campaign staff. brad par scale is demoted. former aid to chris christy the new campaign manager. manager. pa p pascale will serve as an adviser for the data and digital operations. this change comes hours after a new round of poll numbers that show the trump campaign struggling, to put it mildly. much more on all of it coming up. we're also reporting on an alarming new sign of the severity of these coronavirus outbreaks across our country, which as of tonight has now seen 3.5 million confirmed cases. this is bracing even if you have just a passing knowledge of florida. ten hospitals within miami-dade county, the state's main hot spot, have no icu beds remaining. several other states, including georgia, have seen sharp increases in cases over the past few weeks. the state's republican governor this evening extended

coronavirus restrictions until the end of the month. the order limits sizes of gat r gatherigathe gathering but does not mandate masks. in fact, it explicitly bans cities and counties from mandating masks across the state of georgia. atlanta, of course, has born the blunt of georgia's outbreak. the city's mayor, two members of her family are among those infected. trump was in atlanta today ignoring the mandate as he came down the steps of "air force one," a stop to plug an infrastructure plan. nothing on his agenda involved the virus or 138,000 lives lost. his only reference to the crisis came during a speech at a ups hub near the airport. >> let me start by expressing my gratitude to every driver, worker, and employee who has contributed to this great success and continued to deliver for america throughout our battle against the china virus.

goes by many different names. about 21 that i can figure. maybe we'll use a different one every time we hit it. >> the "washington post" notes that trump and his team have yet to present any real plan to deal with the pan deckic. phil rucker who joins us in just a moment along with his colleagues reports it this way. there is no cohesive national strategy with unenforced federal health guidelines and administration is offering a patch work of solutions often in reaction to outbreaks after they occur. although trump and his team declare sweeping objectives like reopening schools, they shirked responsibility for developing and executing plans to achieve them, putting onus on state and local authorities. earlier on this network, atlanta's mayor talked about the lack of guidance from the federal level. >> everyone is doing something differently, and it's extremely

frustrating not to have leader and guidance and giving us solid direction on how we move past this as a country. >> and this was interesting. all day today the white house has been trying to distance itself from the latest round of attacks on dr. anthony fauci, attacks that originated inside the trump white house. trump's trade advisor peter navarro attacked fauci in this morning's "usa today" as one does. this morning a white house spokeswoman said the op-ed, quote, didn't go through normal white house clearance processes and is the opinion of peter navarro alone. donald trump values the expertise of the medical professionals advising his administration. a few hours later, the president seemed to toss navarro under the bus. >> he made a statement representing himself. he shouldn't be doing that. i have a very good relationship with anthony. >> trump later insisted everybody at the white house was

all on the same team including fauci, but the l."l.a. times" reports one administration official said something different, quote, navarro had the president's permission to write the column and added, not only was he authorized by trump, he was encouraged. in an interview today with the "atlantic," fauci responded to efforts to question his credibility. >> it is a bit bizarre. i don't really fully understand it. if you talk to reasonable people in the white house, they realize that was a major mistake on their part because it doesn't do anything but reflect poorly on them. and i don't think that that was their intention. i don't know. i cannot figure out in my wildest dreams why they would want to do that. i can't explain peter navarro. he's in a world by himself. >> fauci went on to say it's time to stop this nonsense, and one note here and let's be candid. americans who value fauci's

advice have to hope he doesn't interview or podcast or zoom every day where we can at least see him and hear him and quote him because he's no longer allowed to appear at white house coronavirus briefings, which with few exceptions are no longer happening. today in an apparent effort at damage control, the vice president posted a picture of his meeting with the world's leading infectious disease specialist in the situation room. no sign of wolf blitzer. oklahoma governor kevin stitt, who has been a covid downplayer seen here next to senator jim inhofe at the tulsa rally last month said he tested positive for the virus. he's still hesitant to mandate masks in oklahoma. another republican governor kay ivey of alabama did issue a

state wide mask mandate, but no details on how she wishes foyt be enforced. the nation's biggest retailer walmart says its customers must now wear masks in its stores. kroger doing the same thing. no mask, no shopping trip. these moves are finally being made as weary health care workers continue to fight to keep americans alive. >> we are running out of space in the hospitals. we're running out, more importantly, of personnel. >> we have seen a drastic increase in covid-19 patients. the patients range anywhere from young 20-year-olds all the way up into the 80s and 90-year-olds. >> i'm afraid that, you know, the health care system can tip. you know, we've never experienced where we actually have to say no. >> to the people outside, please consider protect yourself, wear a mask, do whatever you have to. our resources are limited. >> heroic, all of them.

