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TEXAS HOLDS ’EM — Texas Republican Gov. Greg Abbott learned today that there’s no such thing as a middle path through the pandemic . For months, Abbott has tried to reuse the playbook that helped make him governor — appeasing a raucous far-right flank while trying to maintain the GOP’s grip on the increasingly Democratic suburbs — to handle a public health disaster. It hasn’t always worked, and now it seems to have backfired completely.
Cases in Texas have nearly doubled to more than 131,000 since the state moved to Phase 3 of its reopening plan on June 3. Public health experts and local officials are warning that Houston and other pockets of the state are on the brink of disaster. The economy is likely to take another hit: Even without statewide orders, restaurants are shutting down as cases grow.
Abbott froze the state’s reopening plan today. That makes him only the second Republican governor, after Utah’s Gary Herbert, to press the pause button. Later today Arizona Gov. Doug Ducey became the third. Still, much like in March, Abbott has said publicly that he doesn’t want to reimpose statewide restrictions even as he’s acknowledged Covid is “rampant” in the state and people aren’t voluntarily following social distancing guidelines.
Today he halted elective medical procedures in four populous counties — which include Austin, Dallas, Houston and San Antonio — over fears that Covid cases would swamp the state’s hospitals. That comes after he backed down last week from his statewide order banning local governments from mandating mask wearing.
What went wrong — In an effort to navigate treacherous Texas politics, Abbott sent a series of mixed messages at the outset of the pandemic. First he let city and county leaders impose pandemic restrictions, then claimed local government overreach and took over the response. He caved to pressure from Lt. Gov Dan Patrick and other voices who questioned the virus threat when he lifted stay at home orders in May despite rising Covid caseloads. When Dallas salon owner Shelly Luther became a celebrity for violating Abbott’s executive orders, the governor removed restrictions on hairdressers.
As a result, health officials said, there has been confusion about the importance of stay at home orders, the benefits of mask wearing and how contact tracing can help keep the virus contained. Politically, Abbott’s attempt at a middle-road response has been rejected by not just Democrats who criticize his every move, but also by the far-right wing of his party, which has used the confusion to push a new (and wrong) “masks are harmful” message.
“This is not the kind of crisis where you can split the difference,” said James Henson, director of the Texas Politics Project at the University of Texas.
Renewed urgency — Abbott’s struck a different, more urgent tone in recent days. He’s defied Trump and Patrick by showing up to press conferences in a mask and pleading with state residents to stay home and to wear face coverings when they don’t.
Like other Republican governors, Abbott has been trying to argue that businesses can remain open if people follow social distancing measures and wear masks. But the far-right faction has disavowed such restrictions completely. The state’s Republican Party isn’t planning to require masks at its in-person convention in mid July.
Hospitalizations are rising around the state. Some public health experts expect that the state’s death toll, which has remained relatively low, will start growing as Covid patients deteriorate and case counts continue rising. Lina Hidalgo, Harris County’s top elected official, said that she’s trying to get permission from Abbott to issue new enforceable Covid restrictions, which she described as “something other than another stay-at-home order.”
“I hope we can take an aggressive enough approach,” said Hidalgo. “This curve will not flatten itself.”
Welcome to POLITICO Nightly: Coronavirus Special Edition. The Dixie Chicks dropped the Dixie. They’re just The Chicks now. Reach out with tips: rrayasam@politico.com or on Twitter at @renurayasam.
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| FIRST IN NIGHTLY |
‘THERE ARE NOT OUTBREAKS’ — When state leaders got on a conference call Monday with Trump’s coronavirus task force, a sense of alarm over the spike in cases sweeping the South and West was palpable, health care reporter Adam Cancryn and eHealth reporter Darius Tahir write. The task force officials’ posture on the calls is consistent with Trump’s long-telegraphed desire to shift responsibility for managing the outbreaks to the states. But it’s prompted rising frustration among state officials and the public health experts advising them. They expressed a desire for more extensive federal guidance on how to identify hotspots and reduce infections, along with better data tools and more on-the-ground resources to track cases.
In some major metropolitan areas, like Kansas City, Mo., the funding for testing and contact tracing that was approved by Congress in April is only now starting to trickle down. Kansas City was scheduled to get its slice of the federal aid — about $4 million — for the first time today. Patty Hayes, the public health director for King County and Seattle, Wash., said that states and counties continue to compete against each other to purchase sufficient testing supplies and protective equipment. “We’re still struggling,” she said. “We have to find our own way a lot of times.”
