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Brian Lehrer: It's The Brian Lehrer Show on WNYC. Good morning, everyone. Election Day is six weeks from today, and politics is mingling with policy in new ways. New York is designated an anarchy city along with Portland and Seattle, not just by a Trump tweet that we can ignore as campaign politics, but officially by the Justice Department as US government policy. What does it mean for the city in the presidential race?

The coronavirus is declared by the Centers for Disease Control to be less dangerous if you're in a room with other people, then they said just last Friday as the US records its 200,000th COVID death with almost all of the spread happening indoors. Is the change simply to conform to the president's campaign platform? There's that little matter of rushing through a supreme court nomination just because they can. Never mind what anyone did when Antonin Scalia died. Remember this from Chuck Grassley when he was chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee back then?

Chuck Grassley: Our side, meaning the Republican side, believes very strongly that the people deserve to be heard and they should be allowed to decide through their vote for the next president, the type of person that should be on the supreme court. As I've stated previously, this is a reasonable approach. It is a fair approach and it is a historical approach.

Brian: Sorry to interrupt senator. We'll talk about all of these things now with Amber Phillips from The Washington Post politics site, The Fix, and Errol Louis, daily news columnist and host of Inside City Hall, weeknights at 7:00 on NY1. Amber and Errol, welcome back to WNYC.

Errol Louis: Good morning.

Amber Phillips: Hi, Brian.

Brian: Amber, can you tell us basically first what the Justice Department did yesterday with respect to New York, Portland, and Seattle?

Amber: Yes, they labeled them as jurisdictions and I'm going to use the direct language, "That have permitted violence and destruction of property and signaled them out for possible cuts in federal funding." Like you said, this is the Justice Department doing this. Attorney General William Barr said in the statement, "We can't allow federal tax dollars to be wasted," and essentially he wants to use this label to get leverage these cities to somehow "reverse course" and become serious about performing the basic function of government and start protecting their own citizens.

It's not clear exactly what that would mean, but we know that the president has issued that memorandum thing. Federal funding is what's going to get cut, but the issue is, this is all very subjective on the Justice Department and White House as part. What does it mean to reverse course? What does it mean to permit violence and destruction of property and no longer do it to the level that the Justice Department thinks is valid? It all feels very subjective in a way that, I think, lead these cities unsure with what's going to happen.

Brian: Politics is supposed to be subjective. The law is not. Errol, you're a lawyer as well as the journalist. What's the difference between President Trump saying something like that as a matter of politics and the United States Justice Department making a formal designation?

Errol: The formal designation and the effort to try and put some sense to what really reads like a rant. If you look at the actual order on the Justice Department website, it's the president just ranting really and that's what is going to get them shipwrecked the minute this goes to court. There is no objective criteria there. In fact, it includes a few statistics, but even those statistics are not compelling because as we know here in New York and I know you've talked about on your show, the recent increase in shootings and the recent increase in homicides and other crimes still put us in way better position than we were, say, 10 years ago and certainly 20 or 30 years ago.

It's not entirely clear what the standard is here. Is the idea supposed to be that crime can only go down? You can never have any upticks. You can never have any upsurges. You can never change your policy in such a way that might, in some temporary sense, lead to an increase in crime? Something like bail reform, where it was just an open question. We didn't know what was going to happen. It's not clear what a jurisdiction would have to do to get off of the attorney general list.

This order, by the way, requires the Justice Department to add or remove different jurisdictions from there, I guess, naughty or nice list that's supposed to be published on their website every so often. This is really DOA when you try and convert it into rational policy. As politics though, it's got some people talking like us this morning.

Brian: Here's a clip of Governor Cuomo reacting to this yesterday, saying basically the same thing.

Governor Cuomo: Is it going to happen? No, because it's illegal and it's unconstitutional but it's politics. It's politics for the next few weeks, going up to the November election. That's all this is.

Brian: Amber, is Cuomo right that this can't happen constitutionally because and I think the reason is Congress passed those appropriations and those formulas for state by state funding and Trump can't cut them off on his own?

Amber: That is exactly what a federal appeal court ruled, earlier this year or last year, excuse me. When it came to New York City's and cutting off funding of her immigration policies. If you remember the keyword there the president used a lot was sanctuary cities for protecting certain illegal immigrants. "I'm going to cut off any funding for them," and the federal went all the way up to the federal appeal court and they said, "No, that's Congress's job. They're the ones with the power of the purse."

