Trump officials interfered with CDC reports on Covid-19

The health department’s politically appointed communications aides have demanded the right to review and seek changes to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s weekly scientific reports charting the progress of the coronavirus pandemic, in what officials characterized as an attempt to intimidate the reports’ authors and water down their communications to health professionals.

In some cases, emails from communications aides to CDC Director Robert Redfield and other senior officials openly complained that the agency’s reports would undermine President Donald Trump's optimistic messages about the outbreak, according to emails reviewed by POLITICO and three people familiar with the situation.

CDC officials have fought back against the most sweeping changes, but have increasingly agreed to allow the political officials to review the reports and, in a few cases, compromised on the wording, according to three people familiar with the exchanges. The communications aides’ efforts to change the language in the CDC’s reports have been constant across the summer and continued as recently as Friday afternoon.

The CDC's Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Reports are authored by career scientists and serve as the main vehicle for the agency to inform doctors, researchers and the general public about how Covid-19 is spreading and who is at risk. Such reports have historically been published with little fanfare and no political interference, said several longtime health department officials, and have been viewed as a cornerstone of the nation's public health work for decades.

But since Michael Caputo, a former Trump campaign official with no medical or scientific background, was installed in April as the health department's new spokesperson, there have been substantial efforts to align the reports with Trump's statements, including the president's claims that fears about the outbreak are overstated, or stop the reports altogether.

Caputo and his team have attempted to add caveats to the CDC's findings, including an effort to retroactively change agency reports that they said wrongly inflated the risks of Covid-19 and should have made clear that Americans sickened by the virus may have been infected because of their own behavior, according to the individuals familiar with the situation and emails reviewed by POLITICO.

Caputo's team also has tried to halt the release of some CDC reports, including delaying a report that addressed how doctors were prescribing hydroxychloroquine, the malaria drug favored by Trump as a coronavirus treatment despite scant evidence. The report, which was held for about a month after Caputo’s team raised questions about its authors’ political leanings, was finally published last week. It said that "the potential benefits of these drugs do not outweigh their risks."

In one clash, an aide to Caputo berated CDC scientists for attempting to use the reports to "hurt the President" in an Aug. 8 email sent to CDC Director Robert Redfield and other officials that was widely circulated inside the department and obtained by POLITICO.

"CDC to me appears to be writing hit pieces on the administration," appointee Paul Alexander wrote, calling on Redfield to modify two already published reports that Alexander claimed wrongly inflated the risks of coronavirus to children and undermined Trump's push to reopen schools. "CDC tried to report as if once kids get together, there will be spread and this will impact school re-opening . . . Very misleading by CDC and shame on them. Their aim is clear."

Alexander also called on Redfield to halt all future MMWR reports until the agency modified its years-old publication process so he could personally review the entire report prior to publication, rather than a brief synopsis. Alexander, an assistant professor of health research at Toronto's McMaster University whom Caputo recruited this spring to be his scientific adviser, added that CDC needed to allow him to make line edits — and demanded an "immediate stop" to the reports in the meantime.

"The reports must be read by someone outside of CDC like myself, and we cannot allow the reporting to go on as it has been, for it is outrageous. Its lunacy," Alexander told Redfield and other officials. "Nothing to go out unless I read and agree with the findings how they CDC, wrote it and I tweak it to ensure it is fair and balanced and 'complete.'"

CDC officials have fought the efforts to retroactively change reports but have increasingly allowed Caputo and his team to review them before publication, according to the three individuals with knowledge of the situation. Caputo also helped install CDC’s interim chief of staff last month, two individuals added, ensuring that Caputo himself would have more visibility into an agency that has often been at odds with HHS political officials during the pandemic.

Asked by POLITICO about why he and his team were demanding changes to CDC reports, Caputo praised Alexander as "an Oxford-educated epidemiologist" who specializes "in analyzing the work of other scientists," although he did not make him available for an interview.

"Dr. Alexander advises me on pandemic policy and he has been encouraged to share his opinions with other scientists. Like all scientists, his advice is heard and taken or rejected by his peers," Caputo said in a statement.

