Tag: covid-19

President Donald Trump announced a halt to American payments to the World Health Organization, pending a review of its warnings about the coronavirus and China.

Nations around the world reacted with alarm to the news, and health experts warned the move could jeopardize global efforts to stop the coronavirus pandemic.

The first tentative steps in lifting the economically crippling coronavirus restrictions in Europe and China are running into resistance, with shoppers and other customers staying away from the reopened businesses and workers afraid the newly restored freedoms could put their health at risk.

Here are some of AP’s top stories Wednesday on the world’s coronavirus pandemic. Follow APNews.com/VirusOutbreak for updates through the day and APNews.com/UnderstandingtheOutbreak for stories explaining some of its complexities.

WHAT’S HAPPENING TODAY:

— An investigation by The Associated Press has found that six days of delays by China — from Jan. 14 to Jan. 20 — in alerting the public to the growing dangers of the virus set the stage for a pandemic that has upended the lives of millions, sideswiped the global economy and cost nearly 127,000 lives.

— The European Union moved Wednesday to head off a chaotic and potentially disastrous easing of restrictions that are limiting the spread of the coronavirus, warning its 27 nations to move very cautiously as they return to normal life and base their actions on scientific advice. And U.S. President Donald Trump said he’s enlisting advisers from nearly all sectors of American commerce, the medical field and elected office to help shape his plans to reopen the economy.

— The official death toll from the coronavirus soared in New York City on Tuesday after health authorities began including people who probably had COVID-19 but died without being tested.

— As countries around the world edge toward ending lockdowns and restarting their economies and societies, citizens are being more closely monitored. The challenge is achieving the tricky balance between limiting the spread of disease and allowing people freedom to move outside their homes.

— The U.S. military is bracing for a monthslong struggle against the coronavirus, looking for ways to maintain a defensive crouch that sustains troops’ health without breaking their morale — while still protecting the nation. Defense Secretary Mark Esper acknowledged it’s tough to enforce social distancing and other standards with a force of 2.2 million spread out all over the world.

— Efforts to slow the spread of the coronavirus may be choking Africa’s already-vulnerable food supply. Lockdowns in at least 33 of Africa’s 54 countries have blocked farmers from getting food to markets and threatened deliveries of food assistance to rural populations. Many informal markets where millions buy their food are shut.

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WHAT YOU NEED TO KNOW:

For most people, the coronavirus causes mild or moderate symptoms, such as fever and cough that clear up in two to three weeks. For some, especially older adults and people with existing health problems, it can cause more severe illness, including pneumonia and death. The vast majority of people recover.

Here are the symptoms of the virus compared with the common flu.

One of the best ways to prevent spread of the virus is washing your hands with soap and water. The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommends first washing with warm or cold water and then lathering soap for 20 seconds to get it on the backs of hands, between fingers and under fingernails before rinsing off.

You should wash your phone, too. Here’s how.

TRACKING THE VIRUS: Drill down and zoom in at the individual county level, and you can access numbers that will show you the situation where you are, and where loved ones or people you’re worried about live.

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ONE NUMBER:

— 8.7: U.S. retail sales plummeted 8.7% in March, an unprecedented decline, as the viral outbreak forced an almost complete lockdown of commerce nationwide.

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IN OTHER NEWS:

— HOME BAKERS: With millions of people across the globe stuck at home due to lockdown measures imposed during the coronavirus pandemic, many people are choosing to make their own bread, rather than venturing to the local store to buy their weekly fix.

— ALOHA MASKS: Face masks made with the same colorful prints used for aloha shirts — known as “Hawaiian shirts” elsewhere in the United States — are the latest fashion trend in Hawaii as islanders try to prevent the spread of the coronavirus.

— POST-PANDEMIC PTSD?: A Boston Marathon bombing survivor talks about his own journey back to mental health, the importance of self-care, and the anxiety, depression and trauma some may be struggling with as the pandemic wears people down.

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Follow AP coverage of the virus outbreak at https://apnews.com/VirusOutbreak and https://apnews.com/UnderstandingtheOutbreak

BIRMINGHAM, Ala. (AP) — For people who lost homes to the deadly tornadoes that rampaged across the South, there are no comforting hugs from volunteers or handshakes from politicians. For homeless families, there are no Red Cross shelters, only hotel rooms.

