The Daily - The Governor and the Protester

Episode Date: April 29, 2020

She ordered Michigan to stay on lockdown through mid-May. He thinks the measures are too extreme. Today, we speak to them both. Guests: Gov. Gretchen Whitmer of Michigan and Phil Campbell, a vice president of a pest control company whose revenues have been halved during lockdown. For more information on today’s episode, visit nytimes.com/thedaily. Background reading: Two weeks ago, President Trump announced that governors would be on their own to decide when to ease lockdown restrictions. The day after his announcement, he called for Michigan’s liberation on Twitter. Raucous protests ensued.After becoming a prominent foil of the president, Ms. Whitmer is now being considered as a potential vice-presidential pick in the election.

From The New York Times, I'm Michael Bavaro. This is The Daily. Michigan has been one of the most aggressive states when it comes to taking steps to combat the coronavirus. Bans on all gatherings outside a single household, travel to in-state vacation homes, and the use of motorboats. Michigan's restrictions on its citizens' movements have been at the center of a national debate about public health versus economic survival. Protests in Michigan are growing because the governor, Democrat Gretchen Whitmer, has told citizens they can't leave the city and stay in their summer homes. Don't buy paint, don't buy roses, don't buy, I mean, she's got all these crazy things. I mean, she's got all these crazy things. Today, a conversation with the governor who ordered those restrictions and a demonstrator who is protesting them.

It's Wednesday, April 29th. So I just want to start by asking you to introduce yourself, your name, and where you're talking to us from. My name is Philip Campbell, and I'm coming to you from Jackson County, Michigan, which is about an hour west of Detroit and about an hour away from the capital of Lansing. And how long have you lived there? I've been here in this particular location for five years, but I'm a born and raised Michigander my whole life. And did you say how old you are?

Yeah, 39. I'm turning 40 in June. I had a massive party planned. I was inviting everyone I know, and now I just don't know what's happening with that. When you say massive, how massive? I invited 1,000 people. So we were going to be... I have five acres, and were going to, I was going to like rent port-a-johns and we're going to camp and it was going to be like a multi-day bash,

you know? It turns out you're very popular too. Well, I've made a lot of friends over the years. So tell me about what you do for a living. I'm the vice president of a pest and wildlife control company. We are the ones you call if you wake up at 1 a.m. and there's a bat flying around your kid's bedroom and you need somebody to go get it. We will climb on your roof and pull down the hornet's nest. We will take care of the mice in your basement.

You know, we'll do this sort of work. We have about 30 employees. I've been with the company for about 10 years now. I think I'm one of the most senior employees there. We started when we were in the basement of the owner's house. And now we have a very large industrial building with a depot and a shop. So it's been cool to see that grow over the years. So at this point, how would you describe the company and its success? I mean, I think we're on the threshold of breaking through to the next level of growth. We're grossing about $3 million a year. Just this year, we're able to,

for the first time, provide health benefits for our employees. So we've been working towards that for a long time, you know, trying to get to where we had the sort of revenue and the growth that we could take on those costs, which are not insignificant. We like to think that we're one of the companies or industries that can still offer regular old Joes without a college education, a very decent middle-class livelihood with insurance and benefits, things like that. The majority of the technicians are what I would just call blue-collar people. They like to hunt, they fish, they go out on the lake on the weekends and drink beer on their pontoons and listen to music and just, you know, regular old folks, you know. And what kind of a living do the people generally make?

I mean, many of the people in our company, they provide for their families. You know, they're the breadwinner. You know, they're making between a new technician, like starting, might make 35. And then a technician who's been with us for a while and knows what he's doing, he can make in the high 50s or 60s. So with the 30 employees we have, we feed about 100 mouths with their children and families. So we feel responsible for about 100 people's well-being. And what did the first Michigan lockdown, the one ordered by Governor Widmer, what did it mean for your pest control business? Her order did not exempt us. I mean, the text of

the order itself, it did not make any exemption for wildlife control, pest control, and we were preparing to shut down. And then I noticed that it said for its definition of essential services, it said for further clarification, see this document by the Department of Homeland Security. And we found that we were allowed to stay open. Got it. But very quickly after that, we had to furlough a couple people after that, because even though we were allowed to stay open, you know, our customer base, many of them aren't working. So if your customers aren't working, they're not spending money. And it doesn't really matter if you're open, if all the people you serve aren't working, you know what I mean? Right. Can you, I don't want to pry too much, but if you

