The Trump administration has many task forces — but still no plan for beating the coronavirus crisis
The Trump administration still has no clear plan for ending the coronavirus crisis, but it does have many task forces.
There is the official task force led by Vice President Pence that meets daily and is supposed to oversee the government’s sprawling response to the deadly pandemic that has cratered the economy and, as of Saturday, killed more than 19,000 in the United States alone. There is the “Opening Our Country Council,” an economic task force announced Friday focused on reopening portions of the economy as quickly as possibly. There is the group that reports directly to Trump’s son-in-law and senior adviser Jared Kushner, a cadre dismissively dubbed “the shadow task force” that helps Kushner with his roving list of virus troubleshooting.
And there is also the “doctors group,” a previously unreported offshoot of the original task force that huddles daily to discuss medical and public health issues, created in part to push back against demands the health experts view as too reckless.
In theory, the small flock of task forces are all working toward the same goal: defeating the coronavirus and getting the nation back to work — and life — as quickly as possible. But the reality is far more complicated: a bureaucratic nesting doll of groups with frequently competing aims and agendas. [Continue reading…]