POLITICO NIGHTLY: New York City starts to wake up

By Erin Durkin and Renuka Rayasam

BIG APPLE TAKES FIRST BITE — One hundred days after recording its first coronavirus case, New York City today took its first steps toward reopening. A city beset for months by one crisis is now looking to rebound from two, after nights of unrest over police violence and racism put New York under its first curfew since World War II. Mayor Bill de Blasio is tasked with leading the city, but confidence in him is at perhaps an all-time low. Already drawing criticism for his handling of the pandemic, he has come under fire from all sides for his response to the protests. Former aides, elected officials and protesters have hit de Blasio for his defense of the NYPD as videos showed officers hitting protesters with batons and otherwise using force against peaceful protesters. They've also criticized the curfew, saying it criminalized peaceful protest and invited violence against demonstrators. De Blasio continued to deny police used excessive force, which has been labeled a “dangerous lie” and “gaslighting an entire city.” Today, just as de Blasio was touting the city’s reopening, hundreds of his own current and former staffers were marching in protest against him over police reform. At the same time, Republicans have gone after him for failing to maintain order during a spate of looting. The pandemic’s imprint on New York is clear from the numbers: 21,844 city residents have died as of today, and 204,253 cases of Covid-19 have been confirmed. And the city’s outbreak is far from over. New York is still experiencing “moderate transmission,” the city health commissioner said today, with hundreds of new cases still diagnosed each day. At the pandemic’s height, more than 800 New Yorkers died in a single day, as refrigerated trucks filled with bodies outside area hospitals and mass burials surged on the island where the city inters its unclaimed dead. Last week, the city saw a day without a single confirmed coronavirus death. Now comes the test: whether the city can slowly and cautiously return to its old ways without inviting a resurgence of the virus. One key question will be the safety of mass transit, the main mode of travel for the majority of New Yorkers, who don’t own cars — and there’s no real plan on that front. Officials bluntly acknowledge that social distancing will be impossible on the subway. They’re hoping that riders wearing masks will be enough to fend off a second wave. The crowds of thousands at the protests are a new source of concern. The city will rely on an effort to test tens of thousands of people a day, trace their contacts, and isolate them — a program that has already seen several stumbles. A feud between de Blasio and his own health department caused initial delays as the effort was handed over to the public hospital system, and contact tracers have described a chaotic hiring process. There are also fears that privacy concerns will stop people from participating. The first phase of reopening, as momentous as the milestone feels, is rather modest in practice: Construction sites and manufacturers are back up and running, and retail stores can open for curbside or in-store pickup. Much of what makes New York New York is still on ice. Broadway will be dark at least until fall and perhaps much longer; restaurants and bars are closed except for takeout; museums and tourist attractions are shuttered; and Manhattan’s office towers remain largely empty. Welcome to POLITICO Nightly: Coronavirus Special Edition. Congrats to this happy couple who shared their wedding day with protesters. Reach out with tips: rrayasam@politico.com or on Twitter at @renurayasam.

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First In Nightly

Illustration by Montse Galbany

THE WILD WORLD OF INTERNET VOTING — Some West Virginians voting in Tuesday’s primary will tap on their phones or laptops instead of heading to the polls. Some in Delaware will get to do the same next month. And the trend may spread into November, as the coronavirus pandemic inspires a search for voting methods that don’t expose people to the deadly disease. But moving elections to the internet poses huge risks that the U.S. is unprepared to handle — endangering voters’ privacy, the secrecy of the ballot and even the trustworthiness of the results, cybersecurity reporter Eric Geller writes. The internet is riddled with security flaws that hackers can exploit. So are voters’ computers, smartphones and tablets. And the U.S. has never developed a centralized digital identity system like the one in Estonia, a tiny, digitally savvy nation that has held its elections online since 2005. “Securing the return of voted ballots via the internet while ensuring ballot integrity and maintaining voter privacy is difficult, if not impossible, at this time,” four federal agencies, including the Department of Homeland Security’s cybersecurity arm and the FBI, warned in a bulletin last month. They called it far riskier than mail-in voting, the technology that has drawn the bulk of the political debate during the pandemic. In fact, it may be a decade or more before the U.S. can safely entrust the internet with the selection of its lawmakers and presidents, according to some experts. Still, a handful of states are pushing ahead, with the encouragement of one politically connected tech entrepreneur — and the tempting logic of the question, “If we can bank online, why can’t we vote the same way?”