were bringing in, I think you said almost $3 million a year in revenue before this. What did it start to look like once the lockdown was in place and the calls from customers began to taper off? At first, it was a 50% drop. Wow. Again, this is for a company that was allowed to stay open. Right. And then around this time, the second shutdown order came, which was the one that everybody started protesting about. Tell me what you mean. Yeah, the second shutdown order just ramped down on the first. This was the one that went in and shut particular sections of stores that were still open. So like it said, you can't buy paint products, you can't buy gardening products. See, because what was

happening is people thinking like, okay, I got to stay home, I might as well work on my house, you know. So a lot of those people were going to Home Depot or going to whatever to get their supplies. And then the governor said, no, you can't get that stuff. So this was the order that said you can't go out on a lake by yourself in your boat, in your private lake, if the boat has a motor, but if it doesn't have a motor, you can go. Things that seemed a lot more arbitrary, the one that said you can't have someone come mow your lawn, even though, you know, they pull up in a truck, they drive the lawnmower off, they don't touch you, they don't go into your house, it's just one guy mowing your lawn.

You know, things that people start thinking, like, the economy's already in free fall, like, is it really necessary to go this far with it? From my own experience, if the economy takes a dump and we can't get back to where we were, we're going to have to cut their health insurance or we're going to have to lay people off. We're going to have to take other measures to stay afloat. You know, I don't know what we're going to have to do. I don't want to hypothesize. I don't want my employees to listen to this and be like, what would you say is going to happen? But, you know, I don't know. We're going to have to do something. We can't just suddenly take a 30 to 50 percent decline. I mean, that's huge.

You know what I mean? Right. What if you got a 50 percent pay cut? You know, like, I mean, it would affect your life, you know? And so, you know, I'm thinking about the ripple effect. Like, we take a 30 to 50 percent drop. Our employees take a dip. Maybe they can't afford to pay their debts.

Maybe they can't afford to pay their own mortgages or whatever. You know. I don't know. I haven't assessed the financial situation of each of my employees. But I guess what I am frustrated about, and I don't want to minimize the risk of COVID-19 or the people that have had it, but as someone who's worked for 10 years in this business trying to build it up, get it to where it is. I'm frustrated with the attitude of some people that we can just shut it off for a while and then just turn it back on when everything's safe and just pick up where we left off. Like, no, that's not how business works. That's certainly not how small business works. If you take a big enough hit, it's hard to recover from it, you know? So I'm curious when you first hear about the possibility of a public demonstration, a protest in Michigan of these lockdown rules. I saw an event on social media, I think, or I saw people talking about it like, hey, let's go down to Lansing and protest. So the owner and I, I mean, work's been slow. So we said, hey, we got time. Let's drive down to Lansing on Thursday.

And the way I understood it, we were going to drive by the Capitol and honk our horn, basically. And what was that honked horn going to mean? The honked horn was going to mean like, we are workers and we want the freedom for people to be able to work. Please consider opening things back up a little more. The Capitol in Lansing, it's like on a loop. So you drive around in like a circle around the Capitol. So I thought that all the traffic would come in and we'd kind of loop around and we'd honk and then we'd go back home, you know. But they were anticipating a certain amount of people, I think 10 times more than they anticipated, showed up. So it took us two hours to get to

Lansing. We got in Lansing and then we were just, I mean, Michael, it was a traffic jam. That's what it was. It was just a big trap. It was like an organized traffic jam. Well, what did it feel like to be in that traffic jam? Right. Cause it's like a, it's a particular kind of traffic jam with like-minded people there to protest something. It was really neat. Um, it was nice to not feel so alone because I was really sick of people on social media telling me like, I'm selfish because I don't want the company I helped build for 10 years to just collapse. Who's calling you selfish? Do you feel like? Oh, just people on social media, my friends, people in my broader circle, you know, not people I'm necessarily close to,

but I'd say like, I lost some friends over this, honestly, when the governor shut the economy down, I said, this is going to be very hard on businesses. And this is gonna be very hard on us. And a lot of people's response seemed to be like, what do you want people to die or something, you know, and it kind of degenerate into like either you want people to die or you hate my business, you know, or stuff like that. And I was really glad because I was starting to feel kind of isolated to see a solidarity of so many other Michiganders who were similarly frustrated at the situation. Afterwards, when I got home, I saw there was a lot of like, like a lot of people with a lot of Trump stuff. And I was