here for our lead-off discussion on a wednesday night, phillip rucker, pulitzer prize-winning writer for the "washington post," co-author with his colleague carol hennig. maya wiley back with us, as well. she's a former assistant u.s. attorney for the southern district of new york, veteran of the new york city mayor's office with the new school in new york and dr. aileen marty is back with us. she's professor of infectious diseases at florida international university in miami having spent 25 years as a u.s. navy officer, she also works with the w.h.o. and in the past worked with teams responding to outbreaks across the globe. good evening and welcome to you all. phil rucker, because this is your beat on a daily basis, let's continue our campaign of candor here. not a great look to change up the campaign management with 111 days to go. >> you know, brian, this change, which has been expected for a

few weeks now, you know, really comes at a moment of peril for president trump, politically speaking. he's trailing joe biden, and he's trailing joe biden by increasing margins by the day. there are two polls today showing him with double digits -- behind by double digits with joe biden. so trump is desperate to turn this around and figure out a way forward. you know, changing the leadership of the campaign may not necessarily solve the problem because so many of trump's political troubles have originated with the president himself, with his lack of discipline with acts that even some of his aids consider self-sabotage. until he turns this around, his political fortunes may not turn around. nonetheless, he's turning to bill stepien to try to turn this around. he's sort of a no-nonsense

political operative who came up in the campaigns of new jersey governor chris christie and has been in the trump orbit for some time and less dramatic and less of a public profile than brad parscale had. >> hey, doctor, we quoted you and showed videotape of you on this broadcast last night saying that a lockdown in a place like miami may be the only way to get the upper hand. it was then today that we learned that news that puts a lump in your throat that miami-dade is out of icu beds. in your view, is it time to get tougher? >> unfortunately, yes. but it's not just a matter of doing a lockdown. we have to set ourselves up to succeed if we do do a lockdown. in other words, we have to put in place those measures that we didn't put in place in the previous lockdown, and not just in florida, in many places. we have to see in order to get out of lockdown, we should

follow at least the cdc guidelines of less than 10% positivity or, better even yet, the international guidelines of 5% and a whole bunch of other steps i would be happy go into if you want. >> well, you mentioned the cdc guidelines. the director yesterday talked about masks. he said if we're all willing to war them for, i think he said, four to six weeks, we could begin to get the upper hand on this. i'm assuming you concur with that. i'm assuming, as well, that would have been great to hear in march and april for all americans. >> yes, and i actually began asking people in march and april and may and june to please wear masks because we know it's an effective way of reducing transmission. and, in fact, my friend gloria estefan did a beautiful song, you know, "put on your mask," trying to get people to understand how important it is.

this is something that we know works and should be implemented and should be a cohesive plan throughout the government of what we're doing. this is like a third world country, and it's embarrassing and it's very hard. our hospitals cannot continue to operate at 100% capacity every single day. our staff is exhausted. and we need people to understand this is very serious circumstance, and we've got to turn this around. we've got to have enough contact tracing and testing, and the contact tracing has to ask the right questions, there has to be enough of them, and the testing turnaround has to be much shorter. we have to get it turned around in 24 hours or 48 hours, 24 hours ideally or less. >> maya wiley, let's talk about the intersection of all this and politics. i'm going to show you poll numbers. people asked how they feel about donald trump, what they credit him with, what they view him as doing a poor job with.

