Quit Procrastinating: Hawaii's Primary Election Is Almost Here - Honolulu Civil Beat

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I’m sure I’m not the only one who will be sitting at the kitchen table this weekend and tackling Hawaii’s primary ballot.

Don’t feel bad if you’ve put it off. This has been a very weird election season so far. The pandemic has thrown everything into kind of a political haze — no candidates wanting to chat at the front door, no neighborhood forums to drop in on. It even seems like sign-waving has fallen off.

Yet Aug. 8 is almost here. Elections officials urge you to drop your ballot in the mail by Monday — five days early — to make sure it gets in their hands on time.

Here at Civil Beat, covering the virus and its economic fallout has taken a lot of our collective energy. And then came the Black Lives Matter protests, and an almost hurricane. I think there was a legislative session or two or three in there somewhere.

The pandemic may have disrupted traditional campaigning this election season, but candidates are still finding ways to get their messages out, like this giant sign on King Street.

Cory Lum/Civil Beat

But we’ve tried to keep up with the campaign politics, too. So here’s a quick guide to how to find plenty of information to help you decide how to mark your ballot.

We have a special section on the candidates running for Honolulu mayor, arguably the biggest race on the ballot this year for Oahu residents. Mayor Kirk Caldwell is term-limited out, leaving the seat open. Although 15 people filed for the office, five of them quickly surfaced as leading contenders, raising hundreds of thousands of dollars in campaign contributions and attracting solid response from potential voters in early polls.

This year, more candidates than ever completed our questionnaires that seek to get at their views on the issues we think are important. I think many of them probably found the Q&As a good way to get their information before the voters at a time when the traditional campaign tactics were disrupted by a pandemic.

The best way to find the ones you’re interested in is on our Hawaii Elections 2020: Primary Election Ballot. If there’s no link, that means the candidate did not respond, possibly because they didn’t have a contested primary race. (Candidates: Our elections editor, Richard Wiens, will be pestering you again once the primary is over and we hope to get even more Q&As published in time for the general election on Nov. 3.)

Of the 329 people seeking elective office across the islands, 202 responded to Civil Beat’s surveys. All of those responses have now been published.

In 2018, about 140 candidates had responded to surveys at this point, and in 2016, the pre-primary total was 104.

Of the 20 candidates for the Honolulu City Council, all but two answered the surveys. The opportunity to learn more about their views is especially important this year, when not a single incumbent is running in any of the five races.

Honolulu is also due for a new mayor, and 12 of the 15 candidates answered the surveys, including all of the major contenders. Ditto for Honolulu prosecutor, where we got responses from five of the seven office-seekers.

Neighbor island candidates are also well-represented, with 11 responses from the field of 15 for Hawaii County mayor, 12 out of 20 for Maui County Council and 14 of 21 for the Kauai County Council.

And remember that all Hawaii voters get a say in the Office of Hawaiian Affairs elections. We received responses from 18 of 24 OHA candidates. The OHA Q&As are some of the most clicked on every year and this year they’ve already been viewed by thousands of readers.

Many of the office-seekers consider this a seminal moment for the islands: an opportunity to make the visitor industry both more profitable and less harmful to our environment while also encouraging an agricultural renaissance and the growth of new industries to make us more self-sufficient.

They also sound off on issues such as police accountability, climate change preparations and government transparency before identifying their own top concerns and reasons for running.

Our news stories and columns on the 2020 elections and candidates can be found on this landing page: Elections 2020.

And our Hawaii Elections Guide 2020 provides a lot of information on the races, the parties and campaign finances along with important links to state and county election sites and even places you can follow the money and the politics on your own.

This is the first year Hawaii elections will be conducted solely by mail. State elections officials say they sent out more than 700,000 ballots and already many have been returned.

Honolulu elections officials said nearly 120,000 had been returned by late this past week, sparking hopes that turnout will be much improved.

And that would be a great thing. This year is particularly important to pay attention to the people who are running this place. We hope our reporting efforts help you make up your mind who you want leading the state and local governments for the next few years.

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Quit Procrastinating: Hawaii's Primary Election Is Almost Here - Honolulu Civil Beat
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Here Are the Billionaires Funding Trump's Voter Suppression Lawsuits - Sludge

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With millions of people out of work and struggling to keep up with their bills because of the coronavirus shutdown, the federal government has passed new tax breaks for the rich and created trillions for bailing out large corporations. The 2020 election could give voters a chance to remove the politicians who enacted these policies, but if the Trump administration and Republican Party get their way, many voters will be forced to put their health at risk by voting in-person in November, almost certainly before a vaccine or a reliable treatment for the coronavirus is available.

For the past several months, national Republican have been at war in the courts over state policies—advanced mainly by Democrats, but also by Republicans in some states—designed to make it easier for people to safely vote. In more than a dozen states, including battlegrounds like Wisconsin and Michigan, the Republican National Committee (RNC) has initiated or joined lawsuits to block states from expanding vote-by-mail systems or to oppose Democratic lawsuits in states that have resisted putting universal vote-by-mail systems in place. The lawsuits are financed by a $20 million litigation budget that the Republicans have amassed for fighting Democrats on voting issues. 

Trump and Republicans have repeatedly said that mail ballots are more susceptible to electoral fraud, though nonpartisan groups like Brennan Center for Justice say there is “no evidence” that voting by mail results in significant levels of fraud. Trump has said that he believes high levels of voting hurts Republicans. 

“My biggest risk is that we don’t win lawsuits,” Trump told Politico in June. “We have many lawsuits going all over. And if we don’t win those lawsuits, I think—I think it puts the election at risk.”

In Pennsylvania, a key swing state, the RNC has sued to stop state officials from making remote drop boxes available for voters to submit their ballots and from counting ballots that are mailed without being sealed in internal secrecy envelopes. In Iowa, another swing state, the RNC joined a motion to dismiss a lawsuit brought by Democratic groups that seeks to overturn a law barring election officials from using voter rolls to look up information missing on mailed ballots. In California, the RNC filed a lawsuit in partnership with other Republican groups to prevent state election officials from following an executive order from Gov. Gavin Newsom to mail absentee ballots to all voters, but recently conceded after the legislature passed a legislative version of the order.

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In a tweet on Thursday, now pinned to his profile, Trump said, “With Universal Mail-In Voting (not Absentee Voting, which is good), 2020 will be the most INACCURATE & FRAUDULENT Election in history,” adding, “Delay the Election until people can properly, securely and safely vote???” Election experts like Rick Hasen, Professor of Law and Political Science at UC Irvine, interpret Trump’s tweet as encouraging the continued slowdown of the U.S. Postal Service and withholding of needed funding from state boards of election to prepare vote-by-mail systems.