kind of thinking like, no, this isn't political. Like, don't make it into a political thing. Cause this isn't about like the governor happens to be a Democrat or a woman or something. And cause I would have gone down there if it was a Republican, you know, it's not, it wasn't about her party affiliation. So I was frustrated. What did, what did you make of kind of the flavor of the protest? It seems like you didn't see this yourself in your car, but there were, as you've hinted, there were kind of strong strains of libertarianism and conservatism and pro-Trump posters,

as well as people with guns, as well as some more vulgar and extreme sentiments. Some people compared Governor Whitmer to Hitler. Oh, like Governor Whitmer? I don't know. I think that's just juvenile. I mean, it's, I mean, I think it's pretty juvenile in public discourse when the only thing you go to is compare your opponent to Hitler. I wish it wouldn't have been so much of an anti-Whitmer, because this isn't about like Governor Whitmer, the person, you know, I wish that wouldn't have been so much of an anti-Whitmer, because this isn't about, like, Governor Whitmer, the person, you know? I wish that it would have been more on point and focused about, let me work, you know? I wonder where you fall in the political spectrum. Did you vote for

Trump? Did you vote for Whitmer? And how did your political views apply to this event? My political views didn't apply to this event really at all. You know, like I would have been there if this was a Republican. I did vote for Trump. I don't particularly think he's doing that great of a job. So I'm not a gung-ho Trump supporter. I didn't vote for Whitmer,

but I didn't like the guy running against her either. So... You're saying you're not seeing this crisis or the lockdowns through a political lens. No, no, not at all. Not at all. The little match between President Trump and Governor Whitmer is making it more political. When Trump tweets liberate Michigan, when he refers to her as that woman from Michigan, obviously that sets Governor Whitmer up as a foil against President Trump, which politicizes it.

When rumors start coming out that Biden wants to consider her as VP material, that politicizes it. I really liked when I was there that it simply seemed like a spontaneous expression of working class frustration. Phil, I want to tick through what your governor said when she began this process of locking down the state, basically enforcing social distancing. And here's what she said. The only tool we have to fight the virus at this moment and to support our healthcare system is to give them the opportunity by buying some time.

And she went on to say, without aggressive measures, more people will get sick, more people will die, and our economy will suffer longer, right? And her telling, the disease spreads if people are out there. If people aren't out there, the disease doesn't spread. So she is making the case from the beginning that these sacrifices are required to prevent a system overload. What do we think of that? Well, we were willing to go along with that because we were all expecting this huge crunch on all our hospitals. We were worried about not enough beds, not enough ventilators. But the fact is the curve is flattened now. We now have hospitals that are, they're not overwhelmed anymore.

So what we're saying is like that was all well and good, but now we can start to open up again because we've flattened the curve. Even if infections go back up at this point, as I grant they could, if we start being more economically active, It seems highly unlikely given all the empty hospitals that we're going to get to another crush where we don't have enough beds or something like that. So I want to just, I want to make sure I understand what you're saying when you talk about where things are in Michigan. The Times has maps about where the virus is in each state. And just pulling this up, Michigan has about

38,000 infections, and there's been about 3,300 deaths. Yeah, we're the third highest state, I think. So when you talk about your frustrations with the different phases of this lockdown, how do you square it with those numbers? Well, I square it because my understanding is that the lockdown wasn't supposed to be like, we're going to lock down until this goes away. What we were told was that this lockdown was to distribute those amount of cases over a longer period of time so that the health system doesn't get overwhelmed. So I look at the total number of deaths and infections

and say, okay, this thing is here to stay whether we like it or not. The hospitals do have the ability to take people in. So it seems like to me that the goal has been met. The goal was not to- It sounds like you're saying that if we assume that the measures taken so far have flattened the curve to some degree in Michigan, that you're willing to accept the risks of restarting the economy, even if that means that the curve might go up a little bit.

