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actively trading before the

spreading infectious disease

caused the markets to fall were

Republican Sens. Kelly Loeffler

and David Perdue of Georgia,

and James Inhofe of Oklahoma.

The husband of Sen. Dianne

Feinstein, the California Demo-

crat, also sold stock before the

market downturn.

Ms. Loeffler and Ms. Fein-

stein, who are both married to

investment professionals, said

they had been unaware of the

trades because they are han-

dled by advisers. Mr. Perdue

said his portfolio is managed

by an investment adviser who

regularly makes dozens of

trades and was buying as well

as selling shares of companies

at the time. Mr. Inhofe said he

Mr. Burr said he relied upon

“public news reports to guide

my decisions regarding the

sale of stocks.”

On Friday morning, Mr.

Burr said he “understands the

assumption that many could

make in hindsight” and asked

the Senate Ethics Committee

chairman “to open a complete

review of the matter with full

transparency.”

While some market analysts

were warning at the time of

the potential damage the

emerging coronavirus could

cause to the stock market, the

sales also came at a time when

President Trump and some Re-

publican politicians were play-

ing down the potential harm.

Other senators who were

Weeks before the coronavi-
rus pandemic sent the stock
market plummeting, several
members of Congress, their
spouses and investment advis-
ers each sold hundreds of
thousands of dollars in stock
after lawmakers attended
closed-door briefings about
the threat of the disease.
Some of the sales spared
the senators and their spouses
as much as hundreds of thou-
sands of dollars in potential
losses, a Wall Street Journal
analysis of the trades shows.
Sen. Richard Burr, a top Re-
publican from North Carolina
who sits on two committees
that received detailed brief-
ings on the growing epidemic,
reported in disclosure reports
that he and his wife on Feb. 13
sold shares of companies
worth as much as $1.7 million.
The Journal analysis shows
that the shares sold by the
Burrs were worth—at mini-
mum—$250,000 less at the
close of trading on March 19
than they were when the sena-
tor and his wife sold them.
Mr. Burr quickly drew criti-
cism after his stock sales were
reported Thursday evening by
ProPublica and the Center for
Responsive Politics. Fox News
host Tucker Carlson called for
Mr. Burr to resign, as did a
handful of Democratic House
members and the North Caro-
lina Democratic Party.

U.S. NEWS

also has an investment adviser

and doesn’t manage trades.

Mr. Burr, chairman of the

Senate Intelligence Committee,

which has been receiving fre-

quent briefings on the spread

of Covid-19 since it emerged in

China, made 33 stock trades

on Feb. 13 worth between

$628,000 and $1.7 million, ac-

cording to the filings. Con-

gressional rules require that

trades be reported in ranges,

not precise figures.

Mr. Burr, who is regarded

as the Senate’s leading author-

ity on pandemics as the author

of the 2006 Pandemic and All-

Hazards Preparedness Act, is

also on the Senate health com-

mittee, which was briefed on

the coronavirus on Jan. 24.

Three of Mr. Burr’s sales

were in hotel company

stocks—Park Hotels & Resorts

Inc., Wyndham Hotels & Re-

sorts Inc. and Extended Stay

America Inc.—which have seen

their value drop 74%, 63% and

50%, respectively, since Mr.

Burr made the sales.

Mr. Burr and his wife also

sold between $96,000 and

$265,000 in stock between

Jan. 31 and Feb. 4, the filings

show, including additional

shares of Extended Stay.

In 2012, President Obama

signed the Stop Trading on

Congressional Knowledge Act

to outlaw members of Con-

gress and other government

staff from engaging in insider

trading based on information

learned through their jobs.

BYJAMESV.GRIMALDI
ANDANDREAFULLER

Senators Sold Stock After Virus Update

Sen. Richard Burr (R., N.C.) sold shares worth as much as $1.

million last month after detailed briefings on the coronavirus.

TOM WILLIAMS/CONGRESSIONAL QUARTERLY/ZUMA PRESS

Sean Dowse, mayor of Red

Wing, Minn., said preparations

can go only so far with the un-

certainty of the virus.

“Right now, Red Wing is

ready for disaster,” he said.

“We have the personal protec-

tive equipment, we have the

personnel in place. What will

happen in two weeks, we have

no idea, because what will

come down the road to us could

be a surprise and we’ll have to

be flexible going forward.”

In its Thursday forecast,

NOAA said above-average tem-

peratures and precipitation

are expected for much of the

middle of the country. With

soils already saturated, any

heavy storms could bring ad-

ditional flooding.

