Health adviser says on CNN ‘you could logically say if you started mitigation earlier, you could have saved lives’ * Coronavirus – live US updates * Live global updates * See all our coronavirus coverageProminent US public health adviser Dr Anthony Fauci appeared on Sunday to confirm a bombshell New York Times report which said he and other Trump administration officials recommended the implementation of physical distancing to combat the coronavirus in February, but were rebuffed for almost a month.Asked on CNN’s State of the Union why the administration did not act when he and other officials advised, Fauci said: “You know … as I have said many times, we look at it from a pure health standpoint. We make a recommendation. Often, the recommendation is taken. Sometimes, it’s not.“…It is what it is. We are where we are right now.”More than 530,000 cases of Covid-19 have been confirmed in the US, with almost 21,000 deaths. Officials currently expect a death toll of about 60,000 by August.CNN host Jake Tapper asked if Fauci thought “lives could have been saved if social distancing, physical distancing, stay-at-home measures had started [in the] third week of February, instead of mid-March”.> There was a lot of pushback about shutting things down back then> > Dr Anthony Fauci“It’s very difficult to go back and say that,” Fauci said. “I mean, obviously, you could logically say, that if you had a process that was ongoing, and you started mitigation earlier, you could have saved lives. Obviously, no one is going to deny that.“But what goes into those kinds of decisions is complicated. But you’re right. I mean, obviously, if we had, right from the very beginning, shut everything down, it may have been a little bit different. But there was a lot of pushback about shutting things down back then.”Since the White House issued physical distancing guidelines on 16 March, much of the US has gone into lockdown, shuttering the economy and leading to unprecedented and potentially ruinous unemployment.Chafing against such conditions in an election year, Donald Trump has voiced an eagerness to reopen the economy as early as 1 May. The president has also said he will listen to advisers if they counsel against such a move.On Sunday, Fauci, other experts and governors of hard-hit states were skeptical. Phil Murphy, governor of New Jersey, the state with the highest death toll after New York, told CBS’s Face the Nation: “If we start to get back on our feet too soon … we could be throwing gasoline on the fire.”No White House briefing was scheduled on Sunday but Trump continued to attack the Times and its article, in one tweet appearing inadvertently to confirm it, writing: “the Fake News Opposition Party is pushing, with all their might, the fact that President Trump ‘ignored early warnings about the threat’.”Trump also claimed vindication regarding his “travel ban” on China. One of his most vocal supporters in the US media, Fox News host Sean Hannity, followed suit.“Hey [Maggie Haberman],” Hannity tweeted, to one of six reporters on the byline of Saturday’s report. “…You should Thank [Trump] for the Travel Ban(s) put in place while you and [the New York Times] were fixated on impeachment and advising people to travel to China. NYTimesEpicFail.”Trump restricted travel from China before travel from Europe. The Times has reported that scientists believe most of the first Covid-19 cases in New York came from Europe, reporting which has prompted presidential tweets.In reply to Hannity, Haberman wrote: “Weird. Six bylines on our story about how the president handled the growing threat of the coronavirus but just one he’s focused on. Something there but I can’t put my finger on it...”The only female reporter on the Times article also tweeted footage of Fauci’s remarks.“This is confirmation of our story,” she wrote, “which focused on various moments the president had to take the threat more seriously and didn’t, in no small part due to the culture of government he’s created.”Trump has also complained about the Times’ use of anonymous sources. On Sunday, the paper’s executive editor responded.Dean Baquet told CNN’s Reliable Sources there were some anonymous sources but the story was “based on many on-the-record interviews, documents. There is a tremendous email chain among scientists inside and outside the government where they talk about the growing crisis.“So, I would suggest that people read it, rather than take the president’s tweet at its word. It is a very well-documented, powerful chapter in understanding why the government was so slow in dealing with this pandemic.”Baquet also said: “I would hope that the president reads it, because I think his tweet maybe indicates that he had not read it. And I think he will see a very important historic portrait of a government that was slow to deal with crisis.”The editor was asked about his previous comparison of the coronavirus outbreak and the US government response with the terror attacks of September 11, 2001. In New York, more than three times as many people have died of Covid-19 as died on 9/11.Baquet said he did not know if the government’s failure regarding the pandemic was of the same magnitude as failing to prevent the attacks on New York, Washington and an airliner which crashed in Pennsylvania.“I think we have a lot more reporting to do,” he said. “It’s clearly a failure.”