President Trump in trying to take money from the military to build his border wall is another example where he's run into court cases although that is going on largely unimpeded right now, but there have been legal challenges. That's, again, an example where he asked Congress for money, or in this case, he would ask Congress to limit money. They said, no and then he's trying to do it himself and it just opens the door to legal challenges and specifically with cities, he's struggled to argue in the courts that is legitimate for exactly that reason. There's separation of powers. Congress controls the purse. The executive execute what Congress tells them to spend money on or not.

Brian: Presumably, they'll stop talking about it on November 4th, one way or another, but as it exists, is it just a vague threat to cut-off federal funds to punish New York? Or are there specific lines of federal funding, Amber, that they're even going to try to argue should be tied to whether they're doing law enforcement properly at the local level?

Amber: I'm not exactly sure. I know that the president when he issued this memo in September, he criticized specific cities. DC was top of the list, but New York is right up there for things they did this summer regarding the protest centered around George Floyd's death and in Minneapolis. Allowing writers and anarchists to burn down a church in DC, for example.

He named other specific instances that he felt New York City didn't really live up to keeping these protesters "under control". I'm not exactly sure what the Justice Department is going to measure the next step by because these protests have largely calmed down, with the exception of, I think Portland might be one of the cities which is in this memorandum, but it's not as dominating of a news story and in the actual streets in these cities as it was the summer. I'm not clear what they'll measure it by.

Brian: Errol, I'm wondering if there are specific lines of federal funding that they're threatening to cut-off here that are related like you're cutting money to your police department. We're not going to give you more justice funding or just generally you're being bad so we're not going to give you as much money for food stamps. You know what I mean? Are they making specific threats?

Errol: Not exactly. No, it's a very good question. In fact, I asked this of Mayor de Blasio just yesterday. He, of course, like Governor Cuomo didn't express any great concern, but if you do read the order, what it does call for is for the Office of Management and Budget to go through all different budget lines, many of which we probably don't know about and see which ones can or should be perhaps linked to this policy.

One thing that comes to mind through the Justice Department, I believe it is, it might be Homeland Security are the so-called Byrne Grants named after Eddie Byrne, those who remember the history know that. [unintelligible 00:09:49] was a whole wave of violence in the city that led to a specific line of federal grants to help local law enforcement deal with what was at the time an out of control situation.

It seems a little peculiar on logical grounds to say that, "If you're de-funding the police, and we don't like that, our punishment to you, New York City, will be that we will further defund you." I'm not sure how that's supposed to work. The logic doesn't really make sense to me. When it comes to some of these other line, food stamps, social services, housing, we get a lot. I think the number is something around $7 billion a year in federal assistance. It's not a small amount. It's not something to simply write off and say, "We'll just do without it."

There probably should be at least a little bit of nervousness. I think in Albany and at city hall, that some kind of funding might be lost or at least endangered, imperiled, impounded. It's not something to simply laugh off. We'll know soon. I think OMB is going to have to follow the president's order and try and figure out what if anything they can do. That, in turn, leads, Brian, I think to another question about what the real effect of all of these is.

A lot of people who probably should be working on something else are going to be wasting their time trying to figure out how to punish New York; even knowing that number one, they won't necessarily find it. Number two, it's not clear it could actually be done legally. Number three, we don't really even know if this administration is serious about it. It really does seem to be a talking point that expires on November 3rd.

Brian: Here's a clip of Mayor de Blasio on Your New York lunch show last night, Errol, reacting to the idea that New York is a city of anarchy.

Mayor de Blasio: I saw people going about their business. People excited that it's the first day of school. I saw anything but anarchy. This is just another one of President Trump's games.

Brian: How much do you see anarchy on the streets, Errol Louis?

Errol: I haven't seen a whole lot of anarchy. There was a car on fire a few blocks from me late Sunday night, that seemed pretty bad, but that wasn't anarchy. Look, [chuckles] the idea of calling it anarchy just doesn't make any sense. We never even really had anything comparable to what was going on on the West Coast with these autonomous zones. The closest we had was occupy city hall and that was a filthy mess for a couple of weeks, but it's all been cleaned up. What the president is trying to do, I think, is something analogous to what he once did with a magic marker drawn on a map to try and make a weather map look like what he had said it should look like.

He's trying to make cities in general, New York, in particular, look like this image of violent chaos that he wants to use for political purposes. His [unintelligible 00:12:54] is just not big enough though. This just isn't the place. This is not the right place. You could say a few blocks of this autonomous zone out and wherever it was out in Portland.

