Hi. Welcome to On Politics, your guide to the day in national politics. I’m Lisa Lerer, your host. |
 | | Erin Schaff/The New York Times |
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There must be someone who knows exactly what’s happening with President Trump’s health. |
But it’s certainly not the American people. |
Since Mr. Trump announced early Friday morning that he had tested positive for the coronavirus, the White House has spent days releasing conflicting and incomplete information about the true nature of his battle with Covid-19. |
This afternoon, the president’s physician, Dr. Sean P. Conley, said that Mr. Trump’s health had improved and that he would be returning to the White House after spending three nights at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center. But he also said Mr. Trump “may not entirely be out of the woods yet.” |
Dr. Conley and other experts have previously suggested a grim picture of Mr. Trump’s bout with the disease — his plummeting blood oxygenation, high fever and treatment with medication reserved for patients with severe Covid-19. Yet Mr. Trump and his team have insisted on projecting a rosy image of a president nearly undisturbed by his illness. |
Their efforts have been fairly ham-handed: The president’s trip in his motorcade to greet supporters outside the hospital led to criticism that he had exposed his Secret Service team to the virus. And Mr. Trump told his Twitter followers today not to fear Covid-19 and “don’t let it dominate your life,” seemingly ignoring the more than 209,000 people who have died from the virus in this country. |
Meanwhile, some medical experts said that it would be unsafe for Mr. Trump to return to the White House now, given that some patients quickly deteriorate several days into their illness. |
It is not an exaggeration to say that the health of the president of the United States is the highest-stakes question in the world right now. The flood of confusion, evasion and distortion from the White House has left Americans, and America’s allies, shaken and uncertain. |
There is just so much we don’t know: When did the president get sick and how sick did he get? How many people did he interact with after receiving his diagnosis or showing symptoms of the virus? And what is the administration’s plan if his condition deteriorates? |
It’s not clear how Mr. Trump’s team could clear up the confusion at this point. Certainly, more transparency about the president’s health and clear guidance on the White House’s contingency planning, as much as it exists, would help. But the reality is that the stream of falsehoods from this administration over the past four years has eroded public trust both at home and abroad. |
Often the deceptions and exaggerations spread by Mr. Trump and his allies have been about the president’s image and self-regard: the size of his rallies, for example, or his net worth or charitable foundation. |
His health is a far more serious matter, one that puts national security at risk. |
The world is watching right now, and this is what people see: |
The American president is hospitalized with a serious illness, in the final stretch of an election whose results he won’t promise to accept. The number of infected people in the White House and in Congress grows daily, potentially hampering the operation of government. All the while, the country is facing a largely uncontrolled pandemic, a struggling economy and civil unrest over racial justice. And, don’t forget, Russia is already meddling in the election. |
It’s not a picture of a country ready to fend off foreign interference, warn national security experts, who say adversaries probably see the United States as distracted and weakened. |
The threats are real, they say. Maybe the White House response should be so, too. |
We want to hear from our readers. Have a question? We’ll try to answer it. Have a comment? We’re all ears. Email us at onpolitics@nytimes.com. |
Dispatch from Michigan: The fight over the governor’s emergency powers |
DETROIT — There hasn’t been a Trump campaign event in Michigan in the past four months that hasn’t included a chance for supporters to sign a petition that could limit the powers of Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, one of the president’s chief adversaries. |
The group spearheading the effort, Unlock Michigan, has been seeking to repeal a 1945 law that gives the governor broad authority to declare emergencies during a public health crisis. It turned in more than 500,000 signatures on Friday, with the hopes that the Republican-controlled Legislature can act on the petition before the end of the year. |
Under the law, Ms. Whitmer signed executive orders shutting down most of the state’s businesses during the early days of the coronavirus pandemic. She has extended the state of emergency every month, but she has also gradually allowed businesses to reopen with limited capacities. |
Unlock Michigan’s efforts may have been superseded late Friday when the Michigan Supreme Court, in a 4-to-3 ruling, said Ms. Whitmer did not have the authority to extend her original emergency declaration after it expired on April 30, noting the extensions “violated the Michigan Constitution because it delegated to the executive branch the legislative powers of state government and allowed the executive branch to exercise those powers indefinitely.” |
Ms. Whitmer called the ruling “deeply disappointing,” noting that it will not go into effect for 21 days and promising to use other sources of authority to deal with the virus in Michigan. |
Fred Wszolek, a spokesman for Unlock Michigan, said the organization would not stop its effort after the ruling. |
“We’re going to keep doing what we’re doing because a different court could reverse the decision and we still want to get the law repealed,” he said. |
Under Michigan law, citizen-led petition initiatives approved by the Legislature are not subject to a veto by the governor. But the signatures first have to be vetted by the Bureau of Elections and approved by the Board of Canvassers, a process that Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson, a Democrat, has said could take more than 100 days. |
That pushes a possible vote on the petition into 2021, when the partisan makeup of the State House of Representatives could change. All House seats are up for election in November and Democrats need to flip four of them to take over the majority. |
Unlock Michigan is prepared to sue the state to get the signatures certified much quicker so that the Republican majority can repeal the law before the end of the year, Mr. Wszolek said. |
Attorney General Dana Nessel, however, has opened an investigation after an Unlock Michigan trainer was filmed telling employees how to use deceptive measures to get people to sign the petitions. |
Mr. Wszolek said the group had thrown out more than 800 signatures gathered by employees who were trained by that person. |
This item was part of a series of short Battleground Dispatches our reporters have been filing from swing states, offering an in-person snapshot of what it’s like to be on the ground in Minnesota, Wisconsin and elsewhere. You can read all of those dispatches here. |
The vice-presidential debate might look … a little bit different. |
Thursday evening’s On Politics newsletter misstated the surname of an election law professor at the University of California, Irvine. He is Rick Hasen, not Hansen. |
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Thanks for reading. On Politics is your guide to the political news cycle, delivering clarity from the chaos. |
Is there anything you think we’re missing? Anything you want to see more of? We’d love to hear from you. Email us at onpolitics@nytimes.com. |
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