WASHINGTON -- Peter T. Gaynor, the federal government's top emergency manager, was about to go on television last week to announce that he would use wartime production powers to ensure the manufacture of about 60,000 desperately needed coronavirus test kits.With minutes until the camera went live
WASHINGTON — Peter T. Gaynor, the federal government’s top emergency manager, was about to go on television last week to announce that he would use wartime production powers to ensure the manufacture of about 60,000 desperately needed coronavirus test kits.
Some officials said Kushner had mainly added another layer of confusion to that response, while taking credit for changes already in progress and failing to deliver on promised improvements. He promoted a nationwide screening website and a widespread network of drive-through testing sites. Neither materialized.
After the governors of Illinois and New Jersey called Trump last month, Kushner’s team told FEMA to immediately deliver medical equipment to both states even though the career officials were concerned that would redirect valuable medical necessities away from where they were most needed, such as the coronavirus hot spot of Washington state. Agency officials had to call the states’ emergency managers to ask them to submit formal requests for supplies the White House had already promised.
Since jumping into the crisis in mid-March, Kushner has focused on coordinating a scattershot government effort — first to improve testing, where progress has been made, and then to obtain more medical equipment, which remains a major problem for hospitals. His team organized an airlift of 22 scheduled flights of gloves, masks, gowns and other medical supplies from China, the first touching down in New York on Sunday.
Kushner has long been one of the most powerful players in Trump’s West Wing, taking on a broad portfolio with mixed results. He is credited with helping to push through bipartisan criminal justice legislation that shortened sentences for some drug offenders and expanded job training for prisoners, but his much trumpeted bid to broker Middle East peace has gone nowhere.
The culture clash between public and private sectors has been jarring. The senior official described the Kushner team as a “frat party” that descended from a UFO and invaded the federal government. To government officials, the outsiders demonstrated a lax attitude to policy discussions — at one point using the website FreeConferenceCall.com to arrange high-level meetings. Others have used personal email accounts in delicate policy exchanges.
After the president at Kushner’s urging made a splashy announcement last month that Google was helping build a national screening website to direct Americans to testing locations, it turned out there was no such national site anywhere close to being unveiled by Google. While senior FEMA officials, including Gaynor, the agency administrator, privately complain that Kushner’s team is disrupting their operations, they describe Kushner himself as helpful. He arrived at planning meetings in recent weeks prepared with data sets that FEMA officials did not think to ask for, including models for expanding the emergency response. Some expressed relief that Kushner’s arrival meant someone at the White House was finally in charge of operational activity.
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