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Apparently you either relied on someone else for your information, or you just didn't pay attention. So let me refresh your memory.Here's the Timeline of the Trump Administration's Response to the Wuhan CoronavirusBeth Baumann | Apr 13, 2020 8:00 PMSource: AP Photo/Alex BrandonThe Trump campaign on Monday released a timeline of the Trump administration's response to the Wuhan coronavirus. Below is the timeline of events around the world and throughout the United States. Prominent decisions and actions are bolded.DECEMBER:December 31: China reports the discovery of the coronavirus to the World Health Organization.JANUARY:January 3: CDC Director Robert Redfield sent an email to the director of the Chinese CDC, George Gao, formally offering to send U.S. experts to China to investigate the coronavirus.January 5: CDC Director Redfield sent another email to the Chinese CDC Director, George Gao, formally offering to send U.S. experts to China to investigate the coronavirus outbreak,January 6: The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) issued a travel notice for Wuhan, China due to the spreading coronavirus.January 7: The CDC established a coronavirus incident management system to better share and respond to information about the virus.January 11: The CDC issued a Level I travel health notice for Wuhan, China.January 17: The CDC began implementing public health entry screening at the 3 U.S. airports that received the most travelers from Wuhan – San Francisco, New York JFK, and Los Angeles.January 20: Dr. Fauci announces the National Institutes of Health is already working on the development of a vaccine for the coronavirus.January 21: The CDC activated its emergency operations center to provide ongoing support to the coronavirus response.January 23: The CDC sought a “special emergency authorization” from the FDA to allow states to use its newly developed coronavirus test.January 27: President Trump tweeted that he made an offer to President Xi Jinping to send experts to China to investigate the coronavirus outbreak.January 27: The CDC issued a level III travel health notice urging Americans to avoid all nonessential travel to China due to the coronavirus.January 27: The White House Coronavirus Task Force started meeting to help monitor and contain the spread of the virus and provide updates to the President.January 29: The White House announced the formation of the Coronavirus Task Force to help monitor and contain the spread of the virus and provide updates to the President.January 31: The Trump Administration:Declared the coronavirus a public health emergency.Announced Chinese travel restrictions.Suspended entry into the United States for foreign nationals who pose a risk of transmitting the coronavirus.January 31: The Department of Homeland Security took critical steps to funnel all flights from China into just 7 domestic U.S. airports.FEBRUARY:February 3: The CDC had a team ready to travel to China to obtain critical information on the novel coronavirus, but were in the U.S. awaiting permission to enter by the Chinese government.February 4: President Trump vowed in his State of the Union Address to “take all necessary steps” to protect Americans from the coronavirus.February 6: The CDC began shipping CDC-Developed test kits for the 2019 Novel Coronavirus to U.S. and international labs.February 7: President Trump told reporters that the CDC is working with China on the coronavirus.February 9: The White House Coronavirus Task Force briefed governors from across the nation at the National Governors’ Association Meeting in Washington.February 11: The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) expanded a partnership with Janssen Research & Development to “expedite the development” of a coronavirus vaccine.February 12: The U.S. shipped test kits for the 2019 novel coronavirus to approximately 30 countries who lacked the necessary reagents and other materials.February 12: The CDC was prepared to travel to China but had yet to receive permission from the Chinese government.February 14: The CDC began working with five labs to conduct “community-based influenza surveillance” to study and detect the spread of coronavirus.February 18: HHS announced it would engage with Sanofi Pasteur in an effort to quickly develop a coronavirus vaccine and to develop treatment for coronavirus infections.February 22: A WHO team of international experts arrives in Wuhan, China.February 24: The Trump Administration sent a letter to Congress requesting at least $2.5 billion to help combat the spread of the coronavirus.February 26: President Trump discussed coronavirus containment efforts with Indian PM Modi and updated the press on his Administration’s containment efforts in the U.S. during his state visit to India.February 29: The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) allowed certified labs to develop and begin testing coronavirus testing kits while reviewing pending applications.February 29: The Trump Administration:Announced a level 4 travel advisory to areas of Italy and South Korea.Barred all travel to Iran.Barred the entry of foreign citizens who visited Iran in the last 14 days.MARCH:March 3: The CDC lifted federal restrictions on coronavirus testing to allow any American to be tested for coronavirus, “subject to doctor’s orders.”March 3: The White House announced President Trump donated his fourth-quarter salary to fight the coronavirus.March 4: The Trump Administration announced the purchase of approximately 500 million N95 respirators over the next 18 months to respond to the outbreak of the novel coronavirus.March 4: Secretary Azar announced that HHS was transferring $35 million to the CDC to help state and local communities that have been impacted most by the coronavirus.March 6: President Trump signed an $8.3 billion bill to fight the coronavirus outbreak.The bill provides $7.76 billion to federal, state, & local agencies to combat the coronavirus and authorizes an additional $500 million in waivers for Medicare telehealth restrictions.March 9: President Trump called on Congress to pass a payroll tax cut over coronavirus.March 10: President Trump and VP Pence met with top health insurance companies and secured a commitment to waive co-pays for coronavirus testing.March 11: President Trump:Announced travel restrictions on foreigners who had visited Europe in the last 14 days.Directed the Small Business Administration to issue low-interest loans to affected small businesses and called on Congress to increase this fund by $50 billion.Directed the Treasury Department to defer tax payments for affected individuals & businesses, & provide $200 billion in “additional liquidity.”Met with American bankers at the White House to discuss coronavirus.March 13: President Trump declared a national emergency in order to access $42 billion in existing funds to combat the coronavirus.March 13: President Trump announced:Public-private partnerships to open up drive-through testing collection sites.A pause on interest payments on federal student loans.An order to the Department of Energy to purchase oil for the strategic petroleum reserve.March 13: The Food & Drug Administration:Granted Roche AG an emergency approval for automated coronavirus testing kits.Issued an emergency approval to Thermo Fisher for a coronavirus test within 24 hours of receiving the request.March 13: HHS announced funding for the development of two new rapid diagnostic tests, which would be able to detect coronavirus in approximately 1 hour.March 14: The Coronavirus Relief Bill passed the House of Representatives.March 14: The Trump Administration announced the European travel ban will extend to the UK and Ireland.March 15: President Trump held a phone call with over two dozen grocery store executives to discuss on-going demand for food and other supplies.March 15: HHS announced it is projected to have 1.9 million COVID-19 tests available in 2,000 labs this week.March 15: Google announced a partnership with the Trump Administration to develop a website dedicated to coronavirus education, prevention, & local resources.March 15: All 50 states were contacted through FEMA to coordinate “federally-supported, state-led efforts” to end coronavirus.March 16: President Trump:Held a teleconference with governors to discuss coronavirus preparedness and response.Participated in a call with G7 leaders who committed to increasing coordination in response to the coronavirus and restoring global economic confidence.Announced that the first potential vaccine for coronavirus has entered a phase one trial in a record amount of time.Announced “15 days to slow the spread” coronavirus guidance.March 16: The FDA announced it was empowering states to authorize tests developed and used by labs in their states.March 16: Asst. Secretary for Health confirmed the availability of 1 million coronavirus tests, and projected 2 million tests available the next week and 5 million the following.March 17: President Trump announced:CMS will expand telehealth benefits for Medicare beneficiaries.Relevant Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act penalties will not be enforced.The Army Corps of Engineers is on ”standby” to assist federal & state governments.March 17: President Trump spoke to fast food executives from Wendy’s, McDonald’s and Burger King to discuss drive-thru services recommended by CDCMarch 17: President Trump met with tourism industry representatives along with industrial supply, retail, and wholesale representatives.March 17: Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin met with lawmakers to discuss stimulus measures to relieve the economic burden of coronavirus on certain industries, businesses, and American workers.March 17: Secretary of Agriculture Sonny Perdue announced a partnership between USDA, Baylor University, McLane Global, and Pepsi Co. to provide one million meals per weak to rural children in response to widespread school closures.March 17: The Treasury Department:Contributed $10 billion through the economic stabilization fund to the Federal Reserve’s commercial paper funding facility.Deferred $300 billion in tax payments for 90 days without penalty, up to $1 million for individuals & $10 million for business.March 17: The Department of Defense announced it will make available to HHS up to five million respirator masks and 2,000 ventilators.March 18: President Trump signed the Families First Coronavirus Response Act, which provides free testing and paid sick leave for workers impacted by the coronavirus.March 18: President Trump announced:Temporary closure of the U.S.-Canada border to non-essential traffic.Plans to invoke the Defense Production Act in order to increase the number of necessary supplies needed to combat coronavirus.FEMA has been activated in every region at its highest level of response.The U.S. Navy will deploy USNS Comfort and USNS Mercy hospital ships.All foreclosures and evictions will be suspended for a period of time.March 18: Secretary of Defense Mark Esper confirmed:1 million masks are now immediately available.The Army Corps of Engineers is in NY consulting on how to best assist state officials.March 18: HHS temporarily suspended a regulation that prevents doctors from practicing across state lines.March 18: President Trump spoke to:Doctors, physicians, and nurses on the front lines containing the spread of coronavirus.130 CEOs of the Business Roundtable to discuss on-going public-private partnerships in response to the coronavirus pandemic.March 19: President Trump announced:Very encouraging progress shown by anti-malaria drug Hydroxychloroquine for fighting coronavirus.Carnival Cruise Lines will make ships available for use as hospitals in impacted areas to use for non-coronavirus patients.March 19: Vice President Pence announced tens of thousands of ventilators have been identified that can be converted to treat patients.March 19: The State Department issued a global level 4 health advisory, telling Americans to avoid all international travel due to coronavirus.March 19: President Trump directed FEMA to take the lead on the Federal Government’s coronavirus response & visited FEMA HQ with Vice President Pence for a video call with Governors.March 20: The U.S. and Mexico agree to mutually restrict nonessential cross-border traffic.March 20: Secretary Mnuchin announced at the direction of President Trump that tax day will be moved from April 15 to July 15 for all taxpayers and businesses.March 20: President Trump:Spoke with Sen. Schumer about coronavirus response & stimulus measuresHeld a call with over 12,000 small business owners to discuss relief effortsAnnounced the CDC will invoke Title 42 to provide border patrol with tools to secure the bordersMarch 20: The Department of Education announced it will:Not enforce standardized testing requirements for the remainder of the school yearAllow federal student loan borrowers to stop payments without penalty for 60 daysMarch 20: Secretary Azar announced:FEMA is coordinating and assisting coronavirus testing at labs across the countryThe CDC is suspending all illegal entries to the country based on the public health threat, via Section 362 of the Public