Caputo also said that HHS was appropriately reviewing the CDC's reports. “Our intention is to make sure that evidence, science-based data drives policy through this pandemic—not ulterior deep state motives in the bowels of CDC," he said.

Caputo's team has spent months clashing with scientific experts across the administration. Alexander this week tried to muzzle infectious-disease expert Anthony Fauci from speaking about the risks of the coronavirus to children, and The Washington Post reported in July that Alexander had criticized the CDC's methods and findings.

But public health experts told POLITICO that they were particularly alarmed that the CDC's reports could face political interference, praising the MMWRs as essential to fighting the pandemic.

"It's the go-to place for the public health community to get information that's scientifically vetted," said Jennifer Kates, who leads the Kaiser Family Foundation's global health work. In an interview with POLITICO, Kates rattled off nearly a dozen examples of MMWR reports that she and other researchers have relied on to determine how Covid-19 has spread and who's at highest risk, including reports on how the virus has been transmitted in nursing homes, at churches and among children.

"They're so important, and CDC has done so many," Kates said.

The efforts to modify the CDC reports began in earnest after a May report authored by senior CDC official Anne Schuchat, which reviewed the spread of Covid-19 in the United States and caused significant strife within the health department. HHS officials, including Secretary Alex Azar, believed that Schuchat was implying that the Trump administration moved too slowly to respond to the outbreak, said two individuals familiar with the situation.

The HHS criticism was mystifying to CDC officials, who believed that Schuchat was merely recounting the state of affairs and not rendering judgment on the response, the individuals familiar with the situation said. Schuchat has made few public appearances since authoring the report.

CDC did not respond to a request for comment about Schuchat’s report and the response within the department.

The close scrutiny continued across the summer with numerous flashpoints, the individuals added, with Caputo and other HHS officials particularly bristling about a CDC report that found the coronavirus spread among young attendees at an overnight camp in Georgia. Caputo, Alexander and others claimed that the timing of the August report was a deliberate effort to undermine the president's push on children returning to schools in the fall.

Most recently, Alexander on Friday asked CDC to change its definition of “pediatric population” for a report on coronavirus-related deaths among young Americans slated for next week, according to an email that Caputo shared with POLITICO.

“[D]esignating persons aged 18-20 as ‘pediatric’ by the CDC is misleading,” Alexander wrote, arguing that the report needed to better distinguish between Americans of different ages. “These are legal adults, albeit young.”

Caputo defended his team’s interventions as necessary to the coronavirus response. “Buried in this good [CDC] work are sometimes stories which seem to purposefully mislead and undermine the President’s Covid response with what some scientists label as poor scholarship — and others call politics disguised in science,” Caputo told POLITICO.

The battles over delaying or modifying the reports have weighed on CDC officials and been a distraction in the middle of the pandemic response, said three individuals familiar with the situation. "Dr. Redfield has pushed back on this," said one individual. "These are scientifically driven articles. He's worked to shake some of them loose."

Kates, the Kaiser Family Foundation's global health expert, defended the CDC's process as rigorous and said that there was no reason for politically appointed officials to review the work of scientists. “MMWRs are famously known for being very clear about their limitations as well as being clear for what they've found," she said.

Kates also said that the CDC reports have played an essential role in combating epidemics for decades, pointing to an MMWR posted in 1981 — the first published report on what became the HIV epidemic.

“Physicians recognized there was some kind of pattern and disseminated it around the country and the world,” Kates said. “We can now see how important it was to have that publication, in that moment.”

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NY man finds escaped inmate hiding under sheet in living room

‘I’ve been here for fifteen years and nothing like this has ever happened.’

A 19-year-old federal inmate in Brooklyn is back in custody after police found him hiding under a sheet in a man’s living room following a daring escape. 

Police say Jhonny Soto was arrested in Queens on Monday for possessing an illegal firearm that had the manufacturer’s serial number removed. FBI agents were transporting him to the Metropolitan Detention Center in Brooklyn on Wednesday when he managed to give them the slip, setting off an hours-long manhunt, ABC7 reports.

