The NPR Politics Podcast - Weekly Roundup: August 8th

Episode Date: August 6, 2021

The unemployment rate dropped to 5.4% in July — a low for the pandemic. Nearly a million new jobs were added to the economy — although restaurants and factories are still hurting for workers. Covid cases continued to rise, too. We take a look at the two ends of the response spectrum: New York City's vaccine mandate and Florida's free-for-all.This episode: White House correspondent Scott Detrow, White House correspondent Asma Khalid, chief economics correspondent Scott Horsley, national correspondent Greg Allen, and national correspondent Jasmine Garsd.Connect:Subscribe to the NPR Politics Podcast here.Email the show at [e-mail] the NPR Politics Podcast Facebook Group.Listen to our playlist The NPR Politics Daily Workout.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

Hi, it's Ethan from Muncie, Indiana. It's the day before school gets back into session, and I enter my fifth year of teaching U.S. government. It's been a wild ride. You're listening to the NPR Politics Podcast, which was recorded at... It is 1238 Eastern on Friday, August 6th. Things may have changed by the time you listen to this podcast, but I'll have a class full of students eager to make this year as normal as possible. Enjoy the show. Asma, a fellow Indianan. I gasped because the timestamp is from Indiana. Thank you.

You need to correct me. I was trolling you with Indianan. I don't want the internet to yell at me for saying that. A fellow Hoosier. Thank you for submitting that timestamp. It's so wonderful to hear from my fellow Hoosiers. Hey there, it's the NPR Politics Podcast. I'm Scott Detrow. I cover the White House. I'm Asma Khalid. I also cover the White House. And our old friend Scott Horsley, who also used to cover the White House, covers the economy these days, is joining us today. Hey, Scott. Great to be with y'all. And Scott's here because it's a jobs report day. 943,000 new jobs in July. The unemployment rate fell from 5.9% to a pandemic era low of 5.4%.

Scott Horsley, you used to be in the White House like us. These days you cover the economy and, you know, now you're doing stories from bars and restaurants. Life must be hard for you, Scott Horsley. Not a lot of field work, although I did spend some time in the craft beer tent while we were bicycling across Iowa last week. But the reason we've been paying a lot of attention to bars and restaurants, they were obviously very hard hit during the pandemic. And in recent months, they have been staffing up quickly, although not as quickly as a lot of bar and restaurant owners would like. We got news of the July jobs numbers this morning from the Labor Department. And once again, bars and restaurants were near the top of the list. They added 253,000 jobs last month.

Asma, you and I just had a conversation yesterday about your reporting on how the White House is trying to handle some of the weirdness of this economy, which we're going to talk more about today. How did President Biden respond to this jobs report, which most people said was better than expected? Sure. I mean, it is an objectively solid jobs report. But candidly, I was struck by listening to his remarks, how non-celebratory it sounded. I mean, there was actually a point where I think he himself kind of acknowledged that this isn't a moment to celebrate. He says, you know, it's an indication of how much hard work there is still to do. And so much of what he was talking about today focused on the vaccine, steps that need to be taken to ensure that the economy stays on track, and just the importance of essentially combating the spread of the Delta variant.

My message today is not one of celebration. It's one to remind us we've got a lot of hard work left to be done, both to beat the Delta variant and to continue our advance of economic recovery. We all know what it starts with. And I said again and again, this is a pandemic of the unvaccinated. So we have to get more people vaccinated. I mean, Scott, this is such a weird economy, right? Because, you know, this jobs report is a good example.