As President Donald Trump’s impeachment trial closed two months ago, 2020 was shaping up to be perhaps the lamest year in Congress in decades. Some judges would be confirmed, lawmakers would punt on the toughest issues and all eyes would turn to the presidential election.

Instead, the coronavirus pandemic will define the 116th Congress even more than earth-shaking events that just months ago seemed to embody the wild days of government under President Donald Trump. The third ever presidential impeachment trial, a battle over Trump’s unprecedented use of executive power to build his border wall and the longest government shutdown in U.S. history now all seem quaint.

After that marathon of drama, leaders in both chambers expected a breather heading into the fall, the usual pre-election slowdown. Now, the House and the Senate are trying to stop the next Great Depression and save thousands of lives on the fly. The crisis has utterly consumed Congress, changing basically everything about the way the institution works and its priorities, according to interviews with more than a dozen senators and multiple aides in both parties.

“These are major, major policy levers that have just never been pulled before,” said Senate Majority Whip John Thune (R-S.D.) of the $2.2 trillion effort to aid unemployed workers, small business and corporations. “We’ll probably be studying this for some time. And let’s hope to heck that it works.”

The Coronavirus Congress is sure to go down in history as the most consequential legislature in a generation or more. But whether the House and Senate can stabilize the economy and fight the disease will shape more than just lawmakers’ legacies — it’s also likely to determine their fates in November and control of Capitol Hill.

At-risk lawmakers are trying to push all that to the back of their minds. Many have essentially frozen their campaigns at the precise moment they would normally be making the election their main focus.

“The thing that we’re trying to do is to try to not think about that. The perceptions and the politics of this are truly taking a backseat for us,” said Sen. Doug Jones (D-Ala.), who faces an uphill battle for reelection this fall. “I will be judged. I’m happy to be judged on whatever I say and do at that point come November.”

At times, Congress has put away its partisan swords to pass massive pieces of legislation to respond to the disease, including the unheard of unanimous votes for March's "Phase 3" package. But bad habits die hard: on Thursday, Senate Democrats and Republicans deadlocked over an extension of small business relief, leaving the timing and scope of the next round of aid uncertain.

Still, there’s simply no end in sight to the amount of money Congress is likely to dedicate to the crisis before it — and yet some economists fear Washington is not moving quickly enough to fill the growing hole in the economy.

The gravity of the situation is just beginning to sink in with elected officials whose lives and jobs have been upended just like the rest of the public. Lawmakers are now scattered around the country, some stuck in D.C. and others quarantined in their houses. Their jobs toggle between constituent services and big picture legislative thinking as they pore over grim projections that change hourly.

“The landscape is changing so quickly,” said Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.).

“I don’t know if many of us have had time to even process it,” added Sen. Chris Coons (D-Del.).

Caucus meetings are done by conference call. No one knows when Congress will come back for business as usual.

Aides worry about logistics and try to virtually staff their bosses, setting up Skype studios to do TV hits. Some TV stations aren’t even letting guests inside; Hawley’s outdoor hit on Fox News last week was punctuated by bird chirps piercing the air.

Senators work the phone for hours as they deal with a flood of interest in small business grants and loans, cut deals for medical supplies and call each other to commiserate and try and plan the next round of trillion-dollar spending.

“We’re really busy,” said Sen. Rob Portman (R-Ohio), who’s helping broker deals for more supplies and trying to relax restrictions on new testing in his state and tariffs on goods needed during the pandemic.

“No possible way would I have imagined my making calls to federal officials on a Saturday in spring trying to get more guidance so that our companies can make protective gear,” said Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.).