Health & Security ActMarch 20: Secretary Azar sent a letter to all 50 Governors that the federal government is buying and making available 200,000 testing swabsMarch 21: Vice President Pence announced to date over 195,000 Americans tested for coronavirus and have received their resultsMarch 21: The Trump Administration announced HHS placed an order for hundreds of millions of N95 masks through FEMAMarch 21: The FDA announced it had given emergency approval to a new coronavirus test that delivers results in hours, with an intended rollout of March 30March 21: Adm. Giroir confirmed 10 million testing kits had been put into the commercial market from March 2 through March 14March 22: President Trump approved major disaster declarations for:Washington StateCaliforniaMarch 22: President Trump announced:Governors will remain in command of National Guard forces & the federal govt will fund 100% of operations costHe directed the federal govt to provide 4 large federal medical stations with 2,000 beds for CA & 1,000 beds for NY & WA.March 22: President Trump confirmed his administration was working with Peru & Honduras to return Americans stranded in both countries as a result of travel restrictions.March 22: Vice President Pence announced:The testing backlog will be resolved by midweek.To date, over 254,000 Americans have been tested for coronavirus and received their results.March 22: President Trump announced that the USNS Mercy will be deployed to Los Angeles.March 22: FEMA issued guidance for tribal governments to seek federal assistance under the President’s emergency declaration.March 23: President Trump signed an executive order invoking section 4512 of the Defense Production Act to prohibit the hoarding of vital medical supplies.March 23: VP Pence announced:313,000 Americans were tested for the coronavirus & received results.FEMA established a supply chain stabilization task force so Americans get supplies they need.HHS will have commercial labs prioritize testing for hospitalized patients.March 23: The White House Office of Science & Technology Policy announced a public-private consortium to:Advance coronavirus research.Provide access to computing technology and resources for researchers.March 23: Attorney General Barr announced:The Justice Department held a National Task Force meeting on hoarding and price gouging.Each of the 93 U.S. Attorney General offices is designating a lead prosecutor to prevent hoarding.March 23: President Trump announced HHS is working to designate essential medical supplies as “scarce” to prohibit hoarding of these items.March 23: The Treasury Department announced it is working with the Federal Reserve to lend up to $300 billion to businesses and local governments.March 24: President Trump announced the Army Corps of Engineers & the National Guard are constructing four hospitals and four medical centers in New York.March 24: President Trump approved a major disaster declaration for the state of Iowa related to the coronavirus outbreak.March 24: Vice President Pence:Confirmed FEMA sent New York 2,000 ventilators.Announced individuals who have recently been in New York should self-quarantine for 14 days.March 24: Dr. Deborah Birx announced the U.S. has conducted more coronavirus tests in the last week than South Korea has over the prior eight weeks.March 24: The U.S. Army issued orders for three army hospitals to deploy their health care professionals to New York and Washington state, at the direction of Secretary of the Army Ryan McCarthy.March 25: President Trump approved major disaster declarations related to the #coronavirus outbreak for:TexasFloridaNorth CarolinaMarch 25: President Trump & Vice President Pence held a conference call with 140 non-profit organization leaders, including The Salvation Army & The Red Cross, to discuss coronavirus response efforts.March 25: President Trump signed a bill reauthorizing The Older Americans Act, which supports senior citizens by providing meals, transportation, and other crucial services.March 25: Vice President PenceHeld a conference call with equipment manufacturers to discuss on-going coronavirus response efforts.Announced 432,000 Americans have been tested for coronavirus and received results.Confirmed 4,000 ventilators were delivered to New York.March 25: Vice President Pence held discussions with multiple governors, including the Governor of Indiana & the Governor of MichiganMarch 26: President Trump approved major disaster declarations related to the coronavirus outbreak for:IllinoisNew JerseyMarylandMissouriMarch 26: President Trump announced the USNS Comfort will depart for NYC on Saturday to assist in the coronavirus response – 3 weeks ahead of schedule!March 26: President Trump participated in a video conference with the leaders of the G20 to discuss the global coronavirus response & the need for countries to share information and data on the spread of the virus.March 26: President Trump held a phone call with Chinese President Xi Jinping to discuss the coronavirus.March 26: Vice President Pence announced 552,000 Americans have been tested for coronavirus and received their results.March 26: Dr. Fauci announced the Federal Government is working with companies to speed up production of potential coronavirus vaccines while those drugs are still in the trial phase.March 27: President Trump signed The Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security (CARES) Act into law.March 27: President Trump signed a Defense Production Act memorandum ordering General Motors (GM) "to accept, perform, and prioritize federal contractors for ventilators.March 27: President Trump signed an executive order allowing the military to activate members of the Selected Reserve and Ready Reserve to active duty to assist with the Federal response to the coronavirus.March 27: President Trump approved major disaster declarations related to the coronavirus outbreak for:South CarolinaPuerto RicoMarch 27: President Trump appointed Office of Trade and Manufacturing policy director Peter Navarro to serve as the Defense Production Act Policy Coordinator.March 27: President Trump announced that 100,000 ventilators are projected to be manufactured in the next 100 days, three times the amount typically manufactured in one year.March 27: President Trump announced that Boeing offered the use of three "Dreamlifter" cargo air crafts to transport medical supplies across the country.March 27: Partnering with FEMA, the CDC, and the Coronavirus Task Force, Apple released a coronavirus app which allows users to screen for their symptoms.March 27: President Trump spoke with British Prime Minister Boris Johnson about the global coronavirus response and committed to helping provide ventilators to the U.K. where possible.March 27: Vice President Pence announced that 685,000 Americans have been tested for coronavirus and received their test results.March 27: Emory University began enrolling participants for a phase one clinical trial, sponsored by the NIH's National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), of a new, potential coronavirus vaccine.March 27: FEMA Administrator Pete Gaynor spoke to the director of each of the state's emergency operations about the state-led, federally-supported coronavirus response effort.March 27: The USNS Mercy arrived in the port of Los Angelse to help relieve the strain on hospital facilities in Southern California.March 28: President Trump visited Norfolk, VA to send off the USNS Comfort to New York City where it will help relieve the strain on local hospitals.March 28: President Trump approved major disaster declarations related to the coronavirus outbreak for:GuamMichiganMassachusettsKentuckyColoradoMarch 28: President Trump spoke with New York Governor Andrew Cuomo and Florida Governor Ron DeSantis regarding the coronavirus response effort.March 28: The CDC issued new guidance for residents of New York, New Jersey, and Connecticut to avoid non-essential domestic travel for 14 days to #StopTheSpread of the coronavirus within the U.S.March 29: President Trump announced that CDC guidelines will be extended through April 30 to promote #socialdistancing and other measures to stop the spread of the #coronavirus.March 29: President Trump approved major disaster declarations related to the coronavirus outbreak for:ConnecticutOregonGeorgiaWashington DCMarch 29: President Trump met with supply chain distributors including FedEx, Cardinal Health, and UPS to discuss ways to get state and local governments necessary medical supplies to combat the coronavirus.March 29: President Trump congratulated the Army Corps of Engineers for having completed construction on a 2,900 bedroom temporary hospital at the Javits Center in New York.March 29: President Trump tweeted his support for the FDA to expedite the approval process to approve mask sterilization equipment produced by Battelle.March 29: President Trump announced the on-going study of 1,100 patients in New York being treated with Hydroxychloroquine for coronavirus.March 29: President Trump directed the Treasury & Labor Departments to look at reinstating deductions of business expenses at restaurants, bars, and entertainment businesses to help the hospitality industry.March 29: The first "Project Airbridge" shipment of medical supplies from abroad, organized by FEMA, landed at JFK airport, carrying 80 tons of masks, face shields, and other vital medical supplies.March 29: President Trump announced that Cigna and Humana are waving co-pays for coronavirus treatment.March 29: Vice President Pence sent a letter to hospital administrators requesting that hospitals across the country report their coronavirus data to the Federal Government in addition to state authorities.March 29: Adm. Giroir announced that 894,000 Americans have been tested for coronavirus and received their results.March 29: HHS accepted 30 million doses of Hydroxychloroquine, donated by Sandoz, and one million doses of Chloroquine, donated by Bayer Pharmaceuticals, for clinical trials and possible treatment of coronavirus patients.March 30: President Trump announced that one million Americans have been tested for coronavirus and received their results.March 30: President Trump approved major disaster declarations related to the coronavirus outbreak for:AlabamaKansasPennsylvaniaRhode IslandMarch 30: Secretary Azar announced that the FDA has approved Battelle’s N95 mask sanitization process for use to decontaminate tens of thousands of masks per day.March 30: President Trump announced further private sector commitments to manufacture personal protective equipment by MyPillow, Honeywell, Jockey, Procter & Gamble, and United Technologies.March 30: President Trump announced, to date, FEMA has dedicated $1.3 billion to assist New York State’s coronavirus response.March 30: President Trump announced “more than 14,000” National Guard service members have been activated to respond to the coronavirus outbreak.March 30: President Trump spoke with the nation’s governors about their need for medical supplies.March 30: President Trump announced that in the coming days the Federal Government will be delivering:400 ventilators to Michigan300 ventilators to New Jersey150 ventilators to Louisiana150 ventilators to Illinois50 ventilators to ConnecticutMarch 30: President Trump spoke to Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte of Italy and pledged to send $100 million of medical supplies to aid Italy’s battle against coronavirus.March 30: Answering President Trump’s call for the private sector to join the fight against the #coronavirus, Ford Motor Company committed to producing 50,000 ventilators in the next 100 days.March 30: On coronavirus testing, Secretary Azar announced that the U.S. is currently testing nearly 100,000 samples per day.March 30: HHS took steps to accelerate a clinical trial of a potential coronavirus vaccine developed by Janssen Research & Development.March 30: CMS announced new regulatory changes to cut red tape and give flexibility to America’s health care workers by relaxing hospital workforce regulations, expanding child care, meal, and laundry services for health care workers, expanding tele-health reimbursement, and more.March 30: The USNS Comfort arrived in New York Harbor, providing more than 1,000 more hospital beds for patients without coronavirus, to relieve pressure on local hospitals.March 30: The USNS Mercy began treating patients in Los Angeles.March 31: President Trump officially issued “30 Days To Slow The Spread” guidance to mitigate the outbreak of coronavirus.March 31: President Trump approved major disaster declarations related to the coronavirus outbreak for:OhioMontanaMarch 31: President Trump participated in a conference call with executives of American Network Service Providers to promote connectivity amid social distancing.March 31: President Trump announced that the federal government is stockpiling 10,000 ventilators to be urgently distributed as needed once the coronavirus pandemic hits its peak in the U.S.March 31: President Trump announced that the Treasury Department and SBA are rapidly mobilizing money from the CARES Act’s $349 billion paycheck protection program, with the program set to be “up and running” by April 3.March 