on the economy, job approval up 12 points, which means somebody must be having a good economy in this quarantine, this pandemic, but coronavirus, negative 22. race relations, negative 30. maya, i am tempted to call those social issues, but these days, they're more likeke existential issues, and do you agree they might count for more? >> they're absolutely existential. they are questioning who we are as a society. i suspect even on the positive poll numbers s on the economy, that's early exuberance because of reopening and the idea trump himself is peddling to the

american public that all we need to do is go out and pretend everything is okay and the economy will come back. i think unfortunately, as we just heard from the congressional budget office, we're not looking at a quick recovery. we're looking at something that may take a decade that will depend how we behave and what we do. the only thing we're concerned about with donald trump is his inconsistency. he has shunned any facts and used his position to district the public from all of the public health information and direction that we have been getting from public health officials like dr. fauci, and instead of reinforcing that message, instead of using the office of the presidency to elevate science, to tell people how we guard our lives, and to step in and not just create a plan around coronavirus, which is critical, but also a plan for the economy, a plan for

recovery, a plan where democrats and republican governors alike have asked for $50 billion just to ensure that people can eat, just to ensure that schools can operate safely and effectively, just to do the basic services of government, it turns out we need a national government, but right now we appear not to have a national leader. >> phil rutter, the president's deputy chief of staff sends over a cartoon mocking dr. fauci and then today this takedown, this hit piece in "usa today" by peter navarro, an educated man, a senior aide, an important guy to this president, attacking the foremost infectious disease specialist maybe in the english-speaking world, perhaps on the planet. what is going on there? >> brian, it's really remarkable

this is happening right now as the cases are spiking, as so many states are having to grapple with emergency measures related to this pandemic that this infighting is taking place, but i can tell you from my reporting that peter navarro is not alone in the white house in believing those views. he may have been alone in putting his name to that op-ed, but there are many others who serve this president who are skeptical of the science, who are skeptical of the urgency conveyed by dr. fauci who see dr. fauci as standing in the way of economic progress in a reopening and returning this country to normalcy. that is their view and that is certainly the president's view because he has shared it publicly. in fact, one of the reasons why the white house aides in recent days started distributing negative information, opposition resear research, so to speak, is they

were trying to support the fact that dr. fauci was trying to support the statements that the president himself was making when he said that dr. fauci had been wrong on a number of occasions. of course, dr. fauci was not wrong on a number of occasions. he was making judgments in realtime based on what we knew about the disease, based on what we knew about the science and that information evolves. we've learned so much more about covid-19 as the weeks go on and therefore, dr. fauci's assessments and judgements evolved as we learned new information but nonetheless, this is very unsettling to the medical professionals, health professionals, scientists and this government scrambling to try to protect this country from the pandemic and are being silenced. >> doctor, let's be scary for one more minute. am i hearing reports out of hong kong that this virus is mutating four and five times, which is very bad news in the vaccine business? >> yerkes it's mutating, and we do have some issues with

possible issues with the vaccine. we're also seeing more instances of people several weeks and months down the road turning positive again for covid-19. we're still trying to tease that out. i want to make one more comment about dr. fauci. he was already at nih when i was a young resident in 1982 at walter reed military hospital, then called the national naval medical center, and i have the utmost respect for dr. fauci. he is phenomenal, a hard-working, honest, great scientist, and it pains me to no end to see him spoken about in any way but with utmost respect. >> yep. two-thirds of americans who can fog up a mirror certainly agree with you on the amount of respect and esteem we have for that man. maya wiley, this is going to sound petty and local but involves the president and your bailiwick. the president is going to fight

the manhattan d.a. to subpoena his financial documents. he really doesn't want them out. what's the likelihood he'll be successful or unsuccessful here? >> i think it's very likely he'll be unsuccessful, and it's just a continuation of a pattern of a president who wants to delay and distract rather than to deal with the very real problems that "face the nation" and to take responsibility for his own actions. this one isn't one he's going to be able to dodge forever. whether he can tie it up and delay it long enough to get through an election, possibly. we don't know. it's going to take a long time for the d.a. to go through a true and full investigative process, i suspect, even once it gets the records because it's going to go through it thoroughly. but i think that what all american voters should start to understand right now is that donald trump has something to hide, but the one thing he can't

hide from us is that he's driven nothing but division, distraction, and a failure to step up to the plate and deliver for this country, and that's something that the voters will have to decide for themselves in november. >> we learned a lot from our big three tonight. much obliged. greatly appreciate you all starting us off. thank you. coronavirus numbers way up. his poll numbers way down. not a position of strength for the trump campaign, which as we said, under new management effective tonight. two professionals from the world of politics standing by to talk with us. >> and later, what if there were a cheap easy way to track coronavirus that didn't rely on contact tracing and testing so many people? well, it turns out there is. no lines, no delays, and we will take you there as "the 11th hour" just getting under way on this wednesday night. st getting this wednesday night

