Oh my God. Here we go again:
The White House is preparing to release new reopening guidelines for schools as President Donald Trump threatened Wednesday to “cut off” funding for those that do not reopen this fall.
White House officials said Wednesday that the guidance released earlier this summer by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention was too restrictive.
The White House’s heavy-handed approach and Trump’s mounting pressure campaign on state and local officials to fully reopen schools this fall, viewed by the administration as crucial to economic recovery, comes despite a surge in coronavirus cases across the country.
Vice President Mike Pence said Wednesday at a briefing of the White House Coronavirus Task Force that the CDC next week would issue “a new set of tools, five different documents that will be giving more clarity on the guidance going forward.”
Among the CDC guidelines for re-opening schools that the White House finds too restrictive is limiting the sharing of toys, electronic devices and books, a senior administration official said.
“There are concerns they’re overly prescriptive, making it virtually impossible for many schools to reopen,” the official said.
This is, of course, bullshit. CDC guidelines are CDC guidelines, based on science, and if the White house tells states they don’t need to follow them, they won’t.
How do I know this? We’ve been here before:
May 7, 2020
The White House sent back guidelines from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention last month on how businesses, schools and other organizations should reopen with a request for revisions, two administration officials said.
The White House coronavirus task force, which is headed by Vice President Mike Pence, viewed the CDC’s advice as overly restrictive and in some cases thought it undercut the White House’s three-phase guidelines for opening up the country, released in mid-April, the official said.
The White House’s guidelines on reopening and easing social distancing are broad and leave much of the decision-making to governors. Those guidelines say states should see a 14-day decrease in coronavirus cases before reopening but do not set a specific timeline for doing so.
How’d that work out for us?