Sen. Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn.) has served three terms in the Senate and two terms as governor and done stints as a Cabinet secretary and university president. But he doesn’t have the luxury of easing into retirement at the end of the year as he finds himself in the middle of what he calls a “fascinating moment,” if also a dire one.

“I’ve been on the phone until my neck hurts,” Alexander said. “I find myself sort of exhausted at the end of the day from the phone calls and the discussions I’m having about the present and what comes next.”

Both personally and as legislators, the coronavirus has had widespread consequences on Capitol Hill. Several House members have been infected and Rand Paul (R-Ky.) became the first senator to test positive, alarming all the Senate Republicans who had come close to him and thrusting some into quarantine. Alexander lived in one room of his house once he returned home, and his wife in another.

“It’s surreal,” said a similarly cloistered Sen. Angus King (I-Maine.). “The only time I go outside is when I go for a walk, and then when I see someone coming toward me, I go off onto the side of the path.”

Amid the panic over Paul’s diagnosis. Thune came down with a headache he couldn’t shake, which he found unusual given that he is rarely sick. He jumped on a plane and left Capitol Hill amid the final negotiations over the $2.2 trillion rescue package, worried that he would infect his staff or other senators.

“I don’t get down very often. And when I woke up in the middle of the night with a pounding headache and the next morning was all kind of feeling sickly, couldn’t get out of bed, I thought: ‘I’m not going to take any chances,’” Thune recalled.

He later tested negative, and the rest of the Senate seems to have avoided widespread infection. But there is considerable unease among senators about when to return, and many hope that the chamber may be able to operate with a skeleton crew, passing legislation unanimously.

In addition to the day-to-day effects on senators who are used to being surrounded by staff or on the trail campaigning for their seats, there have been rapid shifts in power dynamics. The crisis has elevated legislators in normally sleepy positions, most notably the Senate Small Business Committee, where Chairman Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) has found himself leading the charge for new aid to businesses.

In the past, some lawmakers have privately sought to escape the committee as their seniority increased. But with small businesses on the verge of collapse amid lockdown orders across the country, the committee suddenly has some of the most sway in Congress.

“I don’t think any of us anticipated that we’d be the front-and-center committee on this,” said Sen. Bern Cardin (D-Md.), the panel’s top Democrat.

That committee’s work is now the subject of a widening partisan dispute, in which Republicans want to immediately replenish the $350 billion Paycheck Protection Program and focus on other needs later, while Democrats say $250 billion more for hospitals and local governments should be included in any small business measure. The impasse is showing no signs of ending.

But at some point, the current logjam will break because it simply has to. Nearly everyone in Congress knows that protracted, weeks-long fights over how to respond to the crisis will not cut it.

“In many respects, what we’ve done has been miraculous,” said Senate Minority Whip Dick Durbin (D-Ill.). “We’re rising to the occasion. It’s going to be harder and harder to maintain that status as we disagree on what’s next.”

Andrew Desiderio and Marianne LeVine contributed to this report.