Trump recently selected former RNC convention finance chair Louis DeJoy to the position of postmaster general. Besides helping to raise money for the RNC, DeJoy has donated $122,500 to the RNC legal fund. 

The RNC legal proceedings account has raised more than $23 million so far in the 2019-20 election cycle, including transfers from a Trump joint fundraising committee and large donations from more than two dozen billionaires, according to Sludge’s review of Federal Election Commission records.

While a Biden administration is unlikely to substantially roll back upwards wealth redistribution, the billionaires backing the lawsuits would almost certainly fare better under another four years of Trump. Biden, for example, has said he would try to end Trump’s signature 2017 tax law, which has disproportionately benefited the wealthy. According to research from University of California, Berkeley economists Emmanuel Saez and Gabriel Zucman, Trump’s tax bill reduced tax rates for the country’s 400 richest households below the level that any other income group pays.  

Below is a table of the billionaires, per Forbes latest list, who have donated to the RNC legal proceedings account so far this election cycle, including donations from spouses of billionaires. The donations listed below comprise about 15% of the total amount that the RNC legal proceedings account has received from individuals this cycle. 

At least 17 of the 24 billionaire donors to the RNC legal fund are among the top 400 wealthiest American households as ranked by Forbes magazine, including the following: Kelcy Warren, CEO of natural gas and propane pipeline giant Energy Transfer Partners, net worth $4.3 billion; Stephen Schwarzman, CEO of The Blackstone Group private equity firm, net worth $17.7 billion; and Charles Schwab, net worth $7.7 billion. Two more top donor families, those of Fertitta brothers Lorenzo and Frank III, fall just outside the top 400 richest Americans, with net worth around $1.6 billion apiece. 

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Also siding with the RNC on the lawsuits is a network of conservative “dark money” nonprofits tied through personnel and funding to groups that have worked to build support for the confirmation of Trump’s Supreme Court nominees and to elect conservtaive judges to state supreme courts. 

One such group that recently emerged, the Honest Election Project, is a rebrand of the shadowy Judicial Education Project, according to OpenSecrets and The Guardian. The Judicial Education Project is established as a charity, allowing it to keep the sources of its millions of dollars in annual revenue hidden. In addition to its election lawsuit work as the Honest Elections Project, it makes grants to consevrative groups including SpeechNow, which helped establish the legal basis for super PACs through a 2010 case against the FEC. The Honest Election Project also funds Private Citizen, a First Amendment legal expense fund, and the George Mason University Foundation, a law school that established conservative ideological law centers and hired multiple Federalist Society-linked academics after receiving millions in donations from the Charles Koch Foundation.

The Honest Elections Project, which shares a law firm with the RNC, Viriginia-based Consovoy McCarthy PPLC, has filed multiple briefs in states and federal courts defending states against lawsuits from Democrat-aligned groups that seek to expand mail voting or ease requirements on ballot signatures. It also worked to force states to clean up voter registration rolls, a process that critics have labeled “purging.” The group recently spent $250,000 to run ads on cable news channels claiming that Democrats have sought to expand mail voting for partisan advantage and advocating for limited or no changes to voting laws to accommodate voters during the pandemic. 

According to OpenSecrets and The Guardian, Judicial Education Project (the Honest Elections Project’s alias) has been funded almost entirely by DonorsTrust, a donor-advised fund sponsor that specializes in helping conservative donors anonymously fund “sensitive or controversial issues” while also securing special tax advantages. DonorsTrust has been a major funder of groups in the Koch network, including Americans for Prosperity, the American Legislative Exchange Council, and the State Policy Network, and in 2018 it provided 99% of Judicial Education Project’s funding.

Read more from Sludge:

Dark Money Floods in to State Elections, Revealing Cracks in Disclosure Laws

Trump Admin Bails Out Oil and Gas Companies That Gave Millions to GOP Groups

Trump Admin Finalizes Rule That Could Protect Foreign Dark Money in Elections

Three More States Expand Vote-By-Mail, Leaving Five Holdouts

Every day, the reporters at Sludge are relentlessly following the money to reveal the hidden networks and conflicts of interest that drive political corruption. We are 100% ad-free and reader supported, so we’re counting on our readers to help us continue calling out powerful politicians and lobbyists. If you appreciate the work we do, please consider becoming a member for $5 a month to support our investigative journalism. We can’t do this work without your support.

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'We're dying here,' Florida newspaper says in pleading with governor to issue a statewide mask mandate - CNN

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The Sun Sentinel editorial board asked him to issue a statewide face mask mandate in an editorial titled, "Help us out, Gov. DeSantis. We're dying here."

"Help us all out. Far better that you require people to wear masks in public than to continue fostering conditions that will force another shutdown," the editorial said.

"Your refusal to impose a mask order -- a requirement now in effect in 32 other states -- is out-of-touch with the mainstream. A new Quinnipiac poll found 79 percent of Floridians support a mask requirement, including 60 percent of Republicans. If that's not a mandate, what is?"

DeSantis encourages people to wear masks but is leaving it up to local governments to issue mask mandates, saying a state mandate punishable by law could backfire.

The governor said that some local sheriffs have said they would not enforce such a law and there are parts of the state where a mandate wouldn't make sense. Businesses also have the right to ask customers to wear masks, he said

Florida set a new record for the number of deaths in a day for the fourth day in a row. The 257 deaths reported on Friday is the highest the state has reported since the pandemic began, according to data from the Florida Department of Health.

"Your daily upbeat message is hopelessly at odds with what Floridians are going through," the editorial said. "You make it sound like everything is headed in the right direction. But it's not."

A study has shown that wearing a face covering or mask is the most effective way to limit the person-to-person spread of coronavirus, and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said that everyone should wear them when around other people in public.

Florida reported 9,007 new coronavirus cases in the state on Friday, which brings the total to at least 470,300, according to a tally by Johns Hopkins University.

Florida is second in total cases only to California and ahead of New York, which was once considered the epicenter of the pandemic in the US.

CNN's Tina Burnside and Jason Hanna contributed to this report.

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Why can't the CFA Institute run its exams like this? - eFinancialCareers

With CFA exam takers already fretting about the possibility that the exams in December, which were postponed from June, will be cancelled because of the virus, there are increasing calls for the testing process to be moved online. All the more so because the CAIA, which runs a set of semi-rival exams on alternative asset management, will be offering online proctored exams from this September.

The CAIA announced its new arrangements last week. The online proctored exams won't be mandatory but will be optional for candidates hesitant about attending exam sites in person. In a document detailing how the online proctored exams will work, the CAIA says that among other things candidates will be expected to sit the exams in an area where online proctors can see both them and their testing space at all times. Candidates will need to provide photos of themselves, their government ID and their testing space (x4) and these will be validated before the exams begin. No additional computer monitors will be allowed on and posters on walls should be removed. 