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>> on a scale of one to ten, how would you rate your response? >> i'd rate it a ten. i think we've done a great job. we think some states can open up the deadline of may 1st. and i think that will be a very exciting time indeed. vaccine or no vaccine, we're back. and we're starting the process. >> i can tell you on covid or coronavirus, whatever you want to call it, plenty of names, tremendous progress is being made. >> we will defeat this virus and ee americmerge stronger than ev before. >> if you watched the dates in the corner, you see they were

about 30-day increments from march to present day, the day of the ups event in georgia. after four months, coronavirus is simply out of control, and what we're in while controllable at one time is a full on public health crisis. don't let anybody tell you any differently. according to our new nbc news/wall street journal polling, 72% of americans say the country is on the wrong track. this is a 16-point increase just since march. that's off-the-charts under water in politics. and that same poll shows biden ahead of trump by 11 points nationally, with us again tonight, two of our returning champions john, co-host of "the circus" on show time and also with us is our friend michael steele, former chairman of the republican national committee and lieutenant governor of maryland, these days the host of

the michael steele podcast. michael steele, is new management at the campaign going to make all the difference? >> no, because people don't vote for campaign managers. donald trump is still the candidate. and at the end of the day the people by the polling you shared with us, their response to what they see the president doing on covid-19 on the economy and racial race relations is saying overall that they think the country's moving in the wrong direction. no campaign manager's going to fix that because the campaign manager is not managing those three issues. the president of the united states is, who happens to be a candidate for re-election. and looking at the re-election, the people are assessing, okay, are we better off today than we were not four years ago but four months ago. are we better off going into the future with donald trump as our

president, and the answer right now seems to be no. >> john heilemann, i want to tell you something you already know. pick up any decent book, and the history of the presidency from the formation of the march of times for children affected by polio and a titanic struggle pacific. it was leadership, something he felt in his own bones. there was an opportunity here for the president to make a guy like fauci his own lieutenant for the president to level with the country, show leadership, even in the face of a pandemic. >> right. i can't believe you actually just teed up a question about donald trump by talking about fdr, you know. it's an amazing, amazing thing to do on national television.

yes. look. it is the reality that presidencies encounter crises. some of them are larger. some of them are smaller. all crises are opportunities for presidents. there are moments where it's a test of their mettle, but if they rise to the occasion and lead the country, the country wants to be led. the country never wants to be led than in the moment of crisis. they are willing to forgive a lot of sins and make allowances for past errors and forget about them if the president is there for them, to lead them when they need the president to be there. the problem with trump, we knew he was fdr long before this pandemic hit. we've been sitting around for three and a half years and i'm certain we've been on the television program and said in the years of 2017, '18 and '19

when you saw trump's, quote, leadership style and saw the chaos around him and saw him squandering the credibility of the office, when you saw him lying profusely indiscriminately over and over again. relentlessly you said, you know, he's squandering this credibility and will need it later. we see this chaos. we see the way he's behaving. my god, he's been lucky for three years he's not been hit with a major foreign policy or domestic crisis. what happens when that moment comes? everything that happened this winter and spring into the summer is what was -- is both predictable and predicted. it just happens that the scale of the crisis is incredibly large. it's not just our kind of run-of-the-mill crisis. it's a once-in-a-century crisis, and trump's uniquely bad management skills and absent leadership skills are particularly ill-suited to a

moment when trum truly great leadership was required given the skill of the challenge. >> let take a quick break here. luckily for us, both guys are at home, have nowhere to go and agreed to stay with us. >> has the biden campaign identified its reach state, perhaps more of a dream state for them? we will talk about that with these two gentlemen when we come back. back