It comes out. It's strong. But we're already saying, well, wait a second. This data in it, was this before Delta? How much does Delta change things? It's like, these are usually things that move so glac 943,000 jobs added overall in the month of July. The jobs numbers for May and June were also revised upwards. The general trend line there shows a job market that's accelerating, more people going back to work, and that's good to see. That said, these numbers were gathered in the early part of July, and that's before the really big spike in

new coronavirus infections. As we've said all along, the path of the economy depends on the path of the virus. It's possible that as those infection rates keep climbing, some people may be more reluctant to go out to eat, go out to in-person entertainment, might be less willing to travel. So that could reduce the demand side of the economy. And also some of the people who've been on the sidelines worried about the pandemic or who've been preoccupied with looking after their kids, they might be slower to go back to work. It could affect the reopening of schools. It could affect people's willingness to go back to work. So the big question mark is how much the Delta surge will interfere with this comeback.

And Scott, you've been talking to restaurant owners about this very problem, having a hard time filling open jobs. What have they been telling you? Yeah, what's happened in the restaurant industry in particular, and in other parts of the economy as well, is demand has come back more quickly than the labor to meet that demand. Restaurants are crowded, they've got lots of customers, but they don't necessarily have the cooks and the servers and the dishwashers to serve all those customers. And as a result, some have had to cut back their hours or close some days of the week. I talked with Liz Valeni, who owns a couple of restaurants in Dayton, Ohio. She's only able to operate five days a week right now just because she doesn't have enough staff. Not everybody wanted to come back to this industry.

So people that have been in this industry for 5, 10, 15 years made the decision not to come back to hospitality. They've moved on to other areas of career path. Villene and other restaurant owners have been raising wages and offering other benefits to try to entice more people to come back. Wages in the larger hospitality industry are up 9.6% over the last year. That's more than double the wage gains we've seen throughout the private sector. So they are paying more. Of course, restaurants and bars still tend to be a pretty low wage environment. And I've talked to a lot of workers who just said, I don't want to go back to that environment. I'm going to maybe think of another way to make a living. I mean, it feels

like so much of what this White House keeps saying is that it's really hard to talk about the economy without talking about the virus. And that's it felt like so much of what we heard again from President Biden today. I mean, this was a jobs report day. And I feel like on days like this, you expect the president to come out and give a speech that's very tailored to the economy. And it feels like so much of what we keep hearing from him and what we heard from him today was about the perils of remaining unvaccinated. Today, about 400 people will die because of the Delta variant in this country. A tragedy, because virtually all of these deaths were preventable if people had gotten vaccinated.

All right. Well, Asma, Scott, it was great to talk to both of you. Always good to be with y'all. You are both being kicked out of the podcast at this point in time, but I think one of you might come back for Camp Let it Go. I'm coming back. I'm coming back. You've decided that already. I guess that's settled then. We'll talk to you in a few minutes. But first, we're going to take a quick break. Then we're going to come back and we are back. And as you know, COVID cases are rising basically everywhere in the United States today. Back to the 100,000 new cases daily total milestone that we thought

we had left far behind. We've talked so much about how as the pandemic has gone on, it's become, you know, a lot of local pandemics, really, all playing out differently based on vaccination rates, political climates, who's in charge, things like that. So now we're going to contrast what Delta looks like in two very different places, at least politically. NPR's Greg Allen and Jasmine Garz are here. Hey, both of you. Hello.

Hi. So, Greg, you're covering Florida. What is COVID looking like in Florida right now? Well, right now, Florida is at the middle of this resurgence of COVID from the Delta variant. We're responsible for something like one out of every five cases nationally right now. It's a surge that started about five, six weeks ago. Hospitals think that it might be going to peak in the next couple of weeks and we'll start to come down from there. But meanwhile, our governor, Republican Ron DeSantis, is saying that this is really just a seasonal spike, something that will go away in a few weeks and we shouldn't be overly concerned about. He hasn't issued a state of emergency as he did with the first resurgence.

