The Morning Dispatch: New COVID Cases Hit Daily Record

Plus, the questions that surround reopening schools in the fall.

Happy Thursday! Prepare yourself for some #data in this newsletter.

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Quick Hits: Today’s Top Stories

  • As of Wednesday night, 3,054,650 cases of COVID-19 have been reported in the United States (an increase of 60,891 from yesterday) and 132,298 deaths have been attributed to the virus (an increase of 843 from yesterday), according to the Johns Hopkins University COVID-19 Dashboard, leading to a mortality rate among confirmed cases of 4.3 percent (the true mortality rate is likely much lower, between 0.4 percent and 1.4 percent, but it’s impossible to determine precisely due to incomplete testing regimens). Of 37,431,666 coronavirus tests conducted in the United States (553,560 conducted since yesterday), 8.2 percent have come back positive.

  • In the penultimate day of the term, the Supreme Court delivered two wins for religious liberty advocates. In a 7-2 ruling, the court affirmed the Trump administration’s ability to exempt religious organizations like the Little Sisters of the Poor from an Affordable Care Act mandate that required covered employers to provide health insurance coverage for birth control. In another 7-2 decision, the high court also expanded the rights of religious institutions to hire and fire certain ministerial employees without being being subject to employment discrimination laws. The court is expected to hand down its decision on whether the president must turn over personal financial records to Congress and the New York County District Attorney later this morning.
  • Harvard University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology filed a lawsuit against the Trump administration’s Department of Homeland Security in an effort to block its recently announced rule barring international college students from studying at universities that move entirely online when classes resume.
  • Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman—a key witness in President Trump’s impeachment inquiry—announced via Twitter his retirement from the U.S. Army after more than 21 years of service. His lawyer said Vindman has experienced a “campaign of bullying, intimidation, and retaliation” since testifying in the inquiry last year.
  • The Ivy League became the first Division I conference to suspend all fall sports in response to the coronavirus pandemic.

The State of the Virus

After locking down economic activity almost entirely for two months in an effort to slow the spread of the coronavirus, most states across the country began gradually moving through the White House Coronavirus Task Force’s phased reopening approach in mid-to-late May or early June. The result? We’ve seen 1,264,478 new confirmed COVID-19 cases since June 1, per the Johns Hopkins University dashboard, and 60,891—a daily record—yesterday alone.

Some of these numbers—as the president is wont to point out—can be attributed to increased testing capacity. The country conducted roughly 510,000 thousand COVID-19 tests per day in June, up from about 350,000 per day in May. But rate statistics show COVID-19 transmission is growing faster than our ability to test for it. In the first seven days of June, just 4.6 percent of tests came back positive. That figure is nearly double for the past week: 8.2 percent.

Increases in the daily number of new cases are happening in states across the country—36 to be exact—but trends in Arizona, Florida, Texas, and California are among the most worrisome.

Are Schools Going to Open in the Fall?

When the coronavirus pandemic led state and local officials to begin shutting things in mid-March, school closures were some of the most disruptive. Schools provide education, of course, but also child care, meals, and counseling to millions of children and their families across the country, five days a week. If the objective is to regain some semblance of normalcy in the fall, schools will have to reopen.

With the fall term set to begin in less than two months, schools—public and private, from pre-K to college—are grappling with exactly how and when to proceed. The president offered his two cents earlier this week:

Donald J. Trump @realDonaldTrump

SCHOOLS MUST OPEN IN THE FALL!!!

But plenty of education systems are ignoring his demand. Harvard University made news on Monday when it announced that “all course instruction (undergraduate and graduate) for the 2020-21 academic year will be delivered online.” New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio released the city’s hybrid approach for the fall on Wednesday: Some in-person an thlearning will be available to students, but only one to three days per week in order to promote social distancing. No more than 12 students will be permitted in classrooms at any given time.

But these two examples—although prominent—aren’t necessarily emblematic of the country at large. The University of Notre Dame announced in May its plan to reopen academics and athletics in the fall, and the University of Virginia will also resume full operation for all students in a few months. Many colleges are adopting a hybrid approach, encouraging students to return to in-person instruction but putting a cap on the number of students allowed in each class. Princeton University is welcoming freshmen and juniors to campus in the fall, and sophomores and seniors in the spring.

Worth Your Time

  • Among the less-discussed casualties of the COVID-19 lockdowns: Victims of drug overdoses, domestic violence, and mental health crises. This piece from Jacob Stern in The Atlantic tackles the last of those three—predicting grim aftereffects of the coronavirus on our nation’s psychological health. Mixed messages from public health officials early on, combined with an already inadequate mental health-care system, will create a wave of psychological stress of massive proportions, he writes. “A pandemic, unlike an earthquake or a fire, is invisible, and that makes it all the more anxiety-inducing,” Stern writes. “Mental-health professionals can’t reassure [people living through a pandemic] that the danger has passed, because the danger has not passed.”

Presented Without Comment

Toeing the Company Line

  • The gang recorded a Dispatch Podcast yesterday! Tune in for a discussion of the open letter on free speech that ran in Harper’s, the school reopening debate, mask wearing and culture warring, and President Trump’s Mount Rushmore speech last Friday.
  • In yesterday’s G-File, Jonah mounts a defense of the American founding, shedding light on the revolutionary liberal principles that drove the creation of a more perfect union. He disputes narratives that cast the American Revolution in the singular light of white supremacy, writing, “I understand that race is the most important issue—even the only issue—for a lot of people today. But it wasn’t then.”
  • This week, Thomas Joscelyn takes a look into the Chinese Communist Party’s “Fox Hunt.” On its face, the campaign targets Chinese nationals at home and abroad suspected of corruption charges. In practice, the wide-reaching operation takes aim at a variety of political deviations from the CCP, investigating and repatriating dissidents through a vast espionage apparatus. Learn more in the latest edition of Vital Interests (🔒).
  • Is there a better way to unpack a big day of Supreme Court decisions than by tuning into a bonus episode of Advisory Opinions? We don’t think so. Be sure to check out Sarah and David’s latest for an examination of the mounting legal tension between religious liberty and LGBTQ protections.
  • On the site today, Ronald Rubin Seila Law LLC v. Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, in which the majority found that the CFPB’s structure that allowed the director to be removed by the president only “for cause” to be unconstitutional. Rubin explains how the decision could have a lasting effect on the administrative state.

Reporting by Declan Garvey (@declanpgarvey), Andrew Egger (@EggerDC), Sarah Isgur (@whignewtons), Charlotte Lawson (@charlotteUVA), Audrey Fahlberg (@FahlOutBerg), Nate Hochman (@njhochman), and Steve Hayes (@stephenfhayes).

Photograph by Tom Pennington/Getty Images.