Gyms now allowed to reopen their doors. Reporter thats right, ayman. Weve seen a steady stream of folks coming out to cross fit. Some of them are behind me getting that midday work out in. Were seeing Safety Measures implemented here as were seeing across the country. At this gym, they moved some of the equipment that was inside outside in order to create more space and promote that social distancing. But this does come as texas has seen record high numbers in terms of covidpositive cases. Saturday saw a singleday increase and so i asked some of the gym goers about that. Take a listen to what they told me. Does it surprise you that were seeing these spikes in numbers . No. As contagious the disease is, youre going to risk having more positives. As we open up, we have increased testing. Weve had limited testing in texas, were getting more and more testing. As we open up, were going to have more cases. Reporter and the governor has worked to increase that testing sending surge Response Teams to places like meatpacking plants and ordering that all Nursing Homes staff and residents tested. We expect him to make another announcement about reopening today. Lets go over to Shaquille Brewster in chicago. Testing is being expanded after cook county gets the distinction of having the most cases of coronavirus than any in the country. Talk to us a little bit about that and the plans for expanding testing in that county. Reporter thats right, ayman. New testing criteria here in the state of illinois. Any frontline or essential worker can get tested. No payment, no referral from doctors. Think about Grocery Store attendants, people at gas stations, pharmacy workers can get that testing. In addition to that, people with chronic illness can get tested. Thats an expansion of the previous criteria. Anyone who has interacted with someone who was tested positive can now go to one of these driveup facilities and go and get tested. This expanded testing is part of the reason and part of the explanation that you hear from officials on that new distinction that you mentioned of chicagos cook county. Chicagos cook county leads the country in total coronavirus cases. It is important to note, though, that the next county on that list, new yorks queens county, is about half the size of chicagos cook county. Officials are still saying that the numbers that were seeing are far, far, far. Thats a quote. Below actual coronavirus numbers. Theyre hoping testing helps reveal the size and scope of the situation and the outbreak here in chicago. Despite the increase in testing and despite the increase in numbers, youre seeing illinoiss government and governor face increasing pressure to reopen the state. The governor says that the state, if you look at the metrics that hes using for reopening, including hospitalizations, including a positive test rate, hes saying that the state is on track to begin and move into their next phase of reopening in about two weeks. But this weekend, we saw some churches open up and have services, openly defying the stayathome order here in the state. You saw some protests, again, in the downtown area. The governor saying its all about testing, its all about the numbers and thats what hes focused on as he looks towards reopening. Right now, the priority remains on testing here in chicago and here in the state of illinois. Shaquille brewster, stay with us for a moment. I want to go to kara lee at the white house. Give us the politics of it. The president taking another swipe at president obama this morning after a war of words erupted over the weekend. Let me play you that sound bite. More than anything, this pandemic has torn back the curtain on the idea that so many of the folks in charge know what theyre doing. A lot of them arent even pretending to be in charge. Look, he was an incompetent president , thats all i can say, grossly incompetent. Carol, you have that happening on one side. This morning the stock market taking a bump, 700 points, the biggest it has in the past month or so. Walk us through the politics of what were seeing play out between the former administration and this administration. Well, look, ayman, you have former president who has endorsed President Trumps opponent, obviously, President Trump has really escalated the tensions between the two of him and his predecessor. Hes accused president obama of an unspecified crime without any evidence saying that took place. When you look narrowly at their differences on the handling of the coronavirus pandemic, the president s really just engaged in a blame game here. He said this morning hes tweeted in response to an article that has called his handling of coronavirus historic. He said thats true except to the Fake News Media and a former president who didnt have a clue. In another tweet, the president says, weve done a great job. We were left little by obama. So hes essentially the argument from this administration is that the Obama Administration did not leave enough resources behind for the Trump Administration to combat a pandemic. However, we know that the Obama Administration left a pandemic playbook behind to hand over during the transition to the Incoming Administration and President Trump has been criticized for ignoring that. White House Press SecretaryKayleigh Mcenany said on friday that was a thin packet of paper. Theres sparring on that. And at the same time, you know, put it into context. The president saying that the Previous Administration didnt do enough when the pandemic came in his fourth year in office. So clearly, he had several years if there werent enough resources to come up with those resources. But this is all against the backdrop of a president who is trying to turn the page