And so hospitals are in some parts of the state are actually getting full. But he's saying that things are fine. And so there's kind of a tale of two COVIDs going on right now, one from the state response and one from what we actually are seeing at the hospitals and at the local level. All right. So we're going to get back to that response from Governor DeSantis in a bit. But first, Jasmine, you're covering New York City. What does it look like there? Well, we are seeing a rise in COVID cases and officials are really concerned about the Delta

variant. And there's a lot of concern about the amount of unvaccinated people. I mean, it varies a lot depending on communities here. But in some communities, like, you know, among black New Yorkers, the vaccination percentage is around 30%. It's also quite low for Latinos and immigrant communities. And so there is a lot of concern. I mean, we are not at, you know, levels like we were last winter, but it's going up. And there's plenty of concern about this. So there's like been this two pronged effort, get more people vaccinated and like start with the mask and some mandates to curb the spread. The mayor of New York, Bill de Blasio, he's a Democrat. Before Delta really came onto the scene, he was doing this like pandemic victory lap, wearing goofy outfits and playing cornhole and volleyball, seemingly in every park in New York City.

But he's really shifted his tone now, and he's taking some drastic steps. Yeah, this week, a mandate came down that if you want to go to a bar, to a restaurant, to a gym here in New York, you're going to have to show proof of vaccination. And that's for everyone. Like even if you're not a resident, you're visiting from out of town, you have to show proof of vaccination. That can either be the Excelsior Pass, which is an app, or the CDC card that you get. And it's proof of one dose that you have to show. This is what's going to turn the tide.

And we also know that people are going to get a really clear message. If you want to participate in our society fully, you've got to get vaccinated. You've got to get vaccinated. It's time. What it's going to look like right now on the ground, there's a lot of questions about that, what this mandate is going to look like. Reactions wise, you know, there's been some pushback. Like, you know, there was a councilman from Staten Island, which is a little more conservative, who said that this was going to create, you know, a second, a secondary class and that this was discriminatory. I gotta say, for the most part, the feeling I get from New Yorkers I'm speaking to is, we're really tired. New Yorkers cannot

relive 2020. Not financially, not physically, not emotionally. And so if this is what it takes, so be it. I mean, Greg, I feel like exhaustion with COVID protocols stretches partisan divides, right? Come down to Florida. There's no protocols down here. Yeah, well, that's what I was getting at. What is wildly different is how public officials are handling this. And Ron DeSantis has become kind of the cutting edge of Republican governors saying, nope, we're done with this. And that's despite the fact that, what, Florida is 20% of all national cases lately? Right. And, you know, it's illegal for a business to require a customer to show a vaccination card here. He made that a legal emergency order, and then the legislature passed a bill to put it into the law.

So yeah, I mean, he dropped all restrictions on businesses related to COVID last fall. Counties that want to do things like impose mask mandates can no longer do it in Florida because of laws that have been passed. And let's just really emphasize that he is not putting mandates in place. He is actively saying local mandates are not allowed. Counties and cities are not allowed to say you have to wear a mask. Right, exactly so. And the latest thing has to do with school districts. Of course, schools are starting next week in some districts here. And the school boards are in places like Jacksonville, which leads the state in the number of cases there.

You've got some hospitals that are actually full. The school board wanted to impose a mask mandate following the CDC's guidance. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said that, recommended that school children should be wear masks when schools resume. And so some of these districts in Broward County, they want to do it. Up in Jacksonville, they wanted to do it. A few other counties. But then the governor said, no, that's not allowed. He issued an executive order saying that parents have to be allowed to opt out. Today, the rules were issued by the Department of Health and the Department of Education to promulgate that order. And so school districts are in a tough position now trying to decide whether they can require masks or not. How does Governor DeSantis explain his rationale here with cases climbing and climbing and climbing?

Well, all along, he's said that Florida is the freedom state, and he believes in personal freedom. And so I think the question is, is we can either have a free society or we can have a biomedical security state. And I can tell you, Florida, we're a free state. People are going to be free to choose to make their own decisions about themselves, about their families, about their kids' education, and about... He signed a parental bill of rights law early this year, which says that parents have the right to make educational and health decisions for their children. And he says that includes wearing masks. And so he says this is all about protecting parental rights. At the Board of Education meeting, we heard the chairman there saying that there's a lot of discussion about local control. Should the state be taking

local control away from the school boards? He said, well, there's no more local control than the parents themselves. And that's what we're doing. We're giving local control to the parents. And so that's the idea here that DeSantis is pushing. Let the people decide whether they should get vaccinated. Let the people decide whether they should wear masks or not. Jasmine, just going forward, the cases are going to keep rising even as vaccinated people do not end up in the hospital as much or are much safer when they get COVID. But this is continuing to be a problem going forward. You mentioned pockets of low vaccination rates.

