 | BY JOANNE KENEN AND LAUREN MORELLO | Presented by Uber | With help from Renuka Rayasam and Myah Ward BAD NEWS FIRST — It’s a good week for science. And a bad week for the millions of Americans who have family or friends struggling with Covid-19. Vaccines are outperforming expectations in clinical trials. A promising do-at-home coronavirus test has been greenlit by the FDA. But the virus doesn’t know a vaccine is on the way. It’s still here. The United States has had well over 11 million confirmed infections. A quarter-million people are dead. Both counts are probably low, given all the testing woes. Hospitals are bursting. Health care workers are exhausted. Some are quitting. Talk to any health adviser to President-elect Joe Biden — or just about any reputable public health expert — and the message is the same. Yes, the vaccine news is stunning, glorious, beyond expectations. And there’s probably more good news about vaccines and home tests to come. But that’s for then. For now, the long, dark winter has begun. People still have to do all the things they’ve gotten weary of doing: wearing masks, social distancing, staying home when they can. The government has got to do all the things it has not done very well: testing, contact tracing, sound and consistent messaging. The promise of a vaccine can cut both ways. It can make people feel the pandemic is just about over, that it’s safe to race back to normal. Toss out those sweatpants, and dig out those dancing shoes. That will just prolong the crisis and cost more lives. “The number of new cases, and hospitalizations, are worse than at any time since we began our briefings in mid-March,” David Kessler, the former FDA chief who is one of Biden’s top advisers on the pandemic, said. “Please protect yourselves, your family, and your community. … Everyone’s goal should be to save as many lives as we can.” Yet the vaccine news might also make it easier for people to follow the Covid safety steps, knowing, finally, that this too will pass. You don’t have to do this forever. The anxiety, the uncertainty, the isolation will end. You will be able to hug people again. But not by Thanksgiving. The politicization of a public health crisis has not subsided as a season of hope begins. Just this morning, White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany — who herself caught the virus during one of the White House outbreaks — called some of the state guidelines for limiting holiday gatherings “Orwellian.” But President Donald Trump’s HHS Secretary Alex Azar struck a different tone. “We have reason for optimism,” he said of the vaccines. He added, “The safest way to celebrate Thanksgiving this year is at home with the people you live with and through virtual celebrations. Gathering indoors with people who aren’t members of your household is a high-risk activity for spreading the virus.” The government’s top infectious disease expert, Tony Fauci, has said his daughters won’t be coming home for Thanksgiving this year. Speaking Tuesday to CNN, he urged the public to stay patient — and careful. “The fact that we have a vaccine coming means we should double down and hang in there,” he said. “Help is on the way.” Welcome to POLITICO Nightly. As if Texas politics could get any more interesting. Matthew McConaughey doesn’t rule out a run for governor. Reach out at jkenen@politico.com, lmorello@politico.com and rrayasam@politico.com, or on Twitter at @joannekenen, @lmorello_dc and @renurayasam.
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A message from Uber: CA voters & app workers voted overwhelmingly to protect workers’ flexibility and provide new benefits. Time for other states to follow, see how here. | | | | | THE OPPOSITION IN WAITING — The conservative movement is handicapped by an unspoken rule set by Trump: Do not acknowledge Biden’s imminent White House takeover, writes White House reporter Gabby Orr. Conservative reporters won’t take pitches about Biden’s rumored Cabinet contenders, insistent on covering evidence-deficient claims of voter fraud instead. One conservative group involved in policy advocacy backed off from hiring two soon-to-depart Trump administration officials after growing concerned about the consequences. As Biden’s Jan. 20 inauguration inches closer, the lack of preparation within the conservative movement has some of its top members worried they are unwittingly damaging their joint legacy with the president and creating an opening for the next administration to swiftly pursue a radical agenda. Conservatives should be readying a legal response to Biden’s promise to sign a series of executive orders on his first day in office that would undo some of Trump’s key policies on immigration, foreign policy and deregulation, said several prominent conservatives, granted anonymity to speak candidly about the situation. They are frustrated by the lack of pressure Biden has faced to fill his Cabinet with moderate voices who might balance out progressive influences elsewhere in his administration. They have also become increasingly concerned that the Democratic candidates competing in a pair of Senate runoff races in Georgia will win if Republicans fail to communicate, due to fears of upsetting Trump, what Biden and a Democratic Senate could accomplish. “It’s hard to publicly point to what’s going to happen Day 1 … because if we do, we look like traitors to the president,” said one official at a Washington-based conservative think tank. “In reality, we’re trying to preserve his legacy.”
