Calif Wildfires/Postmaster Gen/NYC Gyms/UPDATES

In California, record heat, rolling blackouts and now wildfires test a state already besieged.

On Monday, Gov. Gavin Newsom of California called for an investigation into what he described as a major utility failure that was even more alarming set against the backdrop of the pandemic, when people, many largely confined inside, may be more dependent than ever on electricity: rolling blackouts over the weekend, caused by a record-shattering heat wave.

And a wave of wildfires are also posing particular challenges in the pandemic, Mr. Newsom said, as officials struggle to shelter residents forced to flee, and the state’s firefighting force has been depleted thanks to outbreaks in the state’s prisons.

The power issues and wildfires could also have impact on education. A reporter asked, for instance, about how the state would address the loss of remote learning time, if students lose power. “In extenuating circumstances, we have to be flexible,” he said.

The blackouts came not long after California leaders scrambled to address problems with the state’s virus data reporting system, which clouded case counts and threw into question the list of counties where virus transmission is particularly troubling.

Mr. Newsom said on Monday that the backlog of cases arising from the data glitch had been cleared, and that the state’s seven-day average reflected that.

The state’s positivity rate and other measures, such as hospitalizations, he said, were moving in the right direction.

 

Death Valley Just Recorded the Hottest Temperature on Earth

In the popular imagination, Death Valley in Southern California is the hottest place on earth. At 3:41 p.m. on Sunday, it lived up to that reputation when the temperature at the aptly named Furnace Creek reached 130 degrees Fahrenheit, according to the NOAA Weather Prediction center.

If that reading — the equivalent of 54 degrees Celsius — is verified by climate scientists, a process that could take months, it would be the highest temperature ever reliably recorded on earth.

Death Valley is no stranger to heat. Sitting 282 feet below sea level in the Mojave Desert in southeastern California near the Nevada border, it is the lowest, driest and hottest location in the United States. It is sparsely populated, with just 576 residents, according to the most recent census.

Brandi Stewart, the spokeswoman for Death Valley National Park, said that the valley is so hot because of the configuration of its lower-than-sea-level basin and surrounding mountains. The superheated air gets trapped in a pocket and just circulates. “It’s like stepping into a convection oven every day in July and August,” she said. So how does 130 degrees, which she walked out into on Sunday, feel? “It doesn’t feel that different from 125 degrees,” she said. “The feeling of that heat on my face, it can almost take your breath away.”

She added that “People say, ‘Oh, but it’s a dry heat!’ I want to do a little bit of an eye roll there,” she said. “Humidity has its downsides too, but dry heat is also not fun.”

The heat rises through the afternoon, generally reaching the peak from 4 p.m. to 5:30 p.m. The high on Monday was 127.

The previous record for highest temperature was also observed in Death Valley on June 30, 2013, at 129 degrees. The same temperature was also recorded in Kuwait and Pakistan several years later.

And that is also important to understand: There may be hotter places than Death Valley, such as parts of the Sahara, but they are too remote for reliable monitoring, said Daniel Swain, a climate scientist at the University of California, Los Angeles and the National Center for Atmospheric Research.

As the greenhouse gases that humans generate continue heating the planet, more records are expected, and not just in Death Valley.

The postmaster general received millions in income from a company that works with U.S.P.S., documents show.

Postmaster General Louis DeJoy, who has come under fire for financial ties to a company that does business with the United States Postal Service, received between $1.2 million and $7 million in income last year from that firm, according to financial disclosure forms reviewed by The New York Times.

Mr. DeJoy continues to hold between $25 million and $50 million in that company, XPO Logistics, where he was chief executive until 2015 and a board member until 2018. Those stock holdings were first reported last week by CNN.

But documents filed with the Office of Government Ethics show that Mr. DeJoy also receives millions of dollars in rental payments from XPO through leasing agreements at buildings that he owns. The revelations are likely to fuel further scrutiny of Mr. DeJoy, a major donor to President Trump who has made cost-cutting moves and other changes at the Postal Service that Democrats warn are aimed at undermining the 2020 election.

Mr. DeJoy agreed on Monday to testify next week before the House Oversight Committee, where Democrats are expected to press him on the justification for his policies and question his potential conflicts of interest.

Mr. DeJoy has maintained that he has fully complied with federal ethics rules and that the measures he has implemented are necessary to modernize the Postal Service. “I take my ethical obligations seriously, and I have done what is necessary to ensure that I am and will remain in compliance with those obligations,” Mr. DeJoy said in a statement.

Elsewhere on the postal front:

• Two Democrats on the House Judiciary Committee urged the F.B.I. to open a criminal investigation into actions by Mr. DeJoy and the Postal Service’s Board of Governors that may have caused mail delays. “Multiple media investigations show that Postmaster DeJoy and the Board of Governors have retarded the passage of mail,” Representatives Ted W. Lieu of California and Hakeem Jeffries of New York wrote in a letter to the F.B.I. director. “If their intent in doing so was to affect mail-in balloting or was motivated by personal financial reasons, then they likely committed crimes.”

