|
The Trump administration’s rushed move to cut the CDC out of coronavirus data collection left overwhelmed hospitals in the lurch as outbreaks accelerated, a scandal that’s flown under the radar as the president basically declares war on liberal cities.
- On Tuesday the U.S. reported over 1,000 daily coronavirus deaths for the first time since May. Hospitalizations across the country are near the peak we saw in April, and California officially has more confirmed cases than New York. Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) has urged the CDC to use its authority to implement mask requirements and intervene in situations like Georgia’s ban on local mask mandates. There are now statewide mask mandates in more than 30 states, but Republican governors in several notable hot spots have sat back and let Walmart take the wheel.
- Hospitals facing influxes of patients are also scrambling to transition to the Trump administration’s shady new data reporting system, which has created a significant extra burden. The Department of Health and Human Services gave hospitals two days to comply with the abrupt change and tied their cooperation to the distribution of remdesivir. It’s a testament to how many garbage fires are ablaze that this hasn’t captured public attention: The Trump administration threatened to withhold one of the only proven coronavirus therapies to force health care providers on board with a scheme to make critical data less transparent.
- The transition has also left some states in a dangerous data blackout. States that relied fully on the CDC to assemble their data have been unable to access the same information from the HHS platform, leaving many hospitals (particularly smaller, rural ones) and health officials in the dark about the severity of their outbreaks. The hospitalization data on Missouri’s COVID-19 dashboard hasn’t been updated since June 12, and nine states currently have fewer than 50 percent of their hospitals reporting data through the new system. Meanwhile, health experts are worried that TeleTracking, the little-known private firm now collecting hospitals’ data, may not be up to the task: “they are not the gold standard with data.”
|
|
|
But don’t look at any of that! Look at these big dumb distractions, at home and abroad!
- President Trump announced Wednesday that the Justice Department will deploy hundreds of federal agents to Chicago, IL, and Albuquerque, NM, “to drive down violent crime” under an expansion of Operation Legend, a Justice Department initiative that provides an excuse for federal law enforcement surges in Democratic-led cities even where protesters aren’t savagely attacking buildings with paint.
- A day after the Justice Department charged two Chinese hackers with trying to steal coronavirus vaccine research, the State Department has ordered China to close its consulate in Houston “to protect American intellectual property and Americans’ private information.” The U.S. gave China just 72 hours to comply. It’s a serious escalation, and leaders in Beijing are reportedly considering shutting down the U.S. consulate in Wuhan in retaliation, but the important thing is maybe we’ll all forget Trump’s obsequiousness to Chinese President Xi Jinping when coronavirus first reached the United States in time for the election. (No indictments or retaliation yet for those Russian vaccine hacks, by the by.)
It’s been 24 hours since The Great Tone Change of July, and Trump’s somber new pandemic response seems to consist exclusively of sending more feds to terrorize American citizens, because of crime surges Joe Biden’s presidency has somehow caused from the future. See you back here in two months, when he concedes that the death toll is “bad.”
|
|
|
Exciting news—over the last year, over 25,000 of you have contributed to our Get Mitch or Die Trying fund to flip the Senate, and you’ve raised over $2 million for Democratic Senate candidates! Your donations to the fund have supported 14 candidates, including two Democratic incumbents and 12 challengers.
So far, your contributions have allowed us to send big checks to Doug Jones in Alabama, Jon Hickenlooper in Colorado, Jon Ossoff in Georgia, Theresa Greenfield in Iowa, Amy McGrath in Kentucky, Sara Gideon in Maine, Gary Peters in Michigan, Steve Bullock in Montana, Cal Cunningham in North Carolina, Jaime Harrison in South Carolina, and MJ Hegar in Texas (plus funds for the nominees in Arizona, Alaska, and Kansas).
