♪ welcome to thursday. it is "mtp daily." i am chuck todd, continuing nbc's coverage of the coronavirus pandemic. as we mentioned top of the show yesterday, over the last month all 50 states have officially begun to ease restrictions, some more quickly than others. every state is vowing to open to some degree. the biggest question hanging over every one of them, over the governor and the federal government, is whether or not it is safe to open the valve from a public health standpoint when it comes to hospital bed capacity.

today we learned there are newly discovered problems with the data some states and more importantly the federal government may have used to help determine whether it is safe to open the valve as widely as some states have. reporters at the atlantic which runs one of the most widely cited coronavirus data tracking projects discovered the cdc along with a number of states was for whatever reason combining two totally different kinds of testing metrics into one big number and this is a problem. let me explain. when states test for the virus, they can test for who has the virus or who apparently has antibodies to the virus. i say apparently because the antibody tests are widely considered less reliable. simply put, one tells you where the virus is, the other tells you where the virus has apparently been, past tense. they're both tests, they both

tell you perhaps who's had the virus, but they tell you very different things about the potential trajectory of the virus which is important information for policy makers and health experts who are studying if communities are in a position to safely reopen, and if so, how quickly you do it. what the atlantic found is a number of states, some very big states, have been combining numbers in public reports. that's a problem. some states have since corrected the issue, but it is unclear if they were using misleading testing data during the period on your screen when every state government much to the president's urging collectively decided to begin reopening. it is also unclear at least to us how many states might have had this problem, were using essentially flawed data to give a rosier picture. it gets weirder because the atlantic found in one strange instance, a state like florida was separating testing numbers, giving two different, the

diagnostic and anti-body separately, as they should. the cdc decided to combine them in federal numbers, making cdc numbers bigger than florida's own figures. with deaths approaching 100,000 people, bottom line is states and the federal government may have been using inaccurate test numbers as they made decisions on reopening, and it is unclear what they've done to overall integrity of the testing data, which is not a comforting thought. for weeks we have been following public available numbers. the data used for insight into how many cases are confirmed, leading indicator for how many deaths you're likely to see which inform projections on how many could lose their lives, and how many beds we have, and if we're testing enough. joining me, robinson meyer, staff writer for the atlantic. i also have dr. patel, primary

care physician, former policy director at the obama white house and msnbc contributor. robinson, let me start with you. when and how did you figure this out? >> yeah, so over the past few weeks, america's ability to test, at least in numbers, has increased. it has gone, we were testing 150,000 a day to testing 400,000 a day, in the past few days. we started, it has been a really shocking leap. i mean, we added more capacity the past few weeks than we anticipated adding. we started to get worried maybe this was happening, maybe states were starting to combine viral tests with antibody tests on the market because the surge happened at the same time the antibody test came on the market. a reporter in richmond found

virginia was doing it, we covered, thought it was a stand alone, then it came out more and more states were doing it. we're not sure unless a state said it is not, whether they're combining the two important metrics. >> i want to put up some of the states you discovered where they're combining data. texas, pennsylvania, georgia, vermont, you pointed out virginia, and maine was doing this, since disaggregated. let me ask you this. >> west virginia, yes. >> why did the cdc at first go one way? that's the other part of this. if it was an accident at first, it looks like it is no longer an accident. how's that. >> yes. so separately we discovered states are doing it. when the states do it, it is one issue because governors base decisions off their state data.

last week, the cdc started to publish state by state test figures. a huge deal. it hadn't published reliable daily national figures how many americans were getting tested for covid-19. for months, they weren't doing anything. publishing last week, many states deviated from what states were saying. 13 states that was 25% off what states were saying. and florida was a big example, florida data was larger, it was a local reporter that asked the cdc what was happening after our report. and the cdc responded, didn't give the response they had given us, hey, actually we're combining antibody and viral in the data. that's why the discrepancy. it is funny, the cdc didn't say it was doing that last week, it

said it would claim it was reporting only viral tests. fessed up or changed the metric. >> how hard to disaggregate the data at this point or are we concerned that states have so mixed this that the data is polluted? >> if states are reporting the viral antibody tests separately, some are, we can trust that data, be pretty sure it is in a good place. if they're combining them, it's really hard because we just don't know how many antibody tests are happening in a state, not sure the percentage, so not only does that mess up our raw number of how many americans are getting tested but a number of other metrics governors are consulting, such as the number tested per capita, or percent positive tests, the number of tests that come back positive.