These and other changes reflect how disaster response has been affected by the coronavirus pandemic: Workers are still trying to provide all the help they can, but from a distance.

Within hours of the tornado onslaught, which began Sunday and killed more than 30 people, church groups were out in damaged communities, and Southern Baptist volunteers were told to avoid holding hands with people as they prayed, said Sam Porter, director of disaster relief for the nearly 15 million-member denomination. Hugs also are out.

“You’re talking about a very hard change in procedures,” Porter said Tuesday. “It’s agonizing. Jesus touched people all through his ministry. He created us as emotional beings. But we are trying to comply with the guidelines.”

About 550 people in four states were staying in hotel rooms funded by the Red Cross since mass shelters were not an option, said Brad Kieserman, a vice president of the organization.

People are being fed catered meals delivered to the hotels instead of through a large kitchen, he said, and workers are wearing masks, gloves and other gear when dealing with people affected by the storms. Other agencies are making similar provisions, he said.

“How ironic is it that the very thing that may unify people and unify communities is the condition in which we have to remain 6 feet apart,” Kieserman said.

The death toll from the outbreak rose to at least 34 as officials said a 12th person had died in Mississippi. There, Gov. Tate Reeves, who toured damaged areas, said the pandemic was making a bad situation worse.

“The fact that the coronaviruses exist is complicating the recovery from the tornado, while the tornadoes are complicating our efforts to make sure that we do everything in our power to stop the spread of the virus,” Reeves said during a stop in tiny Soso. “It is it is exceptionally complicated, and it’s tough on all of us.”

About 40 miles away in Prentiss, around 15 people wearing masks helped clean up amid the rubble of James Hill Church, which took a direct hit from a tornado. Pastor Sean Coney said breathing through cloth made the work more difficult, “but you can’t be selifsh” and risk spreading the virus.

“As difficult as it may be, you have to do it,” Coney said.

A twister left shingles, insulation and other debris strewn across Chattanooga, Tennessee. Almost every official on a tour of storm damage wore a protective mask, and some wore gloves. Instead of hugs and handshakes, Gov. Bill Lee and Mayor Andy Berke offered elbow bumps while talking to affected residents.

“We need money! We need that stimulus check now!” a person in a passing pickup truck yelled out to Lee as he visited with people cleaning around their home.

The storms claimed lives in at least six states, and the National Weather Service said preliminary assessments found evidence of at least 27 twisters. The strongest confirmed so far was an EF-4 tornado that devastated southeastern Mississippi with winds as strong as 170 mph (273 kph).

Hundreds of homes and businesses were damaged or destroyed across the region, and heavy rains caused flooding in some areas. Nashville, Tennessee, received 2.23 inches (5.66 centimeters) of rain in a day, the weather service said. A day later, on Tuesday morning, the city saw snow flurries.

Damage occurred up the East Coast, with a flurry of tornado warnings issued in Delaware after storms left the Southeast.

With the economy already faltering because of business shutdowns and job losses linked to the pandemic, the storms hit the state’s $2.9 billion poultry industry. At least 90 poultry houses were damaged or destroyed, many near the city of Collins, the Mississippi State University Extension Service said.

“Although some houses were between flocks and empty, many of these houses had chickens in them,” poultry specialist Tom Tabler said in a statement. “Some would have been chicks just a few days old, while others would have been flocks nearly ready for harvest.”

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This story has been corrected to remove reference to record one day flooding in Nashville.

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Associated Press writers Emily Wagster Pettus in Jackson, Mississippi; Kimberlee Kruesi in Chattanooga, Tennessee; and video journalist Sarah Blake Morgan in Charlotte, North Carolina, contributed to this report.

Governments battling a virus that has crossed borders with breathtaking speed pinned their hopes Tuesday on tests, technology and a coordinated approach to ease the tight restrictions on movement that have slowed the outbreak but strangled the global economy.

While the European Union looked into creating a COVID-19 smartphone app that could function across the bloc, governors on both U.S. coasts pledged to work together as they planned an easing of the confinement of millions. The main concern is to avoid a resurgence by the virus.

As governments grapple with when and how to reopen their countries for business, the International Monetary Fund projected that the world economy will suffer its worst year since the Great Depression in the 1930s. The grim forecast Tuesday underscored the dilemma facing world leaders as they strive to balance public health against economic stability.

