MRT 052620: TX: 8 More COVID Deaths, 623 New Cases; COVID Statistics Blurred by Antibody Tests; Keith Wade Remembered; Allen West Recovering from Crash
Here's what you need to know in Texas today.
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TUESDAY – 05/26/20
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TOP NEWS
"Texas reports 8 more coronavirus deaths, 623 new cases," via AP-- "Texas health officials reported 623 new cases of COVID-19 Monday and said there have been another eight deaths linked to the disease caused by the coronavirus.
The state had 55,971 confirmed cases and there have been 1,527 fatalities related to the virus, according to the Texas Department of State Health Services. The true numbers are likely higher because many people have not been tested, and studies suggest people can be infected and not feel sick.
More than 35,000 Texans who were sickened by COVID-19 have now recovered, according to state estimates.
For most people, the coronavirus causes mild or moderate symptoms, such as fever and cough that clear up in two to three weeks. For some, especially older adults and people with existing health problems, it can cause more severe illness, including pneumonia and death." AP
"‘Not living in the same reality:’ Why COVID-19 data settles zero arguments in Texas,"The Houston Chronicle's Eric Dexheimer -- "Entering Williamson County’s 110-year-old courthouse last week, Derrick Neal, a naturally fast walker, had an extra bounce in his step. No administrator likes asking the bosses for extra money for operations. But as the director of a public health agency in the middle of a historic pandemic, he liked his chances.
Williamson County, a rapidly growing and politically conservative suburb of Austin, hasn’t been hit as hard by the novel coronavirus as some Texas communities. But Neal’s office had begun seeing concerning signs the virus was gathering steam since Gov. Greg Abbott began lifting business and movement restrictions a month ago.
The virus had for the first time found local EMS workers; 20 paramedics were quarantined. Local nursing homes and construction sites, too, had seen case surges. Confirmed infections had nearly doubled in the county since the state relaxed business and personal sheltering restrictions.
“We don’t even see a bending of the curve,” Neal said. “I’m nervous about July. It won’t take long to reach hospital capacity.” Among other expenses, he was requesting money to pay the team of contact tracers his office was assembling." Houston Chronicle
"Texas GOP chair candidate Allen West recovering at home after motorcycle crash,"The Austin American-Statesman's Luz Moreno-Lozano -- "Allen West, a candidate for chair of the Texas Republican Party, was released from the hospital Monday, two days after suffering a concussion, several fractured bones and multiple cuts due to a motorcycle crash near Waco.
West was driving back after speaking at the Texas Freedom Rally at the Capitol in Austin on Saturday when a car cut in front of him on Interstate 35 causing him to crash, the candidate said in a statement Sunday.
In a video posted on his Twitter page, which was streamed from his home Monday, West’s right arm can be seen in a sling and his left hand covered in bandages. The video had more than 122,000 views by Monday evening.
“I’m back home now and I just want to thank you all for all your prayers and lifting me up,” he said as he fought back tears. “I thank God that I was able to make it through. I’ll need a little time to recover but I’ll be back out there.”
West is a former Republican congressman from Florida and a retired Army lieutenant colonel. He is running against incumbent James Dickey to become the Texas Republican Party chair." Austin American-Statesman
"Bexar County GOP chair denounces coronavirus as hoax by Democratic Party,"The San Antonio Express-News' Vincent T. Davis -- "Democrats fired back Saturday after the chairwoman of the Republican Party of Bexar County denounced the novel coronavirus crisis as a hoax at a rally outside City Hall.
The chairwoman, Cynthia Brehm, told several supporters Friday that the coronavirus was a hoax perpetrated by the Democratic Party. Democrats quickly responded by issuing a statement that said Texas Republicans were downplaying the threat from the virus and had mismanaged the health crisis.
They linked Brehm’s attitude concerning the virus to that of the state’s leadership: Gov. Greg Abbott and Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick, both Republicans.
“From top to bottom, Texas Republican leaders continue to downplay and mismanage the coronavirus crisis. Texans continue to suffer because of their lack of leadership,” the Texas Democratic Party responded in its Saturday statement.
In a video clip from KENS-5 TV that was widely disseminated on social media, Brehm rejected Mayor Ron Nirenberg’s and County Judge Nelson Wolff’s call to wear protective masks. She cited Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, calling the policy unconstitutional.
“This is America,” she said, “and we shouldn’t have to be forced or mandated to wear a mask.”
Asked what he had to say about Brehm’s charge at Saturday night’s daily coronavirus briefing, Wolff was clear.
