic because warm ocean temperatures provide some of the fuel for big storms.
“Warm ocean waters are one of the main ingredients for tropical cyclone development, which refers to both hurricane and lesser storms like tropical depressions and tropical storms,” said Daniel Brouillette, an atmospheric and climate scientist at Pennsylvania State University. “The warmer those waters are, the more likely that tropical cyclones will develop, and also the stronger they may be if they do develop.”
Both the Colorado State and the Penn State forecasts also found that El Niño conditions are unlikely to develop this year. That phenomenon, characterized by unusually warm water in the Pacific Ocean, influences climate patterns around the world and typically increases wind shear in the Atlantic, which can tear hurricanes apart and disrupt major storms as they are forming.
The counterpart of El Niño, known as La Niña, is characterized by unusually cool temperatures in the equatorial Pacific, and also drives global climate patterns. In the case of La Niña, there is typically less wind shear over the Atlantic, making for conditions that are more conducive for tropical cyclone development, Brouillette said.
Though there is strong consensus so far that this year’s hurricane season will be a busy one, Klotzbach said it is still early, and even minor changes in ocean or atmospheric conditions can influence the outcome of the season.
“A lot can happen between April and June,” he said. “There are a lot of signs pointing to an active season, but I wouldn’t say it’s a slam dunk.”
Still, scientists will be closely monitoring developments in the upcoming hurricane season, which runs until Nov. 30, because it will be unfolding against the backdrop of the coronavirus outbreak.
“The hurricane season is coming whether we want it to or not,” Klotzbach said. “And regardless of the seasonal forecasts, people need to be prepared every year.”
Preparations may be particularly important this year, as emergency resources in many states, and at the federal level, are likely already strained because of the pandemic.
“It would behoove emergency managers, but also the public, to hedge their bets that the pandemic will still be going on later in the summer and fall,” Brouillette said, “and to make as many preparations as possible right now to anticipate difficulties with that.”
The local district attorney blocked police from making arrests immediately after the Feb. 23 shooting death of unarmed jogger Ahmaud Arbery, two county commissioners said Friday — with one accusing the two of being in cohoots because they were friends.
Cops at the scene of the Georgia shooting had believed they had probable cause to make arrests, Glynn County Commissioner Peter Murphy told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution — but were told to stand down by the DA’s office.
“They spoke to an assistant, who relayed their request to [Glynn County District Attorney] Jackie Johnson,” Murphy told the paper of the cops at the scene.
“They were told not to make the arrest.”
“She shut them down to protect her friend McMichael,” a second county commissioner, Allen Booker, told the paper.
Johnson had recused herself from the case entirely a few days after the shooting, Booker said.
Travis McMichael, 34, and his father, Greg, 64, were arrested Thursday, more than two months after Arbery was shot.
The father is a former cop who had worked as an investigator for the DA’s office, the paper reported earlier Friday. He had helped prosecute Arbery in the past, when he was in high school, on a weapons charge.
Johnson’s office did not respond to the Journal-Constitution’s request for comment on Murphy’s account.
Arbery’s 26th birthday would have been today.
“I saw the tape and it’s very, very disturbing,” President Trump said Friday of a video that emerged Tuesday showing the pair scuffling with the unarmed Arbery before he is shot and falls to the ground.
Ahmaud Arbery
VIA REUTERS
Glynn County DA Jackie Johnson
Glynn County
A memorial at the spot where Ahmaud Arbery was shot and killed in Brunswick, Georgia.
The Justice Department is dropping charges against Michael Flynn, President Trump’s former national security adviser.
Manuel Balce Ceneta/AP
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Manuel Balce Ceneta/AP
The Justice Department is dropping charges against Michael Flynn, President Trump’s former national security adviser.
Manuel Balce Ceneta/AP
Why is the government seeking to drop charges against Michael Flynn even though he pleaded guilty — in two admissions in court — to committing the crime at issue?
The short answers: The Justice Department is giving him a break. And Flynn has played his cards well.
The long answer: It’s a long story.
