President Trump says the U.S. and Mexico will close border to non-essential travel amid the coronavirus. Trump also invokes the Defense Production Act to get critical medical supplies. The U.S. is also waiving school standardized test requirements.
Sen. Lamar Alexander, R-Tenn., talks with reporters following a Republican policy lunch on Capitol Hill in Washington, Thursday, March 19, 2020.
The president told Schumer he would, then could be heard on the telephone making the order. He yelled to someone in his office to do it now, said Schumer’s spokesman, Justin Goodman. Hoping to inject some good news into the dreary outlook, Trump held a White House briefing trying to highlight new efforts underway to find treatments for COVID-19 as infections in the country climbed past 11,000, with at least 168 deaths.
At the White House, where temperature checks continued and officials and journalists sat separated from one another as they practiced social distancing, Trump also stepped up his criticism of China, chastising the country he had previously praised for not warning the world earlier about a disease that started in Wuhan, but has since spread across the globe.
Trump grew agitated when one reporter noted the economy had essentially ground to a halt. “We know that,” Trump snapped. “Everybody in the room knows that.” But Trump insisted against the evidence Thursday that there are more than enough supplies available to meet needs. And he said that it was up to states to obtain them.
Again and again during the call, governors said they were having difficulty securing supplies, including the materials needed to process tests, with some sounding panicked. Some said they were competing with the federal government for purchases. Officials in the room, however, insisted there was plenty available on the market to purchase.
As the virus threat has become more acute, Trump has begun to describe himself as a “wartime president.” As he and members of Congress craft bailout packages, Trump said he believed the government should take partial ownership of some companies hard hit by the pandemic and aided by taxpayers. Some Republicans in Congress have pushed back on the idea, saying it amounts to the government picking winners and losers, as they criticized President Barack Obama of doing after the 2008 financial crisis.
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