• Mail-in voters from six states filed a lawsuit against Mr. Trump and Mr. DeJoy, seeking to block cuts to the Postal Service ahead of the election.

• Senator Mitch McConnell, pushed back on Monday on concerns that the Postal Service would not be able to handle as many as 80 million ballots come November, telling reporters in his home state that “the Postal Service is going to be just fine” and that Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin had already signaled a willingness to spend more on it.

• The House Speaker, Nancy Pelosi, Democrat of California, said Sunday that she would call the House back from its annual summer recess almost a month early to vote this week on legislation to block changes at the Postal Service.

• The postal crisis has forced states to look for alternatives to mail-in ballots.

  Postal slowdowns and warnings of delayed mail-in ballots are causing election officials to rethink vote-by-mail strategies, with some states seeking to bypass the post office with ballot drop boxes, drive-through drop-offs or expanded in-person voting options, despite the coronavirus pandemic.

  The 2020 election was supposed to be the largest-ever experiment in voting by mail, but the Trump administration’s late cost-cutting push at the Postal Service has shaken the confidence of voters and Democratic officials alike. The images of sorting machines being removed from postal facilities, mailboxes uprooted or bolted shut on city streets, and packages piling up at mail facilities have sparked anger and deep worry.

  Even if, as the Postal Service says, it has plenty of capacity to process mail-in ballots, the fear is that the psychological damage is already done. So as Democrats in Washington fight to restore Postal Service funding, election officials around the country are looking for a Plan B.

• The newest front in the battle over voting in 2020 is the drop box, where ballots mailed out to voters can be returned without fear of Postal Service backlogs or coronavirus infection. Once voters deposit their ballots in such boxes, they are collected by election officials and brought to polling places for tabulation.

  Election officials in Connecticut, Virginia, Pennsylvania and elsewhere are seeking to expand drop-off locations for absentee and mail-in ballots, but they have met vehement opposition from President Trump and his campaign.

• • Ahead of a pair of congressional hearings, the US postmaster general is “suspending” new Postal Service initiatives that drew widespread criticism. [Washington Post / Jacob Bogage]
  • P>S>: There’s no meaningful distinction between voting by mail and absentee voting. [Vox / Dylan Matthews]
• 

• U.S. college campuses grapple with coronavirus fears, outbreaks and protests.

• The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill announced it would shift to remote learning for all undergraduate classes starting Wednesday.

  The university, with 30,000 students, was one of the largest in the country to open its campus during the pandemic. Officials said 177 students had been isolated after testing as of Monday, and another 349 students were in quarantine because of possible exposure.

• The university said it would help students leave campus housing without financial penalty. It was not immediately clear how the university’s decision would affect its athletic programs, though North Carolina said that student-athletes could remain in their dormitories.

  The university’s athletic department said in a statement that it still expected its students would be able to play fall sports, but that it would “continue to evaluate the situation.” 

• Earlier this month, dozens of students protested plans to reopen by staging a “die-in” on campus. A similar protest erupted on Monday at the Georgia Institute of Technology in Atlanta, the first day of fall classes. The school had said that majority of courses would have some in-person attendance this fall, but dozens of students and faculty members staged a “die-in” on campus to push for more options for staff and students to teach or learn remotely.

• Some of the concerns about reopening college campuses have been directed at students who have gathered at bars or house parties. Video footage appearing to show University of North Georgia students attending a crowded off-campus party garnered online attention over the weekend
• 

• N.Y. Gyms and Fitness Studios Can Reopen as Soon as Aug. 24, Cuomo Says.

• Health clubs will be limited to a third of their total capacity and must meet state requirements before reopening.

• Mr. Cuomo’s announcement came with several caveats: Gyms would be limited to a third of their total capacity, and people would be required to wear masks at all times. The state would also require air filters that help prevent airborne transmission of viral particles and sign-in forms to assist with contact-tracing efforts.

  Local governments will also need to inspect gyms to make sure they meet the state’s requirements before they open or within two weeks of their opening.

  Local elected officials can stop gyms from holding indoor classes, Mr. Cuomo said. New York City has decided not to initially allow indoor fitness classes or indoor pools to operate when gyms reopen, a spokesman for the mayor said.

  Mr. Cuomo’s announcement came with several caveats: Gyms would be limited to a third of their total capacity, and people would be required to wear masks at all times. The state would also require air filters that help prevent airborne transmission of viral particles and sign-in forms to assist with contact-tracing efforts.

  Local governments will also need to inspect gyms to make sure they meet the state’s requirements before they open or within two weeks of their opening. Local elected officials can stop gyms from holding indoor classes, Mr. Cuomo said. New York City has decided not to initially allow indoor fitness classes or indoor pools to operate when gyms reopen, a spokesman for the mayor said.