i'm thinking of all of you across texas. and although rising numbers are causing fear and app

presentation, people are frightened and worried about their parents, grandparents, and loved ones most at risk. this virus is tough, but texas is tougher. >> interesting right there, former v.p. joe biden out with his first tv ad in texas today. a possible sign his campaign sees an opening in the reliably red state. back with us for round two, john heilemann and michael steele. so, michael, if i poured you not one but two of your preferred cocktails and noting your republican party status, asked you to really loosen up and be honest, in your dreams, is texas really on the board for the democrats? is that on the whiteboard of possibles in somebody's campaign headquarters? >> it has been a growing opportunity for the democrats going back 20 years. when i was state chairman of maryland in 2000 and working with state parties around the country at that time, i remember being in dallas and houston and

just observing what then were early signs of the democrats beginning to lay seeds for a play in texas. it is now fermented, grown, whatever you want to call it, but it is realizable. whether it happens in 2020, i think remains to be seen, but the fact that biden is now beginning to make an inroad there to establish some measures is significant. when you look at the voting trends in texas, you look at the demographic trends in texas and look at the fact that texans, republican, democrat, independent alike are getting used to voting for democrats statewide and in local elections, the opportunity is there.

i'm on the record of saying by 2024 texas will be like virginia. it will be a battleground state between the two parties, and the republicans will be at a significant disadvantage if they don't figure out how to turn that horse around. right now that horse is moving away from them and biden sees that in his campaign, what it's making, i think, a smart strategic move whether or not to win, that remains to be seen, but to make the republicans play in texas? oh, yeah, this is going to be fun. >> hey, i got one for you. here is jason johnson earlier today on this network. we'll discuss when he's done. >> i have long believed donald trump will not leave office and we have to remember the fear that i have is not just that he won't leave but remember, because so many of these ballots will come by mail, we won't have a new president by election night. it's going to take weeks. you'll have militias showing up, threatening people. we're in for a very, very

difficult couple of months, and we may be comfortable at the polling now, but you've got to recognize we have a president that's daycare tater and will do anything to stay in power, regardless of his numbers. >> john, people pay good money to hear bill maher say that as he has, by my count, over a year, had this view. >> not accusing jason of being on election night, two potential donald trump, judging by biden in the polls right now. the other is donald trump refuses to concede and wants to fight in some number of states. i think there is zero chance on election night and says race better man to one and i'm calling you to concede. i don't think that's going to happen. the part of jason's scenario that's 100% right is if joe biden won by five electoral votes or 50 or more, every state that is a battleground state, every state that biden is not won by double digits, donald trump is going to claim that the result was rigged and he's going to have election lawyers flying to those states to contest results if there is recounts to be had, they will be forced.

if there is lawsuits to be filed, they will be filed, and then i think the question in that over time is how does it go. i, you know, think it's the reality that the united states military recognizes the winner of this election. donald trump will not be allowed to stay on longer than january 20th of 2021 if he's lost the election and everyone through all of this litigation, people have come to the conclusion that in fact joe biden is the winner.

but i saw, you know, in ""the new yorker," a piece a couple months ago that raised the most plausible scenario of this kind that i seen, which is the notion that trump could call on a friendly republican governor to deploy the national guard from a republican state and try to barricade himself in the white house on that basis. it struck me as the first time i had seen someone lay out a scenario by which you could imagine the worst case of an actual armed conflict of trump barricaded inside the white house and armed people in front of it, trying to ward off what is the inevitable conclusion of his presidency. >> what a time. what a thought. our two friends, michael steele and john heilemann, have given us a lot to think about tonight. john has rethought the kitchen. congrats on that thought. coming up, yes, these are dark and surreal and socially

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the government -- federal government rose to the challenge, and this is a great success story. as we reopen, by june, a lot of the country should be back to normal, and the hope is by july, the country is really rocking again. >> that's jared. here is our reality mid-july. the u.s. has over 3.5 million confirmed coronavirus cases. the death toll surpassed 138,000. we are 4% of the world's population. we have fully one quarter of the coronavirus on the planet. one new forecast predicting something close to a quarter of a million deaths by election day. estimates of the number of americans out of work begin at around 50 million. millions more in financial jeopardy and distress every day. millions of children have been deprived of school, any kind of socialization.

