During a press briefing this Wednesday, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis joined Miami-Dade Mayor Carlos Gimenez, and Miami Beach Mayor Dan Gelber to give an update on the state's efforts against the coronavirus outbreak.
Throughout the briefing, some viewers were puzzled as to why DeSantis wore one sterile glove on his left hand, only to use the ungloved hand to periodically touch his face.
Last week, some Republicans in Florida admitted that former Gov. Rick Scott had intentionally made it more difficult for residents in his state to receive unemployment benefits as a way to artificially keep unemployment statistics low.
“It’s a sh*t sandwich, and it was designed that way by Scott,” one adviser to current Republican Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis told Politico. “It wasn’t about saving money. It was about making it harder for people to get benefits or keep benefits so that the unemployment numbers were low to give the governor something to brag about.”
Another DeSantis adviser said that "the system was designed to fail," which wasn't as big of a problem when unemployment was low, but is now a massive problem with millions of Americans losing their jobs.
ABC News has now posted aerial footage from southern Florida showing massive numbers of people standing in line to receive paper unemployment applications because the online system has completely crashed.
The footage shows many people waiting in line are wearing protective masks and gloves, but they are also not standing six feet apart from one another as recommended by social distancing guidelines designed to slow the spread of COVID-19.
On Tuesday, Politico reported that election officials in Florida are warning GOP Gov. Ron DeSantis that the state desperately needs changes to its election laws — or the coronavirus pandemic could cause a "presidential election meltdown."
"The county officials — who issued the red alert on the same day Wisconsin held a disastrous primary amid widespread fears and irregularities due to the coronavirus — said the changes are needed to accommodate more absentee ballot voters, who could be scared away from the polls if the coronavirus outbreak persists into the August primary or the November general election," wrote Gary Fineout.
Levy County election supervisor Tammy Jones, president of the Florida Supervisors of Elections, warned that "Florida is not in a position, at this time, to conduct an all-mail ballot election this year."
"In the March 17 presidential primary, Jones said, supervisors had trouble keeping poll workers, were forced to move polling locations and had difficulty keeping a supply of hand sanitizer available. More than 3 million voters cast ballots," wrote Fineout. "Two poll workers in Broward County, an area prone to elections debacles, contracted the coronavirus."
Among the changes requested by supervisors is to allow 22 days of early voting, with polls open all the way up until Election Day.
DeSantis, who has come under fire for his delays in issuing a statewide shelter-in-place order, has not yet responded to these requests.
While the coronavirus pandemic is a national and international concern, state and local officials find themselves on the front lines of the public health battle.
Governors, in particular, have been in the spotlight in recent weeks. New York’s Andrew Cuomo has been praised by news outlets for his leadership at the epicenter of the U.S. outbreak, while others have been criticized for slow responses.
A clear partisan gap has emerged in how quickly governors have declared emergencies and issue stay-at-home orders. Democratic governors have issued orders three to four days sooner than Republican governors, on average.
Timing pivotal
We study state governments, including their interactions with the federal government. Our previous work on federalism and state politics has identified partisan conflict between national, state and local government. Federalism is the distribution of power and authority across levels of government, and partisan conflict involves disagreements and competition between political parties. Partisan conflict over policy is nothing new.
But the coronavirus has put some governors in an ideologically compromising position. Republicans, who traditionally advocated for states’ rights, now find themselves deferring to the federal government.
Based on a review of emergency declarations, we found that the median date for instituting a state of emergency for Democratic governors was March 10, and for Republican governors, March 13.
Although stay-at-home orders have only been issued in 41 states as of April 4, a similar trend is emerging there.
So far, all 24 Democratic governors have issued such an order with a median date of March 24. On the other hand, only 17 of 26 Republican governors have, and of those the median date is March 30.
Most governors used boilerplate language citing public health experts in their announcements. But some evidence shows that Republican governors were responding to leadership from President Donald Trump, who largely downplayed the severity of the pandemic for weeks, which discouraged governors from taking actions that contradicted the leader of their party. For instance, on March 7, he said “I’m not concerned at all,” and on March 10 he claimed “it will go away. Just stay calm.”
Additionally, nearly half of Republican governors declared emergencies on the same day – March 13 – that the president declared a national emergency, and a few have explicitly cited Trump as a reason behind their decisions.
