Could Trump declare a national shutdown?
Momentum appears to be building for a national shutdown to confront the coronavirus crisis, raising the prospect that President Trump could issue an order requiring people to stay at home.
Such an order would be unprecedented in American history, but some of Trump's top advisers have said publicly they would be open to it. Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, said Sunday he had raised the prospect of such a dramatic step with the administration.
"I think we should really be overly aggressive and get criticized for overreacting," Fauci said Sunday on NBC's "Meet The Press." "I think Americans should be prepared that they're going to have to hunker down significantly more than we as a country are doing."
Even some who have been outspoken critics of the Trump administration say faster action must be taken to avoid a catastrophe on the level that Italy faces today.
"We are two weeks behind Italy," Ezekiel Emanuel, a former top Obama administration official now at the University of Pennsylvania and the Wharton School, said Friday on MSNBC. "I am a little curious why the task force and the president have not made this a mandate nationwide. Not the lockdown but a mandate for all the states and to close restaurants and do the other things. It seems to me they are being slow on this."
(The Hill)