Law enforcement put the neighborhood near Fourth Avenue in Sunset Park on alert to keep an eye out for Soto.  

Read More: R. Kelly allegedly attacked by inmate inside Chicago jail

Local resident Stephanie Tatsis told reporters that when she spotted the fugitive with his hands still shackled in her mother-in-law’s back yard, she chased him off with a meat cleaver and called 911.

“He was already on our porch, so I grabbed the meat cleaver and I chased him off the house,” Stefanie Tatsis said, CBS New York reports. “He jumped over and he started doing his jumping over each yard to try to find his escape.”

Tatsis added, “He definitely looked like he was up to no good.”

Hours later, 62-year-old Terry Pierson noticed an “odd lump” underneath a sheet over his weaving loom. 

“I grabbed my flashlight, moved the sheet and there’s a face looking back at me. He’s been sitting behind my chair for three hours,” Pierson told reporters. “I went running that way for the police that I knew were in the backyard, hollering, ‘He’s in there, he’s in there.’”

Police rushed in and apprehended Soto.

The FBI confirmed that he is back in custody.

Pierson believes Soto gained access to his home by breaking a screen door in the back of the house. 

“I’ve been here for fifteen years and nothing like this has ever happened,” he said.

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The West is on fire. It took Trump 3 weeks to mention it

OAKLAND — California and the West have been on fire, but President Donald Trump went more than three weeks without mentioning it.

During that time, Trump tweeted, golfed, held news conferences and appeared at campaign rallies. He visited Louisiana in late August after Hurricane Laura killed 27 people, saying he wanted "to support the great people of Louisiana, it's been a tremendous state for me."

But as wildfires ravaged Western states with a similar number of deaths, Trump waited until Friday night to reference it publicly after coming under growing criticism for his silence.

"THANK YOU to the 28,000+ Firefighters and other First Responders who are battling wildfires across California, Oregon, and Washington," he wrote. "I have approved 37 Stafford Act Declarations, including Fire Management Grants to support their brave work. We are with them all the way!"

The Trump administration has behind the scenes approved emergency declarations and pledged federal relief to states trying to contain fast-moving fires. California Gov. Gavin Newsom said he spoke to Trump for 30 minutes Thursday, a conversation that included specifics about the North Complex Fire where 10 people were found dead this week.

But West Coast residents wondered why he didn't use his presidential bullhorn to summon support from Americans — except once to blame the state for not taking care of its forests.

Last month, when California was under siege by hundreds of lightning-caused fires, Trump held up the state as an example of liberal excess in a speech to Pennsylvania rallygoers. “I see again the forest fires are starting," he told supporters. “I said, you gotta clean your floors, you gotta clean your forests — there are many, many years of leaves and broken trees and they’re like, like, so flammable, you touch them and it goes up."

Across the West, 42 large fires have put more than 28,000 firefighters and support personnel on the front lines to contain damage as 4.5 million acres have burned, according to the National Interagency Fire Center. A dry winter, record heat, lightning strikes and high winds have combined to create perfect conditions for fire to spread.

While California has drawn the most attention in recent years, Oregon and Washington this month have also suffered from a staggering scale of devastation that has put entire towns in danger as tens of thousands were ordered to evacuate. In southern Oregon, about 25 miles north of the California border, entire blocks of homes were razed by fire in the towns of Phoenix and Talent. In eastern Washington, the local sheriff said wildfires left Malden as a "moonscape," according to the New York Times.

In California, the North Complex Fire has been raging for weeks and erupted this month when winds swept through Northern California. So far, 10 people have died and others remain missing in Butte County, the same region where the town of Paradise was decimated in late 2018 in the state's deadliest fire.

Further south, about 200 people had to be airlifted by National Guard helicopters over Labor Day weekend from a Sierra Nevada region near Yosemite National Park — and some were told their best chance for survival was to jump in the nearby reservoir.

Meanwhile, West Coast residents hundreds of miles away choked under orange skies, blankets of thick smoke and raining ash, as the National Weather Service warned of unhealthy breathing conditions for millions.