it's a lot. a recent kaiser foundation survey found more than a third of those questioned, 36% report symptoms of anxiety or depression that has tripled in a year's time. our next guest has faced his own challenges in life and has been collecting advice on coping with challenges, we welcome to the broadcast the author bruce filer. works you may know, "the council of dads" and "walking the bible." his timely book is called "life is in the transitions, mastering change in a nonlinear age." bruce, it's great to have you. we will try to avoid the ivanka public service announcement campaign of find something new,

find something different and talk about this book, which predates coronavirus but the secret to life is timing. asking for a friend, tell us why it's, in your sri, a good thing that at least we're all going through this together. >> we are in, brian, as you said, a life of change with aftershocks for years, and i came up with this term. as you mentioned, i went through a lifequake. i had cancer. i almost went bankrupt. my father tried to take his own life. there wasn't a book to find answers. i went on a journey and collected hundreds of life stories of americans in all 50 states. people that lost jobs and got out of bad marriages. military veterans that lost limbs and politicians that lost jobs and what i discovered, lost elections. what i discovered is the linear life, expectation we'll have one job, one home, kind of one spirituality or relationship is gone. it's been replaced by a

non-linear life involving many changes, and most of these we get through, but every now and then, we get through one of these massive live quakes. what is unique, i'm thinking of your love of history. this is the first time in a century the whole planet has gone through a life quake at the same time. >> paraphrasing dorothy to the wizard, i'm wondering if there is anything in your bag for this problem and that is children. i read yesterday, a kindergartner, depending on how long this goes on, could lose 20% to 25% of their life's possible socialization, just not know it at all by the time we're out of this thing. think of children from poor homed and families. they already suffer such great education disparities.

now everybody is down and out and idle. what do you have for that? >> so i think that what i've learned, brian, let be honest. people will lie in bed tonight or sit at the breakfast table tomorrow and be scared. do i have a job? if i have a job, is it the right job? do i need to quit to care for my children. people are scared. the good news is life transition is how we get unstuck. the reality is we're in this globe life quake together, but it's going to affect each of us differently. we all have to go through our own life quake. what i did with the interviews is spent all this time coding them and trying to understand and so my book unveils this model how to navigate life transitions, and the good news is if we deploy the skills and go into it, we actually can can get through these periods. >> having watched you talk a lot, i know you've come to know your country very well during this process for you. can you believe that we now have a society where the wearing of a mask or not is often a marker of your political party and preferred candidate for president in a pandemic? >> i mean, i'm speaking to you from my home in brooklyn. i come from five generations in the state of georgia, and it is

deeply sad -- in fact, the issue of how to get through this has become powe lollized. i have to say, when i went into this process, i thought it would be one solution for political crisis, one for a health crisis, one for a work crisis and turns out it really is the same tool kit for all of these crises. that was something i have to say where i was wrong and have to say it did give me hope. so my kind of message for all of this is i went to talk to people who were in extremely dark times. i was in a dark time. what i found is the transitions work. 90% of the people i spoke to said they got through their difficult times. so whatever it is that you're worried about, i have to say hey, i was there. i know a lot of people and when i talk to these people, i got the sense that there are things we can do. we can get through this together and so my invitation is if you come on this journey across america with me and meet these people in this book, you'll find things, whatever you're worried

about, we're going to get through this together, we'll make the transition easier, and your transition will go a lot more effectively. >> perfectly put, and because the news we cover every night is so grim, we wanted to have this man on to talk about this book in hopes that it might help some of the folks watching, knowing what they're dealing with. it is called "life is in the transitions: mastering change at any age." our guest is the author bruce feiler. thank you very much for spending a few minutes with us here tonight. it may be the least glamorous way to track coronavirus, but it's proving to be very effective. we'll explain what's in those test tubes when we come back. e test tubes when we come back automatically adjusts to keep you both effortlessly comfortable. will it help me keep up with him? yep. so you can really promise better sleep?