Palace Intrigue

THE SHOW MUST GO ON — President Donald Trump plans to restart rallies in the next two weeks in a major turning point since the coronavirus shut down traditional campaigning, Alex Isenstadt reports. Trump’s advisers are still determining where the rallies will take place and what safety measures will be implemented. The president has been itching to resume his boisterous rallies, his favorite way to connect with supporters and let off steam. He plans to use the events to drive home what is expected to be a major theme of his campaign: He is the leader of the country’s reopening and economic rebound. “The great American comeback is real, and the rallies will be tremendous,” campaign manager Brad Parscale said in a statement. “You’ll again see the kind of crowds and enthusiasm that sleepy Joe Biden can only dream of.” While Trump is likely to face blowback for resuming in-person events while the coronavirus pandemic is still ravaging the country, his advisers contend that the recent massive protests in metropolitan areas will make it harder for liberals to criticize him.

Covid-2020

THE VEEPSTAKES JUST GOT HIGHER — It’s been three months and a million lifetimes since Joe Biden pledged to pick a female running mate. In that time, more than 110,000 people have died because of Covid, 40 million people have filed for unemployment, and protests over George Floyd’s death are transfixing the nation. Your host spoke with national correspondent Natasha Korecki over Slack about how recent events have changed the veepstakes. This conversation has been edited. How have the protests upended Biden’s search for a running mate? The campaign understands this is a watershed moment in the country, and that has elevated race as a factor in the search for a VP. Potential candidates who were considered long-shots — like Atlanta Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms and Florida Rep. Val Demings — are really getting scrutinized. Isn’t considering a mayor or a House member unusual? Aren’t most presidential candidates looking for someone who can help them win a battleground state? Typically, campaigns abide by the first major tenet of a VP, which is “First, do no harm.” But these are different times. Biden is 77, and he has signaled that he’s likely to serve only one term, making the selection of a vice president all the more critical. And history suggests that a presidential contender won’t automatically win a state just because that's where the running mate happens to live. He is concerned about qualifications. Biden has said he considers the dozen or so women on the “shortlist” to be qualified for the job. If you had to wager today, whom do you think Biden will pick? I hate predictions, so I won't make one. If I closed my eyes and guessed? Keisha Lance Bottoms. Why? She was a frontline warrior for Biden through the thick and thin. And loyalty means something to him. But so much can change between now and ... tomorrow.

A couple hug in the subway station in Wuhan, China. Wuhan has seen its urban life gradually return to normal following encouragement from local city management to open up street stalls. | Getty Images