Georgia Republican Gov. Brian Kemp said, “Based on President Trump’s emergency declaration, I will declare a public health emergency.”
Florida’s Ron DeSantis, a Republican who had resisted issuing a stay-at-home order despite mounting pressure from public health officials and the media, cited the shift in Trump’s tone and demeanor as the signal it was time to issue a stay-at-home order to contain the pandemic in his state.
Michigan Democratic Gov. Gretchen Whitmer declared a state of emergency on March 10.
Trump’s net approval – the portion of survey respondents approving of Trump’s job performance minus the portion disapproving –
in states with Republican governors that declared emergencies before March 13 averages +1; in Republican states declaring emergencies on or after March 13, it averages +8. For Democratic states, Trump’s net approval averages -9 before March 13, and -10 on or after March 13. Clearly, Trump’s net approval is important to the Republican governors.
Ohio’s Mike DeWine was the first governor to call for a statewide closure of schools on March 12, and Maryland’s Larry Hogan, who has been vocal in criticizing the White House’s leadership, was the first Republican governor to declare an emergency, on March 5. Trump’s net approval in Ohio is 0 and in Maryland, -24.
Partisan conflict evident
In contrast, Democratic governors have advocated for more aggressive response efforts at both state and federal levels.
In addition to Andrew Cuomo, who has become a key figure in recent weeks, Michigan’s Gretchen Whitmer has traded jabs with the president. New Jersey’s Phil Murphy has called for a “postmortem” on the federal response to understand why it has gone so wrong.
While conflict between political parties is usually most visible in Congress, the coronavirus has put partisan conflict between the president and governors on full display as federal and state governments try to contain this pandemic.
"Last Week Tonight" host John Oliver told Stephen Colbert in an interview that filming his show during the shutdown has been difficult because he has technological issues. He described it as being akin to a civilian being forced to land a plane. But the host managed to make it through to bash President Donald Trump, son-in-law Jared Kushner, and the governors of Alabama, Georgia, and Florida.
Oliver began by attacking Trump for praising himself for only 200,000 people, likely dying of coronavirus in the U.S. instead of millions.
"OK, setting aside the fact that leading disease forecasters are mystified at how Trump got to those numbers, trying to spin 200,000 deaths as a good job because it's not millions, is the most callous way to minimize the deaths of Americans imaginable," Oliver said. "Were it not for the fact that Trump responded to 9/11 on 9/11 by pointing out that he used to own the second tallest building in downtown Manhattan, now he owns the tallest. And the thing is, that wasn't just offensive, it wasn't even true."
Oliver then proceeded to hashtag his statement with #OurPresidentIsAnIndescribableDick.
The host moved on to discuss the failures of Jared Kushner, who argued that states shouldn't depend on a federal stockpile of medical supplies because it was for the federal government's use, not for the states. The website of the stockpile described it as being used for the states, but once it was pointed out to Kushner, the website was promptly changed.
"Wait, our stockpile? It's not your stockpile!" Oliver exclaimed. "It's a national stockpile for use by the United States you f*cking moron. And here's the interesting thing about the United States, it's almost entirely made of states. There's states everywhere. I'd say more than 40 of them, Jared. And some of them badly need supplies right now, like the city you used to live in, and I pray you never show your f*cking face again."
Oliver then moved on to shred Republican Govs. Ron DeSantis (FL), Brian Kemp (GA), and Kay Ivey (AL) for their failed response to the coronavirus threat in their states. He singled out Kemp for being so ill-informed that he didn't know that asymptomatic people could transmit COVID-19, a fact Oliver noted was known as far back as February. He ripped DeSantis for allowing a reckless right-wing pastor in Tampa to hold his megachurch services to infect more people. Finally, he blasted Ivey for being so clueless about her state's coronavirus cases that she doesn't even understand her state has a higher growth of coronavirus cases than California.
Appearing remotely with MSNBC host Stephanie Ruhle, Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL) was abruptly cut off by the host after he tried to put a positive spin on the too-late response by Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) to the coronavirus pandemic that is currently devastating his state.
Following a discussion on the difficulties the administration is having getting funds to needy small businesses, the MSNBC host abruptly changed gears and asked, "Can we talk about your state of Florida?"