President recently ousted two inspectors general, including one tasked with leading oversight of coronavirus relief law Donald Trump’s abrupt ousting of two veteran watchdogs has prompted fears the scandal-prone US president is purging people from government who have oversight of fraud, waste and abuse.The moves also come at a time when a global pandemic and resulting mass unemployment crisis has prompted a multitrillion-dollar economic rescue effort, much of which is aimed at helping some of America’s largest companies.Ex-watchdogs – dubbed inspectors general – plus top Democrats have voiced alarm at Trump’s removal last week of an acting IG at the Pentagon slated to lead a new oversight panel for the $2.2tn coronavirus relief law. The move came just days after Trump axed the intelligence community IG who had alerted Congress to a whistleblower complaint precipitating Trump’s impeachment.Trump also drew fire for tapping a White House lawyer involved in fighting impeachment as a special IG to oversee a $500bn corporate bailout piece of the $2.2tn law. Days before, Trump had used the signing statement for the law to blunt two newly created IG posts, suggesting he would decide what information Congress receives about the aid package.Trump’s sudden oustings of the two well-respected watchdogs, Michael Atkinson, the IG for the intelligence community, and Glenn Fine, the acting IG for the Pentagon, sparked special concerns given their timing and apparent political motivations.Trump’s ousting of Fine, who was recently picked by his fellow IGs to run a critical oversight panel for the $2.2tn law, is seen as a broad slap at any oversight on the president and his administration since it rendered Fine ineligible to lead the watchdog panel.Trump’s motives in firing Atkinson prompted other worries. After initially saying he had simply lost confidence in Atkinson, Trump used a pandemic press briefing the next day to unleash an angry torrent at Atkinson’s handling of the whistleblower complaint, slamming him as not “a big Trump fan”.Trump’s antipathy to IG watchdogs was displayed again at a pandemic briefing last week when he was asked about a report by the health and human services IG revealing that hospitals faced “widespread” shortages of face masks, and “severe” test shortages.Providing no evidence, Trump dismissed the report as “just wrong”, and the next day labeled it “another fake dossier”.IGs were created in 1978 to ferret out executive agency waste, fraud and abuse. Presidents nominate them, but they require Senate approval.“The mandate for IGs is to serve as the public eyes and ears regarding the functioning of the executive branch,” said Michael Bromwich, a prominent ex-IG at the justice department. “That means they must be independent, and they are required to be so by law. Trump doesn’t understand any legal mandate that conflicts with personal loyalty. He believes everybody in the executive branch should be loyal to him personally.”For instance, Atkinson’s firing reveals Trump’s penchant to “retaliate against people he perceives to be his enemies whose duties require them to do things that are contrary to Trump’s political interests”, Bromwich said.> Trump doesn’t understand any legal mandate that conflicts with personal loyalty> > Michael Bromwich, former IGLikewise, Fine “is simply too independent and has too much integrity to be trusted to minimize or sweep under the rug problems with the $2tn package recently passed by Congress”.Other ex-IGs say Trump’s actions pose a danger to all IG watchdogs and the vital role they perform in curbing corruption“Trump’s actions are clearly a threat to all IGs,” said Cynthia Schnader, a former acting IG at the justice department. In just a few days, “he has fired one, moved another one aside, and publicly attacked a third one for accurately reporting problems.”The former Pentagon IG Eleanor Hill stressed that Trump’s moves seem to endanger the mandate of IGs “to be honest and independent brokers”, and alert Congress to serious problems.Significantly, the current justice IG, Michael Horowitz, who leads a group of executive branch IGs, quickly came to Atkinson’s defense, issuing a strong statement of support for his “integrity and professionalism” – including his handling of the whistleblower complaint that helped spark Trump’s impeachment which featured one count of obstruction of Congress. Horowitz has also vowed that “aggressive, independent oversight” would continue after the firing.Former officials say Trump mistreated Atkinson.“It is troubling to see that the president – apparently based on political grievances – has removed Michael Atkinson, a talented and capable inspector general who was doing exactly what his job requires,” said Mary McCord, a former chief of the DoJ’s national security section where Atkinson once worked.Atkinson himself concurred.“It is hard not to think that the president’s loss of confidence in me derives from my having faithfully discharged my legal obligations as an independent and impartial Inspector General, and from my commitment to continue to do so,” Atkinson said in a statement on Sunday.Other criticism of Trump erupted when he selected the White House lawyer Brian Miller as a special IG for a $500bn business chunk of the $2.2tn law.“Someone who currently works in the White House counsel’s office, serving a president who has tried to silence other inspector generals and announced his intention to silence this one, is not independent,” Senator Ron Wyden, the top Democrat on the Senate finance panel, said in a statement.In Bromwich’s eyes, Trump “has rejected all forms of oversight by congressional committees, and has now turned his opposition to oversight to the IG community”.