What are you looking for? What are you paying attention to, you know, as the city tries to make sure that spring 2020 never repeats itself? You know, there's a couple of things. First of all, the city announced that it is hiring a lot of community kind of grassroots organizations to go into communities that are very reticent to get vaccinated and convince people, you know, it's complicated. There's, you know, in the black and Latino and immigrant communities, there is a well-documented and well-founded distrust of government initiatives and public health initiatives. And so a lot of this is going into those communities and saying,

you know, this is important. We need you to do this. The other thing that I'm following really closely is, you know, all the service industry workers I have spoken to about this mandate are quite happy about it. You know, they feel like, okay, finally, we're being protected. At the same time, there is a question of who are we asking to enforce these rules? Because definitely in 2020, a lot of people I interviewed who were bartenders and waiters and baristas, they had to deal with rather belligerent customers who didn't want to wear a mask. And so the question that I'm hearing a bit is, you know, are we asking people who at times make less than minimum wage to be policing

vaccination cards? And de Blasio has said, you know, this is no different than carding someone at a bar. I don't know about that, you know, because it's like you're going to be carding someone to go into a diner. You're going to be carding someone to, I don't know, go to the gym. And so who does that responsibility fall on? And I think that is, service industry workers have already been through so much during this pandemic. And to give this added responsibility, you know, that's something to think about. Not that we needed any more evidence to that fact, but more evidence that we just live in a country with wildly, wildly different political climates. And it shows itself on every big story and especially COVID. All right, Greg Allen, thank you so much for joining us.

You're welcome. And Jasmine, great to have your reporting too, but stick around and join us for Can't Let It Go, which we will do after a quick break. We are back. Asma, welcome back. Thank you for having me back. So, Jasmine, we are excited to have you in this part of the show. It is Can't Let It Go. We do it every Friday. It is the part of the show where we talk about things from the week. We cannot stop talking about politics or otherwise.

I feel like there's been a lot of otherwise this year for everybody. That has been the case for me. Asma, why don't you get us started? Well, I am happy to bring the Can't Let It Go segment of our show back to politics today. Okay. I actually had a different idea in mind. But then just a little while ago, I'm here at the White House today, I went to the president's remarks on the economy and COVID. And in I see President Biden walk in a tan suit. No.

Yes. Thank you for that reaction. I was like, is anyone going to react? Tan suit. So for those of you youngins who do not recall, back in, gosh, what year was that, Scott? Was it like 2014? It was like 2011-ish. No, it was a second-term scandal. It was 2014. It was 2014. Former President Barack Obama, he wore a tan suit to an August press conference. And this was in, I believe, remarks about the U.S. military response

against the Islamic State in Syria. And he was lambasted for wearing this tan suit. Republicans said that it made him look too casual. It was too much of a summertime suit for him to be wearing on a very serious occasion. And it became this whole debacle of wearing a tan suit at what many folks felt was just not the opportune moment. Well, then it became like a double debacle of how stupid that criticism was. But I remember there was this one quote that former Congressman Peter King made, where he said that the president looked like he was, quote, on his way to a party at the Hamptons. Though I'd like to say if he was really on his way to a party at the Hamptons. Though I'd like to say if he was really on his way to a party at the Hamptons, I think he ought to be wearing a seersucker suit, not a tan suit. Well, I mean, I think the question is who wore it better?

