Moments after California Governor Gavin Newsom reported a shockingly large record number of daily coronavirus cases in the state, Los Angeles County Public Health Director Barbara Ferrer reported 2,496 new cases of COVID-19, just shy of the all-time record, which topped 2,500 on June 22.
The day before, on Tuesday, the number of daily new cases was 4,015. That data included a backlog of tests, so it’s hard to call it a record. But the daily average is “now 2,400 a day,” according to Ferrer. Those numbers indicate that the number of daily new cases may remain at the near-record level for some time.
For perspective, less than a month ago the county Department of Public Health reported it had measured 1,857 new confirmed coronavirus cases on June 13. That number represented a single-day record at that time. The daily average of new cases is now roughly 30 percent higher than what was a record single-day number at the time.
“We’re entering a phase where we’re seeing a rate of infection and hospitalizations like we did in late April,” said Ferrer, referencing the height of community spread in L.A. “We’re even seeing a small increase in new deaths, which is usually a lagging indicator.”
Related Story
California Coronavirus Update: Gov. Gavin Newsom Reports New COVID-19 Case Numbers That Shatter Daily Record by 64%
“We are seeing a sharp increase in community transmission,” warned Ferrer.
The daily positivity rate — a composite of a 7-day rolling average — is now 10.4 percent, according to the county health department. That’s a rate that Los Angeles County hasn’t seen since late-April.
There are now more than 2,000 people currently hospitalized, according to public health department. Twenty six percent of those people are confirmed cases in the ICU.
The 3-day average of hospitalizations is now at over 1900 patients. According to Ferrer, that is “more than any other time in the pandemic.” That number is rising daily by 10.4 percent, according to the 7-day average
Ferrer reported a relatively-high number 65 new deaths from COVID-19 over the past 24 hours, for a total of 3,642 coronavirus deaths since the pandemic began.
Minutes before the health officials’ briefing, Newsom then announced a mind-boggling number of new coronavirus cases in the state. Over the previous 24 hours, California saw 11,694 new cases, which which includes a backlog of cases from Los Angeles County.
Testing backlogs have spiked the state’s daily new case numbers before, but the Wednesday number so far exceeds the state’s previous all-time high of 7,149 reported on June 24, that it cannot be ignored.
Later, to avoid destructive tariffs threatened by Mr. Trump, Mexico deployed a new security force, the National Guard, to police its borders and prevent migrants from passing into the country. That concession shifted the forces away from the reason they were created — to fight the spiraling violence engulfing the nation.
But although Mr. López Obrador’s concessions helped upend decades of established asylum policy, he paid little price in the polls. His astronomic approval ratings at the time — around 70 percent or higher — barely budged.
Mr. López Obrador has shown a remarkable talent for reading the Mexican electorate and for making choices that, while deeply upsetting to his critics, have done little to dampen his overall public support.
Even today, with coronavirus infections soaring and the death toll roughly five times higher than the government’s initial estimates, Mr. López Obrador still enjoys nearly 60 percent approval ratings, according to a recently published average of several polls.
“The average Mexican is only interested in putting food on the table, and so in that sense this visit is the last thing that worries Obrador’s supporters,” Iliana Rodríguez, a professor of international relations at the School of Government at Tec de Monterrey, said of the Trump meeting.
Mr. López Obrador has made clear that his primary focus is domestic. Appeasing Mr. Trump means the American president is less likely to interfere in domestic issues — or to punish Mexico with economic measures like tariffs.
“López Obrador put his money on a strategy of détente, and ironing out tensions with our biggest commercial partner and the world’s most powerful country,” said Jorge Volpi, a novelist and columnist in Mexico.
Kanye West, who announced his intention to run for president on Saturday, said in a Forbesinterview Wednesday that he believes “Planned Parenthoods have been placed inside cities by white supremacists to do the Devil’s work” — adding to a long-standing claim anti-abortion activists have made that the women’s health organization perpetuates racist ideals because its founder Margaret Sanger was a proponent of eugenics.
Kanye West meeting with President Donald Trump in the Oval Office at the White House in 2018.
AFP via Getty Images
KEY FACTS
Planned Parenthood has long refuted the claims that it was founded on racist ideals and alluded to the allegation in a recent statement announcing its new CEO and president Alexis McGill Johnson, saying that it “has publicly committed to reckoning with its history, investing in work aimed at engaging communities of color, and improving Planned Parenthood’s health care delivery.”
Sanger recruited Black leaders to support the project and, in the letter, she said that white men should not run the clinics and that there would be more community involvement and support if the clinics were run by Black doctors because they could “get closer to their members and more or less lay their cards on the table which means their superstitions, ignorance, and doubts.”
“We do not want word to go out that we want to exterminate the Negro population, and the minister is the man who can straighten out that idea if it ever occurs to any of their more rebellious members,” she wrote.
The first half of the sentence was referenced in a letter Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) and 25 House Republicans sent in 2015 urging the National Portrait Gallery to remove a bust of Sanger to support their claim that she “famously espoused birth control as a method for controlling the population of minorities.”