  Mr. Cuomo said on Monday that gyms would be allowed to reopen because New York has successfully kept its rate of positive coronavirus test rates hovering around 1 percent since June.

  Still, Mr. Cuomo said that he remained worried that reopening gyms might accelerate the virus’s spread. He said his main concern was that local governments would not adequately enforce the state’s restrictions, noting, as he has before, how many cities and towns have not aggressively cracked down on bars and restaurants ignoring social distancing measures.

  It was not clear on what day New York City would clear gyms for reopening, or which agency would be responsible for conducting the necessary inspections or enforcing regulations.

  Last week, Mr. Cuomo announced that museums and other cultural institutions in New York City, which stayed closed even as their counterparts reopened in the rest of state, would be allowed to reopen on Aug. 24, at 25 percent capacity and with timed ticketing.

  Also last week, Mr. Cuomo gave bowling alleys statewide the green light to reopen with strict protocols in place: Every other lane is supposed to be blocked off because of social distancing, and bowling equipment must be properly sanitized.

The House returns for a USPS vote

 

• VOX
• House Speaker Nancy Pelosi announced that the chamber would return from its annual August recess early to address President Trump’s attacks on the US Postal Service, which threaten the country’s ability to conduct an election largely by mail. [Axios]
•  
• A bill to protect the agency, stymie further policy changes, and provide an infusion of emergency funding could come to a vote in the House by this weekend, though the Senate remains in recess. [AP / Lisa Mascaro and Matthew Daly]
• 
• And Postmaster General Louis DeJoy, [above] a Trump donor, is set to testify before the House Oversight Committee next Monday about a recent slew of changes he has pushed at the agency. [Politico / Daniel Lippman]
•  
• DeJoy has a strong incentive to appear: Over the weekend, Democratic Rep. Jim Cooper tweeted that the House “need[s] to subpoena the Postmaster General, and if he fails to appear, we should send the Sgt at Arms to arrest him.” [Twitter / Cameron Joseph]
•  
• Alarm over the plight of the Postal Service rose sharply late last week when the Washington Post reported that the agency had warned 46 states that voters could be disenfranchised by chronic, widespread mail delays. [Washington Post / Erin Cox, Elise Viebeck, Jacob Bogage, and Christopher Ingraham]
•  
• Trump has been clear about why he opposes USPS funding. Last week, he told reporters that Democrats “need that money in order to have the post office work so it can take all of these millions and millions of ballots,” which, yes, is how mail-in voting works — Trump just seemingly doesn’t want it to happen. [Vox / Aaron Rupar]

Trump tries to pin Postal Service funding woes on Democrats, as Pelosi eyes emergency action. Protesters demand postmaster general resign.

Nick Casselli, president of the American Postal Worker’s Union Local 89, in Darby, Pa., said he had been inundated with alarmed messages about delays in mail delivery.Credit...Michelle Gustafson for The New York Times

NY TIMES

President Trump on Saturday accused Democrats of refusing to fund the United States Postal Service as he faced intense criticism from Democrats who say slowdowns in mail delivery, the removal of sorting machines and other changes are threatening the integrity of the general election.

Speaking at a news conference at his golf resort in Bedminster, N.J., Mr. Trump also continued to rail against mail-in voting, calling it “a catastrophe.” But he did not directly say whether he supported the removal of mail-sorting machines and other changes made under the leadership of his postmaster general, Louis DeJoy.

“I don’t know what he’s doing,” Mr. Trump said. “I can only tell you he’s a very smart man. He’ll be a great Postmaster General.”

Democrats have, in fact, pushed for a total of $10 billion for the Postal Service in talks with Republicans on the coronavirus response bill. That figure, which would include money to help with election mail, was down from a $25 billion plan in a House-passed coronavirus measure.

Speaker Nancy Pelosi of California and House Democratic leadership have begun discussing bringing the chamber back early to address the issues with the Postal Service, a move that would cut short the annual summer recess. While the House is not scheduled to return for votes until Sept. 14, Democratic leaders could call lawmakers back in the next two weeks, two people familiar with the talks said on Saturday.


Among the legislative options under consideration include a measure put forward by Representative Carolyn B. Maloney of New York, the chairwoman of the House Oversight Committee, that would prohibit agency leadership from enacting any operational changes that were in place before Jan. 1 or once the public health crisis subsides. Such changes would include ending overtime pay or any measures that would delay mail. Lawmakers are also discussing adding language to the bill that would ensure all ballot-related mail is considered First Class Mail and treated as such.

While Democrats have been fighting to include funding for the Postal Service in a coronavirus relief package, it is unlikely that Democrats would act on a standalone funding bill, said the two people, who asked for anonymity in order to disclose details of private discussions, because the current crisis the agency is facing is tied to policy, not funding.


