| | |  | BY RENUKA RAYASAM | With help from Myah Ward OUT OF TEACH — Nightly asked last week to hear from students in their own words about their first day of school. I reached out to two who emailed us — with their parents’ permission — to talk more about virtual classes. You can hear our interviews on a special Nightly preview of Friday’s POLITICO Dispatch, the daily podcast hosted by Jeremy Siegel.
| | New York City just became the latest school system to give up on the idea of starting the school year in person, leaving parents and students adrift. Despite months of preparation, school has been a chaotic mess almost everywhere in the U.S. Although President Donald Trump has called for schools to resume in-person classes this year, across the country each school district is making its own decision on whether to meet in person, move online or use a combination of the two. Many teachers have been reluctant to go to their classrooms for fear of getting infected with Covid or infecting a family member. The pandemic has also wrecked state budgets, further complicating efforts to hold classes, which now involve the additional costs of air filtering, “deep cleaning” and frequent Covid testing. Many private schools, which get to cherry pick students and operate with fewer regulations, are moving ahead with in-person education even as many public schools have moved online. While the grown-ups hash out the details of whether, when and how to open schools, most students seem to be dreading another year of Zoom school. The technical glitches, the awkward interface, spending the day staring at a screen — it’s all taken a toll on kids. Like their parents, who are having to juggle supervising distance learning with their own jobs, students are coming to terms with the limits of virtual education. “When I am doing virtual classes, or whatever, I just really have trouble focusing and it’s made me want to quit a lot of my classes honestly,” Natalie Bernstein, a 10th grader in Arlington, Va., told your host this week. Natalie said she has ADD. She’s been frustrated with the start of the school year. The school district faced a host of technical issues on its first day last week. She normally loves English class, but over Zoom there’s no real discussion. Natalie is worried about not doing well in her classes, that she is setting back her efforts to go to college. She said it’s awkward to ask for help in a virtual setting, and that her teachers haven’t set aside enough time for office hours. Her school district has tried to limit screen time by curbing the hours of online classroom time and setting aside more hours for self-paced assignments. But Natalie points out that all her assignments are done on the computer, so it doesn’t really help. Her younger brother and sister are going to private school, but she couldn’t get in. Jonah Sriqui, a second grader at Key Elementary in Washington, D.C., is in a learning pod with his younger brother. Online school has been hard and “a little weird,” he told me. He misses his friends. He’s figured out how to watch baseball videos on his computer. “I couldn’t hear the P.E. teacher, and I had to figure it out. I figured it out and it was better,” he said. “A lot of stuff did not work right.” The frustrations shared by students like Jonah and Natalie, and the likelihood that many students will be set back months or even a whole year or more, have some parents wondering if we should just give up on this school year entirely. Listen to Natalie and Jonah in their own words in the latest POLITICO Dispatch, previewed a day early for Nightly readers. Subscribe to POLITICO Dispatch on Spotify, Apple or wherever you listen to podcasts. Welcome to POLITICO Nightly: Coronavirus Special Edition. Michael Stipe weighs in on Covid policy in Georgia, while reminiscing about REM’s start at the 40 Watt in Athens, Ga. Reach out rrayasam@politico.com or on Twitter at @renurayasam.
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A masked first grader attends class at Stark Elementary School in Stamford, Ct. Most students at Stamford Public Schools are taking part in a hybrid education model, where they attend classes in school every other day. About 20 percent of students in the school district, however, are enrolled in an all-distance learning option. | Getty Images | | |
| | BECOME A CHINA WATCHER : Many experts believe that if there is an "October surprise" leading up to Election Day, it will be a foreign policy-oriented development. What would be the likely scenario involving China? Some say a Phase One trade deal collapse could upend the election. Are they right? Join the conversation and gain expert insight from informed and influential voices in government, business, law, and tech. China Watcher is as much of a platform as it is a newsletter. Subscribe today. | | | | | | | TRUMP FAILS TO HOLD MAIL — Six months into a crusade to stop universal mail-in voting, Trump hasn’t yet prevented a single state from sending voters the unsolicited ballots he claims, with minimal evidence, are ripe for fraud, White House correspondent Anita Kumar writes. His attempts in Nevada, New Jersey and Montana are tied up in court. His legal challenge in California was circumvented by the state legislature. And he hasn’t challenged the mailing of ballots in the six other states that plan to mail them, including Vermont, the last state that switched to full remote voting this year following the coronavirus outbreak, according to the Trump campaign and the Republican National Committee. Time is running out. Ballots are already being sent across the country. Some counties in New Jersey began mailing them last week. Both Vermont and Nevada, a battleground state the president campaigned in last weekend, expect to mail ballots within days. “Once the ballots have gone out, it’s hard to see how the courts could grant meaningful relief on the claims,” said Richard Pildes, an expert on election law and a professor of constitutional law at the New York University School of Law.