The deal
Flynn admitted to lying to the FBI about conversations he had had with Russia’s then-ambassador to the United States as he and the rest of President-elect Donald Trump’s camp waited in the wings early in 2017.
That case appeared clear. But the former Army lieutenant general also had been involved with other enterprises that might have resulted in more charges — including undisclosed foreign lobbying — and his deal with prosecutors swept that off the table.
It also apparently avoided prospective charges for Flynn’s son. Flynn and his attorneys considered the deal to be the least bad way out of the jam.
“My guilty plea and agreement to cooperate with the special counsel’s office reflect a decision I made in the best interests of my family and of our country. I accept full responsibility for my actions,” Flynn said in late 2017 at the time of his plea.
All the same, few knew at the time of that submission how problematic Flynn’s fateful interview with the FBI would be for nearly everyone else involved, including the specific FBI agents, the leadership of the bureau and the Justice Department.
The conversation
Former FBI Director James Comey since has described the question about whether Flynn had lied, or whether to charge him, as “a close one.”
U.S. Attorney Timothy Shea quoted that statement in his brief about the Flynn case filed Thursday to seek the dismissal of the charges, along with the notes of the FBI agents that also have since come to light.
In those materials, the investigators appear to wonder what they’re doing preparing to interview Flynn.
“What is our goal — truth, admission or to get him to lie so we can prosecute him or get him fired?” one note read. Another says: “[White House] will be furious” and “protect our institution by not playing games.”
Flynn’s attorneys fought to get this material unsealed after their dealings with the government soured. They call it the basis for their claim that the FBI effectively entrapped him.
The Justice Department’s new brief cites these materials and argues that the bureau had all but concluded that Flynn wasn’t a counterintelligence risk as it was looking into prospective links between Trump’s camp and the Russian interference in the 2016 election.
In this new reasoning, Flynn’s false statements to investigators weren’t ‘”material’ to any bona fide investigation,” Shea wrote — so the case shouldn’t continue.
What about the guilty pleas?
Attorney General William Barr was clear in an interview with CBS News on Thursday evening: “People sometimes plead to things that turn out not to be crimes, and the Department of Justice is not persuaded that this was material to any legitimate counterintelligence investigation. So it was not a crime.”
Change in the weather
Also unknown to the public at the time of Flynn’s interview were the disputes about it taking place within and between the FBI and the Justice Department.
The procedures — or lack thereof — that were followed then helped create the opening for the new legal interpretation by Barr that the Flynn case was improper.
Comey’s fingerprints and those of other former bureau leaders were all over the decisions made about what to do and whom to tell and not tell about Flynn’s interview. Those names are now mud with most Republicans, and that, separate from the legal interpretations, make the politics safe within the GOP for Trump and Barr to let Flynn go.
Democrats argue that Trump and Barr have made a mockery of what was intended to be an independent Justice Department, first with the intercession in the sentencing of Trump’s friend Roger Stone and now with Flynn.
The player
Through all this, Flynn and his attorneys sought the best deal they could get at each juncture. First, they turned state’s evidence.
Intitially, prosecutors called him a model cooperator and told a judge they would be fine if he received a sentence of only probation, even though federal guidelines contemplated at least a few months in prison.
The longer Flynn cooperated, however, the more fraught became his relationship with the feds. After giving prosecutors everything they wanted in the Russia matter, Flynn became less forthcoming when the government brought a case against his former business partner, prosecutors said.
The U.S. Attorney’s Office for Washington D.C., which took the prosecutorial baton from special counsel Robert Mueller’s office, told a judge that it thought Flynn should be sentenced to as many as six months.
That could include probation, it said — but didn’t rule out the prospect of prison time, given how much less helpful prosecutors said Flynn had become.
By this point, in mid-2019, Flynn had changed out his legal team, and it howled at the prospect of prison after all the work he had done for the Justice Department.
That “stunning and vindictive reversal,” as Flynn’s lawyers called it, was one basis for their request to withdraw the guilty plea earlier this year, notwithstanding Flynn’s admission of guilt and months of cooperation.