31: President Trump spoke to Michigan Governor Whitmer about the state’s need for ventilators.March 31: President Trump announced the Army Corps of Engineers & FEMA will construct:8 facilities with 50,000 bed capacity in CaliforniaA field hospital with 250 bed capacity in Michigan2 field hospitals in Louisiana with 500 bed capacityAn alternative care sight in New Orleans with a 3,000 bed capacityMarch 31: President Trump spoke with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan about the international effort to defeat the coronavirus and support the global economy.March 31: President Trump and the First Lady spoke with their Majesties King Felipe VI and Queen Letizia of Spain about efforts to combat the coronavirus.March 31: Vice President Pence announced that 10 states now have access to federal funding for The National Guard to respond to the coronavirus outbreak.March 31: Vice President Pence announced that 17,000 National Guard Servicemen have been activated across the country to assist in the coronavirus response.March 31: Vice President Pence announced that 1.1 million coronavirus tests have been completed.March 31: Adm. Giroir & Surgeon General Adams issued an open letter to the U.S. health care community about how to optimize the use of ventilators.March 31: The FDA issued an emergency use authorization for a two-minute coronavirus antibody test developed by Bodysphere Inc.March 31: The Treasury Department and IRS launched the employee retention credit, created by the CARES Act to incentivize businesses to keep their employees on payroll, and said businesses can begin using it.March 31: The VA announced that it had expanded virtual services to veterans, continuing to provide care while limiting in-person interactions that could potentially harm vulnerable populations at VA facilities.APRIL:April 1: President Trump approved a major disaster declaration related to the coronavirus outbreak for:North DakotaHawaiiThe Northern Mariana IslandsApril 1: President Trump spoke to Walmart CEO Doug McMillon about the need to procure gowns for hospitalsApril 1: President Trump spoke to military families whose relocation or reunion with loved ones was impacted by the coronavirus.April 1: President Trump announced that the construction & refurbishing of two additional hospital ships like the USNS Mercy and USNS Comfort are being considered.April 1: Vice President Pence announced that 1.2 million coronavirus tests have been completed.April 1: The White House, HHS, and the FDA worked with Senator Rob Portman to acquire and authorize for use over two million gowns donated to the Strategic National Stockpile by Cardinal Health.April 1: Dr. Birx announced that the White House issued a challenge to universities and states to develop ELISA, or Enzyme-Linked Immunosorbent Assays, tests to detect coronavirus antibodies in larger communities more quickly.April 1: The Treasury Department released FAQs to help small and medium businesses understand the paid sick and family leave tax credits now offered under the Families First Coronavirus Response Act.April 1: The Department of Labor posted a temporary rule to implement the Families First Coronavirus Response Act in order to provide paid sick and family leave.April 1: In New York City, the USNS Comfort began treating its first patients.April 1: The VA opened its East Orange, NJ medical center to serve non-veteran coronavirus patients to assist the state and FEMA in their response to coronavirus.April 1: The Treasury Department announced that Social Security recipients, including senior citizens, disabled Americans, and low-income Americans who do not file tax returns will have their coronavirus relief payments directly deposited into their bank accounts.April 2: President Trump invoked the Defense Production Act to direct 3M to produce more N95 respirator masks.April 2: President Trump invoked the Defense Production Act to help 6 companies (General Electric, Hill-Rom Holdings, Medtronic, ResMed, eRoyal Philips, and Vyaire Medical) get the supplies they need to make ventilators.April 2: President Trump approved major disaster declarations related to the #coronavirus outbreak for:VirginiaTennesseeThe U.S. Virgin IslandsApril 2: President Trump discussed the production of ventilators with GM CEO Mary Barra.April 2: President Trump announced that The Javits Center temporary hospital will be converted into a coronavirus hospital.April 2: President Trump announced that the Department of Defense will be establishing 48 more ICU beds in New York.April 2: President Trump announced that the Federal Government will be establishing a coronavirus hospital in Louisiana and Texas.April 2: President Trump took an additional coronavirus test and tested negative.April 2: President Trump ordered the Federal Government to cover the costs of all National Guard operations in states with recently approved disaster declarations.April 2: President Trump sent Senator Chuck Schumer a letter debunking false claims made against the Trump Administration’s coronavirus response.April 2: Secretary Mnuchin and Small Business Administrator Jovita Carranza announced that the Paycheck Protection Program, created by the CARES Act to provide $350 billion in loans to small businesses, will be launched tomorrow.April 2: Secretary Mnuchin announced that the first relief payments will be dispersed within two weeks.April 2: Vice President Pence announced that 1.3 million coronavirus tests have been completed.April 2: Vice President Pence announced that all Blue Cross Blue Shield Members will be waiving out of pocket costs for coronavirus treatment.April 2: Rear Adm. Polowczyk announced FEMA’s Supply Chain Stabilization Task Force has delivered:27.1 million surgical masks19.5 N95 million respirator masks22.4 million surgical gloves5.2 million face shieldsOver 7,600 ventilatorsApril 2: First Lady Melania Trump had a phone call with Mrs. Sophie Grégoire Trudeau of Canada, who is recovering from the coronavirus.April 2: The Federal Transit Administration (FTA) announced $25 billion in federal funding to support public transportation systems in response to the coronavirus.April 2: The Department of Justice and HHS distributed 192,000 N95 respirator masks confiscated from price gougers to health care workers in New York and New Jersey.April 2: The FDA approved the first coronavirus antibody test, developed by Cellex.April 2: The FDA issued new guidance to increase the supply of blood donations, reducing the deferral period for gay men from 12 months to 3 months.April 2: The Department of Education donated 5,760 N95 respirator masks discovered in storage to aid the fight against the coronavirus.April 2: Secretary Pompeo announced that the State Department has now brought home 30,000 Americans stranded overseas as a result of coronavirus-related travel restrictions.April 2: April 2: HHS announced it was relaxing enforcement of HIPAA violations to encourage health care providers to share coronavirus data and information with federal and state health care officials.April 2: The Trump Administration issued recommendations to nursing homes to help mitigate the spread of coronavirus.April 2: HUD announced it was immediately making $3 billion of CARES Act funding available to help America’s low-income families and most vulnerable citizens across the nation.April 2: The Energy Department announced it would immediately make 30 million barrels of the strategic petroleum reserve’s (SPR’s) oil storage capacity available to struggling U.S. oil producers.April 3: President Trump announced new voluntary CDC guidelines that all Americans wear non-medical, fabric or cloth face masks to prevent asymptomatic spread of coronavirus.April 3: The President met with energy execs from Phillips 66, Devon Energy, Continental Resources, Hilcorp Energy, Occidental Petroleum, The American Petroleum Institute, The Energy Transfer Partners, Chevron, & Exxon Mobil to discuss coronavirus’ impact on the energy industry.April 3: President Trump spoke with French President Emmanuel Macron to discuss convening the five permanent members of the UN Security Council in an effort to defeat the coronavirus and discuss its impact on the world.April 3: President Trump approved major disaster declarations related to the coronavirus outbreak for:New HampshireWest VirginiaIndianaArkansasOregonApril 3: President Trump signed a Presidential Memorandum blocking the export of N95 and other respirator masks, surgical masks, PPE gloves, and surgical gloves to ensure they are available in the U.S. – designating them as “scarce” under the Defense Production Act.April 3: President Trump announced that Anthem will waive co-pays for coronavirus treatment for 60 days.April 3: President Trump announced that uninsured Americans will have their coronavirus treatment covered, using funding from the CARES Act.April 3: Trump Administration officials spoke to the directors of the two largest health care providers in Louisiana, Ochsner and LCMC Health, to discuss their need for medical supplies.April 3: President Trump directed FEMA to send Ochsner Surgical Gowns.April 3: President Trump announced that 9,000 retired Army medical personnel have volunteered and are assisting the federal response to the coronavirus.April 3: President Trump announced that the DOJ and HHS have together secured:200,000 N95 masks130,000 surgical masks600,000 glovesfrom hoarders and have distributed the supplies to health care workers.April 3: Vice President Pence announced that 1.4 million coronavirus tests have been completed to date.April 3: Vice President Pence announced that 18,000 machines are already available across the country to administer Abbott 15 Minute Coronavirus Tests, with another 1,200 soon to be distributed to states.April 3: Vice President Pence announced that a Project Airbridge flight landed in Columbus, Ohio with medical supplies.April 3: Secretary Azar announced a public-private partnership with Oracle to collect crowd-sourced data on coronavirus therapeutic treatments.April 3: The SBA launched the Paycheck Protection Program for small businesses impacted by the coronavirus pandemic, issuing more than 17,500 loans valued at $5.4 billion.April 3: The Army Corps of Engineers is working with states to assess 750 requests for temporary hospital facilities, having completed 673 already.April 3: The FDA announced it would coordinate the national effort to develop blood-related therapies for COVID-19.April 3: The Defense Department’s Joint Acquisition Task Force launched a new portal giving the private sector the ability to submit information and solutions to the DoD.April 3: The State Department announced that they have awarded contracts for 8 new medical facilities, totaling 9,693 new beds.April 3: The Department of Labor issued guidance to help employers reduce their use of N95 respirators, freeing up supply for the coronavirus response.April 3: HUD announced it is making $200 million in Indian housing block grants for Indian Tribes under the CARES Act.April 3: EPA Administrator Wheeler held a call with retailers and marketplace platforms to discuss ways to protect consumers from fake disinfectants.April 3: First Lady Melania Trump held a phone call with Mrs. Brigitte Macron of France to discuss the coronavirus response.April 4: President Trump announced that 1,000 members of the Defense Department’s Medical Corps will be deployed to New York to assist in the fight against coronavirus.April 4: President Trump spoke to commissioners of major league sports organizations including the MLB, NFL, & NBA, recognizing what the leagues, teams, and players are doing in their communities to combat coronavirus.April 4: President Trump tweeted encouragement to American children unable to start their Little League baseball season on time due to coronavirus.April 4: President Trump approved major disaster declarations related to the coronavirus outbreak for:NebraskaWisconsinMaineNevadaApril 4: President Trump announced that he was considering a second coronavirus task force focused on the economy.April 4: President Trump urged PM Modi of India to allow Hydroxychloroquine to be shipped to the United States.April 4: President Trump announced that the U.S. government has repatriated over 40,000 Americans from 75 countries.April 4: Vice President Pence spoke to Governors of New York, New Jersey, Louisiana, Massachusetts, Michigan, and Maryland.April 4: FEMA obligated $44 million to Iowa under the state’s major disaster declaration to combat the coronavirus.April 5: President Trump approved major disaster declarations related to the coronavirus outbreak for:South DakotaNew MexicoOklahomaMississippiApril 5: April 5: President Trump announced that by Tuesday, 3,000 military and medical personnel will have deployed to New York, New Jersey, and Connecticut to assist in the coronavirus response effort.April 5: President Trump announced that the Trump Administration will be sending New York 600,000 N95 masks tomorrow, including 200,000 to Suffolk County alone.April 5: President Trump announced that the Administration will soon send:300 ventilators to Michigan200 ventilators to Louisiana600 ventilators to Illinois100 ventilators to Massachusetts500 ventilators to New