If the proctors see multiple faces, no face, or the wrong face in the window, the exam will be terminated. It will also be terminated if candidates leave the room at any time except for their scheduled break.

“Postponing, cancelling, or otherwise calling ‘time out’ on our efforts and the hard work of our Candidates amidst continued COVID-driven uncertainty is not an option," says William J. Kelly, CEO of the CAIA Association. "Instead, we see an opportunity to embrace proven technologies that allow us to keep our Candidates and their families safe, provide clarity as to when and how they will be able to sit for the exam, and further grow the number of qualified professionals this industry very much needs.”

The CAIA Association's decision follows a modelling study suggesting exam rooms could be ideal environments for the transmission of COVID-19. Some CFA candidates have also questioned whether lockdowns will effectively prohibit the exams from taking place in some countries. Others have pointed out that some of the usual exam CFA centers are currently being used as COVID-19 quarantine facilities. 

Starting from next year, the CFA Institute is already planning to switch its level I exams to a digital format. However, this should not confused with allowing candidates to take exams from home: even when CFA testing is "computer based," the intention is still that candidates will attend an exam center in person.

Have a confidential story, tip, or comment you’d like to share? Contact: sbutcher@efinancialcareers.com in the first instance. Whatsapp/Signal/Telegram also available. Bear with us if you leave a comment at the bottom of this article: all our comments are moderated by human beings. Sometimes these humans might be asleep, or away from their desks, so it may take a while for your comment to appear. Eventually it will – unless it’s offensive or libelous (in which case it won’t.)

Photo by Jonathan Francisca on Unsplash

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Andrew Cuomo: Coronavirus Tests Can Have Fast Results, Here’s How - The New York Times

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It’s been six months since the United States reported its first coronavirus case, and getting a test can still take days. National labs are overwhelmed, leaving people to wait as much as two weeks for results. Every day that testing falls short is another day the virus can spread undetected, costing lives and delaying the reopening of our economy, schools and society.

As states try to control the virus and as Congress considers the fourth Covid-19 relief bill, New York offers important lessons on how to fix the testing mess.

Over the last 10 weeks, New York has used testing to not only flatten the curve, but actually reduce the rate of infection since our phased reopening started. We have kept our testing rates high through partnerships with federal and local governments. In February and early March, New York worked with the Food and Drug Administration to gain the necessary approvals to begin using our own coronavirus test and mobilize a network of hundreds of labs. In April, when our labs were struggling because of shortages of a necessary chemical ingredient, reagents, President Trump and I reached an agreement that helped double New York’s capacity.

Here’s what states should do to build a sustainable testing operation, and how Congress can help.

Mobilize smaller local labs. Almost all states are now using a handful of national testing companies, and they are overwhelmed. New York has managed to avoid the delays because more than 80 percent of our testing does not depend on the national laboratories experiencing long turnaround times for results.

In the early days of the pandemic, New York organized hundreds of local labs to conduct as many tests as possible. We moved equipment sitting idle to labs that could run them around the clock. Today, more than 250 labs in the state report results each day — some conducting 10 tests daily, some thousands. All together, New York can now conduct on average 65,000 tests a day.

And while any lag time is not ideal, over the past week, more than 85 percent of New York’s tests took a median of just two days (and an average of three days) from collection to result, and lags will continue to shorten as we move tests from labs with backlogs to labs without.

Each state should mobilize its own network of laboratories, which will take pressure off the major national labs, reduce reporting times and arm states with data that can help slow the spread of the virus. Congress should dedicate money to help develop the capacity of local laboratories and ensure federal agencies can provide speedy approvals and technical assistance to states.

Streamline the supply chain. In New York and other states, there are high-capacity labs running at partial capacity because they don’t have enough supplies.

How can it be, six months after America’s first case was reported, that the United States still doesn’t have an adequate supply chain? What labs need — reagents and plastic pipette tips — are not complicated to manufacture. They can, and should, be made in mass quantity, immediately, and here at home.

New York invested $750,000 in Rheonix, an Ithaca-based manufacturer, to build lab instruments and make reagent kits, which are now being used for thousands of tests daily. States should tap their local manufacturing companies to compensate for international shortages, and Congress should allocate funding for businesses that fill these needs.

Invest in innovative solutions. The Food and Drug Administration recently approved pooled testing, where multiple samples are run at once, increasing capacity and saving lab supplies. But for one national lab, the approved pool size is just four samples. In Wuhan, China, up to 10 specimens were pooled, allowing the city to increase its capacity to 1.5 million tests daily, up from 46,000 tests daily.

The federal government should direct research money so that labs can increase their pool size, while ensuring accuracy. With flu season on the way, Congress and federal agencies should also invest in developing widely available single tests that can detect multiple respiratory viruses, including the coronavirus and different types of influenza.

Congress should also invest in developing more tests that can give results in minutes and that can be administered at workplaces, not just labs. The F.D.A. has approved only a handful of these devices, and they are not widely available.

Fund all necessary testing. Currently, under federal rules, “medically necessary” testing is free for those with Covid-19 symptoms, as well as asymptomatic people who have been exposed to the virus.

But states should be able to conduct broad community screening — 40 percent of infected people are asymptomatic — to detect the virus and control its spread. For example, Congress should ensure testing is free for individuals who attend mass gatherings, regularly ride public transportation or interact with members of the public at work.

New York is proof that a real testing strategy can control Covid-19. But our future success depends on other states to do the same — a virus anywhere is a virus everywhere.

There can be no economic recovery without each state having a sustainable testing strategy. New York has already advised other cities, and we stand ready to help any state or local government replicate our success.

Andrew M. Cuomo is the governor of New York.

The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips. And here’s our email: letters@nytimes.com.

Follow The New York Times Opinion section on Facebook, Twitter (@NYTopinion) and Instagram.

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Seanyy - 'Be Like That' - Dancing Astronaut

by: Rachel Narozniak Jul 31, 2020

Seanyy is building strong case for his electronic candidacy, and as his latest single, “Be Like That” evidences, his breakout is poised to be anything but quiet. The electro anthem arrives ahead of Seanny’s debut EP, a project that’s shape still remains nascent at this time, but glimmers of what is to be expected are apparent on “Be Like That,” a rollercoaster of sharp, effervescent builds and breaks with an energetic ebb and flow. The winding dance record has arrived via Seanyy’s very own imprint, Swerve Collective Creations.

