The Detroit automaker is farthest along in the effort to make more of the critical breathing machines. It’s working with Ventec Life Systems, a small Seattle-area ventilator maker to increase the company’s production and repurpose a GM auto electronics plant in Kokomo, Indiana, to make the machines. The company said Friday it could build 10,000 ventilators per month starting in April with potential to make even more.

After Trump invoked the act, GM said in a statement that it has been working around the clock for more than a week with Ventec and parts suppliers to build more ventilators. The company said its commitment to build Ventec’s ventilators “has never wavered.”

Trump said that while the White House activated the act against GM, it may not be needed. “Maybe we won’t even need the full activation. We’ll find out,” Trump said Friday in the Oval office.

Trump’s action came just after a series of tweets attacking GM, alleging that the company promised to build thousands more breathing machines than it can deliver for coronavirus patients and that it wants too much money for them.

“As usual with ‘this’ General Motors, things just never seem to work out,” Trump wrote on Twitter, adding that the company promised 40,000 ventilators quickly but now says it will build only 6,000 in late April. Trump also tweeted that Ford should start making ventilators fast.

The move escalated a feud involving the president, GM, several governors and medical experts over the severity of the crisis and just how many ventilators will be needed to handle it.

Experts say the U.S. is hundreds of thousands of breathing machines short of what it likely will need to treat a rapidly rising number of COVID-19 patients. New York, Michigan, Louisiana and the state of Washington have been singled out as virus hot spots in the U.S.

The series of tweets came just hours after Trump, during a Fox News interview Thursday night, said he had “a feeling” that the number of ventilators being requested to handle the virus was too high. GM said it is offering resources to Ventec “at cost.”

In the interview, Trump questioned whether the number of ventilators requested by hospitals was exaggerated: “I have a feeling that a lot of the numbers that are being said in some areas are just bigger than they’re going to be,” Trump said.

“I don’t believe you need 40,000 or 30,000 ventilators,” he continued. “You know, you’re going to major hospitals sometimes, they’ll have two ventilators. And now, all of a sudden, they’re saying, ‘can we order 30,000 ventilators?’”

His remarks contradicted medical experts and apparently were aimed at New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo, who has been pleading for 30,000 more ventilators to handle an expected surge in critical virus patients during the next three weeks.

“When the president says the state of New York doesn’t need 30,000 ventilators, with all due respect to him, he’s not looking at the facts of this astronomical growth of this crisis,” said New York City’s mayor Bill de Blasio on ABC’s Good Morning America.

Nikki Haley Resigns From Boeing Board Over Opposition to Proposed $60 Billion Bailout

(COLUMBIA, S.C.) — Former U.N. ambassador Nikki Haley has resigned from the board of Boeing Co., cutting ties with a company she long supported as South Carolina governor because of her opposition to a bailout of the airplane manufacturer that is in the works amid the growing coronavirus outbreak.

“I strongly believe that when one is part of a team, and one cannot in good faith support the direction of the team, then the proper thing to do is to resign,” Haley wrote to Boeing CEO Dave Calhoun and board chairman Larry Kellner, in a letter dated March 16 and provided Thursday to The Associated Press. “As such, I hereby resign my position from the Boeing Board.”

Earlier this week, Boeing said it was seeking $60 billion in federal aid for itself and its supply chain, both of which are struggling amid the COVID-19 outbreak, which has halted major travel and shuttered many businesses. The Trump administration has said it would back Boeing, which is also a top U.S. defense contractor.

Haley, 48, joined the Boeing board last year after her departure from President Donald Trump’s administration. Popular in her home state, Haley moved back to South Carolina — where Boeing has a major production facility — founded a nonprofit organization, and wrote and promoted a memoir.

As governor of South Carolina prior to joining the Trump administration, Haley fought attempts by unions to represent workers at the North Charleston plant where the company assembles its Boeing 787 jetliners. At the time, she said unions weren’t needed because companies in her state take care of their workers.

In 2017, workers at the plant voted about 3-to-1 against representation by the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers, a resounding setback for unions that have long hoped to make inroads in the South.

Boeing is among the companies whose stocks are tumbling amid the COVID-19 outbreak. Earlier this month, the Chicago-based company said it had imposed a hiring freeze in response to the virus outbreak, which is undercutting air travel and threatening to kill airlines’ appetite for new planes.

Like Diaz, Liliana Hernandez, a 42-year-old housekeeper, is also taking that risk.

Her employer, the Fairmont Miramar Hotel in Santa Monica, told her to stop coming to work this week after bookings dried up. Her husband, a restaurant worker, recently lost his job as well.

The couple has just two months’ worth of savings to support themselves and their teenage son. “Everybody is panicking,” says Hernandez, who’s going to try to find a job at a grocery store.

“I’m concerned about getting infected or something like that, but we have to go on and continue to work. My fear, I have to put it away.”