JerseyApril 5: President Trump announced the establishment of a federal coronavirus medical station in Washington D.C.April 5: President Trump announced that Washington has returned 400 ventilators to the strategic national stockpile.April 5: President Trump announced that 1.67 million coronavirus tests have been completed.April 5: President Trump announced that the government has stockpiled 29 million doses of HydroxychloroquineApril 5: Dr. Birx announced that testing in the New York metro area, New Jersey, Louisiana, and Washington has exceeded the testing rate of Spain and ItalyApril 5: Adm. Polowczyk announced that three Project Airbridge flights of medical supplies landed across the US today carrying:1 million gowns2.8 million surgical masks11.8 million glovesApril 5: Adm. Polowczyk spoke to top health officials from states severely impacted by the coronavirus to discuss the supply chain.April 5: Secretary Wilkie announced that the VA is making 1,500 beds available at VA hospitals to help states and localities across the country.April 5: Vice President Pence spoke to governors from states severely impacted by the coronavirus, including Michigan, Louisiana, and Illinois.April 5: FEMA and The Army Corps of Engineers completed renovations at the McCormick Place Pavilion in Chicago, providing an additional 500 hospital beds for the cityApril 6: President Trump announced an agreement with 3M to produce and import 55.5 million N95 masks each month for the next three months.April 6: President Trump held a call with CEOs from pharmaceutical and bio-tech companies to discuss potential coronavirus therapeutics.April 6: President Trump had a “very friendly” phone call with former Vice President Joe Biden to discuss the coronavirus.April 6: President Trump announced that 1.79 million coronavirus tests have been completed.April 6: President Trump approved Governor Murphy’s request to allow New Jersey patients aboard the USNS Comfort.April 6: President Trump approved Governor Cuomo’s request to allow the treatment of coronavirus patients on the USNS Comfort.April 6: President Trump announced that CVS will open two new drive-thru coronavirus testing sites in Georgia and Rhode Island. Both will use Abbott’s rapid coronavirus test.April 6: President Trump announced that the FDA authorized Inovio’s potential coronavirus vaccine for a clinical trial, wile 10 potential coronavirus therapeutic agents are in “active trials” with another 15 potential therapeutics in plans for clinical trials.April 6: President Trump praised the work of the private sector, including Apple and Salesforce, who have agreed to donate personal protective equipment to help defeat the coronavirus.April 6: President Trump announced that The Army Corps of Engineers is building 22 field hospitals and alternative care sites in 18 states.April 6: President Trump announced that 8,450 hospital beds and 8,000 ventilators have been deployed across the country from federal stockpiles.April 6: Vice President Pence announced that to date $4.1 billion has been allocated to states under federal disaster declarations.April 6: Vice President Pence announced that 21,000 National Guard Servicemen have been activated across the country to assist in the fight against coronavirus.April 6: VP Pence announced that thanks to California’s donation of 500 ventilators, the federal government will send:200 ventilators to MD100 ventilators to DE100 ventilators to NV50 ventilators to DC50 ventilators to Guam & the Northern Mariana IslandsApil 6: The CDC began publishing a new, data-centered coronavirus surveillance report on Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19).April 6: HHS announced an additional $186 million in CDC funding for state and local jurisdictions combatting the coronavirus.April 6: HHS announced it will be purchasing 15-minute coronavirus tests from Abbott for state, territorial, and tribal labs and for the Strategic National Stockpile.April 6: The Department of Education announced a streamlined process making it easier for states to use federal education funding for distance learning during the coronavirus outbreak.April 7: President Trump participated in a conference call with banking executives to discuss how to best deliver financial aid and technical assistance to small businesses.April 7: President Trump announced the SBA has processed “more than $70 billion” in loans to help small businesses as part of the Paycheck Protection Program.April 7: President Trump approved a major disaster declaration for Minnesota related to the coronavirus outbreak.April 7: President Trump announced that in addition to the 8,675 ventilators in the strategic national stockpile, the federal government will be acquiring 110,000 ventilators in the next three months to be distributed to states in need.April 7: President Trump announced that 1.87 million coronavirus tests have been completed.April 7: President Trump announced his intent to ask Congress for an additional $250 billion for the Paycheck Protection Program to loan to small businesses.April 7: Vice President Pence participated in a conference call with over 500 business owners to discuss their needs amid the coronavirus response effort.April 7: CMS Administrator Verma announced that CMS will make available an additional $30 billion in grants this week for health care organizations with increased operating costs due to the coronavirus.April 7: The State Department announced an additional $225 million in health, humanitarian, and economic assistance to reduce the transmission of the coronavirus around the world.April 7: As part of Project Airbridge, UPS and FEMA began shipments of 25 flights with more than three million pounds of medical supplies.April 7: The Department of Transportation finalized a requirement that airlines who receive assistance under the CARES Act continue flights to destinations they were serving before the outbreak, ensuring commercial flights are available.April 7: The EPA distributed over 1,100 N95 masks to the California Office of Emergency Services.April 8: President Trump spoke to over 10,000 faith leaders & more than 3,000 state, local, and tribal officials to discuss the coronavirus response effort.April 8: Secretary Pompeo announced that since January, over 50,000 Americans have been repatriated by 90 countries in over 480 flights.April 8: Under the DPA, HHS announced a $646.7M contract with Philips to produce 2,500 ventilators for the Strategic National Stockpile by the end of May, and a total of 43,000 by December.April 8: President Trump approved a major disaster declaration for Vermont related to the coronavirus outbreak.April 8: President Trump announced that a Project Airbridge shipment of protective gowns landed in Dallas, Texas.April 8: President Trump announced that 10 drugs to potentially be used against the coronavirus are currently in clinical trial.April 8: President Trump thanked Indian PM Modi for allowing a shipment of the life-saving drug hydroxychloroquine to be released to the U.S.April 8: Vice President Pence announced:$98B in forgivable loans were disbursed through the Paycheck Protection Program27,000 National Guard service members were activated across the country to assist in the coronavirus responseApril 8: The CDC issued new guidance for how essential and critical workers who have been exposed to the coronavirus can return to work, with precautions.April 8: Four additional flights as part of Project Airbridge landed across the country, delivering PPE and other medical supplies.April 8: Customs and Borders Protection announced with FEMA that it will detain shipments of PPE in order to keep critical medical supplies within the U.S. for domestic use.April 8: HHS announced an agreement with DuPont and FedEx to rapidly manufacture and deliver 2.25M new Tyvek Protective Suits to the Strategic National Stockpile over the next five weeks.April 8: HHS expanded telehealth services for Native Americans through The Indian Health Service.April 8: HHS authorized pharmacists to order and administer coronavirus tests, further expanding the availability of testing.April 8: HHS awarded $1.3B from the CARES Act to 1,387 health centers in all 50 states, 8 territories, and the District of Columbia to fight coronavirus.April 8: CMS issued updated guidance based on CDC guidelines to protect patients and health care workers in hospitals from the coronavirus.April 8: The USDA announced its approval of Arizona's & California’s request for food stamp recipients to purchase food online, allowing these recipients to purchase groceries for delivery.April 8: The VA announced that it has begun using funding from the CARES Act to pay overtime, hire new staff, and purchase supplies including PPE, beds, and pharmaceuticals.April 9: President Trump spoke with mental health advocates from across the country to discuss their work amid the coronavirus outbreak.April 9: President Trump approved major disaster declarations related to the coronavirus outbreak for:AlaskaIdahoApril 9: President Trump announced that 24 Project Airbridge flights have been completed to date, with an additional 49 flights scheduled.April 9: President Trump announced that there are currently 19 potential coronavirus therapies being tested and another 26 potential therapies in active planning for clinical trials.April 9: President Trump announced that, to date, over 2 million coronavirus tests have been completed.April 9: Vice President Pence announced that $125B in Paycheck Protection Program forgivable loans has been approved to date.April 9: Vice President Pence announced that a total of 29,000 National Guard service members have been activated across the country to assist in the coronavirus response.April 9: Vice President Pence announced that to date 4,100 military medical personnel have been deployed to New York, New Jersey, and Connecticut.April 9: The Treasury Department announced that it extended over 300 tax filing, payment, and administrative deadlines to give relief to taxpayers.April 9: Working with the Treasury Department, the Federal Reserve announced new lending programs providing up to $2.3T in loans to businesses and state & local governments.April 9: HHS announced it would relax enforcement of HIPPAA for pharmacies and other organizations that are working at coronavirus testing sites, helping these groups focus on testing.April 9: Secretary of Education DeVos announced that $6.3B in CARES Act funding will be immediately distributed to colleges and universities to provide cash grants to students affected by the coronavirusApril 9: The EPA announced that more than 11,500 pieces of PPE have been transferred to FEMA, which will be later transferred to state and local agencies across New England combating the coronavirus.April 9: The USDA launched the Pandemic Electronic Benefit Transfer (EBT) Program in Michigan, which will help feed children eligible for USDA school lunch programs who are now home during the coronavirus outbreak.April 9: The USDA announced relief for farmers across the country by giving borrowers 12 months to repay marketing assistance loans (MAL), helping protect farmers from being forced to sell crops to make loan payments.April 9: CMS temporarily suspended a number of regulations so that hospitals, clinics, and other health care providers can book the number of staff to confront the coronavirusApril 10: President Trump announced that 60 mask sterilization systems, with the ability to clean over 80,000 masks approximately 20 times, will be sent to 10 cities.April 10: President Trump spoke with Russian President Vladimir Putin to discuss the global coronavirus response and the global energy market.April 10: President Trump announced that a field hospital in Seattle will be leaving, as Washington State’s coronavirus outbreak becomes more manageable.April 10: President Trump announced that his administration is working to bring blood-based serology tests to market “as quickly as possible” so Americans can determine if they have had the coronavirus.April 10: President Trump announced that he will be establishing an “Opening Our Country Council” with more details coming early next week.April 10: President Trump signed a Presidential Memorandum to facilitate the supply of medical equipment and other humanitarian relief to Italy.April 10: Dr. Fauci spoke to Arkansas Governor Asa Hutchinson and Wyoming Governor Mark Gordon to discuss coronavirus mitigation in those states.April 10: Vice President Pence, CDC Director Redfield, & Surgeon General Adams spoke to over 400 leaders of the African American community, including Jesse Jackson, NAACP representatives, & the National Black Nurses Association to discuss the impact of the coronavirus.April 10: Vice President Pence spoke to Colorado Governor Jared Polis about the specific needs of his state’s battle against the coronavirus.April 10: Vice President Pence announced that more than 2.1M coronavirus tests have been completed to date.April 10: Vice President Pence announced that:29,600 National Guard Troops have been activated4,700 active duty medical personnel have been deployed to nine statesApril 10: Vice President Pence announced that to date, 26 Project Airbridge flights have landed in the U.S. with