Areas at greatest risk for

major and moderate flooding

include the upper and middle

Mississippi River basins, the

Missouri River basin and the

their capacity to deal with pa-

tients in the coming weeks,

Mayor Belinda C. Constant

said she can only hope the city

will have the resources to deal

with flooding.

“We’re just praying every

day that we don’t end up in a

state of anarchy,” she said.

While this year’s flooding

isn’t expected to be as dire as

last year’s, cities are in un-

charted territory as they make

plans to deal with flooding

along with a pandemic that

has created a national state of

emergency.

Robert Gallagher, mayor of

Bettendorf, Iowa, and co-

chairman of the Mississippi

River Cities and Towns Initia-

tive, said in a press call Thurs-

day that the group of nearly

100 mayors is working to-

gether with federal authorities

to ensure they have the re-

sources for first responders

needed to tackle what he

called a double disaster of

flooding and Covid-19.

“We have concerns as we

move into the possible floods

and storms that those first re-

sponders will have an in-

creased need for supplies,”

such as masks and full protec-

tive gear, he said.

Mr. Gallagher said the com-

ing flood season also would re-

quire new protocols at shelters.

Those showing signs of the vi-

rus will be sheltered separately

from the rest of the popula-

tion, who would be asked to

observe social distancing.

Volunteers streamed last
week into Sandbag Central in
Fargo, N.D., where a machine
known as the spider can fill up
to 120 sandbags a minute.
Working in groups of 70, they
made and stacked about
232,000 sandbags to prepare
for flooding on the Red River
of the North.
This year, they had a new
addition: hand sanitizer, wash-
ing stations and gloves.
Still reeling from last year’s
historic floods, river cities in
the Great Plains and central
U.S. are preparing for another
active flood season in the mid-
dle of the unfolding new coro-
navirus pandemic.
Last year’s flood season,
one of the wettest on record,
inflicted $20 billion in damage
and crop losses across 19
states, according to a recent
analysis by the National Oce-
anic and Atmospheric Admin-
istration.
On Thursday, NOAA issued
a new spring flood forecast,
which predicted moderate to
major flooding in 23 states
from the Northern Plains to
the Gulf Coast. The most sig-
nificant flood potential are in
parts of North and South Da-
kota and Minnesota.
Farther south, in Gretna,
La., near New Orleans, the
pandemic already is approach-
ing a crisis stage. With malls,
stores and restaurants closed
and hospitals concerned about

BYJOEBARRETT

Battered Towns

Gearing Up for

Flood Season

close almost all the levee

breaches on the main stem of

the river that were opened

during a devastating storm in

March 2019. One levee was so

damaged that the Corps will

rebuild it entirely in coming

weeks.

Coronavirus won’t stop the

work. “It’s hard to be more so-

cially distant than a guy in a

bulldozer out working on his

own,” said Bret Budd, chief of

the Corps’ system restoration

team.

Grafton, Ill., at the conflu-

ence of the Illinois and Missis-

sippi rivers, was one of the

hardest hit towns by last year’s

flooding. This year’s less-dire

flood forecast offered little

comfort to Mayor Rick Eberlin.

“We don’t expect the flood-

ing to be as bad as last year,”

he said. “But with the Covid

virus, we think the economic

impact will be even worse than

last year. Our bars and restau-

rants are closed. Our town is

virtually a ghost town.”

In Fargo, officials are pre-

paring for what could be the

fourth-worst flood on record.

The current forecast says the

Red River has a 10% chance of

reaching that level.

Simon Atadoga spent about

two hours on his 21st birthday

last week shoveling sand into

sandbags in the city’s Sandbag

Central, since all the spots at

the spider had been taken by

other volunteers.

The Nigerian accounting and

business major at the Univer-

sity of Minnesota in Moorhead,

just across the river from Fargo,

said the work was demanding

but it didn’t bother him.

“It was a lot of fun,” he

said. “I did not feel the hard

work because I had a lot of

conversations and got to meet

new people.”

Volunteers in Fargo, N.D., filled sandbags last week. City officials are preparing for what could be the fourth-worst flood on record.

CITY OF FARGO

Red River of the North, NOAA

said.

On the Missouri River, a

mild winter allowed the U.S.

