Trump undermines CDC masks guidance at combative briefing – as it happened

Live reporting on the coronavirus in the US continues on Saturday’s blog:

• The CDC issued new recommendations for people to wear masks or face coverings while in public. The president undermined the guidelines almost immediately after announcing them, insisting that he wouldn’t wear masks because “they’re not for me”.
• During the daily coronavirus task force briefing, Donald Trump attacked the idea of voting by mail, despite having requested an absentee ballot in 2020. The president said, citing no evidence, that mail-in voting encouraged cheating.
• Asked whether he could reassure New Yorkers that the state would receive enough ventilators, the president said, “No.”. The state is seeking 15,000 ventilators before the peak of cases hits. Today, New York reported the largest single-day increase in its coronavirus death toll, with nearly 3,000 residents having already lost their lives.
• Nancy Pelosi said Congress should pass another economic relief bill. The House speaker said Congress should build upon the $2tn stimulus package passed last month.
• The unemployment rate rose to 4.4% last month, according to the US jobs report released this morning. Economists expect that figure to rise steeply as more companies lay off workers amid the pandemic.
• The supreme court announced it will postpone oral arguments scheduled for this month. The court had already delayed cases that were scheduled to be argued in March.
• Congressman Adam Schiff drafted a bill to establish a commission to probe the coronavirus response. The Democratic lawmaker said the commission would seek to gather lessons for future crises, but Trump dismissed the idea of a commission yesterday as a “witch-hunt”.

And here’s a roundup of the Guardian’s coronavirus coverage from across the country:

1) In California, food banks are struggling to keep up with growing demand, even as they run into volunteer shortages and rising food prices.

2) In Michigan, a public bus driver died less than two weeks after expressing concern about passenger coughing without covering her mouth.

3) In New York, workers at Bellevue hospital, which has fought against epidemics for centuries, say they can see a breaking point coming as coronavirus cases rise.

4) In Florida, passengers from an ill-fated cruise were carefully freed from their cabins and allowed to touch dry land.

Here’s a round-up of Guardian opinion pieces, to help you digest this week in politics:

1) Lloyd Green on Jared Kushner, the president’s son-in-law as public health adviser...

2) David Heymann on face masks...

3) Heidi Shierholz on the economy...

4) And finally, The Guardian view on Trump’s coronavirus response...

Here’s more from the reporter who Trump attacked during the briefing. The president told Weijia Jiang of CBS that she “oughtta be ashamed” for asking what the president’s son-in-law Jared Kushner meant when he said that the federal stockpile was “ours”.

The president has habitually lashed out at reporters of color, and particularly women. The Guardian’s David Smith has also found that the pattern extends to lawmakers and public figures of color.

My colleague Sam Levine circles back to the moment during today’s coronavirus briefing when Trump bashed the idea of voting by mail...

As Donald Trump was explaining that he won’t be wearing a mask, because he doesn’t want to greet “presidents, prime ministers, dictators, kings queens,” with his face covered, Melania Trump tweeted an appeal for “everyone” to take the CDC guidelines seriously:

I missed this moment, from earlier, when Trump discusses models:

Well, that’s all the briefing we’re getting today.

My colleague Joanna Walters has one last fact check for us:

Fact check: the federal stockpile

A reporter at the White House briefing asked Trump why Jared Kushner, the president’s son-in-law and senior adviser, referred to “our stockpile” yesterday when asked about states struggling to get key medical supplies, especially ventilators, from the federal government. (Kushner had said: “The notion of the federal stockpile was it’s supposed to be our stockpile. It’s not supposed to be states’ stockpiles that they then use.”)

Trump just gave a very confusing response, saying: “You know what ‘our’ means? The United States of America. Our, our, and then we take that ‘our’ and we distribute it to the states.”

The reporter responded: “So why did he say it’s not supposed to be states’ stockpiles?”

Trump: “Because we need it for the government, we need it for the federal government. To keep for our country because the federal government needs it, too, not just the states. But out of that we choose oftentimes, as an example, we have almost 10,000 ventilators and we are ready to rock...we are going to bring them to various areas of the country that need them. But when he says ‘our’ he is talking about “our country” he is talking about the federal government. You should be ashamed of yourself...don’t make it sound bad...you just asked your question in a very nasty way.”

In fact, yesterday reporters quickly noted the stockpile is indeed meant as a resource for the states, as noted on the department of health and human services’ website.

“When state, local, tribal, and territorial responders request federal assistance to support their response efforts, the stockpile ensures that the right medicines and supplies get to those who need them most during an emergency,” the website read.

But this morning, that language had been removed from the HHS website. “The Strategic National Stockpile’s role is to supplement state and local supplies during public health emergencies,” the website now says. “Many states have products stockpiled, as well.”

Fact check: Mail-in voting

“A lot of people cheat” with mail-in voting, Trump said. People should go to the voting booth, “proudly display yourself” and have an ID, he added. “All sorts of bad things can happen”, when people vote by mail, the president said.

But there is no evidence of widespread cheating when people vote by mail, and on the contrary, there is evidence that removing barriers to voting by mail can make it easier for many people – including those with disabilities, and work and childcare responsibilities – to vote.

Still, Trump has long-opposed measures to expand vote by mail. My colleague Sam Levine reported earlier this week:

Donald Trump admitted on Monday that making it easier to vote in America would hurt the Republican party.

The president made the comments as he dismissed a Democratic-led push for reforms such as vote-by-mail, same-day registration and early voting as states seek to safely run elections amid the Covid-19 pandemic. Democrats had proposed the measures as part of the coronavirus stimulus. They ultimately were not included in the $2.2tn final package, which included only $400m to states to help them run elections.

“The things they had in there were crazy. They had things, levels of voting that if you’d ever agreed to it, you’d never have a Republican elected in this country again,” Trump said during an appearance on Fox & Friends. “They had things in there about election days and what you do and all sorts of clawbacks. They had things that were just totally crazy and had nothing to do with workers that lost their jobs and companies that we have to save.”

Fact check: Is the previous administration to blame?

Donald Trump has repeatedly blamed the “previous administration” for his government’s lack of preparation for the coronavirus crisis. “Speak to the people from the previous administration. The shelves were empty,” he said when asked why the US failed to stockpile enough medical supplies to meet current needs.

But Trump, who has been president since 2017, ignored early warnings that a pandemic was coming, including from his own HHS secretary. Three months before the first cases of coronavirus began spreading through China, the Trump administration ended a $200m early warning program designed to alert it to potential pandemics.