PPE, with four flights scheduled to land today with 250,000 gowns and 25M pairs of gloves.April 10: HHS began delivering $30B in relief funding to health care providers, part of the $100B allocated to health care providers by the CARES Act.April 10: The FDA approved an emergency authorization for a blood purification device to treat coronavirus patients.April 10: Transportation Secretary Elaine Chao announced $1B for Amtrak to continue rail service and respond to the spread of the coronavirus.April 10: The Treasury Department launched a web portal to help Americans who did not file tax returns receive their coronavirus relief payments under the CARES Act.April 10: The Treasury Department announced it will launch a new “get my payment” app where Americans can enter their direct deposit information to get coronavirus relief payments quicker.April 10: The VA deployed medical staffers to New Orleans to help “surge” personnel in the area, which is currently being heavily impacted by the coronavirus.April 11: President Trump approved a major disaster declaration for Wyoming related to the coronavirus outbreak, marking the first time in U.S. history a President has declared that a major disaster exists in all 50 states.April 11: The DoD announced it is using The Defense Production Act to get the private sector to produce 39 million N95 masks within 90 days, a $133M investment.April 11: Three Project Airbridge flights landed in Chicago, Illinois, delivering over 62 million gloves.April 11: The Department of Justice announced it is monitoring state and local social distancing regulations to ensure religious organizations are not unfairly targeted.April 11: The USDA added Florida & Idaho to the food stamp online pilot program, allowing food stamp recipients to purchase food online.April 11: CMS expanded the requirements that private health insurers provide free coronavirus testing, saying that this includes anti-body testing and costs related to coronavirus testing, like emergency room or urgent care visits.April 12: A deal brokered by President Trump was announced between The OPEC countries, Russia, and the U.S. to cut production and stabilize the oil market amid dual disruptions from coronavirus and the price war between Saudi Arabia & Russia.April 12: The FDA issued an emergency authorization to devices from Advanced Sterilization Products, which can decontaminate approximately 4 million N95 respirators each day.April 12: The FBI uncovered an international fraud scheme related to the attempted purchase of 39 million N95 masks by a Service Employees International Union Affiliate.Editor's Note: Want to support Townhall so we can keep telling the truth about China and the virus they unleashed on the world? 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Recently our boss Jim who is also main administratrator published the samples of moon: Imagine landing on the Moon, climbing down the ladder of your spacecraft, and looking around the harsh lunar landscape—to see another, older spacecraft standing only 200 yards away.That's exactly what happened in November 1969, when astronauts Pete Conrad and Alan Bean stepped out of the Apollo 12 lunar module. There, within walking distance on the edge of a small crater, stood Surveyor 3, an unmanned U.S. spacecraft that had landed in April 1967.Above: Apollo 12 astronaut Pete Conrad inspects Surveyor 3. Conrad's own spaceship, the Intrepid, can be seen 200 yards away in the background. [More] [Stereo View]Apollo 12's landing site had been chosen deliberately near Surveyor 3. The little lander had spent two and a half years exposed to the worst the Moon had to offer: harsh vacuum, intense cosmic radiation, meteoritic bombardment, extreme temperature swings. Back on Earth, NASA engineers wanted to know how metals, glass and other spacecraft building materials held up to that kind of punishment. Inspecting Surveyor 3 first hand seemed a good way to fOn their second four-hour EVA, Bean and Conrad walked over to Surveyor 3, took dozens of photographs and measurements, and began snipping off parts of metal tubing and electrical cables. They retrieved a camera. The very last thing they removed was a small scoop at the end of Surveyor's extendable arm, which had dug into the dry moon dust and gravel to make mechanical measurements of lunar soil.The little scoop, the camera, and other artifacts returned to Earth were analyzed and then put in storage. At some point in the intervening four decades, the scoop, owned by Johnson Space Center, was transferred on permanent loan to a space museum in Kansas. And there matters quietly lay ... until recently when researchers at NASA's Glenn Research Center (GRC) realized that that little scoop could hold big secrets.Namely, the secrets of digging on the Moon.NASA is returning to the Moon with plans to establish an outpost--and this will inevitably require some digging. The rocky, dusty lunar soil or "regolith" contains many of the natural resources humans need to live. For instance, there is plentiful oxygen bound up in ordinary moon rocks and, in polar regions, deposits of frozen water may lie hidden in the soil of shadowed craters. All that's required is a little excavation.But how? Lunar regolith is not like terrestrial soil. Here on Earth, the sand beneath our feet is shaped by a combination of biological and meteorological forces. Terrestrial soil is moist, rounded by weather, and utterly familiar. Lunar regolith, on the other hand, is a dry, glassy substance pounded into dusty smithereens by eons of meteoritic bombardment. It's not going to respond to a shovel--or a scoop--like terra firma.Right: A micro-photo of lunar regolith. The sample is a mixture of volcanic glass beads, sharp-edged fragments of "impact glass", rock fragments and . Photo courtesy of Larry Taylor, University of Tennessee."To design lunar digging equipment, we need to predict the forces required to move a scoop or other implement through lunar regolith," says Allen Wilkinson, team leader of the ISRU (In-Situ Resource Utilization) Regolith Characterization team at the Glenn Research Center.Surveyor 3 and a sister ship Surveyor 7 actually dug into the Moon and measured how hard their drive motors had to work to scoop, press, and scrape the soil. To interpret those measurements more than 40 years later, however, Wilkinson's team needs to know the dimensions of the Surveyor scoops. Unfortunately, they learned, the blueprints had been lost! Only a scoop itself could provide the answer.That sent Wilkinson to Hutchinson, Kansas, in April 2007 to borrow the Surveyor 3 scoop from the Kansas State Cosmosphere in order to make detailed measurements.Above: Surveyor 3 scoop being examined by four of the members of the Regolith Characterization team; from left to right they are Xiangwu (David) Zeng, Enrique Rame, Allen Wilkinson, and Juan Agui. Copyright 2007 Trudy E. Bell.Measuring the scoop, however, would prove to be no simple matter. You can't just lay a ruler along the scoop and read off the dimensions. Indeed, you can't touch it at all. The Surveyor 3 scoop is in an airtight triangular container, and NASA curators do not wish the scoop to be removed because handling in air will degrade the historical fidelity of the unique artifact.So the Glenn team borrowed photogrammetry apparatus from the Kennedy Space Center. Photogrammetry is a technique of measuring objects strictly from photographs. They have a photographic studio setup with a white background. GRC team member Juan Agui, an expert in digging force experiments, photographed the scoop in its container next to a standard photogrammetry cube, which has a precise checkerboard pattern on it. Then, using software, Robert Mueller of the Kennedy Space Center extracted dimensions using mathematical triangulation, measuring from points on the scoop to points where corners of dark checks meet on the cube. The software was developed for the Columbia Accident Investigation Board activity.Right: Surveyor 3 scoop inside its glass container. A fountain pen in the foreground gives the image scale. shows the interior of the scoop. Copyright 2007 Trudy E. Bell."Photogrammetry is pretty good," Agui remarks. "We got measurements of the scoop accurate to 0.030 or 0.040 inch (~1 mm)."They've since constructed a replica of the scoop and now they are using it to dig into simulated lunar regolith."Measurements of digging forces are underway," he says. The replicated scoop plunges into a rectangular "soil bed" filled with JSC-1a, a man-made moondust substitute that closely matches the known properties of lunar regolith, while a computer monitors bearing forces. "Our team is quite pleased to find that the measurements appear to be close to reproducing [the best] Surveyor 7 data from the Moon."With this test bed in place, the team can, e.g., move forward to test alternate scoop designs and refine theories of lunar soil mechanics. "Obtaining the Surveyor replica really made the difference," says Agui.The secrets of digging on the Moon are being revealed.Author: Trudy E. Bell | Editor: Dr. Tony Phillips | Credit: Science@NASAmore informationMore about the Surveyor program: from NASA and from Wikipedia.The Surveyor 3 scoop is described in a 1971 paper "Examination of the Surveyor 3 Surface Sampler Scoop Returned by the Apollo 12 Mission," by R. F. Scott and K. A. Zuckerman. Caution: PDF is a large 35MB file.The Apollo Lunar Surface Journal for Apollo 12 -- The transcript for the second EVA, when Conrad and Bean cut the scoop off Surveyor 3, begins at 134:28:20; the scoop was removed from Surveyor at the very end, almost as an afterthought as it was not on the original list of items to be returned.A brief history of lunar soil mechanics measurements:Several Apollo astronauts during their landings between 1969 and 1972 used a standard soil mechanics tool called a cone penetrometer to measure some of the regolith's mechanical properties in the top two feet (60 cm). So did the Soviet Luna and Lunakhod missions that landed elsewhere on the Moon. From the U.S. and Soviet data, soil mechanicians have indirectly calculated digging forces.Only two U.S. lunar spacecraft directly measured actual digging and trenching forces—direct measurements are the most accurate and useful for the design of lunar excavators: Surveyor 3 (which landed on Oceanus Procellarum on April 20, 1967) and Surveyor 7 (which landed near the crater Tycho on January 7, 1968). Those two Surveyor spacecraft included an extendable arm ending in a scoop (officially called the Soil Mechanics Surface Sampler). Among other tests, each scoop pressed vertically down to measure the regolith's weight-bearing strength, and pulled the scoop toward the spacecraft while bearing down to dig trenches. Only the data from Surveyor 7, though, were considered reliable enough to provide the needed digging forces.Over a year ago, the Glenn team calculated the expected digging force for the one published Surveyor 7 digging force measurement. But something was clearly wrong: their calculated predictions, based on the size of the scoop they had estimated from photographs, were 5 to 10 times smaller than what was actually measured on the Moon. That discovery motivated a year of effort to find all still-existing Surveyor digging data and artifacts, so the Glenn team could calibrate their experiments and benchmark the strength of their test soils.This detective hunt led the Glenn team to find video images of the Surveyor 7 scoop while digging, the actual returned Surveyor 3 scoop, possible data files with motor currents during other Surveyor 7 digging runs, and the paper calibration curves actually used in the 1960's to convert motor currents in into digging forces. The Glenn team learned that the Surveyor digger drawings were lost. They found two engineering prototypes of the scoop: one on display at the Smithsonian Air and Space Museum and one stored in the Garber Restoration facility. Glenn team member Juan Agui, an expert in digging force experiments, visited both sites to measure the scoops. To his consternation, he found the two engineering prototypes differed in crucial design details. But which one matched the actual flight units?The answer was: neither. This the Glenn team learned from 74-year-old Floyd Roberson, a former JPL scientist who had co-developed the Surveyor scoops and supervised their operations with the late Ron Scott of the Californian Institute of Technology, Surveyor principal investigator for soil mechanics. From his personal archives, however, Roberson verified that the Surveyor 7 scoop was identical to the Surveyor 3 scoop that the Apollo 12 astronauts had returned to Earth. The key to the puzzle, therefore, was the Surveyor 3 scoop available for hands-off study in a museum in Kansas..Thanks for reading this guys. Have a great time ahead