Brian: Seattle.

Errol: Yes, that seemed pretty chaotic. I was in Seattle for a little while. That was pretty bad, but we don't have anything like that. Believe me, we've got problems. We've got problems with violence, we've got problems with traffic. God knows we've got problems. You talk about it every day so do I. It's not as he is portraying it. Now, if you go down the rabbit hole and look at what they're talking about in right-wing media, Fox News, in particular, you probably would think that New York is a flame that's burning with red fires as if we were San Francisco.

I don't think that's an unreasonable assumption because the president talks about it so much. He's trying to create a reality out of his own political need. It strikes us as absurd, but we don't know what other people are hearing outside of our media bubble here in New York.

Brian: Before we move on to the supreme court justice succession fight. There's breaking news on this just in the last few minutes. There is a rise in murders and shootings compared with last year. Errol, I've been watching your series with your criminal justice reporter, [unintelligible 00:14:14] and many voices about some places being beset by this. I wonder if the city is so polarized politically that one side has to pretend that it's 1977 and falsely label it anarchy and the other side downplays murders and shootings because to acknowledge them fully, plays into the president's phony agenda.

Errol: Yes, I think that's exactly right. I live in that space. I live in that horrible space. You don't want to further some crazy agenda where the president and others are making up falses about our city and whether or not this is a safe place. On the other hand, I live in the 77th precinct where homicides are up by more than 100% compared to last year. Where it's not entirely safe. Where you do see statistics and incidents and problems that are really quite serious and are serious to the point where you're not going to talk your way out of it. You're not going to social service your way out of it. You actually need the police there from time to time. That, I think is where a lot of New Yorkers actually do live literally in my case.

We've got to have a better, a different kind of a conversation about what's real, and what's fake, and what we actually want to do. So often, I think the conversation gets overly politicized much too quickly and that's one of the bad sides of a political season. I normally love election season because you can talk about things that we always needed to try and make some decisions about as a society. This is a case where the conversation I think has gone a little bit sideways.

Brian: Listeners, if you're just joining us, we're talking with Errol Louis from NY1 and he's also a daily news columnist and Amber Phillips from The Washington Post politics site, The Fix. Really about three things. The designation of New York as well as Portland and Seattle by the US Justice Department as anarchic cities. We're going to go on to the fight over who will succeed Ruth Bader Ginsburg on the supreme court and we'll touch on the designation by the CDC, the Centers for Disease Control of the coronavirus as a risk because of aerosols in a room and then resending that. If you want to call in with a comment or a question on any of those three things, it's 646-435-7280. 646-435-7280 or you can tweet @BrianLehrer.

All right, Amber, the supreme court, your latest article on The Washington Post site is The numbers to know on the Supreme Court fight. The numbers just changed in the last few minutes when-- What I'm seeing reported here is Mitt Romney has now announced that he will vote to confirm.

Amber: Yes, exactly. Mitt Romney needed an explanation for this. Let me pause to step back and say why we were looking at him in the first place. He is a moderate who hasn't been afraid to oppose President Trump. He's the only Republican who voted to convict Trump on an account of impeachment, if you can believe it, is only earlier this year. People are watching for him as a potential defector among Republicans. Republicans aren't expected to get any Democratic votes for President Trump's nominee. They only have 53 senators, and they can only afford three defections. They've so far had two, that's really close.

Susan Collins of Maine and Lisa Murkowski of Alaska. Some reporters are on Capitol Hill right now. The senators are back in session as we speak, trying to chase these people down. Mitt Romney was one they got a hold of and issued a statement and he said he would support moving ahead with an election-year vote. He is firmly on Mitch McConnell's side.

There are some senators who just say, "We're in power so we can do it." Romney felt like he needed a little bit of logic to try to explain why 2020 is different than 2016 when Republicans didn't support moving forward on President Obama's nominee in an election year. What he used is logic that Mitch McConnell has tried to use as well. Saying it's different when the Senate is confirming an imposing party's nominee. That typically doesn't happen in an election year.

The Senate can confirm a nominee when the White House and the Senate are of the same party, that's a little more common. I fact-checked this over the weekend, supreme court experts said that's just not true. The problem is, there haven't been many election-year vacancies to measure this by. There just is no precedent because there's such a small amount of data on this.

