Stevenson’s army, April 5

One of the recurrent criticisms of the Trump administration is for its disdain for career professionals and rejection of their advice. Early on, Michael Lewis wrote a prescient book, The FIfth RIsk, warning of the loss of competent officials. The president has also failed even to nominate people for key positions, leaving agencies hollowed out and under timid “actings.” Then the pandemic hit.
– WaPo describes “70 days of denial and dysfunction.” But it wasn’t just the president’s delay in acting and contradictory statements. The article shows that the interagency group dealing with the coronavirus spent January worrying about stopping travel from China except for evacuating Americans; the CDC spent February protecting its bureaucratic prerogatives while bungling the testing kits.
– A new AP report says: A review of federal purchasing contracts by The Associated Press shows federal agencies waited until mid-March to begin placing bulk orders of N95 respirator masks, mechanical ventilators and other equipment needed by front-line health care workers.
– BTW, NYT calculates that 430,000 people have flown to the US on direct flights from China since the virus was made known, 40,000 of them since Trump’s travel ban, and they got scattershot screening.
– Just over the horizon is the next big challenge for the US government: executing the generous laws Congress has passed for public health expansion and economic support. Can the hollowed out administration do its job? A historian tells how FDR rose to the challenge.
– WSJ says 29% of US economy has gone idle.

My SAIS colleague Charlie Stevenson distributes this almost daily news digest of foreign/defense/national security policy to “Stevenson’s army” via Googlegroups. I plan to republish here. To get Stevenson’s army by email, send a blank email (no subject or text in the body) to stevensons-army+subscribe@googlegroups.com. You’ll get an email confirming your join request. Click “Join This Group” and follow the instructions to join. Once you have joined, you can adjust your email delivery preferences (if you want every email or a digest of the emails).