Announced they will not send all of their students back to the campuses this fall. So what is he doing here exactly . Hes got the cdc now spinning and saying it will come out with new guidelines, relaxing guidelines around school. Theres always, with this president , an element of politics here. What are they . Thats right, willie. For weeks and even a couple of months, the sort of hot button political cultural wedge issue was use of masks. The president defying all Available Health data, the recommendation of his own medical team and Public Health professionals and not wear a mask. Even in the face of rising elements that a mask reduces the transmission of the virus. And weve seen fellow republicans break with the president and endorse them, other prominent elected officials. Seems the next battleground is going to be schools. In the last 48 hours a remarkable assault from the president making this political push suggesting without evidence that del democratic governors and mayors and other local officials are trying to keep schools closed to hurt him politically. Weve sort of grown numb to this because weve seen the president do it, its remarkable the way he broke with the cdc, his own agency, i disagree with them, theyre being too tough. According to our reporting the white house is looking at their own guidelines along with cdc revisions. This is about him believing he needs schools to open. We all need schools to open, my kids need schools to open, but in his eyes its towards november because its a sign of normalcy and thinking the economy cant reopen unless w k working parents can go back to work because their kids are back in school. The president specifically said he will cut off funding to those schools that dont reopen. Just a blanket threat to schools across the country even as we see coronavirus spiking in many states across the south and in the sun belt. Obviously he doesnt have the power to cut off federal funding most funding we know comes from states and local governments and they run their School Systems but is that something being entertained, if you dont open your school, you may suffer because of it . The president brandished this threat yesterday, pretty to extraordinary. Weve been pushing the white house as to what it means, they say its still in the works. Certainly theres federal funding involved and schools trying to reopen are going to need more federal funding. Theres a sense when Congress Gets back here in a couple weeks thats an issue they need to address as well. Its not clear the president will follow through. In early stages the president made similar threats to who would funding but it didnt go anywhere. Hes drawing a line here. Hes making it the next political fight and trying to put the democrats in a box and doing it with an eye towards november. This comes during a week as his campaign tries to reboot itself. Three weeks after that disastrous comeback rally in tulsa where he faced a sea of empty seats. Hes back out there, tomorrow, florida, his first in person fundraiser. And saturday he makes his return to the Campaign Rallies with one saturday night in new hampshire. Whether or not the president has the power to do it the president did say, imagine this, were going to cut off funding to Public Schools if you dont rush your kids back in during the pandemic. Arizona, florida, South Carolina among those states struggling mightily right now, leading the world in rapidly growing numbers of coronavirus cases. The New York Times reports the outbreak in the sun belt is worse than any country. No country in the world where confirmed coronavirus cases are growing as rapidly as it is in those states. The sun belt has become the global virus capital. Looking at several states in particular. Florida reported nearly 10,000 new cases, more than 220,000 positive cases statewide. And the test Positivity Rate has been above 14 for a week. Texas hit highs yesterday with more than 9,600 hospitalized. 15 of the tests in the state have come back positive, the highest rate since the start of the pandemic. And arizona announced it is delaying the start of its school year as the number of coronavirus cases spike across the state. More than 3,500 new cases have been reported there in just the last 24 hours. Meanwhile, the mayor of phoenix says, her city is in a crisis situation. The federal government has provided a testing surge in other states such as texas and florida. I request that they do the same in phoenix. When you see the positive rate that steven just mentioned above 25 . We are only testing the sickest of the sick. We need more help with testing right now. We also need more medical personnel. We are stretched right now and our hospital ceos tell me its going to get worse. This weekend i went to a testing site where people waited over 8 hours. I saw a man who was sweating and struggling to breathe try to refill his gas tank because he ran out of fuel on our city street. If anyone looks at that and doesnt want to do better for him, then i just dont understand it. We need that testing surge, in particularly our latino areas of phoenix. We are in a crisis right now. The resources in testing have not reached every part of our state and for months now we have been asking for additional testing. Time has come to deliver. For months youve been asking for months literally for this . In anticipation of the situation youre in . Phoenix is the largest city in the country to have not received one of the large testing sites from the federal government. Even in april the houston mayor was announcing everyone who wanted a test could get one. Whereas we were struggling for our critical workers and sickest patients to get testing. At the time i asked why they had such a better result than we did and learned the federal government had set up mass testing