Editors’ Blog
Where Things Stand: Florida And Texas Dig Their Heels In 
As at least one Republican governor expresses regret over a state law that bans mask mandates at the local level, Texas and Florida’s top officials are doing the opposite.
Support For DeSantis Drops Amidst Pro-COVID Policy Push
Floridians don’t seem wild about Gov. DeSantis’s pro-COVID policy agenda. A new poll out this morning shows DeSantis’s public support falling roughly ten points since May. The new poll is from St Pete Polls and shows DeSantis with 44% approval and 49% disapproval.
We have a couple tentpole events each year which are critical for the business side of our operation. One of those is when we offer all our members two weeks of TPM AF (Ad Free) at no extra cost. That’s what we’re doing this month. It’s basically a no-risk free trial and we do it because we’re so confident that once you’ve tried it you won’t want to go back. It’s just that much better.
It’s also a way to support TPM. We fund TPM with a mix of membership revenues and advertising. Every time a member opts out of advertising our financing gets a bit more stable and we spend a bit less time scrambling for ad dollars. We spend that time producing a better site. It makes a big difference.
No hard sell to upgrade. But I really do want to ask you to do the trial. There’s no obligation. It’s easy to opt out if it’s not for you. If nothing else, just enjoy two weeks ad free on us and then opt out. The trial is super easy to turn on and turn off. Can you give it a try? Just click here. Like I said, we’re confident that if you give it a try you simply won’t want to go back.
Please keep an eye out tomorrow for an important message on our annual sign up drive for TPM AF (Ad Free).
Let me update you on my post from this morning about states and jurisdictions which are reporting COVID data by vaccination status. That’s a mouthful. So, for clarity, breakdowns of how many cases, hospitalizations and deaths are in people who are fully vaccinated versus the unvaccinated or partially vaccinated.
One follower on Twitter was kind enough to flag this Kaiser Foundation study which looks at just who is compiling this information. A team from Kaiser surveyed all the state dashboards in addition to non-governmental information sources to see who’s following what. The study has a chart with data from a couple dozen states which provide a breakdown of cases among the vaccinated and the unvaccinated.
Where Things Stand: Ex-GOP Rep On Trump’s Legal Team Won’t Try To Block Testimony From Some Former Officials
Former Rep. Doug Collins (R-GA), who served on Trump’s impeachment defense team and who represented the former president in his legal bid to overturn election results in Georgia, signaled on Monday that Trump’s legal team will not block congressional requests for testimony from at least a handful of former Trump administration officials.
But there’s a caveat.
What On Earth Is Going On Here?
Over the course of July our long foretold ‘hot vax summer’ has either come to a screeching halt or at least hit a major speed bump. We’re in the midst of another wave of new cases if not, at least in most of the country, hospitalizations and deaths. The Delta variant has changed things. It’s significantly more infectious and to at least some extent it’s weakened the efficacy of the best vaccines. But just how much? And how much does that matter? There’s a fairly spirited debate about what we should even consider an infection (we’ll come back to this). On really every front we’re flooded with anecdotal information.
Where Things Stand: DeSantis’ Balancing Act
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis’ (R) rise to Trumpy stardom is largely tied to his defiant stance against public health measures during most of the pandemic last year.
This lovefest between Tucker Carlson and Viktor Orbán is fascinating on a number of levels.
One thing that a number of us have been saying for some time is that increasingly over the last decade-plus, the GOP has continued to present itself as a center-right party of government while increasingly operating as a rightist revanchist party on the European model. This intentionally conspicuous hobnobbing with Orbán is part of that story. Obviously, Carlson isn’t formally representing the GOP. But in practice he does. He’s far more influential in conservative politics than any elected official currently in office.
A few weeks ago in my off-air brainstorming I had thought about simply paying people $100 to get vaccinated. It’s almost certainly a good investment for government. I mean, we’ve paid many thousands of dollars to individuals to maintain the economy through the stresses of COVID and other outreach efforts cost significant amounts of money too. The idea had occurred to me when reading articles about how many people have not gotten vaccinated simply because it requires taking time off work or having the risk of a couple days downtime from side effects. So I was excited to see that people at the White House were thinking along the same lines.
It is a good reminder that the vaccine ‘hesitancy’ issue is really two different issues, and they’re not even both hesitancy.