A8| Wednesday, April 8, 2020 **** THE WALL STREET JOURNAL.
Kenneth,” she said. “If that
chart is not up there in two
seconds” after the governor
asks for it, the darts quickly
begin to fly, like notes passed
in a high-school class.
Later, when the governor
calls out someone for not fol-
lowing his recommendations,
the tweets will cheer him on.
“You tell him, Andy,” she said.
The vibe in Ohio is a little
more low-key.
Gov. DeWine kicked off a
recent daily briefing by intro-
ducing his wife, Fran, who
talked about a bean soup rec-
ipe she’d made for the gover-
nor the night before. She also
mentioned dropping off craft
projects for some of their 24
grandchildren. “What is im-
portant is the memories we
are making with our kids,” she
said.Jessica Tyler of Versailles, Ky.,
watching a coronavirus briefing
by Gov. Andy Beshear.BOB LEARand education and universal
basic income.
Mr. Dorsey’s pledge is one
of the largest individual finan-
cial commitments a chief exec-
utive has announced during
the coronavirus pandemic.
Mr. Dorsey, who ownsabout 2% of Twitter stock, ac-
cording to FactSet, said he
was donating shares from
Square, because his holding in
the financial-services firm is
larger. At current market
prices, Mr. Dorsey’s stake inFEMA has requested prod-
ucts ranging from body bags
“suitable for burial or crema-
tion” to protective eyewear,
face shields and coveralls with
hoods, its request for propos-
als shows.
In some cases, companies
seeking to do business with
FEMA have contacted Jared
Kushner, senior adviser and
son-in-law to President
Trump. Mr. Kushner has re-
ferred them to FEMA’s pro-
curement department, people
familiar with the matter said.
A spokesperson for Mr.
Kushner and the White House
didn’t respond to a request for
comment.In a statement to The Wall
Street Journal after a version
of this article published on-
line, a FEMA spokesperson
said “the business community
is a key partner” to the agency
and that it is critical that pro-
posals be reviewed using the
proper channels.
“Although this process
takes time, it is faster in the
long run than having to rec-
ompete failed projects,” the
spokesperson said.
FEMA is also working with
the Department of Health and
Human Services, its supply
chain task force and “federal
partners” to tackle the sup-
plies shortage, the spokesper-son said.
The supplier mismatch has
resulted partly from the
agency’s facing its biggest-
ever disaster, a global crisis
that has throttled many sup-
ply chains. Since taking over
pandemic response coordina-
tion from HHS in mid-March,
FEMA has been focusing on
the shortfall in supplies at the
state and local levels.
One challenge is that
FEMA’s expertise is largely in
dealing with disasters like
hurricanes and wildfires,
which usually are localized in
one region. With the coronavi-
rus pandemic, the agency is
working in unfamiliar territoryand grappling with how to
manage a crisis affecting all
areas of the country.
There are few vendors that
aren’t “already stretched or
tapped out,” said Craig Fugate,
the agency’s administrator un-
der the Obama administration.
Never before has FEMA
struggled to find supplies in
such a way, say current and
former employees. Meanwhile,
hospitals continue to face
shortages of critical supplies
and testing capabilities, ac-
cording to a new report from
the inspector general of the
Department of Health and Hu-
man Services.
President Trump said Mon-THE CORONAVIRUS PANDEMIC
day that the government
would buy nearly 167 million
masks from3MCo. over the
next three months after invok-
ing the Defense Production
Act on the company. 3M isn’t
working with FEMA through
its request for proposals, the
person familiar with the mat-
ter said.
The few companies that
look like potential wins in
FEMA’s call for help couldn’t
be learned. Those companies
are currently going through
FEMA’s fuller vetting process,
one of the people said. How-
ever, orders that might come
from them are unlikely to be
large, the person said.
The agency has had more
success with its “air bridge”
program, which has involved
Mr. Kushner, some of the peo-
ple said. In that program,
FEMA has been covering the
cost of flights from overseas
factories to the U.S. The
agency has said that process
has cut “the amount of time it
takes to ship supplies from
weeks to days.”
As of Monday, FEMA had
overseen 13 flights bringing in
gloves, gowns, goggles and
masks. Its first flight, on
March 29, delivered 80 tons of
protective equipment to New
York, New Jersey and Con-
necticut, FEMA said.
Additional flights brought
83.5 million gloves, 5 million
surgical masks and 1.2 million
gowns, according to the De-
partment of Homeland Secu-
rity.