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the hour is late, but our viewers are sturdy with strong enough stomachs to handle this next topic. the researchers who are employing a very unconventional way to track these virus cases on a massive scale, by looking

at wastewater, the stuff that comes out of humans. our willen marx has that report from england tonight. >> reporter: under this manhole cover could be the key to one of the world's greatest challenges, stopping the spread of covid-19. dr. rheanne white is a scientist tasked with sewage from this wastewater pipe in the north of england. she's helping hunt down covid-19 tracking what is left behind. >> the bacteria in viruss that naturally occur in human bodies and we're used to dealing with that. to look for the fragments of the covid-19 virus. and look at those fragments to determine the health of the population. >> reporter: her job is not

glamorous. this detective work is at the front line in the fight against coronavirus. she works for one of the largest water utility companies and taking samples like this since mid-march. her bottles end up in several freezers at a nearby university where scientists sift through them. the process is part of a nationwide effort to collect human waste, convert it to laboratory samples, and check inside for the presence of covid-19. >> we want to get a better understanding of how the levels you find in sewage relate to what's in local population. >> reporter: david graham has spent decades scouring global waste systems for chemicals, bacteria, and the deadly virus. his team is working with colleagues worldwide on an alternative to the expanding but expensing testing techniques. >> based on finding one individual isn't necessarily enough information for you to shut down a city. but if you find an elevated level of virus particles in sewage coming from that city, you know then that city needs to be dealt with. >> reporter: these samples contain viral material, whether you're sick or asymptomatic.

testing before you leave home, they can provide an early warning system. >> you can put your pulse on the community before you see disease. >> holy grail. >> it's the holy grail if you can make the method accurate enough. >> reporter: and while scientists work to find a precise correlation between levels of genetic material and the virus presence in a population, the potential cost savings and speed are appealing to governments around the world with similar studies from spain to delaware where they check wastewater every week. >> it gives us some immediate feedback on policy decisions that we make. >> reporter: the newcastle county executive. >> we're sampling a community. a representation of the is the viral load getting worse or better. and waste water for our purposes seems to do that better than

anything else. >> reporter: there's around 15,000 treatment plants across the united states. >> there's around 15,000 treatment plants across the united states. if you test 550 of those you cover half the u.s. population, the bill for that testing would be a fraction of what it is now. these programs offer a rough roadmap. sewage could prove to be an accurate predictor for coronavirus second wave before it hits. >> tried to warn you. another break and we'll be back with wartime republicans. right after this. this

last thing before we go tonight. it is axiomatic. it is by now the best, easily the toughest and most creative anti-trump ads of this election cycle are being made by republicans, and it's not close. they have formed groups called the lincoln project. republicans for the rule of law. republicans against trump. all pros. they are men and women who have played politics at the nfl level, they're beating democratic candidates and now they're angry because their party has been stolen from them. it once meant something to them to be a republican. quaint old notions about things like standing up to russia. debt and deficit. and there's this. democrats often aren't killers. they tend to be former student council precedents.

they're ardent recyclers and prefer shoes and cars on the sensible side. and to them, kale is a staple and not a stock car driver. as republican and exile rick wilson puts it, democrats always bring a soup laid toll a knife fight. but about those republican ads, there's the latest from republican voters against trump. and we're looking at you, mike pence. >> the president took unprecedent steps because of the action the president took. it's among the reason the threat of the coronavirus remains low. >> standing here today i couldn't be more proud to stand alongside this president. >> we believe we are slowing the spread. >> we slowed the spread. >> we flattened the curve.

we safe saved lives. >> we will largely have this coronavirus epidemic behind us by memorial weekend. >> republican voters against trump to take us off the air tonight. that is our wednesday effort. thank you so much for being here with us on behalf of all of our colleagues. good night from our temporary field headquarters. with the number of coronavirus cases climbing daily, at least ten hospitals are out of icu beds. also a shakeup for the president's re-election campaign months before november. campaign manager brad parscale has been replaced as the polls show trump trailing biden. the social media says it was, likely, a quote social, coordinating, engineering attack.