As with most ear-catching productions, “Be Like That” comes with a serendipitous backstory. Speaking on the one-off’s creative foundation, Seanny, a Finance Officer in the United States Army born Sean Danielczyk, said,

“It originally started out as a remix of Justin Caruso and Rosie Darling’s ‘High Enough.’ I was in a time crunch to finish it as I was heading to Air Assault school in one-week…I didn’t end up winning the contest, but I remember the drive home from Grafenwoer, blasting the finished tune on repeat. I will always correlate this track wtith those brutal two-weeks at Air Assault. Fast forward almost two-years, and I’ve revisited the project and turned it into an original. I got so much positive feedback from the original remix that it just felt shameful to not officially release it. That’s how ‘Be Like That’ was born.”

Featured image: @max_stills/Instagram

Tags: Be Like That, electro, Seanyy, Swerve Collective Creations

Categories: Music

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In 1920, Native Women Sought the Vote. Here’s What They Seek Now. - The New York Times

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Native women were highly visible in early 20th-century suffrage activism. White suffragists, fascinated by Native matriarchal power, invited Native women to speak at conferences, join parades, and write for their publications. Native suffragists took advantage of these opportunities to speak about pressing issues in their communities — Native voting, land loss and treaty rights. But their stories have largely been forgotten.

After the 19th Amendment was ratified on Aug. 18, 1920, and celebrated by millions of women across the country, the Indigenous suffragist Gertrude Simmons Bonnin, also known as Zitkala-Sa, a citizen of the Yankton Sioux Tribe, reminded newly enfranchised white women that the fight was far from over. “The Indian woman rejoices with you,” she proclaimed to members of Alice Paul’s National Woman’s Party, but she urged them to remember their Native sisters, many of whom lacked the right to vote. Not only that, she explained, many were not U.S. citizens, but legally wards of the government, without a political voice to address the many problems facing their communities.

Bonnin and other Native suffragists would continue to remind audiences that federal assimilation policy had attacked their communities and cultures. Despite treaty promises, the United States dismantled tribal governments, privatized tribally-held land, and removed Native children to boarding schools. Those devastating policies resulted in massive land loss, poverty and poor health that reverberate through these communities today.

Native suffragists’ activism contributed to Congress passing the Snyder Act of 1924, which extended U.S. citizenship to all Native people; though in response many states enacted Jim Crow-like policies aimed at disfranchising Indians. The Native suffragists also aided the push for the Wheeler-Howard Act of 1934, which stopped the breakup of tribal lands and emphasized tribal self-governance.

President Calvin Coolidge with a Native delegation, possibly from the Plateau area in the Northwestern United States, near the South Lawn of the White House in 1925, the year after the passage of the Snyder Act.Credit...Library of Congress

As the centennial of the 19th Amendment approaches, it is worth taking up Bonnin’s call to remember Native women and their full range of political experiences. With this in mind, Prof. Cathleen D. Cahill, a historian who has written about Native suffragists, joined Prof. Sarah Deer, a scholar of Native law and a citizen of the Muscogee (Creek) Nation, to talk about issues Native women face today. The conversation has been edited for length and clarity.

Cathleen D. Cahill:

You have spent much of your career addressing the issue of violence against Native women, including in your book, “The Beginning and End of Rape.” Native women have been calling attention to this kind of violence for more than a century. Why are Native women especially vulnerable?

Sarah Deer:

I’m a citizen of the Muscogee (Creek) Nation of Oklahoma and I have been working to address violence against Native women for over 25 years. I started when I was 20 years old as a volunteer advocate for survivors of sexual assault, and that experience inspired me to go to law school. It was in federal Indian law classes that I began to understand the reasons for the high rate of violence. Quite simply, the criminal legal system in Indian Country is broken. What else could explain these statistics: Over 84 percent of Native women have experienced violence in their lifetime, and over 56 percent of Native women have experienced sexual violence. This is data directly from the federal government — and these are probably low estimates.

To make matters worse, in 1978 the Supreme Court ruled that tribal nations lack authority to prosecute non-Natives — again, for any crime. Many experts believe this is one of the reasons Native people experience the highest rates of interracial violence in the nation. A system that doesn’t hold people accountable sends two message — to victims, it says “don’t bother to report” — and to perpetrators, it says “keep victimizing people.”

Cahill: That’s really awful. In the 1920s Gertrude Simmons Bonnin drew similar connections between violence against Native women and the fact that federal policies had dismantled tribal governments and made Indian people “wards” without any political power. That seems like such a long time ago, but the July 9 Supreme Court ruling in McGirt v. Oklahoma demonstrates that the past is so clearly present in Indian Country. Can you talk about the ruling’s ramifications?

Deer: Indian law scholars are calling this the greatest win for tribal governments in the last 50 years. It also hits close to home — it was a victory for my own tribal nation.

Our Nation signed a peace treaty with the United States in 1866 which established specific boundaries for our reservation — about 3 million acres. The United States promised that this reservation would “be forever set apart as a home for said Creek Nation.” Seems simple, right?

Throughout the 20th century, though, the state of Oklahoma ignored the treaty and gradually began exercising criminal and civil authority over the reservation, denying its existence.

An 1892 map of the Indian and Oklahoma territories showing the boundaries of tribal reservations. Soon after, the federal government started the process of dividing the tribally-held land despite resistance by tribal leaders. Credit...Library of Congress

The Supreme Court’s 5-4 decision, written by Justice Gorsuch, determined that the Creek reservation boundaries were never disestablished; the reservation promised to the Creek people in 1866 is still in full force.

Tribal issues don’t fare well in the U.S. Supreme Court — losing over 75 percent of the time — so this was an unlikely win, and a tremendous win; the legal reasoning in this decision will have far-reaching implications for many different tribal nations who are attempting to preserve land and resources. Your research has looked into the role of Native women in the American suffrage movement. I’d love to learn more.

Cahill: White feminists were inspired by the matriarchal traditions of Native people. They especially looked to Haudenosaunee (or Iroquois) women’s power to appoint male political leadership, control their property, and have custodial rights to their children — those were legal rights white women did not have. They wanted to hear more and often invited Native women to speak at their meetings. This gave Native activists a chance to educate their audiences and while they did proudly talk about their traditions, they also insisted on talking about the problems that faced “the Indian woman of today,” as Bonnin put it.

