saturday, april 4 , 2020. the washington post eZ re A
NAtiONAL seCURitY
Judge orders review of
wiretap applications
The nation’s s ecretive
surveillance c ourt on Friday
ordered the government t o
determine by mid-June w hether
any of the 29 surveillance
applications that the Justice
Department’s i nspector general
recently found were flawed
contained “ material
misstatements or omissions” t hat
could render them invalid.
Inspector General Michael
Horowitz, in a memorandum
issued Tuesday, f ound that all 29
applications his office scrutinized
as part of a review contained
errors, s uggesting that problems
exposed in a wiretap application
during the FBI’s probe of
President Trump’s 2 016 campaign
extend f ar beyond t hat case alone.
Horowitz did n ot determine
whether a ny o f the errors would
have i nfluenced the g overnment’s
decision to apply to t he Foreign
Intelligence Surveillance Court
for permission to secretly w iretap
a suspect. Under the Foreign
Intelligence Surveillance Act, the
government must have probable
cause to believe the t arget i s an
agent of a foreign power.
James E. Boasberg, the FISC
chief judge, ordered the F BI and
Justice Department, which v ets
the applications and presents
them t o the c ourt, to provide him
with an assessment by June 15
concerning to what extent the 29
applications contained
misstatements or omissions and
whether a ny o f the errors should
invalidate any of the applications
granted by the court.
— E llen N akashimageORgiAProsecutor t o expunge
King’s arrest warrantA county prosecutor in G eorgia
said he will e xpunge Martin
Luther King Jr.’s record for his
trespassing arrest during a 1960
sit-in protesting the segregated
dining rooms a t an Atlanta
department store.
Fulton County S olicitor
General Keith Gammage told the
Atlanta Journal-Constitution h e
is also interested in erasing the
records of all other civil rights
workers who were arrested in
Atlanta.
But some civil rights advocates
said they wouldn’t w ant their
civil disobedience records
expunged.
“That is part of my h istory as a
civil rights worker,” BernardLaFayette, who was arrested 30
times, told t he paper.
King biographer Clayborne
Carson also was arrested for his
work as a civil rights activist.
He t old the Journal-
Constitution it is a “badge of
honor, a nd it doesn’t change t he
historical reality that you were
arrested.”
Gammage, 48, who also serves
on the board of trustees at K ing’s
Ebenezer Baptist Church, said
he’s h ad positive c onversations
with t he King family a bout his
plan and wouldn’t d o it without
their support.
King joined the Atlanta
Student Movement’s campaign of
boycotts and sit-ins on Oct. 19,
1960, and was a rrested after
asking to be served in a whites-
only dining r oom at R ich’s
Department S tore.
— A ssociated PressDigestBen garver/associated press
A lamb feeds Friday at Hancock Shaker Village in Pittsfield, Mass.
Because of the coronavirus pandemic, the m useum and w orking farm
laid off nearly half its year-round staff, MassLive reported.Politics & the Nation
BY MATT ZAPOTOSKY,
JOHN WAGNER
AND AMANDA COLETTAThe Centers for Disease Con-
trol and Prevention is recom-
mending that Americans wear
basic cloth masks in public to
prevent spreading the coronavi-
rus, President Trump announced
Friday, reversing earlier guidance
on the subject as the epidemic
continues to balloon across the
United States.
The updated recommendation
came as the nation saw a new
daily high in virus-related deaths
— 1 ,100 — which brought the total
American toll from the outbreak
to more than 7,000. The number
of people with confirmed infec-
tions also grew by more than
31,000, increasing the total to
more than 273,000 — equivalent
to the population of U.S. cities like
To ledo and Durham, N.C.
Trump said the mask recom-
mendation was “voluntary,” and
he almost immediately added
that he wouldn’t follow the guid-
ance: “I don’t think I’m going to
be doing it.” He also said that
Americans need not wear medi-
cal-grade masks, which should be
reserved for health-care workers,
and that they should continue to
follow the CDC’s s ocial distancing
guidelines, which call for people
to stay a t least six feet from others
and to not gather in groups.
Health-care workers and state
leaders have this week intensified
their calls for more masks, as well
as gowns, gloves and ventilators
needed to treat the ill. Trump on
Friday announced that he was
invoking the Defense Production
Act to prohibit “scarce health and
medical supplies,” i ncluding N
masks and gloves, from being
exported outside the United
States “by unscrupulous actors
and profiteers.”
The move, coupled with other
developments Friday, seemed to
ramp up America’s burgeoning
feud with other nations over sup-
plies to treat coronavirus illness-
es.
“We need these items immedi-
ately for domestic use,” Trump
said, though he suggested he
would not interfere with other
countries’ existing orders. “We
have to have them.”
Surgeon General Jerome M.
Adams said the CDC issued the
new guidance on masks in part
because officials had seen more
data showing that people without
symptoms could spread the virus.
There appeared to have been a
vigorous debate inside the White
House about what to do. As re-
cently as Thursday night, a White
House official said the guidance
“would be targeted for those in
areas of high community trans-
mission,” t hough the recommen-
dation ultimately issued was for
all Americans.
