The NPR Politics Podcast - Is It Safe For Kids To Return To School?

Episode Date: July 8, 2020

The President is insistent: kids must return to school in the fall. But its not his decision to make and school districts are struggling to figure out how to open safely. Also, the Supreme Court allows more exceptions to contraception coverage. The last day of the Court's term is tomorrow.This episode: reporter Danielle Kurtzleben, education correspondent Cory Turner, White House correspondent Franco Ordoñez, national correspondent Sarah McCammon.Connect:Subscribe to the NPR Politics Podcast here.Email the show at [e-mail] the NPR Politics Podcast Facebook Group.Subscribe to the NPR Politics Newsletter.Find and support your local public radio station.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

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Okay, here's the show. It takes all kinds, doesn't it? Okay, here's the show. I cover politics. I'm Frank Ordonez. I cover the White House. And we have a lot to cover today. We're going to start by talking about the fight to reopen schools. So Corey Turner of NPR's education team has graciously agreed to join us. Corey, hello. Hello, Danielle. Welcome, welcome. Let's start with President Trump.

He had this to say yesterday about reopening schools. We want to reopen the schools. Everybody wants it. The moms want it. The dads want it. The kids want it. It's time to do it. He, Vice President Pence, Education Secretary Betsy DeVos, they were all out at events yesterday with that message that the kids have to go back. Everybody wants this to happen, is what they're saying. So, Franco, let's start with you. The thing that stands out here is that every other part of the pandemic response, or at least a lot of these parts, have been left up to local officials. And public schools, you know, decisions about them tend to be made at the state level. But this, President Trump is really diving into headfirst.

Yeah, he definitely is. I mean, the administration has repeatedly said over and over that they have confidence in governors and state officials to make the right decisions in regards to this pandemic. But here in this case, when it comes to schools, the president is taking a very clear stand, and he says they must open. He has talked about this issue before, saying back in May that he wouldn't consider the country being reopened unless the schools were opened. But he's definitely getting more adamant, especially these last two days, saying yesterday that he was going to use the weight of his office to pressure governors and everyone else to reopen the schools, and even threatened today in a tweet that he could take away federal funding if schools don't open.

So, Corey, can he do that? Short answer is no. Schools get just about 10 percent of their overall funding from the federal government. And most of that money is allocated to help schools educate low-income kids and serve children with disabilities. It goes through Congress. It has for decades. It's bipartisan. He has no authority to touch it. I know Vice President Pence seemed to suggest today when he was asked about this tweet, no, that's not quite what the president meant. He was maybe talking about a future bailout for schools and how there might be incentives attached for broadly reopening. But that's really unclear at this point.

Well, let's get more into what else President Trump has said about this. Today on Twitter, he said the following, quote, I disagree with at CDC gov on their very tough and expensive guidelines for opening schools. While they want them to open, they are asking schools to do very impractical things. I will be meeting with them. And that's three exclamation points, So, Corey, what's the local level, along with public health officials, were really struggling to figure out like what is the safe and appropriate thing to do here? And really their pole star in all of this was this guidance from CDC, which offered a whole host of recommendations in terms of reopening. Now they're recommending things like divide kids

into smaller groups, which makes it a lot easier to do contact tracing. I think the big one for schools right now is the CDC suggests desks be spaced at least six feet apart for social distancing. The problem is there are lots of places where that's just really hard to do. I have yet to meet a school leader who isn't desperate to reopen schools. They just want to do it safely. And, you know, I think further complicating things this week, the reason the story has really taken off is because the Trump administration has a really powerful ally in this argument. The American Academy of Pediatrics, came out with a pretty forceful policy statement in the last couple of days, basically saying, look, we think the risks of bringing kids back aren't nearly as bad or severe as what we are seeing happening

to kids at home. But, you know, the head of the AAP was on Morning Edition just this morning saying, well, yeah, but schools also, they do need to follow safety guidelines. They need to be able to afford it, which many can't right now because, oh, by the way, we're in a pretty crushing recession. And we still need to listen to local public health officials who are reacting to local and regional infection rates. You know, you just can't you can't make these decisions top down. They have got to be bottom up. And that's the point. Right. It sounds like nothing is easy here. Nothing is easy. Franco, let me turn to you

and let's talk about the politics of this. One of the things our colleague Mara Eliason says every time she's on this podcast is that President Trump thinks of everything through the lens of will this help me get reelected or not? So I want to ask you, you cover the president closely. Do you see this push to reopen schools that way? Well, I mean, this I mean, it's definitely part of this. I mean, President Trump wants to turn the focus away from the bad parts of this pandemic, from the unemployed Americans, from the lost jobs. And he wants to focus on getting the economy back to normal. And the schools are a big part of that. I mean, look, it is critical for the economy,

for many people to be able to return to work. As you noted, they need their kids to go to school in the fall. And people do want schools to open. I do. I want my kids in school, but to do so safely, of course. Well, he knows that voters won't see things as being, you know, quote, back to normal if kids are still out of school in August, September, October. And those are very critical months leading up to the November 3rd election. Most definitely. So, I mean, he's putting this, you know, he's putting this like so many other issues in this very black and white kind of way. He's charging Democrats of wanting to keep the schools closed because it would help them politically in November. But there's really no evidence of that.