Marie Louise Bottineau Baldwin, a citizen of the Turtle Mountain Band of Chippewa, posing with floral pattern beadwork on her wrists and behind her to showcase Native women’s artistry. In 1914 she became one of the first Native American women in the U.S. to graduate from law school.  Credit...Library of Congress

A good example of this is when organizers asked Marie Louise Bottineau Baldwin, a citizen of the Turtle Mountain Band of Chippewa, to put together a float for the 1913 suffrage parade in Washington. They wanted the float to portray Native women as they were in the past, you know, wearing buckskin with their hair in braids, that kind of thing. Baldwin was deeply aware of the power of imagery in shaping public perceptions of Native Americans, so she used her image strategically. She decided not to organize the float, and instead marched with her classmates and teachers from the Washington College of Law. I think she was making a statement that Native women were modern New Women who were looking to the future. She also thought it was important for Native people to study law to protect their land and treaty rights. She was one of the first Native woman to graduate from law school, in 1914. You’re also an attorney (and a tribal court justice). What do you think is the role of legal training for Native women in the 21st century?

Deer: Access to legal education is a critical step to strengthening tribal sovereignty. There are still relatively few Native attorneys in the United States, but the numbers are increasing. There are also only a handful of Native women law professors. Nonetheless, Native people are actively litigating important questions of tribal jurisdiction, land rights and criminal authority. Native women serve on tribal courts, but there are also Native women who serve on state benches. Diane Humetewa (Hopi) became the first Native woman appointed to the federal bench in 2014. Some Native attorneys focus their work on legislation like the Violence Against Women Act (VAWA) which contains significant provisions that directly affect tribal justice systems. Native women have also been leading the movements to address environmental abuses and pipelines. At Standing Rock Sioux Reservation, in particular, women were doing most of the organizing and decision-making in the fight over the Dakota Access Pipeline.

Rep. Sharice Davids (D-KS), a Ho-Chunk citizen, at a news conference on March 10, 2020.Credit...Pete Marovich for The New York Times

U.S. Rep. Deb Haaland (D-N.M.) of the Laguna Pueblo, at a press conference on June 19, 2019 in Washington, D.C.Credit...Stefani Reynolds/Getty Images

Cahill: One striking thing just in the past few years is the growing number of Native women running for state and federal offices. The first Native women in Congress were just elected in 2018: Deb Haaland of the Laguna Pueblo represents New Mexico and Sharice Davids, a Ho-Chunk citizen, represents your state of Kansas. Native men have served in Congress for well over a century, but they are the first Native women to hold office in Washington. What does it mean to have Native women in Congress or other elected offices?

Deer: Native women have served in state legislatures for many years, but we are now seeing a critical mass of new Native women politicians. Today, we have one Native woman in the Kansas House, and another young Native woman is campaigning for the Kansas House as well. In Minnesota, White Earth citizen Peggy Flanagan, became the first Native women to be elected as a lieutenant governor in the United States in 2018.

When Haaland and Davids were elected as the first two Native women in Congress, it was seen as a tremendous victory for Native people. It seems fitting that there were two women elected together. From my perspective, being the “first” or “only” Native woman serving in Congress could be a lonely experience. A “partnership” of two Native women perhaps makes it easier to achieve great things in Congress. For far too long, Congress has been passing laws to limit the power of tribal governments without any tribal input. It is far past time for us to have a seat at the table.

Cahill: Absolutely. And that is so important to remember when we think about the anniversary of the suffrage amendment. For all suffragists, getting the vote wasn’t an end point, it was the possibility for change that voting opened up. Native suffragists saw the vote as a way to change the awful circumstances that faced Native communities at the time. One hundred years later, what’s next for Indigenous feminism?

Deer: I’m still basking in the afterglow of the McGirt decision, so I’m optimistic about the future for Native women and tribal nations. I hope to see more Native women elected to public office — at all levels, tribal, state, and national. We have been politically and symbolically disenfranchised for too long. I’m so glad our issues are getting more national attention.

---

Cathleen D. Cahill is an associate professor of history at Penn State University and the author of the forthcoming “Recasting the Vote: How Women of Color Transformed the Suffrage Movement.”

Sarah Deer is a citizen of the Muscogee (Creek) Nation and a professor at the University of Kansas.

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Under Armour CEO Patrik Frisk says 'tentative' shoppers are here to stay thanks to pandemic - CNBC

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Under Armour's stores are opening back up across the county after being forced shut due to the Covid-19 crisis, but shoppers aren't showing up like they used to, according to the retailer's CEO. 

"The consumer is there, but they are still nowhere near pre-Covid levels ... there is hesitancy there," Under Armour Chief Executive Patrik Frisk told CNBC's Sara Eisen Friday morning, on the heels of the retailer's fiscal second-quarter earnings report. 

"The consumer is out there shopping, and when they do shop conversion is better," he explained. "But the traffic is still depressed. ... We think that kind of tentative approach from the consumer is going to stay." 

Under Armour shares were falling more than 7% Friday morning, after management said during an earnings call that the company is forecasting revenue to be down between 20% and 25% in the back half of the year. Within that time-frame, it said declines could be worse during the fourth quarter, which includes the all-important holiday season. And it also warned 2020 gross margins could end the year down on a year-over-year basis, due to heightened promotional activity. 

"We are taking a more conservative outlook around the back half of the year," Frisk said on CNBC. 

"We don't know how the consumer is going to be navigating the back half of this year … how back-to-school is going to play out," he said. 

Under Armour isn't alone in navigating such uncharted territories in the retail industry. Analysts say the back-to-school and holiday shopping seasons this year could be like nothing these companies have ever experienced before, making planning for demand both in stores and online much more difficult. 

Few retailers have offered Wall Street a 2020 outlook, as some have already mentioned preparing for a potential second wave of Covid-19 cases spiking in the U.S. 

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Coronavirus in Michigan: Here’s what to know July 31, 2020 - WDIV ClickOnDetroit

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The number of confirmed cases of the coronavirus (COVID-19) in Michigan has risen to 80,887 as of Thursday, including 6,191 deaths, state officials report.

Thursday’s update includes 715 new cases and 19 additional deaths, including 14 from Vital Records review. Cases increased by 996 on Wednesday, including 300 cases added from a testing backlog.

New cases have increased moderately in recent weeks, while deaths remain flat in Michigan. Testing has increased in the last week, with an average of more than 30,000 per day, with the positive rate between 3 and 4 percent. Hospitalizations have increased slightly, but remain considerably lower than in April.

Michigan has reported 57,502 COVID-19 recoveries. The state also reports “active cases,” which were listed at 17,300 as of Thursday. Michigan’s 7-day average moving average for daily cases was 706 on Thursday, the highest since early May.

Michigan limits indoor gatherings, sets limited open for casinos

Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer issued amended orders on Wednesday to limit indoor gatherings, while setting a reopening date for Detroit’s casinos, as COVID-19 cases continue to rise in the state.