Historians have argued that the line has been taken out of context and that she was referring to people’s suspicions, not Planned Parenthood’s goal.
key background
Anti-abortion activists also point to the fact that Stanger, who is seen as the founder of the birth control movement, spoke about birth control at a women’s branch of the Klu Klux Klan in 1926. Planned Parenthood has since denounced the meeting with the Klu Klux Klan, saying that it “strongly disagrees with Sanger’s decision to address an organization that spreads hatred.” They also argue that, while Sanger believed in the “broader issues of health and fitness that concerned the early 20th-century eugenics movement,” she believed that reproductive decisions should be made by individuals and that she “consistently and firmly repudiated any strictly racial application of eugenics principles.” She did believe in some of the eugenics principles “progressives” of the day favored that many would balk at today, including Planned Parenthood, which has said there are “major flaws in Sanger’s views” and called them “wrong.” “That Sanger was enamored and supported some eugenicists’ ideas is certainly true,” Susan Reverby, a health care historian and professor at Wellesley College, told NPR in a 2015 article about the allegations. But, she added, Sanger’s main argument was not eugenics — it was that “Sanger thought people should have the children they wanted.”
crucial quote
“The sentence may have been thoughtlessly composed, but it is perfectly clear that she was not endorsing genocide,” Ellen Chesler, author of Woman of Valor: Margaret Sanger and the Birth Control Movement in America, wrote in a 2011 Salon article.
tangent
West’s famous wife Kim Kardashian West, has been supportive of Planned Parenthood. In an episode of Keeping Up With the Kardashians, she and her sisters Khloe and Kourtney went to a Planned Parenthood center to talk to women. “The perception of Planned Parenthood is that it’s like this abortion clinic,” Kardashian West said during the episode. “That’s nothing like what it’s like. Hearing that first-hand really made it real for me.” (West made his view of abortion clear in the four-hour Forbes interview saying, “I am pro-life because I’m following the word of the bible.”)
WASHINGTON – The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is revising its guidance on reopening schools after President Donald Trump tweeted his disagreement with them, Vice President Mike Pence said Wednesday.
“The president said today we just don’t want the guidance to be too tough,” Pence said at a news conference at the U.S. Department of Education. “That’s the reason why, next week, CDC is going to be issuing a new set of tools, five different documents that will be giving even more clarity on the guidance going forward.”
Trump tweeted Wednesday that he disagrees with the CDC’s “very tough & expensive guidelines for opening schools” as the coronavirus pandemic continues.
“They are asking schools to do very impractical things,” Trump tweeted. “I will be meeting with them!!!”
He also threatened to withhold funding from schools that don’t populate their classrooms this fall.
Asked about that threat, Pence said the administration wants to include “incentives for states to go forward” in the next federal stimulus package.
“And as we work with Congress on the next round of state support, we’re going to be looking for ways to give states a strong incentive and encouragement to get kids back to school,” said Pence, the head of the White House Coronavirus Task Force.
Most education funding comes from the state and local levels, but the federal government provides billions to schools through grants for low-income schools and special education programs.
On Tuesday, the president and first lady Melania Trump staged a White House event designed to push local school districts to reopen in the fall. The event provided a forum for teachers, administrators, students and parents to discuss “best practices” for safely reopening schools around the country.
The first lady urged parents, teachers and schools to inform children about the CDC’s guidelines on coronavirus at the start of the school year and to implement those guidelines when appropriate.
At Wednesday’s news conference at the Education Department, CDC Director Robert Redfield said he wanted “to make it very clear” that the guidelines are intended to help schools reopen and are not “to be used as a rationale to keep schools closed.”
Pence said that was the sentiment behind Trump’s tweet about the guidelines.
“What the president was saying this morning is, that if there are aspects of the CDC’s recommendations that are prescriptive, or that serve as a barrier to kids getting back to school, we want governors and local officials and education leaders to know that we’re here to work with them,” Pence said. “Every American knows that we can safely reopen our schools.”
At a later briefing at the White House, Press Secretary Kayleigh McEnany cited one example of a problematic CDC recommendation: “Have children bring their own meals as feasible, or serve individually plated meals in classrooms instead of in a communal dining hall or cafeteria, while ensuring the safety of children with food allergies.”
McEnany focused on the first part of that recommendation, saying there are millions of students who depend on schools for meals and can’t bring their own.
“There are 28 implicit acknowledgements that these guidelines aren’t even feasible,” she said.
On funding, McEnany said Trump is looking at “potentially redirecting” federal dollars so it’s “tied to the student, and not to a district where schools are closed.”
In Pence’s home state of Indiana, the Republican state superintendent of education expressed her displeasure Wednesday morning with the threatening message coming from the White House.
Jennifer McCormick tweeted that while schools and health departments are working on re-entry plans, schools “cannot & should not be bullied from DC into ignoring safety concerns.”
“Not helpful,” she added.
The CDC’s “readiness assessment” to monitor “recommended practices” includes a multi-page checklist schools can follow. It covers such items as coming up with procedures for regular cleaning, for daily health checks of staff and students, for limiting contact throughout the school day and for responding if someone does become infected.
The CDC says implementation “should be guided by what is feasible, practical, acceptable, and tailored to the needs and context of each community.”
The US supreme court has upheld a broad expansion by the Trump administration of the pool of employers that can use religious objections to deny women insurance coverage for contraception.
The ruling, which struck down a lower court decision, could deprive up to 125,000 women of contraceptive coverage, Justice Sonia Sotomayor warned during oral arguments in the case in May.
Justice Clarence Thomas wrote an opinion for the 7-2 majority striking down a lower court’s finding that the Trump administration did not have the authority to issue such a broad order. “This decision,” Thomas wrote, “was erroneous.