Talking to the Experts

A BETTER LOCKDOWN FOR A SECOND WAVE — Public health experts are warning of a second Covid wave this fall or winter. Nightly’s Myah Ward asked experts and political leaders: What can the U.S. learn from the lockdown about containing and mitigating the virus? And should a second wave come this fall, what, if anything, should we do differently? “Depending on where we see the bulk of new infections, it might make sense to keep outdoor spaces, like parks and beaches, open while temporarily closing higher-risk indoor settings, like bars and casinos, where people tend to gather in crowds. I also hope to see harm reduction guidance that can help people stay as safe as possible in all aspects of life, including socializing, physical intimacy, funerals, protests, and any other activities that people may deem essential, both now and during a potential second wave.” — Julia Marcus, assistant professor at Harvard Medical school, epidemiologist “Key to this response will be wearing masks, especially indoors, and producing better masks than the cloth masks we currently recommend at a population level. We need to direct our manufacturing industry toward scaling up higher filtrate masks for widespread distribution, especially for those who have close contact with many other people as a result of their work, as well as those who are in high-risk groups. We should really think about Japan's ‘3 C’s’ model — which advises to avoid crowding, close spaces, and close-contact settings as much as possible. This unfortunately may mean avoiding some of the things we love the most, such as indoor bars or gyms.” — Abraar Karan, physician at Harvard Medical School and Brigham and Women's Hospital, works on state level Covid-19 response in Massachusetts “Most of us think we will see a resurgence in the fall or winter. The hope would be, instead of having to slam the brakes on and going into a lockdown again, that it’s more like a dimmer switch on a light — that you can dial it back a little bit, and then open it up a little bit more, because I just think the economic consequences are obviously pretty severe. If you see hospitalizations going up, if you see ICU admissions going up, which are the two metrics I pay close attention to, then you can start to say, Hey wait a minute, we need to start scaling back, instead of going to full-scale lockdown.” — Rep. Ami Bera, M.D. (D-Calif.) “There was a mathematical correlation between the lockdown and the effective reduction in the trajectory of cases, so that's a clear relationship. I think it was also effective at essentially grinding our economy to a halt. So it was effective at doing both things. And we have to find a way, I think, to balance those two things. And that’s what we're trying to do now. It's not easy. It requires our citizens to continue to have discipline. We have a slope, not only for new cases, which has just flattened, but we have a slope for what we call that delta between intakes and discharges. And that delta is still the same — it's still on the downward slope. So there are more discharges than intakes right now. But that’s something that we closely monitor. If we start seeing those numbers going in the opposite direction, then you know we’re going to have to make some tough choices.” — Francis Suarez, the Republican mayor of Miami “We have flattened the curve, but also lengthened it. I anticipate one to two years of needing millions of N95 masks, and it is not too late to use the Defense Production Act to ramp up domestic manufacturing. Specifically, for the fall, we should focus on widely immunizing against influenza, since the same PPE will be required to test for flu and Covid-19. Mask usage in public needs to become standard everywhere.” — Rep. Kim Schrier, M.D. (D-Wash.)

On The Hill

DEMS BEGIN POLICY PUSH — Top Democrats unveiled a major police reform bill this morning as protesters nationwide demand justice after the killing of George Floyd. The bill would make dramatic changes to police policy across the country, Heather Caygle, John Bresnahan and Sarah Ferris write, and undo decades-old laws that Democrats and activists say have led to the deaths of black men and women at the hands of police officers. “The world is witnessing the birth of a new movement in our country," Congressional Black Caucus Chair Karen Bass (D-Calif.) said at a press conference introducing the bill today. "A profession where you have the power to kill should be a profession where you have highly trained officers accountable to the public.”