sites. At the time they told me we didnt have the number of cases to justify it. But unquestionably we do now with the highest positive rate in the country. We went for our first 50,000 cases in arizona it took five months and then it doubled within two weeks. The rate of growth is staggering and scary. A plea from the mayor of phoenix, arizona. Joining us Infectious Disease physician and medical director at the Boston University of medicine, an msnbc medical contributor. Doctor, great to see you again, this must be frustrating for you to watch because youve been with us for four months now saying testing is the key, testing is the key, testing is the key. We have to identify who has coronavirus, we can isolate them, get our arms around this. Why now as we sit on july the 9th cannot the city of phoenix get enough tests . Willie, thanks for having me. Youre right. I think partly whats frustrating is we saw the country go through this already in the northeast. We know where the issue would arise. The issue is not just in the availability of tests because people are waiting a long period of time to get tested. Then when they get tested you hear from florida to georgia to arizona theyre waiting for a long time for those results. If you dont know that youre sick and youre not quarantining or theyre not able to Contact Trace you, youre in the communities spreading the disease. You heard the mayor speak about theyre seeing exponential rise, that continues. That becomes a corner stone. I heard your conversation with Jonathan Lemire, the conversation about opening schools. The evidence Shows One Third or half has likely to get the infection, children are, but some do and end up in the hospital. We have the multisystem inflammatory disease in children we dont understand the pathology of it yet. Then you look around the world, the risk of transmission, the countries that have done some small opening or altered opening of schools, its tied into the prevalence of disease in those communities. So if we want to open schools the mayor thing we have to do is drive the cases down. Thats the thing, the president is talking about a national reopening of schools even as each School District has different numbers of cases and the crisis is more acute in some places than others. So as you listen to the cdc saying it will change its guidelines after the president protested them and relax them, make them less restrictive as the president called them. What do you make of that where the cdc is stepping back saying maybe we will make it easier to reopen schools . Just stepping back a little bit, right, talking about the elements that go into a Successful School opening. It would require all of us to do our part with Community Transmission but then we need the physical engineering, having the ability to physically distance the kids, social engineering, do we put teachers and students into pods . How do we get the supplies and how do we link things like d disinfection gloves, and then to link everything to a Public Health infrastructure that is ready to followup on outbreaks if they happen in those settings. We all want to open schools, its the correct thing to do socially for our children, for their mental, physical, social development, but doing it without the correct preparation, if you open schools and youre doing it without the preparations, youre looking at a Public Health disaster, timed exactly for october and november. I think its short sided for the president to say what he said. When i see that tweet from the president to the cdc, its a bit more damaging than what it appears at first plusblush. I think the School Reopening versus Public Health is the new false dichotomy, youre asked to choose one or the other rather than realizing you need the resources to be open. And you have to have a plan to reopen the schools safely. Not just say reopen or im cutting off funding. Another bit of alarming news were seeing is reports that nursing homes, hospitals, are facing a shortage of masks, gowns and disposable gloves, ppe. Doctors in houston reportedly having told to reuse single use n95 masks for up to 15 days. The New York Times notes some hospitals in florida are handing out only loose fitting surgical masks to workers treating presumed asymptomatic patients. Vice president mike pence yesterday dismissed those reports instead encouraging reusing the supplies. Received encouraging reports, strong supplies of ppe in hospitals, Hospital Capacity remains strong. We also are issuing renewed guidance on preservation and reuse of ppe. Were Encouraging Health care workers to begin now to use some of the best practices that we learned in other parts of the country to preserve and to reuse the ppe supplies. Doctor, a question again just like the one i asked you on testing, how are we back here again . Ppe as we know in the early days in new york city, especially, new jersey was short, you had emergency room and icu physicians reusing the personal protective equipment, but here we are again. How did we get here . And here in boston in all of the northeast we suffered the same crunch. The only thing we had going for us when we were looking at this and coming up with strategies across the northeast of using the same n95 sometimes for an entire week, at least for an entire shift and trying to do the technologies that allowed disinfection of the masks to try to reuse them. At least we had the hope there might be some manufacturing benefits by the time were here. The big issue is still n95s remain a shortage across the country. And the manufacturing capability to help provide for the increase need for those in anticipation of the fall are still not ready. Were still looking at supply chains not able to apply that. I think a big reason were here is we did not make the investments in that manufacturing