POLITICO NIGHTLY: The virus makes Mexico pay

 

BY RENUKA RAYASAM With help from Myah Ward BORDER CROSSING — Two days after Mexico recorded its first confirmed Covid death in March, President Andrés Manuel López Obrador hopped, maskless, on a commercial flight bound for Oaxaca. There he held official meetings and met with residents. In one video posted to Obrador’s Twitter account, he stood close to a young girl and said that he wanted to eat her with kisses, but couldn’t because he had to maintain his distance. AMLO won by a landslide in 2018, in his third try running for president, on a populist platform: pledging to fight corruption and help the country’s poor. During the six months that coronavirus has ravaged Mexico, he’s been criticized for downplaying the virus. He’s resisted a shutdown order and doesn’t wear a mask. And he’s prioritized fiscal restraint over doling out aid to Mexicans who have lost income or gotten sick. Mexico has recorded nearly 600,000 virus cases and nearly 65,000 deaths, though most agree that the country’s official statistics are missing a huge number of cases and deaths because of a lack of testing and record keeping. AMLO insists that things are improving across the country, as cases continue to surge. The virus has preyed on workers in the country’s factories , Gabriela Minjáres and Itzel Ramírez, journalists at Le Verdad, a news site in Juárez, told me last week. I parked my car in an El Paso park, walked across the free bridge, so named because there’s no toll to cross it, and met the two journalists on the Mexican side of the park. Minjáres and Ramírez have been investigating Covid outbreaks in the border city’s factories, which the country reopened on June 1 after pressure from United States companies and officials. The death toll has been growing. Many factory owners haven’t put in place distancing measures or provided their workers with protective equipment. Yet because the Mexican government has provided little financial assistance to workers who have been laid off or at home sick, the workers take their chances in the factories anyway. Most Mexican hospitals are ill-equipped to deal with virus victims, Minjáres said. They were starved of resources for years before the crisis hit, with shortages of hospital staff and basic equipment. Most people tried to avoid the health care system rather than fall victim to it even when they got sick, said Minjáres. She said they worry that medical mistakes or neglect will kill them before the virus. Across Juárez, there are daily reminders of the millions of Mexicans who have been cast into poverty as cross border travel shut down, small businesses closed and workers lost their jobs. There are more people begging on street corners, Minjáres said. Children knock on her door and ask if they can sweep her house for money. “We are on the edge of an economic crisis,” she said. “If you don’t die from the virus, you’ll die from poverty.” Welcome to POLITICO Nightly: Coronavirus Special Edition. It’s impossible to read this account by novelist Jesmyn Ward on her husband’s death during the pandemic without your heart breaking. Reach out rrayasam@politico.com or on Twitter at @renurayasam.   BEIJING IS WATCHING, ARE YOU? China has long been a nation of involved and cynical election-watchers, at least when it comes to American presidential campaigns. As the United States races toward election day, how do Chinese citizens believe each candidate would impact relations between the two nations? 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.     FIRST IN NIGHTLY UH-O CANADA — Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau is trying to leave his summer of scandal behind, POLITICO’s Maura Forrest writes from Ottawa. Trudeau spent summer on the defensive, getting summoned to testify before Parliament as the opposition called for his ouster. He’s now looking to secure his legacy and his party’s political future with a yet-to-be-released pandemic recovery plan that would transform Canada’s social safety net and make the country’s economy cleaner and greener. Talk of a fall election is flying in Canada, with some suggesting it would suit Trudeau well to campaign on this new mandate while the rival Conservative party is still introducing a brand-new leader to Canadians. The Liberals insist they’re not looking to send Canadians to the polls. The challenge for Trudeau now is to convince the public he has the ability to manage an economic recovery that would involve massive new spending, especially in the wake of a scandal concerning a nearly C$1-billion grant program. He and his new finance minister, Chrystia Freeland, must gauge whether Canadians will continue to accept huge deficits, as the country’s federal debt is set to top C$1 trillion for the first time. And he must find a balance between reforms to social programs and a green agenda he promised not to abandon at the start of the pandemic. ON THE ECONOMY A LITERAL STAY-AT-HOME ORDER — The Trump administration said today it will ban evictions of tenants who are unable to pay rent through the end of the year with a broad new order under the CDCs public health powers. The agency order, the result of an Aug. 8 executive action by President Donald Trump directing the CDC to study the issue, would impose criminal penalties on landlords who violate the ban. Evictions for reasons other than nonpayment of rent will be allowed to proceed, financial services reporter Zachary Warmbrodt writes. It's the administration's boldest move yet to head off what could be a torrent of evictions of tenants unable to afford their payments because of the financial crunch imposed by the coronavirus pandemic. Trump has come under increasing pressure to act since a federal moratorium lapsed at the end of July. In testimony before the House coronavirus subcommittee earlier today, Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin said the action will affect up to 40 million renters. The earlier eviction ban, passed by Congress