those are often factors in governors' decisions to reopen, and they're just not -- they become completely unreliable if you include the antibody test. >> doctor, does this mean we throw up our hands? i mean, we already knew we were a bit blind on the virus, we got a late start, feels like we're always a week behind feeling whatever that feeling is. how concerned now are you about the state of what we know and don't know about this virus? >> it's pretty concerning and i have to say, chuck, that there are so many of us that kind of had a history of working with the cdc as the kind of title of robinson's article states, we can't believe it, it is so shocking you can't believe it is real, but we have the facts in front of us. moving forward, chuck, we have to figure out how to have a reliable sense of weather cases

are truly declining, because people already reopened the country, and we're pouring apples and oranges together to get the data. i think this is something you can parse. remember, a large majority of tests are being done by a handful of manufacturers, and facilities within a state, for example. so i do think you can try to move forward. but it certainly doesn't help instill confidence in the cdc, and it calls to question what else is being -- what else are we not knowing, are death numbers accurate, et cetera. that's my top of mind. >> doctor patel, on the antibody test, there are so many reports of high level of false positives or excuse me, false negatives, that it left the impression with me these are less reliable tests than the diagnostic tests. should the cdc be even counting the antibody tests yet in your

mind? >> that's no, chuck. truly the purpose of an antibody test is for some sort of community surveillance, to understand who had been exposed. the cdc should be doing, and they are conducting kind of a nationwide surveillance, but that does not help us in those daily reporting numbers. it helps us in a different way to tell us really what is the kind of prevalence of the virus. so there's a utility for it, but then you heard that even as of today the fda pulled about 27 antibody tests that received some sort of approval, marketing themselves, so we know there's actually a lot of bad testing going on, so they're of no value to a person and really only useful separately to think how much of the country has been exposed to coronavirus. >> if you were in your old job

now, dr. patel, what would you demand of the cdc director now? >> i thought about this a lot. number one, that's no question we would need to understand where things went wrong, why this is in the state that it is, and really the accountability would come not just from the cdc director, from secretary of health and human services, and ultimately you would have somebody like president obama who would have said this is not acceptable and how do we fix it, and that's i think, to be honest, i'm waiting to understand if we're all in such disbelief, what is being done today to fix it, and how can we move forward. >> let me bring it back to you, robinson. have you gotten a better sense of how this happened inside the cdc and whether there's some sort of panic now to try to fix this? >> i say we have not found the

cdc to be incredibly communicative, has not explained discrepancies between what data is stated in reporting and data it is reporting. individual scientists we fear this belief, there's a number of reports of scientists saying we're going to be saying no way the agency is doing that, then seeing what's happening, being shocked. i would say the cdc just on the data front, it has really underperformed this whole pandemic. the testing data for them has never been reliable. i want to establish for viewers we think the case and death data from cdc on a state by state level is fairly reliable. we're slightly concerned they might be including probable cases from antibody tests within the overall count, but the case

does match the states pretty well. the viral testing, the basic blocking and containing the pandemic, lets you identify, and if we don't have trustworthy numbers on that, hard to say whether states are ready to reopen or whether they can handle an outbreak if it happens. >> the final question for you. at this point all states are open, barring some drastic outbreak, i don't imagine any governor is going to look for reasons not to do a lockdown, put it that way. how should we be testing now that we stumbled into summer. we can go back, say we should have done this, this, and this. that horse has left the barn. how would you want to use testing going forward? >> right. you need to make sure you're getting at least your higher risk populations thoroughly tested, health care workers, nursing homes, et cetera.