It also fueled their quest to obtain more of the core documents about Flynn’s interview, which revealed the notes from the FBI investigators.
The sentencing that wasn’t
In a strange twist, what might have set the stage for Flynn’s eventual release was an encounter with an outspoken judge who raised the prospect of punishing him more severely.
Nearly everyone, including Trump, expected Flynn to be sentenced in late 2018 when he appeared before Judge Emmet Sullivan in Washington. Flynn and prosecutors invited family members to be with them in court.
But the judge yielded surprises and headlines with his spirited remarks about the case.
“I’m not hiding my disgust, my disdain, for this criminal offense,” he said.
Sullivan asked prosecutors whether Flynn might have committed “treason,” raising the prospect that Flynn might get prison time after all. No, the government said, it didn’t consider that part of the case.
Ultimately, Sullivan deferred the sentencing because he said he had more questions about the matter, adding more months to Flynn’s legal saga.
If Sullivan had issued a sentence then and resolved Flynn’s case, Flynn’s admissions and guilt might have stood. His legal odyssey might have ended there.
Instead, the judge’s delay led to the phase of the story in which Flynn replaced his attorneys and broke with the government. His new legal team fought for and obtained the FBI memos and sought to rescind the guilty plea.
That dispute was still ongoing when the Justice Department decided this week to drop the case. In the end, Flynn and his lawyers outlasted everyone.
A government watchdog has found that there is evidence that federal scientist Rick Bright was ousted as head of a health agency for pushing back against a controversial coronavirus drug treatment embraced by President Donald Trump, Bright’s lawyers said Friday.
The watchdog, the Office of Special Counsel, will ask the Health and Human Services Department to stay his removal from the job, Bright’s lawyers said.
Bright was booted last month as head of the Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority, a unit of HHS, after what he said was his resistance to embracing expansion of the use of hydroxychloroquine, the anti-malarial drug touted by Trump.
Bright has claimed in a whistleblower complaint filed this week to the Office of Special Counsel that he was transferred to a job in the National Institutes of Health “without warning or explanation” over his refusal to increase access to the drug.
The OSC is an independent federal investigative and prosecutorial agency, which, among other things, investigates alleged violations of the federal Whistleblower Protection Act.
Bright’s attorneys, Debra Katz and Lisa Banks, in a statement said that on Thursday afternoon they “were notified by the Office of Special Counsel … that it had determined there were ‘reasonable grounds’ to believe that Dr. Bright had been subjected to a prohibited personnel practice – i.e., that there was sufficient evidence to believe that his involuntary removal as” BARDA director “was retaliatory.”
“OSC further advised that in light of this determination, it would contact the Department of Health and Human Services … to request that it stay Dr. Bright’s removal as Director of BARDA for 45 days to allow OSC sufficient time to complete its investigation of Bright’s allegations,” the lawyers said.
A spokesman for the Office of Special Counsel declined to comment. “OSC cannot comment on or confirm the status of open investigations,” the spokesman said.
Katz and Banks said they “strongly” urge HHS Secretary Alex Azar “to agree to this request” to stay Bright’s transfer.
“Dr. Bright should not be denied the right to have his complaint investigated fully and fairly before he is formally transferred to NIH — a move that will harm not only him, but the country as well,” the lawyers said.
“This country is in an unprecedented health crisis and needs the expertise of Dr. Bright to lead the nation’s efforts to combat COVID-19,” the attorneys said. “We hope the Secretary will grant the Special Counsel’s request and allow Dr. Bright, one of nation’s leading vaccine scientists, to return to his position leading BARDA and serving his country.”
Trump, when asked about the finding on Friday, said, “I don’t know. To me he looks like a disgruntled employee. I don’t know who he is.”
“But to me, he’s a disgruntled employee. And if people are that unhappy they shouldn’t work,” Trump said.
“If you’re unhappy with a company you shouldn’t work there, go out and get something else, but to me he’s a disgruntled guy, and I hadn’t heard great things about him.”
“This whole thing started in the state of California, the first community spread, in a nail salon,” Newsom said at his news briefing. “I’m very worried about that.”