"It's one of the last states -- not all the states have participated -- one of the most recent to issue this stay-at-home order. What in the world is going on down there?" she asked. "You have a whole lot of senior citizens and, last I checked, they're pretty high risk."
"Yeah, so let me say one thing," Rubio attempted. "I think for all practical purposes, we were in a stay-at-home order. Virtually every county in the state, had restrictions in place, perhaps with the exception of --."
"Senator come on now -- stop it. You and --" Ruhle cut in only to have Rubio protest, "No, I'm serious."
"Okay, sir, hold on. Those handfuls of counties don't have -- but fine, wait," she began before he tried to interrupt her again. "Those handfuls of counties don't have walls around them. You and I both saw pictures of partiers on beaches jamming on it, right? They're not bound by those counties, they can get all over the state, come on."
"Yeah, that was two or three weeks ago," the Florida Republican replied. "Those are not recent images and all of the counties that those videos reflect have closed beaches or the cities themselves. What I'm trying to say is just because you didn't have a stay-at-home order doesn't mean people weren't staying at home. There were orders and virtually all of southeast Florida had these orders, Duval County, central Florida had these orders. About a week and a half ago, all the Tampa Bay region had these orders."
"That said, I think the governor made the right decision to implement that statewide because it creates a level of uniformity and -- but the governor has -- his preference is to defer to the local level," he added.
Republicans admitted Florida's unemployment system was "designed to fail" -- and then whined about their election chances now that the system was overwhelmed by thousands of suddenly jobless people.
The U.S. economy collapsed under the weight of the coronavirus outbreak that's nowhere near abating, and Florida Republicans are forming a circular firing squad now that unemployed workers are finding the "Connect" system was purposefully designed to discourage new claims to keep jobless numbers down.
“Everyone we talk to in that office when we ask them what happened tells us, ‘the system was designed to fail,’” one adviser to Gov. Ron DeSantis told Politico. “That’s not a problem when unemployment is 2.8 percent, but it’s a problem now. And no system we have can handle 25,000 people a day.”
The system was implemented by former Gov. Rick Scott, now a GOP senator, and the state's Republican-led legislature, which promised business groups Connect would grant them tax breaks while delivering just $275 in unemployment benefits to jobless workers for a maximum of 12 weeks.
Their admissions and blame-shifting sparked fury across social media.
Republicans are furious that Florida's broken unemployment system was working exactly as former Gov. Rick Scott intended -- and it could help kill President Donald Trump's re-election chances.
The coronavirus outbreak has sent thousands of suddenly unemployed workers to the state's byzantine system to apply for help, and Republicans privately admit the $77.9 million system was designed to discourage jobless claims to keep numbers low after the great recession, reported Politico.
“It’s a sh*t sandwich, and it was designed that way by Scott,” said one advisor to Gov. Ron DeSantis. “It wasn’t about saving money. It was about making it harder for people to get benefits or keep benefits so that the unemployment numbers were low to give the governor something to brag about.”
Jobless Floridians are encountering dropped calls and busy signals in the Department of Economic Opportunity's "Connect" system, and even those who get through are finding they'll get just $275 a week for a maximum of 12 weeks.
“Everyone we talk to in that office when we ask them what happened tells us, ‘the system was designed to fail,’” one DeSantis adviser told Politico. “That’s not a problem when unemployment is 2.8 percent, but it’s a problem now, and no system we have can handle 25,000 people a day.”
The system was implemented on the promise that it would lower unemployment taxes for Florida businesses, and a 2011 analysis by the state legislature estimated the changes would save business owners more than $2.3 billion between 2011 and 2020 -- but the COVID-19 outbreak has exposed its deficiencies and made it a political liability.
“This is horrible for people, I don’t want to minimize that,” the DeSantis adviser said. “But if we have to look past the crisis, it’s bad for the president and it’s bad for the governor.”
A virus-hit cruise ship with dozens of ill passengers and crew docked in Florida on Thursday after being barred from several South American countries, concluding a harrowing time at sea for those stranded aboard.
The Zaandam, operated by Holland America Line, tied up at Port Everglades in Fort Lauderdale, and its sister ship the Rotterdam was not far behind.
Their arrival comes after days of protracted negotiations about whether they should be allowed to enter Florida, and how they could safely dock and disembark -- as concerns mounted for the passengers.