New York Gov. A ndrew M. Cuo-
mo (D) said he was signing an
executive order that would allow
him to deploy the National Guard
ments to allow recovering coro-
navirus patients to be served at
some of its medical facilities.
But Trump also has sought to
blame the states, saying they
should have done more to in-
crease their own stockpiles before
the outbreak. In September 2018,
the Trump administration re-
ceived detailed plans for a new
machine designed to churn out
millions of protective respirator
masks at high speed during a
pandemic, but it did not proceed
with making the device.
A new ABC-Ipsos poll released
Friday found that fewer than half
of Americans approve of Trump’s
management of the coronavirus
outbreak.
The poll found that 47 percent
approve of the president’s han-
dling of the public health crisis,
while 52 percent disapprove. Sev-
eral other recent polls have sug-
gested a bump in approval of
Trump’s performance, including
an ABC-Ipsos survey released
March 20 that showed 55 percent
approval of his management of
the situation.
The latest ABC-Ipsos poll was
conducted April 1 and 2, after
Trump warned of some “very
painful” weeks ahead and the
White House released projections
that between 100,000 and
240,000 Americans will die as a
result of the coronavirus, even if
social distancing measures are
closely followed.
The U.S. economy is continu-
ing to buckle under the weight of
government-imposed stay-at-
home orders designed to slow the
spread of the virus. According to a
Labor Department report, the
economy shed 701,000 jobs in
March, driving the unemploy-
ment rate up to 4.4 percent.
Almost two-thirds of the de-
cline — 4 59,000 jobs — occurred
in the leisure and hospitality sec-
tor, mainly in restaurants and
bars, according to the report. But
government economists said “no-
table” job cuts also hit several
other sectors, including health
care, professional and business
services, retail trade, and con-
struction.
Wall Street ended another wild
week on a low note, with the Dow
Jones industrial average sinking
360 points. The Standard & Poor’s
500 and Nasdaq composite also
ended the day in the red.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi
(D-Calif.) pressed the case Friday
for another federal stimulus bill
that would include more direct
payments to individuals, addi-
tional small-business loan fund-
ing and the extension of en-
hanced unemployment benefits.
[email protected]
[email protected]
[email protected]Luisa Beck, Jacob Bogage, Karen
deyoung, amy gardner, thomas
heath, alex horton, david J. Lynch,
Loveday Morris and Jon swaine
contributed to this report. coletta
reported from toronto.to redistribute ventilators from
hospitals in his state that do not
immediately need them to those
that are in crisis. Though Cuomo
said the ventilators would be re-
turned later or the hospitals
would be reimbursed, he conced-
ed that the dramatic step might
rankle those reluctant to part
with a resource they might one
day need. He said the mounting
death toll and growing shortage
of equipment in parts of New
York gave him no choice.
“I’m not going to be in a posi-
tion where people are dying and
we have several hundred ventila-
tors in our own state somewhere
else,” Cuomo said. “If they want to
sue me for borrowing their excess
ventilators to save lives, let them
sue me.”
New York had a particularly
difficult Friday, a dding nearly 560
people to its covid-19 death toll,
bringing the state’s total count to
more than 2,900. But it was hard-
ly alone. Neighboring New Jersey
recorded more than 100 deaths,
raising its total to more than 640.
Michigan and Louisiana added
about 60 deaths each, bringing
their respective totals to more
than 470 and more than 370.
“This is one of the greatest
tragedies to ever hit our state and
our nation, indeed, and we musthave a constant and visible me-
morial of the tremendous person-
al toll covid-19 is having on our
communities,” said New Jersey
Gov. Phil Murphy (D), who on
Friday ordered flags in the state to
be flown at half-staff to honor
residents who have succumbed to
the virus.
In Wisconsin, the governor on
Friday called for a special legisla-
tive session Saturday to debate
canceling in-person voting in
Tuesday’s primary and extend the
deadline for mail-in ballots to late
May. Trump criticized that deci-
sion and said he was skeptical
generally of mail-in voting.
Across the globe, the coronavi-
rus has now infected nearly
1.1 million people and has killed
more than 58,000. Though the
pandemic originated in China
and reportedly killed more than
3,300 people there, it has
wreaked even more havoc outside
its borders — particularly in Italy,
where more than 14,600 have
died, and Spain, where more than
11,000 have died.
U.S. governors have repeatedly
complained that Trump is forcing
them to compete against one an-
other to purchase supplies and
that the federal government is
not sending enough help. U.S.
officials have said the nationalstockpile of medical supplies has
been depleted as they ship mate-
rials to hospitals, and they are
scouring the globe to find more.
But their efforts met resistance
Friday, as some officials in other
countries complained that the
United States was being inconsid-
erate toward its allies.
Canadian Prime Minister Jus-
tin Trudeau said Friday that “it
would be a mistake” f or the Unit-
ed States to stop the Minnesota-
based manufacturing giant 3M
from exporting N95 respirator
masks to Canada, which is simi-
larly scrambling to acquire criti-
cal medical equipment as sup-
plies dwindle.
