Joe Biden is powerless.
At least in Texas and Florida when it comes to making it mandatory to wear protective masks.
Federalism in the US allows governors to set their own rules for their states.
And the Republicans Gregory Abbott from Texas and Ron DeSantis and Florida have therefore enforced that the obligation to wear a mask in closed rooms is prohibited in their states.
This measure hardly helps against the corona virus, but it does help against the Democrats, because both men know about their compatriots' exuberant love of freedom.
And they know that their decisions make themselves popular with those who oppose vaccination in the United States.
The result: a conflict between Washington and the states.
"The problem is that the Delta cases are going through the roof in Florida," says Roland Nelles, long-time US correspondent for SPIEGEL.
"Of course, Biden and the Democrats want Governor DeSantis to slowly get into his shoes, to make wearing masks compulsory again or to encourage vaccination somehow."
But Biden also uses the argument of fighting pandemics to justify decisions that could be beneficial to the United States. Only recently was the "Travel Ban" extended, which prohibits citizens of the EU, China and other countries from entering the country if they do not have a special permit. And they're hard to come by.
“America is a little bit self-sufficient right now. European airlines, for example, are much more dependent on the transatlantic business than American airlines. American airlines now do a huge part of their business within the US, ”explains Roland Nelles in this episode of the podcast. “And of course that also helps the local tourism industry, it balances out to a certain extent what has been lost by the Europeans. In this respect, the Americans do not feel that the Europeans are not there. "
The virus is thus increasingly becoming a tool on both political sides in the power struggle before the midterm elections next year. What the "Travel Ban" means for European companies, why the Republicans could still fail and to what extent Donald Trump's secret vaccination is now setting the scene, you will hear in this episode of "Eight Billion":