| | |  | BY MYAH WARD | BRACKET BUSTER — Covid isn’t stealing March Madness from us this year, but that doesn’t mean it won’t wreck your bracket. For players and fans, pandemic precautions have upended the 68-team men’s college basketball tournament, one of the nation’s biggest sporting events. The NCAA isn’t calling it a bubble, but for the first time in the tournament’s history, all of the games will be played in one state, with most scheduled in Indianapolis, Ind. Players and coaches are staying in hotels connected to practice sites and close by the arenas. When not playing, teams will be isolated to their hotel floor and can eat in their rooms or in the designated, socially distanced dining rooms. You’re not just counting on your team’s skill for it to advance in the tournament this year. Players will need seven straight days of negative Covid tests to go to Indy.
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A Lucas Oil Stadium employee disinfects the seats due to Covid-19 after the game between the Purdue Boilermakers and Ohio State Buckeyes at Lucas Oil Stadium on Friday in Indianapolis. | Getty Images | But the NCAA has designed the rules so that one negative test won’t eliminate an entire team. Teams can travel in smaller groups and leave Covid positive players behind. If a team has five players who test Covid free, game on. If not, the opposing team will get a free pass to the next round. It may be by design that Virginia and Kansas — two of the teams knocked out of conference tournaments by positive Covid tests — are scheduled for round one on Saturday, just enough days to produce those negative tests. It’s not yet clear what happens if one of the championship game teams has an outbreak, but the NCAA should probably have a contingency plan for that scenario. An early warning sign: The UConn women’s basketball program announced today that coach Geno Auriemma tested positive and is isolating in his home. The team earned a No. 1 seed in the brackets revealed tonight. After missing out on the money last year, the motivation to play the tournament for networks, schools and the NCAA is huge, said ESPN analyst Jay Bilas. “There’s a billion dollars at the end of this. They’re going to get this done,” he said on Outside The Lines on Saturday. “They need the money.” For the women’s tournament in San Antonio, Texas, fans are barred from the early games and capped at 17 percent capacity for the later rounds. For the men’s tournament, most arenas will allow 25 percent capacity, which means about 17,500 people could attend the Final Four at Lucas Oil Stadium. Indianapolis Mayor Joe Hogsett, a Democrat, said the state gave facilities the option to lower the capacity to levels arena managers were comfortable with. Simon Skjodt Assembly Hall at Indiana University, where some of the first games will be played, decided to not allow more than 500 spectators in a stadium that could hold 18,000, Hogsett said. Covid Act Now has labeled Indiana orange and “high risk,” which is on par with the majority of the U.S. The state is averaging 11.3 daily new cases per 100,000, with a 2.9 percent positive test rate. The state has room in its ICUs in case another wave of Covid strikes. Even a more sparsely attended tournament means out-of-state travelers staying in hotels and swarming bars and restaurants. Indianapolis loosened restrictions at the beginning of March, increasing bar capacity to 50 percent and indoor restaurant capacity to 75 percent. Republican Gov. Eric Holcomb has kept a statewide mask mandate in place, but it will be up to the venues, restaurants, bars and hotels to enforce Covid protocols. The governor also signed a bill last month that protects businesses from Covid-related lawsuits. Indiana has stuck with an age-based vaccine distribution plan: Anyone 50 or older is now eligible. More than 12 percent of Hoosiers are fully vaccinated and 19 percent have at least one dose, on pace with the national average. Beckers Hospital Review has the state ranked 14th in percentage of vaccines administered — approximately 2.1 million of the 2.5 million doses distributed to the state have been used. The city managed the Indy 500 in August 2020, though no fans were allowed. Indianapolis has also hosted volleyball tournaments and cheerleading competitions during the pandemic. Tens of thousands of people have visited the city for these events, Hogsett said, adding that Indianapolis hasn’t seen any resulting increase in Covid positivity rates. “If you talk directly to Virginia Caine, who is the head of the Marion County Department of Public Health,” he said, “Dr. Caine would tell you that as it relates to Covid-19 potential spread, she is more worried about spring break, than she is about this March Madness event.” Welcome to POLITICO Nightly. Reach out with news and tips at mward@politico.com and rrayasam@politico.com, or on Twitter at @myahward and @renurayasam.
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| | JOIN THE CONVERSATION, SUBSCRIBE TO “THE RECAST”: Power dynamics are shifting in Washington, and more people are demanding a seat at the table, insisting that all politics is personal and not all policy is equitable. “The Recast” is a new twice-weekly newsletter that breaks down how race and identity are recasting politics, policy and power in America. Get fresh insights, scoops and dispatches on this crucial intersection from across the country, and hear from new voices that challenge business as usual. Don’t miss out on this new newsletter, SUBSCRIBE NOW. Thank you to our sponsor, Intel. | | | | | | | NOT SO EMBASSY SWEET — Donald Trump named more of his political allies to serve as ambassadors than any president in modern history. Now the pressure is on Joe Biden to reverse that trend — and set a new standard, Anita Kumar and Nahal Toosi report. Biden still plans to dole out ambassadorships to major campaign donors, but some diplomats say slashing the number of fundraisers sent to overseas posts would restore confidence in the federal government, boost State Department morale and send a message around the globe. Every presidency starts with the politically well-connected clamoring for all types of coveted positions, including White House jobs and board memberships, but the jockeying for ambassadorships in cities from Paris to Sydney always tops the list. The Biden presidency is no different, according to interviews with five donors, but after the perception of corruption around nominees grew during the Trump years, Biden is being pressed to appoint more career diplomats. In total, about 800 individuals or couples raised at least $100,000 each for Biden’s campaign. “There are some who do a lot for the campaign and they don’t have a lot of experience in government and you want to take care of them and what the f--- else are you going to do with them?” said a longtime Democratic donor.