Around the world, India extended the world’s largest lockdown on 1.3 billion people until May 3. In Britain, new data showed hundreds more people died of the virus than have been recorded in the government’s daily tally from hospitals. The dead include a wave of victims in nursing homes.

China faced a new flare-up along its remote northern border with Russia. The border has been sealed and medical units have rushed to the area to prevent travelers from returning with the virus.

New infections appear to have leveled off in much of Asia and Europe, including Italy, France, Spain and Germany, said Dr. Sebastian Johnston, a professor of respiratory medicine at Imperial College London.

Even in New York — where reported coronavirus deaths passed 10,000 on Monday — Gov. Andrew Cuomo declared the “worst is over if we can continue to be smart.” More than 23,000 people have died of the virus in the United States overall, with close to 600,000 confirmed infections, according to a tally by Johns Hopkins University.

Tensions between the White House and the nation’s governors increased when President Donald Trump claimed that he has “total” authority to decide how and when to reopen the economy. The Constitution largely delegates such authority to states.

“We don’t have a king,” Cuomo, a Democrat, said Tuesday on NBC’s “Today. “We have a president. That was a big decision. We ran away from having a king, and George Washington was president, not King Washington. So the president doesn’t have total authority.”

With social distancing and lockdowns in place across much of the world, projections that the virus would spread with equal ferocity to other corners have yet to materialize. But without a vaccine or widespread antibody tests to determine how many people are immune to the virus, governments fear new outbreaks.

Germany’s foreign minister, Heiko Maas, called for a single smartphone app across the European Union.

“It’s important we don’t end up with a patchwork of 27 corona apps and 27 data protection regimes but coordinate as best as possible,” he told Germany’s Funke media group.

Maas said a contract-tracing app already being jointly developed by several countries showed that the EU “doesn’t have to copy the Big Brother methods of authoritarian states” but can instead safeguard both personal privacy and public health.

Lothar Wieler, head of the Robert Koch Institute, Germany’s disease control center, said constantly exchanging information among countries and institutions about best practices, vaccine studies and protecting vulnerable people is key.

The virus has also forced rival companies to work together. Two of the world’s biggest drug companies — Sanofi Pasteur and GSK — announced they will combine forces to work on a vaccine. And Apple and Google last week announced a joint effort to help public health agencies worldwide use Bluetooth wireless technology to trace the contacts of infected people.

In China, where new reported cases have dwindled, life is ruled by a green bar-code symbol on a smartphone screen that says a user is symptom-free and can board a subway, check into a hotel or just enter Wuhan, the city of 11 million where the outbreak began in December.

South Korea and Israel have both aggressively used smartphone data to track the movements of carriers. But epidemiologists say contact tracing must be combined with widely available testing, which has been lacking in places like the United States and Britain.

In Europe, officials pointed to positive signs as they started to reopen their economies.

In Italy, where the day-to-day count of infections has been trending downward, bookstores, stationery stores and shops selling baby supplies were allowed to open nationwide. Forestry workers, needed to clear dead trees ahead of the summer fire season, also returned to work.

In Spain, where the official death toll rose to over 18,000, the country’s main epidemiology institute found an additional 1,500 “unexpected deaths” since mid-March after it studied mortality rates.

Spanish workers returned Monday to some factory and construction jobs. Stores and services were still closed, and the government required office workers to keep working from home.

In Austria, hardware and gardening stores reopened Tuesday. Chancellor Sebastian Kurz said the government is monitoring new infections closely, and “if the figures develop in the wrong direction, we will, of course, pull the emergency brake.”

In Britain, which started its lockdown later than the rest of Europe, new infections and deaths were still rising. Britain as of Monday reported more than 11,300 deaths of COVID-19 patients in hospitals. But the head of one of the country’s biggest nursing home operators said Tuesday that the number of infections and deaths among the elderly is much higher than official reports.

In the United States, governors in the Northeast and along the West Coast announced separate state groups to coordinate reopenings.

California Gov. Gavin Newsom said he would announce a detailed plan Tuesday for lifting virus restrictions, using “science to guide our decision-making and not political pressure.”

“The house is still on fire,” New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy said. “We still have to put the fire out “but also ”make sure this doesn’t reignite.”

New Jersey is in a coalition with Connecticut, Delaware, Massachusetts, New York, Pennsylvania and Rhode Island to figure out how to reopen their economies while still fighting the virus. The governors of California, Oregon and Washington announced a similar plan.