About 100 people gathered in the wealthy residential neighborhood of Kalorama outside the apartment complex of the postmaster general, Louis DeJoy, [above] a Republican megadonor and ally of President Trump who was appointed in May. Videos on social media showed them banging spoons on pots, blaring horns and chanting “resign,” with many in the group wearing masks and remaining socially distanced.
Critics say that changes enacted under Mr. DeJoy’s oversight, like cutting overtime pay for postal workers and removing mail-sorting machines, have slowed the delivery of mail and endangered vote-by-mail operations when millions of people are expected to exercise that option because of the coronavirus pandemic.

The Postal Service sent letters in July to all 50 states and the District of Columbia cautioning them that it may not be able to meet their deadlines for delivering last-minute mail-in ballots. News reports about the letters on Friday intensified the criticism directed at the Postal Service and Mr. Trump by Democrats and voting rights advocates, who say the president is deliberately stoking unfounded concerns that voting by mail will lead to fraud and miscounts as a way to cast doubt about the outcome of the election.

In the letters, Thomas J. Marshall, the general counsel for the Postal Service, urged states to require that residents request ballots at least 15 days before an election — rather than the shorter periods currently allowed under the laws of many states.

He said 45 states faced the risk that their timetables could leave some voters unable to get their ballots postmarked by Election Day or received by election boards in time to be counted.

In response to the warning letters, some states, including Pennsylvania and Michigan, have called for extensions on counting late-arriving ballots in the November election.

Mr. DeJoy, who has argued he is modernizing the Postal Service to make it more efficient, has become a target of criticism. Posts on social media showed protesters delivering fake absentee ballots to the entrance of Mr. DeJoy’s building on Saturday, cluttering the glass front doors with folded sheets of paper that read, “Save the post office. Save our democracy.”



Postal workers from small-town post offices to metropolitan distribution centers say they used to operate along a simple motto: Every piece, every day, meaning that they did not leave until all of the day’s mail went out the door. No more, they say.

Postal workers say drivers are being sent out according to set schedules, whether or not all of the morning’s mail is ready for them, and delivery trucks now have strict cutoff times for when they have to be gone. They say they are already short on staff because of quarantines and the coronavirus outbreak, and limits on working overtime are pushing them further behind.

“Mail is coming into the building faster than we can get it out,” said Mary DiMarco, who sorts bundles in a Miami postal center. “I’m concerned about ballots being handled. That they’re not going to be processed in time.”

“The decisions happened so rapidly — now we are seeing the effect of those decisions,” Mr. Freeman said. “People are coming in every day complaining about how long it’s taking them to receive everything: ‘What the heck is going on?’”

He said further delays had occurred after five mail-sorting machines in the major Cleveland-area distribution center were dismantled in recent days. Critics worried that political influence inside the Postal Service have focused on the removal of 671 sorting machines — about one-eighth of its devices — from facilities across the country.
The stakes in this year’s election are higher than ever. While nearly a quarter of Americans voted absentee or by mail in 2016, millions more are expected to mail their ballots this year because of the coronavirus crisis.

In Ohio, mail-in voting has been common for more than two decades, and a quarter of the state’s voters regularly cast their ballots by mail. But some postal workers say the recent changes in work rules have drastically slowed their ability to deliver mail, raising concerns that votes cast just several days before the election might not make it in time to be counted.

The Postal Service’s inspector general said Friday she had opened an investigation into complaints that leading Democrats have filed against the postmaster general, Louis DeJoy, a Republican megadonor and ally of President Trump, who has begun a series of cuts to the agency that Democrats say have slowed down the delivery of mail and endanger vote-by-mail operations.

“We are in receipt of the congressional request and are conducting a body of work to address concerns raised,” a spokeswoman for the U.S. Postal Service inspector general, Tammy L. Whitcomb, said.

Senator Elizabeth Warren, Democrat of Massachusetts, Representative Carolyn Maloney, Democrat of New York and others last week requested the inspector general investigate “all recent staffing and policy changes put in place” by Mr. DeJoy.

Trump Holds up coronavirus aid to block Postal Service funds for voting by mail.

 

REUTERS

Trump said he was blocking Democrats’ effort to include funds for the U.S. Postal Service and election infrastructure in a new coronavirus relief bill, a bid to block more Americans from voting by mail during the pandemic.

Congressional Democrats accused Republican Trump of trying to damage the struggling Postal Service to improve his chances of being re-elected as opinion polls show him trailing presumptive Democratic nominee Joe Biden.

Trump has been railing against mail-in ballots for months as a possible source of fraud, although millions of Americans - including much of the military - have cast absentee ballots by mail for years without such problems.

Trump said his negotiators have resisted Democrats’ calls for additional money to help prepare for presidential, congressional and local voting during a pandemic that has killed more than 165,000 Americans and presented logistical challenges to organizing as large an event as the Nov. 3 elections.

 “The items are the post office and the $3.5 billion for mail-in voting,” Trump told Fox Business Network, saying Democrats want to give the post office $25 billion. “If we don’t make the deal, that means they can’t have the money, that means they can’t have universal mail-in voting.”