in March as part of a massive economic rescue package, applied to federally financed rental units and protected about a quarter of the nation’s tenants. AROUND THE NATION ALOHA ON ALERT — Earlier this summer, Hawaii was a Covid success story. Now it’s one of the worst-performing states in the nation. On the latest POLITICO Dispatch, health care reporter Alice Miranda Ollstein talks about the state’s swift unravelling. Listen to the latest POLITICO Dispatch podcast ASK THE AUDIENCE Nightly asks you: Send us pictures of your Covid-19 work or study space. Send your photo to nightly@politico.com. We'll include select photos in our Friday edition. COVID-2020 PRIMARY COLORS — Nightly’s Myah Ward talked with Stephanie Murray , Massachusetts Playbook author, over Slack about the blockbuster Senate Democratic primary in Massachusetts between Sen. Ed Markey and Rep. Joe Kennedy III, and how Covid-19 has played a role in the race. As Murray put it, “Markey has his career on the line, and Kennedy has his reputation on the line.” How has Covid-19 affected the primary? The pandemic knocked both campaigns off the trail for months. That was especially tough for Kennedy, whose advisers often tell me that his strength is connecting one-on-one with voters. On the other hand, Markey was able to harness the power of the online left during the state's stay-at-home advisory and turn it into a pretty powerful small-dollar fundraising operation. What about Gov. Charlie Baker's response to Covid-19? Has his Covid response made the pandemic less of an issue in the primary? Here's a stat that might blow your mind: Gov. Charlie Baker is more popular in Massachusetts than Dunkin' Donuts and Patriots coach Bill Belichick. The Republican Baker is actually more popular among Democrats in Massachusetts than he is among members of his own party, so almost all politicians go to great lengths to avoid criticizing him. In one of their debates, neither Markey nor Kennedy would commit to voting for Baker’s Democratic opponent if he runs for a third term in a few years! What are you watching for tonight? Tonight will test whether the left wing of the party can unseat an incumbent, but also whether it can protect an incumbent: House Ways and Means chair Richard Neal is facing a primary from Holyoke Mayor Alex Morse. He’s running to Neal's left and he was born the same year Neal was sworn into Congress — 1989! Morse is trying to seize on progressive energy and knock out Neal, similar to what Rep. Ayanna Pressley did in 2018. HEALING, THEN BLAME — Trump said today he hoped to bridge the nation’s racial divide. Then, he traveled to Wisconsin against the wishes of local officials, where he dismissed this summer's protests for racial justice as predominantly violent, left-wing attacks on cities. "The fact is we've seen tremendous violence," the president told reporters after a round table with local law enforcement leaders. "By and large this is not peaceful protests." Before heading to Kenosha, Wis., the site of protests and bloodshed after police shot a Black man on Aug. 23, Trump told reporters outside Joint Base Andrews that he would like to heal America’s racial wounds. The president suggested his messaging was helping accomplish that, “because I’m about law and order.” Upon arriving in the state, Trump largely ignored the tragedy that brought him here: the police shooting of Jacob Blake, who survived but is now paralyzed, his family members have said. A white counter-protester is charged with shooting three people, two days after Blake was shot, during demonstrations against police brutality in Kenosha, killing two. NIGHTLY NUMBER 11 The number of days New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio will delay in-person public school instruction after pressure from teacher and principal unions to postpone a planned Sept. 10 reopening. PARTING WORDS SHUT UP AND GOVERN — Milwaukee Bucks assistant coach Vin Baker said today that White House senior adviser Jared Kushner showed a “level of ignorance” when talking about NBA players’ refusal to take the court after Blake was shot. “There’s no sensitivity there,” Baker told POLITICO Playbook authors Anna Palmer and Jake Sherman. Kushner, Trump’s son-in-law, was dismissive of the players in an interview last Thursday with CNBC. “Look, I think that the NBA players are very fortunate that they have the financial position where they’re able to take a night off from work without having to have the consequences to themselves financially,” Kushner said. “So they have that luxury, which is great.” Kushner said that “there’s a lot of activism” within the NBA and that the league had “put a lot of slogans out,” but argued that “what we need to do is turn that from slogans and signals to actual action that’s going to solve the problem.” The Bucks, whose home arena in downtown Milwaukee is 40 miles north of Kenosha, sparked a wave of protests across the sports world last week when the team declined to participate in a playoff game against the Orlando Magic. The NBA subsequently postponed three playoff games scheduled to take place that day as players around the league refused to take the court to protest for racial justice and against police brutality. “I don’t obviously agree with the comment,” Baker said of Kushner. “There’s a level of ignorance there.”   A GAME CHANGER? The FDA gave Abbott Labs emergency approval for its rapid antigen test, which can detect Covid-19 in 15 minutes. Is this new test a game changer? Or does it give Americans a false sense of security? The health care system that emerges from this pandemic will be fundamentally different, and emerging technologies will continue to drive change. Future Pulse spotlights the politics, policies and technologies driving long-term change on voters' most personal issue: their health. SUBSCRIBE NOW.     Did someone forward this email to you? Sign up here.   Follow us on Twitter Renuka Rayasam @renurayasam   FOLLOW US

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