POLITICO NIGHTLY: The lasting damage to black and Latino communities

By Laura Barrón-López and Renuka Rayasam Presented by COVID CONSEQUENCES — By now you know that African Americans and Latinos are disproportionately infected with coronavirus, are disproportionately hospitalized by those infections, and are dying more often than white people from them, too. The uneven impact of the pandemic on communities of color won’t stop with the deadly consequences of generations of health inequities. The damage is spreading: Minority business owners say they’re struggling to stay afloat. Some 45 percent of black and Latino small business owners anticipate closing within six months, according to a poll released Monday by Global Strategy Group for the nonprofit and civil rights advocacy groups Color of Change and Unidos US. The survey of more than 500 minority business owners, black workers and Latino workers found 51 percent of black and Latino small business owners applied for less than $20,000 in federal relief each. But just 12 percent say they received the full amount of assistance requested. The stimulus packages passed by Congress and signed by President Donald Trump have offered no relief to immigrants without social security numbers, temporary visa holders, or undocument immigrants like Dreamers. A Latino Decisions poll conducted for SOMOS, Unidos US, and MoveOn scheduled to be released Wednesday found 31 percent of U.S.-born Latinos and 45 percent of immigrants did not receive a stimulus check. This past weekend, Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar said on CNN that the diversity of the country and comorbidities, not necessarily lack of testing or treatment, was a big reason America was overcome with so many cases. When pushed by CNN, Azar said the response by the government was “historic” and that he wasn't faulting Americans. The administration’s response has led to increased lack of trust among African Americans: On a scale of zero to 10, Trump ranked at the bottom of trusted messengers, below Surgeon General Jerome Adams, Anthony Fauci, and ordinary doctors and nurses, according to a poll of African Americans released today by the African American Research Collaborative. The same poll found that 64 percent of African Americans say they are less likely than whites to be offered a coronavirus test. And 60 percent say they are less likely than whites to have everything done to save their lives in the hospital. The poll was conducted in partnership with the NAACP and the Equity Research and Innovation Center at Yale School of Medicine. To address these issues, Congress required the CDC to issue a report detailing coronavirus cases, hospitalizations and deaths broken down by race and ethnicity. In response, the CDC has filed a two-and-a-half page compilation of links to pages on their website where members of Congress can find that data — which is a piecemeal collection from states that in many cases are not adequately ensuring the collection by testing labs and at the physician level of the race and ethnicity of patients, public health experts say. From home ownership, to unemployment and health, NAACP President Derrick Johnson said today, coronavirus will have “devastating” effects on African Americans. “Traditionally when you put a black face on policy issues,” he said, “there is a loss of political will to ensure health and access in governance for everyone.” Welcome to POLITICO Nightly: Coronavirus Special Edition. Feeling down after reading this Marie Claire story about how pandemic travel restrictions are leaving Ukrainian surrogates and the newborns they carried stranded. Reach out with tips: rrayasam@politico.com or on Twitter at @renurayasam.   A message from PhRMA: In the midst of coronavirus, PhRMA members are expanding efforts to help millions of Americans dealing with other diseases that need to be treated and may be struggling to afford their medicines. Our Medicine Assistance Tool was built to connect patients with resources that may help lower out-of-pocket costs.   First In Nightly SCHOOL’S OUT … FOREVER? A plurality of voters oppose Trump’s push for U.S. elementary and high schools to reopen this fall, according to a POLITICO/Morning Consult poll that asked 2,000 registered voters whether students should return to day care, schools and college campuses. Education reporter Juan Perez Jr. writes 41 percent of Americans said it’s a bad idea to reopen K-12 schools in the fall, while 44 percent felt it was a bad idea to open day care centers. About a third of voters say it’s a good idea for children to resume in-person classes or go back to child care. But when it comes to colleges and universities, voters are evenly split — 38 percent said a return to campus was a good idea and the same percentage said it's a bad one. Fifty-four percent of voters who have favorable views of Trump agree it’s a good idea to reopen elementary and high schools this fall, the survey said. Only 24 percent of voters with unfavorable views of the president agree. Among African American voters, just 18 percent of those surveyed said opening K-12 schools is a good idea. As for colleges and universities, among ideologically conservative voters, 53 percent of those surveyed think it’s a good idea to reopen campus this fall. Thirty-five percent of moderates and 26 percent of liberal voters share that view. The poll was conducted May 15-18 and has a margin of error of plus or minus 2 percentage points.   YOUR TIME IS PRECIOUS: This global crisis has countries across the world and states across the country trying to balance public health with economic survival. POLITICO Dispatch is a short, daily podcast featuring experts from across our newsroom who provide the critical news and context you need in 15 minutes or less. Cut through the noise, subscribe and start listening today.     