Alec Baldwin’s Donald Trump did not make his typical appearance in Saturday Night Live’s cold open from home this week. But he did do a Fox & Friends-style call-in during which he repeatedly attacked anchor Colin Jost and Michael Che for asking “nasty questions” about his coronavirus response. “I'm happy to report, Colin, that America is now number one in the world for coronavirus,” Trump said. When Jost said he seemed “almost excited about it,” the president added, “Well, my approval rating is up, my TV ratings are through the roof and every night at 7 p.m. all of New York claps and cheers for the great job I’m doing.” “Yeah, I don’t know if that’s for you, man,” Che replied before asking Trump what his latest advice for Americans is, “because it seems to be changing every 24 hours.” “That's a nasty question, you're very nasty,” Trump said. “I've been consistent all along. I’ve always said it was a giant hoax that we should take seriously. Even though it was invented by the Democrats. Impeachment part two. Everyone needs to wash their hands, or not.” He then advised Americans to listen to the “experts”: Sean Hannity, Jared Kushner and the MyPillow guy. Tom Hanks Returns to Host SNL at Home After Coronavirus RecoveryAsked why he has stopped calling COVID-19 the “Chinese virus,” Trump explained, “I had to turn down the ethnic slurs after I discovered that everything we need to survive the virus is made in China.” Finally, Trump delivered this inspiring message to the nation: “In times like this, we need to come together as one nation because no matter our differences, all Americans can agree on one thing. Carole Baskin definitely fed her husband to those tigers.” He signed off by saying, “All the absentee ballots are covered in coronavirus. Happy Easter, everybody!”For more, listen and subscribe to The Last Laugh podcast. Read more at The Daily Beast.Get our top stories in your inbox every day. Sign up now!Daily Beast Membership: Beast Inside goes deeper on the stories that matter to you. Learn more.

