The Morning Dispatch: Politics vs. Public Health

Happy Tuesday! We didn’t know slow news days were still possible, but yesterday was one—we’ll get you up to speed in a jiffy.

Quick Hits: Today’s Top Stories

• As of Monday night, 3,363,056 cases of COVID-19 have been reported in the United States (an increase of 60,361 from yesterday) and 135,605 deaths have been attributed to the virus (an increase of 429 from yesterday), according to the Johns Hopkins University COVID-19 Dashboard, leading to a mortality rate among confirmed cases of 4 percent (the true mortality rate is likely much lower, between 0.4 percent and 1.4 percent, but it’s impossible to determine precisely due to incomplete testing regimens). Of 41,002,876 coronavirus tests conducted in the United States (720,700 conducted since yesterday), 8.2 percent have come back positive.

• California’s two largest public school districts, Los Angeles and San Diego, announced their schools will be online-only to begin the fall semester, adding they will “continue planning for a return to in-person learning during the 2020-21 academic year, as soon as public health conditions allow.” The move comes as a part of California’s broader rollback of reopening efforts, including Gov. Gavin Newsom’s reclosing of bars, restaurants, and movie theaters statewide, and gyms, barbers, and places of worship in the state’s most affected counties.

• Driven primarily by the CARES Act, the U.S. budget deficit hit $864 billion in June, an all-time high for this early in the year.

• Following widespread pressure and an internal review, the Washington Redskins announced Monday they will retire their name. The team reportedly has a new name in mind, but its announcement is being delayed by trademark issues.

Politics vs. Public Health

With the United States experiencing unprecedented surges in new coronavirus cases across the country, a public health vs. politics schism within the Trump administration is spilling out into the public. The president used to appear nightly alongside his administration’s coronavirus task force to update Americans on the latest developments in our COVID-19 response. Those briefings ended when the calendar flipped from April to May, and the administration’s messaging transitioned from “slowing the spread” to “opening up America again.”

To the delight of cable news producers and his own campaign staff alike, President Trump donned a mask over the weekend on a trip to Walter Reed National Military Medical Center. But that very same day, White House officials began circulating a memo with talking points meant to discredit Dr. Anthony Fauci, the 79-year-old director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) who has served under six presidents. “Several White House officials are concerned about the number of times Dr. Fauci has been wrong on things,” a Trump administration aide anonymously told reporters. Trump aide Peter Navarro argued recently that Fauci “has been wrong about everything I have ever interacted with him on.” Informal Trump adviser Stephen Moore even bragged to the Daily Beast that he is working on a memo that will “go after Fauci” and show “how many times [he’s] been wrong during not just [this pandemic], but during his entire career.”

Fauci—who was at the White House yesterday but hasn’t met with President Trump since the first week of June—was wrong about a few key aspects of the novel coronavirus early on before we had much data, thanks in part to China’s obfuscation. “There’s no reason to be walking around with a mask,” he told 60 Minutes on March 8. Asked about these comments last month, Fauci admitted that “masks work,” and said his—and other Trump administration officials’—hesitancy to recommend them stemmed from a desire to ensure health care workers were able to secure as much personal protective equipment as possible. The White House memo also cited Fauci’s previous comments downplaying the seriousness of the virus (though he usually hedged his answer with a “right now” or “this could change”) and initial questioning of asymptomatic transmission (though he added he would “really like to see the data”).

Still, the White House’s targeting of Fauci is downright bizarre. We’re in the middle of a global pandemic that the United States has struggled mightily to control and top White House officials are spending time attacking one of their own top scientists? The crux of the White House’s criticism of Fauci is that he consistently underestimated the coronavirus. But in those early days, White House officials, including Trump, repeatedly made rosy claims that well beyond what Fauci was saying—in private and in public. National Economic Council Director Larry Kudlow said on February 25 the administration had “contained” the coronavirus “pretty close to airtight.” President Trump said on February 26 the country’s 15 confirmed cases were going to be “down to close to zero” within “a couple of days.”

But since the virus spread in the United States in March, armed with additional data, Fauci has consistently urged that U.S. government take aggressive measures to limit its damage, with his warnings dismissed by some in the administration as alarmist.

Meanwhile, top Trump administration officials have continued to promise an imminent end to the crisis. In late April, Vice President Mike Pence told a radio show, “I believe by early June we’re going to see our nation largely past this epidemic.” He added: “If you look at the trends today, that I think by Memorial Day weekend we will have this coronavirus epidemic behind us.” Pence wrote in a June 16 Wall Street Journal op-ed that concern about a coronavirus second wave is “overblown” because “cases have stabilized over the past two weeks, with the daily average case rate across the U.S. dropping to 20,000.” With cases climbing to a staggering 60,000 per day—far outpacing increases in the rates of testing—and new deaths slowing rising, too, the optimism continues. On June 17, Trump said: “If you look, the numbers are very minuscule compared to what it was. It’s dying out.” On July 1, he said: “I think we are going to be very good with the coronavirus. I think that, at some point, that’s going to sort of just disappear, I hope.” On July 4, Trump claimed that 99 percent of COVID-19 cases are “harmless.”

Trump has undoubtedly perceived Fauci’s criticism of the United States’ response to the virus in recent weeks, in part, as criticism of him. “As a country, when you compare us to other countries, I don’t think you can say we’re doing great,” Fauci said in an interview with FiveThirtyEight last week. “I mean, we’re just not.”

He pointed to partisanship as a reason for our ineffective response. “If there wasn’t such divisiveness,” he said, “we would have a more coordinated approach.”