That's because justices, they just don't leave the bench in an election year if they can afford it, unless, of course, they die, which has happened to us to two presidential cycles in a row. What we have here, I think is McConnell offering up dubious legal precedent argument for senators like Mitt Romney who felt like they needed to take it. Last thing I'll say is the bottom line is Mitt Romney is someone who wants a conservative supreme court. He wants conservative justices. In hindsight, it's tough to see why he would oppose moving forward with this.

Brian: If the difference that McConnell is trying to establish between now and 2016 is that the White House and the Senate are in the same party's hands. Yes, I guess then it simply comes down to that in politics, people will play the hand that they have. In 2016, the Democrats had the White House to nominate someone, but the Senate was Republican with the power to not confirm.

Now, the Republicans have both so they have the power so they will. Their big excuse now is to argue that if the shoe was on the other foot, Democrats in the White House and Democrats in the Senate, in a similar close to the election situation, the Democrats would do the same thing. There's no actual historical example to prove or disprove it. It really looks like they're trying to put a principle around something that's no principle at all. It's just whichever party has the power, they're going to go as far as they can.

Amber: Exactly. There are a couple of examples of things not working out between opposing parties in an election year in history but there are examples of it working out. Specifically, President Eisenhower of thinking of nominate aliberal justice system. The Democratic Senate was like, "Oh, yes, we'll confirm that." It just comes down to politics, just like you said, Brian.

Brian: Errol again, for you as a lawyer, I guess, either of you could answer this, whether a political reporter at the national level or one here who is also a lawyer. What happened with the filibuster when they needed 60%? They needed 60 votes to get something like this done in the past, right?

Errol: Yes, that's right. Look, if they had maintained the old rules, we wouldn't even be having this conversation.

Amber: Right.

Errol: There was a point when Democrats were in the majority in the Senate and were overly frustrated by all of the delaying tactics that were coming from their Republican colleagues. After a lot of discussion, and a lot of debate, and a lot of progressive Democrats pushing and pushing and pushing, Harry Reid was the majority leader at the time, gave in and engineered an end to the filibuster rule or drastic modification to it so that with a simple majority, you can now get approval to the higher courts.

From 30,000 feet, if you take a step back, and these warnings were issued at the time, by the way. You can say, "Democrats, you made the bed now you have to lie in it." That there always comes a time. We don't have a huge sample size, but after a couple of centuries, it seems pretty clear. Parties come and parties go as far as whether they control the Senate. Once you lose control of the Senate, if you want to raise the stakes and make it complete winner take all, then you have really put people like a Mitt Romney in a weird kind of a place, and they're going to vote against you so that where you might have been able to get more moderate candidates, lower the temperature, make sure that you don't have this slash and burn politics every time a vacancy comes up.

The Democrats, they considered it and they throw it away. I don't know if this is a one-way trip. I don't know what Amber would say but, it's hard to imagine them reconstructing that kind of-- We now know fragile architecture that built-in some level of moderation, cooperation, and conversation across the aisle. That's just gone now. When I look, I'm not in the prediction business, but I don't see any way Democrats should expect that the seat is not going to get filled between now and next January. They don't have the power and they don't have the votes. If we've had a different situation where you had to at least try and pull some people across the aisle each and every time, almost every time, then we'd have a different conversation. We've got what we've got. Your listeners should not be kidding themselves, Brian. There's going to be a vacancy that is filled by the Republican majority in the Senate.

Brian: Let's see. I'll hold off on that from a prediction but it's hard to see the mechanics that would stop it right now. Let's take a Romney related call. Jack in Long Island City. You're on WNYC. Hi, Jack.

Jack: Hi. I just want to say that Romney has raised the hypocrisy to quite a different level. He has previously voted to remove this president because he is unfit for office, and now he says he'll take and consider the nomination from this unfit president. It's quite different from some of the others, and it's quite a bit worse.

Brian: Jack, thank you very much. Yes, Amber, how do you explain that? I realize it's just broke and you haven't had a chance to ask him yet. How do you explain Mitt Romney coming down on the side of being willing to vote for a confirmation when just back earlier this year, he was the lone Republican in the Senate to vote-

Amber: The lone Republican, yes.

Brian: -for the removal of the president from office after impeachment?

Amber: It's exactly right. It will. I think Jack hits on why Romney decided the president should go, at least, based on one of the two counts of impeachment and then decided the president should get this controversial vacancy. It's the same reason that a lot of Republicans who don't like Trump's temperament or his tweets, or his governing style have stuck by him. Which is, he has unequivocally been anti-abortion, and he put his actions behind his or in front of his words, really, and nominated two and now any day now, three supreme court justices that we expect, in their personal views, at the very least, are hostile to abortion rights.