But do you think that so far the measures taken have done enough to merit that kind of experimentation with essentially taking the risk of reopening? I think so. And again, I'm not saying like just a full like the economy isn't a switch, just turn it on, everybody comes back out, you know. But I think people who want to work and can work in a way that is maintaining safe protocols, I think they should be able to, because the thing is, like what I would like able to. Because the thing is, like, what I would like people to understand is that it's not like either we stay home and stay safe or we all get the coronavirus and die. It's like staying home and nobody working has its own inherent risks and dangers and devastation that's going to come. When I talk about the economy, you know, I'm not saying

I'm worried about the stock market or the financial sector. I'm talking about the ability of the average person to provide sustenance for himself and his, you know, and one's family. So we could have negative outcomes because of the shutdown, not because of COVID, negative outcomes that dwarf COVID. So we're now talking on Monday, April 27th, and that protest was about two weeks ago. Yeah. And I'm curious if you think that protest, which was one of the very first protests, had any kind of impact. Yeah, I think it did. I mean, this is just me kind of blue-skying this, but I think it let her see that she only had a limited amount of political capital that she could keep carrying this out indefinitely. Like she started to say, we'll let lawn service

in again. We'll let various things start. She rolled back some of the more, in your mind, problematic restrictions. Yeah, she rolled back some of the more problematic restrictions and she started talking about an end game, you know. So in that respect, I think it was helpful. I think it got the message across. You know, we plan to talk to Governor Whitmer, and I wonder what you most want to communicate to her about what you think she may not understand, what she might not be getting at this moment.

Well, first I would say to her, Americans are responsible people. We're creative people. Tell us what social distancing guidelines you think we should be maintaining when we're out there and let us find a way to do it. If you think we need to be six or seven feet apart, if you think we shouldn't have more than six people in a room, give us a safe paradigm of personal behavior and let us work within it. Don't lock us down and say that we can't provide for ourselves. That's the most basic human right is to provide for your own well-being. Just let us find some way to work.

Well, Phil, thank you very much. We really appreciate your time. Yeah, thank you. I was very happy to be with you today. We'll be right back. Hi there. Hi. Governor Wimmer, it's Michael Barbaro. How are you?

I'm doing all right. How are you doing? I'm doing great. Where are you right now? That looks like it might be home. Yes, yes. I'm at the governor's residence in one of the rooms. Is that a sign of you that says the gov?

It's a beer that was named after me. So yes, that's a poster. And the beer is called the gov? Yep. Is it any good? It is pretty good. It's an Indian pale ale. So Governor, over the past few weeks, it feels like a lot of people have learned your name.

But I sense a lot of Americans, a lot of our listeners don't know all that much about you and how it is you became the governor of Michigan. So in brief, what is that story? You know, I'm a lifelong Michigander. I've lived here my whole life. I was brought up in a household with a father who was kind of a Republican, a mother who was kind of a Democrat. I decided to run for governor after spending some time practicing law and teaching. And I did a stint as a prosecutor in my hometown, but I think that part of my nature is when I see a problem and I don't see the right people there to fix it, I just kind of want to jump in and do it. The tagline of the campaign was fix the damn roads, and it wasn't because it was poll tested. It's how everyone in the state talks about their frustration with infrastructure that hasn't been attended to properly for a long period of time. And it is the most visceral daily reminder of government that's not getting the

fundamentals right. That was kind of the call to action. And I won by almost 10 points after Donald Trump had won my state by less than 11,000 votes just two years before, I think because we really were trying to rally around getting the fundamentals right. So it's fair to say, right, that you did not run in that race for governor as somebody who would become a polarizing and partisan figure in a national debate over the future of the American economy. Correct.

To the contrary, I went out of my way to not go down that path. And so to be right here in this moment, in the midst of a global pandemic, to be trying to pull people together where things are have gotten so polarized in ways that I think many people would say they couldn't have ever predicted if they were being honest, is kind of surreal. So let's talk about how that happened, how you have gotten to this point, where there's so much polarization over your decision-making. As the pandemic unfolds, soon enough you begin imposing restrictions on the movement of Michigan residents. And what feels like a pretty standard version of a lockdown.