This newfound ire isn’t directed just at Fauci. We wrote last week about Trump, Pence, and Education Secretary Betsy DeVos’s frustration with the CDC’s school reopening guidelines. Just yesterday morning, President Trump retweeted Chuck Woolery—yes, the former Love Connection game show host—to make the case that “the CDC, Media, Democrats, our Doctors” are lying to “keep[] the economy from coming back.”

Asked about this in a press briefing, White House Press Secretary Kayleigh McEnany said “the notion of the tweet was to point out the fact that when we use science, we have to use it in a way that is not political,” adding that Trump still has confidence in the CDC. She also maintained Trump still appreciates the guidance Fauci gives him, saying “Dr. Fauci is one of many on the task force who provides advice.”

Fauci’s credibility with Republicans has dropped 18 points since March according to a new Economist/YouGov poll, but the NIAID head still garners significantly more public trust on “medical advice” than Trump or Democratic challenger Joe Biden. Fauci boasts a net trust/distrust rating of +30, while Trump and Biden lag behind at -19 and -11, respectively.

With less than four months to the election and the end of the contest with Biden, Trump and his supporters have added Fauci to their list of targets, launching a campaign to discredit him alongside their campaign to defeat their actual opponent.

Polish President Wins Re-election

Nationalist-populism is here to stay in Poland—at least for the next five years. President Andrzej Duda of the Law and Justice party (PiS) won re-election by a slim margin on Monday, defeating his more centrist opponent with 51.2 percent of the vote. Duda’s win solidifies the PiS’ hold on power until the next general election three years from now, allowing its populist agenda to continue apace.

Poles headed to the polls in droves; voter turnout was near its highest level since the fall of communism in Poland in 1989. The presidential election was Europe’s first since the onset of the coronavirus pandemic.

Duda claimed a preliminary victory on Sunday evening: “Winning the presidential election with 70 percent of turnout, it’s excellent news. I’m very moved.” His challenger—Warsaw Mayor Rafal Trzaskowski of the Civic Platform Party—did not concede the race until Monday afternoon.

President Trump congratulated Duda on his win Monday evening.

Duda’s re-election is expected to exacerbate already existing tensions over Polish identity. “It wasn’t really an issue-based campaign as much as an identity-based campaign,” said Rachel Ellehuus, the deputy director of the Europe program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. Trzaskowski “tried to appeal to people who were in cities and towns, and who were more Western-oriented and focused on greater integration into NATO and the EU,” she said. Duda focused his campaign efforts on appealing to older, rural, Catholic voters.

Duda made “defend[ing] children from LGBT ideology” a key plank of his campaign, and one of his political allies recently tweeted that “Poland is the most beautiful without LGBT.” PiS leader Jarosław Kaczyński accused Trzaskowski last week of not having a “Polish soul, Polish heart, and a Polish mind” because he expressed openness to restitution for the World War II-era lost property of Polish Jews, 90 percent of whom were murdered in the Holocaust.

Once viewed as a beacon of hope in post-Communist Europe, Poland has shown symptoms of democratic erosion under the Law and Justice Party. As Johns Hopkins political scientist Yascha Mounk wrote in Persuasion yesterday, “Elected autocrats tend to follow six steps: win elections; capture referees, such as courts and other independent bodies; attack or seize control of the media; demonize and undermine the opposition; change the rules of the game; and win new elections that are no longer free.” 

Poland has adhered to much of this roadmap under Duda and the PiS. “The media over the years has been increasingly-state owned, so it’s hard for opposition candidates to get equal air time,” Ellehuus said. The PiS has also attacked the independent judiciary by “stacking the judges on the constitutional Court” and “instituting penalties for Polish judges who follow EU laws and regulations and their judgments.”

Worth Your Time

• Yesterday’s episode of the Ezra Klein Show with Yascha Mounk emphasized how much more productive and fruitful actual conversation is than long back-and-forths over Twitter or email. Ezra and Yascha got into it on Twitter last week over the merits of the Harper’s Magazine open letter on free speech. But they decided to table the debate and have it on the podcast instead. They ended the conversation still disagreeing on a few key points, but not as many as either may have expected. 

• If you—or people you know—are still unsure about the efficacy of masks in slowing COVID-19 transmission, this conversation with epidemiologist George Rutherford and infectious disease specialist Peter Chin-Hong is among the best things we’ve read on the subject. “In one case, a man flew from China to Toronto and subsequently tested positive for COVID-19. He had a dry cough and wore a mask on the flight, and all 25 people closest to him on the flight tested negative for COVID-19. In another case, in late May, two hair stylists in Missouri had close contact with 140 clients while sick with COVID-19. Everyone wore a mask and none of the clients tested positive.”

Presented Without Comment

Also Presented Without Comment

Toeing the Company Line

• Get yourself a podcast that does it all: Monday’s episode of Advisory Opinions features a discussion between Sarah and David on presidential campaign strategy, Trump’s pardon of Roger Stone, the theological and constitutional arguments related to the death penalty, and the tax-exempt status of academic institutions.

Let Us Know

One of the benefits of our ad-free model here at The Dispatch is that we don’t need to try to chase clicks for clicks’ sake. We covered the Polish election in today’s TMD because we deemed it important, not because we thought a headline about Andrzej Duda and Rafal Trzaskowski would attract millions of eyeballs. How are you feeling about our topic selection of late?

Reporting by Declan Garvey (@declanpgarvey), Andrew Egger (@EggerDC), Sarah Isgur (@whignewtons), Charlotte Lawson (@charlotteUVA), Audrey Fahlberg (@FahlOutBerg), Nate Hochman (@njhochman), and Steve Hayes (@stephenfhayes).

Photograph by Alex Edelman/AFP/Getty Images.