Texas GOP sues Turner over cancellation of in-person Houston convention

[RandySF]

The Texas Republican Party on Thursday sued Mayor Sylvester Turner and Houston First Corp. for canceling the party’s in-person convention scheduled for next week in downtown Houston.

The lawsuit, filed in Harris County state district court, alleges that Turner erred when he invoked a “force majeure” clause of the contract between the Texas GOP and Houston First, the city’s public nonprofit that operates the George R. Brown Convention Center. The suit also names the city and Houston First President Brenda Bazan.

Turner, who ordered Houston First to cancel the convention on Wednesday, said the clause allows one side to cancel over something out of its control, including “epidemics in the City of Houston.” In its petition filed Thursday, the GOP said Turner simply does not want to hold the convention and, therefore, fails to meet the force majeure standard.

"Houston Mayor Sylvester Turner’s use of the force majeure clause is just a pretext to his intent to treat the Republican Party of Texas differently than other groups, such as those we have seen from recent protests in the city of Houston,” the party said in a statement Thursday. “It should go without saying that a political viewpoint cannot be the basis for unequal treatment.”

Turner said he called off the convention based on concerns about Houston’s recent COVID-19 surge and input from various medical professionals. The mayor said Thursday afternoon that he had yet to see the lawsuit, though he stood by his original argument.



https://www.houstonchronicle.com/politics/houston/article/Texas-GOP-sues-Turner-over-convention-15397481.php

[Iliyah]

1. republicans love to sue the shit out of anything . .

even when it is for their protection during a Pandemic.

[SoCalNative]

7. Also

because Black Man

[struggle4progress]

2. Federal Disaster Medical Assistance Teams Heading To Texas

Jack Fink July 9, 2020

DALLAS (CBSDFW.COM) – Parkland Hospital says a federal disaster medical assistance team (DMAT) will arrive sometime next week to help with its staffing levels during the COVID-19 pandemic.

A spokesman said the team will work in a variety of roles.

The Chief of the Texas Division of Emergency Management, Nim Kidd, said Thursday that team is one of seven such teams that are either coming to or have arrived in Texas to help make sure staffing levels at hospitals are adequate to treat patients. “They’ve had executive and assessment teams here with us all week and are working with each of our advisory councils and our hospital folks to make sure we get the right level of need at the right time in the right location.”


A spokesperson with U.S. Health and Human Services said the teams will be in Dallas, Houston, Austin, Laredo, Midland and McAllen. “These teams will work with local officials to determine the needs of hospitals within their jurisdictions, including the type and number of federal medical personnel needed and for how long. In addition, 72 members from our Disaster Medical Assistance Teams (DMAT) are pre-positioned in San Antonio, Austin, and McAllen, and will relocate to the hospitals identified during the assessment process as needed for surge support” ...

https://dfw.cbslocal.com/2020/07/09/federal-disaster-medical-assistance-teams-texas-dallas/

[struggle4progress]

3. Coronavirus in Houston, state 'is out of control'

HOUSTON – Mayor Sylvester Turner said the coronavirus pandemic in Houston and in Texas is out of control and that Houstonians actions in the next few weeks were critical to slowing the spread of the deadly virus.

Turner was joined by Dr. David Persse, Fire Chief Sam Peña and police Chief Art Acevedo at 3 p.m. Thursday ...

https://www.click2houston.com/news/local/2020/07/09/watch-live-mayor-turner-gives-update-on-coronavirus-in-houston-and-city-response/

[struggle4progress]

4. Texas reports nearly 400 coronavirus deaths in a week

Jeremy Wallace July 9, 2020 Updated: July 9, 2020 4:44 p.m.