Yes. But then at a certain point, you introduce a second wave of restrictions that are a little bit different, right? Banning travel to second homes, banning motorboating, limiting what kind of non-essential goods stores can sell. And Governor, what was your thinking there with that second wave of restrictions? So what we knew at the time was that COVID-19 was ravaging Southeast Michigan. We also know that we have an incredibly high death count compared to our population. Tenth largest population, but the third highest number of positive cases and number of deaths. We also know that COVID-19 doesn't recognize

boundaries of a county, that this is a disease that is highly communicable. There are studies that will tell you COVID-19 can stay active and communicable for 72 hours on a stainless steel surface. And so as the weather starts to warm up here in Michigan, we know people want to head north and go to the lake. One of the lakes, we've got lots of beautiful freshwater lakes. And the more people that are on the road, the more likely COVID-19 will be spread at a gas station. I often would invoke the visual of that gas pump. So you think about all the nurses and doctors and people that have to touch that gas pump because they're going out to get groceries or they're going out to pick up medication. The more people that are on the road, the more likely COVID-19 spreads to

other parts of the state too. And that's why these restrictions made sense. So your thinking was, let's shut down anything that might contribute to the spread. And let's make sure that people in the most populous parts of Michigan don't end up basically exporting it to less populous parts of the state where outdoor activities are concentrated. And let's do this even if it might seem a little bit extreme. Let's shut down what's not life-sustaining activity. That was the thought process of why we went more aggressive than some other states. So you think those second-wave measures were the right call? I do. Governor, the protests that broke out in your state, I'm sure you were aware of them because you're in Lansing. Protesters very much by design came to you. Did you sympathize at all with the protesters who said that they found these restrictions to be too onerous, to be unfair, to be, in their minds, undemocratic?

chronic? I'll say this. I respect people's right to disagree with me. I do. And I will defend anyone's right to say what they want to say. Their ability and right to do that is absolutely something that I have a great deal of respect for. The fact of the matter is congregation is the biggest threat to containing COVID-19. Because when people come from all different parts of the state, congregate, don't observe CDC best practices, and then go back to all parts of the state, that's precisely what we're hoping to avoid in terms of continuous transmission and growth in other parts of Michigan. But when you look at these protests, there were a variety of different political groups that came together. It had a rally feel to it.

It was right outside the office. I saw, I watched a bit of it. People were open carrying automatic rifles. There were demonstrations, anti-choice demonstrations. They're displaying Confederate flags and Nazi symbolism. And I think very partisan rhetoric was more about a political statement rather than a statement of the sacrifices that I've asked people to make. Well, yesterday, Governor, I spoke with a man who was at that protest. He stayed in his car. His name was Phil Campbell. He manages a kind of moderate-sized business that he says is suffering right now under these restrictions.

contested, whether you were a Democrat or a Republican. And in his mind, the shutdown is creating its own health and safety costs, right? I mean, he says his employees may soon lose their health insurance because business is suffering so much they can't afford to provide it much longer. I mean, what do you say to someone like that who says this is not about politics, this is not about you being a Democrat, this is not about the Tea Party. This is about a view that this is just not right. The reality is unrestrained activity would have made what was a hard time, a catastrophe that would have taken a lot longer to start to re-engage from. What our modeling told us, we would have 220,000 people who would need to be hospitalized this week. We have 3,000 people who are hospitalized. It's worked, and the vast majority of people are doing their part and doing the right thing.

It hasn't been easy, but they've stepped up to do it, and we've saved lives in the process. This gentleman I spoke with, Phil, the protester, his ultimate message, and it was directed very much at you as governor, is trust us. Let us start to go back to work, not like a Band-Aid being ripped off, but gradually. And trust us to be able to work and follow social distancing guidelines. And I think his question to you would be, do you trust Michiganders to do that? I am so inspired by what the people of this state have done in this crisis. They've stepped up. They've made sacrifices. I have incredible faith and confidence in the people of this state. But we have a duty to make sure that we get this right. And it's got to be guided by the best medical experts as well as business leaders.

And that's what we're working to do. I have a council of business leaders and medical leaders who are helping us determine how do we start to re-engage our economy in a way that avoids a second wave. Because whether Phil and I agree on how quickly that should be done or not, I think we can both agree, I hope so, that none of us ever wants to do this again. You know, in states that are moving, some would say too fast, one of the issues that small business is confronting is that the public is not confident that it's safe to re-engage. And so they've lifted the protections for small business while you're in a crisis, and yet the public's not coming out to patronize. And that could be even worse for small business. So what we want to do is get it right. And that means

working with the business community and public health and turning up the dial together so we don't have to turn it back. Well, let's talk about how it is that you get it right when it comes to reopening and how you're monitoring? And I'm curious, and I'm sure lots of people in Michigan are too, what's the thing or things that trigger the reopening? So we've started to re-engage. We are looking, of course, at rolling averages on hospitalizations. We are looking at our ability to ramp up testing. We need to build out when it comes to tracing so that if someone does test positive for COVID-19, that we're able to trace all their contacts and keep it from spreading. I would also add that we in Michigan

are assessing different sectors of our economy for risk, asking questions like, is the work done in a region of our state that's been devastated by COVID-19 or a region that has been untouched by COVID-19? Right. Does the type of work require that multiple people use the same instruments or machinery? Is the work done indoors or outdoors? It makes a difference. Right. One of the examples that I think Phil gave was around this idea of, is there work that can be done that just feels fundamentally safer by nature, that those might come back soon? So you used the word feels. Feels safer.