| | — Psaki calls Cuomo vaccine chief’s political outreach ‘inappropriate’: White House press secretary Jen Psaki called reports that Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s vaccine czar blurred lines by querying county officials about their loyalty to New York’s governor “concerning” and “inappropriate.” “We work to ensure that [the Covid vaccine] is equitably distributed and that there are not steps that are taken that are concerning,” Psaki told reporters. “So we were concerned, of course, about the reports of this inappropriate behavior, but we also have a number of steps in the system to ensure that the people of New York, the people of any state [that] the vaccines are being distributed fairly and equitably.” — N.Y. Assembly hiring outside counsel in Cuomo probe: The New York State Assembly is in the process of hiring an outside law firm to help with its impeachment investigation of Cuomo, Speaker Carl Heastie said today. Heastie said an announcement would come “some time this week.” The speaker did not have any details on how the investigation would proceed or how long it might take. “It should be done expeditiously,” he said. “But I think to say you have to come back with a decision in a week or two weeks or a month would be unfair to the process of an investigation.” — Haaland makes history in the Cabinet: Deb Haaland won confirmation in the Senate to lead the Interior Department today, making the congresswoman from New Mexico the first Native American ever to serve in a presidential Cabinet. — Senior Dem ‘hot mic’ says budget reconciliation likely on infrastructure: Sen. Ben Cardin, a senior Democrat on the committee responsible for crafting a surface transportation bill, in a “hot mic” moment told Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg that Democrats will likely have to use budget reconciliation to avoid a filibuster for their infrastructure plans, citing expected resistance from Republicans. — Authorities charge two men for assault on U.S. Capitol Police officer Brian Sicknick: Two men have been charged with assaulting Sicknick with bear spray, as federal authorities inch closer to identifying what may have caused the officer’s death following the Jan. 6 assault on the Capitol. — Slavitt: People must 'do their part' to reach Biden's goal of a normal July 4th: In a briefing with the White House Covid Response team and other public health officials, acting CMS Administrator Andy Slavitt urged Americans to continue safety precautions, and get vaccines once the ever-increasing supply is available to them. “We believe that we will have enough for the adult population — produced by the end of May. And with some time after that, those vaccinations will have occurred,” Slavitt said.
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| | | ‘JUST TARGETED RANDOMLY AND KILLED’ — An 84-year-old man body-slammed in a driveway. A 27-year-old Air Force veteran jumped and called racial slurs in LA’s Chinatown. In the latest POLITICO Dispatch, executive producer of audio Irene Noguchi reports on the rise in anti-Asian attacks.
| | | | OXFORD/ASTRAZENECA PAUSES — A wave of EU countries moved today to suspend use of the Oxford/AstraZeneca coronavirus vaccine , ignoring the advice of the bloc’s medicines regulator as investigations continue into cases of blood clots. Within hours this afternoon, France suspended use of the vaccine until at least Tuesday afternoon and Germany did the same indefinitely after newly reported cases of blood clots. Italy made a U-turn decision after its drugs regulator said Sunday the vaccine is safe, and Spain’s health minister announced a pause while waiting for an assessment by the European Medicines Agency, possibly for up to two weeks. Cyprus also followed suit. Countries face a dilemma over whether the proven benefits of the Oxford/AstraZeneca jab outweigh any as-yet-unproven link to blood clots — and the growing consensus is to wait for firmer scientific evidence.
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7 The number of people who have been selected to the jury in the trial against Derek Chauvin , who is charged with murder and manslaughter in the death of George Floyd. Attorneys will continue questioning jurors one by one until they get to a total of 14. Twelve will deliberate and two will be alternates. |
| | | CALIFORNIA SPLIT — Biden, Vice President Kamala Harris and their spouses have it. The governors of Texas, Iowa and West Virginia have gotten theirs. But in California, elected officials from Gov. Gavin Newsom on down have largely chosen not to get vaccines yet. “All of us want to get the vaccine when it’s our turn, and everybody wants it to be our turn today; I do as well,” Newsom, 53, said last week at a Los Angeles vaccination clinic. “I’m looking forward to that opportunity as well.” Even as more vaccines are available, California politicians are afraid of being seen as line-cutters — and none more than recall-threatened Newsom, Debra Kahn writes. The Democratic governor’s reputation was damaged in November after he dined at an exclusive Napa restaurant with lobbyists and friends while telling the public to avoid gatherings last fall. Getting the vaccine ahead of others his age and people with high-risk disabilities, all while low-income communities have the lowest rates of vaccination in California, could result in more negative headlines. “Unfortunately, I think the way it could be used in a political context against them just has them gun-shy,” said Rob Stutzman, a Republican strategist. “Politically, it’s a valid concern of theirs, even if it makes no sense from an operational perspective.”
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