The governor on Thursday announced that the Golden State would be entering into the second phase of its four-phase reopening plan.
On Friday, businesses in the state that have been identified as low-risk, including some retailers, sporting goods stores, florists and bookstores will reopen with modified operations, such as curbside pickup. Manufacturing and logistics companies associated with these businesses will also reopen.
CA will begin moving into stage 2 of modifying the stay-at-home order starting tomorrow.
This isn’t a return to normal. ✅ Retail, with curbside pickup, and associated supply chains can reopen with modifications that follow NEW state guidance.https://t.co/snYe5v55Rwpic.twitter.com/Pif27PubYL
— Office of the Governor of California (@CAgovernor) May 7, 2020
Nail salons — along with hair salons and gyms — have been labeled as high-risk businesses, and Newsom didn’t give a timeline for their reopening.
California has been one of the hardest-hit states by the pandemic, with more than 60,000 confirmed cases of COVID-19 and more than 2,500 deaths.
WASHINGTON — The single $1,200 check to Americans in a federal stimulus package was not enough to make ends meet during the coronavirus pandemic, a group of senators say, and they want to send more.
Sens. Bernie Sanders, Ed Markey and Kamala Harris unveiled legislation Friday that would provide $2,000 payments until three months after the Department of Health and Human Services declared the public health emergency to be over, a proposal likely to face strong resistance from the White House and congressional Republicans.
The senators said the legislation would provide much-needed economic support as businesses suffer the economic impacts of social distancing measures designed to stop the virus’ spread. The U.S. unemployment rate has soared to 14.7% with 20.5 million jobs lost in April.
“The one-time $1,200 check that many Americans recently received is not nearly enough to pay the rent, put food on the table and make ends meet,” said Sanders, I-Vt.
But GOP leaders in Washington appear to be in no rush to get a new stimulus deal done. The White House has turned its focus to reopening the economy while Republicans in Congress want to spend already approved stimulus money before deciding on more. However, the GOP has pushed for provisions like liability protections and a payroll tax cut to be included in the next coronavirus relief bill.
“I think there’s a pause in the formal negotiations. We’re going to take a look at things at the end of May and early June and see where we are in the economy,” White House Economic Council Director Larry Kudlow said Friday on Fox Business. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., said Tuesday that senators would “take a pause” to evaluate the effects of previous legislation before moving forward on relief bills.
Markey, D-Mass., noted the monthly payments would be the “most direct and efficient mechanism” to provide relief, especially to “low-income families, immigrant communities, and our gig and service workers.”
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said Thursday in a Bloomberg News interview “putting money in people’s pockets” was a top priority for House Democrats in the next stimulus, and provisions like an extension of unemployment insurance and direct payments were under consideration. Democrats have also pressed for hundreds of billions in dollars of aid for state and local governments whose budgets have been cratered by the coronavirus pandemic.
The bill would provide $2,000 a month to every individual with an income below $120,000, higher than the $75,000 threshold in the previous stimulus. Married couples would receive $4,000. Families would receive $2,000 per child for up to three children, and payments would be assessed retroactively to March 2020.
The legislation would give payments to all U.S. residents, even if they did not have a Social Security number or had filed recent tax returns. It would also forbid debt collectors from taking the payments, and provide payments to homeless and foster youth.
While the bill’s future is unclear, unorthodox proposals have gained traction during the coronavirus pandemic. The previous round of $1,200 payments, for example, started as a proposal from Sen. Mitt Romney, R-Utah.
The stimulus check program has also drawn scrutiny as Americans have reported missing and delayed checks, or others have reported checks issued to dead people. The Treasury Department has asked for stimulus checks issued to deceased relatives to be given back.
During his daily coronavirus briefing, New York Governor Andrew Cuomo says the state is seeing some cases where children affected with coronavirus can become ill with symptoms similar to Kawasaki disease or toxic shock-like syndrome. » Subscribe to NBC News: http://nbcnews.to/SubscribeToNBC » Watch more NBC video: http://bit.ly/MoreNBCNews
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