The amended order requires statewide indoor gatherings to be limited to 10 people. It also orders that bars in every region, including those in regions 6 and 8, must close for indoor service if they earn more than 70% of their gross receipts from sales of alcoholic beverages.

Earlier this month, Whitmer ordered establishments with on-premises retailer liquor licenses that earn more than 70 percent of their gross receipts from alcohol sales to shut down their indoor bar services until further notice.

Understanding the regions:

• Region 1 includes the following counties: Monroe, Washtenaw, Livingston, Genesee, Lapeer, Saint Clair, Oakland, Macomb, and Wayne.
• Region 2 includes the following counties: Mason, Lake, Osceola, Clare, Oceana, Newaygo, Mecosta, Isabella, Muskegon, Montcalm, Ottawa, Kent, and Ionia.
• Region 3 includes the following counties: Allegan, Barry, Van Buren, Kalamazoo, Calhoun, Berrien, Cass, Saint Joseph, and Branch.
• Region 4 includes the following counties: Oscoda, Alcona, Ogemaw, Iosco, Gladwin, Arenac, Midland, Bay, Saginaw, Tuscola, Sanilac, and Huron.
• Region 5 includes the following counties: Gratiot, Clinton, Shiawassee, Eaton, and Ingham.
• Region 6 includes the following counties: Manistee, Wexford, Missaukee, Roscommon, Benzie, Grand Traverse, Kalkaska, Crawford, Leelanau, Antrim, Otsego, Montmorency, Alpena, Charlevoix, Cheboygan, Presque Isle, and Emmet.
• Region 7 includes the following counties: Hillsdale, Lenawee, and Jackson.
• Region 8 includes the following counties: Gogebic, Ontonagon, Houghton, Keweenaw, Iron, Baraga, Dickinson, Marquette, Menominee, Delta, Alger, Schoolcraft, Luce, Mackinac, and Chippewa.

Read more: Here’s how all 83 Michigan counties are divided into regions in Gov. Whitmer’s reopening plan

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More coronavirus news:

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5 COVID-19 cases linked to indoor wedding reception in Southgate

The Wayne County Public Health Division announced Wednesday it has confirmed a total of five cases of COVID-19 linked to a wedding reception held on Saturday, July 18, at Crystal Gardens Banquet Hall in Southgate.

More people may have been at risk of contracting and exposing others to COVID-19 as more than 100 people were in attendance for the indoor reception, according to Wayne County health officials.

• Attendees of the reception at the Crystal Gardens are encouraged to call the Wayne County Health Division at 734-727-7078 to report their contacts, get tested by a healthcare provider as soon as possible, and self-quarantine at home as directed.

Southfield Public School District to start school year with remote learning only

The Southfield Public School District plans to start the 2020 fall semester with remote learning “due to a large number of COVID-19 cases in our region,” the district announced. The school district describes its remote learning plan as follows:

“Students will begin the 2020-2021 academic year engaged in all-remote learning, similar to the final few months of the previous school year. Students will receive rigorous online instruction and support, and the same academic excellence that our in-person curriculum and teaching provides. Accountability measures for attendance, grades, and assessments apply.”

Health officials identify Greektown as COVID-19 ‘hot spot’ in Detroit

One of the most powerful weapons against coronavirus (COVID-19) is knowing where it’s being spread.

The number of confirmed cases of the coronavirus in Michigan rose to 79,176 as of Tuesday, including 6,170 deaths, state officials reported. Chief public health officer Denise Fair said the latest numbers of who is testing positive should get everyone’s attention. The majority of new cases are being found in people between the ages of 20 and 29.

Tracking Michigan COVID-19 hospitalization data trends

The number of COVID-19 hospital inpatients in Michigan has been steadily increasing since the beginning of July. However, the volume is far lower than it was in April when Michigan reported nearly 4,000 COVID-19 inpatients.

On July 21, Michigan reported 500 inpatients at hospitals, the highest number since June 4 (50). That number receded to 493 inpatients on July 22 and 481 on Friday, July 24.

Here’s a look at the state’s hospitalization trends:

3 Detroit summer school students test positive for COVID-19

So far, 359 kids were tested and three have tested positive. Parents of the students are being notified to self-quarantine for 14 days and to monitor for symptoms.

The students who tested positive will continue classes online. The school is working to clean and disinfect the school and the school bus.

Read more: Detroit public schools, protesters head back to court over COVID-19 testing decision

Michigan officials say $600 COVID-19 unemployment bonus ends this weekend

Michigan unemployment officials said the $600 coronavirus (COVID-19) unemployment bonus will end this weekend.

The Unemployment Insurance Agency announced Friday that the additional $600 weekly unemployment bonus offered to workers during the COVID-19 pandemic will expire Saturday, barring congressional action.

FEMA provides $2.6 million in federal aid for Washtenaw County COVID-19 response

More than $2.6 million in federal disaster aid has been made available to support the continuing of COVID-19 operations in Washtenaw County.

The grant funding comes from the U.S. Department of Homeland Security’s Federal Emergency Management Agency’s Public Assistance program. The program provides funding to local governments and eligible private nonprofit organizations for costs sustained for emergency actions taken to protect lives or property. Read here.

Ann Arbor Public Schools anticipates fully virtual start to school year

Ann Arbor Public School students can anticipate returning to school virtually at the end of August.

In a Wednesday night study session meeting, officials from Ann Arbor Public Schools discussed plans for a remote-learning start to the next academic year.

Ann Arbor Public School superintendent Jeanice Swift acknowledged how officials are “hardwired” for safety and that they must put student safety first. Read here.

Judge: Detroit’s in-person summer school classes can continue with virus testing

A judge has ruled the in-person summer school classes can continue in the Detroit Public Schools Community District (DPSCD). Local 4 and ClickOnDetroit are working on getting reaction on the ruling from the district.

Summer school in the DPSCD began last week. A lawsuit was filed by parents, teachers, students and activist group By Any Means Necessary (BAMN) against the district. The suit was seeking to sop summer school and first went before the judge on Friday with the decision expected this week.

While the judge has decided that the classes can continue, all of the students attending those classes need to have COVID-19 tests in the next two days or the in-person learning could be shut down.

Read more here.

Tracking moving 7-day average of new COVID-19 cases in Michigan

The chart below tracks the moving 7-day average of new cases dating back to March 17, one week after the first confirmed cases in Michigan.