capacity to the level we needed. We did fine, we have ventilators but a response takes continuous investment and then furnishing of any new shortages that have come along. N95s are shortages we have known and ppe are shortages we have. The reason were here we dont have a national capacity. I feel like a broken record. I think at this point states need to come together to make that collective, come up with that plan because were not getting that from the federal government. It remains a state by state scramble, as you say. Doctor, great to have you with us as always. Lets bring in washington anchor for bbc world news america, katty kay, and reverend al sharpton and sam stein. Lets get specific on the president s and schools. Yesterday he wrote, in germany, denmark, norway, sweden and many other countries schools are open with no problems. The democrats think it would be bad for them politically if u. S. Schools open before the november election. But it is important for the children and the families. He writes, may cut off funding if not open. The president also tweeted. I disagree with the cd on their very tough and expensive guidelines for opening schools. While they want them open, theyre asking schools to do very impractical things, ill be meeting with them, three exclamation points. The Washington Post reports, what is found too restrictive is eliminating sharing of toys and books. Heres Vice President mike pence. The president said we dont want the guidance to be too tough. Thats why next week the cdc is going to be issuing a new set of tools five different documents giving more clarity on the guidance going forward. So you had yesterday, as i just read, the president of the United States threatening schools with funding. He cant do that obviously on his own but he can veto new congressional funding for schools if he was so inclined. This is an extraordinary step as Jonathan Lemire reported to bring the politics of reelection and to suggest the democratic governors and mayors are keeping children out of schools therefore keeping parents out of the work place so they can prevent donald trump from winning reelection. Look, i dont think theres a single parent, whether a blue or red state, whether they vote democrat or republican, that doesnt want their child to go back to school in september if it can be done safely. Everybody is trying to work, right. We all know what its like to be home with small children. The question is, can it be done safely . To some extent the president is right when he tweets they have done it in the Northern European countries without a problem. There have not been big spikes related to schools in places like denmark and germany since the children went back to school. But heres the catch. They did it after a huge amount of deliberation and with exactly the kind of restrictions that the cdc is suggesting schools implement. So its costly, they need more not less funding in order to put the restrictions in place and they need to follow closely protocols which have been hammered out in order to do things like have the desks 6 feet apart, not having the kids sharing toys, not having the kids eating commonly in some places. Having the parents arriving at staggered times. All of that costs money to implement. In some schools in denmark, they have put in extra bathrooms so there are extra hand washing facilities. Theyve made a huge effort to do it safely. I think what the cdc is suggesting is very much in line with what the European Countries have done in order to do it successfully. America has the advantage of a road map of other countries that have done it but dont take the road map and rip it up and throw it out the window because it wont be done safely. As the president announced schools must be open, mayor de blasio announced schools in new york city will not be opened in full attendance. New york citys Public School system is the largest in the country with more than 1. 8 Million Students and nearly 1,800 schools. Ive heard from community members, ive heard from people in the business community, civic groups, clergy all over the city the same message everyone is looking to the Public School system to indicate the bigger direction of new york city. Under the mayors plan, there probably will be no more than a dozen people in the classroom at a time for spacing, including teachers and aids. Thats a change in class size from new York City Schools which are around 30 children. The governor has final say over whether to reopen the schools. Rev, what you have here is the president of the United States saying from the white house, everybody reopen your schools and School Districts led by the biggest in the country, new york city, saying we dont have the luxury of reopening the doors and flooding children back in. Were going to be smart about this, we reserve the right to adjust our plans as school gets closer. One must keep in mind that the president is the very same president that denied there was a pandemic coming when he was told by his own Health Experts in january and early february of this year and he never did anything till march. So clearly he puts the politics and the Public Perception of his administration over the health of american citizens. So why would parents, who clearly would want to send their children back to school under the most healthy conditions why would they believe somebody who, in many ways caused, in my opinion, the up tick in march and april around the country because he did not do what Health Experts had warned him of in the first place. Why would we believe hes not listening to Health Experts now. I think what the mayor of new york is doing is wiser and listening to the Health Experts. But no one should be surprised that the man who wouldnt listen to the Health Experts four months ago is defying them now