“Let me say it to you this way. It was about 2½ years ago, maybe three, I was talking to my late, great friend Commissioner Paul Elizondo,” Wolff recounted. “Paul said, ‘We’ve got to run for re-election again.’ And I said ‘Paul, why would we want to do that? You know, we’re getting a little bit older.’ And he said ‘Well, there’s too (expletive) many crazy people running for office.’ This is a good example.”
By Saturday afternoon, the video had more than 18,000 likes on Twitter and 106 shares on Facebook.
“Why is this happening today?” Brehm is heard to ask at the lectern. “I’ll tell you why — all of this has been promulgated by the Democrats to undo all of the good that President Trump has done for our country, and they are worried.”
“So, take off your masks, exercise your constitutional rights. Stand up, speak up, and vote Republican.”
In an email later, Brehm said the group held the news conference to speak out against its constitutional rights being violated. She said that under the mayor’s and county judge’s orders, she has had to wear a mask when shopping for groceries.
Brehm said she hopes in the future that Nirenberg and Wolff will stop imposing edicts on people and will cooperate with Abbott to get Bexar County back to work.
“Many small businesses have closed, and their employees are now unemployed,” she said. “Telling people to stay quarantined until June when the governor is trying to get us up and running is not helping. It’s hindering it.”" San Antonio Express-News
"Keith Wade remembered as the kind, behind-the-scenes force for Houston power brokers,"The Houston Chronicle's Dylan McGuinness and Mike Morris -- "Keith Wade's crusading campaign for student president at the University of Houston is what first caught legendary U.S. Rep. Mickey Leland's eye. Wade sought the position after a white student told him a black person couldn’t win.
Wade was soft-spoken but principled. He won people over with what friends described as a disarming charm. And his great political talent, they said, was in building coalitions. He did not ruffle feathers; he brought people together.
For his college campaign, he tapped a white student from a popular sorority to join his ticket, widening his reach and winning to become the first black president. He soon would deploy that coalition-building prowess in Leland’s office, as district director, and then was behind the scenes for just about every big name in Houston politics for four decades — mayors Annise Parker and Sylvester Turner, longtime state senator and now Harris County Commissioner Rodney Ellis, and U.S. Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee, among others.
“No one (in the public) ever heard of Keith until he died,” said longtime friend and client Jolanda Jones, a former HISD trustee and City Council member. “But everyone on the inside knew who Keith was. If you were in the annals of power, or if you wanted to be a player in politics, and you did your homework, you knew you had to call Keith Wade.”
Wade, 65, died Thursday of COVID-19, according to the officials he helped elect. He is survived by three adult children. Jones said he was selfless even in suffering, saying he did not want to use a test or take a hospital bed that somebody else needed more.
The news of his death elicited praise and tributes from many corners of Houston politics. Turner said he was a tireless advocate for labor and the disenfranchised, and the mayor called him “a friend and a brother.”
“This loss cuts deep,” said Ellis. “Houston has lost a quiet champion, and I’ve lost a dear friend.”" Houston Chronicle
STATE AND LOCAL GOVERNMENT
"Coronavirus statistic touted by Gov. Abbott was blurred by inclusion of antibody tests,"The Houston Chronicle's Jeremy Blackman -- "Texas included tens of thousands of antibody tests in its daily reports on COVID-19, skewing the recent picture of the outbreak and the state’s response as it scrambled to ramp up surveillanceof the outbreak.
About 49,000 antibody tests were included as of Wednesday, or 6.4 percent of all tests reported, according to updated data from the Department of State Health Services. Antibody tests don’t track current infections, only people who have had and recovered from the disease.
Health experts advise against including the antibodytests with standard viral tests for the coronavirus because only the standard tests give a current snapshot of the outbreak. In Texas, the positive antibody tests are not included in the overall case count but have been used in the total number of tests. That created a slightly deflated “positivity rate,” or rate of confirmed cases to total tests.
The health department acknowledged earlier this week that antibody tests made up “a small fraction” of tests reported but only began distinguishing between them and standard viral tests Thursday.
With antibody tests now excluded, the positivity rate has been readjusted up — about half a percentage point for both Tuesday and Wednesday. The positivity rate has been a key measure for Republican Gov. Greg Abbott as he reopens more of the state.
The rate was 5.4 percent as of Wednesday, up a bit from earlier in the week, according to the state data.
Diana Cervantes, who directs the epidemiology program at the University of North Texas Health Science Center, cautioned that the lower positivity rate is likely at least in part because it’s easier for people who aren’t showing symptoms to get tested.
