Show an ad over header. AMP  

Trump's coronavirus testing czar: Lockdowns in hotspots "should be on the table"

12 July 2020
 Dan Ackermann

The Trump administration's coronavirus testing coordinator Adm. Brett Giroir said on ABC's "This Week" that "everything" — including the "stringent lockdowns" that many governors implemented in March and April — should be "on the table" in states where new infections are skyrocketing.

Why it matters: President Trump said in June that the U.S. "won't be closing down the country again" — a view shared by many Republicans who believe that the economic damage caused by stay-at-home orders was too great to justify a second round of lockdowns.

The big picture: Seven times over the last two weeks, the U.S. has set a new record for the most cases in a single day. Cases are increasing in 33 states, and several of those states are seeing such staggering increases that they may soon overwhelm their hospitals.

  • Giroir stressed that every American should wear a mask when they go out in public, and that states where cases are surging need to close restaurants and bars as soon as possible.
  • He also said that he expects hospitalizations and deaths to increase, since they are a lagging indicator to new infections.
  • "We do expect and are planning for and are surging people and everything else — but we expect hospitalizations to go up," Giroir said. "At the peak in April, we were at about 85,000. Right now, we're at 63,000. But we do expect those to go up."

Go deeper: Americans would rather return to lockdown if coronavirus cases spike

Transcripts show George Floyd told police "I can't breathe" over 20 times

Section2

Newly released transcripts of bodycam footage from the Minneapolis Police Department show that George Floyd told officers he could not breathe more than 20 times in the moments leading up to his death.

Why it matters: Floyd's killing sparked a national wave of Black Lives Matter protests and an ongoing reckoning over systemic racism in the United States. The transcripts "offer one the most thorough and dramatic accounts" before Floyd's death, The New York Times writes.

The state of play: The transcripts were released as former officer Thomas Lane seeks to have the charges that he aided in Floyd's death thrown out in court, per the Times. He is one of four officers who have been charged.

  • The filings also include a 60-page transcript of an interview with Lane. He said he "felt maybe that something was going on" when asked if he believed that Floyd was having a medical emergency at the time.

What the transcripts say:

  • Floyd told the officers he was claustrophobic as they tried to get him into the squad car.
  • The transcripts also show Floyd saying, "Momma, I love you. Tell my kids I love them. I'm dead."
  • Former officer Derek Chauvin, who had his knee on Floyd's neck for over eight minutes, told Floyd, "Then stop talking, stop yelling, it takes a heck of a lot of oxygen to talk."

Read the transcripts via DocumentCloud.