POLITICO NIGHTLY: The West Coast gets hit first, again

BY DEBRA KAHN AND RENUKA RAYASAM With help from Myah Ward VIRUS, MEET CLIMATE — As the coronavirus continues its slow burn through the country, California is literally on fire. The West Coast was the first to duck under the wave of the coronavirus back in March; six months later, the pandemic has become largely a local phenomenon — here in San Francisco, we’re miraculously below 100 deaths total, while Los Angeles County has had more than 60 times the number of deaths, with 12 times the population. Now it’s the fires that are inescapable. Smoke from nearby wildfires fills the air in Mill Valley, Calif. | Debra Kahn | POLITICO For those of us who have been sheltering in place here since March, the pandemic has receded into the background, superseded by smoke, eerie red skies and the possibility of evacuation. More than 3 million acres have burned this year in the Golden State, 26 times the amount this time last year. The once-distant threat of climate change is now at our doorsteps. “Somehow the virus doesn’t worry me at all right now,” a Marin County resident told me last week, when the hills north of San Francisco were under a red flag warning. The red skies mirrored our overheated psyches. President Donald Trump, who traveled to California today for a private meeting with Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom, has largely been silent on the wildfires except to blame the state for its forest management practices. Newsom presented him with charts showing the increase in temperatures and fire severity, as well as how California has outspent the federal government on forest management despite the feds owning 57 percent of forests in California. Trump responded with a denial that recalled his response to the pandemic. “It will start getting cooler,” Trump said after a plea from California’s natural resources director to listen to scientists on the issue. “Just watch. I don’t think science knows actually.” Even before this summer’s conflagrations, the wildfires were becoming an existential issue for California, which is particularly susceptible thanks to dry summers and population centers close to flammable areas. The state’s largest utility, Pacific Gas & Electric, declared bankruptcy last year over its role in sparking fires, and residents are becoming accustomed to planned power shutoffs to reduce the risk of more utility-caused blazes. The fires might accelerate the pandemic-fueled exodus out of California. Friends and acquaintances are trickling out of the city, either to nearby suburbs where they can get some outdoor space or to mountain towns in Colorado. But the outdoors, which we’d turned to in solace during the pandemic, is no longer a refuge. All 18 national forests in California closed last week due to fire risk, as did two dozen state parks. A respite isn’t expected for at least a month. We’re just at the beginning of what’s typically the worst part of the fire season, as vegetation dries out and Santa Ana and Diablo winds pick up before the rains start in November. Welcome to POLITICO Nightly: Coronavirus Special Edition. Renu is back from a few days off, which means the Nightly’s NFL grudge matches will be on hiatus for a while. Reach out rrayasam@politico.com or on Twitter at @renurayasam.   JOIN TOMORROW – A PLAYBOOK INTERVIEW WITH BIDEN CAMPAIGN MANAGER JEN O'MALLEY DILLON: Join Playbook co-authors Anna Palmer and Jake Sherman for a virtual interview with Joe Biden's campaign manager, Jen O'Malley Dillon, to discuss how her team is adapting to this new election landscape, whether Bob Woodward's new bombshell book will have lasting impact on the campaign, and the Biden campaign's assessment of the state of play in the top battleground states. REGISTER HERE.     FIRST IN NIGHTLY BIDENOMICS — Barack Obama entered the White House in 2009 during a brutal recession, quickly pushed through a sizable stimulus package and then spent the next several years realizing it wasn’t nearly big enough. Democratic nominee Joe Biden is determined not to have the same regrets if he wins, chief economic correspondent Ben White writes. The former vice president is surrounding himself with a more aggressive cadre of economic advisers who lean toward the liberal wing of the party, one that has itself moved significantly to the left since 2009 and shed most of its concern with appeasing budget hawks and Wall Street bankers who tend to worry about soaring deficits. Should Biden take the White House and get a Democratic Senate, it will likely translate into an immediate push to roll back Trump’s corporate tax cuts, slap significantly higher taxes on wealthy Americans and push through a multitrillion-dollar spending package aimed at fighting the Covid-19 virus, sending cash directly into people’s pockets, renewing enhanced unemployment benefits, rescuing struggling state budgets and investing in new infrastructure projects. Biden’s group of internal and external advisers leans decidedly more to the left of Obama’s and includes Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) and left-leaning economists Heather Boushey, Lisa Cook, Raj Chetty, William Spriggs and Jared Bernstein, all of whom support tax and spending policy to fulfill the former vice president’s pledge to create “most progressive administration” since Franklin Delano Roosevelt. The broad economic advisory group is not totally dominated by hardcore liberals. Gene Sperling, who served in both the Obama and Bill Clinton administrations, is an important voice in Biden’s ear as is Jeff Zients, who served as Obama’s National Economic Council director and is now a co-chair of the Democratic nominee’s transition team . Zients is a wealthy investor with deep ties to the finance industry, giving the campaign the ability to reassure corporate America that their concerns won’t go entirely unaddressed. Ben Harris, who served as Biden’s top economic adviser in the Obama White House, is also said