“If you look at the peak on the 13th of April, I’m sure that represented people who had signs and symptoms,” she said, referring to when the rate was at nearly 14 percent. “Whereas you look at it now, the people being tested may have had symptoms, it may be people who have been exposed, it may be mass testing of vulnerable populations — it’s a much broader group. That alone will drive down the percent positivity.”
When asked about the issue during a news briefing Monday, Abbott insisted that the antibody tests were not being included in the official counts. A spokesman later clarified that he was talking about them being separated going forward.
The governor has since said some counties needed time to separate out the antibody results from their overall counts." Houston Chronicle
2020
"Pence floats sending GOP convention to Texas as Trump rails at N.C. for ongoing COVID-19 restrictions,"The Dallas Morning News' Todd Gillman -- "Vice President Mike Pence floated the possibility of moving the GOP convention to Texas on Monday, as North Carolina’s governor refused to promise to lift public health restrictions in time for the mass gathering planned for Charlotte in August.
Both Dallas and Houston have hosted national party conventions and came close to hosting them again in recent years.
President Donald Trump has railed for days at Gov. Roy Cooper, a Democrat, accusing him of moving too slowly to ease stay-home orders meant to blunt the COVID-19 outbreak.
Cooper “is still in Shutdown mood & unable to guarantee that by August we will be allowed ... to head to beautiful North Carolina in August,” Trump tweeted on Monday, demanding the governor say “immediately” whether the arena can be “fully occupied. If not, we will be reluctantly forced to find, with all of the jobs and economic development it brings, another Republican National Convention site.”
The demand came two days after North Carolina recorded about 1,100 news coronavirus cases, its largest daily spike since the pandemic began. The number of hospitalizations hit a new peak on Monday." Dallas Morning News
"Texas GOP plans to manage safety risk with in-person convention in Houston,"The Austin American-Statesman's Jonathan Tilove -- "Potentially putting lives on the line amid the coronavirus pandemic, Texas Republicans are proceeding with plans for a huge, in-person convention in Houston in mid-July.
“We have been developing plans to safely move forward with a spaced-out convention,” Texas Republican Party Chairman James Dickey told the American-Statesman on Tuesday, referring to a gathering of about 7,500 now planned for July 13-18 at the George R. Brown Convention Center.
He said the event will observe appropriate social distancing and respect for face masks even though they won’t be mandated, something anathema to party activists.
“We are confident we will continue to lead the way in showing how we can safely reopen Texas,” said Dickey, also expressing confidence that Gov. Greg Abbott will give the OK for a convention that may serve as trial run for the GOP National Convention Aug. 24-27 in Charlotte, N.C.
Even as the governor launched the second phase of his Open Texas plan this week, he told KSAT-TV in San Antonio on Tuesday that the timetable for allowing conventions remains under review, but “whatever we open up, we need to make sure we open up in ways that will continue to reduce the transmission of COVID-19.”
While the Texas GOP originally envisioned a convention of more than 15,000 people, Dickey said “we expect, for a whole lot of reasons, for there to be fewer people, many fewer people than that. We are probably looking at half that.”
The convention center is owned by the city and managed by Houston First Corp. The last event there was the Houston Fishing Show, which drew about 8,000 people on March 8.
Both Houston Mayor Sylvester Turner and Harris County Judge Lina Hidalgo have expressed concern about the pace and confusion surrounding the governor’s latest rush of reopenings.
“Just because you can, doesn’t mean you should,” Turner said Tuesday.
“I keep saying: Don’t tempt fate,” Hidalgo said." Austin American-Statesman
"Influential conservative group endorses Ronny Jackson over Josh Winegarner in runoff for U.S. Rep. Mac Thornberry's seat," The Texas Tribune's Patrick Svitek -- "The Club for Growth is taking sides in one of the highest-profile Republican primary runoffs this summer in Texas.
The deep-pocketed national conservative group is endorsing Ronny Jackson, the former White House physician, to replace retiring U.S. Rep. Mac Thornberry, R-Clarendon, in his safely Republican district. Jackson has the support of President Donald Trump in the July runoff against Thornberry's preferred successor, Josh Winegarner.
"We are proud to join President Trump in endorsing Ronny Jackson, a principled, pro-growth conservative and former presidential physician who served our country in uniform as an admiral in the U.S. Navy," Club for Growth's president, David McIntosh, said in the group’s endorsement, which was first shared with The Texas Tribune.
