Check, one thing i noticed there is now it seems the president is a bit mudying the water of why he cares so much about the Postal Service. Now hes going back to what he said previously about being concerned over the financial situation with the post office when he made very clear last week why he is holding up, why hes not interested in funding the Postal Service. It the has nothing to do with getting its house in order. It has everything to do with mailin voting. Well, exactly. He said so directly. The backdrop for this, kate, as you know, is longterm funding issues for the u. S. Postal service and republicans have talked for years about wanting it to be more run like a business. Of course, the way the reason the Postal Service loses money in some cases is because rural small states that get service are at the same rates that everyone else does aring subsidized because they are more expensive to serve of, but this is a case where the demands on Postal Service have dramatically increased because of the coronavirus. To avoid getting sick many, many more people want to vote by mail. The president is losing the election. Hes behind in all the polls to joe biden and hes looking to sow confusion and doubt about the outcome of the election and the democrats are beginning to push back. Speaker nancy pelosi is calling back the house, and the question is going to be how do Congressional Republicans snond are they going to hear voices of their constituents who are fearful that say their medications will not be delivered on time because of some of these Service Problems with the Postal Service. Thats where the battle will really get joined. Thanks for standing by and working through that with us. Appreciate it. Joining us is a cnn medical analyst and former new york city commissioner of health. Doctor, ill ask the control room if you have that sound bite of the president being asked about olyandrin let me know because i would like to play that again for the doctor. Im asking about that on the fly. Even without that, ive been wanting to ask you about that because this is reporting that just came out two axios citing sources saying that the president wants the fda to approve the botanical extract which has a potential cure as the people who support it cure for covid19 but its not only not proven that it has any impact with relation to covid, thats not proven to have its not approved for anything. What do you think of this . Well, kate, i think the same rules, the same procedures and protocols need to apply to any drug or vaccine that were looking at for coronavirus or any medical condition and whether thats drugs that have already been studied in phase one and two or the drugs that the president is talking about, is that this is not russia. We dont put out a vaccine without testing it appropriately. Theres a reason why we have these health and safety protocols to make sure that whatever we put out there is safe and effective, and thats just not been proven in this case or in the case of other medications that the president has promoted like hydroxychloroquine. And i guess thats something a comparison to make for sure because it does seem hike it could be even poe potentially more dangerous than the conversation over hydroxychloroquine since this is not currently test it had or approved for any use whereas hydroxychloroquine with serious side effects though was approved for actual treatments of actual diseases. What do people need to know . Well, look, i think thats important to remember that we do have processes. Will we have a food and Drug Administration because there were periods in our history, for example, in the early 1900s where many things were peddled for cureahles, snake oils that were really dangerous to people. Things like one drug which was largely opioids so you had a lot of women becoming addicted a opioids in our history. Theres reasons why we have the health and safety measures, to protect the american people. Yeah. Theres no research out, doctor, that i wanted to ask you about really just within the last few minutes highlighting not only how latino and black poem are getting harder hit by the virus than any other group but are disproportionately been hospitalized, for example, in ohio, where black people accounted for 31. 2 of hospitalizations compared to making up only 13 of the states population. Thats startling in and of itself, but what does it mean for the country and what needs to be done now . Well, this certainly rings true with my own experience in new york city caring for covid patients. The vast majority of patients i saw were latin x or africanamerican and this is largely related to who is at risk for being exposed and then who is at risk for having severe disease. This is not just about socioeconomic status. This is about Structural Racism that is baked into every aspect of our society, so whether that is the fact that we know that latin y and africanamerican and indigenous communities are more likely to live in have worse air pollution, that they are more likely to not have access to safe water, to have water thats contaminated by lead, that they are more likely to have schools that are crumbling without appropriate ventlation, they are less likely to be in jobs that have the same health and safety regulations that the rest of us enjoy. Its not surprising to me at all were seeing this bear out in the data. Not surprising but horrible nonetheless. The theres a lot of talk about this new inexpensive salivabased covid test that just received