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President Obama warned Thursday that the fight against the Zika virus was reaching a critical stage, with local transmission confirmed in southern Florida, and implored Congress to “do its job” and approve funding to support the effort. In his opening remarks at a Pentagon press conference, Obama reiterated that the administration was running out of the money that it had redirected from an Ebola emergency fund earlier this year. (Scott, 8/4)

President Barack Obama on Thursday blasted Congress for skipping town for August recess without approving emergency funding for Zika response amid a local outbreak in a Miami neighborhood. The president said the news of 15 locally acquired cases of Zika in South Florida was both “predicted and predictable” and blamed members of Congress for not approving the administration’s request of $1.9 billion to fight the mosquito-borne virus. (Ehley, 8/4)

Democrats are turning up the heat on GOP leaders to call off the rest of Congress’s recess to come back and deal with the Zika virus.With the virus now spreading through Florida, more than 40 Senate Democrats wrote to the top two congressional Republicans on Thursday urging them to “immediately cancel” the remaining four weeks of break and approve emergency funding. (Ferris, 8/4)

Senate Democrats are continuing calls for Republican leaders to reconvene Congress early to pass spending legislation to fight the Zika virus. Forty Democratic senators and independent Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont on Thursday sent a letter to Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) and House Speaker Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) urging them to cut the summer recess short to have Congress consider a “clean” spending bill for Zika. Currently, Congress is not scheduled to reconvene until after Labor Day. (Reid, 8/4)

Republicans and Democrats on Thursday continued bashing each other for a lack of congressional action to combat the Zika virus. Both sides failed to reach an agreement on a spending package before leaving town in July for a seven-week recess. In a letter to Republican leaders, Senate Democrats again suggested cutting their recess short to return to the Capitol to pass new funding for Zika. Also Thursday, House Speaker Paul D. Ryan wrote an op-ed column for USA Today defending the House-adopted conference report on Zika spending that was blocked by Senate Democrats in July. (McCrimmon, 8/4)

As the Zika virus spreads in Florida, Gov. Rick Scott has toured the state, talked up his administration’s commitment to fighting the mosquito-borne ailment and frequently criticized Congress and President Obama for not spending enough to help out. But Scott is far less eager to talk about his own record of cutting mosquito-control programs over the years, including the elimination of a state-funded pesticide-testing facility that was once known as “the mosquito lab.” (Caputo and Sexton, 8/5)

As chief operating officer of the CDC, Sherri Berger has been busy in recent years. First Ebola, now Zika, which revived a fierce political fight after officials confirmed the first cases of local transmission of the virus in Florida last week. And of course the government’s premier public health agency also works on much more — from curbing antibiotic resistance and prescription drug overdoses to promoting water fluoridation. (Weyl and Karlin-Smith, 8/4)