on top of that, you want to do some sort of testing of asymptomatic individuals, so you can do that through a number of different mechanisms in public health that we're very familiar with, something called pool testing. you can have a purposeful sample of the community to check and understand what the status is. and then the third is actually thinking about how you can scale, for people returning to work, a critical part is testing strategy for employers, schools, faith based organizations, small businesses, and that is in and of itself for practical purposes of reopening the economy a pretty important milestone as well. >> and if you said we lost these antibody tests, how much set back that we don't have a reliable antibody test we have been able to scale, dr. patel? >> i'll say this.

i don't think it is a critical set back, i think the diagnostic tests, having a good, remember, we had issues with performance on diagnostic tests, too, chuck, so having a reliable diagnostic test that tells you if you have the virus or don't is of critical importance. in places like new york or areas where there's high prevalence, an antibody test can be important to know because you might have 30% of a population exposed to the virus, but in most of the country won't tell you anything. in some cases, it tells you if you had exposure to the virus, doesn't tell you about real immunity. and i would be worried people would have a false sense of security they were somehow immune. so the cdc should have surveillance mechanisms, use antibody testing of quality to do that. i have a question whether they can. the testing strategy needs to be the diagnostic test we talked about, to see if you have the

virus or not. >> every time you think we have started to make progress on testing, reality smacks us in the face. robinson meyer, dr. kavita patel, thank you for your expertise and getting us started. up ahead, headed to michigan and the politics of the pandemic. his trip comes one day after he threatened to withhold michigan's federal funding, and one month after he tweeted the state should be lib rated. many of their stories remain untold. find and honor the veterans in your family. their stories live on at ancestry. yoo-hoo, progressive shoppers. we laughed with you. sprinkles are for winners. we surprised you. on occasion, we've probably even annoyed you. we've done this all with one thing in mind. to help protect the things you love.

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. welcome back. president trump is in michigan in his official capacity as president, but the trip has taken on a political tinge. he finished remarks after touring a ford factory, in violation of gretchen whitmer's ban on nonessential factory tours amid the coronavirus pandemic, she put that out in

mid may, not wearing a mask in violation of ford policy and whitmer's order that all people wear masks in closed public places. if you had any doubt politics were on his mind, he hosted a round table before his remarks featuring likely nominee for senate, john james. he walked out to his campaign trail play list, which of course includes god bless the usa. he has three visits to 23 states this week. he met with ron desantis in florida, did otr as it is called on pool duty with the vice president at the burger shop. he is going to meet with brian kemp in georgia tomorrow, another battleground state. john harris summed it up when he wrote the incumbent president managed to make politics the first to return to something recognizable as normal. okay. that's one way of putting it.

joining me from ypsilanti, shaquille brewster and peter baker. shaquille, tell me about the visit. first, we see the michigan state officials are not happy with the president, yesterday feuding with secretary of state, today feuding with the attorney general. what did you see in the tour? >> reporter: well, the president just left this facility behind me, a ford facility that makes battery packs for hybrid vehicles, plug in cars, has been making ventilators, 50,000 they plan to make in july, 6,000 a week once you get to june. the president toured the facility. one thing we were asking, would he plan to wear the mask. he was not wearing a mask on the tour. when bill ford was asked about it on tour, you saw the

executives wearing the mask. when he was asked about it, he said it is up to him. it is in violation of the governor's orders in that regard. in terms of his speech, what you heard from president trump, you got a sense of what he was trying to do, what his purpose was. he was trying to highlight his administration's efforts responding to the coronavirus outbreak, talked about the defense production act, that ford was making ventilators. then he got political. he opened the question why unions weren't supporting him instead of the so-called democrat that doesn't know where he is, referring to vice president biden. you hear the political hints in his speeches and you notice that he is continually going to places that are 2020 battleground. we saw him in arizona, pennsylvania, now in michigan, a state he only won by about 10,000 votes. a state you can tell, if you look at his visits, you can tell it is crucially important to him and his focus now.

