Number of covid19 deaths in a single day and ten states in puerto rico are seeing record hospitalizations. And in one of those states, thats the state of georgia, theres a battle right now, as you know, within the state over masks. Governor brian kemp is suing atlantas mayor over her mask order even though masks are proven to help prevent the spread of the virus, so lets begin in georgia and all that has happened, diane gallagher, this morning, the Governor Holding a press conference and the mayor responding to all of this in this new lawsuit against her right here on cnn. Yeah, poppy, and, look, Governor Brian Kemp doesnt deny that masks protects the community. In fact, he said it multiple times today and even flew around the state of georgia back before the numbers were so bad here encouraging people to wear masks, so it was a bit perplexing that he chose to sue the mayor of atlanta as well as the members of city council, especially since roughly a dozen different local communities have some version of a mask mandate throughout the state. Now, the governor claims that it violates his executive order because the executive order says you can not put any restrictions that exceed the order in it. He also in the lawsuit is suing her for recommending that atlanta if back to phase one. He claims that this is about businesses. Over and over again he said its lives and livelihoods and says that it should be up to businesses to try to have to spend their time enforcing a mask mandate, but when you listen to it, and he couldnt answer the question about how this wasnt just about politics. And i know that many wellintentioned and wellinformed georgians want a mask mandate and while were all agree that wearing a mask is effective. Im confident that georgians dont need a mandate to do the right thing. Instead of issuing man dates that are confusing and unenforceable im asking all local leaders to enforce the current executive order. I have not heard personally from the white house, but i do know that brian kemp does the bidding of President Trump and instead of speaking on the same accord about how we can stop the spread of this virus, this governor is taking taxpayer money to sue me personally, and the irony is that i am now infected with covid19, and he is suing the atlanta city council, and our city by and large supports a mask mandate. Then we should point out that the numbers here in georgia have continued to climb. We have higher deaths, hospitalizations and also the new cases that are here. According to the governors own task force, poppy. 39 increase in hospitalizations just this week alone, so so, look, its a serious situation here, and they are kwaubsquabbl over masks. I wonder what is going on. Safety of the American People is at risk. Florida is now leading the nation in new cases of coronavirus per capita, so when you look at the numbers in the state, its now averaging just over 55 cases per 100,000, thats 11 cases more than any other state. Lets bring in Broward County mayor dale holness. Thank you so much for being with me. Thank you for having me, poppy. Look at you look at you in that mask, even in your office. Thank you. We wear masks in our office because its the right thing to do. Its how we protect ourselves and our family and our community and beat this pandemic. Me, too. The mine is right over here in my bag. Let me ask you this. Numbers are so tragic right now. When you look at the youre neighboring county on 107 Hospital Capacity in miamidade county. I mean, they are out of icu beds and thats right next to you guys. You guys have expressed a lot of concerns not only about bad availability and staff and medication shortages. Can you update us on your preparedness and your available resources this morning. So as it is right now. Poppy, we have my latea data shows that we have 18 of icu beds beds hospital beds available. 11 , almost all icu bed availability. But it is a lagging indicator in terms of the number of tests that we see coming in positive. We weve been very vigilant in keeping our numbers down. We closed early. We issued we issued a facial covering mask on april 11th for anyone receiving service in the public. Further on july 1st when we required that everyone in the public wear facial covering, even within your apartment complex. Yeah. So long as you cant socially distance six feet or more. We know that is an effective way of stopping the virus spread and get to a place where we can keep business viable and keep people employed. We have people becoming homeless already because the funding from the federal government on rent is not reaching folks. And the unemployment benefit of 600 more is going to end at the end of july and i fear thats going to make the decision for a lot more people difficult. Before you go, you said if the hospitalizations get worse and bossivity rates dont drop, youll have to shut down. Are you on the brink of that now . Were not necessarily right on the brink, bewere going to monitor this very closely. I have calls with all the mayors across Broward County. We have 1. 9 Million People, 31 different cities and i get 28 of the mayors on each week, and were getting the hospitals and the medical professionals in to tell us where we are. Well have another call coming up next week to see where we are. The fact is this. Facial conversation works, social distancing works, stay home if youre sick. Dont get in clouds, and we have an issue also where people are having parties at home. Yeah. And that has to stop. Were enforcing that. We put together a 311 number of folks who call to report when there are problems, when there are people not following the emergency orders and not doing whats right and were shutting the businesses down that dont follow the guidelines. Mayor dale holness, thank you so much. We wish you a lot of luck as you navigate this. Thank you for your time this morning. Thanks for having me, stay safe. Lets talk about the Medical Center with dr. Reiner of George Washington university. Dr. Reiner, thanks so much