| | SPLIT DECISION — It’s an outcome practically no one wants that’s starting to look like a real possibility: a 50-50 Senate, Marianne LeVine and John Bresnahan write. If Democrats pick up a net three seats, that’s what happens. Should Joe Biden win the presidency, they’ll hold the majority; if Trump is reelected, Democrats need four seats to do so. Under an evenly divided chamber, the party that holds the White House runs the Senate, with the vice president casting the deciding 51st vote to break any tie. The struggle for the Senate majority is being contested in a half-dozen states. GOP Sens. Cory Gardner of Colorado, Martha McSally of Arizona, Thom Tillis of North Carolina and Susan Collins of Maine face tough challenges in November. Democrats are also investing heavily in Iowa and Montana, and there are two Senate races in Georgia that could present them with pickup opportunities. But Sen. Doug Jones has an uphill reelection bid for a Democrat in Alabama. And Michigan Democrat Gary Peters holds a small lead over his GOP challenger, although Biden’s strength in the swing state will aid Peters. Which party is running the Senate might not be known until January if the two Georgia Senate races go to runoffs.
| | YOUNG AND UNDECIDED — In a polarized nation, 47 days before Election Day, undecided voters have taken on a mythical status. Who in the world are these people? What are they waiting to learn about Trump and Biden? Cathy Cohen, a University of Chicago political scientist, took a look at a subsection of the undecideds in 2020: young independent voters between the ages of 18 and 36. In Cohen’s most recent survey, young independents don’t care much for either Biden or Trump. Fifty-eight percent said they don’t know who they trust more to handle the pandemic. These young independents are growing in number, Cohen said, but a lot of them don’t vote. About 52 percent of them did not vote in 2018 midterms, up from 42 percent in the 2016 election, according to the survey. These young independents are less likely to have jobs or a college education than young Democrats or young Republicans. “They are deeply alienated by government institutions, and they don’t trust national politicians to help them solve the problems they face,” Cohen said.
| | Nightly asks you: Curbside delivery? Movies released straight to your home theater? Take-home cocktails? What changes from the Covid era do you want to remain, even after a vaccine arrives? Send us your answers on our form, and we’ll feature select responses in Friday’s edition.
| | THE ZOOM PANEL — On the latest edition of Four Square, Eugene Daniels, Tim Alberta, Ryan Lizza and Laura Barrón-López talk about the fallout from Bob Woodward’s book, the hunt for the Covid-19 vaccine and the upcoming presidential debates.
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7.2 million The number of Advoque N95 masks California has distributed — masks they will now have to replace after the Silicon Valley manufacturer lost its temporary federal certification. |
| | | SHOT IN THE DARK — Scientists around the world are racing to produce an effective vaccine and governments are throwing billions at drug companies to be first in line for access. But despite the severe disruption caused by the coronavirus pandemic, a significant minority of people say they don’t want a jab even when one becomes available. That’s the message from polling nearly 20,000 adults in 27 countries. An Ipsos poll for the World Economic Forum found that 74 percent of respondents would take a vaccine if it becomes available. There is huge variation among countries, however. In China, 97 percent said they would get a future vaccine, while in Russia nearly half said they would not. Russia was the first country to make a vaccine available, although there has been widespread criticism it has not been adequately tested. In Europe, skepticism of a coronavirus vaccine is most prevalent in Poland and Hungary, with 45 and 44 percent respectively saying that they would not get a vaccine. U.K. respondents were most enthusiastic, with 85 percent saying they would take it.
| | ABCD1234 — Twitter has a suggestion in the run-up to the election, and it isn’t to be sure to vote: Change your password. The social media giant will require certain political candidates, elected officials and journalists to beef up their passwords, the company said today, in an effort to head off any breaches of high-profile accounts as November draws near. The change comes two months after an embarrassing cyberattack in which hackers exploited Twitter employees’ credentials to wrest control of dozens of accounts, including those of former President Barack Obama, Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden and Microsoft founder Bill Gates. The steps announced today would not have prevented that hack but could foil less sophisticated exploits. The new rules: Accounts deemed to have weak passwords will be compelled to make them stronger, and those users must now verify a phone number or email address before making password changes. The social media company will also encourage, but not force, high-profile users to implement two-factor authentication, a security measure that requires them to input a unique code in addition to their password. The new rules will apply to presidential campaigns, political parties and certain political candidates, as well as members of the executive branch and Congress. Governors and secretaries of state must also adopt tougher security measures, as do major U.S. news outlets and political journalists, Twitter said.
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| | DON’T MISS OUT ON POLITICO’S AI SUMMIT: How is artificial intelligence redefining the global balance of power? What’s next in Europe’s plan to pass laws for AI? How is the Covid-19 pandemic impacting tech policy priorities? Find out at the POLITICO EU AI Summit on September 30 and October 1. Hear from top global AI leaders such as Michael Kratsios, The White House’s chief technology officer, Margrethe Vestager, European Commission’s executive vice president for a Europe fit for the digital age and Didier Reynders, European commissioner for justice. Register now. | | | | | Did someone forward this email to you? Sign up here. | |
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