on the pandemic and really wants to lean into his reelection campaign. Weve had reporting by me and some of my colleagues about the president , as his Coronavirus Task force fades from public view, really listening to a reelection task force, the number of advisers, jared kushner, members of his campaign, his outside advisors like karl rove who ran george bushs 2004 campaign. This is all part of it, trying to find a way to deflect from the criticism of the president s handling of coronavirus, trying to find somebody else to blame. And at the same time the president really wants to lean in and focus on the economy, ayman. All right. Carol lee at the white house for us. Let me take that for a moment and go back to Shaquille Brewster. Give us the sense as we heard there from carol who was talking about the politics of this, the president trying to blame everybody but his administration in the way this has handled. Youre on the ground in chicago. Youve been speaking to folks across the state of illinois, what is the perspective of the response of the federal government from the folks who need that help, on the testing front, on the hospitalization front, on the equipment front . What are folks telling you about the kind of support and resources theyve gotten from the federal government and specifically this administration . Reporter when you listen to illinoiss governor, he has not been shy about going after President Trump and going after the white house saying that he needs more help, that theyre low on testing supplies and hes had to do things on his own, that he would expect of the federal government, and you also have heard President Trump even this weekend fire straight ahead at the governor here, Governor Pritzker, saying hes not doing enough. He needs too much. Youve seen that back and forth happen there. What youre hearing on the ground, something that illinois and the city of chicago has been focused on, is the disproportionate impact of this virus on africanamerican and latino communities. Right now, for example, the mayor is going out and shes one of the cityrun Testing Centers, shes going out with Actor Sean Penn trying to bring awareness. The Testing Center im at right now, is a staterun facility. You have private testing facilities. The mayor right now, if you look at the video, we have a shot, shes with sean penn, this is one in a Latino Community. We know that from data, especially were talking a lot about this last week, the Latino Community has had the coronavirus has had a disproportionate impact on the Latino Community in terms of the cases you see. Africanamericans here in chicago have a disproportionate impact in terms of the deaths that you see here with the virus. Ayman . Shaquille brewster, priscilla thompson, and carol lee, thank you all for starting us off this hour. Im joined now by dr. Jeremy faust from boston. Good to have you with us, this morning. Let me start by getting your response to the big news this morning. Moderna, a pharmaceutical company, reporting some promising vaccine results after the first round of testing on humans. Theyre reporting that they saw a dose dependent response, eight out of eight patients showed neutralizing antibodies. Antibodies were similar to or higher than those who recovered from covid19 and the vaccine was generally safe and well tolerated among them. Can you translate some of what that means for us and what that potentially means Going Forward . Idad be happy to. This news is the first step in a 10,000 mile journey. Its a good step. We like to see that under the microscope, theres an immune response. This is phase one. Very few drugs and vaccines get from phase one to market. But this is a first step. Thats good news. The one thing i would just put out there, this is a very exciting technology, the mrna vaccines. But noi dont believe a single e has reached market. Its a new front tier. I believe theres more than a hundred or so Different Companies out there who are testing for the vaccine right now. Is this different than anything weve seen. Weve reported on other companies that have been making some of these strides. But this one seems to have a different tone to it. Well, i think that whats exciting about this report is you see the idea that there is a good immune response, but thats really premature. I think that in general, the approach that were going to have to use is, try everything, see what works, and move forward. If i think we prejudge one versus another, we could actually rule out some really promising things. So its a bit of a race, but its also its a quality too. You cant get across the finish line with somebody that is suboptimal. Theres old technologies, new technologies. Lets try it all and watch carefully. Lets turn to states reopening, particularly texas. As you saw this morning, taking another step. Even though the state saw a record single day increase in coronavirus cases, is this to be expected as more people decide to venture out and as we increase our Testing Capacity across the country . I think that people have shut down fatigue and i think that some of that is because weve just been so shut down. When you hear about people getting arrested for surfing, you understand why they are getting tired of this. At the same time i think it might make sense to open some things that weve been really conservative about, just because it makes sense to do that and theres some benefits as well. But at the same time, if we dont do that or the fact that we havent done it sorry far, leads to people making poor choices. Going surfing or visiting the cemetery to see your loved one on the anniversary on someone who died, i think thats safe whereas going out to bars and what were concerned