But I mean, it's just I feel like a not fair comparison in terms of where they are at their stages in their lives. Headline, Biden wears tan suit almost exactly seven years after right-wing media made Obama wearing one into a scandal. Jasmine, what can you not let go of this week? Oh, this week I cannot let go of the Lox Dipset versus Battle. These two iconic hip-hop groups that, you know, faced off. So versus, Jasmine, you mean like one of those webcast virtual concerts, right? Like I'm thinking of that iconic Brandy and Monica one I remember during, I don't know, at some point during the pandemic. Where there's just like no audience.

Or was this one, did they have an audience for this one? Oh, yeah. This one happened at Madison Square Garden. And there was a like no audience or was this one, did they have an audience for this one? Oh, yeah. This one happened at Madison Square Garden. And there was a lot of audience. In fact, there's like this one point where people start, like there's so many people on stage that they have to ask people to get off stage because it's like going to collapse or something. This was packed. Yes. Don't scare the white people, dog.

Get off the stage. Everybody get off the stage. No music. Get off the stage. Get off the stage. Everybody get off the stage. Respectfully get off the stage. Respectfully.

This is like that post-pandemic life everyone's coming together. Yeah. And I guess it's this moment of bliss where it's like we can finally get out into the world again. Who won? Well, you know what? New York won. Like for once in the last two years, it felt like New York won. It was just such a celebration of New York hip hop culture.

So I would say technically the Lox won, but New York won. Everybody put your right everybody right new york city this is about all the way in the back put them up put your right fist up on the real tip this is about new york city we gonna make it we gonna make it i'm glad the hot 97 era of hip-hop continues to continues to have its moment alright so I'll go last Asma you will appreciate it is of course about the Olympics because that's all oh yes so like I don't know you and I

both love the Olympics but I feel like I love the Olympics as with like a lot of sports this year I was kind of having a harder time getting into it there was the pandemic there was like this real obvious problem that like maybe we build up and put too much pressure on and turn into cartoons. Our star athletes, you know, like I think like real questions have been raised and athletes have been more blunt about talking about that this year.

So there's been a lot of like non Bob Costas-y things about this Olympics. But I wanted to talk about like last night I had like the perfect Olympics moment. We were just like, all right, let's see what's on. We're toward the end. So now we kind of get into these sports I'm not as familiar with. And the program ended up going to women's 10-meter diving. So these people are like 30 feet in the air. Did you see this at all?

I did not see this, no. So this 14-year-old girl from China, Kuan Hong Chan, gets up and just starts dominating, like literally perfect dive. She's getting perfect 10, perfect 10, perfect 10, perfect 10, two dives in a row. Every single judge gave her a 10. Oh, wow. And it was just like I just got sucked into it. And watching and like I was like, she, of course, won the gold, you know, like shattered records. But like I just had this moment of like, oh, this is.

This is what humans can do, right? I know. That's what I love about the Olympics is it just shows I mean, not humans because not people like me. Right. Like I feel like I do not have that athletic prowess. But it shows you just like what we collective humans are capable of, which I feel like, again, after this year and a half of COVID, it's kind of uplifting to see what we're capable of doing. Yeah. Anyway, if you haven't seen this, look up the replay because it's just like a total domination of the sport. More embarrassingly, I have climbed onto a high dive and then made my way back through the crowd and not jumped off.

That's the sensible response. I might have been booed. Jasmine, thanks for hanging out with us. I really enjoyed having you on the sensible response. I might have been booed. Jasmine, thanks for hanging out with us. I really enjoyed having you on the podcast today. This was so much fun. Thank you. So that is a wrap for this week. Our executive producer is Shirley Henry.

Our editors are Mathani Mathuri and Eric McDaniel. Our producers are Barton Girdwood, Elena Moore, and Lexi Schipittel. Thank you to Brandon Carter. Our intern is Maya Sel Spotted Elk. I'm Scott Detrow. I cover the White House. And I'm Asma Khalid. I also cover the White House. Thank you for listening to the NPR Politics Podcast.