President Donald Trump has kicked off his general election advertising campaign with a xenophobic attack ad against Joe Biden, the presumptive Democratic nominee, the opening shot in a messaging war that is expected to be exceptionally ugly.In a minute-long digital ad released late Thursday that relies heavily on imagery of China and people of Asian descent, the Trump campaign signaled the lines of attack it will use in its attempts to rally the president's base and define Biden. The ad reprises accusations Trump has made that the former vice president's family profited from his relationships with Chinese officials and presents selectively edited scenes and statements attempting to portray him as doddering and weak.For the president and his allies, the approach represents their assessment of the race as it narrows into a one-on-one contest with Biden, the opponent who is least susceptible to their charges that the Democratic Party is too far outside the political mainstream.The new ad also shows that while the country has changed drastically in recent weeks amid a national health crisis, the president has not. He continues to lead the nation and run his campaign the way he always has: by belittling his adversaries and exploiting racial discord.While other presidents have used campaigns during periods of national trauma to try to unite the country, political strategists said that Trump was taking the opposite approach."They're just going to run a white grievance campaign," said Stuart Stevens, who worked on the presidential campaigns of the Republicans Mitt Romney and George W. Bush. "It's not complicated. He's losing with everybody but white men over 50," Stevens added."Trump hasn't changed," he said. "He hasn't changed in 30 years."Biden amplified that criticism with a statement Friday, saying, "The casual racism and regular xenophobia that we have seen from Trump and this Administration is a national scourge.""Donald Trump only knows how to speak to people's fears, not their better angels," he added.Since the coronavirus started spreading in the United States, Trump has tried to steer the conversation over his response toward themes and issues he is most comfortable with like nationalism and border security. Until recently, he had been referring to the coronavirus as the "Chinese virus."Now, with unfounded claims that Biden and his family have profited from below-board business deals with the Chinese, Trump is attempting to link his political rival to his chief geopolitical foe at a time when there is rising xenophobia and violence in the United States aimed at Chinese Americans."During America's crisis, Biden protected China's feelings," the online ad says, presenting a montage of clips of Biden complimenting and praising the Chinese, including the country's leader, Xi Jinping, and of a news segment accusing Biden of helping his son Hunter profit off Chinese investments.The ad also includes an image of a smiling Biden standing alongside an Asian American man -- an apparent attempt to suggest that the former president has an inappropriately cozy relationship with China. But the man in the image is a Chinese American, the former governor of Washington, Gary Locke, who also served as President Barack Obama's commerce secretary and ambassador to China.The picture, which appears briefly in between clips showing Biden socializing with Chinese officials and stammering through speeches, was taken at a 2013 event in Beijing where Locke and the former vice president appeared together.The ad's implication that Biden is soft on China is oddly timed, coming as Trump's own stance toward China and Xi has been more positive. Trump has been complimenting Xi, and as recently as last week, the president described the two of them as close allies and good friends.The Trump campaign defended using an image of an Asian American to illustrate Biden's ties to the Chinese, saying it was selected simply because Hunter Biden accompanied his father on the 2013 trip to China. Trump has repeatedly accused him, without evidence, of using his father's official visit to further his own business interests."The shot with the flags specifically places Biden in Beijing in 2013," Tim Murtaugh, a Trump campaign spokesman, wrote on Twitter, referring to the picture with Locke. "It's for a reason. That's the Hunter Biden trip. Memory Lane for ol' Joe."Murtaugh did not address the fact that Locke is not Chinese, or that the ad presents the image with no context or explanation.Locke responded by accusing Trump of stoking hatred against Asian Americans. "The Trump team is making it worse," he said in a written statement. "Asian Americans are Americans. Period."In recent weeks, Asian Americans have reported being physically attacked, yelled at and spit upon; organizations have begun to track the incidents. Trump's rise has only pushed many Asian Americans further into the Democratic Party, though they were once considered a fairly reliable Republican demographic.Some Democratic strategists said that the tone and nature of the Trump ad should serve as a wake-up call. The coronavirus pandemic and the human and economic suffering it has unleashed does not mean that politics as usual are on hiatus, they said."This should tell the Biden campaign and every other entity trying to beat Trump that we have to rethink the playbook," said Kelly Gibson, a Democratic media strategist who advised the campaigns of Andrew Yang and Julian Castro. "So if Democrats don't sink to his level, at least a little, we will be at a sizable disadvantage. You can't beat fear with logic; it has never worked and it will never work."The Trump campaign's approach is a coarser version of the strategy that incumbent presidents typically deploy against their opponents: try to define them early before they get a chance to define themselves."What the Trump campaign wants to do is introduce on their terms, or in the case of Joe Biden, reintroduce that opponent to the American people before that opponent gets a chance to introduce himself," said Ken Goldstein, a professor of politics at the University of San Francisco. "Their whole campaign is going to be about disqualifying Joe Biden."Though the ad is among the first to come from the Trump campaign directly since Biden became the presumptive nominee, an undeclared ad war has been raging for months, initially begun during the impeachment of Trump. In previous ads, including two that CNN refused to air citing "demonstrably false claims," Trump has already attacked the Bidens on similar grounds.And since late February, Priorities USA, one of the largest Democratic super PACs, has spent $6.5 million on ads attacking Trump in key swing states; an early round featured former supporters of Trump voicing their displeasure with his administration. Priorities USA has since started airing ads starkly criticizing the president's response to the coronavirus outbreak.In total, Democratic groups have already spent $15.5 million on general election ads this cycle, according to Advertising Analytics, an ad tracking firm. Many millions more have been spent online as well; Priorities USA alone has spent $19 million on digital attack ads already, and Acronym, another Democratic outside group, has spent $10 million.But it is unclear how much any of this advertising will matter given Americans' preoccupation with more pressing concerns. Biden, who lacks the financial wherewithal that Trump and the Republican National Committee have amassed, could stand to benefit in this regard."The shorter the race, the more it favors the person with the least amount of money," said Stevens, who saw firsthand in 2012 how Obama's financial advantage and the advertising it bought made it difficult for Romney to define himself."One of the major advantages of an incumbent president is monetary," Stevens added. "And that's being mitigated by this virus."This article originally appeared in The New York Times.(C) 2020 The New York Times Company