More than 1.9 million infections have been reported and over 120,000 people have died worldwide, according to Johns Hopkins University. The figures understate the true size of the pandemic, because of limited testing, uneven counting of the dead and concealment by some governments.

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Hinnant reported from Paris while Blake contributed from Bangkok. Associated Press journalists around the world contributed to this report.

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Follow AP coverage of the pandemic at http://apnews.com/VirusOutbreak and https://apnews.com/UnderstandingtheOutbreak

NEW YORK (AP) — Jennifer Page jokes that four months in, this decade is already the worst of her life.

A server at a nearby resort, she’s out of work due to the pandemic. After someone tested positive at her mother’s nursing home, Page moved her into a room off the dining room. Two weeks ago, her father died. The day after his memorial, she and her family went for a walk, and her 5-year-old daughter, Roxa, asked for something coveted by children for more than a century.

“She was just like, ‘Mama, when this is over, can we go to the movies?’” recalled Page, 36, of Buffalo. “She went through the whole process of going to the movies. She said, ‘We can get popcorn and each have our own drink and each get a candy.’”

The coronavirus pandemic is forcing Americans to journey through hardship without some of the reliable comforts of hard times. One of them is the movies. For more than a century, movie theaters have been a refuge, a communal escape, a place for popcorn-chomping-dreaming-with-your-eyes-open transportation away from everything else.

A world without movie theaters, like the one we’re temporarily inhabiting, has longbeenforetold. It’s been predicted with every major technological advancement in media, and especially since the advent of streaming. Cinemas, so inconveniently located outside the home, are a dinosaur, analysts have said — one that’s on its way out.

Now, we’re getting a glimpse of life without movie theaters. Most see this as an opening for streaming services, hastening their expected takeover. But it has also brought a renewed appreciation for the pleasures of going to the movies and clarified their unique role in social life. Isolation has only illuminated the power of sitting together in the dark.

“It’s one of those things you can’t really appreciate something until it’s taken away from you,” says John Bell, president of the Tampa Theatre, a 1920s-era movie palace. “This has certainly accelerated a dystopian future look at what the landscape could look like. But I just innately believe that humans are social creatures and, ultimately, they will want to gather again. Streaming is great, it’s convenient. But it’s just not the same.”

Nearly a month of shelter-in-place orders have forced some to hanker for the sticky floors of cinemas like never before. Sure, those people texting a few seats over were always a nuisance and the films weren’t always so great. But peruse social media lists of “What I’m going to do when this is over” and you will see countless cravings for the big screen and a tub of popcorn.

Being holed up at home has, for some, made the difference between streaming and moviegoing especially acute. Neither “Tiger King” nor the bite-sized “movies in chapters” of Quibi fill the loss of a night out at the movies. Gary Walker, a 22-year-old in San Jose, California, who’s studying film at San Francisco State University, has been filling his time watching documentaries on Netflix and series on Disney Plus. But it doesn’t do the trick.

“I can’t wait to go back,” says Walker. “I’m just a person who really likes the social experience of going to the movies, not sitting at home watching a movie by myself. Don’t get me wrong — I like doing that, too. But it’s really different sitting in a theater with other people.”

Theaters nationwide have shuttered indefinitely due to the pandemic, leaving about a dozen still open. Most are drive-ins, which have seen a sudden resurgence after a decades-long slide. Chains have furloughed or laid off employees, many of whom are part-time or hourly workers.

The shutdown will almost certainly lead to the permanent closure of some cinemas. Analysts say that AMC Entertainment, which presides over the nation’s largest chain, is on the cusp of bankruptcy. To weather the storm, theater owners — like many other businesses — have sought federal aid through the coronavirus stimulus package.

The earliest most theaters are hoping to reopen is June. All major releases have been postponed up until mid-July.

“The ability, when this is done, to go out and enjoy something entertaining and affordable with your family and friends is going to be hugely important to the cultural and psychological fabric of the country,” says John Fithian, president of the National Organization of Theater Owners. “We want to do that,” he says. “But we still need to be viable.”

Moviegoing has been waning for two decades, a decline masked by higher ticket prices. Last year, domestic ticket sales amassed $11.4 billion. That revenue is a big reason why all but a handful of the largest upcoming productions have postponed theatrical release rather than head to streaming. The big money is still at the box office.