Around the Nation

ONE CITY’S REFORM PATH — Frank Moran, Democratic mayor of Camden, N.J., has a message for cities and activists that are talking about police reform: Give us a call. Police reform in the city, once labeled the most dangerous in America, has been a decade in the making. It started with disbanding the police: In 2011 the city laid off half its police force and a year later dissolved the city’s entire police department. But what happened next was not less policing, but more. The city and county recreated a new force together. And without police union contracts, Camden doubled the size of its police force and overhauled the department’s ethos. “The investment that we have made in policing is paying back positive dividends, and we're reaping the benefits of the community literally willing to talk to the police and work with the police,” said Moran, who became mayor in 2018. Officers walked neighborhoods and introduced themselves. Issuing fees and fines were no longer encouraged — in some cities, those fines can make up a large share of a police budget. They got training in de-escalation tactics. Former President Barack Obama visited Camden in 2015 to hold it up as a model for police reform. All that happened when New Jersey had a Republican governor, Chris Christie. “We were fortunate that we had a great partnership with the governor at the time and we had a commitment at all levels of government to make this thing happen,” said Moran. More recently, Camden police joined protests over George Floyd’s death and grilled hot dogs and hamburgers during a block party. They helped distribute material on Covid safety in several languages. They also charged a handful of people for violating restrictions. About 350 people have died from Covid in the county. Last year the city unveiled one of the strictest use of force policies in the country, limiting force to narrow situations and holding officers responsible for other officers’ behavior and requiring the police to provide prompt medical care. Homicides and violent crime are down: There were 25 homicides in 2019 compared with 67 in 2012. Mea culpa — Our Thursday night graphic mistakenly omitted that our data was calculated per 100,000 residents of a given city. The Global Fight START THE NEWS ON SPREADING — Known coronavirus infection numbers are their highest ever, but the World Health Organization said it has good news, Ryan Heath writes: “It’s very rare” for asymptomatic carriers of the virus to spread it. In other words the spread is nearly all coming from people with obvious symptoms, said Maria Van Kerkhove, who leads WHO’s emerging diseases team, at a news conference today. The claim drew criticism from scientists on Twitter: WHO didn’t properly draw a line between people who are truly asymptomatic and those who might be presymptomatic, said Ashish Jha, director of the Harvard Global Health Institute today. Jha criticized the WHO for putting out a misleading claim without detailed data. He called asymptomatic spread “the Achilles heal of this outbreak.” While daily deaths from Covid-19 have averaged below 5,000 per day over the past week, down from a high of more than 7,000 per day in mid-April, the number of people diagnosed is still increasing: Nearly 800,000 people have been diagnosed with Covid-19 over the past week. There are now more than 3.6 million active cases worldwide. The U.S. and Brazil continue to add the highest number of new cases each day: at least 15,000 per day. Making the difference — A new paper in Nature surveyed 1,717 policy measures in the U.S., China, Iran, France, Italy and South Korea and estimated that the actions in each country “significantly and substantially” slowed the spread of the virus. The authors — led by Solomon Hsiang who leads Berkeley’s Global Policy Laboratory — “prevented or delayed” around 62 million confirmed cases, which the authors then estimated ultimately averted 530 million total infections, given that each confirmed case would likely have spread the virus to others. Protests cross the pond — A statue of a slave trader has reignited the culture wars in the U.K. Thousands took to the streets in Britain this weekend to join anti-racism demonstrations. Almost four years after Brexit’s new fault-line in British politics, the response to a small number of violent and destructive incidents amid largely peaceful protests exposed deep cultural divides that extend further, U.K. reporter Emilio Casalicchio writes. One moment in particular — the toppling of a statue of 17th-century slave trader Edward Colston in Bristol — quickly became the debate’s centerpiece. The memorial was dragged off its plinth with ropes and tossed into the harbor. To many, it was criminal damage that undermined a legitimate quest to end racism. Some questioned why, despite the ongoing pandemic, protesters broke social-distancing rules to wage a battle that originated in the U.S. — and criticized the police for not acting more forcefully. Others, however, questioned why the statue had survived for so long when it had been a source of anger. For many, Britain’s own battle against racism was self-evidently still raging, or as soccer player Raheem Sterling put it: “The only disease right now is the racism that we are fighting.” Nightly Number 128 months The length of the U.S. economic expansion that ended in February, according to an official designation from the National Bureau of Economic Research today. The U.S. economy entered a recession in February as the Covid-19 pandemic spread and triggered the shutdown of businesses across the country, ending the longest expansion on record, according to economists. Parting Image Stephen Voss THE CAPITAL HITS THE STREETS — The killing of George Floyd by Minneapolis police officers inspired protests across the world against police brutality, but the ones that were heard loudest — literally — by the president were the thousands who showed up outside the gates of the White House. POLITICO Magazine’s photo essay takes you through the days and nights of protest in the nation’s capital, from last Monday’s Lafayette Park standoff to the weekend’s jubilant atmosphere.   HAPPENING TOMORROW 11 a.m. EDT – "INSIDE THE RECOVERY" PART III: PLAYBOOK INTERVIEW WITH NEW JERSEY GOV. PHIL MURPHY: How is the governor from one of the states hit hardest by the pandemic handling concurrent health, economic and social crises? Join POLITICO Playbook co-authors Anna Palmer and Jake Sherman for a virtual interview with Governor Phil Murphy (D-NJ) to discuss his state’s reopening, how the Garden State is handling protests and unrest, and what New Jersey is looking for from the Trump Administration in the weeks and months ahead. REGISTER HERE.     Did someone forward this email to you? Sign up here.   Follow us on Twitter Renuka Rayasam @renurayasam   Follow us  POLITICO, LLC 1000 Wilson Blvd. Arlington, VA, 22209, USA