Washington (CNN) White House coronavirus task force member Dr. Scott Atlas criticized Michigan’s new Covid-19 restrictions in a tweet shortly after they were announced Sunday evening, urging people to “rise up” against the new public health measures.
“The only way this stops is if people rise up,” Atlas said. “You get what you accept. #FreedomMatters #StepUp”
His message — which runs counter to the consensus of public health officials — is likely to fuel new tension between the White House and Michigan Democratic Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, whom federal and state officials announced last month was the target of an alleged domestic terrorism kidnapping plot.
Responding to Atlas’ tweet Sunday evening, Whitmer told CNN’s Wolf Blitzer, “We know that the White House likes to single us out here in Michigan, me out in particular. I’m not going to be bullied into not following reputable scientists and medical professionals.
“Instead, Whitmer said, she consults “people that actually have studied and are well respected worldwide on these issues, not the — not the individual that is doing the President’s bidding on this one.
“Whitmer announced in a news conference earlier Sunday that Michigan will begin a “three-week pause targeting indoor social gatherings and other group activities” to mitigate the spread of Covid-19.
“If everyone does their part, we will see a big benefit from it,” she told Blitzer of the new measures. “But we’ll be assessing it every step of the way.”
Throughout the pandemic, Whitmer has been the focus of extreme vitriol from far-right groups. The alleged scheme to kidnap her included plans to overthrow several state governments that the suspects “believe are violating the US Constitution,” according to a federal criminal complaint.
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Saturday saw New Jersey hit a record high in new cases, with more than 4,000 additional COVID-19 reported. The last time the state topped 4,000 was in April. (Above chart.)
The rise in hospitalizations was also unrelenting, with 2,000 patients reported for the first time since the early spring. That remains well below New Jersey’s pandemic peak of 8,000 hospitalizations.
Statewide, 26 deaths were reported, also up in recent weeks but also a small fraction of the spring peaks when more than 400 deaths were reported in a day.
The latest positivity rate on tests administrated dropped slightly, but the transmission rate rose again to 1.35.
Nationwide, it was the fourth consecutive day where the United States set a new record for new infections
Gov. Phil Murphy planned to meet this weekend in an “emergency summit” with governors of adjoining states to discuss coordinating their responses and restrictions to best stem the spread of the virus.
The other states are New York, Connecticut, Massachusetts, Pennsylvania and Vermont.
No new COVID restrictions have been announced, but Murphy this week pulled back on the reins a bit, ordering bars and restaurants statewide to close their doors to indoor patrons at 10 a.m., while calling an immediate halt to all bar-side service.
Murphy also issued an executive order allowing municipalities and counties the option to order non-essential businesses within their jurisdictions to shut down after 8 p.m.
NEW YORK (November 12, 2020) – The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) announced today that it has implemented the EPA If you’re not receiving our free updates, sign up here(ELMS) to 83% of the agency across the United States. The program has enjoyed success in EPA’s Region 2 office, covering New Jersey, New York, Puerto Rico, the U.S. Virgin Islands and eight federally recognized Indian Nations.
“Region 2 has embraced the ELMS program as a way to improve our processes to help critical work move forward more quickly while improving the quality of that work,” said EPA Region 2 Administrator Pete Lopez. “Efficient processes yield results for the American people and enhance our ability to protect people’s health and the environment.”
ELMS is an agency-wide systematic approach to continuous process improvement. It is based on lean principles used for years by the private sector and is comprised of six components: visual management, standard process, cascading performance measures, problem solving, business reviews & huddles, and leader behaviors. EPA implementation of each of these elements has allowed EPA to make significant improvements to the speed and quality at which it delivers its services to the American people.
EPA Office of Continuous Improvement – the team responsible for implementing ELMS – set a goal to deploy this system to 80% of agency personnel and use it to improve 250 processes by fiscal year 2020. Both goals were successfully met with the agency reporting over 500 processes improved and 83% of personnel using ELMS.
In EPA’s Region 2, employees and managers are using ELMS to track and improve 76 processes. These processes, in different stages of implementation, focus on a range of issues, including hiring staff, responding to public inquiries, laboratory work, superfund cleanups, enhancements to enforcement, state clean air plan approvals, grants, and internal services for employees.
As part of the new system, the executives in EPA’s 23 national programs and regional offices monitor over 800 measures each month. If a measure’s target is not met, problem solving is performed and a plan is created for getting back on track. In addition, over 10,000 of EPA’s staff on the front line now huddle in small groups for 15 minutes each week to review electronic boards used to track the flow of their team’s work and the metrics used to measure process performance.
Delivery of chemical data in a timely manner is a crucial part of the decision-making process during remediation of a Superfund site. Through the ELMS process and use of visual management problem solving tools, R2’s Laboratory Services and Applied Science Division has successfully streamlined the reporting of chemical results for Superfund sampling projects. Thanks to the ELMS process, Region 2 has achieved a 33% improvement in the time to produce the sampling report. Additionally, the average number of days to produce the sampling reports was cut in half. This ELMS process helps move Superfund projects to completion faster to meet the Superfund Redevelopment Initiative for beneficial reuse.