"Still no word from Trump, the self-proclaimed savior of the suburbs," tweeted liberal activist Amy Siskind, referencing threatened and destroyed neighborhoods in Oregon earlier this week. Slate's Mark Joseph Stern blamed it on the Electoral College, which "allows — indeed, encourages — Trump to ignore California's wildfire crisis because he knows he cannot win the state."

On Thursday, the White House approved Oregon's request for an emergency declaration in response — but only after 1 in 8 Oregonians were advised to flee their homes as Gov. Kate Brown said September firestorms are likely to be the deadliest in Oregon history.

Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden said Thursday on Twitter, "The images coming out of California, Oregon, Washington, and other Western states are truly horrifying. If you’re in an impacted area, please heed the warnings from your local authorities and stay safe. Jill and I are keeping you all in our prayers."

Vice President Mike Pence mentioned on Fox News Thursday that his daughter and son-in-law live in California — and that he wanted to assure firefighters, business and homeowners that they’ll have the federal government’s support.

Trump, however, kept his fire discussions private. Newsom gave further details during a visit to the North Complex Fire region on Friday. He said the Trump administration issued a major disaster declaration last month that has helped provide business and local government support, as well as emergency relief to evacuees and victims.

“We walked through the current status report on the active fires the larger complexes," Newsom said. "We actually specifically talked about Butte County and some of the recovery efforts from the campfire. And he reinforced his commitment to our effort, and we were grateful.’’

The Trump administration last month also reached a deal with Newsom to treat 500,000 wooded acres a year in California forestland — the majority of which the federal government is responsible for.

If anything, it has seemed like a missed opportunity for Trump to appear presidential during a fall campaign stretch in which voters are questioning such credentials — particularly after his handling of coronavirus, which has killed more than 190,000 Americans.

“As horrible as it sounds, natural disasters are almost always a positive political opportunity,’’ said Sean Walsh, former communications director for Gov. Pete Wilson and a Bush and Reagan White House insider. “At a minimum, you can project empathy — people are suffering and people care when you care about them,’’ a message that would resonate in a huge swath of the West this week, not only in California but also Oregon and Washington.

In addition, the president has at his disposal huge federal resources, Walsh noted, “and the mere fact of deploying those resources is another positive note you send to people" where there's a disaster.

Walsh suggested that the reality for the White House may be as basic as “out of sight, out of mind.’’ He noted that Beltway media in recent weeks have been fixated on major revelations on the White House, first in the Atlantic last week about Trump reportedly disparaging military members in private, then with Washington Post reporter Bob Woodward's new book, "Rage," with new details about what the president knew when about coronavirus.

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Louis Vuitton charging nearly $1,000 for designer face shield

While stylish, the full face shield is not an effective source of protection against the coronavirus.

Louis Vuitton has unveiled a light sensitive face shield that will go on sale in late October for nearly $1,000.

The full face mask is part of the label’s 2021 Cruise Collection, and is described as “an eye-catching headpiece, both stylish and protective,” according to a news release, per Vanity Fair.

The LV Shield is photochromatic, allowing it to transform from clear to dark when in direct sunlight. The shield can also be flipped up and turned into a hat, USA Today reports.

Read More: Naomi Osaka wears Trayvon Martin mask at US Open: ‘Things have to change’

Louis Vuitton has denied that pricing is listed at $961, noting that no price has been announced yet, according to Business Insider. 

The face shield features monogram-trim, gold studs and an elastic head-strap engraved with the brand’s signature logo. While stylish, the LV full face shield is not an effective source of protection against the coronavirus.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) does not recommend the use of face shields amid the pandemic, as they are primarily used for “eye protection for the person wearing it.”

“At this time, it is not known what level of protection a face shield provides to people nearby from the spray of respiratory droplets from the wearer,” the CDC said. “There is currently not enough evidence to support the effectiveness of face shields for source control.”

According to Dr. David Edwards of Harvard University, plastic face coverings are “particularly effective” at blocking airborne respiratory particles, as they don’t completely cover the face.