Right. And to give Joe Biden's side of this, because he's also out on the campaign trail responding to President Trump, a Biden campaign official said, of course, former Vice President Biden wants to open schools. But he also said that's why he's been making these proposals and pressing Trump to act. But we need to ensure we can do it safely in line with the recommendations of public health experts. And Trump keeps failing us on that score. So Biden is really hammering, following what public health experts say. And one of his plans also has a part of it that would give funding to schools to try to make those schools safer and try to follow those public health experts' recommendations. Thank you, Corey, for joining us. You're the best.

Absolutely. Anytime. And Franco, you're also the best. Please stick around. We're going to take a quick break here. When we come back, the Supreme Court is winding down its term, which means lots of big decisions. We're going to chat about one of the latest decisions on birth control and the Affordable Care Act. Whenever you face a choice, it helps to think like an economist. And this week on Planet Money Summer School, we'll start off our course in economics with a workout for your brain. How to decide what something truly costs. Listen now to Planet Money from NPR.

And we're back once again with Franco Ordonez, but also Sarah McCammon. Sarah, welcome back. Thank you so much. So we wanted to talk to you today about the Supreme Court. They had another big day today with multiple big rulings. We're going to focus on one having to do with the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, which our listeners probably better know as the ACA or Obamacare. This ruling had to do with religious groups and contraception. Now, Sarah, I know this has come before the court before. Can you explain to us what was at issue today? Yeah, if this sounds familiar, that's because it is. And really this question,

the big question here is whether or not employers who have religious or moral objections to providing contraceptive coverage for their employees. So we think a lot of Catholic organizations, but it's not just Catholics, whether or not they have to include contraceptive coverage in their health care plans. And this became an issue under the Affordable Care Act because under rules put out by the Health and Human Services Department under the ACA, contraception is considered one of those preventive health services for women that the ACA, as you may remember, made a big deal out of providing preventive health care, and contraception is considered one of those types of health care. That became an issue for religious groups who oppose contraception on religious grounds.

And during the Obama administration, the exemption that was carved out was pretty much focused on churches and synagogues, you know, houses of worship who held these beliefs. Since then, there's been a lot of litigation, multiple rounds, including several rounds before the Supreme Court, over this issue and how broad those exemptions should be. When President Trump took office, he, of course, has made religious liberty a really big rallying cry for his conservative religious base. So his Department of Health and Human Services went farther and carved out more exemptions, not just for religious objections, but also for moral objections. That was challenged by the states

of Pennsylvania and New Jersey. But the court has said that the Trump administration does indeed have the authority to make those carve outs. So just to be clear here, would this affect, you know, say a religious school or even or even bigger than that, just any employer that might have a moral or religious objection? Well, it certainly would apply to religiously affiliated universities, for example. But reproductive rights advocates I've talked to like the ACLU say this is a huge expansion and it could really open the door for a wide range of employers who have, again, not just religious but also moral concerns about contraception, open the door for them to saying, no, we're not going to cover it. It's hard to know exactly what the impact will be.

I think that remains to be seen. But the federal government, the Department of Health and Human Services, has estimated that somewhere between 70,000 and 126,000 women could lose coverage under this policy. Wow. Well, so tell us about what the justices said. What was the majority view here? This wasn't a narrowly split ruling, as I understand it. Right. It was kind of 7-2 or kind of 5-2-2, depending on how you look at it, because Kagan and Breyer concurred that, you know, they're more liberal judges. They concurred with the conservative judges. But functionally, most of the judges said that, yes, the Trump administration has the authority to make these rules, to carve out these exemptions to the contraceptive coverage mandate. Kagan and Breyer, not to get too technical, but their concurrence carves out, it's a little more nuanced. It raises some questions for the lower courts potentially about the rule itself, whether it's arbitrary and capricious. But essentially, the majority

here is saying that yes, the Trump administration can make these rules. And then you have Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Sonia Sotomayor in the dissent. What did they say? So Ginsburg, writing the dissent, says that employers should not have this authority, that this is sort of not in their purview to make these kinds of decisions for employees. She says, quote, this decision leaves women workers to fend for themselves, basically to have to find contraceptive coverage on their own separately from their employer. And the argument all along, you know, originating with the Obama administration, when this requirement was promulgated under the ACA, was that contraception is an important part of women's health care. It prevents pregnancy. It also helps treat a lot of

other conditions. And essentially, Ginsburg and Sotomayor agree. Frank, I want to ask you, reproductive rights is one of those very core social conservative issues that President Trump likes to talk about that he's counting on to keep his base together this November. How might he play this? How might this affect him? Well, as we know, his base is very important to the president. And this is a win for the president. And, you know, kind of politically, he kind of needed one out of the Supreme Court. You know, it's not good when the Supreme Court rules against you, especially if you're the president running for re-election. And there have been some other high-profile decisions recently on immigration and abortion

rights that haven't gone his way. And he's lashed out at the court and called for more conservative judges and promised to pull together a new list of potential candidates for the high court should a vacancy come open. So this decision, which is right in, as you know, a bread and butter social conservative issue that will really kind of energize his base, is really helpful and something that he can point to and lean towards or lean into before the November elections. Right. For now, thank you so much, Sarah. Sure thing. My pleasure. And there has been a ton of news today. To keep up with it, please subscribe to a roundup of all of our best online analysis.

Head to npr.org slash politics newsletter. Until then, I'm Danielle Kurtzleben. I cover politics. And I'm Franco Ordonez. I cover the White House. And thank you for listening to the NPR Politics Podcast.