A critical part of the Superfund enforcement process is identifying potentially responsible parties who can perform or fund response actions at each site. One of the most important tools EPA has for doing so is issuing an information request letter authority under Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation, and Liability Act. The process for preparing and issuing these letters needed to be made more efficient. In the past year, the process took Region 2 about 244 days on average. Such a delay slows the gathering of key evidence, which, in turn can delay site cleanups. Region 2’s goal was to reduce the average length of time by at least 25% (to 183 days) by September 30, 2020. Using ELMS, the average length of the process is now 92 days – an improvement of 62%.
EPA Region 2 also used ELMS in a cross-divisional effort to reduce the backlog in National Pollution Discharge Elimination System (NPDES) permits in Puerto Rico. The program ensures that discharges of treated industrial and municipal wastewater do not impair water quality. The NPDES program in Puerto Rico is jointly managed by EPA Region 2’s Caribbean Environmental Protection Division, Enforcement Division and Water Division. If permits that are not renewed within the five-year time frame, they either expire or become administratively continued and are considered backlogged. To address the backlog, the three EPA Region 2 divisions developed a system of remote huddles to allow staff in New York and San Juan to meet and track permit issuance. The team also implemented new information sharing practices with the PR Department of Natural and Environmental Resources (PRDNER), including re-instituting quarterly check-ins and developed an expansive SharePoint site that allows EPA and PRDNER to update permit information in real time. From October 2018 to September 2020, the team reduced the permit backlog by 88%.
Reviewing work at Superfund sites every five years is key to ensuring that the cleanup work remains protective of the communities located near the site. Under Superfund, EPA conducts about 35-45 of these Five-Year Reviews (FYRs) each year. Due to workload and inefficiencies, half of this work was conducted in the last quarter of our fiscal year. Starting in 2018, Region 2’s Superfund and Emergency Management Division (SEMD) began implementing an ELMS process to improve the timeliness of the FYRs. In FY 2020, that process was further revised to include additional incremental deadlines that help to keep the FYRs on track. As a result, SEMD completed 68% of the FYRs by the end of the third quarter in 2020, which was a 66 % improvement over 2019. By moving these reviews earlier in the year, staff and managers have more time to focus on drafting these documents and resolving any issues that may affect the protectiveness of the cleanup work.
President Trump’s faltering efforts to challenge the election results suffered twin blows Friday, as Republicans contended with multiple legal setbacks and as the final state projections in the White House race gave President-elect Joe Biden a resounding 306 electoral votes.
In court, Republicans on Friday faced losses in Michigan, Arizona and Pennsylvania, while another major law firm withdrew from its representation of the president.
Meanwhile, Edison Research projected that Biden won in Georgia, while Trump was victorious in North Carolina, the last states to be called in the race.
Together, the latest developments underscore what the president’s advisers have been privately acknowledging throughout the week: that heading off Biden’s victory is essentially impossible. To do so, Trump would have to somehow overturn his rival’s wins in three separate states.
Biden is now projected to have won the same number of electoral college votes as Trump did in 2016, while also defeating the president in the popular vote by more than 5 million votes.
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Edison Research projects that President-elect Joe Biden will capture Georgia’s 16 electoral votes, flipping a state Republicans have taken in presidential elections since 1996.
Georgia is now conducting a statewide hand recount of presidential votes, but Biden’s current lead of 14,152 votes there is expected to withstand any recount changes.
President Trump was projected to add North Carolina’s 15 electoral votes to his total.
While the Republican-controlled Pennsylvania House is preparing for a wide ranging review of the 2020 election, the review appears unlikely to impact President Donald Trump’s loss in the Keystone State.
That’s despite days of rallies, one big, most small, by ardent Trump loyalists from across the country outside the state Capitol calling for the Legislature to overturn the election results on baseless assertion of election fraud.
That reality became clear Tuesday, as House Speaker Bryan Cutler tapped Rep. Seth Grove, R-York, to assess state election law and the administration of the recent presidential contest at least until the end of November. Cutler appointed Grove the acting chairman of House State Government Committee. He’ll replace retiring Rep. Garth Everett, R-Lycoming.
“We’re concerned with the administration of the election, and that will be the focus of the committee,” Cutler said at a press conference Tuesday.
Cutler added that “mismanagement” by counties, including differing interpretations of state law, had led voters to not trust the results of the election.
On such issues as providing voters a chance to to fix a mail-in ballot mistake to when to start processing ballots to rules for poll watching, different counties followed different standards.
Such discrepancies sparked a number of lawsuits, mostly unsuccessful, from Trump’s re-election campaign, as he attempts to sow uncertainty around his projected loss in the 2020 election.
While Cutler did call for preliminary results by the end of the month, he did not say that certification of the final results should wait for the completion of the legislative report.
But a delay on final results pending a House investigation was what about two dozen arch-conservative Republicans called for early Tuesday morning, echoing Trump’s base.
At the press conference, the lawmakers, led by Rep. Dawn Keefer, R-York, said that the Wolf administration should not certify election results until after the Legislature completed its own review of the election.
The lawmakers described getting a wave of phone calls from constituents reporting what they think is voter fraud.
When pressed for specifics, Keefer said that she and others “just got a lot of allegations” and said they are “too in the weeds” to comment about them.
Even if these results were delayed, it is highly unlikely that it would change the outcome of the presidential race.
There is no deadline to certify election results in Pennsylvania under state law, but Congress must certify electoral college results by Dec. 8.
But there is not a legal pathway for the General Assembly to influence this outcome.