“With smaller particles, they don’t travel like bullets, they hover in the air and below that face shield you’re still breathing in that air,” Edwards told PEOPLE.

Twitter

While there are some “pros” to wearing shields, the CDC recommends wearing masks to prevent the spread of the potentially deadly COVID-19 contagion. 

“From a purely scientific point of view, if you asked me, a surgical grade mask versus a shield, I would wear a mask,” said Edwards. 

The CDC says “face shield wearers should wash their hands before and after removing the face shield and avoid touching their eyes, nose and mouth when removing it.”

Louis Vuitton is the latest luxury brand offering high-end face coverings. Burberry announced its $120 face masks last month.

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Appeals court OKs Florida law forcing felons to pay off fees before voting

TALLAHASSEE — A federal appeals court on Friday ruled against felons in Florida seeking to restore their voting rights without first paying off court debts and fees, finding that a 2019 state law designed to curtail a successful ballot measure still created a clear path to the ballot box.

The 6-4 ruling by the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals is another victory for Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis, who opposed lifting Florida’s lifetime ban on voting for felons. The law calls for felons to include the exact amount the in court costs they owe when they apply to vote with the Florida Department of State. Critics of the law argued that determining the costs was difficult, if not impossible. But the appellate panel determined Florida was within its rights under the federal due process clause.

“States are constitutionally entitled to set legitimate voter qualifications through laws of general application and to require voters to comply with those laws through their own efforts,” Chief Judge William Pryor wrote in the majority opinion.

Florida’s judicial system includes 20 circuit courts and 67 county courts. Most court records are independently maintained by a locally elected county clerk and not kept in a state-level repository. In a dissent, Judge Adalberto Jordan asked how the law expects felons to restore their rights if the state has no concrete method, such as a centralized resource for convictions, to confirm the debt they have to settle first.

“How can this system possibly encourage or incentivize felons to complete the terms of their sentences?” Jordan wote. “There is no answer, because no answer is possible.”

The legal fight centers around whether the law clashes with Amendment 4, a ballot initiative approved in 2018 with 65 percent of the vote. The ballot measure gave back voting rights to convicted felons after they completed all terms of a criminal sentence including imprisonment, probation and payment of any fines, fees, costs and restitution. Felons and civil rights groups challenged the requirement as a poll tax.

Desmond Meade, executive director of the Florida Rights Restoration Coalition, called the ruling a blow to democracy and the hundreds of thousands of people who would have an opportunity to vote in the November election.

"We will continue to place people over politics,” said Meade, who also led the successful Amendment 4 campaign. “We will not rest until we live up to the promise of Amendment 4 and see every one of the 1.4 million returning citizens who want to be a part of our democracy have the opportunity to do so.”

Meade said people can join the fight by donating cash to his Fines & Fees Program, which will cover court costs on behalf of felons who want to vote. The program has raised more than $4 million and has attracted high-profile donors such as retired basketball legend Michael Jordan. Earlier this summer, More Than A Vote, a group established by basketball player LeBron James and others in the wake of George Floyd's killing in Minneapolis, announced plans to donate $100,000 to help pay outstanding court debts of felons so they can register.

A collection of felons and voting and civil rights groups sued DeSantis and state election officials over the law. And in May, U.S. District Court Judge Robert Hinkle struck down most of it as an unconstitutional “pay to vote” scheme. DeSantis subsequently petitioned to overturn Hinkle’s ruling, and the appeals court held oral arguments in August. The bench is mostly judges appointed by President Donald Trump, and the court put Hinkle’s decision on hold as it considered an appeal.

Friday’s ruling will leave thousands of felons off Florida’s voting rolls on Election Day. Sean Morales-Doyle, deputy director of the Voting Rights and Elections Program at the Brennan Center for Justice at the New York University School of Law called it a historic mistake that has people with past convictions from a fundamental right.

“It tells the State of Florida that it’s legitimate to put a price tag on voting,” Morales-Doyle wrote in a statement. “Worse, the Court says it’s okay to do so even when Black Floridians owe more than their white counterparts, and even when many can’t even determine how much they owe and to whom.”

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