Ron DeSantis Announces Plan to Basically Ensure Florida Schoolchildren Get COVID

Quick: You’re the governor of a state where COVID-19 is literally out of control, reportedly accounting for about 20% of all new infections in the country. As one doctor recently explained, if your state was a country, the U.S. would probably impose a travel ban on people visiting from it. Not only are things really, really bad across the board, but when it comes to children, your state currently holds the record for the most young people admitted to the hospital in the past week. Do you (a) start taking this thing seriously, by imposing public health measures known to stop the spread of the virus (b) think of the children, and follow other states in requiring masks in the fall or (c) at the very least allow individual schools to make their own decisions on the issue of masks, including letting them decide they’re necessary? If you’re Florida governor Ron DeSantis, the answer is a resounding “none of the above” and an added note to “screw the kids.”

On Monday, DeSantis’s office threatened to withhold the pay of superintendents and school board members who ignore the governor’s executive order banning mask mandates for schools. Just so it’s clear, that means if a school district looks at the (overwhelming) data and decides that it would like to protect its community—from getting sick and potentially *dying—*DeSantis will block them from getting paid to score political points with conservatives. Usually, school districts get in serious trouble if they’re caught putting kids in harm’s way, but in this scenario, DeSantis is threatening to punish anyone caught protecting kids (and teachers) from catching a highly contagious disease. Which, in the words of health experts, is fucking insane, even for Florida.

The warning comes as infections in the Sunshine State have increased 51% in the past week, according to data from Johns Hopkins University; Florida reported 134,506 new COVID-19 cases from July 30 to August 5, more than any other seven-day period. Meanwhile, the delta variant has been more harmful to children than the original strain, with 4,615 Florida children hospitalized last week, Rolling Stone noted. “Our pediatricians, the nursing, the staff are exhausted, and the children are suffering, and it is absolutely devastating,” Aileen Marty, M.D., an infectious disease expert at Florida International University, told CNN’s Anderson Cooper 360 on Friday night. “Our children are very much affected. We’ve never seen numbers like this before.”

“The viral load in Florida is so high right now, there are really only two places on the planet where it’s higher—one is Louisiana and the other is Botswana,” Jonathan Reiner, M.D., a professor at the George Washington School of Medicine and Health Sciences, told CNN on Sunday. “It’s so high in Florida that I think if Florida were another country, we would have to consider banning travel from Florida to the United States.”

DeSantis’s latest announcement comes as Florida and Texas appear to be duking it out to see who can infect more children. As my colleague Eric Lutz noted on Friday, Texas recently “released a new guidance that somehow makes DeSantis’s effort[s]…seem smart.” Under new recommendations from the Texas Education Agency, Texas schools will not be required to conduct contract tracing and will not need to let parents know if a student has tested positive for the virus. If a child is a close contact of an infected student, the new guidance says they can still go to school. To borrow Reiner’s metaphor re Florida being a country the U.S. would ban travel from, if Florida and Texas were parents, we’d all be calling social services on them.

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Things could be going significantly better for Rudy Giuliani

On the bright side, he’s not yet in prison. On all the other sides, friends say he’s basically broke and Trump seems to have lost his number, according to The Daily Beast:

As Rudy Giuliani’s legal bills have piled up in recent months—and as federal investigators intensify their probe into Donald Trump’s longtime associate—the former president appears willing to provide just as much help as he usually does when his friends are in need: next to nothing. For months now, Trump has consistently ignored or rejected Giuliani’s pleas for assistance. And it’s not just that Trump and other prominent Republicans have been unwilling to open up their wallets or war chests to help offset Giuliani’s mounting legal costs; in many cases, Giuliani’s former Trumpworld comrades have declined to even acknowledge the existence of his legal defense fund, which has struggled to raise much of anything from the public.

“There have been times when I’ve asked people in the [former] president’s orbit to see if Trump wanted to draw attention to the fundraising,” said an ally and longtime associate of the former New York City mayor. “That went nowhere. Many of these people wouldn’t even tweet or retweet [links to the legal fund] when I asked them to.”

According to the Daily Beast, three sources familiar with the matter say there have been “several fruitless attempts this year by Giuliani’s camp to convince Trump to swoop in and provide significant financial support and other forms of assistance to Giuliani,” in light of the fact that Giuilani is under criminal investigation for his Ukraine dealings, which were largely at Trump’s behest. And while Trump, a known cheapskate who would probably stop talking to Ivanka if he thought she was damaging his political chances, has given Rudy every reason to butt dial a reporter and leave a long voicemail ranting about having been screwed, he apparently wouldn‘t dare do so:

According to a person with knowledge of the matter, Giuliani has reminded those close to him to not name Trump when complaining in public or on social media about how top Republicans have abandoned Giuliani in his time of distress.

“We are allowed to call out the RNC and other Republican leaders,” this person told the Daily Beast. “But not Donald Trump.”

Chuck Grassley: it‘s perfectly fine for a president to strategize re: overthrowing the government

Elsewhere!

‘A code red for humanity’: U.N. urges action to blunt a grim climate future (Washington Post)

New revelations expose future threat Trump poses (CNN)

Delta Wave Goes Coast-to-Coast in U.S., Showing Variant’s Force (Bloomberg)

Pentagon will seek mandate for vaccination of all active-duty military personnel by mid-September (Washington Post)

Andrew Cuomo’s top aide resigns amid sexual harassment scandal (Guardian)

Democrats release $3.5 trillion budget blueprint as Senate prepares to finish infrastructure debate (Washington Post)

“You Have to Let Them Do Whatever They Want”: Billionaire Leon Black Flew a Russian Model to Meet Jeffrey Epstein, New Legal Filing Claims (Hive)

Man chops through 85 kiwis in minute while on balance board (UPI)

Quentin Tarantino Says He’s Stuck to a Childhood Promise to Never Give a ‘Penny’ to His Mom (People)

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