Texas lawmakers upped the pressure on the federal government Tuesday to keep supporting COVID-19 testing sites in the state, petitioning the Department of Health and Human Services and the Federal Emergency Management Agency to continue to assist the sites past the end of the month.
In a normal country this shouldnt be even matter of discussion…
When you’ve lost even Texas…
https://www.seattletimes.com/nation-world/as-texas-hits-all-time-high-in-new-covid-19-cases-governor-tells-texans-to-stay-home/
AUSTIN, Texas — Gov. Greg Abbott sternly warned Texans of “rampant” spread of coronavirus that took the state to a new high Tuesday of more than 5,000 new cases in a single day.
Saying Texans should stay home unless they have a good reason to venture out, Abbott late Tuesday afternoon gave local officials more powers to limit public gatherings during the upcoming Fourth of July weekend.
He expanded the ability of mayors and county judges to restrict outdoor gatherings of over 100 people — down from the previous limit of more than 500 people. Previously, this applied only to outdoor gatherings over 500 people.
I sincerely hope this sentence in the article is predictive: “Senate Majority Leader Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-NY) expressed outrage at the move.” 
Not an Abbott fan, but Trump and Trumpism have this ability to make even hitherto obstinate GOPPERs seem like paragons of public interest.
Somehow moving testing performed by county officials and paid for by the feds is now going to be replaced with CVS, Walgreens, Walmart, and Target becoming testing sites. There’s a money angle here. And if they’re moving these testing sites to commercial stores how are the stores going to protect their staff and customers not there for testing from being in contact with people who suspect that they are infected?
Problem is that Abbott talks and that’s it. He won’t set policy. He’s extremely passive aggressive.
But at least he is giving power back to our local authorities again.
has the motherfucker resigned yet?
Seems like maybe having to make childrens’ hospitals into Covid wards might be a wake-up call.
He’s talking a lot more seriously about the pandemic than he was for the preceding two weeks if that means anything and it barely does.
The most significant thing he did was give power back to local authority. It’s limited - he’ll take it back any time.
Trump is extracting re-election campaign favors from them with this.
Sadly, I think it’s going to take one of these States having their whole healthcare system collapse and a NYC-level of deaths before people start realizing that just because they weren’t at NYC-levels when NYC was, doesn’t mean that they escaped the virus.
We’re really stuck with this for the long-haul. How the nation which should be handling this the best went so wrong is just sickening. And why the republicans haven’t tossed trump overboard, not to save us, but to save themselves, is getting way beyond me.
This one I don’t necessarily attribute directly to trump, smells more bean-counter shit from MoscowMitch.
Ending Fed support in multiple States would have a lot of impacts. For example, if they end the Fed support of National Guard activations (which is tied to the FEMA mission referenced), then a lot of activated Guard would fall shy of the magic 91 days where they start earning GI Bill benefits.
Just for one piece.
They didn’t they haven’t they won’t.
Even John Bolton slithers around when asked about Trump like last night on Colbert. He was disgusting.
I don’t get any of this.
Perhaps. I tend to think Trump wants more voter suppression activity in TX to assure he’s not routed by the combination of CA and TX electoral college votes. We’ll have to watch closely.
I’m sure he does and I’m sure as well that every one of the GOP in Texas wants the same thing. They wouldn’t be fighting us so hard on mail in voting if that wasn’t so.
I strenuously disagree. He’s done nothing to stem the spike in cases, refusing to do anything beyond gloat when a judge in San Antonio figured out a loophole in his no mandatory masks policy as though he had known for weeks that it was available to them. It’s disgusting behavior.
Also this comment:
Texas Gov. Greg Abbott (R) was asked about the report in an interview with a local radio station on Tuesday. He said that “there is a strategy that will supplant and actually be superior to that strategy” which the state will announce “within a week.”
…is positively Trumpian.
This current outbreak in Texas is Abbott’s fault. He reopened Texas too early (no decline in cases at all before he pulled the trigger) and too quickly – each phase was less than three weeks long which, with a lag of around two weeks between infection and reporting an infection, left no time to assess the effect of each reopening phase. Failure was baked into the process.
Finally, just this Monday, even as hospital admins were sounding the alarm all around the state, all he said was that if we had another month like the last one, more action could be necessary. Another month??? He was forced to make another statement less than 24 hours later, but even that was Trumpian – that you should stay home unless you need to go out.
In some ways Abbott is worse than Trump since he actually has some idea of what he should be doing, and its politics and ideology that’s preventing him, not profound ignorance and ego.
It is Trumpian and it is his fault that we’re experiencing such a spike here.
You know what you get from chickens? Chicken shit!!!
People are saying that boi Jared has been unsuccessful at finding some way to grift from the testing fund.
Plus Governor Cuomo and governors of two neighboring states have announced that visitors from states with high rates of infection will be quarantined for fourteen days should they visit New York, New Jersey or Connecticut.
so unfair ™