| | |  | BY RENUKA RAYASAM | Presented by |  |
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| THE PARENTING PUZZLE — Illinois Sen. Tammy Duckworth is one of the finalists for Joe Biden’s vice presidential selection for a lot of reasons: She’s a disabled war veteran, a woman, an Asian-American and Democrats like her record on foreign policy and defense issues. But she’s also got a unique perspective on the coronavirus crisis: She’s one of the few mothers of young children in the Senate, and is facing the child care and virtual schooling crisis first hand. Duckworth has not been afraid to put her maternal credentials on display — she cast a vote on the Senate floor in 2018 while holding her newborn daughter. (About 41 million U.S. workers between the ages of 18 and 64 were caring for at least one child under the age of 18 in 2018, according to the Brookings Institution.) Duckworth has also sponsored legislation to expand access to child care. Nightly interviewed Duckworth today to discuss the child care crisis spurred by the pandemic, and we tried to slip in a question about whether she’s moving up or down on Biden’s VP selection list. This conversation has been edited. (Spoiler alert below.) How are you juggling caring for your young kids with being a Senator? Listen, I just found out that Chicago public schools is going to back to 100 percent online when we go back to school. Fairfax here in Virginia is the same. Some of the school districts have published what the potential schedule is going to look like and it’s going to be 9 to 3 online education. How does anybody manage that with their children and hold down a job? You can’t even telecommute from home because you are being the teachers assistant. I definitely want our kids to go back to school, but we can’t do it unless we spend the money and send funding out to our school districts so they can afford to make schools safe so our kids can go back to school. If you could pass a bill in the Senate today to address the child care crisis in the country, what would it contain? We should be able to let families afford to have child care so they don’t have to quit their jobs. A caring economy is one that would include universal paid family leave, so you can take the time off to take care of your loved ones or to take care of yourself. We should have universal pre-K because we know whether or not a child is enrolled in pre-K or Head Start affects their ability to read by the 4th grade and their performance at the end of 4th grade is predictive of whether or not they are going to graduate high school and go on to college. Some of your colleagues are grandparents — how receptive have they been to some of these ideas? This is something that we can work on. I don’t understand why they would not be supportive of a tax credit for the middle class. You don’t have to pay for all of it. If you can provide a credit for up to, say, 50 percent of a family’s child care cost, that means you can actually keep the economy vibrant because those parents would still be working. Free and early education is really critical. When I travel around Illinois, when I say universal pre-K, people understand and are supportive of it no matter where I am, whether I am in the bluest of the blue counties or the reddest of the red counties. There has to be an understanding of the value of taking care of children in our society. Have you talked to Biden recently about his vice presidential selection? They’ve got their own process. I am going to leave them to it. I am really not just commenting on the process anymore because he is going to face many crises and any one of the women’s names who have been mentioned are going to be great running partners of his. I am willing to be in any position on Team Biden that he thinks would help him pull our country out of the multiple crises we are in right now. Let the man make his decision. Welcome to POLITICO Nightly: Coronavirus Special Edition. Disney is releasing its live action version of Mulan on its streaming platform on Sept. 4, the same day it will be available in places where theaters are open and where Disney Plus isn’t operating. But it will cost subscribers a one time fee of $30. Reach out rrayasam@politico.com or on Twitter at @renurayasam.
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| | A message from PhRMA: America’s biopharmaceutical companies are sharing their knowledge and resources more than ever before to speed up the development of new medicines to fight COVID-19. They’re working with doctors and hospitals on over 1,100 clinical trials. Because science is how we get back to normal. More. | | | | | FAUCI WANTS VAX, BUT SAYS HE WON'T JUMP THE LINE — The infectious-disease expert joined POLITICO's Pulse Check podcast today to discuss vaccine development, navigating the politics of coronavirus and more. Asked if he wanted to be first in line to get the vaccine or to wait until later, 79-year-old Anthony Fauci struck a contemplative tone. "When the vaccine becomes available after a 30,000-person or more placebo-controlled randomized trial — and it's shown to be safe and effective — I would get it any time within the timeframe of the people who prioritize it according to ethical principles," Fauci told Pulse Check host Dan Diamond . "In other words, there may be people who need it more than I do, and I would prefer they get it if they need it." The full interview comes out Thursday morning. Subscribe to the podcast, and you'll get the episode as soon as it posts.
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| | BECOME A CHINA WATCHER : Tensions between the U.S. and China continue to rise following the shuttering of China's consulate in Houston. Is it possible for the two countries to hit the "reset" button or is that just a pipe dream? Join the conversation and gain expert insight from informed and influential voices in government, business, law, tech and academia. China Watcher is as much of a platform as it is a newsletter. Subscribe today. | | | | | | | GONE FOR GOOD — Millions of jobs that have been lost during the pandemic aren’t coming back even if the virus fades and the economy rebounds. It’s a trend that is only going to accelerate this fall as temporary layoffs become permanent, our economy reporter Megan Cassella told your host today. The damage is going to be widespread, not just concentrated in industries directly affected by the pandemic like retail and restaurants. And permanent job loss is starting to hit white collar jobs as well, like financial analysts. We gave Megan just three minutes to explain how the pandemic is ushering in structural changes to the economy. Watch below to see if she can do it.