A man sits at the back of a bus in London. The British government is easing the lockdown it imposed two months ago, abandoning its “stay at home” slogan in favor of asking residents to “be alert.” | Justin Setterfield/Getty Images Around the Nation OPEN THE DOORS, WHERE ARE THE PEOPLE? Delaware and Massachusetts are among the states allowing church goers to congregate again in person this week. They will join Iowa, Ohio, Texas and other states that have already reopened religious services or declared them essential and never shut them down at all. With the virus still on the loose, churches — like restaurants, hair salons and many other businesses — have been forced to come up with creative ways to attend to their congregants in person, and not just on Zoom, Facebook Live and YouTube. A San Jose congregation leased a drive-in movie theater for Easter services. A New Jersey church offered drive-through confessions. Others have moved to communion delivery, with consecrated wafers left on congregants’ doorsteps Getting people to come inside again is especially fraught. With so many people in a confined space for an extended period, religious services pose a particularly strong risk for contagion. The CDC found that more than half of the 61 people who attended a two-and-a-half hour choir practice in March in Skagit County, Wash., later became infected with Covid. Two eventually died. The CDC released another study today showing that nearly 40 percent of the 92 worshippers who attended a rural Arkansas church during a week in March got Covid. Three died. Another 26 infections and one death occurred in the community linked to the church outbreak. In response, some congregations are banning singing — soft humming with a mask only, if you must — to try to reduce the transmission of the virus. Unlike dining out and getting your haircut, the free exercise of religion is explicitly protected under the Constitution, though what that means during a pandemic has been contentious. Churches are suing Minnesota, Oregon, Kansas and other states that have shut down in-person worship. In California, at least, federal judges don’t agree that the Covid restrictions violate the First Amendment. RED STATE, GREEN STATE — By Wednesday, every state in the country will have lifted at least some social distancing restrictions that were put in place in March. Yet not a single one has met the White House reopening guidelines for more than a few days at a time, according to Covid Exit Strategy , a website published by a group of public health experts that tracks states’ progress at hitting the White House metrics. The reopening criteria are pretty hard to meet, said Marta Wosińska, deputy director for policy at the Duke-Margolis Center for Health Policy and one of the experts working on the project. To even enter phase 1, according to the White House plan , a state has to demonstrate a downward trajectory of cases for 14 days. (The White House didn’t specify how to define that trajectory.) Covid Exit Strategy uses a seven-day moving average to judge whether a state has hit the benchmark. Using that, plus the two other criteria — hospital bed capacity and how many people are being tested — the group marks states that meet all three criteria as green, while those that are far behind are colored red. So many states are failing, we’re resorting to grade inflation. The group decided to mark states showing improvement, but that still fell short of meeting the criteria, as yellow. “We are giving partial credit, otherwise there would be lots of reds,” Wosińska said. Reopening has given us a national game of “Red Light, Green Light.” Even states that pass all three reopening criteria often do so only temporarily. North Dakota was green for a few days last week on the Covid Exit Strategy tracker. Now it’s yellow. Kentucky was moved from green to yellow last week after its testing numbers mysteriously dropped. Same with New Jersey this week. Today, Michigan and New Mexico are green. And Alaska has met most of their criteria except for testing numbers. “They are so close,” Wosińska said. “It is definitely happening.” Yet we can’t be sure the data is trustworthy. Many states are relying on questionable data to justify their reopenings. Virginia reversed a widely condemned decision to combine antibody testing and diagnostic testing in how it measures case counts. Texas might still be mixing those results. Some states are using the number of specimens tested as opposed to the number of people, which inflates testing numbers because one person often requires multiple specimens for a test. Georgia’s data reporting has been filled with missteps, though Republican Gov. Brian Kemp has denied that the errors were politically motivated to brush up the state’s image. Adding to the mystery: Florida removed its Covid data chief, which raised eyebrows. And last week the CDC started reporting state-level testing data, but in many cases the federal numbers are a departure from state numbers. OVER A BARREL — The Energy Information Administration forecasts an uncertain 21 months for energy production and consumption as the Covid-19 pandemic erodes employment and disrupts energy supplies and demand. Patterson Clark/POLITICO     On The Hill PAYCHECK CORRECTION — Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.) voted against the $3 trillion House bill passed Friday even though she helped negotiate it. In the next edition of the Women Rule podcast , landing Wednesday, Jayapal tells Anna Palmer that she believed the bill wouldn’t provide enough help to people who lost their jobs. She introduced the Paycheck Recovery Act today, which proposes to pay employers for the full