Trump later said at a news briefing that if a deal was reached that included postal funding, he would not veto it.

The amount of money in question is less than 1% of either party’s current proposed aid package for Americans struggling because of the pandemic. Senate Republicans have floated a $1 trillion response while the Democratic-controlled House of Representatives passed a $3 trillion bill in May.

The White House negotiating team of Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin and Chief of Staff Mark Meadows has not met with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer in six days.

 

 

 

Trump's plan to sabotage the USPS, explained

 

VOX

With the general election just 82 days away and Covid-19 still a major public health risk, Trump is dead-set on preventing as many people as possible from voting by mail this November. [CNN / Ellie Kaufman, Marshall Cohen, Jason Hoffman, and Nicky Robertson]

On Thursday, he told Fox Business that “[Democrats] need that money in order to make the post office work so it can take all of these millions and millions of ballots… But if they don’t get those two items that means you can’t have universal mail-in voting.” [Twitter / Abby D. Phillips]

Later, he appeared to walk back his comments a bit, saying, "If they make a deal, the Postal Service is taken care of. All they have to do is make a deal." [Twitter / Sahil Kapur]

White House economic adviser Larry Kudlow put it even more transparently on Thursday when he included “voting rights” as part of “really liberal left wishlists” when discussing coronavirus relief negotiations. [Twitter / Don Moynihan]

Both comments reflect what appears to be an increasingly serious strategy on the part of a historically unpopular president — to sabotage the US Postal Service in order to limit voter turnout and improve his chances of winning reelection. [NY Mag / Ed Kilgore]


Trump made strides toward that goal last week, when the new postmaster general — Louis DeJoy, a Trump donor — ousted 23 USPS officials from their jobs as part of a major reorganization. [Washington Post / Jacob Bogage]

Mail-sorting machines are also being removed from at least some USPS facilities, a move that workers have warned could impede their ability to quickly process mail, particularly if they receive a surge of ballots come November. [Vice / Aaron Gordon]

It’s not hard to parse what Trump’s problem with mail-in voting is. He gave away the game as early as March, when he told 
Fox and Friends that Democrats want “levels of voting that, if you ever agreed to it, you’d never have a Republican elected in this country again.” [Washington Post / Aaron Blake]

That’s not exactly how it works, at least not under normal conditions: As Vox’s David Roberts wrote in May this year, vote-by-mail does increase turnout, but there’s no evidence that it advantages either Republicans or Democrats. [Vox / David Roberts]

But a constant barrage of voter-fraud accusations by Trump and the GOP, as well as the politicization of public health guidance, mean that in November, far more Democrats are likely to vote by mail, whereas Republicans are more likely to vote in person. [Vox / Ian Millhiser]

According to NPR, around 70 percent of the votes cast in the general election could be by mail. That’s good news from a public health perspective, as experts say that voting by mail could well reduce the spread of the coronavirus — but Trump opposes it nonetheless. [NPR / Barbara Sprunt]



While There are Over 1000 Deaths in U.S. Each Day for Past 10 Days, in NYC coronavirus infection rate drops below 1% as deaths plummet:

New York’s coronavirus infection rate fell below 1% Wednesday as the state continues to stave off a second wave of the deadly respiratory illness. Gov. Cuomo said only 636, or 0.87%, of the more than 70,000 test results that came back Tuesday were positive as hospitalizations fell by four patients to 564 people statewide.

“Our progress is thanks to the hard work of New Yorkers - even after two and a half months of reopening, the numbers have continued to go down,” the governor said in a statement.

The falling infection rate in the Empire State comes as the city passed a significant milestone: three days without a reported COVID-19 death. The state recorded just four deaths from the virus on Tuesday, Cuomo said. Another four New Yorkers of COVID-19 on Tuesday, the governor said.

Meanwhile...

At least 1,252 new coronavirus deaths and 53,633 new cases were reported in the United States on Aug. 5. Over the past week, there have been an average of 56,966 cases per day, a decrease of 14 percent from the average two weeks earlier.

As of Thursday morning, more than 4,832,300 people in the United States have been infected with the coronavirus and at least 158,500 have died, according to a New York Times database.

Dr. Oxiris Barbot’s departure came after escalating tensions with City Hall.Credit...Dave Sanders for The New York Times 

N.Y.C. Health Commissioner Resigns After Clashes With Mayor Over Virus

New York City’s health commissioner, Dr. Oxiris Barbot, resigned on Tuesday and voiced her “deep disappointment” with Mayor Bill de Blasio’s handling of the pandemic, renewing scrutiny of his leadership during the crisis just as the city faces pressing decisions about how quickly to reopen schools and businesses. 

Dr. Barbot’s departure came after escalating tensions between City Hall and top city health department officials, which had begun at the start of the coronavirus outbreak in March, burst into public view and raised concerns that the feuding was undermining crucial public health policies. 

.The mayor’s new health commissioner is Dr. Dave A. Chokshi, a former senior leader at Health + Hospitals, the city’s public hospital system.