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A pilot flies a test flight in preparation for drone delivery of Covid-19 home self-testing kits from Walmart in El Paso, Texas. Residents who live within 1.5 miles of the Walmart Supercenter in East El Paso are eligible for the free kits as part of a drone delivery pilot program. | Getty Images | | | WILL BIDEN SHIRK BIRX? Biden’s transition team is weighing whether to give Trump administration coronavirus coordinator Deborah Birx a role in its Covid-19 response, even as it prepares a broader purge of officials closely tied to the president’s handling of the pandemic, Adam Cancryn writes. Only Fauci is guaranteed to be part of Biden’s pandemic team, where he’ll likely take on an elevated role as one of the administration’s highest-profile messengers. Yet unlike most of Trump’s top task force officials, Birx is not a political appointee — rather, she’s a career government employee who has spent decades working in various parts of the federal public health bureaucracy, and more recently as ambassador-at-large and U.S. global AIDS coordinator under President Barack Obama. That means both that the Biden administration can’t simply fire her, and that she still boasts support from public health experts inside and outside of government, including close ties to Fauci, a longtime friend and mentor. BLM’S UPHILL POLICY BATTLE — Black Lives Matter leaders turned out the vote and helped secure Biden’s victory. Now they want a piece of the political action. In the latest POLITICO Dispatch, politics reporter Maya King reports on why that might be tough — especially under a Republican-controlled Senate.
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| | HAPPENING THURSDAY - A CONVERSATION ON COVID-19, MENTAL HEALTH AND FLORIDA: The coronavirus pandemic—and the anxiety, isolation and disruption of routines and support that it has wrought—has exacerbated the mental health crisis in America. Join POLITICO for a forward-looking conversation on how we can emerge from this crisis with a strong approach to mental and behavioral health. Florida—one of the hardest-hit states in the nation—will be our case study. REGISTER HERE. | | | | | | | Welcome to Bidenology, Nightly’s look at the president-elect and what to expect in his administration. Tonight, Nightly editor Chris Suellentrop gives Obama’s new memoir a “Washington read” for the president-elect. During the first term of the second Bush administration, a newspaper reporter called me for insight — or at least a good quote, I hoped — on the “Washington read,” the shameless and understandable practice of opening a new political book from the back first, by turning to the index to find out whether you’re in it. “It’s the analog version of ego-Googling,” is what I remember saying, in a very 2004 metaphor. My name didn’t rate a mention in the resulting news story, but something close to my words did. These days the concept has been given a digital upgrade: ego-Kindling. As a service to the president-elect, I searched the Kindle version of Obama’s A Promised Land for mentions of “Joe” and “Biden.” There are 39 mentions of “Biden” across 700 pages, not counting photo captions, footnotes and the index. (One caption calls Biden “another brother.”) There are a lot more mentions of “Joe” — 97. Most of them are about the vice president, but there are a fair number of other Obama-famous Joes to sift through: Lieberman. Wilson. The Plumber. Some of the Obama-on-Biden observations you’ll find inside: Biden’s weaknesses He is described as taking part in a “bipartisan tizzy” when Candidate Obama said, during the 2008 primaries, that he would kill Osama Bin Laden without the consent of Pakistan, if necessary. Biden and John McCain are cited by Obama as exemplars of how the Washington foreign policy establishment is often mistaken, and how “decision makers in Washington consistently failed to level with the American people.” “In a town filled with people who liked to hear