That is a driving feature of being a Republican, of being a social conservative, of being a religious social conservative like Mitt Romney. That is the holy grail of US politics. Even if you think everything else about this guy is unethical, and in Mitt Romney's case, you're willing to vote, put it down in a historical vote, you think he should go, it does not compare to being able to challenge abortion on the supreme court.

Brian: Here's some pushback from the-- it's okay to have this vote now. Aside from a listener tweeting as MeTooUnlessThey'reBlue. MeTooUnlessThey'reBlue says, "What's wrong with an election year vote? They impeached and voted to remove Trump in an election year?" Amber, are you hearing that?

Amber: Yes, I'm hearing that. Let me think for a second how I'll respond. What Democrats would say is-- There's nothing I can say that doesn't sound extremely partisan. [chuckles] What Democrats would say is, you can impeach in an election year because you impeach when the issues come up that you need to impeach the president for. Democrats saying now, "You're not supposed to fill a supreme court seat in an election year because Republicans [unintelligible 00:27:41] four years ago. You weren't supposed to do that."

I think what's different from Democrats' perspective is, they're trying to hold Republicans on words against them. To argue as Jack tried to say that they're hypocrites for moving forward on this whereas there is a little less precedent on impeachment because Republicans weren't arguing he should not do this, specifically in an election year. Of course, that being said, Democrats were hesitant. Nancy Pelosi in the house was hesitant to take this on a year before Trump's election, which is when it all got started for the very [inaudible 00:28:17] it would look extremely political.

Brian: We have another Long Island City caller. Tommy in Long Island City. You're on WNYC. Hi, Tommy.

Tommy: Hi, Brian. How are you? Love the show, love you guys, always Great.

Brian: Thank you.

Tommy: I think the Democrats right now are having the wrong conversation where Chuck Schumer said that everything is on the table in regards to packing the court with liberal justices and adding Justices. A much more feasible option would be to pass a law where there's an age limit on supreme court justices, such as 70 years old. This would give the Democrats two new picks. It would force Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito to retire. They would keep the current justices at nine, which I think is a good number because if they just start packing the court, what stops the next Republican president from coming into office and packing the court?

Also, there have always been rumors about justices falling asleep. I know Clarence Thomas, there was a few news articles of him falling asleep because they're so old. There should be an age limit. These lifetime appointments, they don't benefit anybody.

Brian: Tommy, thank you for that. Is there any talk of that, Amber?

Amber: Yes.

Brian: I'm going to throw in another one. I know we're going to run out of time soon. I'll put these together. Pete Buttigieg, when he was running in the Democratic primaries, had a plan to depoliticize the supreme court. It doesn't just keep going back and forth and back and forth, and everybody's arguing like they are today. "Oh, is this [unintelligible 00:29:56] exact equivalent of that or is that--" While they do what they can do. His proposal was to expand the court to 15 justices, have Democrats appoint five, Republicans appoint five, and then those 10 justices have to appoint the other five to permanently depoliticize the supreme court, or at least minimize the politicization. Are Democrats talking about that if they win or something more like Tommy brings up about age or anything?

Amber: They're not talking specifically about Pete Buttigieg's idea from what I can hear. Although, we're still early days, but they are talking about fundamental ways to change, not just the court, but democracy. I'm writing on this today and there's growing conversation about knocking the filibuster down even more to completely eliminate it from legislation so that they can't have Senate Republicans, even if they're in the minority, try to stop a fight in White House and the Democratic majority Congress removing through legislation.

Then, that they fully expect that legislation if it gets passed in law to get challenged by Republican attorneys general and so that's where you do have conversations about packing the court. I will say an age limit of a kind was part of Franklin Delano Roosevelt's proposal in the 1930s to pack the court where he said, "All these justices are really old. They were appointed in the 1920s. They're not in line with everything that I want to do. They're striking down the new deal. What I propose is anyone over 70 who's a justice or a federal judge, I get to add a new judge to which would essentially reshape the court."

That didn't happen, but I think age limits and court-packing can intertwine is what I want to say about that. Then finally, there have been discussions, at least during the primary. I don't know how prominent they are now about term limits for the supreme court justices. Joe Biden specifically opposes. You know who is open to it? Kamala Harris. I have a quote right in front of me, "We are on the verge of a crisis of confidence in the supreme court. We have to take this challenge head-on and everything is on the table to do that." Sounds a little bit like what Chuck Schumer told his colleagues this weekend.