Dr. Chokshi, who has also worked for health department in Louisiana and as a health adviser to the United States secretary of Veterans Affairs, received praise from the former surgeon general, Dr. Vivek Murthy, who called him an “extraordinary public health leader who both sees the forest and the trees.”

Current and former health officials said the departure of Dr. Barbot reflected Mr. de Blasio’s history of distrust in his health department. From early in the coronavirus outbreak, he has clashed with the department on testing, public messaging and how quickly to shutter schools. Mr. de Blasio has been faulted for resisting calls to close down schools and businesses, which some epidemiologists believe worsened the outbreak.

Some public health officials had bristled at the mayor’s decision to place the city’s contact-tracing program inside Health + Hospitals. The health department has performed such tracing for decades; the public hospitals have not. Dr. Barbot disagreed with the move, but kept her disapproval private.

Perhaps the most consequential debate inside City Hall over the coronavirus came during the second week in March. The city had a small number of positive cases, but its public health system was flashing a warning about the unchecked spread of a flulike virus.

Dr. Barbot and one of her top deputies began urging more restrictions on gatherings. Mr. de Blasio for a time sided instead with Dr. Katz, who had been advising City Hall against ordering shutdowns.Some officials inside the health department talked about quitting that week, or staging a walkout to force action. Eventually, top officials and the mayor agreed on the need to lock down the city to stop the spread of the virus. Mr. de Blasio ordered schools closed on March 15.

Outside of the administration, some blamed Dr. Barbot for the delays and confusion, citing her shifting public statements on the virus from late January to early March. A few elected officials called for her to be fired in early April.

On March 4, with COVID-19 cases emerging in Westchester County, Barbot dismissed the threat of infection by casual contact, saying, “There’s no indication that being in a car, being in the subways with someone who’s potentially sick is a risk factor,” the letter notes.

At a City Hall press conference on March 5, with “only four confirmed cases” in NYC, Barbot said the city was urging people who arrived from certain countries with rising cases to self-isolate, but everybody else without symptoms should not have to quarantine.

The turmoil at the top of the city’s health agency worsened in May over the mayor’s decision to locate the city’s contact-tracing efforts within its public hospital system and not in the health department.

Under Health + Hospitals, the city’s contact-tracing program got off to a rocky start. Lacking the capability to hire and manage 3,000 new workers, it outsourced much of the day-to-day management of the call center at the core of its operations to Optum, a billion-dollar subsidiary of UnitedHealth Group.

So far, fewer than half of New Yorkers who have tested positive for the coronavirus — some 20,000 people since the program began on June 1 — have shared their contacts.

“Right now, cases are popping up all over the place and we are not linking them to known contacts except in a small proportion of cases,” Dr. Neil Vora, the director of the trace effort, said at an internal town-hall-style meeting for tracers last month, a recording of which was provided to The Times.

Even with the new tracing program, the health department has been called on to handle more intricate aspects of so-called disease detective work, particularly in group settings like homeless shelters and nursing homes. That expanded to include restaurants and other social gatherings last month.

The mayor said on Friday that outbreaks in schools would also be handled by the health department, in coordination with the city’s new corps of contact tracers.

Mr. de Blasio has pointed to court delays and bail reform to explain the surge in gun violence. But the N.Y.P.D.’s own numbers tell a different story.Brooklyn has seen some of the worst gun violence in recent weeks.Credit...Justin Lane/EPA, via Shutterstock[/caption]

The Mayor Blames the Virus for Shootings. Here’s What Crime Data Shows.

By Alan Feuer

• In the past few weeks, Mayor Bill de Blasio and his police commissioner, Dermot F. Shea, have tied the steep rise in shootings in New York City to a breakdown in the criminal justice system that they contend has allowed criminals back out on the streets.

The mayor and commissioner have cited a range of causes that they have portrayed as outside their control: the pandemic and the George Floyd protests, as well as measures approved by the State Legislature, including one that eliminated cash bail for many defendants.

But a confidential analysis of police data, conducted by city officials but not released to the public, offers little if any evidence to back up their claims. In fact, the analysis, obtained by The New York Times, suggests the state’s new bail law and the mass release of inmates from city jails in recent months because of the coronavirus outbreak played almost no role in the spike in shootings.

Of the 1,500 inmates let out of Rikers from March 16 to April 30, only seven had been rearrested on a weapons charge by mid-July, according to the confidential analysis. 

Nearly 2,000 people who in July had open gun cases were allowed to go home to await trial, but only about 40 of those defendants were arrested on another weapons charge while they were out, the analysis said.

Instead, the analysis points to a different possible reason for the wave of shootings: The number of arrests for gun crimes has plummeted.

While murders and shootings have surged, reports of other major crimes have actually fallen in recent months. Still, the spike in gun violence has stirred deep fears that the city might be sliding back to an era of random violence on the streets. Recent shooting victims have included a two teenagers going to play basketball and a baby boy.