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| PALACE INTRIGUE |
WHAT TRUMP IS THINKING — Covid-19 is no longer front and center for Trump or most of his White House, in part because it’s viewed as an unwieldy and losing issue for a president who has always felt much more comfortable playing economic cheerleader than delving into the nuances of health issues, according to interviews with half a dozen current and former senior administration officials and Republicans close to the White House, White House reporter Nancy Cook writes.
Aides insisted there would be no change in White House strategy to fight the pandemic, and no additional money or new resources given to states dealing with spikes in cases. “In only 3 percent of the counties across the country are we are seeing an increase in cases,” said one senior administration official. “The vast majority of the country is not experiencing that. When they turn on the TV and see maps full of red and then they go out into their communities, that is not what they see.”
| TALKING TO THE EXPERTS |
Nightly’s Myah Ward discussed mask effectiveness with Dr. Krutika Kuppalli, infectious diseases physician and vice chair of the Global Health Committee at the Infectious Diseases Society of America
When is wearing a mask the most effective?
Given the context of the current pandemic, it would be most effective if you’re out and about running errands — you’re not going to be able to appropriately physically distance yourself from other people. So if you’re doing things like going to the supermarket or the pharmacy. If you’re going to be around other people, I think it’s very important to be wearing a mask because we’re currently in a situation where we have to assume everybody has Covid-19.
Also, making sure you use hand hygiene before you touch your face covering or your mask. One of the things we get concerned about is we know that the virus can live on countertops, light switches, it can live on surfaces. What we would hate is for somebody to touch something, get the virus on their hand and then touch their mask.
Is one type of mask best?
The whole idea behind the wearing of a mask is to prevent any of your droplets from spreading to anybody else. So anything that you can put over your nose and your mouth that's going to prevent spreading of droplets is going to be optimal. Nobody in the public really needs to be wearing an N95 mask.
Is it still effective when people cover their mouths with the mask, but not their noses?
It’s better than nothing, but it’s defeating the purpose because we know this is an upper respiratory tract infection so you can inhale in droplets.
What about claims that masks are dangerous for people with certain health conditions?
I can’t come up with any medical condition that would make it inappropriate for you to be wearing a mask. What’s becoming challenging is people are trying to come up with all these, for lack of a better word, loopholes, to get around it. I think the one I hear the most is: “I have asthma. I can’t wear a mask.” There’s no reason you can’t wear a mask if you have asthma. I have friends who are surgeons who have asthma who have not had problems wearing masks for years and years.
How often should you wear one?
If you’re by yourself in your car and nobody’s been in your car, there’s no reason to be wearing a mask. If you’re in your car and you're with somebody else, depending on who that person is, it is a good idea to be wearing a mask. Because, let’s say, I’m in the car with my 80-year-old grandmother. We’re potentially breathing the same air, we’re in close proximity to each other.
In certain cases depending on your risk, it may be a good idea to wear one at home, depending on what you’re doing, the people who are living in your house and their risk factors as well.
The longer we don’t adhere to the recommendations, the longer that this is going to go on. And so I guess my plea to everybody would be: really think about not just yourself but other people.
| FOUR SQUARE |
THE ZOOM PANEL — Eugene Daniels, Tim Alberta, Ryan Lizza and Laura Barrón-López discuss Black voters and the Democratic Party, and if Democrats can get this key voting bloc to head to the polls in November, on the latest episode of Four Square. Watch this Nightly clip, and find the entire discussion Friday on POLITICO.
| FROM THE HEALTH DESK |
‘MALPRACTICE’ — That's what Rajiv Shah, the president of the Rockefeller Foundation, called the CDC’s lack of testing guidance when he dropped by POLITICO for a virtual roundtable this afternoon, health care reporter Dan Diamond wrote to us. Shah, a physician who led the U.S. Agency for International Development during the Obama administration, blasted the federal health department for leaving hospitals, doctors, business leaders and Americans confused over who should get tested for coronavirus and how frequently.
“It’s so shocking,” Shah said. “The first function of the federal government is to protect its people. … And there’s no guidance” on myriad situations, like the role of businesses to screen their employees, or whether people who don’t have any symptoms should be getting tests.
Shah has spent weeks touting Rockefeller’s national coronavirus testing plan . He said the Trump administration should do more to enlist community leaders to help with the fight against coronavirus, especially in populations that have been hard-hit by the outbreak.
One piece of evidence: The lessons Shah learned during the 2014-2015 Ebola outbreak when winning over local leaders in places like Liberia — who then became advocates for the U.S. public health message. “We should be building the [U.S.] community leader infrastructure to communicate trusted messages — now,” Shah said, adding that has to include communities that are medically underserved. “When the vaccine’s available, that’s your sales force.”
| AROUND THE NATION |
‘THIS IS NOTHING NEW’ — National political reporter Laura Barrón-López emails us:
Former Democratic presidential candidate Julián Castro, a former mayor of San Antonio, said in an interview with POLITICO that his home state of Texas “should do a statewide mandate” for masks to be worn in public.