themselves talk, he had no peer.” He was “a man without inhibition, happy to share whatever popped into his head.” “His style was old-school, he liked the limelight, and he wasn’t always self-aware. I sensed that he could get prickly if he wasn’t given his due.” Biden’s strengths Obama chooses Biden as his running mate, over Tim Kaine, because he was “smart, practical and did his homework”; had “broad and deep” foreign policy experience; had “skill and discipline as a debater”; and “most of all, Joe had heart. … Joe was decent, honest and loyal.” Biden’s instincts Alone among Obama’s principal advisers, Biden opposes sending more troops to Afghanistan without a new strategy. He sees the war as “a dangerous quagmire.” Obama attributes Biden’s hesitance, in part, to feeling “burned by having supported the Iraq invasion.” (When Biden advocates waiting for more intelligence before signing off on the Bin Laden raid, Obama chalks it up to his memories of the Iranian hostage crisis.) It would be easier, Biden argues in Obama’s recollection, “to put troops in once we had a clear strategy as opposed to trying to pull troops out after we’d made a mess with a bad one.” After Obama’s first Situation Room meeting, Biden grabs the president by the arm. “‘Listen to me, boss,’ he said. ‘Maybe I’ve been around this town for too long, but one thing I know is when these generals are trying to box in a new president.’ He brought his face a few inches from me and stage-whispered, ‘Don’t let them jam you.’” Obama calls Biden “the contrarian in the room,” and says he liked that people were “a bit freer with their opinions when the contrarian wasn’t me.” Biden’s face Obama sends Biden to negotiate with Mitch McConnell as the Bush tax cuts approach expiration. Here’s why: “One of the reasons I’d chosen Joe to act as an intermediary — in addition to his Senate experience and legislative acumen — was my awareness that in McConnell’s mind, negotiations with the vice president didn’t inflame the Republican base in quite the same way that any appearance of cooperating with (Black, Muslim socialist) Obama was bound to do.” Biden’s mouth “Joe looked at the name on Axe’s BlackBerry and then turned to me. ‘Who the hell is Sarah Palin?’” After Gen. Stanley McChrystal leaks a report to Bob Woodward and goes on 60 Minutes to argue for a counterinsurgency force in Afghanistan, Biden tells Obama, “It’s f---ng outrageous.” Obama writes, “I agreed.” If there’s a mention of the health care “big deal,” I missed it. Instead, Biden tells Obama, “You did it, man!”
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A message from Uber: In order to raise the standard for independent work for all, government and business need to work together. That’s why Uber created our Working Together Priorities, which can help people who earn through app-based work receive more security, protection, and transparency. This work is already underway in California, where voters overwhelmingly approved Prop 22. | | | | | Nightly asks you: What are your plans for Thanksgiving this year during the spike in Covid-19 cases? Submit your answers in our form, and we’ll use select responses in next Wednesday’s edition.
| | NYC SCHOOLS SHUT DOWN — In a bruising setback to New York City’s recovery, the country’s largest school system will shut down in-person learning temporarily on Thursday as the city hit a 7-day, 3 percent positivity rate for the coronavirus — a level of infection not seen for months in a city that was once the national epicenter of the pandemic, Madina Touré writes. Mayor Bill de Blasio exacted a hard won victory by bringing some 300,000 kids back to school in September — one of the more successful endeavors by the administration since the onset of the pandemic. But with reluctance from the teachers union, the city agreed to the 3 percent benchmark to close all schools, despite a much lower rate of infection among schools. Restaurants and in-person retail remain open under state-mandated restrictions.