New York City is not alone. Shootings have skyrocketed in major cities across the country, and that surge has led to intense political fights over whether efforts to rein in the police, including the Defund the Police movement touched off by the killing of George Floyd, are playing a role.

On Sunday, another 19 people were shot in New York City, one fatally. Through the first seven months of this year, shootings were up 72 percent over the same period last year and murders rose 30 percent, even as reports of other violent crimes like rape, assault and robbery fell.

In mid-May, gun arrests citywide began to drop precipitously, the city analysis of police data shows. During the week of May 24, there were 113 gun arrests. During the week of June 7, there were 71 such arrests. By the week of June 28, there were only 22.

Over the same period, the data shows, shootings started rising. During the week of May 24, there were 23 shootings; in the week of June 7, there were 40. In the week of June 28, the number of shootings spiked to 63. 

At a new conference on Tuesday, Mr. de Blasio said the city had deployed more officers to troubled precincts, and gun arrests were beginning to rise again. During the week ending on July 27, arrests for firearms climbed up back up to 54, the police said.

The city’s own analysis suggests the bail law, which allows many defendants accused of nonviolent crimes to be released before trial without posting bail, had little to do with the rise in violence. It notes that shooting incidents stayed relatively stable for more than four months after the legislation was passed.

The analysis also indicates that the courts are processing gun crimes at close to the same rate as before the pandemic. According to the Police Department’s data, there were 2,181 unresolved gun cases in July — slightly fewer than the 2,285 gun cases that were open in December 2019. 

Similarly, the courts handled 642 gun and murder arraignments from October 2019 to December 2019. Between April and June of this year, they handled 819 gun and murder arraignments — and all of them were conducted remotely by video.

“The way we are processing arrests has not changed at all,” said Cyrus R. Vance, Jr., the Manhattan district attorney. “In May, the volume and severity of the arrests we were handling was the same as it was in January. We’re open.”

Still, Michael LiPetri, the Police Department’s chief of crime control strategies, said that the virus’s effects on the criminal justice system were being felt on the streets.

Early in the pandemic, Chief LiPetri said, many suspects arrested on gun charges who in the past would have been asked to post bail were instead released without bail to stem the spread of disease in jail.

So far this year, he said, 40 percent of all gun suspects were released on their own recognizance, compared to only 25 percent last year, and about 35 percent had bail set, compared to 55 percent last year.

The large number of people being sent home to await trial, even with a serious gun charge, he said, had created a permissive atmosphere, especially among gang members who the police believe are driving the wave of shootings.

“When people get arrested and then get out, their crew members start feeling comfortable carrying firearms,” he said.

Chief LiPetri acknowledged the number of gun arrests had dropped off, saying that the force was stretched thin because of the pandemic and the need to redeploy people to cover protests.

In the past month, he said, the department has started moving robbery detectives to work on violent crime and has shifted more than 300 officers in administrative positions to precincts with high numbers of shootings.

A dispute over Postal Service funding complicates the U.S. stimulus impasse as talks continue.

Top lawmakers remained nowhere close to an agreement on Wednesday for a new economic rescue package amid the recession, and appeared to be growing increasingly pessimistic that they could meet a self-imposed Friday deadline.

A dispute over funding for the United States Postal Service has joined expanded unemployment benefits and aid to state and local governments on the list of issues dividing Democratic leaders and the Trump administration.

“I feel optimistic that there is a light at the end of the tunnel,” Speaker Nancy Pelosi, Democrat of California, said after hosting another round of talks in her Capitol Hill office with Steven Mnuchin, the Treasury secretary; Mark Meadows, the White House chief of staff; and Senator Chuck Schumer, Democrat of New York, the minority leader. “But how long that tunnel is remains to be seen,” Ms. Pelosi added.

On the Senate floor, Mr. Schumer called for the Postal Service to fix mail delays that have resulted from cutbacks that Postmaster General Louis DeJoy put in place during the pandemic. Democrats and voting rights groups have charged that the cuts are part of a deliberate effort by President Trump to undermine the service in order to interfere with mail-in voting that will be critical to a safe election in November. Democrats have called for $3.6 billion in the aid package to ensure a secure election, including broader mail balloting, but Republicans are opposing the funds. 

Other outstanding disputes include whether to appropriate hundreds of billions of dollars to help states and local governments avoid laying off public workers as tax revenues fall, and whether to reinstate a $600 per week unemployment supplement from the federal government to laid-off workers.

Democrats are pressing to extend the payments, which lapsed last week, through January. Republicans on Tuesday countered with a plan to resume them at $400 per week through Dec. 15, according to two people with knowledge of the discussions who insisted on anonymity to describe them. Democrats declined the offer, they said. 

Mr. Trump on Wednesday again suggested that he would act on his own to impose a federal eviction moratorium and temporarily suspend payroll tax cuts if an agreement could not be reached. He also reiterated his opposition to a critical Democratic proposal to send more than $900 billion to state and local governments whose budgets have been devastated by the recession.