Many others, including the 78% of American workers who live paycheck-to-paycheck, have even less cushion.

“As a single mother, I don’t know what I’m going to do,” says Mélissa St Hilaire, 37, a home healthcare worker in Miami. She was asked to stay home starting Friday, but she only has enough money to get her family through next week.

“I don’t know how long it’s going to take,” she says of the pandemic. “I’m just here waiting.”

The businesses that are hiring are largely doing their best to keep employees safe and vital services flowing, though no strategy is foolproof.

John DeCicco Jr., co-owner of New York supermarket chain DeCicco & Sons, has brought on about 100 additional employees to meet demand, including many laid off from a friend’s restaurant food supplier.

Among other measures, he’s limiting his stores to 30-40% the normal occupancy rates, sanitizing regularly, and providing customers and employees with gloves.

“They’re on the front line, so you’ve gotta protect them,” DeCicco says. He’s also given employees two weeks of paid sick leave, in addition to their normal sick and personal days.

“They’ll take care of the customers as long as we take care of them,” says DeCicco of his workers. “That’s our philosophy, and that’s what we’re trying to do.”

in addition to 此外

Others are under even more pressure. Caleb Ferling, co-owner of Seattle-area commercial cleaner Cleanstart, recently hired 20 new employees to meet surging demand as clients seek to clean their potentially contaminated offices.

as clients seek to因为客户希望

He outfits his workers in full personal protective equipment, including respirators and biohazard suits, when they go out on a COVID-19 cleaning job.

But he’s running out of essential supplies like disinfectant, and says he’ll have to let workers go if he can’t find more.

“We probably have enough for maybe a handful more jobs, and then we’re done, we’re out,” Ferling says.

running out of  用尽

disinfectant 消毒剂

As companies shutter and the economy grinds to a halt, Diaz is just one of the many thousands of Americans who have been, or are in danger of being, laid off amid the COVID-19 pandemic.

Aside from the hospitality industry, massive layoffs are expected in travel, manufacturing, and more. Some experts are predicting that the unemployment rate — which had been functionally nil before this crisis — could climb as high as 20%, an unprecedented figure in the modern era.

But even as the nation’s automakers stop building cars, airlines park most of their fleets and stadiums shut their doors, other companies are staffing up in a big way.

Facing a crushing surge in demand, companies that provide “essential” services like grocery stores and delivery firms are urgently seeking temporary help.

Amazon is adding 100,000 new full-time and part-time positions to keep up with a surge in online shopping.

Walmart has announced it will hire 150,000 new associates. Kroger, a grocer, is hiring 10,000 new employees nationwide, while Safeway is bringing on more than 2,000.

Fittingly, some of the job postings read more like calls to war than hiring notices.

“We are currently experiencing a monumental surge in our sales & foot traffic,” read a March 13 letter from Costco management seeking temporary worker referrals from staff.

But many of the jobs being created amid the pandemic involve working at the front lines of the crisis.

For those who grab hold of one of these economic lifelines, it could mean putting themselves and their loved ones at risk of contracting the potentially deadly illness. “It would be a calculated risk,” says Diaz, who’s trying to find a job before he burns through his four months worth of savings.

As he sees it, we’ll all need people willing to expose themselves to danger to keep the rest of us going. “We need each other more than ever nowadays, and I think there’s going to have to be somebody, a lot of somebodies, who are going to be willing to go out there and engage.”

China Announces Expulsion of U.S. Journalists

China’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs instructed Americans working for the three U.S. newspapers whose credentials expire at the end of the year to turn in their press passes within 10 days. Those reporters would then be barred from reporting inside China, as well as in China’s semi-autonomous regions of Hong Kong and Macau. The ministry also demanded information “in written form” about staff, operations, finances and real estate of the five American news organizations, including TIME, in China, Hong Kong and Macau.

The Chinese government said that the move to send reporters out of the country was taken in response to the U.S. not allowing more Chinese nationals working for state-run media to work in the U.S. On March 2, the Trump administration put a cap on the number of Chinese nationals allowed to be employed by five Chinese state-run news outlets operating inside the U.S. That action by the U.S. followed China’s decision to expel three reporters from the Wall Street Journal following the publication of an opinion article critical of the Chinese government.

expel three reporter驱逐三个记者

China’s “measures are entirely necessary and reciprocal countermeasures that China is compelled to take in response to the unreasonable oppression the Chinese media organizations experience in the U.S.,” the ministry wrote in a statement.

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo called China’s announcement “unfortunate,” adding in remarks to the press Tuesday that he hopes “they will reconsider.”

Pompeo defended the State Department’s actions to limit the staff of Chinese state-run media in the U.S. “The individuals that we identified a few weeks back were not media,” Pompeo said, “but were part of Chinese propaganda outlets.”