chuck. >> sounds like you're racing against the motorcade. i can hear it, familiar sound to peter and myself. peter baker, i want to play something of what the president said about democratic governors as well today. take a listen. >> now it is time for the country to open again. and i think you'll start with churches, i think you'll start with some other states that have been very resistant. you have a lot of unfortunately this case democrat governors, i think they think it is good politics to keep it closed, but what are they doing? they're hurting themselves. i don't think it is good politics. they're hurting themselves, they're hurting their state, and it's not good. i think they look at it as a possible november question. it is not a november question. it happens to be very bad for them. >> peter baker, it is so clear the president is only thinking about one thing. he is a projector. when he claims somebody else is

thinking it, it is like every single event these days in his mind is about the election. >> right. he sees so much through the lens of partisan politics, when somebody says something he grease with, it is because they're his enemy. the other day he talked about hydroxychloroquine, he said that study done under the auspices of the veteran's administration was done by trump enemies, based on nothing other than the fact that apparently they disagree with him about the drug. yeah. he is looking at democratic governors, looking for somebody to run against. this has been a frustrating period for the president. at his strongest as a political actor when he has an enemy to fight, whether it be president obama or hillary clinton or speaker pelosi or somebody like that. a virus has been a poor enemy in that sense, it doesn't subject itself to tweets and normal political give and take that the president is good at.

he is trying to find of course people he can take on, in this case democratic governors. not sure what good politics would be keeping your state closed if you thought it was safe to do so. your own state's economy, i can't see political gain there. seems to me, governors democratic or republican are trying to weigh these very complicated hard factors, when can you open, how can you open in a way to be safe without allowing, encouraging another wave of the virus. if that's another wave of the virus, that's bad politically for the president as much as it is bad. >> let me go up 30,000 feet, peter. i want to ask about the story we led with. more questions about the cdc, and i have to tell you, the first reaction of a staffer of mine when we saw the cdc story was boy, talk about blowing up trust with the one agency we as a country have had high regard for and that is the cdc.

we don't know as to why the cdc is messing around with numbers, we don't know if it is politics, an accident, i don't know what's worse, politics or incompetence, but it is a big blow for the federal government, is it not, peter? >> it is. you add that to handling of testing early on which obviously was in many views mishandled, they got the wrong tests out. i think you're right. in a larger sense, this is cutting away at our faith and our institutions. the polls show for years there have been questions about whether politicians, congress, president, even the media, now the last couple years increasingly intelligence agencies, the fbi, justice department, institutions we had faith in now seem to be instruments of political warfare, and if the cdc and scientific agencies that we

trust to help us with public health are seen through a political lens, you're right. even more dangerous scenario for everybody. >> want to go back to shaq. wab these are the states trump or pence visited since the outbreak, when basically no one has been traveling. wisconsin, pennsylvania, arizona, florida, virginia, minnesota, iowa, michigan, georgia. not one of them has not been a battleground state now or in the last presidential election or two. give us a sense, shaq, what looked like a campaign event. how much did it feel like a campaign event and how much like a white house event. you covered both. >> reporter: that's right, chuck. when you follow presidents, you'll notice for in couple bent presidents, they have the advantage of incumbency. they can have the event. he had the official visit, the tour, briefed on the ventilators

they're making, that's part of his official functions, but can have the feel of a campaign event. chuck, we just got a statement from ford motor company over the saga over the mask he wasn't wearing. they said bill ford encouraged president trump to wear a mask when he arrived. he wore a mask during a private viewing of three ford gts from over the years. the president later removed the mask they say for the remainder of the visit. even ford getting pulled into this back and forth. the president said when asked by one of the reporters on the tour, he said one of the reasons he took the mask off is he didn't want the press to see him wearing it. he knows people are talking about it. he knows it is something we're watching. you see fordr responding. had the feeling of a campaign event, not only talked about vice president biden, alluded to him, talked to a republican candidate for senate, john james. he said that will be a great senator.

he praised the work john james is doing. both the plolitical side and th presidential side. >> right. shaquille brewster, peter baker, thank you both. it is clear to me the president wants the michigan story to be about masks and not other stuff. there's a lot of other stuff going on. i will talk with debbie stab -- debb debbie stabenow. if this dam had been working better, may have prevented the disaster. and the laws and how they're changing in states that matter most in 2020. st in 2020