---

New Michigan COVID-19 cases per day since July 15:

• July 15 -- 891 new cases
• July 16 -- 645 new cases
• July 17 -- 660 new cases
• July 18 -- 678 new cases
• July 19 -- 483 new cases
• July 20 -- 489 new cases
• July 21 -- 573 new cases
• July 22 -- 523 new cases
• July 23 -- 699 new cases
• July 24 -- 594 new cases
• July 25 -- 437 new cases
• July 26 -- 1,041* (cases higher due to technical glitch)
• July 27 -- 488 new cases
• July 28 -- 669 new cases
• July 29 -- 996* (higher due to a backlog of test results)
• July 30 -- 715 new cases

Daily COVID-19 deaths reported in Michigan since July 15:

• July 15 -- 4 new deaths
• July 16 -- 16 new deaths
• July 17 -- 7 new deaths
• July 18 -- 9 new deaths
• July 19 -- 2 new deaths
• July 20 -- 7 new deaths
• July 21 -- 9 new deaths
• July 22 -- 6 new deaths
• July 23 -- 7 new deaths
• July 24 -- 3 new deaths
• July 25 -- 14 new deaths
• July 26 -- 0 new deaths
• July 27 -- 5 new deaths
• July 28 -- 16 new deaths
• July 29 -- 2 new deaths
• July 30 -- 19 new deaths (14 of which are from vital records)

Here’s a look at the overall COVID-19 data in Michigan:

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Contact Tracing Is Failing in Many States. Here’s Why. - The New York Times

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In Arizona’s most populated region, the coronavirus is so ubiquitous that contact tracers have been unable to reach a fraction of those infected.

In Austin, Tex., the story is much the same. Just as it is in North Carolina, where the state’s health secretary recently told state lawmakers that its tracking program was hiring outside workers to keep up with a steady rise in cases, as a number of other states have done.

Cities in Florida, another state where Covid-19 cases are surging, have largely given up on tracking cases. Things are equally dismal in California. And in New York City’s tracing program, workers complained of crippling communication and training problems.

Contact tracing, a cornerstone of the public health arsenal to tamp down the coronavirus across the world, has largely failed in the United States; the virus’s pervasiveness and major lags in testing have rendered the system almost pointless. In some regions, large swaths of the population have refused to participate or cannot even be located, further hampering health care workers.

“We are not doing it to the level or extent that it should be done,” said Steve Adler, the mayor of Austin, echoing the view of many state and city leaders. “There are three main reasons. One is the sheer number of people, the second is the delay in getting test results back, the third is the wide community spread of the disease.”

The goal of contact tracing for Covid-19 is to reach people who have spent more than 15 minutes within six feet of an infected person and ask them to quarantine at home voluntarily for two weeks even if they test negative, monitoring themselves for symptoms during that time. But few places have reported systemic success. And from the very beginning of the U.S. epidemic, states and cities have struggled to detect the prevalence of the virus because of spotty and sometimes rationed diagnostic testing and long delays in getting results.

“I think it’s easy to say contact tracing is broken,” said Carolyn Cannuscio, an expert on the method and an associate professor of family medicine and community health at the University of Pennsylvania. “It is broken because so many parts of our prevention system are broken.”

Tracking those exposed is so far behind the virus raging in most places that many public health officials believe the money and personnel involved would be better spent on other resources, like increasing test sites, helping schools prepare for reopening and educating the public about mask wearing. Some public health experts now believe that, at the very least, testing and contact tracing need to be scaled back in places with major outbreaks. In some places, they say the effort may never succeed.

“Contact tracing is the wrong tool for the wrong job at the wrong time,” said Dr. David Lakey, the former state health commissioner of Texas who helped oversee the Ebola response in Dallas in 2014.

“Back when you had ten cases here in Texas, it might have been useful,” said Dr. Lakey, who is now the chief medical officer for the University of Texas System. “But if you don’t have rapid testing, it is going to be very difficult in a disease with 40 percent of people asymptomatic. It is hard to see the benefit of it right now.”

Latest Updates: Global Coronavirus Outbreak

Updated 2020-07-31T11:14:48.281Z

• As states scramble to put out fires, Fauci and other top U.S. health officials will go back before Congress.
• Five key developments you may have missed on Thursday.
• Europe’s economic contraction is its worst on record.

See more updates

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Dr. Thomas R. Frieden, a former director of the C.D.C. who is a strong advocate for robust contact tracing programs, largely agreed that it is impossible to do meaningful or substantial contact tracing with huge numbers of cases. He noted that when testing results lag as much as they have, it becomes almost impossible to keep up with the high volume of infected individuals and those who have been in contact with them.

“At some point when your cases are very high, you have to dial back your testing and contact tracing,” said Dr. Frieden, who now runs Resolve to Save Lives, a nonprofit health advocacy initiative. “We may be in that situation in some parts of the country today.”

Lines for Covid testing in Los Angeles last week.Credit...Philip Cheung for The New York Times

Others argue that contact tracing efforts around the country are still nascent, and many workers fanning out in particular zones are still too inexperienced to call it quits. These experts contend that tracking remains an important mechanism that can help as flare-ups continue over the next year and beyond.

Crystal Watson, a risk-assessment specialist at the Center for Health Security at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, said she had hoped more contact tracers would be trained and in place before states started reopening. For now, she expects it to be feasible only in Massachusetts, New York, North Dakota and the District of Columbia. Massachusetts, where the nonprofit group Partners in Health leads the efforts, has done particularly well.

Contact tracing has been used as a tool for hundreds of years to contain diseases like tuberculosis, yellow fever and Ebola. A rudimentary form was even used to track the route of a syphilis outbreak in the 16th century. Countries like South Korea, Ireland and Australia used the method to successfully control the spread of the coronavirus, too.

The C.D.C. has sent about $11 billion in relief funds to states and local jurisdictions for expanding coronavirus testing and contact tracing. A survey of state health departments by National Public Radio last month found they had roughly 37,000 contact tracers in place, with an additional 31,000 in reserve for when they would be needed. The work force — a mix of government employees, volunteers and contract workers hired by outside companies or nonprofit organizations — still falls short of the 100,000 people that the C.D.C. has recommended.

The contact tracers, whose training varies considerably in length and content depending on what state they are in, have struggled to keep up with the rising number of cases.

“The challenge is that we are not dealing with ones and twos,” said Fran Phillips, a deputy Secretary for Public Health for Maryland, a state that has largely kept the virus in check but still faces over 900 new cases daily. For every new case, there are several if not dozens of people to contact, especially in large cities, which further strains the system.

Contact tracing generally works best, public health experts say, when a disease is easily detected from its onset. That is often impossible with the coronavirus because a large percentage of those infected have no symptoms.

“When you have a situation in which there are so many people who are asymptomatic,” said Dr. Anthony Fauci, the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, at a recent Milken Institute event. “That makes that that much more difficult, which is the reason you wanted to get it from the beginning and nip it in the bud. Once you get what they call the logarithmic increase, then it becomes very difficult to do contact tracing. It’s not going well.”