“We hold that the Departments had the authority to provide exemptions from the regulatory contraceptive requirements for employers with religious and conscientious objections,” Thomas wrote.
The Affordable Care Act, passed under Barack Obama, required employers to cover “preventive care” – a category including certain types of contraception – free of charge, allowing for some exemptions for churches and religious groups.
Corporations run by families with religious objections to covering the costs of contraception won exemption from the law in a subsequent high-profile supreme court decision, Burwell v Hobby Lobby (2014).
But soon after Trump took office, his administration issued new, much broader exemptions, which the states of Pennsylvania and New Jersey challenged in court.
Under Trump’s rules, any nonprofit employer or any for-profit employer in a company not publicly traded could claim an objection of conscience and be exempted from offering plans that included coverage for contraception.
Lawyers for the government in the case, Little Sisters of the Poor v Pennsylvania, argued that no employer who did not have bona fide moral objections to contraception would seek to take advantage of the exemption, because health insurance plans that include contraceptive coverage did not cost more than other plans.
But the states argued that the executive branch did not have the power to issue such a broad order. The current case did not significantly delve into the underlying constitutional issues tied to first amendment and equal protection claims in so-called “religious liberty” cases.
Alongside other major rulings in this court term, the religious exemption case offered a glimpse of how a new conservative majority on the court, installed under Trump, could shape public life for decades to come.
During oral arguments in the case, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg blasted the government for hollowing out the Affordable Care Act’s expansion of healthcare for women.
“The glaring feature of what the government has done in expanding this exemption is to toss to the winds entirely Congress’ instruction that women need and shall have seamless, no-cost comprehensive coverage,” Ginsburg said.
The Trump administration was “shifting the employer’s religious beliefs – the cost of that – on to employees who do not share these religious beliefs,” Ginsburg said.
Lawyers for the Trump administration argued that it made sense for exemptions extended to churches under the law to be expanded further.
Justices on the court’s liberal wing repeatedly returned the argument to the plight of women who would lose insurance coverage as a result of the exemption.
“In your calculus what you haven’t considered or told me about is the effect on women who now have to go out, as Justice Ginsburg said, and search for contraceptive coverage if they can’t personally afford it,” said Sotomayor during oral arguments. “And what I just wonder is: if there’s no substantial burden, how can the government justify an exemption that deprives those women of seamless coverage?”
If your day doesn’t start until you’re up to speed on the latest headlines, then let us introduce you to your new favorite morning fix. Sign up here for the ‘5 Things’ newsletter.
The Los Angeles County Department of Public Health on Tuesday confirmed 4,015 new cases of COVID-19, the region’s highest number of new cases reported since the pandemic began. The high number of cases is due, in part, to a backlog of about 2,000 test results received from one lab that just submitted lab results from July 2-5 today.
Testing results are available for more than 1.2 million individuals with 9% of those people testing positive. The daily positivity rate of all tests — a composite of a seven-day rolling average — has risen to 11.6%. On Monday, that seven-day average was pegged at 10%.
There are 1,969 people currently hospitalized — with 27% of those confirmed cases in the ICU and 18% are on ventilators. This remains substantially higher than the 1,350-1,450 daily hospitalizations seen three weeks ago. The number of daily of hospitalizations has steadily increased to more than 1,900 since July 1.
Just hours earlier, Orange County Health Care Agency officials reported 1,028 new coronavirus cases, the most ever in the county, but some infections reported were a result of a backlog from the state.
Also on Tuesday, the state reported it had identified 6,090 new cases in the past 24 hours. That number is second only to the all-time high of 7,149 reported on June 24. The past several weekends have seen totals above 8,000, but these results likely are attributable to delayed testing being released.
State tracking data indicated that more than a third of the region’s total COVID cases have been identified in the past 14 days. California has seen 94,701 new cases since June 23. The total number of positive coronavirus tests in the state is now 277,774, meaning the increase over this two-week period is 34%.
President Trump, seen here at a roundtable discussion at the White House on Tuesday, rebuked the CDC for its guidelines on reopening schools in a tweet Wednesday.
Jim Watson/AFP via Getty Images
hide caption
toggle caption
Jim Watson/AFP via Getty Images
President Trump, seen here at a roundtable discussion at the White House on Tuesday, rebuked the CDC for its guidelines on reopening schools in a tweet Wednesday.
Jim Watson/AFP via Getty Images
President Trump slammed the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Wednesday morning, calling its guidelines for reopening schools in the wake of the coronavirus pandemic “impractical” and “expensive.”
“I disagree with the @CDCgov on their very tough & expensive guidelines for opening schools. While they want them open, they are asking schools to do very impractical things. I will be meeting with them!!!” Trump wrote on Twitter.
Existing CDC guidance includes temporary school dismissals if there is a substantial spread of COVID-19 within the community and, in cases of mild to moderate community transmission, modifying classes where students are in close contact, staggering arrival/dismissal times and enforcing social distancing.
The CDC continues to update its website with best practices, including this checklist for schools. It’s unclear which specific guidance the president was rebuking.
Vice President Pence has said the CDC will be issuing five new documents next week about how to reopen schools.
The American Academy of Pediatrics issued a strong statement in June in favor of bringing children back to the classroom in the fall wherever and whenever they can do so safely. The statement included recommendations about physical distancing, cleaning and disinfection, hand-washing, and using outdoor space whenever possible.