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welcome back. michigan faces dual disasters, the first being the pandemic. one of the hardest-hit by job loss, number of infections and deaths. hit by all parts of the virus. second disaster, record levels of flooding, compounded by failure of dams meant to prevent that. governor whitmer told thousands of residents to evacuate, having to lift coronavirus restrictions to let people evacuate during the flood emergency, and we're learning federal regulators warned about dangers of one of the dams in 2018. take a look at this lake. empty after the dam burst, released water into nearby towns.

no doubts are reported, crisis isn't over, could be days before water resides. and residents are trying to socially distance in a pandemic, while displaced in their homes. joining us, michigan democratic senator debbie stabenow. senator, we originally booked you to talk about the president's visit, i'll be honest, i want to start here. >> right. >> when i read about failures of this dam, the failures of the company that runs this dam, how often, i can't help but look back, you just got through the flint water crisis. this is another infrastructure failure that impacted citizens of michigan. what is your reaction to all of this? >> well, chuck, i appreciate being with you today, and you're right. it is like we're hit in the gut one more time, and this is a private dam, a couple of years ago they stopped the license to sell hydro power because of concerns about it, and the fact

is that they should have been invested and put dollars in in order to be able to strengthen this. the federal government put them on notice for years on this. unfortunately the previous governor who also was overseeing flint at that time when the federal license was pulled didn't take any action. we have 10,000 people that have been evacuated and fortunately as you said no deaths. >> who is responsible for the damage, is this something the taxpayers, is this fema, or is this company going to be held liable for this? >> well, i hope the company will be held, first of all for this. they had plenty of warnings, lost their lnicense, should hav acted. i have been on the phone with

fema and the governor and her team and it is going to be important that fema come in and residents get the help they need individually and that we be able to rebuild this, but i certainly think there's private responsibility here. >> in fairness, the company does claim the reason that they were facing pressure from state officials to raise water levels in order to appease residents, how much do we know about that back and forth? >> chuck, the only thing i know is that the state has released a statement today saying that wasn't true so i'm not sure. i mean, i believe it is not true, they said it is not true, so i don't know all of the details on that, but i do know that most importantly to me now is we have to do everything we can to help the people involved because we've had over 5,000 people die as a result of

covid-19 and on top of this what's happening and the fact that you can't really social distance in a school sleeping on a cot. you can't get into your home. this is a very difficult situation. and i have to say when the president came in and was asked today about whether or not he meant it about withholding money from the state of michigan, he said he was still considering doing that, i mean, look at the pictures here. this is outrageous, on top of coming in and doing a political event right now instead of coming in to help us, that he would say he might still withhold money. >> let's talk about your priorities for michigan when it comes to the next round. it does look like momentum is building that you guys in the senate may start to take some stuff up. what are priorities one, two, and three when it comes to the

michigan needs in this pandemic, both economic and health? >> well, right now when we look at what is happening for michigan, it has to be support for state and local services because what's happening is our communities are having to step in, you know, the president said to them governors, you take the lead, we're with you all the way, then they turn around and he's nowhere, that the reality is that they did step in, now they have to step in again with floods and all of the other things happening. so i'm very concerned that they have to put budgets together in the next month. we know that across the country already a million jobs have been cut by states because they have taken dollars to save lives, and address the health care pandemic, but haven't gotten federal support they need to fill that hole, so i'm concerned in michigan about our schools, about what's going to happen in

terms of police and firefighters, public health, doctors and nurses. that's very important to me. and the other thing is the payment for our heroes, folks on the front lines need hazard pay, they need a thank you, not enough. they need to put food on their own table, pay their own mortgage. so the hazard pay proposal we put in is really important. >> senator debbie stabenow, democrat from michigan, a lot more i would love to talk to you about. unfortunately i have run out of time this segment. we have to pay a couple of bills. thank you for coming on. good luck to central michigan. we hope we continue to have no deaths there as well. thanks for coming on. >> thank you. coming up, future of vote by mail in swing states. our man kornacki has the big board and is going to break it