The Club for Growth previously endorsed Chris Ekstrom, a prominent anti-establishment GOP donor, in the 15-way March primary. He finished third and has since thrown his support to Jackson as well." Texas Tribune
"'This is a scam': Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick calls it laughable for people under 65 to fear voting in person," The Texas Tribune's Matthew Watkins -- "Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick said Friday that efforts to expand mail-in voting during the coronavirus amount to a "scam by Democrats to steal the election" and claimed that people under 65 are at more risk of dying in a car wreck on the way to vote than they are from dying from the new coronavirus because they voted in person.
"There is no reason — capital N, capital O — no reason that anyone under 65 should be able to say I am afraid to go vote," Patrick, a Republican, said in an interview with Fox News. "Have they been to a grocery store? Have they been to Walmart? Have they been to Lowe’s? Have they been to Home Depot? Have they been anywhere? Have they been afraid to go out of their house? This is a scam by the Democrats to steal the election."
Texas has been locked in a legal fight over whether it has to expand who is eligible to vote by mail during the coronavirus pandemic. Democrats and multiple voters have sued the state, saying it's dangerous to require people to wait in line and cast ballots on machines shared with other voters while the virus is spreading. GOP state officials have opposed the effort, however, saying that mail-in voting is vulnerable to fraud.
Patrick repeated those worries about fraud Friday while also dismissing any fears people might have about going to the polls if they aren't eligible for a mail-in ballot. Patrick noted that the vast majority of people dying from the virus are older. Currently in Texas, anyone 65 or older or with a disability is eligible to vote by mail.
"This idea that we want to give you a disability claim because I am afraid to go vote — if you are under 65 — is laughable," Patrick said. "You have more chance of being in a serious auto accident if you are under 65 on the way to vote than you do from catching the virus and dying from it on the way to voting. This is the greatest scam ever."
Texas does not have complete data for the ages of the 1,440 people who have died in the state from the virus. But the state has completed fatality investigations for 489 of those deaths, and about 29% of those were people confirmed to be under 65.
In addition, public health experts are encouraging people of all ages to limit their social interactions. While older people are generally at more risk of dying from the virus, young people can transmit it and endanger people of all ages.
Patrick's comments drew immediate pushback from Democrats on Friday.
"If Dan Patrick says it, it's almost certainly wrong," said Abhi Rahman, a state party spokesperson. "Only in Patrick's la la world is voting a scam and grandparents should die for the economy. Voting by mail is safe, secure, and accessible. Dan Patrick sees the boogeyman in bathrooms, voting booths, and under his bed."
A federal judge on Tuesday ordered to allow anyone who seeks "to vote by mail to avoid transmission of the virus" to do so. But an appeals court put the ruling temporarily on hold a day later. In a separate case pending before the Texas Supreme Court, multiple medical professionals said in a court filing that the nature of voting in person — including standing in line, interactions with others in close proximity and “communal touching” of voting equipment — would facilitate a “heightened danger” for transmission of the coronavirus." Texas Tribune
"For some voters, being able to vote by mail is life or death matter; others just see fraud potential,"The Dallas Morning News' James Barragan -- "For the past two months, the state of Texas has been in a legal battle with the Texas Democratic Party and voting rights groups over a push to expand mail voting during the coronavirus pandemic.
In state and federal courts, the parties have argued and gotten orders from judges to allow more people to vote by mail. Those orders have been appealed and fought over. Expanded mail voting has been on in the state, then off; then on again, then off again. Most of the fighting has involved legalistic procedural challenges.
Shellie McCullough, a sixth-generation Texan, has no use for such ticky-tacky procedural arguments. But the outcome may determine whether she has to place her life in danger come July when she plans to vote in the state’s primary runoffs.
McCullough, 47, who lives just outside of Midlothian, was diagnosed with hypertension 12 years ago. That condition, which she shares with nearly half of all adults in the United States, puts her at high risk for severe illness if she develops COVID-19, the disease caused by the novel coronavirus. It’s the reason she wants to vote by mail." Dallas Morning News
'MACK ON POLITICS' PODCAST
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In this conversation, our guest walks us through the Flynn prosecution, explains why he was charged with lying to the FBI, examines whether the interview was necessary or the lie was material to the investigation, whether Flynn knew Kislyak was being taped, how unmasking fits into all of this, whether Crossfire Hurricane was legitimate, and why the majority of the national media continues to advance the collusion narrative.
Available on iTunes, Google Play, Spotify, Stitcher and on the web at http://www.MackOnPoliticsPodcast.com.
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