The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) Wednesday presented a set of guidelines for returning to school this fall. Guidelines that were almost immediately trashed by President Donald Trump.
“We hope that most schools are going to be open,” Trump said at a White House event Wednesday. “They think it’s going to be good for them politically, so they keep the schools closed…no way. We’re very much going to put pressure on governors and everybody else to open the schools, to get them open.”
Vice President Mike Pence responded to the rebuke during a news conference addressing the issue. Pence said the CDC will issue new guidelines with “more clarity.” Pence addressed the update during his White House coronavirus task force meeting at the Education Department. He called it “absolutely essential” that students return to in-person learning this fall.
“We’re here to help,” Pence said. “We don’t want federal guidance to be a substitute for state and local laws and rules and guidance. We’re here to assist with the shared objective, which I think is shared by every parent in America, which is we want to get our kids back. We want to get them back in the classroom.”
“Remember it’s guidance, it’s not requirements, and its purpose is to facilitate the reopening and keeping open the schools in this country,” CDC Director Robert Redfield said.
Watch Pence’s press conference below.
The press conference came on the same day the United States reached a record high of 3 million coronavirus cases and Texas saw its worst single day number of deaths. Texas also hit a 15% Covid-19 positivity rate, a record high since the pandemic began in March. Additionally, it was given on the same day that 37 football players and staff at University of North Carolina tested positive for Covid-19; the average daily case count in Los Angeles County went up 84% in the past month; 26 Mississippi legislators tested positive; and Houston Mayor Sylvester Turner said he “instructed the Houston Forst Corporation to exercise its right contractually in canceling State’s Republican Convention.”
But let’s get kids back into schools this fall, it’s totally safe.
“I disagree with [CDC] on their very tough & expensive guidelines for opening schools,” Trump tweeted. “While they want them open, they are asking schools to do very impractical things. I will be meeting with them!!!” the President tweeted.