Four people have died on the Zaandam, for reasons not yet disclosed.
"We are so happy to be able to get our guests home and assist those few who need additional medical services," said Holland America president Orlando Ashford.
"These travelers could have been any one of us or our families, unexpectedly caught in the middle of this unprecedented closure of global borders that happened in a matter of days and without warning."
All told, 107 passengers and 143 crew reported flu-like symptoms during the voyage, but many have since recovered.
A total of 14 people -- 13 passengers and one crew member -- are to be taken to a hospital in Florida, officials said.
"We have one hospital that is able to take some of the critically ill. They have the capacity to do that," said Florida's Republican governor, Ron DeSantis.
Long voyage
A total of 1,250 passengers and 1,186 crew members were stranded at sea on the Zaandam and the Rotterdam, which came to its sister ship's aid last week, loaded with supplies.
DeSantis initially said he did not want the ships to dock, for fear the ill passengers would tax the state's already strained health care system.
With more than 8,000 coronavirus cases and at least 128 deaths, the Sunshine State -- home to many retirees -- has the fifth-most cases in the United States.
But late Wednesday, DeSantis changed his tune, telling Fox News that he had not realized there were US citizens involved.
"We actually have Floridians" aboard the Zaandam, he said.
President Donald Trump had said the ships needed to be evacuated, saying: "We have to help the people. They're in big trouble."
Fort Lauderdale Mayor Dean Trantalis said Holland America, which is owned by Carnival, had agreed to a "strict set of protocols" governing how the passengers would disembark.
"It's all going to be done in ways that are not going to expose the people of Florida to any of the illnesses that may be on there," DeSantis told Fox News on Thursday.
Most of the passengers are expected to be deemed "fit for travel" after health checks, and will return home through a combination of charter flights and private cars.
They will be "transported in coaches that will be sanitized, with limited person-to-person contact and while wearing masks," Holland America said Wednesday.
Several dozen more with mild symptoms will remain aboard in isolation until they recover.
Trump said he was working with British and Canadian authorities to repatriate their nationals who are on the cruise liners.
'Good to be back'
The desperate situation aboard the Zaandam attracted worldwide publicity, but several ships are seeking permission to dock at Port Everglades.
Princess Cruises announced that its Coral Princess had requested clearance, and would arrive in Florida on or about Saturday -- with 12 confirmed COVID-19 cases on board.
The Zaandam, which left Buenos Aires on March 7, was originally meant to finish the trip in Chile on March 21 but changed course due to the virus outbreak.
After negotiations while the ships waited in waters off Panama, it and the Rotterdam were allowed to transit the Panama Canal in order to head to Florida.
Rick De Pinho, a 53-year-old attorney, and his wife were among those passengers transferred to the Rotterdam because they were healthy.
"Good to be back," a jubilant De Pinho told AFP after their ship docked in Florida.
Just after signing a statewide stay-at-home order this Wednesday, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis signed a second order taking away the power of local governments to add any additional limitations to the order.
"For reasons I can't fathom, the governor is using his power to remove safe guards that Hillsborough County and other counties have put in place to save lives," Hillsborough County State Attorney Andrew Warren said, according to the Tampa Bay Times.
While the second order was purportedly intended to "provide clarity," it's a direct contradiction to the order DeSantis signed just 5 hours earlier. During the publicly aired press conference regarding the initial order, DeSantis made no mention of the second.
"Local government officials expressed outrage that DeSantis is now overriding their decisions," writes the Tampa Bay Times' Steve Contorno. "Many counties and cities passed local stay-at-home orders that closely adhered to advice from public health experts on how to halt the spread of the virus."
According to The Blaze, Owens is looking for a race she can run in. It's not clear if she is looking at a federal congressional seat, a state House or Senate seat, a county supervisor, city council, or school board, but she knows she'll win it. Whatever the seat is.
"I'll tell you something else, Glenn, I'll win," she said. "They won't know what hit them ... they're being dishonest, and they lie, and I've had enough of it."
Owens grew up in Connecticut so it's unknown if she'll go back to her hometown or become a carpetbagger for another state in the country.