“I say that because for rural communities, even though it’s true that the density, of course, is less and you see a lower infection rate, they also have a lot less hospital capacity,” Castro said. “And what we’re concerned about in many communities is the hospital capacity once infections start rolling.”
As infections started to surge in states like Texas and North Carolina this month, the Trump administration floated a theory that the recent outbreaks were caused by travel from Mexico — a claim, Castro and public health experts said, there is no evidence to support.
“I always get suspicious when sometimes politicians begin to use people coming across the border as the boogeyman,” said Castro. “We had a long history in this state of people suggesting that immigrants are bringing over disease and all sorts of things. So this is nothing new. And I have not seen any evidence that that’s true.”
Castro will be talking with Laura again on June 30 at 1 p.m. ET for a POLITICO Live virtual town hall on police reforms and the protests against systemic racism. Sign up here to join them.
| ON THE HILL |
SENATE GOP’S FRUSTRATION — Senate Republicans are pressing the administration to show a little urgency, write Burgess Everett and Marianne LeVine. The latest outbreaks are reshaping the GOP’s political and legislative strategy, with Republicans planning to focus more on health care in the next coronavirus relief bill. And they’re flashing rare frustration at the Trump administration for its decision to wind down federally supported testing sites. “Frankly I didn’t really understand what they were thinking. … At a time cases are spiking, we’re gonna pull back?” said Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas), who wrote a letter to the administration along with Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) urging them to change course.
| ASK THE AUDIENCE |
Nightly asks you: If you were going to erect a statue in the place where you live, who or what would you choose? And why? Send us your thoughts through our form, and we’ll feature answers in our Friday edition.
FOR CRITICAL NEWS AND CONTEXT YOU NEED IN 15 MINUTES OR LESS, LISTEN TO POLITICO DISPATCH: Coronavirus cases continue to spike as states take steps to reopen. Americans are demanding action from lawmakers to address racial injustice and police reform. How do you keep up with the never-ending news cycle? For quick analysis on the essential news of the day, listen to POLITICO Dispatch, our short daily podcast that keeps you up to date on the most important news affecting your life. Subscribe and listen today.
| NIGHTLY NUMBER |
610 percent
The increase in demand by Vizient member hospitals for dexamethasone, a commonly used corticosteroid, in the week since the initial trial results of a clinical study conducted in the United Kingdom showed it reduced the mortality of patients who are severely ill with Covid-19, according to data from the health care company.
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| THE GLOBAL FIGHT |
NÃO OBRIGADO — The Portuguese government announced the end of a nationwide “state of calamity” today but also reintroduced lockdown restrictions for almost 700,000 people living around Lisbon, where the coronavirus is staging a tenacious resistance.
“Everybody has to understand that this additional effort is essential: Covid has not disappeared,” Prime Minister António Costa said. “The only effective way to control it is to do what we did very well during the state of emergency, which is to stay at home as much as possible, to maintain social distancing as much as possible,” he said.
The government confirmed other rollback measures across the rest of greater Lisbon, including reducing the size of gatherings from 20 to 10, ordering shops and cafés to close by 8 p.m. and banning alcohol sales from gas stations. Policing is being stepped up, with fines of up to €5,000 for infringements of the rules.
Trump’s China seesaw — First, he praised President Xi’s response to the coronavirus pandemic. Now, he’s blaming China (again). Dan breaks down Trump’s back and forth on China in the latest episode of POLITICO Dispatch — and how John Bolton’s explosive memoir sheds new light on the White House’s pandemic response.
| PARTING WORDS |
COVID’S THREAT TO DEMOCRACY — The future of liberal democracy is under threat because of the Covid-19 pandemic, as even democratically elected governments have accumulated emergency powers that restrict human rights, numerous prominent figures argued in an open letter published today.
“Parliaments are being sidelined, journalists are being arrested and harassed, minorities are being scapegoated, and the most vulnerable sectors of the population face alarming new dangers as the economic lockdowns ravage the very fabric of societies everywhere,” says the letter, commissioned by IDEA, a Stockholm-based think tank.
It was signed by such well-known Americans as former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, former Vice President Walter Mondale, former Trump national security adviser H.R. McMaster, former U.S. Sens. Tom Daschle and Gary Hart, former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush and former House Majority Leader Richard Gephardt.
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