Under the program, half of
the supplies on each flight go
to hot-spot areas, determined
by HHS and FEMA based on
data from the Centers for Dis-
ease Control and Prevention.
The remainder go into “dis-
tributors’ normal supply chain
and onto their customers in
other areas across the U.S.,”
FEMA has said.More than 1,000 companies
responded to the Federal
Emergency Management
Agency’s call about two weeks
ago to provide needed sup-
plies to fight the coronavirus
pandemic, according to a per-
son familiar with the matter.
As of early Monday, only
three companies had supplies
the agency could actually buy.
Many of the offers, for
items ranging from protective
medical gear to tests and body
bags, didn’t work out, accord-
ing to people familiar with the
matter, because some compa-
nies have asked for payment
up front, something FEMA
can’t agree to. Another issue:
Some companies have over-
sold what they can actually
get to FEMA.
“There’s a lot of disappoint-
ment in how the business
community is responding,” the
person said.
Inside FEMA, efforts to ac-
quire supplies that fail to ma-
terialize are known as “vapor-
ware,” borrowing the term
from the technology industry
referring to products that are
announced but never actually
manufactured. Company offers
can require hours of vetting by
FEMA’s procurement staff,
costing the agency precious
time as the pandemic spreads.
Staffers are calling vendors
to find out what they have on
offer. But those discussions go
from “ ‘I’ve got’ to ‘I can find’
within three or four phone
calls,” the person familiar with
the matter said. The person
declined to say which compa-
nies would likely win out.
BYRACHAELLEVY
Firms Offer FEMA Supplies It Can’t Buy
More than 1,
answered the agency’s
call; only a few had
what it could purchase
they are going to need this
someday in their life.”
Across the Ohio River in
Kentucky, Gov. Beshear, 42,
has been called a clean-cut sex
symbol for the age of corona-
virus in a Salon.com article.
He also has a meme page dedi-
cated to him, “Andy Beshear
memes for social distancing
teens.” Even his sign language
translator, Virginia, and Ken-
neth, the guy responsible for
putting up slides, have
achieved one-name celebrity
status in the state.
Gov. Beshear has started
several recent briefings with
his key message, “We will get
through this; we will get
through this together,” he
said, and then asked viewers
at home to repeat it as well, as
a kind of mantra for the whole
state.
On a recent day, he showed
a video of teens juggling a
roll of toilet paper like a soc-
cer ball, and seeming to pass
it to each other, even though
they were in separate rooms,
and a clip of a church ringing
bells at 10 a.m., as he had re-
quested everyone in the state
to do.
Mr. Lear and his wife, Jes-
sica Tyler, have been tuning in
almost every day since Gov.
Beshear started the daily
briefings.
“I look forward to listening
to his message,” said Ms. Ty-
ler, 28, who drafts regulations
for the state Department of
Fish and Wildlife. But she es-
pecially likes to follow the
tweets and social-media posts
of people watching along.
“They’ll talk about this guy,The following day, Mr. De-
Wine silently guffawed as he
showed video of the mascot of
the Cincinnati Reds appear to
toss a baseball to the mascot
of the Cleveland Indians on
what would have been opening
day.
“He almost has a Mr. Rog-
ers type of personality,” said
Republican Ohio House
Speaker Larry Householder.
“It’s very comforting to hear
Gov. DeWine speak.”
Katie Sterling, 24, works
for a company that owns sev-
eral concert venues in Cincin-
nati and lives in Newport, Ky.
So she usually watches both
governors’ briefings, and of-
ten starts her day with Gov.
Cuomo’s press conference.
She compares the cast of
characters to her new TV
family.
“I think Andy is the dad or
the fun uncle. Cuomo is the
angry grandpa—he’s got good
reason now,” she said. “De-
Wine is probably the brother
who went away to some Ivy
League school and he’s just
got all this knowledge.”
For all his fun uncle status,
Gov. Beshear also has a stern
side. Several times he’s
scolded people who weren’t
cooperating with public-health
officials or doing something
relatively safe like golfing, but
then gathering in groups
around a green. “We can’t be
doing that” has emerged as a
catchphrase.
“It’s become a joke with me
and my fiancé,” she said.
“Don’t upset Andy. Don’t dis-
appoint Andy. He’ll call you
out at 5.”Wine have dubbed his daily 2
p.m. briefing “Wine With De-
Wine.” The 73-year-old Repub-
lican offers anxious viewers a
folksy dose of TikTok videos,
straight talk and a rotating
collection of Ohio-themed
sports ties. A “Wine With De-
Wine” T-shirt making the
rounds on social media has a
caricature of the governor and
the tagline: “It’s 2 o’clock
somewhere.”
