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Trump to Declare National Emergency Over Coronavirus Trump Says He Will Be Tested for Coronavirus ‘Fairly Soon’
(about 5 hours later)
WASHINGTON — President Trump is expected to declare a national emergency at a news conference on Friday afternoon, a move that would give him authority to use $40 billion of funds allocated by Congress for disaster relief to address the coronavirus crisis. WASHINGTON — There was one big question looming on Friday over the Rose Garden, where President Trump held an afternoon news conference and announced new emergency measures to combat the spread of the coronavirus.
Mr. Trump, according to a senior administration official, is expected to invoke the Stafford Act, a law that empowers the Federal Emergency Management Agency to assist state and local governments during “natural catastrophes” and coordinate the nation’s response. As Mr. Trump introduced a line of chief executives and public health officials, praising their efforts and those of his administration, the mystery was the president’s own health. Would Mr. Trump, 73, be tested after interacting with a Brazilian official who tested positive for the virus just days after meeting with him in Florida?
Mr. Trump has been hinting in recent days that he had been briefed on using the law to address the pandemic, and Democratic lawmakers like Senator Chuck Schumer of New York, the minority leader, have been pressing him to invoke it. On an issue that seemed cut and dry, yes or no, Mr. Trump hedged.
Mr. Trump’s decision to employ the Stafford Act to address the coronavirus crisis was reported earlier by Bloomberg News. First he insisted that he did not have any symptoms, and noted that getting tested might set a bad example. “We don’t want people without symptoms to go and do the test,” he said.
“We have very strong emergency powers under the Stafford Act,” Mr. Trump told reporters in the Oval Office on Thursday. “I have it memorized, practically, as to the powers in that act. And if I need to do something, I’ll do it. I have the right to do a lot of things that people don’t even know about.” Then a reporter questioned whether Mr. Trump was disregarding the advice of Dr. Anthony S. Fauci, the public health official standing directly to his right, who has recommended tests and self-quarantining for anyone who stood next to someone who had tested positive.
Still, the details of Mr. Trump’s announcement, another official cautioned, were in flux and being finalized ahead of a 3 p.m. news conference that Mr. Trump announced on Twitter Friday morning. “I think they shouldn’t be jumping to get the test unless it’s necessary, but I think they have to listen to their doctors,” the president said.
Presidents frequently invoke the Stafford Act in response to natural disasters, like the recent tornado that killed two dozen people in Tennessee. But when pressed again on the issue, Mr. Trump equivocated. In fact, he said, he did plan to get tested “fairly soon,” but not because of his exposure to an infected individual.
But it is usually applied to specific states or geographic areas, not nationally, and has not often been used in the case of major public health crises. And the power it would afford the president depends on what kind of emergency he declares. The act specifies two levels — a major disaster declaration or an emergency declaration. “Not for that reason,” he said, without providing another reason for the test that until now he appears to have resisted. “I think I will do it anyway. Fairly soon. We’re working out a schedule.”
The first is more sweeping and would authorize spending for purposes including unemployment assistance, emergency grants to seasonal workers, food coupons, relocation assistance. But a major disaster is defined very specifically under the law to be something like a hurricane, tornado, landslide or earthquake. A pandemic is not listed, so whether it would qualify is not clear. Get an informed guide to the global outbreak with our daily coronavirus
The second category, an emergency declaration, is more broadly defined and would cover a major public health risk like the coronavirus; President Bill Clinton declared such an emergency under the Stafford Act in 2000 in response to the West Nile virus in New York and New Jersey. newsletter.
But it provides less authority to the president, who would not, for instance, be able to use it for the unemployment assistance, emergency grants and other forms of aid that a major disaster would free up. Pressure on Mr. Trump to get tested has been growing since he came into contact with Fabio Wajngarten, a top communications aide to President Jair Bolsonaro of Brazil, who tested positive days after a visit last weekend to Mr. Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida. At Mar-a-Lago, Mr. Wajngarten participated in meetings with the president and posed for a photograph with Mr. Trump and Vice President Mike Pence.
Senators Rick Scott of Florida and Lindsey Graham of South Carolina both announced on Thursday plans to self-quarantine because of potential contact with Mr. Wajngarten, and Mr. Bolsonaro was also tested for the virus. He announced on Friday that he test had tested negative.