Trump on Wednesday went as far as to threaten to cut off federal funding if schools do not reopen and suggested that his political opponents are somehow interfering with the reopening process, saying Democrats think reopening would hurt them politically in the November election.
In Germany, Denmark, Norway, Sweden and many other countries, SCHOOLS ARE OPEN WITH NO PROBLEMS. The Dems think it would be bad for them politically if U.S. schools open before the November Election, but is important for the children & families. May cut off funding if not open!
However, the decision to reopen schools — like the decision to close them in March — is not top-down, but made from the bottom-up by thousands of local and state school leaders and public health officials.
On average, public schools receive less than 10% of their funding from the U.S. government, and that money is largely devoted to helping schools serve low-income students and children with disabilities. In short, the nation’s most vulnerable students.
For decades, that funding stream has flowed through Congress with bipartisan support, and Trump has no authority to cut it off or add new requirements to funding lawmakers have already allocated.
Consider This from NPR
Ideas For Reopening Schools; Evidence Of Airborne Spread
Consider This podcast tile
NPR
hide caption
toggle caption
NPR
Following Trump’s tweet, Evan Hollander, communications director for the House Appropriations Committee, underscored that the power of the purse rests with Congress, not the president.
“Congress provides federal education funding to support some of the most vulnerable young people in our country. The President has no authority to cut off funding for these students, and threatening to do so to prop up his flailing campaign is offensive,” Hollander told NPR in a statement.
In fact, public schools are facing a financial crisis as states slash education budgets in response to the pandemic-driven recession, and the federal government has so far done little to help them make up for those cuts or shoulder the expensive, new burdens of following public health guidance: deep-cleaning schools, hiring nurses, creating socially distanced classrooms.
Congress set aside roughly $13 billion for schools as part of the CARES Act, but Education Secretary Betsy DeVos has complicated the distribution of that money by insisting that public schools use a far larger share of the aid to help students attending private schools. A bill passed by the House to provide school districts with another $58 billion has languished in the Senate.
Trump’s morning remarks are the latest in the administration’s scheduled programming this week to push states to resume in-person learning this fall. During a roundtable discussion on the subject Tuesday, Trump made his intentions clear.
“We’re very much going to put pressure on governors and everybody else to open the schools,” he said.
Meanwhile, senior administration officials told reporters on a background call Tuesday morning that while the White House will provide states with “best practices” on reopening, the decision remains a local one.
NPR congressional reporter Claudia Grisales contributed to this report.
WASHINGTON – Perry Green doesn’t believe that Joe Biden is listening to what young, Black Americans want right now.
Across the country, young people are protesting systemic racism and calling on political leaders to reallocate funding from local police to other community resources. Green, who is Black, criticized Biden for not supporting the “Defund the Police” movement that many activists support.
“You got Black youth across the country, calling for defunding the police and thinking differently about law enforcement, and … a couple days later, in the midst of all the protests … (Biden’s) campaign says ‘Let’s spend more money on community policing,'” Green told USA TODAY.
Green, 34, lives in Alameda, California, and said he’s still undecided on whether he will vote for Biden after supporting Sen. Bernie Sanders in the Democratic primary. But he added if he was living in a swing state like Ohio, Michigan or Pennsylvania, he would be voting for Biden.
“I think that if I were to see the campaign attempt to engage with more grassroots leaders, that would make me feel a little more encouraged about voting for Biden,” Green said.
With the November election four months away, polling shows Biden’s support with younger Black voters trailing significantly behind that of older Black voters. And while polls show the majority of young Black voters support Biden over President Donald Trump, many are unenthusiastic at best or hesitant at worst.
Black voters of all ages have been a pillar of the Democratic party’s coalition for decades and strong turnout from the Black community, particularly in key battleground states such as Michigan and Florida, will be key for Biden to take the White House in November.
“I think this is a time for Joe Biden to be explicitly clear on his stances,” said Stefanie Brown James, who led Obama for America’s effort to engage African American leaders and voters in 2012. “Don’t skirt around the issue. Talk to these young people directly, and then have policies that he’s championing to show how he wants to push for this progressive change to happen.”
Data shows split between older and younger Black voters
Younger voters who came of age during President Obama’s administration, where Biden was vice president, have higher expectations of their politicians, and likely want to see a more progressive Democrat in office, said Chryl Laird, assistant professor of government at Bowdoin College and author of “Steadfast Democrats: How Social Forces Shape Black Political Behavior.”
“(Young Black voters) are going to have some reservations about Joe Biden,” Laird said, adding that Biden represents “a very clear image of a status quo politician within the Democratic Party.”
Older voters, and particularly older Black voters, are more pragmatic when it comes to deciding who to vote for because they have seen that change takes time, Laird said.
Biden has had “moments of problematic commentary or statements,” Laird said. “And they don’t really see him as the direction that takes the party in a more progressive lean.”
Still, voting for the Democratic candidate is the norm within the Black community, Laird said, and young Black voters will likely fall in line. A Pew Research Center study this year found that the majority (68%) of Black Democrats described themselves as either moderate or conservative. But in 2016, for example, 89% of all Black voters supported Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton.
“I don’t imagine any (young Black voters) going to vote, if they are planning to vote, and voting for Donald Trump,” she said, adding that they will likely vote for Biden but not be happy about it.
James noted it’s “a critical year for young Black voters to be engaged and feel as though they are a part of the process.” Because young voters “are not waiting” and will “move forward how they feel is best,” James said, it’s crucial for Biden to take a step back and meet with young activists in this moment.