support for the creation of a now must figure out how to enact it. A prior nonpartisan analysis priced it at $400 billion per year — twice the state’s current budget. There appears to be no way to finance such a plan without staggering new taxes, making California a magnet for those with chronic illnesses just as its tax rates send younger, healthier Californians house-hunting in Nevada and big tech employers consider leaving the state.But Newsom is not alone. Other governors have made similar promises, and Newsom calls together the executives of the most ideologically like-minded states — Oregon, Washington, New York, Massachusetts, Connecticut, Maryland. What if they banded to create a sole unified single-payer health-care system, spreading risk around a much larger pool of potential patients while creating uniformity across some of the country’s wealthiest states?Fifteen end up forming an interstate compact, a well-established mechanism for working together, explicitly introduced in the Constitution. They sketch out the contours of a common health-care market: a unified single-payer regime with start-up costs funded in part by the largest issue ever to hit the municipal-bond market. The governors agree, as well, on a uniform payroll tax and a new tax on millionaires and corporations set to the same rate with revenues earmarked for health-care costs. The Trump administration has already proved willing to grant waivers to states looking to experiment beyond the Affordable Care Act’s standards — primarily for the benefit of those seeking to offer plans on their exchanges with skimpier coverage. But the states can’t act unilaterally: The Supreme Court has ruled that Congress must approve establishment of any compact claiming authority that previously resided with the federal government.Newsom pressures his friend House Majority Leader Nancy Pelosi to introduce a bill that would give the compact all federal money that flows into its constituent states for health-care costs. Pelosi’s members from Arizona and Florida balk at the proposal, which they fear would enable their states’ Republican governors to gut Obamacare protections. But there are scores more from states looking to join the compact, and their governors marshal Democratic House delegations into a bloc. The bill passes the House, with the support of tea-party Republicans eager to strike a blow against federal power.When it reaches the Senate, the initiative comes from Republicans. In 2011, then–Texas governor Rick Perry championed a Health Care Compact Alliance, joined by eight other states seeking a “regulatory shield” against the Affordable Care Act and full control over their Medicare and Medicaid funds. By the time the Democratic bill passes the House, current Texas governor Greg Abbott has rallied more than 20 states, including North Carolina, Missouri, and Arizona, for a new version of the Health Care Compact. He also has the support of two prominent senators, Ted Cruz and Majority Whip John Cornyn. Republicans who had promised for nearly a decade to repeal and replace Obamacare can finally deliver on the promise — for 40 percent of the country.The president sees opportunity, too. While running for president, Donald Trump called himself “Mr. Brexit,” a boast tied to his apocryphal claim of having accurately predicted the British vote to leave the European Union. Now he’s convinced, thanks largely to a Fox & Friends chyron reading BIGGER THAN BREXIT?, that an even more significant world-historical accomplishment is within reach. Trump lobbies Pelosi and Mitch McConnell to combine their bills. Trump beams at the Rose Garden signing ceremony, calling it “the biggest deal ever” as he goads Pelosi and McConnell into an awkward handshake. Historians will later mark it as the first step in our nation’s slow breakup, the conscious uncoupling of these United States.Let’s just admit that this arranged marriage isn’t really working anymore, is it? The partisan dynamic in Washington may have changed, but our dysfunctional, codependent relationship is still the same. The midterm results have shown that Democrats have become even more a party of cities and upscale suburbs whose votes are inefficiently packed into dense geographies, Republicans one of exurbs and rural areas overrepresented in the Senate. The new Congress will be more ideologically divided than any before it, according to a scoring system developed by Stanford political scientist Adam Bonica: the Republicans more conservative, the Democrats more liberal.Come January, we are likely to find that we’ve simply shifted to another gear of a perpetual deadlock unlikely to satisfy either side. For the past eight years, there has been no movement toward goals with broad bipartisan support: to fund new infrastructure projects, or for basic gun-control measures like background checks or limits on bump stocks. Divided party control of Capitol Hill will make other advances even less likely. For the near future, the boldest policy proposals are likely to be rollbacks: Democrats angling to revert to a pre-Trump tax code, Republicans to repeal Obama’s health-care law. By December 7, Congress will have to pass spending bills to avoid a government shutdown. Next March looms another deadline to raise the debt ceiling.Meanwhile, we have discovered that too many of our good-governance guardrails, from avoidance of nepotism to transparency around candidates’ finances, have been affixed by adhesion to norms rather than force of law. The breadth and depth of the dysfunction has even Establishmentarian figures ready to concede that our current system of governance is fatally broken. Some have entertained radical process reforms that would have once been unthinkable. Prominent legal academics on both the left and the right have endorsed proposals to expand the Supreme Court or abolish lifetime tenure for its members, the latter of which has been embraced by Justice Stephen Breyer. Republican senators including Cruz and Mike Lee have pushed to end direct election of senators, which they say strengthens the federal government at the expense of states’ interests.Policy wonks across the spectrum are starting to rethink the federal compact altogether, allowing local governments to capture previously unforeseen responsibilities. Yuval Levin, a policy adviser close to both Paul Ryan and Marco Rubio, wrote in 2016 that “the absence of easy answers is precisely a reason to empower a multiplicity of problem-solvers throughout our society, rather than hoping that one problem-solver in Washington gets it right.” In a recent book, The New Localism, center-left urbanists Bruce Katz and Jeremy Nowak exalt such local policy innovation specifically as a counterweight to the populism that now dominates national politics across the Americas and Europe.Even if they don’t use the term, states’ rights has become a cause for those on the left hoping to do more than the federal government will. Both Jacobin and The Nation have praised what the latter calls “Progressive Federalism.” San Francisco city attorney Dennis Herrera has called it “the New New Federalism,” a callback to Ronald Reagan’s first-term promise to reduce Washington’s influence over local government. “All of us need to be reminded that the federal government did not create the states; the states created the federal government,” Reagan said in his 1981 inaugural address. At the time, Democrats interpreted New Federalism as high-minded cover for a strategy of dismantling New Deal and Great Society programs. Now they see it as their last best hope for a just society.Some states have attempted to enforce their own citizenship policies, with a dozen permitting undocumented immigrants to acquire driver’s licenses and nearly twice as many to allow them to qualify for in-state tuition. Seven states, along with a slew of municipal governments, have adopted “sanctuary” policies of official noncooperation with federal immigration enforcement. Many governors, including Republicans in Massachusetts and Maryland, have refused to deploy National Guard troops to support Trump’s border policies, and California has sued the federal government to block construction of a wall along the Mexican frontier. After the Trump administration stopped defending an Obama-era Labor Department rule to expand the share of workers entitled to overtime pay, Washington State announced it would enforce its own version of the rule and advised its peers to do the same. “It is now up to states to fortify workers through strong overtime protections,” Washington governor Jay Inslee wrote last week.In California, officials who regularly boast of overseeing the world’s fifth-largest economy have begun to talk of advancing their own foreign policy. After Trump withdrew from the Paris climate agreement, Governor Jerry Brown — he has said “we are a separate nation in our own minds” — crossed the Pacific to negotiate a bilateral carbon-emissions pact with Chinese president Xi Jinping. “It’s true I didn’t come to Washington, I came to Beijing,” said Brown, who is often received like a head of state when he travels abroad. Around the same time, Brown promised a gathering of climate scientists that the federal government couldn’t entirely kill off their access to research data. “If Trump turns off the satellites,” he said, “California will launch its own damn satellite.”Brown’s successor Newsom comes to office just as Californians may be forced to reckon with how much farther they are willing to take this ethic of self-reliance. Since 2015, a group of California activists have been circulating petitions to give citizens a direct vote on whether they want to turn California into “a free, sovereign and independent country,” which could trigger a binding 2021 referendum on the question already being called “Calexit.”During the Obama years, it was conservatives who’d previously talked of states’ rights who began toying with the idea of starting their own countries. “We’ve got a great union. There is absolutely no reason to dissolve it,” Rick Perry said at a tea-party rally in 2009, before adding: “But if Washington continues to thumb their nose at the American people, you know, who knows what may come out of that?” Perry’s lieutenant governor, David Dewhurst, met with members of the Texas Nationalist Movement on the opening day of a legislative session. Right after this year’s midterms, the would-be leaders of the breakaway republics of Texas and California met at a secessionist conference in Dallas.In 2012, the White House website received secession petitions from all 50 states; Texas’s was the most popular, with more than 125,000 signatures. (A counterpetition demanded that any citizen who signed one of the secession petitions be deported.) Two years later, Reuters found that nearly one-quarter of Americans said they supported the idea of their states breaking away, a position most popular among Republicans and rural westerners.Liberal regions have tended to go bigger with their secession fantasies: Why spin off one’s own state when you could split the whole country and gain the resources and manpower of like-minded compatriots? After John Kerry’s loss in the 2004 election, a homemade digital graphic migrated across the pre-social internet. On it, the states that had cast their electoral votes for Kerry were labeled “the United States of Canada”; George W. Bush’s became “Jesusland.” After Trump’s victory, those memes graduated into op-eds, including from others who would have to acquiesce in the fantasy. “Is it time for Canada to annex Blue America?” a columnist in the Canadian news magazine Maclean’s asked last year.The fact that anyone with Photoshop can cogently cleave the country in two is a credit to the hardening of a once-fluid political map. Over half the states have cast their Electoral College votes consistently for one party in every presidential election since 2000. In 2016, those states all picked Senate winners from the same party as their presidential picks as well. But as three British geographers concluded in a 2016 article about spatial polarization, that’s not just a feature of the Electoral College map. Whether measured by county, state, or region, the partisan divide has grown since Bill Clinton’s first election: Red places have grown redder (at least in their presidential votes), blue places bluer. In 1992, 38 percent of Americans lived in “landslide counties,” which went for a presidential candidate by a margin of 20 percentage points or more, the Times has reported; in 2016, the number reached 60 percent.This partisan homogeneity is shaping state governments too. Thirty-six capitals are now dominated by a single party that controls the governorship along with both houses of a legislature; for the first time in more than a century, only one state legislature in the country, Minnesota’s, will be split between two parties. If we are already living in two political geographies, why not generate a system of government to match?Or so goes the fantasy. There’s no real groundswell of support for shrinking the United States. Surveys have shown that two-thirds of Californians oppose independence, and not only because the Calexit movement’s lefty critiques of Trump do not align with its righty origins. (A co-founder of the California Independence Campaign, Louis Marinelli, is a former anti-gay-marriage activist who last year sought permanent residence in Russia.) When a candidate from the Alaskan Independence Party, which had been founded with secessionist ambitions, actually won the governorship in 1990, he turned out to be tepid on the question of sovereignty. (Sarah