I think Democrats are starting to look at the fact, final thing I'll say on this, that a president who did not win the popular vote is now on the verge of nominating three supreme court justices that could be passed by a bare majority of a Republican Senate that does not represent the majority of the population of America, just because of where people live and going, "Okay, if we get power, we need to fundamentally change democracy." It feels like there could be an opening to talk about that if Democrats do win back the Senate and the White House.

Brian: All right, I know you have to go. Amber Phillips, who writes for The Washington Post politics site, The Fix. Thank you very much. We're going to keep Errol on for a quick local news question, but Amber, thanks so much for coming on with us on such a busy day.

Amber: Thanks for having me

Brian: Errol, before you go, I'm looking at another thing here, which is that school started yesterday [chuckles] for a few people. We're going to do a segment on this later in the program regarding the District 75 kids, kids with certain disabilities. Only for them and for pre-K and 3-K, it was supposed to start for everyone and this is the second delay for everyone and the mayor is coming under increasing criticism. I think not even as much for his interest in in-person school, which some people oppose, as for being a bad manager and not getting done what he said he was going to get done and having to make these announced these delays, very close to when the launch was supposed to happen. Is that what you're saying?

Errol: Oh, yes. The criticism, it comes in two buckets. One bucket is, this is a bad idea, you shouldn't be doing this. You're putting kids at risk and their families as well. You shouldn't be deviating from what Los Angeles and Chicago and other big cities have done, which is all remote learning. The other line of criticism though, is just as you say, which is that, why not do a better job of executing this? The mayor appears to have treated this like Captain Ahab and the white whale. He wanted to open in-person period, for whatever reason.

Some of it, I believe, is the genuine feeling that kids would really, really benefit. Some of it is, I think, wanting to make the sacrifice that we all made worthwhile. We drove the rate down generally in the city and we should reap some benefit from it. It's also a precondition for really fully reopening the economy. People have to know where their kids are. All perfectly good reasons, but again on the execution, it doesn't seem to be the feedback loop that many people would have expected.

Just yesterday, in fact, I asked the mayor once again, when they talk about the number of teachers that will be needed to execute to the plan as laid out, we still can't get what the number is. You ask the teachers union, you ask the principals union, they say, "We need another 6,000 to 10,000 certified teachers. Even if you change what certification means and you bring in adjunct professors and graduate school students and so forth and substitute teachers, you just don't get to that number. You maybe get to 4,500, I think is where we are now. I think it's a legitimate question that the mayor has not answered and answered against last night. How are you supposed to get to 6,000 to 10,000? What is the real number, number one? Number two, how do you plan to get there? Perfectly reasonable questions that he does not answer.

When things like that happen, the uncertainty and the doubt and the criticism starts to enter the conversation and eventually overwhelm the conversation and then it enables-- The mayor then fails to do something that I'm not sure you realize that the city really, really wants and needs, which is some certainty, some sense that there is a plan in place that's going to work and it's going to work because every single thing we hear from the leadership is accurate and true. "Tell me something true on Tuesday." "Okay, fine." Even if it's bad news. Then we'll hear again on Wednesday. "Okay, what's the news today?" Then on Thursday. You can build some credibility, but he's doing it in a very different way and it's a way that works for him, it just doesn't work for a lot of other people and hence the criticism.

Brian: There is the outstanding question of whether going back in person in large numbers is even safe, and in our next segment, which we're going to go right to now, we're going to look at some other countries around the world which have gotten their coronavirus virus rates way down like New York has and now they're going up again and we'll see if resuming in-person school has anything to do with it.

I know we also left one topic on the table in this segment that we were going to get to and that was the Centers for Disease Control making coronavirus aerosols officially a risk last Friday, being in the same room as people where breathing is happening or talking is happening and then the aerosols linger in the air. Then, just yesterday they said, "No, that's not true. We're going to take that back."

Our next guest is a coronavirus expert who we hope will be able to answer that question directly. Errol Louis, we thank you very much for coming on with us today. Errol Louis hosts Inside City Hall on NY1, weeknights at seven o'clock. That includes a session with the mayor every Monday night on that show and he's a daily news columnist. Errol, thanks so much.

Errol: Thank you, Brian. Always great to speak with you.

Brian: Brian Lehrer on WNYC. That coronavirus segment next. Stay tuned.

 

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