wages of workers who earn salaries up to $90,000 a year. “We Democrats should be the party of keeping workers in their jobs and not sending them off onto unemployment,” she said. “That's what most countries around the world have done.” Palace Intrigue CABINET FILLED — Trump’s White House Cabinet meeting covered a wide swath of topics today, including debit cards, hydroxychloroquine, relations with China, masks and more. Check out the highlights in the video below. Nightly Number 17 percent The drop in daily global carbon dioxide emissions in April compared with last year as the pandemic shuttered economies around the world, according to new research released today . The study, published in the Nature Climate Change journal, said annual global CO2 emissions would fall 4 percent for the year if social distancing efforts end in mid-June, or 7 percent if such restrictions remain in force through the end of 2020. (h/t energy reporter Zack Colman) Ask The Audience Our question for our readers this week: Memorial Day weekend is almost here. How has the pandemic changed your plans for the summer? Use the form to send us your responses, and we plan to feature several later this week.   BUILDING A SUSTAINABLE FUTURE: A DIFFERENT KIND OF NEWSLETTER: “The Long Game,” presented by Morgan Stanley, explores the convergence of private sector leaders, political actors and NGO/Academic experts on the key sustainability issues of our time. Engage with the sharpest minds from the worlds of finance, technology, energy, agriculture and government around our biggest challenges, from pandemics to plastics, from climate change to land use, from inequality to the future of work. Searching for a nuanced look at these issues and solutions? Subscribe today.     PUNCHLINES A SHELL OF A LESSON — In the latest edition of Punchlines, executive producer of video Brooke Minters joins Matt Wuerker for a (socially distanced) lesson on drawing, including turtles and Sen. Mitch McConnell. The Global Fight SWEDEN SWERVE — Sweden’s death rate from Covid-19 of 364 per million is proving hard to interpret. It is well above some locked-down states like Finland at 54 but well below other countries with a much stricter regime, like the United Kingdom at 510. Experts say they will need more time to make a proper assessment of the effect of different lockdowns on public health. When it comes to the economic effects of Sweden’s more relaxed approach to tackling the pandemic, experts seem readier to make an early assessment: They don't think it will help much, POLITICO correspondent Charlie Duxbury writes. Sweden may have been feeling smug about its decision not to shut down the country to combat coronavirus: The contraction of its economy is 0.3 percent for the first three months of the year vs. 3.8 percent for the eurozone overall. But it seems like it won’t last: The International Monetary Fund predicts Sweden’s economy will shrink by 6.8 percent in 2020. And Sweden’s central bank forecast an economic contraction for the country of between 7 and 10 percentage points for this year and unemployment of between 9 percent and 10 percent. The much-discussed Swedish policy doesn’t seem to have made much of an economic difference: The European Commission's current forecast for the eurozone for 2020 is for an economic contraction of 7.75 percent. What’s behind Sweden’s economic decline is … other countries being shut. The outlook for Sweden is a result of its reliance on exports , especially to the struggling eurozone and U.K. Exports keep around a million and a half of Sweden’s population of 10 million in work, and the upside of keeping restaurants and hair salons open can’t compensate for the huge downside of production stops at big manufacturers from Södertälje-based Scania trucks and Gothenburg-based Volvo cars. “The crisis has shown us once again how export-dependent we are,” Gothenburg Mayor Axel Josefson said. “A recovery could take longer than people think.” Parting Words ROMAN HOLIDAY, DELAYED — Sabaudia, Italy, has stood for many things in the near-century it has existed: sun, sand, Benito Mussolini — and now, the hardships of Covid-19 reopening decisions. The beach town, founded on marshland a little more than an hour south of Rome by the fascist dictator, has lived off tourism as a second home for well-to-do residents of Italy’s capital. But the country’s lifting of lockdown restrictions this week may have come too late — and with too many caveats. After 10 weeks of coronavirus restrictions, Italian shops, restaurants, bars and beach clubs were allowed to throw open their doors Monday. Beach restrictions and confusion are expected to make Italy’s beloved seaside August holiday particularly difficult in Sabaudia. To respect social distancing, only 32,000 towels will be allowed on the beach each day, using a smartphone booking app. (The beach can hold about 80,000 in better times.) That app is not yet functional, and tourists are banned from swimming or even planting an umbrella, although exercising on the beach is allowed. “The season usually starts at Easter,” said Rocco Gambacurta, who presides over four generations of his family at the Lido Azzurro beach club. "We won’t be able to make up for two months of lost revenues. What’s lost is lost.”   A message from PhRMA: In these unprecedented times, many Americans may find it harder to afford their medicines this month. PhRMA member companies are dedicated to helping patients access resources when they need them most. Our Medicine Assistance Tool was built to connect patients with resources that may help lower out-of-pocket costs.   Did someone forward this email to you? Sign up here.   Follow us on Twitter Renuka Rayasam @renurayasam

POLITICO, LLC 1000 Wilson Blvd. Arlington, VA, 22209, USA