No one expects, whenever theaters do reopen, that masses will stream through the doors. Distancing protocols could still be kept in place, at least at first. So long as there isn’t a vaccine for COVID-19, some will be hesitant to attend crowded indoor events. Last month the analytics company EDO polled moviegoers and found 70% said they were likely to return to cinemas. Some 45% said they would wait a few weeks; 11% said they’d wait months.

Theaters shuttered during the Spanish Flu pandemic of 1918, but in a more patchwork fashion. The establishment of the studio system followed in the 1920s, a period recounted by Hollywood historian William Mann in “Tinseltown: Murder, Morphine, and Madness at the Dawn of Hollywood.” Mann believes this pandemic will likewise reshape the movie business.

“If out of this comes a renewed appreciation for going back to some glamour, maybe, in the movies, movie theaters will find their way,” says Mann. “Movie theater chains might be wise to come out of this with a whole new way of, ‘Hey, look at all we have to offer. We can make this experience really special.’”

As the pandemic continues, a larger streaming ecosystem is growing, too. Viewership is soaring. Viewing parties, a digital facsimile of communal moviegoing, are increasing. Some theaters have even themselves embraced streaming as a band-aid and set up virtual screenings online.

But none of those options — all of which come with a “pause” button — provide what many right now could use most: an escape.

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Follow AP Entertainment Writer Jake Coyle on Twitter at http://twitter.com/JakeCoyleAP

NEW YORK (AP) — The flow of money to small businesses under the government’s $349 billion coronavirus relief plan is picking up momentum although many company owners are still waiting and wondering.

Money that was held up by technological and legal issues and the sheer volume of applications began arriving in companies’ bank accounts at the end of last week. The Small Business Administration reported Monday that more than 959,000 applications had been approved for over $232 billion from the Paycheck Protection loan program.

The money Amy Power received Friday evening will go toward paying the eight staffers of her Dallas-based public relations company. Revenue is down more than 12% at The Power Group, whose clients include restaurants whose business has been curtailed by the virus outbreak.

“I want to get through this and retain my people,” Power says.

The loans of up to $10 million at an interest rate of 1% carry the promise of forgiveness if the money is used for retaining staffers or rehiring those who have been laid off. They also can be used for rent, mortgage interest and utilities.

The money was arriving as the first economic impact payments under the government’s $2 trillion relief package also landed in Americans’ bank accounts.

The Paycheck Protection Program so far hasn’t lived up to expectations raised by Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin, who said in announcing the program that owners could get loan money the same day they applied. But neither the SBA nor banks could turn around hundreds of thousands of loans in a matter of days, let alone hours.

There were other obstacles to getting the money flowing. The SBA ran into computer problems and bankers initially favored their most established customers. Money was also delayed amid confusion between the SBA and banks over loan documents.

Owners were finding that while the government promised less paperwork and quick money, there were still the usual lending processes to be dealt with. Jim Kolea applied early in the program, which began April 3, and didn’t hear until Monday that his truck repair business, PennFleet, had been approved. But he still had a wait ahead.

“We should see paperwork later this week to sign,” said Kolea, whose company is based in Boothwyn, Pennsylvania.

Because the coronavirus has devastated the economy as a whole, some owners don’t feel that the loan money would guarantee their companies’ survival. Julie Goldman got her loan money Monday. She’s going to save the money to pay her five staffers when her company, Original Runner, is allowed to reopen by New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy. The company manufactures fabric runners used at weddings.

Goldman, whose company is based in Livingston, New Jersey, is worried about her business coming back after life gets back to normal. She doesn’t know if couples planning weddings will want to spring for details like runners.

“No one knows if they can stay open,” Goldman says. “It’s just a real struggle right now.”

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump claimed the “total” authority to decide how and when to reopen the economy after weeks of tough social distancing guidelines aimed at fighting the new coronavirus. But governors from both parties were quick to push back, noting they have primary responsibility for ensuring public safety in their states and would decide when it’s safe to begin a return to normal operations.

Trump would not offer specifics about the source of his asserted power, which he claimed, despite constitutional limitations, was absolute.

“When somebody is president of the United States, the authority is total,” Trump said Monday at the White House. “The governors know that.”

The comments came not long after Democratic leaders in the Northeast and along the West Coast announced separate state compacts to coordinate their efforts to scale back stay-at-home orders or reopen businesses on their own timetables.