The comments came after 3M
said in a news release that the
White House had requested that
it cease exporting the respirators
to Canada and Latin America —
an ask that it said could spark
retaliation and have “significant
humanitarian implications.” A
day earlier, Trump announced
that he had invoked the Korean
War-era Defense Production Act
to compel 3M to provide more
N95 masks for use by medical
workers in the United States.
Trudeau said Canadian offi-
cials have been “forcefully” point-
ing out to their American coun-
terparts that trade “goes bothways across the border.” Thou-
sands of nurses in Windsor, he
noted, travel to Detroit each day
to work in hospitals there.
“These are things that Ameri-
cans rely on,” Trudeau said, “and
it would be a mistake to create
blockages or reduce the amount
of back-and-forth trade of essen-
tial goods and services, including
medical goods, across our bor-
der.”
In Berlin, a delivery of 200,
masks ordered and paid for by the
city’s police department was
“confiscated” en route, a city offi-
cial said Friday, citing the United
States as the likely reason for the
diversion. The consignment of
FFP2 masks from China only
made it as far as Bangkok, accord-
ing to Andreas Geisel, the state
minister of the interior of Berlin.
“We consider this an act of
modern piracy,” G eisel said. “This
is not how you deal with transat-
lantic partners. Even in times of
global crisis, Wild West methods
shouldn’t rule.”
The Trump administration has
said it has poured millions of
masks, gloves and gowns into the
supply chain, in addition to help-
ing open temporary hospital fa-
cilities in hard-hit areas. The De-
fense Department said Friday
that it has loosened its require-Trump announces CDC guidance
that all Americans wear cloth masks
toni L. sandys/the Washington post
Cecily Habimana, the owner of Sew Creative Lounge in Mount Rainier, Md., makes cotton face masks Thursday. Habimana has been
selling masks to the public and donating them to health-care providers at the Prince George’s Hospital Center.BY ROBERT BARNESThe Supreme Court on Friday
officially canceled its scheduled
oral arguments for April because
of health threats caused by the
coronavirus pandemic, a nd left i n
doubt how the justices will finish
their term.
The court already had post-
poned March arguments, which
means about 20 cases — includ-
ing the battle over President
Trump’s attempts to shield his
financial records from congres-
sional committees and a Manhat-
tan prosecutor — are left in lim-
bo. The court’s April session usu-
ally is its last each term.
“The court will consider re-
scheduling some cases from the
March and April sessions b efore
the end of the term, if circum-
stances permit in light of public
health and safety g uidance at t hat
time,” public information officer
Kathleen Arberg said in a news
release.
“The court will consider a
range of scheduling options and
other alternatives if arguments
cannot be held in the courtroom
before the end of the term.”
In normal times, the court
finishes its work by the end of
June and starts a new term in
October.
The court’s announcement of-
fered no further detail but seems
to leave much leeway, including
whether the justices would hold
some hearings by teleconferenceor other method. The court has
never allowed cameras into its
courtroom, nor permitted live
audio. It releases same-day audio
of arguments only in rare circum-
stances.
The court will continue to de-
cide cases in which it already has
held argument. Some decisions,
for instance, will be released
Monday.
And while it is traditional that
the court hold oral arguments, it
is not required. Every term the
justices decide a handful of cases
based on the written briefs alone.
Two of the court’s pending
issues seem particularly press-
ing.
M anhattan District Attorney
Cyrus Vance Jr. and three Demo-cratic-led congressional commit-
tees have won lower-court deci-
sions granting them access to a
range of Trump’s financial re-
cords relating to him personally,
his family and his businesses.
The court put those decisions
on hold and in December accept-
ed Trump’s request to review
them.
A coalition of liberal groups,
including Demand Justice and
People for the American Way, last
month said the court needed to
act.
“The court’s failure to make
alternative arrangements in this
time-sensitive case only serves to
sanction Trump’s stonewalling of
investigators by indefinitely in-
terfering with lawful subpoenas,”the groups said in a news release.
“Delaying this case is effectively
picking a side.”
The court had also agreed to
decide whether states may re-
quire presidential electors to vote
for the candidate who wins the
state’s popular vote. In 2016 and
before, some of those who met as
the electoral college did not do
that, and courts have split on
whether states may punish or
replace so-called faithless elec-
tors.
The Supreme Court was sup-
posed to hear arguments this
month; states had urged a deci-
sion before voters go to the polls
in November.
Oral arguments are held in
close quarters, shared by specta-tors, lawyers, journalists and
court personnel. A majority of the
justices are considered to be in
the higher risk category for the
coronavirus because of their ages.
Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg is
87 years old, and her fellow Bill
Clinton nominee, Justice Ste-
phen G. Breyer, is 81. Chief Justice
John G. Roberts Jr. and three
other justices are 65 and older,
and Justice Elena Kagan turns 60
later this month.
The justices were last on the
bench together March 9. They
have held private conferences re-
motely, with only Roberts in the
room where they normally gather
to decide which cases to reject or
accept for review.
[email protected]Supreme Court cancels April oral arguments, leaving rest of term in doubt