“He’s got this high approval rating,” Trump said Tuesday at the White House coronavirus task force briefing, “so why don’t I have a high approval rating?”
At the briefing, Trump also defended a viral video that he helped spread in retweets on Monday, even as social media platforms scrambled to remove it because it contained misleading and false claims about the coronavirus pandemic. Asked about a woman in the video who dismissed mask-wearing and promoted hydroxychloroquine — a drug that performed poorly in trials — as a cure for covid-19, Trump said that she was “very impressive” in describing her experience with patients.
“I thought her voice was an important voice, but I know nothing about her,” Trump said.
Here are some significant developments:
- Trump brushed off the new $1 trillion Senate GOP coronavirus legislation as “sort of semi-irrelevant,” dismissing its significance just a day after Senate Republican leaders overcame contentious internal divisions to roll it out.
- Teachers could go out on strike “as a last resort” if they are forced to return to unsafe schools during the coronavirus pandemic, American Federation of Teachers President Randi Weingarten warned Tuesday.
- Twitter on Tuesday penalized Donald Trump Jr. for posting misinformation about hydroxychloroquine, the social media giant said. Trump Jr. tweeted about the offending video directly, while his father retweeted multiple tweets from others showing clips.
- Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp (R) withdrew a request Tuesday for an emergency hearing over whether Atlanta can mandate mask-wearing and implement other restrictions — but the legal dispute is ongoing.
- All games for the Miami Marlins through Sunday are postponed, the Major League Baseball announced, after 15 Marlins players tested positive for the coronavirus.
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Nats learning that the coronavirus sets the terms, and the terms are constantly shifting
The 24 hours between Monday and Tuesday evening would have been chaotic if not for the two solid truths emerging in this baseball season: Uncertainty is a constant, and scrambling is the new routine.
Take all that’s going on with the Washington Nationals. On Monday, ahead of a series opener with the Toronto Blue Jays, the club voted against traveling to Miami to play the Marlins this weekend. Manager Dave Martinez and General Manager Mike Rizzo took that to the league. By Tuesday afternoon, MLB announced that the Marlins’ season was suspended through Sunday, meaning the Nationals would stay in Washington to face a single opponent: the novel coronavirus.
Democratic lawmakers probing whether CDC guidelines on reopening schools were influenced by political pressure
U.S. lawmakers are probing whether newly released guidelines on reopening schools issued last week by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention were subject to political pressure from President Trump, Education Secretary Betsy DeVos or other administration officials.
Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) and Rep. Andy Levin (D-Mich.) have sent a letter to DeVos and CDC director Robert Redfield requesting all correspondence between their agencies and the White House that involves the guidance on school reopening during the covid-19 pandemic. Levin is the vice chairman of the House Education and the Workforce Committee, and Warren is a member of the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions.
Last week, the CDC issued updated guidance on how schools can reopen safely for the 2020-2021 school year. The guidelines included little discussion about the risks of returning to school during the pandemic but emphasized why it was important that students return to classrooms and the economic benefit of parents going back to work.
Pennsylvania’s top health official addresses transphobic attacks against her
Before kicking off her update on novel coronavirus numbers Tuesday, Pennsylvania’s top health official paused to address a recent spate of transphobic attacks against her.
Pennsylvania Secretary of Health Rachel Levine denounced the latest aggressions. Levine said that the attacks go beyond calling into question her competence as a public health leader during the pandemic.
“I want to emphasize that, while these individuals may think that they are only expressing their displeasure with me, they are in fact hurting thousands of LGBTQ Pennsylvanians who suffered directly from these current demonstrations of harassment,” Levine told reporters Tuesday.
Levine is not the first public health official to be personally attacked by people who are offended by government mandates. Others have resigned or spoken out after their personal information was shared online or protesters visited their homes.
But the discrimination against Levine highlights the threat that transgender public officials face in holding high-profile jobs.
Levine is the first transgender person to lead a Pennsylvania state agency, Spotlight PA reported.
In the most recent transphobic attack against Levine, a restaurant, Crossroads Tavern, listed an item on its menu called “Levine Balls.” The restaurant’s owner later apologized in a Facebook post.
7/25/2020: The owner has posted an apology. You can access it by clicking the link below and finding "posts" section. ...