fda emergency ought saimpingts i wanted to get your take on it. Do you see it as a gamechanger as some are describing this test . This is potentially a gamechanger because it really does get rid of a lot of the barriers to scaling up testing so weve been talking for months about shortages of the swabs to get a nasal sample. You dont need a swab. You literally have to spit in a tube as long as its as sterile container and theres no special reagents or chemicals you need to perform this test. This is something that can be performed by the general lab with the instruments and the chemicals that they already have on hand. Youre not going to contract with anywhere special it to do this and yale is making the protopolls for thfrp test available, a test that can be done for under 5 or 10 in the labs so its a much cheaper test than the ones were explaining right now. Doctor, great to see you. Thank you so much. Another development were watching. College students ignoring warnings about social distancing and Wearing Masks. Take a look at this video of what have appears to be a large party near the university of north georgia over the weekend. Normally a video like this wouldnt be startling at all. Thats what happened in college but with covid on the rise, drinking dancing, packed in, not Wearing Masks, at least not as far as we can see, thats terrifying to Public Health experts. At the university of North Carolina at chapel hill they are investigating four covid clusters and classes resumed that last week and at the university of alabama a photographer took these photos, large crowds outside bars in tuscaloosa over the weekend. Again, very few people Wearing Masks and very little social distancing happening despite the states order saying that people in public spaces wearing a Face Covering when less than six feet apart and the cdc says the infection rate in children under 17 and under has increased steadily from march to judgment thats all the more important to consider as more schools reopen and more states struggle to contain new outbreaks. In georgia, understand with again in there. One School District thats had problems since reopening is now suspending inperson learning at one more school due to new covid cases. Diane gallagher is standing by live in atlanta and is tracking this all live for us. Were talking about cherokee county. Whats the latest there . Reporter you said suspending inperson learning at one more school, the Third High School in chiracee high school to suspend that third week of testing, the third week of reopening. If beginning in georgia. Since the beginning of last week, were looking here, the rate of infection of the number of kids who and and teachers who have been infected with covid19 has tripled over just that twoweek period. The number of people who were in faurn teen, more than is 100 has doubled, so were seeing a Ripple Effect through and the challenges faced with inperson learning. A quarter of students chose that option. Its important to point out that they didnt have a mask mandate within the schools in cherokee county. Thats something across the state of georgia that were dealing with. Were talking about the university of north georgia party, that video there. Its stark. You can see that people are not doing what they are doing. Say if this was a 2019 backtoschool party and it was off campus. Thats what were talking about going back to college and university. Officials told cnn that they were, quote, disappoint that had many of the students chose to ignore covid19 Public Health guidance but they said, hey, we do have mask requirements inside our classrooms and public space. They dont have them in Residence Halls and they didnt control what people. They want to exercise their independent responsibility but something that k through 12 and all the way up and college stunts are going to be concerned about here. The plans they put on place all the way through knowing what College Students do when they get back to school. Thanks so much, diane, for tracking all of that. Coming up, new demands over mailin voting the white house saying they will remove sorting machines from post offices and now House Democrats are making moves to try to block any further changes to it the usps. Much more on that coming up. Coming up next, well have one of the speakers at the Democratic National convention beginning tonight. We see you. Looking out for all of us. 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Theres still no fix in place to the Political Drama that the United StatesPostal Service has found itself in the middle of, but there are a lot of developments with the countdown to the election well under way. The president s chief of staff telling cnn sunday that the Postal Service will not remove anymore highvolume pros sessioning machines until after the election. That promise is being called into question already. Remember, he just told jake tapper there yesterday. Cnn on saned internal usps documents indicating nearly 95 of those machines set for removal were scheduled to be taken out of circulation by now. The Postal Service facing backlash over costcutting measures has also agreed to stop removing letter collection boxes from u. S. Streets. Are these moves actually going to change anything . Remember, other new policies in operation include eliminating overtime for postal workers and cutting back on Postal Service operating hours. House democrats are making their own move now. Speaker pleasing is calling them back to washington to vote