More than 100,000 people
have joined a Facebook fan
club for Ohio’s head of public
health, Dr. Amy Acton. In a
calm voice, she walks viewers
through the latest virus num-
bers as part of Gov. DeWine’s
daily debriefs and tells them
how much staying at home is
helping prevent health-care
workers from getting over-
whelmed by the crisis. She has
her own hashtag, “Snackin’
With Acton.”
“He’s adorable,” Heather
Anthony, 37, of Westerville,
Ohio, said of the governor.
“And she’s got this cult follow-
ing of people who respect her
and the decisions she’s been
making. I’m a high-school
math teacher so I kind of geek
out when she starts talking
about the math models, since
I’m always telling kids thatContinued from Page OneLocal
Briefings
Win Fans
Illinois Air National Guard members assembled medical equipment this week at the McCormick Place Convention Center in Chicago.JASON GRABIEC/U.S. AIR FORCE/ASSOCIATED PRESSSquare is valued at a little un-
der $3 billion, based on the
amount of class B shares he
reported having in April 2019.
“The impact this money
will have should benefit both
companies over the long-term
because it’s helping the people
we want to serve,” he said in a
series of tweets. “I hope this
inspires others to do some-
thing similar.”
The broader market slump
from the continuing health cri-
sis has dented Mr. Dorsey’s
net worth. Shares in both
Twitter and Square have
slumped in recent weeks.
Twitter last month warned
its financial performance
would fall short in the quarter
because the spread of the coro-
navirus has depressed advertis-
ing spending, even as users
have flocked to the social-me-
dia site. Twitter’s stock is downaround 20% in the last month.
Square’s stock has slid
around 40% since the end of
February. The payments com-
pany said on March 24 that
the volume of payments it
processed for its small-busi-
ness customers over the previ-
ous 10 days fell 25% from a
year earlier, as it cited the im-
pact of the coronavirus.
Mr. Dorsey has built a repu-
tation for eccentricities. Last
year, he said he would spend
part of this year working from
Africa. Last month, amid a
bruising battle with activist
hedge fund Elliott Manage-
ment Corp. that was pushing
for his ouster at Twitter, he
said he was reconsidering the
plan because of the Covid-
outbreak. The two parties
struck a truce days later that
allowed Mr. Dorsey to retain
his dual-CEO positions.TwitterInc. co-founder and
Chief Executive Jack Dorsey has
pledged to set aside $1 billion to
fund charitable causes starting
with relief efforts toward the
novel coronavirus pandemic.
Mr. Dorsey said Tuesday
the money would come from
his stake in financial-tech
companySquareInc., which
he also co-founded and runs.
The amount, he said via Twit-
ter, represents about 28% of
his wealth.
Mr. Dorsey said he would
move around 19.8 million
shares of Square to an entity
called Start Small LLC, which
would disburse the money. Af-
ter focusing on dealing with
the Covid-19 outbreak, Mr.
Dorsey said, his money will go
toward supporting other
causes such as girls’ health
BYPETERRUDEGEAIR
Twitter CEO Pledges $1 Billion to Charity
KKR & Co. and its execu-
tives have pledged $50 million
to support communities, port-
folio company employees and
first responders affected by
the coronavirus pandemic,
while Apollo Global Manage-
ment Inc. co-founder Leon
Black and his family have com-
mitted up to $20 million to a
new fund to help New York
City hospital workers.
The pandemic “is wreaking
havoc on every country, every
industry, every household, and
virtually every single person.
As such, our response as a firm
must be different,” according
to a letter sent to investors by
KKR founders Henry Kravis
and George Roberts and co-
Presidents and co-Chief Oper-ating Officers Scott Nuttall and
Joseph Bae that was viewed by
WSJ Pro Private Equity.
KKR’s relief fund will be
funded by contributions from
KKR’s executives and the firm
itself. Also, Messrs. Kravis,
Roberts, Nuttall and Bae will
forgo their salaries and annual
bonuses for 2020, according to
the letter.
The relief fund will support
a number of initiatives, includ-
ing those that address imme-
diate needs of first responders
and front-line medical workers
and help ensure food security
for vulnerable communities.
On Tuesday, Apollo said
others from its ranks and the
firm itself have joined the
Black family in contributing to
the newly established NYC
Healthcare Heroes program.BYPREETISINGHInvestment Firm KKR
Forms Relief Fund
Jack Dorsey said the
move represents
more than a quarter
of his wealth.HammacherSchlemmer
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