for being here. Lets talk about whats going on in georgia right now because it it just shows how political so much of this has gotten, unfortunately, when its just about the science and medicine. You called governor kemps blocking of any mask quote, unquote, basically criminal. You heard his press conference this, mo. Hes encouraging people he even says i see the science and i know people should be Wearing Masks but he said he said while we all agree wearing a mask is effective georgians dont need a mandate to do the right thing. What do you make of that . Well, apparently georgians need a mandate to wear a seat belt. Georgia law mandates seat belts in all cars, and i guess all apparently georgians need a mandate to prevent smoking in public buildings because georgia law also does that, so so what do those laws have in common . They are for the public good. Right. And during a pandemic requiring masks is just that simple, so we need to stop this nonsense. You know, there is this notion of individualism or libertarianism but when it gets to a pandemic and something as elemental as wearing a mask that then becomes selfishness, right . You dont have the right to go into public spaces with contamination tuberculosis and not take medicines so why do you have the right to go into public or why cant we mandate the very simple, safe, easy measure of ensuring that we keep each other safe with a mask during a pandemic . It boggles the mind. What about our children and school . You know, i sort of ask this as my colleague sanjay gupta says, but the journalist hat on and parent hat on and i want my kids in school and they really want to be in school but we heard from the white house, the press secretary can a league mcenany saying,ance quote, science is on our safe and its perfectly safe to open school. Help me if im missing something, but all the science ive read and every expert ive had asked say we have very little science on how children act as vectors of covid. We just dont know yet, right . When we talk about pandemic with things we all agree on. We all should be able to agree that masks prevent transmission and we should all be able to agree that Everyone Wants kids back in school, elementally schools and secondary schools and we want them back in colleges, but question is how is it best and safest to do that . So recent data out of places like arizona and california, mississippi show that about 10 of the new infections are in people less than 18 years old, so about 10 of the infections are in essentially children and add lossents. The concern is not so much that the child who acquires the virus will become deathly ill, thankfully thats a rare phenomenon but those children will transmit the virus. They will transmit it to their parents and grandparents and neighbors and other kids will take it to their homes so they become a vector for the perpetuation of the virus. Thats the simple issue. We have to stop things. We have to be able to send kids to school in a safe environment. Some parts of the country can do this, but to think about sending kids to school in miami in a month, how does that make sense or in houston . So lets all be smart about this. Americans are smart people. This is not that hard. Dr. Reiner, thank you very much for your time this morning. Really good to have you. My pleasure. Lets talk about arizona where one of the doctors there says people have passed out in the heat while waiting in line to get a covid fest and in the state my colleague is on the ground in phoenix for us again this morning. That has been a real issue, you know, over 100degree heat in that state and hours and hours of wait time for people just to get tested and then like a week delay sometimes to find out if they have got it. Thats right, poppy. Heat is the number one factor in arizona. Ive been here for several weeks now. Its 7 00 a. M. In south montan park in phoenix at a testing site where i am its 90 degrees so this particular testing site, a selftesting side, you can tell behind me cars are going to drive in here, going to head over there, get swab and head their own test and they are going to be met by medical personnel. Again, all of that process gets shut down if it gets too hot which is a big problem in arizona. This particular testing site is about trying to leave ate the testing challenges here in arizona. They have a very high infection rate which can be indicative of not enough testing being done. The governor is trying to ramp up testing, a femarun site and they are hoping to do 2,500 tests a day, but, again, that number might not be hit if the temperature gets too high which in phoenix you can pretty much count on. Poppy . That you can. Evan, very sad update there. Thanks for the reporting. We appreciate it. Its important. Well, a Commission Meeting goes off the rails turning into an antimask protest. Well show you. This meeting has adjourned. More on this ahead, plus the Top Health Official in one texas county is sending this message as cases surge. We are in dire need. Time and money and short supply for Small Business owners, people who need to make their housing payments, pay their rent at end of the month, were going to be joined by the president s former head of economic advisers tomas philipson. Hes here. With sofi, i was able to condense all of my loans under one account. I was able to lower my Monthly Payments and feel like im well on my way to becoming debt free. And i have sofi to thank for that. Andyou try to stay ahead of the but scrubbing still takes time. Now theres powerwash dish spray its the faster way to clean as you go just spray, wipe and rinse it cleans grease five times faster dawn powerwash. Spray, wipe, rinse. Well the names have all changed since you hung around but those dreams have remained and theyve turned around whod have thought theyd lead ya back here where we need ya welcome back, america. It sure is good to see you. Youve been avoiding. Like people. And pants. Ings but dont avoid taking care of your eyes, because were here