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we don't want mail-in ballots, it will lead to election fraud. we don't want anyone to do mail-in ballots. if somebody has to mail it in because they're sick or by the way because they live in the white house and have to vote in florida, they won't be in florida, if there's a reason for it, that's okay. if there's a reason. if there's not, we don't want to take any chances with fraud in our elections. >> that was president trump earlier today on his way to michigan, once again criticizing voting by mail, as more states make it easier to vote by mail ahead of the november election. steve kornacki joins us from the big board to look at the mail-in voting by the numbers, particularly when it matters for states that matter most. mr. kornacki, what have you got? >> couple of ways to look at this. big picture, what you see in

gold, most of the states, these states allow no excuse absentee voting. you can do mail-in voting for any reason. most states in the country are going to allow that. some of them for the first time. that includes pennsylvania, michigan, wisconsin, arizona, florida, north carolina. probably the six premier swing states. all six of the biggest swing states are going to allow expanse i have voting by mail this year. what's interesting is you see a little difference in terms of who runs the secretary of state office. most states, it is democrats. in florida, it is a republican. >> wow. >> what you've got, i believe that should be a republican for arizona too. but what you've got, chuck, is the question of yes, they allow no excuse absentee voting, but how is the secretary of state going to implement it. that's the controversy in michigan. do you send the applications out preemptively to all voters, do they have to request the absentee application? there's even as we saw, by the

way, this is the other one, i meant to say, the other thing, states don't have a ton of experience with this. this is the percentage of votes in swing states that were cast in person in the most recent election. look at these three. north carolina, pennsylvania, wisconsin. almost all votes cast in person. suddenly in these states this year, they're getting a flood of mail-in ballots. they haven't processed it before, dealt with that. you talk about florida, two-thirds was in person in 2018, either in person early or in person same day. arizona is the only one with that kind of experience, with that scale of mail-in voting. one other thing i mentioned, the most expensive form of mail-in voting in california in the special election, every voter in that district was mailed not an application but a ballot. they sent out 425,000 ballots. everybody that was a registered voteder got the ballot, got a

postage paid envelope to return it, the republican won the race by ten points. first republican pickup in california in two decades with the most expansive form of mail-in voting. >> by the way, kornacki, fear not, the board was correct. arizona has a democratic secretary of state. >> i apologize for that. >> fear not. we rarely have to question the board, kornacki. >> i tried to outsmart the board, look what it did to me. >> there you go. nice work, my friend. much appreciated. thank you. up next, as texas gets ready to move into phase two of reopening, the mayor of dallas is cautioning residents this is not a return to normal. he joins us live after this short break. he joins us live after this short break.

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welcome back. as in most parts of texas, the dallas/fort worth area is slowly reopening. the mega plex tomorrow dog park, skate parks and pavilions will open in time for memorial day weekend. although visitors are still being encouraged to wear masks and practice social distancing. dallas county counted 183 new cases and 7 deaths today. a new study gives the metro area an f for social distancing efforts. in fairness, a lot of places got d's or f's on there, not just a few. with me now is the mayor of the city of dallas, eric johnson. mr. mayor, good to have you on. so let me ask you this. so what are you -- what are you

concerned about the most over the next week? and what gives you some confidence that maybe your concerns are just that, nervousness? >> well, i'll tell you. what gives me confidence is the facts are that the cases in our area appear to be plateauing and maybe even on the decline. that's a fact. what also gives me some confidence is i've been monitoring our hospital capacity numbers for several weeks, and those numbers are holding steady. we've never exceeded that sort of magical 70% number on icu beds or hospital beds, and never exceeded 40% utilization on our ventilators. so we are pretty good on capacity. our case count looks pretty good. but what i'm concerned about is this is the south, and it's starting to get warm. people have been inside a long time, and they're starting to get a message now that we are reopening the economy, and i

don't want that to translate into okay, things are back to normal, and we can go back out and start undoing all the good work we're doing down here. despite what the f report card says, we've seen the numbers suggested it is working what we're doing. >> what are you doing for senior facilities right now? >> the state government is actually working with our local dallas fire and rescue and through the fire departments to make sure that all of our senior facilities in the state are being tested, that all the folks who live in those facilities are being tested. those have been consistent lly issue and a source of cases for us as it has been, i think in many places around the state and the country. the governor has, i think wisely stepped up to address that more directly by sending state resources here locally to help us get those folks tested. >> on the economic side of