And I think that's interesting because what I want to make sure we do is go with the data and make sure that as we are re-engaging, we're continually measuring. I know Phil doesn't want to be back in a stay-at-home order in August, and neither do I. And so I want to get this right for him, for his employees. Lawnscaping, lawn care, that is already permitted. That was in our first wave that I announced on Friday. In this next one, we could have construction that is often in big spaces outdoors with PPE and the protocols necessary. That could be a lower risk one that we can mitigate the risk further through protocols around face masks or separators between workers who can't be six feet apart but can have plexiglass separators, for instance. And so all of these

are pieces to starting to turn the dial up and what it looks like in waves. You know, we started by talking to you about the fact that when you first ran for governor, it was as somebody literally talking about fixing the roads and fixing infrastructure in Michigan. And through these actions that you've taken in response to the pandemic, you have become a national figure, a national democratic figure, right? You're, whether you wanted to or not, sparring with the president. And whether it's fairly or unfairly, you're now seen through a partisan lens as a partisan figure. Are you comfortable now in that role? No, I'm not.

I mean, you know, I was thrown into the national spotlight being, you know, criticized or attacked by the President of the United States. I didn't ask for that. I did not like it. I didn't sleep. Really? Frankly, because I was worried that this would preclude my ability to get the help that I need for Michigan.

You feared that you might actually suffer some kind of retribution that might make it harder to get through this pandemic. Yeah, and I think that that was a legitimate fear with some of the statements that have been made. By the president. Yeah, that if you're not nice, you might not get the help you need. And so I've bent over backwards to try to smooth that over, not throwing, you know, a punch back. I would hate for anyone in Michigan to not have the help they need because I'm not popular with the president for some reason. Do you worry that with the divided state of this country, some of your constituents will come away

from this pandemic seeing your actions as partisan no matter what happens and no matter what your intentions? I think that's the unfortunate reality that we live with. I do think, though, I think that's the unfortunate reality that we live with. I do think, though, that when we have gotten through this and we look back on it, that we're going to be comfortable in the fact that the decisions that were made save lives. The hard thing about public health is when you do it well, you never know how many lives would have been lost otherwise. know how many lives would have been lost otherwise. But we can see when you look at the curves where we were headed and where we are today, that there's no question lives were saved. There's no question that these actions made a difference. And that's what centered everything that we've done. Not the partisan stuff, not the fear of that, but the determination to do everything in our power to save lives and to keep our health care system working so that it's there when we all need it.

Well, Governor Whitmer, I want to thank you very much for your time, and I hope you're getting a little more sleep now. No, but I'll sleep sometime. Thank you. Thank you. We appreciate it. We'll be right back. Here's what else you need to know today. On Tuesday, the number of confirmed cases of the coronavirus in the United States reached one million, reached one million, meaning that roughly one in every 330 Americans has tested positive for the virus. But the Times reports that the actual number of infections is even higher since thousands of Americans have never been tested because of a shortage of testing supplies.

And... We had intended to come back next week. It has been previously scheduled. But once the Capitol physician told us that it was not proper for us to do that in the interest of not only members and staff, but the custodians, the people who maintain the Capitol, the press who cover us,

the staff of the actual legislative chamber, there was no choice for us but to say we will put this off. The House of Representatives has canceled plans to call lawmakers back into session after members complained that returning to Washington would pose an unnecessary health risk and set a bad example for the country. The Senate, however, is expected to reconvene in Washington on Monday. Finally. In New York, jets from the Air Force Thunderbirds and the Navy Blue Angels flew over the city on Tuesday in a tribute to medical workers

and first responders involved in fighting the pandemic. The jets soared over the East River as well as the Hudson and were cheered on by New Yorkers who ventured outside to observe them flying over. That's it for The Daily. I'm Michael Bavaro. See you tomorrow.