“Being able to say, in no minced words, ‘Yes, I know that Black lives matter because x, y, and z,’ ” is important, said James, who is also CEO of Vestige Strategies and co-founder of Collective PAC.
Aerial Langston, 31, said she will likely vote for Biden in November because the alternative would be voting for the current president. But Langston, who is from Houston, Texas, also said she would like to see Biden be more cautious with his words.
“I need someone who could carry America with a little bit more dignity and I won’t be so ashamed to be like, ‘Oh, that’s my president. Period,’ ” she said.
Amid nationwide protests against police brutality and systemic racism, young Black voters, who have taken the lead in many of the demonstrations, are more skeptical of Biden, according to an analysis from the Democracy Fund + UCLA Nationscape project published in May in the Washington Post.
The analysis found:
91% of Black voters 65 and up said they plan to vote for Biden.
68% of Black voters from ages 18 to 29 said they planned to vote for Biden – more than 20 percentage points fewer than Black voters 65 and up
In the 2016 election, Democrat Hillary Clinton drew 85% of young Black voter support, and won 93% of Black seniors.
13% of Black voters ages 18 to 29 said they plan to vote for Trump.
A recent Washington Post/Ipsos poll published in June found that 92% of Black registered voters said they plan to vote for Biden in November. But it was a near even split as to why: 50% of the Black registered voters surveyed said it was mainly because they oppose Trump, while 49% said they mainly support Biden.
The age schism is softened by the fact that older voters, across demographic groups, vote at much higher rates than younger voters.
In 2016, about 70% of voters 65 and up cast ballot, while about 46% of voters ages 18 to 29 turned out to vote, according to data from the Census Bureau. Among African American voters, the voting rates are similar, with young Black voter turnout at about 46% and voter turnout for Black voters 65 and up at 71% in 2016, according to the Census Bureau.
History, recent comments draw criticism from young Black Americans
In the early weeks of the Democratic primary contests, Biden was badly trailing Sanders. But overwhelming support from Black voters, particularly older Black voters, delivered Biden a stunning turnaround in South Carolina.
Biden often touted his record and ties to the African American community during the primary. But parts of his record have come under criticism.
As a former chairman of the Judiciary Committee, Biden promoted the 1994 crime legislation that included the Violence Against Women Act and authorized billions in funding for more police and prisons. Biden negotiated the crime bill with the late Sen. Strom Thurmond, R-S.C., a longtime segregationist who ran for president in 1948 as a Dixiecrat.
Several of Biden’s rivals in the Democratic primary, including Sens. Kamala Harris, D-Calif., and Cory Booker, D-N.J., pointed to that legislation’s long-term impacts on the Black community, particularly its contribution to mass incarceration.
Recently, Biden had a testy exchange during an interviewwith radio host Charlamagne Tha God on his popular morning radio show, “The Breakfast Club.”
The conversation in May lasted nearly 20 minutes and ended with a gaffe that the former vice president had to apologize for hours later.
“If you have a problem figuring out whether you’re for me or Trump, then you ain’t black,” Biden told Charlamagne after the radio host urged Biden to visit New York to continue the discussion. Biden later that day said he regretted the comments, saying he “should not have been so cavalier.”
“I’ve never, never, ever taken the African American community for granted,” Biden said on a call with members of the U.S. Black Chambers Inc., a group that advocates for Black business leaders.
Rep. James Clyburn, D-S.C., a staunch Biden supporter, said he “cringed” at the former vice president’s comments. He said he knows that Biden is not perfect but said he should be compared “to the alternative, not the Almighty.”
Biden has also said he doesn’t support defunding the police, which protesters and activists have called for, but supports the “urgent need for reform,” including funding for public schools, summer programs and mental health and substance abuse treatment “separate from funding for policing,” so officers “can focus on the job of policing.”
And after committing to having a woman as his vice presidential choice, Biden is facing increasing calls for that woman to be a woman of color.
“African American voters, particularly African American women voters, are crucial to the road to the White House,” Marc Morial, president of National Urban League, told USA TODAY earlier this year. “I just believe that anyone running for president today is a fool to ignore Black voters, particularly Black women voters.”
Is Biden’s connection to Obama a strength?
The recent protests against police violence and systemic racism have again highlighted Biden’s different relationships with younger and older Black voters.
In Washington, D.C., Paul Talbert was among hundreds of protesters who marched to the U.S. Capitol in June. He said he still believes Sanders was “the correct choice for Black folks, for younger Black voters like myself.” He noted he was going to vote in November but would not say if he was going to vote for Biden.
“I won’t vote for Donald Trump,” Talbert, 28, said. He criticized Biden as trying to ride on Obama’s coattails.
“I think that whole Obama thing, it got the older generation really going,” he said.
Cassandra Dalmida, 19, also said she doesn’t want Biden “to piggyback off of Barack Obama.” Dalmida said she is going to vote in November, but has not committed to the former vice president yet.
“Honestly, I want him to not bring up Obama at all,” said Dalmida, who is from Orlando, Florida. Dalmida noted she would vote for Biden if he can convince her that he will implement changes that would combat systemic racism across the nation.
But some older Black voters like Biden’s association with the Obama administration.
Walter Wiggins, 67, emphatically declared Biden as his candidate, saying he voted for him in the primary and will vote for him in November.
“He was under President Obama, so that’s how I feel about him,” Wiggins said. “He’s a good guy. I respect him.”