“We have some states and cities — you know them all — they’ve been very poorly run over the years,” he said. “We’re not going to go along with that.”

More than 53,720 cases and 1,250 deaths were reported on Wednesday in the United States. The U.S. Virgin Islands set a daily case record, and Florida became the second state after California to pass 500,000 confirmed infections.

A volunteer receiving an injection as part of a Covid-19 vaccine trial.Credit...Hans Pennink/Associated Press[/caption]

Health experts ask the F.D.A. to make vaccine deliberations public.

A letter signed by nearly 400 health experts on Wednesday night urged the Food and Drug Administration to conduct full safety and efficacy reviews of potential coronavirus vaccines before making the products widely available to the public.

The group called on Dr. Stephen Hahn, the F.D.A. commissioner, to be forthcoming about the agency’s deliberations over whether to approve any new vaccine, in order to gain the public’s trust.

“We must be able to explain to the public what we know and what we don’t know about these vaccines,” noted the letter, which was organized by the nonprofit Center for Science in the Public Interest. “For that to happen, we must be able to witness a transparent and rigorous F.D.A. approval process that is devoid of political considerations.”

More than 30 experimental coronavirus vaccines are in clinical trials, with several companies racing to have the first product in the United States ready by the end of the year. The federal government has promised more than $9 billion to companies for these efforts to date. But many people are highly skeptical of these new vaccines, and might refuse to get them.

Kenya’s unusual approach to the school problem: Cancel the year and start over.

For Kenyan students, 2020 is turning out to be the year that disappeared.

Education officials announced in July that they were canceling the academic year and making students repeat it. They are not expected to begin classes again until January, the usual start of Kenya’s school year.

Experts believe Kenya is the only nation to have gone so far as to declare the entire school year a washout.

“It’s a sad and great loss,” said Esther Adhiambo, 18, who had expected to finish high school and enroll in university this year. “This pandemic has destroyed everything.”

The decision to scrap the academic year, taken after a monthslong debate, was made not just to protect teachers and students from the coronavirus, but also to address glaring issues of inequality that arose when school was suspended in March, said George Magoha, the education secretary. After schools closed, some students had the technology to access remote learning, but others didn’t.

But while the goal was to level the playing field, researchers say it might just widen already-existing gaps. Once schools reopen, the two sets of students will not be on the same level or able to compete equally in national exams, education experts said. 

The decision affects more than 90,000 schools and over 18 million students in pre-primary through high school, including 150,000 more in refugee camps, according to the education ministry. Universities and colleges are also closed for physical classes until January, but can continue holding virtual instruction and graduations.

Helicopter footage of partygoers gathering at the hillside home in the Beverly Crest neighborhood was broadcast on local news outlets on Monday.Credit...KTLA5[/

Los Angeles will shut off water and electricity at houses that host large parties

Eric M. Garcetti, the mayor of Los Angeles, said on Wednesday that the city could cut off power to homes or business that host large gatherings in defiance of public health guidelines.

Large gatherings in private homes are banned under Los Angeles County’s public health orders because of the pandemic, but there have been a number of reports of parties in recent weeks. One party that drew a large group to a mansion on Mulholland Drive on Monday night devolved into chaos and gunfire after midnight, leaving five people wounded, one of whom later died, the authorities said.

“Some research has shown that 10 percent of people cause 80 percent of the spread,” Mr. Garcetti said. “These super-spreader events and super-spreader people have a disproportionate impact on the lives that we are losing, and we cannot let that happen like we saw on Mullholland Drive on Monday night.”

Teachers returned to a Georgia school district last week. 260 employees have already gone home to quarantine.

Gwinnett County’s teachers and school administrators are hardly alone in dealing with the fallout of an early outbreak as they try to launch a digital-only return.

Hundreds of students and teachers in Indiana, Mississippi, Georgia and North Carolina have already been forced into quarantine as covid-19 continues to complicate plans to reopen schools.

 

Trump and his spinners are suddenly freaking out about Florida. Here’s why.

The Trump campaign scrambles to remind seniors that vote-by-mail is good, after all.Democrats lead Republicans in mail ballot requests in the state by 600,000, leading to pressure on the president to relent in his attack on mail voting.

 

 

 

 

Postal Service May End Delivery of Letters on Saturdays

Neither snow nor rain nor gloom of night will stop the mail, but $15.9 billion in losses will, at least on Saturday.

Beginning August 1, it will stop delivering letters and other mail on Saturdays, but continue to handle packages, a move the financially struggling agency said would save about $2 billion annually as it looks for ways to cut cost. Packages will still be delivered on Saturday, which is a profitable part of the business, and post offices will remain open on Saturdays so customers can drop off their mail, buy stamps, and check their post-office boxes—although open hours are likely to be reduced.

The postal service said it has lost $15.9 billion in the last fiscal year—three times the loss recorded just a year earlier.