Posted by Allison Fitzpatrick Maslar on Tuesday, July 21, 2020
In June, a local commissioner resigned after commenting during a public meeting, “I’m tired of listening to a guy dressed up as a woman,” referring to Levine.
In her remarks Tuesday, Levine said the apologies are “only the beginning, not the end, of the conversation.”
“I have no room in my heart for hatred, and frankly I do not have time for intolerance. My heart is full with a burning desire to help people and my time is full with working toward protecting the public health of everyone in Pennsylvania,” she said.
Coronavirus outbreak in Major League Baseball casts pall over other reopenings
One after another this week, more than a dozen Miami Marlins players and coaches tested positive for the coronavirus, leaving Major League Baseball scrambling to quell an outbreak just days after its reopening experiment began.
And one after another, school officials, business owners and everyday Americans trying to figure out what is safe were left to ponder another demoralizing data point demonstrating the fraught nature of efforts to inch back toward normalcy.
After all, if pro sports teams — with their relatively limited number of participants, robust testing and detailed safety protocols — couldn’t evade the virus, what hope is there for students returning to classrooms or workers returning to offices?
Trump calls new Senate GOP coronavirus bill ‘semi-irrelevant’
President Trump brushed off the new $1 trillion Senate GOP coronavirus legislation as “sort of semi-irrelevant” Tuesday, dismissing its significance just a day after Senate Republican leaders overcame contentious internal divisions to roll it out.
At the Capitol, meanwhile, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) disavowed a key Trump administration priority in the bill — funding for a new FBI headquarters — while the second-ranking GOP senator suggested that Congress might be unable to make a deal in time to avert the expiration of emergency unemployment benefits on Friday.
Sen. John Thune (R-S.D.) said Congress might have to pass a stand-alone extension of the unemployment benefits, a piecemeal approach that administration officials have floated but that Senate Republican leaders had avoided publicly embracing before now.
Trump doubles down on video promoting drug that performed poorly for covid-19
President Trump on Tuesday defended his promotion of a viral video touting hydroxychloroquine — a drug that performed poorly in a randomized clinical trial — as a cure for covid-19, even after social media platforms removed the video because it contained misleading and false claims about the coronavirus pandemic.
Trump has repeatedly used his White House coronavirus task force briefings as a platform to advocate for the drug. The Food and Drug Administration last month revoked an emergency use authorization for the medication, saying it was “unlikely to be effective.” Taking the lectern at Tuesday’s briefing, Trump doubled down on the misinformation-filled video clips he and his son helped spread Monday on Twitter.
Asked about a woman in the video who dismissed mask-wearing and promoted hydroxychloroquine as a covid-19 cure, Trump said that she was “very impressive” in describing her experience with the drug.
“I thought her voice was an important voice, but I know nothing about her,” Trump said.
The first randomized clinical trial testing hydroxychloroquine as an early treatment for mild covid-19 found the drug was no better than a placebo in patients who were not hospitalized, and previous randomized trials have shown the drug is not effective in treating hospitalized covid-19 patients. An observational study, considered less rigorous than a randomized trial, showed a much lower death rate among hospitalized patients given the drug early, but critics said the study had several design flaws.
At Tuesday’s briefing, Trump also continued to paint a rosy picture of the coronavirus situation nationwide. Infections seem to be plateauing in the Sun Belt and rising in the Midwest as deaths rise nationwide, but Trump spoke of “improvements across the major metro areas and most hot spots.”
“You can look at large portions of our country,” he said. “It’s corona free.”
Colorado restaurant that opened illegally on Mother’s Day closes permanently
Almost every table at C&C Coffee and Kitchen in Castle Rock, Colo., was occupied on Mother’s Day in defiance of Democratic Gov. Jared Polis’s coronavirus restrictions. Now, the restaurant will probably never be full again.
The breakfast and Korean kitchen announced last week that it would close permanently after losing revenue because of the state’s social distancing rules and because it was struggling to find enough staff members willing to work. Sunday was the restaurant’s last day open.
Owners Jesse and April Arellano wrote that the business finally started to do well in March after six years of serving customers. They shut down the restaurant when the coronavirus hit, they said, but expected to reopen two weeks later.