things, what's the toughest part of the dallas economy to open up in your mind? >> well, we're going open up bars tomorrow at 25% per the governor's orders. the governor in texas has the decision in his hands as to when things are going to reopen and how we handle emergencies per state law. and he has decided tomorrow is the day that bars are going to be allowed to reopen. and that is a little bit of a cause of concern, but that's the -- that's the reality that we're having to deal with, and that's probably my biggest concerns that folks don't go pouring back into situations that they don't have to, and that they exercise good judgment. so i want folks to hear loud and clear from the mayor that we need them if they decide to participate in the economy again, to do so responsibly by wearing a mask and practicing distancing. we're not out of the woods yet.

>> it sounds like by your answer, you made it clear, this is the governor's decision. it sounds like you wish you would be making this decision, and would you be making a different decision? >> well, i'd have to go back and change state law that's been in place since the year i was born. >> of course. >> to have that decision in my hands. all i'm really getting at here is i don't think monday morning quarterbacking is what my residents want me to do. i think they want me to keep them safe and to try to make the governor's decisions work. he's already decided this is the schedule, and now my job is to make sure it works for them. the best thing they can do is if they're symptomatic, stay home. if they're part of a vulnerable population, stay home. if you're going to go back out into the economy, be smart, wear a mask. it's not a sign of weakness. wear the mask and keep others safe. >> how are you going to -- or how you think the governor wants you to police the 25% capacity?

>> i think the governor wants private businesses to in a way figure out how they're going to implement the 25% requirement, but what we've seen so far is it's been a joint enforcement effort at the local level between the city of dallas and dallas county using some combination of code compliance officers and police officers so make sure that the occupancy for these establishments is what the 25% is based on is being adhered to. that's something that we're going to continue to assist with. we could use more resources of course from the state and from the federal government to help with this, because yes doing this for safety reasons. this is not how we would otherwise be choosing to spend our very limited resources. that's going fall in large part to us at the local level to enforce. >> i'm curious. testing and tracing. do you feel like you have enough

contact tracers to, for instance, open up downtown, seeing your office buildings start to fill up again? >> we just addressed the issue of contact tracing publicly at the city level yesterday with my new czar, who i have appointed to assist with this very issue. we are not here where we'd like to be locally on testing, and we are still hovering around the 2% range for folks who have been tested in our community. and we're certainly not where we need to be with respect to contact tracing. that unfortunately like many other things down here has taken on a political overtone, where you stand on contact tracing is some now becoming a partisan issue. but i think the science suggested this is absolutely critical to give people the confidence they need to reenter the economy. and that's how i look at all these things. it shouldn't be a political thing. it shouldn't be a partisan thing. it's a common sense public health practice to give people the confidence they need to reenter the economy. >> yeah, i think individually we

know it's not a political thing. it feels that's been a top-down situation. dallas mayor eric johnson, thanks for coming on and sharing your perspective from the great city of dallas. thank you, sir, and we'll be right back. d we'll be right back usaa was made for right now. and right now, is a time for action. so, for a second time we're giving members a credit on their auto insurance. because it's the right thing to do. we're also giving payment relief options to eligible members so they can take care of things like groceries before they worry about their insurance or credit card bills. right now is the time to take care of what matters most.

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well, thanks for being with us tonight. thanks for trusting us to tune in. and "the beat with ari melber" starts right now. good evening, ari. >> good evening, chuck. thank you very much. welcome to "the beat." i'm ari melber. we have a huge show tonight, and i'll tell you why. the president is visiting a swing state and clashing with michigan officials that state's own attorney general, the top law enforcement official in the state is here on "the beat" tonight and she is telling the president in no uncertain terms if he won't wear a mask, he will not be asked to return to the state. so we'll get into all of that and what he did today. also, jobless claims soaring to almost 40 million. robert reich, a friend of "the beat" is here to give us the perspective we need. and later, donald trump's