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| | | DE BLASIO’S COMMISSIONER CONUNDRUM — New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio pushed out his health commissioner, Oxiris Barbot, after a series of private disagreements throughout the coronavirus pandemic, saying he needed an “atmosphere of unity." But the mayor offered another vote of confidence today in his police commissioner, Dermot Shea, who has publicly called a police reform law the mayor signed “insane,” labeled the budget de Blasio negotiated a “bow to mob rule,” and referred to city leaders as “cowards.” When asked about the contrast, de Blasio said he required “communication” and “team work” from all of his agency heads, and does not believe Shea has violated those standards, New York reporter Erin Durkin writes. “There’s nothing he has said that I took personal offense to,” de Blasio said. “We have talked constantly. When he has a concern, he raises it forthrightly. When it’s something that I understand he thinks is important to talk about publicly, he and I talk about it first,” he said. "And we come to an agreement on the right way to address things and handle things. So it’s been a very collegial dynamic. He has also, to his credit, really put a focus on working with other agencies.” Critics have seen a double standard in de Blasio’s treatment of the white, male police commissioner and the Latina health commissioner. “I am disappointed that women in leadership like Dr. Barbot are pushed out after speaking their mind, while people like NYPD Commissioner Dermot Shea, who has publicly clashed with the Mayor, disagreed with him, and has completely failed in handling the City’s response to this summer’s protests, remains in his position without even the slightest bit of critique from his boss,” said City Council Member Carlina Rivera. DUELING OVER SCHOOLING — Teachers are afraid. Parents are desperate. Child care workers are frustrated. They all want kids to succeed. In the latest POLITICO Dispatch, California education reporter Mackenzie Mays breaks down the fight that's escalating as schools prepare to reopen — in person, online or some combination of the two — during a pandemic.
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| | | | | UNCONVENTIONAL CONVENTIONS — The political conventions that mark presidential election years, like most other facets of life during the pandemic, will be anything but normal. The Democratic National Convention Committee announced today that the party’s event will be completely virtual and that presumptive nominee Joe Biden will no longer travel to Milwaukee for his acceptance speech. The cancellation of all convention-related travel to Wisconsin marks another disruption to campaigning as usual, ending any last hope of a traditional, made-for-TV bonanza that drives party enthusiasm before the November election. Biden will now deliver his keynote speech in his home state of Delaware. Meanwhile, President Donald Trump confirmed reports that he is considering accepting the Republican Party’s 2020 presidential nomination in a nationally televised address delivered from the White House. “I’ll probably do mine live from the White House,” Trump told “Fox & Friends” of his nomination acceptance speech at the Republican National Convention later this month, adding that he had not officially settled on a location for the prime-time remarks. “If for some reason somebody had difficulty with it, I would — I could, you know, go someplace else,” Trump said. “The easiest, least expensive and, I think, very beautiful [option] would be live from the White House.” Trump revealed last month that he was canceling GOP convention keynote events recently relocated to Jacksonville, Fla., amid a surge in Covid-19 cases there.
| | Nightly asks you: What concerns you the most about the November election? Let us know your thoughts, and we’ll include select answers in our Friday edition.
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Members of the Nevada National Guard put down social distancing decals at a new coronavirus testing site inside Cashman Center in Las Vegas. | Getty Images | | | | |
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| | POLITICO'S "FUTURE PULSE" - THE COLLISION OF HEALTH CARE AND TECHNOLOGY : As the United States remains stuck in a screening crisis, a worldwide competition has been launched to find the top Covid-19 rapid testing solutions. The contest aims to find a system with a painless sample and quick turnaround for results. When will a breakthrough come? From Congress and the White House, to state legislatures and Silicon Valley, Future Pulse spotlights the politics, policies and technologies driving long-term change on the most personal issue for voters: Their health. SUBSCRIBE NOW. | | | | | | | DEATH AND STIMULUS — Dead people could end up eligible for economic stimulus checks after all. A little-noticed provision in Senate Republicans’ latest coronavirus relief package would partially overturn the Treasury Department’s much-publicized ban on sending stimulus money to the departed, tax reporter Brian Faler writes. So long as someone died this year, they would be eligible for the $1,200 payments included in the plan. Not just that, Senate Republicans would also make them retroactively eligible for the previous round of stimulus checks. Doing so would be consistent with how the government has long treated recently deceased taxpayers, said a spokesperson for Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa), who chairs the tax-writing Senate Finance Committee. And in the midst of a wrenching pandemic, some lawmakers risk appearing insensitive to people whose loved ones may have been felled by Covid-19 if they're treated differently. It’s a surprising twist in the monthslong back and forth within the government over whether the deceased are eligible for the payments. How the Treasury Department will react in the midst of negotiations over the relief legislation is unclear. The IRS initially said the departed were eligible, before the Treasury Department reversed that. Senate Republicans’ plan to partly reverse that reversal threatens to create an administrative headache for the IRS, not to mention confusion for survivors of the deceased. “To have all of this within one year — it’s whiplash,” said Philip Hackney, a former IRS lawyer who now teaches at the University of Pittsburgh’s law school. “It makes the head spin.”
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| | A message from PhRMA: America’s biopharmaceutical companies are sharing their knowledge and resources more than ever before to speed up the development of new medicines to fight COVID-19. They’re working with doctors and hospitals on over 1,100 clinical trials.
And there’s no slowing down. America’s biopharmaceutical companies will continue working day and night until they beat coronavirus. Because science is how we get back to normal.
See how biopharmaceutical companies are working together to get people what they need during this pandemic. | | | Did someone forward this email to you? Sign up here. | |
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