Archives: Morning Breakouts

Captain Brett Crozier raised health concerns about the sailors on his aircraft carrier. After his memo to senior officers went public, he was relieved of duty, and acting Navy Secretary Thomas Modly berated Crozier in a speech to the crew as being “too naïve or too stupid to be a commanding officer of a ship like this." Modly later apologized, but the controversy created a furor within the Navy, and may be illustrative of the Trump administration's response to the outbreak.

President Donald Trump has put the onus on the states to acquire their own ventilators and other medical supplies, promising to act as backup as needed. But now, the administration is seizing some of those orders and relying on a distribution strategy that governors say just creates more confusion. Meanwhile, desperate states turn to each other for help, with those who haven't been hit hard yet sending equipment to hot spots. In other news: a look at how New York's ventilators stockpile was depleted years before the outbreak; the way Trump's use of the national stockpile differs from past administrations; hospitals plead for more federal coordination to get supplies; and more.

The warning from Peter Navarro is just the latest to show that officials throughout the administration were trying to direct President Donald Trump's attention to the growing threat of the coronavirus outbreak. Meanwhile, Trump and his advisers are bracing for the worst week yet as the outbreak could reach its peak in some hot spots. In other news from the administration: spats between top advisers, espionage efforts during a pandemic and a VA records project put on hold.