Perhaps most harmful to the effort have been the persistent delays in getting the results of diagnostic tests. Often by the time an individual tests positive, it’s too late for the health care workers tracking that person to do anything.

“It’s a race against time,” Ms. Phillips said. “And if we have lost days and days of infectious period because we didn’t get a lab result back, that really diminishes our ability to do contact tracing.” In Maryland, like many states, some labs are taking as long as nine days to turn around results. “We are getting some assurances from national manufacturers this lag is short term,” she said. “I am not confident.”

In contrast, when sports teams and staff of the White House test people constantly, with fast turnarounds, contact tracing is instant and effective.

Even as health care workers leap over these hurdles, they are also finding that it can be difficult not just to reach people who were potentially exposed to the virus but to get them to cooperate. Sometimes there is no good phone number, and in the cellphone era, unrecognized numbers are often ignored; 25 percent of those called in Maryland don’t pick up. Others, suspicious of contact tracers or fueled by misinformation about them, decline to cooperate, a stark contrast with places like Germany where compliance with contact tracers is viewed as a civic duty.

The Coronavirus Outbreak ›

Frequently Asked Questions

Updated July 27, 2020

• Should I refinance my mortgage?

  • It could be a good idea, because mortgage rates have never been lower. Refinancing requests have pushed mortgage applications to some of the highest levels since 2008, so be prepared to get in line. But defaults are also up, so if you’re thinking about buying a home, be aware that some lenders have tightened their standards.

• What is school going to look like in September?

  • It is unlikely that many schools will return to a normal schedule this fall, requiring the grind of online learning, makeshift child care and stunted workdays to continue. California’s two largest public school districts — Los Angeles and San Diego — said on July 13, that instruction will be remote-only in the fall, citing concerns that surging coronavirus infections in their areas pose too dire a risk for students and teachers. Together, the two districts enroll some 825,000 students. They are the largest in the country so far to abandon plans for even a partial physical return to classrooms when they reopen in August. For other districts, the solution won’t be an all-or-nothing approach. Many systems, including the nation’s largest, New York City, are devising hybrid plans that involve spending some days in classrooms and other days online. There’s no national policy on this yet, so check with your municipal school system regularly to see what is happening in your community.

• Is the coronavirus airborne?

  • The coronavirus can stay aloft for hours in tiny droplets in stagnant air, infecting people as they inhale, mounting scientific evidence suggests. This risk is highest in crowded indoor spaces with poor ventilation, and may help explain super-spreading events reported in meatpacking plants, churches and restaurants. It’s unclear how often the virus is spread via these tiny droplets, or aerosols, compared with larger droplets that are expelled when a sick person coughs or sneezes, or transmitted through contact with contaminated surfaces, said Linsey Marr, an aerosol expert at Virginia Tech. Aerosols are released even when a person without symptoms exhales, talks or sings, according to Dr. Marr and more than 200 other experts, who have outlined the evidence in an open letter to the World Health Organization.

• What are the symptoms of coronavirus?

  • Common symptoms include fever, a dry cough, fatigue and difficulty breathing or shortness of breath. Some of these symptoms overlap with those of the flu, making detection difficult, but runny noses and stuffy sinuses are less common. The C.D.C. has also added chills, muscle pain, sore throat, headache and a new loss of the sense of taste or smell as symptoms to look out for. Most people fall ill five to seven days after exposure, but symptoms may appear in as few as two days or as many as 14 days.

• Does asymptomatic transmission of Covid-19 happen?

  • So far, the evidence seems to show it does. A widely cited paper published in April suggests that people are most infectious about two days before the onset of coronavirus symptoms and estimated that 44 percent of new infections were a result of transmission from people who were not yet showing symptoms. Recently, a top expert at the World Health Organization stated that transmission of the coronavirus by people who did not have symptoms was “very rare,” but she later walked back that statement.

In Florida’s Miami-Dade County, contact tracers employed by the state have reached only 18 percent of those infected over the last two weeks, according to Mayor Dan Gelber of Miami Beach; many of the others were never even called. Mr. Gelber wrote a letter to Gov. Ron DeSantis on Monday decrying the state of the program.

“You think it’s a natural situation where people will say, ‘Oh of course, I’ll cooperate,’” Dr. Fauci said. “But there’s such pushback on authority, on government, on all kinds of things like that. It makes it very complicated.”

A list of confirmed coronavirus cases at the Salt Lake County health department in May.Credit...Rick Bowmer/Associated Press

In Seattle, tracers found 80 percent of the people they reached were not in quarantine, even if they had symptoms. And there is little appetite in the United States for intrusive technology, such as electronic bracelets or obligatory phone GPS signals, that has worked well for contact tracing in parts of Asia. Although Americans are free to cross state lines, no national tracing program exists.

“We need federal leadership for standards and privacy safeguards, and I don’t see that happening,” said Dr. Luciana Borio, a former director of medical and biodefense preparedness at the National Security Council.

Many epidemiologists believe fixing the program in the United States to combat and contain the coronavirus outbreaks is essential.

“We have to start by supporting people in getting tested, which means making it easy enough for those exposed to someone or has symptoms to just show up and not worry about a doctor’s order,” Ms. Cannuscio said. “People in the Covid era have a hard time telling you what day it is.”

Dr. Joia Mukherjee, the chief medical officer at Partners in Health, the group in charge of the Massachusetts effort, outlined the principles her group insisted on: Tracers must come from the hardest-hit communities and be able to speak Spanish, Haitian Creole or whatever language the communities do.

Every tracer must be paid, not a volunteer. And Massachusetts had to put in enough money to let the tracers “support” anyone expected to self-quarantine.

“We ask: Do you need food? Infant formula? Diapers? Cab fare? Unemployment insurance? And we help them get it,” Dr. Mukherjee said. “That way people feel it’s care, not surveillance.”

Dr. Marcus Plescia, the chief medical officer at the Association of State and Territorial Health Officials, said that despite the failures so far, it was too soon to surrender. States need more time to build up a tracing work force and the infrastructure to do it well, he said, and Americans need to grow more comfortable with the concept, similar to becoming accustomed to wearing masks.

Dr. William Foege, a former director of the C.D.C., said recently that effective tracers should be “psychiatrists, detectives and problem solvers all at once,” and that will also take time for many who are new to the job.

But in the meantime, Dr. Plescia said, even finding a fraction of cases through contact tracing will help slow the virus’s spread.

“We don’t have to strive for perfection on this,” Dr. Plescia said. “It’s a heavy lift and it’s going to take some time. We need to hang in there and keep at it.”

Donald G. McNeil Jr. contributed reporting to this article.

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