When C&C Coffee and Kitchen opened on Mother’s Day against Polis’s orders, the Arellanos wrote, they knew that they “were going against the grain.” They said they were frustrated by their perception that some people were exaggerating the number of coronavirus cases and that big businesses faced less scrutiny than small businesses.
“Over and over we see the Government chip away our rights, chip away at our choices, and chip away at our freedom,” the Arellanos wrote. “Using public health departments, even unelected ones to make decisions. It seems that many people are okay with this, because our decision makers drive fear and panic instead of hope.”
The Arellanos encouraged their customers to patronize the restaurant’s Colorado Springs location and said they hoped to reopen in Castle Rock eventually.
A doctor in viral video of false covid-19 claims has said demons cause illnesses
After social media companies removed a viral video showing doctors making unsubstantiated claims about covid-19, one of those doctors’s past phrases in particular began trending on Twitter: demon sperm. It turns out Stella Immanuel has a history of making particularly outlandish claims — including that the uterine disorder endometriosis is caused by sex with demons that take place in dreams.
The video showed a group that has dubbed itself America’s Frontline Doctors, standing on the steps of the Supreme Court claiming that neither masks nor shutdowns are necessary to fight the pandemic, despite a plethora of expertise to the contrary. It was live-streamed by the conservative media outlet Breitbart and viewed more than 14 million times — fueled by tweets by Donald Trump, Jr. and multiple retweets by President Trump, which have since been deleted.
In a news conference Tuesday, Trump addressed the video, saying, “I think they’re very respected doctors. There was a woman who was spectacular.”
Florida reports new high in deaths as U.S. surpasses 1,000 daily fatalities
Coronavirus deaths in the United States surpassed 1,000 for the second day in a row and fifth day in the past week, according to Washington Post tracking.
Tuesday’s tally was 1,103 dead, higher than the seven-day average of 1,019. The country reported more than 57,600 confirmed infections.
Four states — Florida, Arkansas, Oregon and Montana — reported records for the single-day deaths Tuesday, with Florida’s count leading the country at 191.
Typically, death tolls on Tuesdays trend higher after low weekend numbers. But Florida’s seven-day average for deaths also hit a record high Tuesday, at 132. The state is averaging nine deaths a day more than it was one week ago and 93 deaths a day above its daily average of 39 as of July 1.
The state reported 9,230 new cases Tuesday, for a total caseload of 441,977. The seven-day average of new cases was 10,306, compared with 10,336 a day earlier and 11,172 a week earlier.
Florida initially declared victory against the virus in the spring after recording low infection rates, but in recent weeks it has emerged as a new epicenter. As the numbers grew, the administration of Gov. Ron DeSantis (R), an ally of President Trump, sidelined scientists and made decisions increasingly shaped by politics, The Post reported.
During a Tuesday roundtable with medical experts in Orlando, WKMG-TV reported, DeSantis said the state is beginning to see signs that hospitalizations could be trending down.
“Obviously we’ve got a lot more work to do, but I think people are doing the right things. I think we’re going to continue to see some positive trends,” DeSantis said. “At least that’s my hope.”
Trump complains about Fauci’s high approval rating, wonders why his isn’t as high
President Trump lamented Anthony S. Fauci’s popularity amid the coronavirus pandemic and complained that he should be given equally high marks.
“We’ve done pretty much what he and others, Dr. [Deborah] Birx and others who are terrific, recommended,” Trump said, referring to Fauci. “And he’s got this high approval rating. So why don’t I have a high approval rating with respect, and the administration, with respect to the virus?”
Trump aired the complaint Tuesday during a White House coronavirus briefing in response to a question about a retweet, since deleted, that accused Fauci of misleading the nation on the effects of the antimalarial drug hydroxychloroquine. From the early days of the crisis, Trump has advocated for the drug as an emergency treatment for covid-19, while Fauci and other medical professionals have warned that it is not effective.
Trump claimed he did not know where Fauci stood on the drug. He said he has a “good relationship” with Fauci, even if he had not always agreed with him. Trump added that if he did not like Fauci he could always get someone else to advise the White House on the virus.
Tensions between Trump and the country’s top infectious-disease doctor have been on display for months. At briefings, Fauci would often contradict the president’s rosier assessment of the pandemic. Fauci has emerged as one of the most trusted figures in the country, which irritates the president.