about. I think people are having trouble necessarily separating those two things out. Let me ask you about a recent oped that you wrote for the Washington Post about a key metric that could tell us when it is safe to reemerge. Its called excess deaths. Explain what that means to our viewers. Sure, excess deaths is the idea that in this country, weve been tracking how many people die every day, week, month, year for over a hundred years. We know on a week in march, april or may how many people are supposed to die of all causes. And the fact is, that over the last month or two, we have seen more deaths than ever and this time frame by historic margins. And so people quibble about, oh, is it coronavirus that killed my relative or did they die of cancer . Actually, if you just track the number of deaths, you realize, oh, goodness, something historic is going on. And so my theory and many experts agree is that you can track that number and when it comes closer to basically your normal expected rates, you can say, whatever is going on in your communities, its not having such a historic effect as it is having right now. Is that number on its way down or are we still at the peak of the excess deaths as you described . When do you think it will be safe to emerge . I know youre saying when the number goes down. Are we seeing the downward trend begin yet . Here in massachusetts, it looks like the there was a peak of excess deaths a few weeks back and it does look like were having some improvement. What i would say is, if we hadnt had that peak, what we currently have would look historic. Im happy to see were coming closer. But we are way off of that baseline. And also theres lag. We need to make sure we dont celebrate our goals before weve put the ball in the net. Its coming down a little bit, i think, but its unclear how far away we are and how much of that is lag. I think some of it is real. I think theres progress. But now is not a time to surrender that progress. Very important milestone there. Dr. Jeremy faust, thank you for giving us the facts over the fear. Still ahead, even as the number of coronavirus case surges in chicago, the citys mayor is determined to reopen the nations Third LargestPublic School system this fall. Were going to talk to the head of the citys schools about what changes are being made to get kids back into the classroom safely. New nbc reporting that the ousted state Department Inspector general was investigating secretary of state mike pompeo and whether he was having a staffer run personal errands for the secretary of state. Next, lawmakers on both sides of the aisle are demanding an investigation into that. Were learning new details this morning about the state Department Inspector general who was abruptly fired by President Trump over the weekend, once again. Nbc news is reporting that the ig, steve linick was investigating whether secretary of state mike pompeo improperly used the political appointee to do personal errands for him and his wife. Late friday night, President Trump informed congress of linicks dismissal giving no specific reason but telling lawmakers he no longer had full confidence in him. Democrats are launching an investigation into the move. Officials tell us they believe it was an act of retaliation. Nbcs Josh Lederman in washington with reporting on that and Garrett Haake is on capitol hill following those developments as well. Josh, what else can you tell us about this firing, what weve learned about it . Reporter ayman, were learning that the types of activities that pompeo allegedly was having this personal aide conduct, according to what the Inspector General was looking into at the time he was removed, included the kind of task that is you might hire a college kid over the summer to do if you were busy, picking up dry cleaning, walking the dog, even making dinner reservations for secretary pompeo and his wife. We also just this morning, ayman, are hearing from state Department Officials who are telling nbc news that they for months have raised concerns internally about the role of mrs. Pompeo, the secretarys wife, and instructions that she would give to state Department Officials and the outsized role that she seemed to play in the operations of that government agency. We have been asking the state department over and over throughout the weekend and again today whether these allegations are true, why the secretary recommended to President Trump that the Inspector General be removed, and whether secretary pompeo even knew at the time that he removed him that he was under investigation by the Inspector General. So far, ayman, it has been total radio silence from the state department on this issue. Lets cross over to capitol hill. Now democrats, even a few republicans, are critical of the move. Where does this go from here on the hill . Reporter over the weekend, the chairman of the House Foreign Affairs committee announced an investigation with the minorityranking member bob menendez saying they would combine forces to investigate what would on in in case. A number of very brave people at the state department came forward as individuals to testify, the state department itself largely stonewalled the efforts of democratic investigators to get documents and relevant investigation and testimony from members who did not want to come forward. The concern here is that the state department will, again, do the same thing, particularly if republicans in the senate are not interested in investigating this. So far, the response has been tepid, except, as again the lessons of impeachment are with us still, mitt romney coming out with a tweet over the weekend, the strongest statement of any kind of that ive seen from republicans,