Palin once attended an AIP conference, and her husband, Todd, became a member.) Local movements elsewhere, whether the left-leaning Second Vermont Republic or South Carolina’s right-leaning Third Palmetto Republic, have never transcended stunt. Among institutions, only the Libertarian Party has ever endorsed the position that states should be freely able to secede.History gives us few examples of successful peaceful secessions. In the ones we do have, national identity rather than ideological differences seem to be at the root of the fissure. (The Confederate States of America would have been a notable anomaly.) When states split in the 20th century, the Australia-based scholars Peter Radan and Aleksandar Pavkovic have pointed out, there were always deep underlying fault lines of language, religion, or ethnicity. None of the three multinational states created between the two world wars — the Soviet Union, Yugoslavia, or Czechoslovakia — survived until the end of the 20th century.Even with widespread fatalism about the American project, there is not an obvious way to dissolve our union. Rewriting the Constitution’s balance of power would require levels of political coordination that seem far beyond the country’s existing leadership. Chances of a civil war are remote, and it is hard to visualize a series of events that could prompt a peaceable dissolution of the union. After the Civil War, the Supreme Court ruled that states have no right to unilaterally secede. The U.N. Charter recognizes the “self-determination of peoples,” but clearly intends the latter to mean well-defined racial or ethnic groups and not, say, a collection of persons who want stronger gun-control measures. Other countries might be wary of recognizing spinoff American states for fear of the precedent. Would China vote to admit California to the United Nations if it set up Tibet or Taiwan to demand the same treatment?And yet, if the desire to secede were to grow, recent votes in Scotland and Quebec have modeled the way that secession in a developed country during years of peace can become just another political question — one debated relatively civilly, voted on democratically, without attendant allegations of treason or sedition. (Spain’s government has been less forgiving of what it calls an unconstitutional independence referendum held last year in Catalonia.)There is at least one mechanism by which a sort of soft breakup may be imaginable — and it’s already found within the Constitution. The document introduces the prospect of one state entering into a compact with another. States have created interstate compacts to maintain common standards, like the Driver’s License Compact that 47 DMVs use to exchange knowledge on traffic scofflaws. Most have been used for neighboring jurisdictions to handle common resources, like the Atlantic Salmon Compact that permits New England states to manage fish stocks in the Connecticut River Basin. (Eleven states have signed on to a National Popular Vote Interstate Compact, to disregard the Electoral College, but it would require a number equal to 270 electoral votes to take effect.)Interstate compacts have rarely been applied to controversial topics. Yet to a paralyzed Congress, and a president without any deeply held views about state-federal relations, they could prove an appealing vehicle to restless factions on both the left and the right. It may be time to take the country apart and put it back together, into a shape that better aligns with the divergent, and increasingly irreconcilable, political preferences of its people — or at least to consider what such a future might look like, if for no other reason than to test our own resolve. An imagined trial separation, if you will. Or perhaps in contemplating a future apart we might stumble upon a few ideas for some new way to live together after all.So let’s return to our hypothetical spring of 2019. After Governor Newsom’s successful health-care deal, lobbyists and think tanks promote compacts for all their pet issues, and Congress — which would be unable to find bicameral majorities for any other substantive legislation — obliges. The Public Lands and Environmental Compact Act gives the states huge leeway to set environmental regulations and manage national parks on their lands, and the Labor and Workplace Compact Act permits states to draft new workplace and employment standards. There’s a Housing Compact Act, an Immigration Compact Act, and an Agriculture Compact Act, which allows the states to take all the money that would come to their citizens as farm subsidies and food stamps as block grants with the ability to set their own rules. Trump giddily signs them all.While the states could generate new partnerships for each policy area, they choose to harden their alliances. As they link their safety nets, the Newsom-led states agree to fully synchronize their tax codes so that they could end a race-to-the-bottom competition for residents and companies. Once they do, Nevada pulls out from the compact, unwilling to implement an income tax on its citizens. Washington, on the other hand, quickly amends its state constitution to permit an income tax for the first time.Seeking his own symbol of integration, Abbott unveils the new Free States Open-Carry Permit, along with new laws ensuring the right to bear arms in schools, churches, and government buildings across his alliance. Newsom and Abbott jointly lobby Congress to grant them the right to manage the Social Security funds generated by workers in their regions. Abbott wants to allow citizens to control their retirement portfolio, while Newsom wants to experiment with moving some trust-fund money from the Treasury bonds to new public-investment vehicles that will support climate-friendly technology.To kick off the Federation Era, the two governors meet on the steps of the United States Supreme Court for a photo op. Shaking hands, the men and their attorneys general pledge not to support any legal challenge to the other’s authority for two decades. All sides have an interest in permitting their new experiment to play out for a while without any unnecessary uncertainty from the courts. The states can’t stop others from suing over the constitutionality of their moves, but they want to send a message to a conservative Supreme Court that state officials are channeling the political will of 250 million Americans, all with Congress’s express consent.The most vocal opposition comes from fixtures of the Washington, D.C., Establishment and permanent bureaucracy, which fear a permanent loss of power. Both Fox News and MSNBC, on the other hand, herald the New Era of Good Feelings. For the first time ever, Gallup records three in four Americans declaring themselves satisfied with the way things are going in the United States — a supermajority that cuts across partisan and demographic divides.Over the first two decades of the Federation Era, the alliances remained relatively stable, with only occasional changes in state status. Virginia quit the Progressive Federation of America early because it felt it would lose leverage to defend the interests of the federal employees who live there. Montana nearly pulled out of the Alliance of Free States when it looked like it might be forced to abandon its closed-shop work rules to match its right-to-work sister states. Florida’s internal politics are driven by perpetual debate over whether the state stood to benefit by joining either federation; Alaska no longer has a Democratic Party and Republican Party but has entirely realigned along a Pro-Fed and Anti-Fed axis.The states that did not join a federation remained governed by Washington, where largely status-quo policies from the early-21st-century remain in place. Some are in the neutral zone, as it is known, owing to principled independent-mindedness (New Hampshire), some by ideological paralysis (Wisconsin), and some because they are happy setting their own rules (Delaware). Power, however, resides in the neutral zone. Since each of the two federations cast Electoral College votes as a bloc, by tacit understanding, any viable national candidate has to hail from the unaffiliated states. (After producing four in a row, Maine changed its official slogan to “Mother of Vice-Presidents.”) Yet with the Legislative and Executive branches largely hobbled from policy-making for much of the country, this offers minor satisfaction. It is said to be a bleak joke around the White House that the only job of the president in peacetime is to inquire daily about the health of the Supreme Court’s oldest member.By 2038, the Progressive Federation of America is being run from a former administrative building on the campus of the University of New Mexico. The federation was initially governed by commissioners appointed by governors and state legislatures. To avoid establishing a permanent bureaucracy, the governors refused to establish a dedicated base, instead rotating its chairmanship across the members for a year at a time. Lobbyists loved having the capital in San Francisco, were less enthused when New York decided it could boost the local economy by chairing its meetings in Buffalo.The abandoned campus in Albuquerque is an inadvertent monument to one of the Blue Fed’s earliest successes. The federation’s state universities initially integrated to secure basic economies of scope and scale: linking their library collections and banding together in search of greater buying power for their energy needs. After a few years, the states agreed to set in-Fed tuition for all public universities to zero. New Mexico took the boldest step. It dismantled its public-university system after determining it was more efficient to cover travel expenses for New Mexicans studying in California or Colorado than to manage its own schools, even continuing to pay lifetime salaries for its tenured professors when they were placed in jobs at new sister schools. The New Mexico regents decided to deplete the remainder of the university’s $450 million endowment to dramatically increase teacher pay for the state’s primary-school teachers. New Mexico’s public high schools are now seen as some of the country’s finest.At first, the task of the Federation commissioners was framed as simple technocracy, implementing the will of state governments. They strengthened regulations to protect workers and set a uniform $18 minimum wage across the zone, with some cost-of-living adjustments to raise the sum in New York, San Francisco, and Boston. Federation taxes have steadily risen as federal rates fell to cover its reduced obligations. Many wealthy Blue Fed residents now pay more in annual taxes to the federation than to Washington. The high-quality cradle-to-grave services those taxes fund have come to define existence across the Blue Fed, from guaranteed public preschool to lifelong medical coverage with no co-pays or deductibles, and have incubated a highly skilled workforce and some of the most impressive life-expectancy rates in the world. (Dental care continues to depend on a system of private insurance.) It was a source of pride when the Blue Fed’s generous higher-education system started drawing large numbers of middle-class families to leave southern cities for northern ones.As soon as one crosses the border into the Alliance of Free States, whether over the Wabash River from Illinois to Indiana, or the grasslands that stretch across the Iowa-Missouri border, the difference between the two federations’ sense of identity becomes immediately visible. A popular decal showing an outline of the Red Fed’s borders — with a column of prairie states rising like an extended middle finger from the clenched fist of Texas — resides on bumpers and car windows as a defiant declaration of a newly defined region’s honor.Over the first decade of its existence, Red Fed leaders found their purpose unwinding the domestic reforms of Franklin Roosevelt, Lyndon Johnson, and Barack Obama and with them much of the 20th-century regulatory state. The Occupational Safety and Health Administration, Environmental Protection Agency, and Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration all saw their staffs gutted, left incapable of enforcing whatever rules did remain on the books. An alphabet soup of government agencies, Bill Kristol tweeted, had become a savory bone broth.The National Labor Relations Board withered in the Red Fed, along with New Deal rules that blocked companies from interfering in employee efforts to win collective-bargaining power. The shift set off a return to the fierce business-labor battles of the Gilded Age, most visible in the emergence of new firms founded by Blackwater and Black Cube alumni, known as the Blackertons, that specialize in aggressive digital surveillance and online-misinformation campaigns against union organizers.The effective elimination of most environmental and employment regulations proved irresistible to manufacturers. Boeing announced it would stop making capital investments in its Seattle-area factory and begin to shift jet assembly to a new plant in Covington, Kentucky. Factories relocated from China to be closer to the American consumer market and avoid import tariffs. Unemployment in parts of the Red