“It sort of is curious. A man works for us, with us very closely … and yet they’re highly thought of,” Trump said. “But nobody likes me. It can only be my personality, that’s all.”
NFL, faced with another league’s outbreak, says it knows ‘this is going to be hard’
The NFL’s chief medical officer acknowledged Monday that “this is going to be hard” as the league attempts to fulfill its long-stated goal of having an uninterrupted season amid the novel coronavirus pandemic.
But as teams prepared to open their training camps fully and NFL leaders eyed the MLB outbreak that raised new doubts about the ability of professional sports leagues to operate successfully outside a bubble environment, Allen Sills said he remained hopeful the league’s health protocols will enable the NFL to stage its season.
“I’ve said all along that I remain cautiously optimistic,” Sills said in a phone interview. “And that’s where I personally view this. As I said before, this is going to be hard. There’s no doubt that this is going to be a challenging year for all of us, not just in the NFL but across all elements of our society. And football is no exception. So I think there’s a tremendous amount of work to do. But I know that we have put a tremendous amount of thought and effort and energy into the protocols and keeping things as safe as possible. I know that we’ve got players and coaches and staff that are very committed to make it work. And I know that it’s something that we all hope very much will show how we can positively live with this virus.”
The NFL’s approach is similar to that of MLB, with plans for teams to play games in their home cities and stadiums. That’s why the outbreak of coronavirus cases among Miami Marlins players and coaches, leading to the cancellation of games Monday night in Miami and Philadelphia, raised further questions about the NFL’s ability to make things work.
Read more here.
Kodak to produce pharmaceutical ingredients with U.S. government loan
In a deal aimed at reducing U.S. reliance on China, the federal government announced Tuesday that it plans to give Eastman Kodak Company a $765 million loan to start producing the chemical ingredients needed to make pharmaceuticals.
The company plans to establish a new division, Kodak Pharmaceuticals, that will focus on the building blocks used to produce generic drugs, according to a joint statement from Kodak and the lending agency, the U.S. International Development Finance Corporation, or DFC.
The planned investment, reported earlier by the Wall Street Journal, will create about 350 jobs at Kodak’s home base in Rochester, N.Y., and in St. Paul, Minn., the company said.
Marlins coronavirus outbreak forces MLB to shuffle schedules of five teams
The viability of the 2020 MLB season as a fair, safe and competitive endeavor in the midst of a pandemic was stretched to the limit Tuesday — the sixth day of the regular season — as the league sorted through the many messy ramifications of the Miami Marlins’ coronavirus outbreak and ultimately altered the schedules of five teams.
In the end, the Marlins, who have seen fully half their 30-man roster test positive for coronavirus in the last five days, were shut down until through Sunday, and the Philadelphia Phillies, who had hosted the Marlins for three games over the weekend, through Thursday. Like the Marlins, the Phillies’ entire roster was tested in the wake of that series, but no Phillies player’s test so far has come back positive.
Georgia governor drops request for emergency hearing in lawsuit over Atlanta’s mask mandate
Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp (R) withdrew a request Tuesday for an emergency hearing over whether Atlanta can mandate mask-wearing and implement other coronavirus-related restrictions in response to the state’s high case numbers — but the legal dispute is ongoing.
The July 16 lawsuit against Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms (D) and the city council alleges that one of Kemp’s executive orders bars them from creating face-covering mandates that are looser or stricter than the statewide rule. The lawsuit also seeks to overrule Bottoms’s July 10 order requiring people to shelter in place again and restaurants to close indoor seating.
Attorneys for Kemp and Bottoms were set to appear at a hearing Tuesday until the governor’s lawyers dropped their request for the proceeding the same day, court records show.
Fulton County Superior Court Judge Jane Barwick directed the parties to keep engaging in mediation.
Cody Hall, a spokesperson for Kemp, told The Post that the state withdrew its request for a hearing because Bottoms had said her statements about rolling back reopenings were recommendations and not legally binding orders.
“Given the threat of economic harm and immediate backlash from Atlanta’s business community, this overreach by the Mayor was our top concern and the primary reason behind the litigation,” Hall said in a statement.
He added that the state would “continue productive, good faith negotiations with city officials” as they proceed in the lawsuit.
Bottoms’s office did not immediately respond to a request for comment.