Wiggins said Biden will continue to build on Obama’s legacy by strengthening the Affordable Care Act and he believes Biden will help pass a law to address police brutality.
Carolyn Jones, 72, said that if Biden becomes president, she hopes he brings “stability” back to the United States.
“What the country needs is solidarity,” Jones said. “Bring some solidarity, bring some peace. If he doesn’t do anything, just bring some solidarity.”
And not all younger Black voters are holding out on throwing their support for Biden.
Biden wasn’t Stephanie Moore’s first choice. “I’m not in love with the fact that he is the nominee,” she said. But Moore, 49, believes Biden not only has the best chance to beat Trump, he also has the empathy to lead in this moment now.
“We all just need a hug,” she said, “and to hear ‘I’m working for you guys and I know it’s hard, I understand.’ Joe Biden is great at that. I really think that he can start to bridge the gap of hatred and anger and nastiness has just come with a Trump administration.”
The former vice president has also received support from leading young Black political leaders, such as Michigan Lt. Gov. Garlin Gilchrist.
Gilchrist, who endorsed Biden in early March, said he knows how many young Black voters feel at the moment.
Gilchrist, 37, voted for Sanders during the 2016 Michigan primary. But he threw his support to Biden in part because of the plans he has set forward and also because the former vice president “has … always surrounded himself with young hungry smart, talented people to be successful.”
“He’s someone who clearly recognizes not only the generational moment that we’re in, but also the fact that we need to empower young people to step into their leadership and step into their power,” Gilchrist said.
Gilchrist praised Biden for stepping up and listening to community leaders at this moment where the entire nation is talking about racism.
“As a young person, I want people who are in the generation ahead of me to recognize my potential and my leadership and give me the opportunity to demonstrate that,” he said.
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis joins Sean Hannity to explain state’s response to spike in COVID-19 cases.
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, told “Hannity” Tuesday that the coronavirus fatality rate in his state has remained low despite a surge in the number of confirmed cases because the virus is spreading among younger people who are less at risk of dying.
“The median age of our new cases was in the 50s about a month and a half ago. That has dropped into the 30s,” DeSantis told host Sean Hannity. “We have had days where the median age was 33, and obviously that is important … because [among] people who are healthy and under 40, you know, the death rate of this thing is very close to zero. So, that’s significant.”
Later in the interview, DeSantis told Hannity: “Of all the ages, the age with the most cases now in Florida is 21 … There is no doubt more transmission going on in the community, particularly amongst people in their 20s and 30s.”
On Tuesday, Florida reported 7,347 new coronavirus cases, 380 new coronavirus hospitalizations and 63 additional deaths from COVID-19. In all, 213,794 people have tested positive for coronavirus in Florida, about one percent of the state’s population.
“We are prepared for this,” DeSantis emphasized. “Now, we are seeing — in places like Miami, you’re seeing increased traffic in the hospitals, but it’s interesting, I was down there today and they said that they’re actually seeing fewer hospitalizations from people in nursing homes, which is obviously a good sign because that’s where the number one risk of mortality is.”
Despite the surge in cases, the state has confirmed just 3,841 deaths from COVID-19, a fatality rate of 1.8 percent.
“I think that’s a testament to shielding the elderly from infections, particularly the nursing home residents,” explained DeSantis.
“The fact of the matter is, if the case occurs for someone in your 20s, you have radically different fatality prospects than if it’s someone who was in a long-term care facility and they are 80. So we worked hard to shield off the folks who were the most vulnerable, so I think that’s why we have a much lower case fatality rate.”
To that end, DeSantis said, he had designated 12 nursing home facilities that will exclusively house recovering COVID-19 patients who have been discharged from the hospital, so that they do not return to their former facilities and run the risk of infecting those around them.
The WHO, which was created by the U.S. and other world powers in the wake of World War II, plays a unique role in collecting and disseminating vital information to foreign governments on infectious diseases, coordinating vaccine research and providing crucial medical advice and equipment to low-income countries, experts said.
At a moment when the world is facing the worst pandemic in a century, the WHO’s role is irreplaceable, said Thomas Bollyky, director of the global health program at the Council on Foreign Relations.
“The U.S. withdrawal from the WHO makes Americans less safe and undermines the global fight against COVID-19,” Bollyky said. “The performance of WHO has not been perfect in this pandemic, but the world is safer for the data and scientific and technical expertise that a fully-supported WHO provides.”
Trump had vowed to pull the U.S. out of the WHO in late May and his administration formally notified the U.N. secretary general and Congress of the decision on Tuesday. The U.S. exit would become effective July 6, 2021.
A WHO spokesperson told NBC News they were aware of reports that the U.S. submitted the formal notification to withdraw, but declined to comment further.
The White House has accused the WHO of failing to confront Beijing over its initial response to the coronavirus outbreak and said the United States would no longer provide funding for the organization without major reforms. But public health experts and former U.S. officials said pulling out of the organization will diminish America’s influence on global health and merely cede ground to Beijing, which already announced plans to increase its contributions to the U.N. body.
“The administration’s move to formally withdraw from WHO amid the greatest public health crisis that Americans and the world have faced in a century is short-sighted, unnecessary, and unequivocally dangerous,” said Elizabeth Cousens, CEO of the United Nations Foundation, which supports the work of U.N. agencies. “WHO is the only body capable of leading and coordinating the global response to COVID-19.”