This couldn't be more important, so we've raised the goal to $3 million. Help us get there and support candidates in the races where your money will make the biggest difference in flipping the Senate: votesaveamerica.com/getmitch
|
|
|
President Trump pressured the British government to steer the British Open to his golf resort in Scotland. Another one of those stories that would be an enormous deal under any other president, in any time other than the year of our lord 2020. In February 2018, the American ambassador to the U.K., Robert Wood Johnson IV, told multiple colleagues that Trump had instructed him to see if he could convince the British government to bring the golf tournament to the Trump Turnberry resort. Johnson raised the idea with the secretary of state for Scotland over the objections of his deputy Lewis Lukens, who emailed State Department officials to tell them what happened. (Lukens was, of course, quickly fired) We already know Trump has used military spending to prop up the Scotland resort; it’s shocking, if not surprising, that he tried to use diplomats toward the same ends, at the expense of one of our most important alliances.
|
|
- The federal government reached a $1.95 billion deal with Pfizer to acquire 100 million doses of its vaccine candidate, to have on hand if it proves safe and effective. The Department of Health and Human Services said the vaccine would be made available to Americans “at no cost.” Who would get it first, and how will that be decided? Nobody knows.
- Twitter has banned more than 7,000 QAnon accounts, and will limit 150,000 more after classifying QAnon material as coordinated harmful activity. Meanwhile, Facebook continues to be a QAnon hotbed, and the conspiracy theory has begun to inspire IRL actions across the border in Canada.
- Senate Republicans are considering extending enhanced unemployment at the astonishingly cruel level of $100 per week. Let us know if you need that Get Mitch link again. Ah, heck, we got you → votesaveamerica.com/getmitch
- Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-FL) appears to have broken House ethics rules by spending thousands of taxpayer dollars to pay a racist speechwriting consultant, and arranging for a private company to install a TV studio in his father’s home.
- A new AP-NORC poll found that only one in 10 Americans think schools should return to normal operations this fall, proving once again that President Trump can read this populace like a book (barely if at all).
- The Senate Armed Services Committee has scheduled a confirmation hearing for Anthony Tata, the Islamophobic conspiracy theorist Trump has nominated to oversee all policy at the Pentagon.
- The FBI said it has evidence linking Roy Den Hollander, the “men’s rights” activist who attacked federal judge Esther Salas’ family, to the murder of a prominent MRA figure in California.
- Four former presidents of the DC Bar Association have called for an investigation into whether Attorney General Bill Barr has violated the group’s rules by failing to uphold the Constitution, among other things.
- Kim Kardashian released a statement addressing Kanye West’s mental health. West ranted about Harriet Tubman at a supposed campaign rally in South Carolina on Sunday and posted a series of concerning tweets, evidently in the middle of a bipolar manic episode.
|
|
|
Recent findings that suggest coronavirus antibodies dissipate and become undetectable within a few months aren’t necessarily as dire as they seem. A study at King’s College London found that many coronavirus antibodies disappeared within several weeks of infection. That gave rise to a number of unsettling headlines suggesting that immunity declines just as fast and any vaccine is doomed, but the truth is much more complicated. First, the King’s College study didn’t account for patients’ T-cell responses, which scientists have found to be an important part of the body’s immune response to coronavirus. Second, a fading antibody response isn’t unusual, and low levels of antibodies may be enough to remind the body how to produce more when necessary. The bottom line is that we still don’t fully know how long-term coronavirus immunity works, and a positive antibody test can’t be taken as evidence of invincibility, but there’s no reason to despair that herd immunity is out of our reach and that the disease will become endemic.
|
|
|
MIT engineers have designed a reusable, affordable face mask that’s as effective as an N95, and could be a game changer for medical workers.
The House voted to remove statues of Confederate leaders from the Capitol, and replace a bust of racist former Supreme Court Justice Roger Taney.
Forty-eight senators introduced legislation to restore the Voting Rights Act, naming the new bill after John Lewis.
A bipartisan group of around 150 members of Congress have called on the Justice Department to combat coronavirus-related anti-Asian racism.
|
|
|
|
|