Fed fell below 2 percent and the region briefly reached 5 percent growth — each several times better than Blue Fed indicators — leading conservative economists to praise the Red Miracle.It was not just manufacturing and resource extraction that boomed in the Red Fed. As soon as the Blue Fed established its single-payer system, medical specialists began taking their practices to states where they wouldn’t be subject to the Regional Health Service’s price controls or rationing. Sloan Kettering now treats New York as little more than an administrative base; the majority of its hospital rooms are in Texas. Johns Hopkins considered closing its medical school when nearly half the faculty decamped en masse to Baylor. Wealthy Blue Fed residents willing to pay out of pocket now invariably travel to Houston when they want an immediate appointment with a specialist of their choice. The arrivals area at the George Bush Intercontinental Airport is packed with chauffeurs from van services run by clinics supported by specializing in such medical tourism.Auctions of public lands across the interior west, along with the privatization of the Tennessee Valley Authority, generated a quick gusher of cash. Vowing not to let the new government wealth create more bureaucracy, Red Fed leaders deposited it all in a Free States Energy Trust Fund that would pay out an annual dividend to every adult and child in the region — a no-strings-attached cash transfer of hundreds of dollars per year. The Southern Baptist Convention encouraged its members to tithe their dividend checks directly into new aid societies to help the least fortunate. The most popular charitable cause has been a relief society to aid religious conservatives in the Blue Fed seeking to migrate to the Red Fed.The boom in manufacturing and energy jobs on one side of the border and the guarantee of free government-sponsored education and medical care on the other created an incentive for families to split — with one spouse working (and paying taxes) in the Red Fed and the other, usually with children in tow, collecting benefits in the Blue Fed. (Remo, which pitched its app to investors as “Venmo for remittances,” became the fastest-growing tech company on the Fortune 500.) Sociologists are starting to worry that what they call the “split-family phenomenon” will become a hallmark of 21st-century life in North America, with its effects growing more pronounced as federation policies continue to diverge.Reaction to Blue Fed culture drives much Red Fed governance. When the Blue Fed opened a gleaming new visitor center at Yosemite, the Red Fed moved to privatize all the concessions at Yellowstone. The Blue Fed’s expansive affirmative-action protocols inspired the Red Fed to abolish all HBCU-specific education programs so that primarily white institutions could compete equally for the funds. After Illinois led a Blue Fed initiative to upgrade its rail service, the Red Fed ended all cooperation with Amtrak, even adjusting gauge size along the Mississippi River to prevent passage of passenger trains from one side to another. As a backlash to the Blue Fed’s net-neutrality rule, the Red Fed imposed the Online Fairness Doctrine, which permits internet providers to slow upload and download speeds for content they determined was in violation of “community standards” or that offends a company’s religious beliefs. Across large swaths of the Red Fed, the only way to log into Grindr is via VPN.These culture-war skirmishes instilled a strong sense of Red Fed identity, and the economy was doing so well that few noticed the slow exodus of tech entrepreneurs and high-skilled creative professionals who had once clustered in Austin and North Carolina’s Research Triangle. Only when the Supreme Court ruled that a compact-wide abortion ban did not place an undue burden on reproductive freedom because Red Fed residents could travel for free services in the Blue Fed did it become evident that conservative social policy would impede efforts to diversify the Red Fed economy beyond natural resources and heavy manufacturing. Amazon’s list of candidate cities to house its HQ14 did not include a single one in the Red Fed.Each federation is the other’s largest trading partner, but they increasingly assume the posture of rivals. When the Blue Fed imposed a controversial excise tax on all products or services generated by companies that could not prove they paid their employees at least $18 per hour, the Red Fed saw it as a de facto tariff on its goods. It retaliated by placing its own excise tax on domestic wine, which led the Red Fed to deepen its trade ties with Chile and Argentina. That was a short-term diversion, but prompted a deeper examination of how economically dependent one federation had grown on the other’s internal policies. A Blue Fed requirement that certain freight classes travel only by all-electric truck fleets had nearly doubled the cost of transporting products to the interior west. Frequent work stoppages by West Coast longshoremen emboldened by their labor-friendly administration affirmed a strategy agreed to by titans of Red Fed industry: They needed their own Pacific port.Red Fed leaders negotiated a deal with Mexican authorities for operating control of the Port of Lázaro Cárdenas, in Michoacán state, investing some of its energy trust funds. A new terminal, staffed by American Customs officials, connects directly with a spur of the Kansas City Southern railroad. There, nonunion laborers load ships with minerals mined through the American West, including lithium and soda ash, heading largely to East Asia, and unload bananas and smartphones from Ecuador and China heading for the landlocked states of the Red Fed without ever once passing through Blue Fed territory.And then came the first humanitarian crisis. When the families of West Virginia workers started overloading schools and hospitals across the border in Hagerstown, Maryland, the Blue Fed began to impose residence requirements for many of its social services. That didn’t stop the migrants, but it led them to cluster in border towns as they waited out the six months required for eligibility. The conditions were often dire. Tent cities around Palm Springs saw the first American measles outbreak in a generation, and in the Spokane bidonvilles, dozens of children froze to death during a harsh winter.Those tragedies set off a reckoning that has prompted an identity crisis for the Blue Fed’s leaders and citizens. On one side, fiscal experts say the Nordic-style welfare state that the Blue Fed has established is unsustainable if it just ends up as an unchecked provider of services to some of the Red Fed’s neediest cases. On the other side, some of the progressive activists who played crucial roles building early support for the health-care compact argue that the Blue Fed has an obligation to promote its values even beyond its borders. The debate rages across the region: What obligation do they have to other Americans who have democratically chosen to pursue a very different way of life?The federations had a gentlemen’s agreement not to drag federal authorities into their disagreements, but the nature of their conflicts made that impossible. Once the Blue Fed declared itself a “sanctuary region” and invited undocumented immigrants elsewhere in the United States to seek refuge, Red Fed leaders threatened to erect internal border controls on state lines. The Blue Fed backed down, publicly revoking its invitation, but only after the Red Fed agreed to jointly lobby Congress to create a series of regionally restricted work visas.The federal government remains the enforcer of the country’s citizenship laws, agent of its foreign affairs, controller of its national defense, and manager of its monetary policy. But it grew increasingly impossible to perform any of those roles neutrally, and many of the country’s democratic institutions were not designed to balance the competing interests of two geopolitical rivals.When the Federal Reserve raised interest rates to stop the Red Fed’s economy from overheating, it pushed the rest of the country into recession, prompting the Great Lakes to lead the first successful campaign to have the Federal Reserve Board removed from office. When Hurricane Rigoberto came through the Gulf of Mexico, leaving large portions of Houston underwater for months — the first trillion-dollar natural disaster, at least when the cost of the subsequent malaria outbreak is included — the Red Fed demanded a bailout from the federal government. Blue Fed politicians said it would be “moral hazard” to do so, given that most of the damage was traced to a Red Fed decision to privatize the Houston Ship Channel and entrust the buyer, a Qatari sovereign-wealth fund, with upkeep of the Galveston Seawall and the levee networks of surrounding southeastern Texas counties.The Pentagon lost its authority to act as a nonaligned arbiter of the national interest. Once cartels seized control of the Red Fed’s Mexican container port, taking hostage 17 retired Texas Rangers working on a private security force, the Defense secretary mobilized West Coast National Guard units to support an Army Rapid Deployment Force, along with Marines and Navy seals. Oregon’s governor balked, announcing that he would not permit his troops to “be used as muscle for the Red Fed’s imperial adventures.” The Supreme Court ruled that National Guard units had to follow the commander-in-chief’s orders, and the Oregon guardsmen headed south, but the incident polarized foreign-policy positions in new ways. When, months later, intelligence agencies issued a report pinning the crash of the western renewable-energy grid on a North Korean cyberattack, Red Fed cities saw some of their largest mass protests in years, all against a rush to war. Nearly 100,000 people gathered in Indianapolis’s Monument Circle, chanting “No blood for solar.” By the time of the South China Sea Crisis, Congress had grown so paralyzed along federation lines that it was impossible to assemble a majority in favor of any declaration of war.Leaders overseas have become eager to exploit what they see as the United States’s political weakness. As concerns about climate change have grown more dire, other countries have become intent on punishing dissenters from the international order, and the Red Fed is now a global villain. The European Union agreed to pre-clear for entry all crops produced under the Blue Fed’s GMO-free agriculture policy, while Red Fed imports are subjected to a lengthy and costly quarantine. China announced most-favored-region trade policies that would give Blue Fed exporters an advantage over domestic rivals when selling into the Chinese market.These trade-related conflicts squeeze Illinois, which wants to export Caterpillar tractors to China under favorable conditions but lags behind West Coast and New England states in transitioning to GMO-free agriculture. Although a founding member of the Blue Fed, Illinois at times felt geographically isolated, surrounded by Red Fed or neutral states. Illinois withdrew from the Blue Fed and helped to form the Great Lakes Federation, which stretches from Philadelphia to Des Moines and up to Duluth, with a permanent capital in Chicago. As the 20-year judicial truce is about to expire, the Midwest controls the balance of power in a Congress that may be forced by the Supreme Court to revisit some of its earliest assumptions about returning power to the states.There is another real-life contemporary example of a semi-secession: Brexit. It, too, began as little more than a thought experiment. What if we could reject a far-off governing structure that no longer seems responsive to our interests in favor of local authority that can more closely match our aspirations and sense of identity as a people? There must have been something thrilling about getting to cast a vote for self-determination.Yet those who are now forced to make that reverie real are pulling back from their former self-confidence about it. Just last week, the Tory official serving as Secretary of State for Exiting the European Union admitted he “hadn’t quite understood the full extent” to which British commerce was “particularly reliant on the Dover-Calais crossing,” and that new trade barriers could impact the availability of consumer goods in stores. Instead of just leaving Europe, as he encouraged his compatriots to do during the 2016 campaign, Dominic Raab now insists on “a bespoke arrangement on goods which recognizes the peculiar, frankly, geographic, economic entity that is the United Kingdom.”As it was for a majority of Britons, it is easier to imagine breaking up the United States than figuring out how to make it work — whether through bold new policies or merely a functioning version of consensus politics. The seeming inelasticity of our system of governance also guarantees a security and predictability that we take for granted. Some of the lessons Europe is being taught under the stress of the Brexit crisis — that a single currency requires a unified economy, or that a lack of internal borders can’t work if no one can agree on what should happen at the outer one — are ones Americans might better learn from fantasy than from experience.