to be a somewhat more moderate voice with experience in the financial industry. But even people like Sperling have trended left in recent years — though they may stop short of pushing Medicare for All or a broad wealth tax. AROUND THE NATION THE COURT WHO DEFIED WOLF — Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Wolf’s pandemic restrictions that required people to stay at home, placed size limits on gatherings and ordered “non-life-sustaining” businesses to shut down are unconstitutional, a federal judge ruled today. U.S. District Judge William Stickman IV, who was appointed by Trump, sided with plaintiffs that included hair salons, drive-in movie theaters, a farmer’s market vendor, a horse trainer and several Republican officeholders in their lawsuit against Wolf, a Democrat, and his health secretary. The Wolf administration’s pandemic policies have been overreaching, arbitrary and violated citizens’ constitutional rights, Stickman wrote in his ruling. The governor’s efforts to slow the spread of the coronavirus “were undertaken with the good intention of addressing a public health emergency,” Stickman wrote. “But even in an emergency, the authority of government is not unfettered.” Courts had consistently rejected challenges to Wolf’s power to order businesses to close during the pandemic, and many other governors, Republican and Democrat, undertook similar measures as the virus spread across the country. Wolf has since lifted many of the restrictions, allowing businesses to reopen and canceling a statewide stay-at-home order. ASK THE AUDIENCE 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. ON THE HILL PRESSURE TEST — House Democrats are launching an investigation into how Trump appointees have pressured CDC officials to change or delay scientific reports on coronavirus, citing POLITICO reporting that found political interference in the publishing process. “During the pandemic, experts have relied on these reports to determine how the virus spreads and who is at greatest risk,” Rep. Jim Clyburn, chair of the House Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Crisis, and his Democratic colleagues write in a letter shared first with POLITICO . “Yet HHS officials apparently viewed these scientific reports as opportunities for political manipulation.” The Democrats’ investigation focuses on the CDC’s Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Reports, the agency’s long-running series of scientific articles that researchers have looked to for the most current and reliable information on the coronavirus, health care reporter Dan Diamond writes. POLITICO reported Friday that HHS public affairs chief Michael Caputo and his scientific adviser Paul Alexander have pressured CDC officials to change the reports, in some cases retroactively, to align with Trump’s more optimistic message about the outbreak. A team of scientists and science students from Chulalongkorn University collect a blood sample from a wrinkle-lipped free-tailed bat at an on site lab near the Khao Chong Pran Cave in Ratchaburi, Thailand. A team of researchers have been conducting bat sampling collection missions throughout Thailand's countryside in an effort to understand the origins of Covid-19. | Getty Images THE GLOBAL FIGHT ‘DODGED A BULLET’ — Italy’s former Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi was released from Milan’s San Raffaele hospital today after more than a week of treatment for Covid-19, local media reported. “It has been the most dangerous test of my life,” Berlusconi told reporters after leaving the hospital, adding that he “dodged a bullet once again.” He warned against the risks of contagion and called for responsible behaviors to stop the coronavirus spread, Giorgio Leali writes. Berlusconi, the 83-year-old media tycoon who headed the Italian government for nearly a decade, was admitted to hospital on Sept. 3 after testing positive for coronavirus. He was diagnosed with pneumonia affecting both lungs. Berlusconi will quarantine in his villa in Arcore, northern Italy, until he tests negative, local media said. NIGHTLY NUMBER $16 billion The amount of pre-tax operating losses in the second quarter for U.S. commercial airlines, according to new Bureau of Transportation Statistics data. (h/t transportation reporter Tanya Snyder) PARTING WORDS BRING IT ON — After a mostly non-existent summer, the start of the school year has been dispiriting: Facebook is full of bleak first day of school pictures with kids propped in front of their computers. In Dougherty County, Ga., the site of an early Covid outbreak, things are especially tough, Callie Evans and Audrianna Williams told me. Many of their students — Evans and Williams are high school teachers and cheerleading coaches at Monroe Comprehensive High School in Albany — know victims of the virus. Others had parents who lost their jobs and are applying for food stamps. A handful are trying to get through classes while suffering from the virus themselves. Evans and Williams wanted to pep their students up before the start of the school year so they wrote and produced their own back-to-school video, set to Jack Harlow’s TikTok hit “Whats Poppin.” “It’s kind of like an icebreaker for class, because now we feel like we already have a bond with our students. They feel like they already know us,” said Evans. And they know that students will need more inspiration with the drudgery of virtual school continuing for the foreseeable future, especially seniors missing out on the usual spate of parties and celebrations. “They are sad to not be in the building, not being able to experience their senior year,” said Williams. “But the videos are most definitely making them happy and they want us to keep going.” Watch Evans and Williams do their next rap in this interview with your host:   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.   Follow us on Twitter Renuka Rayasam @renurayasam   FOLLOW US

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