Nearly 400 people have died from COVID-19 in seven-days as Texas continues to have its deadliest week in the state’s fight against the coronavirus ...

https://www.houstonchronicle.com/news/houston-texas/article/Texas-reports-nearly-400-coronavirus-deaths-in-a-15397875.php

[struggle4progress]

5. America Is Refusing to Learn

By David Wallace-Wells

... For the first time in its history, indeed for the first time in any state anywhere at any point in American medical history, the Arizona Department of Health Services activated its crisis standards for hospitals, giving them more flexibility (and less liability) to triage the overwhelming number of new COVID-19 patients and ration care, presumably by focusing on those who could use it most and declining to treat the grimmer cases.

This was once the terrifying nightmare scenario: American hospitals overwhelmed as they had been in Lombardy, Italy, at the outset of the pandemic. In the spring, it was said we had to do everything we possibly could to avoid this situation — to flatten the curve, even if we couldn’t suppress the disease, so at the very least our hospitals were able to treat all those who needed care. The country as a whole has achieved little else in its pandemic response, as painful as the three-month lockdown was, but it did achieve that. Had achieved that, rather. On Tuesday, Arizona recorded 3,653 new cases. Tuesdays are typically bad ones for coronavirus data, collating cases and deaths that don’t get counted over the weekend. But this Tuesday, 117 patients died, four times the state’s previous peak.

It’s not just in Arizona, where, over the last week, there have been more new cases per capita than anywhere else in the world — making it the epicenter of a global pandemic whose primary incubator, for several months now, has been the United States. In Texas, an ICU doctor at San Antonio Methodist told CNN, in what became a heartbreakingly viral interview, that he had received calls for ten patients to be transferred to his unit, but only had space for three.

Over the last month, the San Antonio hospital system as a whole has seen roughly a tenfold increase in patients. In the Rio Grande Valley, ten of 12 hospitals are already full. Officials in Austin and Houston believe in each city that overall hospital capacity could be overwhelmed in ten days. The state is divided into “trauma service regions”; the East Texas Gulf Coast region, east of Houston and home to more than a million, has six ICU beds available and 364 coronavirus patients. And, as everywhere in Texas, the caseload is growing. In Florida, 54 hospitals in 25 counties report they are already at capacity, with no ICU beds available at all; in 30 other hospitals, intensive care units were already 90 percent full or more. (This after refusing to make public hospital data for several weeks.) On Tuesday, the state reported 7,347 new cases — an all-time high. In total, the state now has 213,000 confirmed cases ...

https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2020/07/coronavirus-case-numbers-surge-in-texas-and-arizona.html

[struggle4progress]

6. Houston nurse describes dire situation in ICU surge

By Alison Medley
Updated 6:37 am CDT, Thursday, July 9, 2020

... "It's organized chaos, " Memorial Hermann ICU nurse Jesse Cannizzo said. "I'm a trauma nurse. That's my background. We're seeing rapid changes day-to-day" ...

Cannizzo added that once one patient leaves the hospital, "you get another patient within the hour." It's basically a constant revolving door. "I can just point to this past Sunday, where we had multiple ICU patients in the emergency room. This past week, we had so many that were waiting for beds." ...

"We're seeing the worst of the worst. The disease doesn't have a preference," Cannizo said. "Younger adults, even 30s and 40s are coming in. Sometimes you help individuals without comorbidities, and they're being put on a ventilator. We're reaching capacity every day."

Cannizzo also worries about the future of the patients after they survive treatment in an ICU ...

https://www.chron.com/local/article/We-re-seeing-the-worst-of-the-worst-Houston-15394649.php

[Mersky]

8. It's so obviously a force majure situation

Compounded by the strident idiocy of the political party that refuse to wear masks until death and infection numbers are screaming in their faces. Even then, their mask wearing is sketchy at best.

The city shouldn’t have had to invoke a clause that’s there for good, common sense reasons. No, the party that claims to be about business should have put together contingencies and shifted their plans. They didn’t/couldn’t/wouldn’t mitigate their sh*t. No, they’re such entitled, dumb pricks that they’ve gotta go whine to the courts rather than just do the right thing.

Good for Houston and Mayor Turner.