On Politics: Biden Ventures Out – The New York Times

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Where things stand

• Joe Biden on Monday made his first (non-virtual) public appearance since he began sheltering in place in March. Appearing alongside his wife, Jill Biden, in matching black masks, he laid a wreath at a Delaware veterans memorial in commemoration of the holiday. “It feels good to be out of my house,” Biden told reporters. “Never forget the sacrifices that these men and women made. Never, ever, forget.” There was no formal ceremony; it was a fittingly understated return to the public eye for a candidate who has been lying low throughout the coronavirus pandemic, reappearing only here and there to give televised interviews. Even still, Biden cut a sharp contrast with President Trump, who appeared mask-less at Memorial Day events at Arlington National Cemetery and Fort McHenry National Monument; the president appeared at Fort McHenry, in Baltimore, in spite of comments from the city’s mayor, Bernard C. Young, urging him to cancel the visit.

• If Biden’s holiday weekend closed with solemn observances, it started quite a bit differently: with an unruly interview on Friday with Charlamagne Tha God, the talk-show host and hip-hop radio D.J., in which Biden often shouted down his interviewer and finished the conversation with an unforced gaffe. After parrying a series of frank, often confrontational questions, Biden took exception when Charlamagne said he would look forward to asking “more questions” in later interviews. Biden retorted: “If you have a problem figuring out whether you’re for me or Trump, then you ain’t black.” The comments drew an immediate backlash, and Biden apologized later that day, saying, “I shouldn’t have been such a wise guy.”

• Speaking to MSNBC’s Joy Reid on Sunday, Charlamagne warned that Biden might be taking black voters for granted. “The apology is cool, but the best apology is actually a black agenda,” he said. “On top of possible Russian interference and voter suppression, Dems have to worry about voter depression, and that’s people staying home on Election Day because they just aren’t enthused by the candidate.” But he told my colleague Annie Karni that Trump had no shot at winning over his vote.

• Trump urged governors on Friday to exempt churches and other places of worship from stay-at-home orders, saying the pandemic shouldn’t keep people stuck at home any longer. “The governors need to do the right thing and allow these very important, essential places of faith to open right now,” he said at a quickly arranged news conference. The issue may soon be decided by the Supreme Court: On Sunday, a Southern California church asked the justices to hear its appeal of a lower court’s decision forcing it to abide by the state’s stay-at-home order. The Democratic governor, Gavin Newsom, is following a multi-step process to return California to normal activity; churches are currently required to remain closed.

• The president is threatening to take the “N.C.” out of “R.N.C.” (Or, technically speaking, vice versa.) In a series of tweets that drove at the partisan divide over reopening, Trump warned on Monday that Republicans might move their national convention, scheduled for August in Charlotte, N.C. Trump said Roy Cooper, the state’s Democratic governor, was in a “Shutdown mood,” and lamented that Cooper was “unable to guarantee that by August we will be allowed full attendance” at the Spectrum Center. The Democratic National Committee has laid out a series of contingency plans for a scaled-back convention in response to the pandemic, and Republicans are quietly working to do the same, though Trump has not publicly endorsed the idea of a pared-down convention.

Photo of the day

Former Vice President Joe Biden, with his wife, Jill Biden, laid a wreath at Veterans Memorial Park at the Delaware Memorial Bridge in New Castle.

Trump’s new testing strategy isn’t heavy on strategy. Our reporter Apoorva Mandavilli explains.

The White House sent Congress a nationwide virus testing strategy on Sunday that more or less rejects the idea that a national strategy is needed at all.

The document, which the Trump administration was required to submit by a stimulus bill passed last month, puts into writing two things that the administration had long made clear. First, it remains states’ responsibility to figure out how to acquire and administer tests. Second, the president thinks that enough tests are already available, despite many governors’ and health officials’ statements to the contrary.

Democratic leaders responded on Monday, saying the White House’s report was an attempt to “reject responsibility and dump the burden onto the states,” and accusing Trump of trying to “paint a rosy picture about testing while experts continue to warn the country is far short of what we need.”

Our science and global health reporter Apoorva Mandavilli covered the news, and she agreed to answer a few questions for us, explaining what this report will (and won’t) do to help states address testing shortfalls.

Hi, Apoorva. What exactly does this report signify?

The Trump administration said last month that it considered the states responsible for setting and meeting testing goals and for coming up with an overall testing strategy that works for each state. With this report, it’s making that stance official. It’s telling the states: We’ll support and encourage you, and even provide some supplies, but ultimately this is your responsibility. And that sets up an everyone-for-themselves, “Hunger Games”-style competition between states.

Doesn’t it make sense for each state to identify and manage its own public health needs?

To a certain extent, yes. States have always managed their own public health, but they have traditionally received enormous amounts of guidance and support from the federal government. So they have not had to develop a ton of expertise on their own. This move essentially represents the federal government “walking away from that partnership in the middle of a pandemic,” Dr. Ashish Jha, director of the Harvard Global Health Institute, told me. States also can’t negotiate international supply chains on their own.

What about the testing numbers?

The report also said that by focusing only on people likely to be positive, the country should be able to get by with 300,000 tests a day. There are no epidemiologists I know of who would agree with that. Most models suggest at least a million tests per day, ranging up to as many as 100 million, depending on whether you want to just bring down the number of infections a little or suppress the outbreak entirely.

Attend a virtual Times event: Women in the public spotlight

The fighters of the suffrage movement frequently flouted laws and norms about how women were expected to behave in public in order to achieve the passage of the 19th Amendment.

Today’s public spotlight looks very different. How do modern women in the public eye draw on the lessons of the past to make a better present and future? What barriers have they felt, broken, ignored and challenged? Join us on Tuesday as we search for answers.

Special guests include Representative Debra Haaland of New Mexico and Reshma Saujani, founder and chief executive of Girls Who Code and author of “Brave, Not Perfect.” Hosted by Monica Drake, assistant managing editor of The Times.

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