Just The Facts

Just The Facts puts the listener in the briefing room with New York Governor Andrew M. Cuomo as he moves between Albany, Westchester and New York City. What comes through is one official working a room, teasing whoever changed seats one moment and reading out infection rates the next. Two crises run side by side. Several briefings begin with a double tally, the days since the coronavirus crisis hit and the days since Mr. Floyd's murder, and the governor speaks of an intersection where the two issues run into each other. The pandemic half runs on numbers. In one briefing he goes through a statewide sample region by region, marking Long Island and the Mohawk Valley as places to watch and congratulating Western New York on a decline. He notes that the numbers are higher for African American and Latino New Yorkers. Elsewhere he rejects the federal claim that rising numbers simply reflect more testing, points to climbing hospitalizations, and asks whether those patients are pretending to be sick. One worry comes back more than once, and it reverses how the crisis began: other states once feared New Yorkers, and now New York fears travelers flying in from places with higher infection rates. The episode titles alone chart the reopening, from phase three and gatherings of up to 25 to low-risk youth sports and a U.S. Open held without fans. The policing half is about procedure. The governor describes a requirement that some 500 local governments and police departments draft plans covering use of force, de-escalation, bias awareness, restorative justice and a transparent complaint process. Those plans must become local law by April 1. Miss it, and state funding goes. His case is plainspoken: the community pays for its police, and a department without that community's trust and respect will not work. Masks tie the two halves together, with protesters and police both told the law applies to them and a mask worn below the nose dismissed as a 'chin guard'. Mayors and county executives hear more than once that compliance is their job. There is ceremony too: Gwen Carr and Valerie Bell, introduced as the mothers of Eric Garner and Sean Bell, attend the 'Say Their Name' signing, and a Westchester stop closes on a promise to light the Mario Cuomo bridge blue, the color he names as his father's favorite. The rhetoric leans on slogans and repetition, from 'Carpe Momentum' to 'smart works', and several briefings sign off with a version of the same refrain: New York tough, smart, united, disciplined, and loving. For the policing thread, the 'Say Their Name' briefing sets out the local-plan requirement in detail; for the testing argument, start with Gov. Cuomo Announces Lowest Percentage of Positive Covid-19 Test Results Since Pandemic Began.