Army Corps of Engineers to

Probabilitiesoffloodingforthe

RedRiveroftheNorthinFargo,

N.D.,throughmid-June

Source: National Weather Service

40 feet

0

10

20

30

10% 25 50 75 90 95

PROBABILITY OF EXCEEDING

RIVER LEVELS

Major flooding

Minor flooding

Moderate flooding

Peak 2019 level

WASHINGTON—Negotia-
tions on a massive economic
stimulus package hit snags on
how to provide assistance to
Americans during the corona-
virus pandemic as a target to
reach a bipartisan agreement
by Friday slipped.
Among the chief remaining

obstacles to an agreement on
the legislation, which could ul-
timately cost more $1 trillion,
was deciding on whether to
give cash payments directly to
some Americans, expand un-
employment insurance or
some combination of the two.
A Senate Republican opening
offer and the Trump administra-
tion called for direct payments
to workers, while Democrats
have sought dramatically in-
creased unemployment benefits.

Democrats also are pushing

for the final agreement to ex-

pand paid leave and funds to

support state and local efforts

to respond to the disease out-

break, which has brought much

of American life to a standstill,

cratered financial markets, and

taken the global economy to

the brink of a major slowdown.

Senate Majority Leader Mitch

McConnell (R., Ky.) had called

on lawmakers to reach an initial

agreement by the end of the day

Friday, but lawmakers and

Trump administration officials

ended talks with a goal of begin-

ning negotiations again Satur-

day morning.

“It’s a big complicated huge

bill and tonight, I would hope

to come to agreements tomor-

row,” said Senate Minority

Leader Chuck Schumer (D.,

N.Y.), who spoke with House

Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D., Ca-

lif.) and Treasury Secretary

Steven Mnuchin twice on Fri-

day. “They’re making progress,

but there’s so much to do, I

think tonight is hard.”

White House Legislative Af-

fairs Director Eric Ueland said

Republicans hoped to have an

agreement in hand by Satur-

day afternoon so the Senate

could move forward with a

vote early next week.

Any eventual deal will need

to be bipartisan because it re-

quires 60 votes in the Senate

and must pass the Democratic-

controlled House to become

law, meaning Republicans and

Democrats will have to bridge

their divisions.

“There’s tremendous spirit

to get something done,” said

President Trump at the daily

White House coronavirus

briefing. He said he had good

telephone calls with Messrs.

Schumer and McConnell.

While sounding optimistic

notes about the state of talks,

Mr. Trump bristled at sugges-

tions that the government’s ef-

fort is falling short on testing,

potential treatments and med-

ical equipment.

Democrats and Republicans

also were working to bolster

the nation’s public health in-

frastructure, bracing for thou-

sands of people sick with the

novel coronavirus to be hospi-

talized. Democrats called for a

$400 billion federal invest-

ment to address capacity is-

sues and medical-supply

shortages at hospitals, partic-

ularly rural and smaller ones.

“Our hospitals across the

country are about to be over-

whelmed,” said Illinois Sen.

Dick Durbin, the No. 2 Senate

Democrat. “They’ll be faced to

make some horrible triage

choices about survivors. We

don’t want to reach that

point.” He called for a dou-

bling of hospital capacity.

Republicans on Friday

seemed less inclined to appro-

priate cash to hospitals. The

Republican plan would boost

Medicare payments to health-

care providers. “We realize

we’re going to have to do some

things to help out providers,”

Sen. John Thune (R., S.D.) said.

“The question is how can you

do that quickly and what’s the

most effective mechanism.”

The National Governors As-

sociation asked lawmakers on

Thursday to double the in-

crease in Medicaid support

that passed earlier this week.

Gov. Larry Hogan of Mary-

land, a Republican, and Gov.

Andrew Cuomo of New York, a

Democrat, said in a letter that

though lawmakers increased

the federal reimbursement

rate by 6 percentage points,

that “falls short of what states

will need.” Republicans have

said that many states have ro-

bust emergency funding pro-

grams, as Democrats have ad-

vocated for sending along

more federal assistance.

Mr. McConnell’s broad plan,

released late Thursday, calls

for taxpayers to receive up to

$1,200, with married couples

eligible to get as much as

$2,400, with an additional

$500 for every child. Those

payments would scale down

for individuals who earn more

than $75,000 a year and cou-

ples that make more than

$150,000. Individuals who

make more than $99,000 and

households that earn more

than $198,000 won’t be eligi-

ble for direct assistance.

Negotiations on an Economic-Relief Bill Hit Hurdles

ByNatalie Andrews,

Andrew Duehren

andCatherine Lucey

Republicans favor

checks; Democrats

push expanded

jobless benefits.

Legend.Bookcase, design Christophe Delcourt.

Manufactured in Europe.

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French Art de Vivre