"You know, I was talking to my husband about this, and my frustration about all these governors and how dishonest they've been ... I'm just getting sick of it," Owens said about gubernatorial actions in the coronavirus crisis. "So I said I said to my husband, you know, I think I should get into politics. I think I should run. I should surprise run, and take somebody for everything they have, and expose people."
If Owens is displeased with the lack of a response by governors, she could run against Gov. Ron DeSantis (R-FL), Brian Kemp (R-GA) or Tate Reeves (R-MS) and attack them on their slow responses to a public health crisis. That said, she also advocated for everything to stay open.
Conservative Washington Post columnist Jennifer Rubin can't understand why President Donald Trump is always the last one to know or understand something. With so many experts at his fingertips, one would assume that the president of the United States would be the most informed American on any issue facing the country. Yet, somehow Trump is always the last to know and the last to understand.
Rubin compared Trump to Gov. Andrew Cuomo (D-NY), along with almost every other governor, "except the bumbling Ron DeSantis of Florida," and arguably Govs. Brian Kemp (R-GA), Tate Reeves (R-MS) and Kevin Stitt (R-OK).
"At his or her daily news conference, you will see someone in command of the facts," Rubin wrote of Cuomo, noting he knows the number of infections, patients, beds, ventilators and discharged people. She explained it's clear he has a sense of his mission.
Meanwhile, Vanity Fair reported Wednesday that Trump son-in-law Jared Kushner claimed he knows more than the experts.
"'I have all this data about ICU capacity. I’m doing my own projections, and I’ve gotten a lot smarter about this. New York doesn’t need all the ventilators,' Kushner said, according to a person present."
Even RealClearPolitics explained that as of March 18, one out of every four people with a confirmed cases of coronavirus has been hospitalized, and 44 percent of those people need a ventilator. It's unclear why Kushner can't do the math, but it translated into the president suggesting a conspiracy is afoot.
"In one way or another, governors are trying to expand the capacities of their health-care systems and use social distancing to slow the progress of infection," Rubin explained. "Many are begging the feds to be the purchaser of scarce equipment so the 50 states and the Federal Emergency Management Agency aren’t bidding against one another."
The contrast between the likes of Cuomo and Gov. Gavin Newsom (D-CA) with Trump is stark, and it should "shock and appall us," Rubin said.
This week, Trump said that his thinking had changed because of the severity of the issue.
“I think also in looking at the way that the contagion is so contagious, nobody’s ever seen anything like this where large groups of people all of a sudden have it just by being in the presence of somebody who has it. The flu has never been like that. . . . Also the violence of it if it hits the right person," Trump told the press during Wednesday's briefing.
"The contagion is so contagious. That’s the president of the United States," Rubin mocked.
"He was warned by experts for weeks that this was highly contagious and that this was not the ordinary flu," Rubin recalled. "Apparently, he was either not listening or did not understand that “just by being in the presence of somebody who has it” the contagion can, well, be contagious. The mind reels."
Even Vice President Mike Pence is only slightly better.
During Wednesday's press conference, Pence clearly didn't know or understand that there are Americans without health insurance. As 6.6 million Americans file unemployment claims, those people also lost their health insurance, if they had it to begin with.
"You would think the president and vice president’s abject ignorance would be a source of embarrassment," Rubin closed. "Nope. They are locked in the right-wing media disinformation bubble. They find out details under duress. Only when things go very badly and their experts are forced to confess bad news do they grudgingly move into the real world. The change in 'tone' that too many gullible reporters coo about is the point at which Trump’s lies, disinformation and self-delusion can no longer be sustained. No wonder he looks deflated."
Rep. Donna Shalala (D-FL) on Thursday tore into Trump-loving Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis for his handling of the COVID-19 pandemic.
While appearing on CNN, Shalala hammered DeSantis for being unwilling to take in non-Florida residents --including many American citizens -- who are stuck on a cruise ship filled with infected people.
"It is immoral to not let them come," she said. "Look, the British, the Germans, no one in the world is turning away Americans if they have coronavirus in their countries. We have to admit them."
Shalala then crushed DeSantis for taking so long to issue a statewide stay-at-home order, and in particular for waiting for President Donald Trump to signal it would be the right move before acting.
"I don't know why people run for office if they're not willing to make hard decisions," she said. "And our governor delayed and delayed until he waited for the president of the United States to pick up the phone and call him. This is about saving lives!"