| | HOOP DREAMS — Covid abruptly halted March Madness earlier this year, but a new college basketball season is set to start on Nov. 25. The NCAA announced Monday that the 64-team, season-ending men’s basketball tournament would be played entirely in one location in March 2021; Indianapolis is in talks to be the host city. Nightly’s Renuka Rayasam reached out to Seth Davis, who covers the sport for The Athletic and CBS Sports, to talk about how college basketball is navigating the pandemic. This conversation has been edited. How do you think the NCAA is handling this college basketball season? The NCAA does not actually run these sports. The NCAA runs championships. It has the ability to set the start date on the season. Nobody can start before Nov. 25, but nobody has to start on Nov. 25. Nobody has to play a single game. That’s up to each individual school and each individual conference. The Ivy League is not going to have a basketball season. Inevitably, there are going to be outbreaks where teams get shut down for a week or two at a time. We’re entering a period now with Thanksgiving where the regular students are going to go home. So there’s a five- to six-week window where the regular students are not on campus. This might be the best window we have all season to get in games — because when those kids come back, we’re gonna have all these spikes again. Why is it important to have a college basketball season at all? I wouldn’t just blindly dismiss the financial considerations. People are very understandably reluctant to talk about that, because it makes it sound like you’re prioritizing that over health. Nothing should be prioritized over health, but the finances are important. College basketball determined it financially cannot lose two tournaments in a row. The tournament finances 90 percent of the NCAA’s operating budget. These individual schools, they’re already losing a lot of money with no fans. If you don’t have games and you don’t make money from TV either, there are a lot of ramifications. A lot of programs have been cut. A lot of people are losing their jobs. Then there’s also the fact that these kids want to play. Everybody is allowed to opt out and still stay on scholarship, which is pretty generous. Not many of us could say, “You know, I’m just not going to do my job this year and I can get paid for it.” Has the pandemic changed the way you think about whether college players should get paid? It is indisputably factually untrue to say that the players are not paid. They are, in fact, compensated. They get scholarship money. They get food. They get books. They get academic tutoring. They get a stipend so they get cash in their pocket. They get access to the best training, coaching, developing their craft. Should they be getting paid more? You can absolutely make that case. I’m a very strong proponent of the name, image and likeness reform that’s coming down the pike. They don’t need to be paid like professionals because they are not being treated like professionals. But if they have an opportunity to make a million dollars in a pizza commercial, they should be able to do that. Whenever a flash point comes, the same people are making the same arguments. I don’t see a lot of minds getting changed, including my own. Your dad, Lanny Davis, started a PR firm and worked for Bill Clinton. How do you think he would advise teams to message around an outbreak? My dad will always appreciate the plug. He wrote a book about his White House years, which I highly recommend. It’s called Truth to Tell. And the subtitle is: Tell it Early, Tell it All, Tell it Yourself . So my No. 1 rule in these situations is always be as transparent as you can. Second of all, don’t do anything that jeopardizes the health and safety of not just your players but anybody. I just think you’re playing with fire by putting fans in there. Who should be in my Final Four bracket? Tell me who’s tested negative first.
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| | TRACK THE TRANSITION, SUBSCRIBE TO TRANSITION PLAYBOOK: As states certify their election results, President-elect Biden is building an administration. The staffing decisions made in the coming days, weeks, and months will send clear-cut signals about his administration’s agenda and priorities. Transition Playbook is the definitive guide to what could be one of the most consequential transfers of power in American history. Written for political insiders, it tracks the appointments, people, and the emerging power centers of the new administration. Stay in the know, subscribe today. | | | | | | | IS THAT IT FOR POLLS? In 2020, just like in 2016, the polls were pretty wrong. In the latest 2020 Check-In, video reporter Eugene Daniels talks to campaign editor Steven Shepard about what went wrong and what it means for the industry’s future.
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$3 million The amount of money the Trump campaign sent to the Wisconsin Election Commission for a partial recount of two counties . In a statement, the Trump campaign said it would request recounts in Milwaukee and Dane counties, which overwhelmingly backed Biden. Because Biden’s margin in the state is greater than one-quarter of a percentage point, the Trump campaign has to foot the bill for the recount, according to Wisconsin state law. |
| | | AWAKE — In the latest Punchlines, video executive producer Brooke Minters fills in for Matt Wuerker. She talks politics, race and wokeness with cartoonist Keith Knight, the inspiration and co-creator of the Hulu show Woke. Knight has brought attention to police brutality through his cartoons for over 20 years, and the show is centered around his personal experience of being profiled by police.
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| | | IRELAND TO ANIMALS: IT’S NOT ZOO LATE — Irish Prime Minister Micheál Martin says he won’t let Dublin Zoo become another victim of the pandemic. “We will do everything we possibly can to ensure Dublin Zoo stays open,” Martin told lawmakers today, hours after the 189-year-old zoo warned it was running out of money to feed its animals. “Given the extraordinary circumstances of a global pandemic, a once-in-100-year event, the government has to intervene here and work with Dublin Zoo to ensure it’s available for generations to come,” he said. The 69-acre zoo inside Dublin’s vast Phoenix Park is normally one of the top attractions in Ireland, Irish correspondent Shawn Pogatchnik writes. More than 1.2 million people visited last year, trailing only the Guinness Storehouse and the Cliffs of Moher in popularity. But it has been closed for five of the past eight months during two national lockdowns that have devastated tourism in Ireland. Did someone forward this email to you? Sign up here. | |
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