The Trump administration says its decision to leave the WHO will not affect the country’s commitment to fighting the pandemic abroad and that the U.S. has allocated more than $10 billion for the global COVID-19 response. Officials have said the administration has already begun diverting money that had been destined for the WHO to other global health organizations.
The withdrawal also will not diminish the United States’ leading role in supporting global health and humanitarian aid, the administration said. The United States “is committed to ensuring our generosity directly reaches people around the world,” a State Department spokesperson said.
The United States has been the leading contributor to WHO’s budget and President Trump’s decision will create a funding shortfall. The annual U.S. contribution to the WHO last year came to $400 million, roughly 15 percent of the agency’s budget. China’s contribution was around $40 million.
The WHO will have to look for additional funding from private donors or foreign governments, an unwelcome distraction for an organization focused on countering the pandemic, Bollyky and other experts said.
Apart from the effect on fighting the COVID-19 pandemic, the U.S. exit from the WHO also puts at risk a polio vaccination program that has long been a priority for the U.S. across several administrations. Trump’s decision comes just as doctors believe polio is on the verge of being eradicated from the planet.
“Without U.S. funding and political support, there is a good chance the world would see a resurgence of wild polio,” said Lawrence Gostin, director of the O’Neill Institute for National and Global Health Law at Georgetown University.
“The U.S. is a key strategic partner in polio eradication. We are nearly at the point of eradication. We can’t take our foot off the pedal now,” Gostin told NBC News.
The focus of the WHO polio program is in Afghanistan, Nigeria and Pakistan, where clusters of cases continue to appear every year. The WHO is able to operate more effectively in Afghanistan and Pakistan than the United States on its own, as it is perceived as a trusted, neutral party, experts said.
Since the program was launched in 1988, the incidence of polio cases has been reduced by 99 percent, according to the WHO.
“The U.S. has put so much work into this effort. To withdraw now is foolhardy and dangerous,” said Craig Spencer, assistant professor at the Columbia University Medical Center.
The U.S. departure could also threaten other WHO programs that seek to combat drug-resistant tuberculosis, HIV, malaria, and ensure vaccinations for children and safe childbirth in poorer countries, according to Gostin.
Since the WHO was founded more than 70 years ago, the United States has played a dominant role in shaping the organization’s agenda and policies. America has more nationals working at the organization than any other country, including three of its citizens in top tier posts.
But the Trump administration and some of its Republican allies in Congress maintain that the WHO was overly deferential to China when the pandemic began, relaying information from Beijing without sufficient caveats. The Trump administration has asserted that the WHO helped conceal the extent of the outbreak in its early stages, but the organization has vehemently rejected the allegation.
“They didn’t get it right. The WHO failed in its mission to provide the information to the world in a timely fashion about the risk that was emanating from China,” Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said in May.
Defenders of the WHO say the U.N. body lacks the authority to compel China or any foreign government to share information or allow international medical teams to visit hospitals or labs. Instead, the organization has to rely on the cooperation of member states.
Some Republican lawmakers argued against Trump’s decision, saying the United States should remain in the WHO to work for reform and correct whatever mistakes were made in the organization’s response to the pandemic.
“Our allies also want answers and to get them we need to show global leadership and work with like-minded nations, not take our ball and go home. Republican Rep. Will Hurd of Texas wrote in an op-ed last month.
Sen. Lamar Alexander, R-Tenn., chairman of the Senate Health Committee, also criticized the move. “If the administration has specific recommendations for reforms of the WHO, it should submit those recommendations to Congress, and we can work together to make those happen,” Alexander said.
Joe Biden, the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee, said Tuesday he would bring the U.S. back into the WHO on his first day in office if he is elected.
Democrats in Congress, and some former public health officials, have accused the Trump White House of focusing on the WHO and China as a way of steering attention away from what they say are the administration’s failures in managing the pandemic.
“The disastrous state of the outbreak in the United States is not the result of following WHO guidance but rather is the result of ignoring the agency’s increasingly urgent warnings from late January onward,” said Jeremy Konyndyk, a senior policy fellow at the Center for Global Development who helped oversee the Obama administration’s response to the Ebola outbreak in Africa.
“Had the US followed WHO’s advice on early preparedness, aggressive testing, contact tracing, and other response measures, we would be in a far better place today than we are,” he said.
Top health officials, including White house health advisor Dr. Anthony Fauci have lamented in recent days that while many other countries succeeded in shutting down and reducing daily new cases to a manageable level, the U.S. has failed to do the same.
“The European Union as an entity, it went up and then came down to baseline,” Fauci said Monday during a Q&A discussion with Dr. Francis Collins, director of the National Institutes of Health. “Now they’re having little blips, as you might expect, as they try to reopen. We went up, never came down to baseline, and now it’s surging back up. So it’s a serious situation that we have to address immediately.”
“I can’t make an accurate prediction but it’s going to be very disturbing,” Fauci told senators at a June 30 hearing held by the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee. “We are now having 40-plus-thousand new cases a day. I would not be surprised if we go up to 100,000 a day if this does not turn around, and so I am very concerned.”
But the U.S. probably isn’t diagnosing all infections in the country, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said, because some people remain asymptomatic and never get tested. Dr. Robert Redfield, director of the CDC, has said the U.S. is probably diagnosing 1 in 10 cases.
Former Food and Drug Administration Commissioner Dr. Scott Gottlieb, however, said earlier this week that the U.S. is probably catching an even smaller portion of all infections because some areas with major outbreaks don’t have enough resources to test everyone who wants to be tested.