to safely serve you with new procedures that exceed cdc guidelines and value your time. Visionworks. See the difference. When i refinanced with sofi, that allowed me to pay off aggressively and save without breaking my back or breaking the bank. Which is why we keep taking care of ourselves, like screening for colon cancer. Because when caught in early stages, its more treatable. Cologuard is noninvasive and detects altered dna in your stool. To find 92 of colon cancers. Even in early stages. Its for people 45 plus at average risk for colon cancer, not high risk. False positive and negative results may occur. So, dont wait to screen. Ask your prescriber or an online prescriber if cologuard is right for you. Well, the utah Commission Meeting has ended abruptly, and it ended with the topic of masks came up. Look at what happened. . This is the exact opposite of what we need to be doing. Were supposed to be physically distancing, Wearing Masks and and so all of our medical that thats what happened talking about masks, something scientifically proven to really help. You could hear the shouts from the crowd. Some people antimask protesting, mandating masks, a fire topic obviously as we have seen especially over the last week in this debate. Also over how to reopen schools. Thats intense. In tulsa, oklahoma, masks were just made a requirement for the schools, and the superintendent of the Tulsa Public School district is really urging students to wear them as well. Superintendent debra jiss joins me now. Thanks for the time. Good morning, poppy. Are you facing the same, the same pushback . You said, look, were going to have masks in our schools and i wonder every parent and student is on board with that. You know, i dont think any of us want to wear masks. They are not comfortable. Right. But but we understand why it matters, and what were hearing from our parents and our teachers is they want us to make good choices about keeping children and team members safe, and safety is our top priority as well, so i feel confident that were going to have general agreement about this while, of course, we know that well have some folks who will not will not be comfortable with it. So as of now, at least, august 31st, thats the start or open date for schools, and i just wonder what your plan is right now meaning are parents going to have a choice to physically have their children in school or do Online Learning . We do have a Virtual Academy option for students in our community, and we also know that we have teachers who are in highrisk categories. Yeah. So we want to have a way to have them be able to teach from home. We have not made a time decision about how we will open school. Well make that school and the board of education will make that decision on august 3rd, but we have prepared an inperson option, a Distance Learning option and also a hybrid option where we have about half of our students in school at any given time so we can have greater social distancing. I wonder when it comes to Online Learning for students. 83 of the students in your district are economically disadvantaged, and a you know what the data show, right . Those who are in lowincome neighborhoods are less likely to have broadband and many dont even have laptops. What do you do for those kids, and, of course, superintendent, special Needs Children . Right. Thats one of the reasons why this is such an excruciating decision. We we know that our students need to be in school. All of our children need to be in school. Thats where they are going to learn best, but we know that for students who have Additional Needs that they really, really need to be in school. We abshow thely are working with families, with children who have ep children, children with special needs, to make shower they are getting their needs net, and that mean that they are in school even if other students are not. Okay, okay. Just more broadly with children who are from lower income communities, we are working hard to make sure that they have internet access. Weve provided every single one of them with a device. I know. Good for you. Im so glad you could do that. Its not just that, right . Theres a whole lot of other factors that go into provide be an equal learning opportunity for them many of which are out of your control. Will have teachers have a choice to show up meaning if they dont have a medical control that they can prove makes them immunocompromised but they are scared and maybe dont want to risk their elderly parents at home. Will they have a choice . Were confident Teachers Want to be in school and what they expect from russ is we have circumstances that will keep them safe. We do have a Virtual Academy and depending on how many students register for that Virtual Academy we need a certain number of teachers to be working in that role. Let me ask you because theres a school next to you thats the union Public School that is in the process of changing its mascot thats right now the redskins for obvious reasons, and, of course, when they talk to you tulsa, obviously very important, 99 years ago, what happened, the tragedy, the mask or the greenwood massacre there, and when you look at the 300plus people who died, more than 10,000 black americans left homeless, more than it,000 of businesses left destroyed it was a tragedy, a horrible violent racial crime, and i wonder, many of the guests that ive spoken with over the last few weeks about this say, you know, so much of this wasnt included in the curriculum, and we didnt learn about this until later in our adult life. Is there going to be more emphasis in this moment, especially in your School District to speech them the fullsome history of what happened . Absolutely. I was a student who grew up in tulsa and did not learn about the race massacre until i was an adult. Wow. Thats atrocious, so we have been working really hard to provide not only the expectation that its taught but the resources and the and the the ways in which our teachers can teach it in all grade levels. Its not som