Anxious to put the crisis behind him, Trump has been discussing with senior aides how to roll back federal social distancing recommendations that expire at the end of the month.

While Trump has issued national recommendations advising people stay home, it has been governors and local leaders who have instituted mandatory restrictions, including shuttering schools and closing nonessential businesses. Some of those orders carry fines or other penalties, and in some jurisdictions they extend into the early summer.

And governors made clear they wouldn’t tolerate pressure to act before they deem it safe.

“The president’s position is just absurd,” said New York Democratic Gov. Andrew Cuomo in an appearance Tuesday on “CBS This Morning.” “It’s not the law. It’s not the Constitution. We don’t have a king. We have a president.”

New Hampshire Republican Gov. Chris Sununu told CNN that, “All of these executive orders are state executive orders and so therefore it would be up to the state and the governor to undo a lot of that.”

“The government doesn’t get opened up via Twitter. It gets opened up at the state level,” said Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, a Democrat, referencing the fact that Trump had first made his assertion by tweet.

Meanwhile, governors were banding together, with New York, New Jersey, Connecticut, Pennsylvania, Delaware and Rhode Island agreeing to coordinate their actions. The governors of California, Oregon and Washington announced a similar pact, saying they will work together and put their residents’ health first and let science guide their decisions.

New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy, a Democrat, stressed the efforts would take time.

“The house is still on fire,” Murphy said on a conference call with reporters. “We still have to put the fire out, but we do have to begin putting in the pieces of the puzzle that we know we’re going to need … to make sure this doesn’t reignite.”

Trump, however, insisted it was his decision to make.

“The president of the United States calls the shots,” he said, promising to release a paper outlining his legal argument at some point.

While Trump can use his bully pulpit to pressure states to act or threaten them with consequences, the Constitution gives public health and safety responsibilities primarily to state and local officials.

Though Trump abandoned his goal of beginning to roll back social distancing guidelines by Easter, he has been itching to reboot an economy that has dramatically contracted as businesses have shuttered, leaving millions of people out of work and struggling to obtain basic commodities. The closure has also undermined Trump’s reelection message, which hinged on a booming economy.

Trump’s claim that he could force governors to reopen their states also represented a dramatic shift in tone. For weeks Trump had argued that states, not the federal government, should lead the response to the crisis. Indeed, he refused to publicly pressure states to enact stay-at-home restrictions, citing his belief in local control of government.

While Trump can use his daily White House briefings and Twitter account to try to shape public opinion and pressure governors to bend to his will, “there are real limits on the president and the federal government when it comes to domestic affairs,” John Yoo, a University of California at Berkeley law school professor, said on a recent Federalist Society conference call.

Mississippi Republican Gov. Tate Reeves, a supporter of Trump, said the question of when to lift restrictions would be “a joint effort” between Washington and the states.

Talk about how and when to reboot the nation’s economy has come as Trump has bristled at criticism that he was slow to respond to the virus and that lives could have been saved had social distancing recommendations been put in place sooner.

That frustration was amplified by comments made by Dr. Anthony Fauci, the nation’s top infectious diseases expert, who told CNN on Sunday that, “obviously,” had the country “started mitigation earlier, you could have saved lives.”

Trump responded by reposting a tweet that included the line, “Time to #FireFauci,” raising alarms that Trump might consider trying to oust the 79-year-old doctor. But at Monday’s briefing, Trump insisted Fauci’s job was safe after Fauci took the podium to try to explain his comments.

Trump has complained to aides and confidants about Fauci’s positive media attention and his willingness to contradict the president in interviews and from the briefing room stage, according to two Republicans close to the White House. They spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss internal conversations.

But Trump has told aides that he knows blowback to removing Fauci would be fierce and that — at least for now — he is stuck with the doctor. On more than one occasion, however, he has urged that Fauci be left out of task force briefings or have his speaking role curtailed, according to the Republicans.

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Mulvihill reported from New Jersey. Associated Press writers Jonathan Lemire in New York; Alan Suderman in Richmond, Virginia; Holly Ramer in Hopkinton, New Hampshire; John O’Connor in Springfield, Illinois; Marc Levy in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania; Scott Bauer in Madison, Wisconsin; David Eggert in Lansing, Michigan; and Mark Sherman and Darlene Superville in Washington contributed to this report.