“The CDC says we’re diagnosing 1 in 10 now,” he said Monday on CNBC’s “Squawk Box.” “We’re probably more like 1 in 12 because these states are getting pressed and we’re falling behind.”
Cases were growing, on average, by at least 5% in 37 states as of Tuesday, according to a CNBC analysis of data collected by Johns Hopkins. CNBC uses a seven-day trailing average to smooth out spikes in data reporting to identify where cases are rising and falling.
Coronavirus-related hospitalizations are also up, on average, by at least 5% in 24 states, according to CNBC’s analysis of data compiled by the Covid Tracking Project, an independent volunteer organization launched by journalists at The Atlantic.
WASHINGTON – President Donald Trump called again Tuesday for the nation’s schools to reopen this fall and warned that his administration would put “a lot of pressure” on governors and others to get children back in the classroom.
“Everybody wants it,” Trump said. “The moms want it. The dads want it. The kids want it. It’s time to do it.”
Trump’s push to open schools comes amid a nationwide debate over whether children should return to the classroom amid the coronavirus pandemic. It also echoes Trump’s calls in the spring for states to reopen their local economies. Many states with Republican governors did so, but places like Texas and Florida are now seeing spikes in COVID cases.
On Tuesday, the president and first lady Melania Trump staged a White House event designed to push local school districts to reopen in the fall. The event provided a forum for teachers, administrators, students and parents to discuss “best practices” for safely reopening schools around the country.
As he has done for days, Trump played down a recent increase in COVID-19 cases. He stressed that death rates from the virus are going down, though scientists fear they will begin to go back up soon as well.
“We want to get our schools open – we want to get them open quickly,” Trump said, predicting that the fall is going to be “a much better climate than it is right now.”
The first lady urged parents, teachers and schools to inform children about the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s guidelines on coronavirus at the start of the school year and to implement those guidelines when appropriate.
“When children are out of school, they’re missing more than just stuff in the classroom,” she said. “They’re missing the laughter of their friends, learning from their teachers and the joy of recess and play.”
Education Secretary Betsy DeVos said “it’s not a question of if – it’s just a question of how” schools reopen this fall. She also warned against “excuse-making or fear-mongering.”
Trump allies in some statehouses already are taking steps toward reopening schools.
Gov. Ron DeSantis, R-Fla., a Trump ally, is requiring K-12 schools to reopen in August, despite the rising infection rates that have followed the re-opening of the Sunshine State. In Arizona, schools will delay reopening for in-person classes this year until at least Aug. 17 because of the COVID-19 pandemic.
But some education groups said they don’t trust the Trump administration to know what it is doing with respect to reopening schools safely along with the rest of the country.
“Trump has not once proven credible, compassionate or thoughtful when it comes to this pandemic,” said Lily Eskelsen García, a sixth-grade teacher who serves as president of the 3-million member National Education Association.
“He ignored our intelligence agencies warning him of the pandemic,” Garcia said. “He blatantly ignores doctors and nurses on how to tackle the virus. He ignores local leaders about reopening the economy safely.”
Education groups are lobbying for $200 billion in federal funding to help schools reopen. A coronavirus recovery package that Trump signed into law in March included about $13 billion for K-12 schools. Another relief package passed in May by the House includes $58 billion for schools, but the Senate has yet to take up the bill.
New coronavirus cases in the U.S. reached record highs last week, climbing to around 50,000 a day. Nearly 3 million Americans have contracted the virus, with more than 130,000 deaths, according to data from John Hopkins University.
Dr. Anthony Fauci, the nation’s top infectious disease expert, warned Monday that the U.S. handle on the coronavirus outbreak is “really not good” and that action is needed to curb the spread.
“We are still knee-deep in the first wave of this,” Fauci said during an interview via Facebook Live. “And I would say, this would not be considered a wave. It was a surge, or a resurgence of infections superimposed upon a baseline.”
In May, before the latest surge in coronavirus cases, Fauci said there is no “easy answer” on whether schools should reopen and said the decision would depend on the dynamics of the outbreak this fall.
But some medical experts aren’t crazy about sending kids back to the classroom.
Dean Hart, a New York City-based expert in microbiology and the transmission of viruses and diseases, said children could all too easily become “silent spreaders” of COVID-19, and that would “almost certainly lead to more death of the older and vulnerable.”
“We are seeing spikes across the country that in certain areas would mean the reopening of schools would spread at a faster pace due to shared classrooms, dormitories, desks and surfaces,” Hart said.
Former Vice President Joe Biden, the presumptive Democratic nominee for president, has accused Trump of failing to do the work needed to help schools reopen safely and effectively. Biden has laid out a number of steps to give schools the guidance, resources and support they need to reopen, Biden spokesman Andrew Bates said.
Asked if the former vice president wants schools to reopen, a Biden official said, “Of course he does – that’s why he’s been making these proposals and pressing Trump to act. But we need to ensure we can do it safely, in line with the recommendations of public health experts, and Trump keeps failing us on that score.”
Roberts has twice experienced seizures, in 1993 and in 2007, but Supreme Court spokeswoman Kathleen Arberg said doctors ruled out that possibility in the latest incident. Doctors believe he was dehydrated, she said.
This is a widget area - If you go to "Appearance" in your WP-Admin you can change the content of this box in "Widgets", or you can remove this box completely under "Theme Options"
