CDC Will Relax School Reopening Guidelines, Mike Pence Says – By Sara Boboltz, Arthur Delaney, Elise Foley, and Rebecca Klein (Huffpost) / July 8 2020
President Donald Trump is waging a pressure campaign against state and local governments.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention will weaken guidelines for reopening schools that President Donald Trump said were too stringent, Vice President Mike Pence said Wednesday.
“The president said today, we just don’t want the guidance to be too tough,” Pence said during a press briefing at the Department of Education. “That’s the reason why next week, the CDC is going to be issuing a new set of tools, five different documents that will be giving even more clarity on the guidance going forward.”
The CDC is under clear pressure from the White House to amend its current nonbinding guidelines for schools, which say, among other things, that teachers and students should wear cloth masks and that desks should be “at least 6 feet apart when feasible.” Trump tweeted earlier Wednesday that he disagreed with the CDC “on their very tough & expensive guidelines for opening schools” and “will be meeting with them!!!” He also threatened to cut off funding to schools if they did not reopen quickly enough, although only Congress has the authority to do so.
At multiple points in the briefing, CDC Director Robert Redfield downplayed his agency’s recommendations by stressing that they “are not requirements” and are “not meant to be prescriptive.”
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