on a bill trying to block the administration from making any changes to the usps. Cnns Sunlen Serfaty is joining us now. House democrats are jumping on a Conference Call this hour. What are you hearing . Thats right. Until a little over an hour the House Democrats will be on a very important phone call where they will be discussing death tails of their very unusual and very rare return to washington, d. C. In the middleofthe summer recess to address all of these issues. Speaker pelosi over the weekend indicated that she most likely will call them back to washington later this week and likely on saturday and vote on a bill that would block major operational changes that the postmaster general is trying to make happen at the postal office. This is one part of a very aggressive rampedup strategy by House Democrats to really put a light on this problem and a show of force showing that they are working on it. They have called for the postmaster general and others to come testify in front of cameras about these problems were hearing about across the country and policy changes at the post office. Just this morning, two House Democrats called on the fbi to look at whether theres any criminality, criminal charges, that they could look at as far as what the postmaster general and others are doing. An aggressive rampup from House Democrats on this issue and well see what that looks like in the Conference Call coming up in the next hour. Thanks so much for that. Great to sigh. Moments ago, president trump, he weighed in once again on this railing against mailin voting throwing around unproven claims of fraud and calling vote by mail dangerous again for which he has not and there is not proof of widespread dangerousness. Listen to this. Absentee ballots are great. You request a ballot, you cant i signed an absentee ballot. Absentee ballots are great. They work and are proven and are good like in florida, but this universal mailin is a very dangerous thing. Its fraught with fraud and every other thing that can happen, and we have to be very, very careful. We have a very big election coming up. I think were goings to do very well and i want to make sure that the election is not stolen. Attacks like this from president now now has state officials in charge of elections looking at Legal Options. Attorneys general for at least half a dozen states are discussing potential lawsuits. One of those states is colorado and im joined now by the colorado secretary of state jenna grizzled would. Youve called the moves by the president very clear voters suppression and you said you are not going to let that happen in colorado and how are you going to girp tee that and preventing that from happen. Kate, thanks so much. The president in his last remarks and all of his rhetoric is trying to suppress voters in november when he should be more concerned about suppression the virus thats killed over 170,000 americans. You know, the nation can look at colorados election model as an example of how to withstand the sabotage coming out of white house. We send out ballots three weeks before election day and actually ask coloradoans to start returning them eight days before because they need to get in by election day and what we have are hundreds of drop boxes that coloradoans use and overall were confident well have successful and secure elections but we want the rest of the nation to follow in our footsteps to make sure all americans can cast their ballot. What are the Legal Options that you believe could be taken right now against the administrations moves . Well, kate, to share with you, in 2012 and 2016 i was a Voter Protection attorney, and in 2017 i ran for secretary of state because the president was trying to suppress voters, including thousands of coloradoans. As secretary of state i will not allow him to suppress any american and will fight him with all options on the table so we are looking at possible legal action against both the postmaster general and the president himself. Is there an example of what the legal option what the range of options would be right now at this point because time is critical as we well know with the election right around the corner . Sure, kate. Youll have to wait maybe a day or two, a couple of days more, but theres several legal possible claims, state law. One element of vote fraud is simply instilling fear and do you think that that damage could already be done . I do think that the president is undermining novembers election and hes having an effect. I was real proud for our statewide primary this see not only did we experience and right now theres recent polling that shows that republican confidence of vote by mail is being chipped away at and thats why its so important to push back against the president. He estold us exactly why hes attacking vote by mail and attacking the postaler is vicious all attacksin a our elections because hes trying to tilt the election in his favor. He said hes trying to defund the Postal Service to make sure that mail ballots dont work. Thats reprehensible and undemocratic and we need to push back against his lies. The president has continually voted to widespread voter fraud for a reason hes opposed. The body of evidence is proving the opposite. Let me play you what the president s chief of staff mark meadows said to jake tapper yesterday. Theres no evidence of widespread voter fraud. Theres no evidence that theres not either. Theres a little bit of crosstalk but heres what was said. Theres no widespread evidence of voter f