But Mr. Trump said he was dubious of Mr. Wajngarten’s condition, and on Friday played down his interactions with him. “There was somebody that they say has it,” he said. “I have no idea who he is. I take pictures and it lasts for literally seconds.”
In one photograph, which Mr. Wajngarten posted on social media, the Brazilian official is standing shoulder to shoulder with Mr. Trump, who is clutching a brown “Make Brazil Great Again” baseball cap.
A video from the event also showed Mr. Wajngarten standing directly behind Mr. Trump and Mr. Bolsonaro as they addressed a crowd. Later in the evening, Mr. Wajngarten attended a birthday party for Kimberly Guilfoyle — an adviser to Mr. Trump’s re-election campaign and the girlfriend of his eldest son, Donald Trump Jr. — that Mr. Trump also attended.
Stephanie Grisham, the White House press secretary, declined to provide any more information about when Mr. Trump would be tested, or whether any members of his family or his administration would also undergo testing. A spokeswoman for Mr. Pence did not respond to questions about whether he, too, would submit himself to a coronavirus test.
Mr. Trump’s news conference took place on a warm, springlike day, with cherry blossoms blooming, a balmy backdrop that belied the anxiety gripping the nation. Governors across the country had ordered schools to close, and people nationwide had been ordered to work from home indefinitely.
At the news conference, Seema Verma, the administrator of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, said nursing homes should temporarily restrict all visitors and nonessential personnel from their facilities.
But Mr. Trump and the clutch of aides that stood around him seemed like they were beaming in from a less precarious time and place. For all of the recommendations about social distancing and the guidance from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to replace handshakes with elbow taps, the president insisted on shaking hands with the chief executives who joined him on the dais.
Behind Mr. Trump, the group huddled closely together, not six feet apart, as guidance suggests.
When the chief executive of a medical home visit company offered Mr. Trump the recommended elbow bump instead of his hand, the president chuckled. “I like that,” he said, as if it were the first time he was witnessing the gesture.
The news conference, which Mr. Trump announced earlier in the day on Twitter, was something of a do-over, after his Oval Office address on Wednesday evening, which was filled with inaccuracies and was generally seen as a failed opportunity to demonstrate leadership or offer guidance during a time of crisis.
On Thursday, advisers planned an announcement that new tests for the coronavirus would be available soon, hoping it would put to bed recriminations about the insufficient availability of test kits that has left health officials largely blind to the virus’s domestic spread. But Jared Kushner, Mr. Trump’s son-in-law and senior adviser, and Hope Hicks, a top adviser who recently returned to the White House, were still working with the president on the details of his announcement until curtain time.
And the tone quickly shifted when Mr. Trump took questions from reporters.
“I don’t take responsibility at all,” the president said when pressed about whether he was responsible for delays in testing. He also claimed to have no knowledge of why, in 2018, his administration dismantled a pandemic response team that was once part of the National Security Council.
“It’s a nasty question,” Mr. Trump shot back. “You say we did that. I don’t know anything about it.”
The president’s defensive responses echoed how he began his day, when he blamed President Barack Obama for a severe shortage in test kits — a charge that did little to rebut critics who say that his administration has moved too slowly to ensure a mass national testing ability.
“For decades the @CDCgov looked at, and studied, its testing system, but did nothing about it,” Mr. Trump tweeted. “It would always be inadequate and slow for a large scale pandemic, but a pandemic would never happen, they hoped. President Obama made changes that only complicated things further.”
The president also pointed to the 2009 swine flu outbreak in the United States that left more than 12,000 people dead, saying that Mr. Obama had mismanaged it.
“Their response to H1N1 Swine Flu was a full scale disaster, with thousands dying, and nothing meaningful done to fix the testing problem, until now,” he continued. “The changes have been made and testing will soon happen on a very large scale basis. All Red Tape has been cut, ready to go!”
But Mr. Obama’s acting health secretary declared a public health emergency in April 2009, when only 20 known cases of the virus existed and before anyone in the United States had died of it. Mr. Obama declared a national emergency six months later, after hundreds of fatalities.
Former Obama officials said that Mr. Trump was making false charges which, even if true, would not account for his failure to act sooner.
“This is a typical Trump move to blame the previous administration,” said Ezekiel J. Emanuel, a former White House health policy adviser. “We are now more than three years into his administration. He’s had plenty of time to rectify any problems. So it’s hard to blame someone else.”
Maggie Haberman contributed reporting from New York, and Michael Crowley from Washington.