topics

politics-policy

epstein-files

donald-trump

2026-midterm-elections

immigration

behind-the-curtain

race-and-equity

technology

privacy-tech-regulation

automation-and-ai

tiktok-news

big-tech

social-media

cybersecurity

economy

social-security

inflation

tariffs

federal-reserve

jobs

transportation

business

stock-market-news

retail-news

crypto

media

elon-musk

dealmaking

health

rfk-jr

drug-prices

axios-explains-abortion

public-health

world

israel

axios-explains-ukraine

iran

russia

china

energy-climate

nuclear-energy

climate-energy-policy

climate-change

extreme-weather

alternative-energy

electric-vehicles

science

emerging-tech

biomedicine

newsletters

pittsburgh

atlanta

san-diego

charlotte

boulder

washington-dc

kansas-city

dallas

denver

detroit

des-moines

austin

boston

chicago

cleveland

columbus

houston

indianapolis

miami

nashville

new-orleans

nw-arkansas

philadelphia

phoenix

portland

richmond

salt-lake-city

san-antonio

san-francisco

seattle

tampa-bay

twin-cities

raleigh

huntsville

colorado-springs

axios-local

axios-pro

axios-live

the-axios-show

National

President Trump's test for the novel coronavirus came back negative, his physician said Saturday.

Why it matters: Trump was tested Friday night after people he had met with at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida last weekend showed symptoms or tested positive, including Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro's press secretary.

Go deeper: Bolsonaro aide tests positive for coronavirus days after Trump meeting

Trump tests negative for coronavirus

President Trump's test for the coronavirus came back negative, his physician said.

Pesident Donald Trump responds to reporter's questions 

President Trump responds at the press briefing room at the White House on Saturday. Photo: Tasos Katopodis/Getty Images)

Politics

Breaking

Politics & Policy

Vice President Mike Pence sent White House staff an email Saturday afternoon recommending "social distancing" and to "avoid physical contact" to keep themselves and their colleagues safe from the novel coronavirus.

Why it matters: This is the first staff-wide email Pence has sent across the complex during his time as vice president — and is the latest sign the White House is shifting its posture against the pandemic.

As recently as Thursday, Pence, who is leading the President Trump's task force to combat COVID-19, told CNN he was still shaking hands with people at the White House.

On Friday before the nation's TV cameras, Trump repeatedly shook hands with industry CEOs during a live press conference in the Rose Garden. 

But on Saturday the president and his team began modeling different behavior — in line with public health official recommendations. Trump tweeted "SOCIAL DISTANCING!", said he'd finally been tested for the coronavirus, suggesting that people should be cautious about shaking hands.

Also on Saturday, for the first time a White House physician scanned journalists' foreheads with a thermometer before they could join the White House press briefing.

Details: Pence wrote in his email to White House staff that "with additional cases throughout the National Capital Region, it's imperative each one of us do our part to take the proper precautions to keep ourselves and our colleagues safe," according to a copy of the email obtained by Axios.

Pence repeated advice from "healthcare experts on the Task Force" to clean hands often, clean and disinfect personal work stations and "commonly touched items" and to "limit large in-person gatherings" and to "stay home if you're sick!"

Pence  told White House staff that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommends home-quarantine "only for those who have had close (within 6 feet) prolonged (>10 minutes) contact with a symptomatic (cough, fever, etc.) COVID-19 patient, or their respiratory droplets."

"This excludes casual, limited interactions such as handshakes, photographs, etc.," Pence added in the email.

Between the lines: The White House has released a memo from Trump's doctor saying that he learned of two Mar-a-Lago guests who interacted with the president and later tested positive for the coronavirus.

The White House physician,  Sean Conley, wrote there is no reason for Trump to home-quarantine because his interactions are considered "low risk" for transmission of the virus.

Trump's exposure to the first individual was "extremely limited (photograph, handshake)" and his exposure to the second individual, while longer, happened when the person exhibited no symptoms of the coronavirus, according to Conley's memo.


Pence tells White House staff to avoid physical contact

This is the latest sign the White House is shifting its posture against the pandemic.

Mike Pence. Photo: Win McNamee / Getty Images

Coronavirus

Health Care

Donald Trump

The U.S. health system faces critical questions about cost, access and equity. Technological advances and new discoveries about diseases like cancer and Alzheimer’s are transforming patient care and reshaping public health.

Health

Cancelled rallies, debates with no audiences, contingency plans for conventions and ballot-casting: this is campaigning in the age of coronavirus.

The state of play: President Trump declared coronavirus a national emergency. Trump, Joe Biden and Bernie Sanders all cancelled large-scale events this week and rolled out coronavirus policy platforms.

Louisiana is postponing the state's Democratic primary until the summer. 

Democratic National Committee chairman Tom Perez told Axios' Jonathan Swan in an HBO interview taped March 9 that he has no plans to cancel this summer's convention in Milwaukee. But the DNC is monitoring the situation "every single day."

Tomorrow's Democratic debate moved from Arizona to CNN's Washington studio with no live audience, and Univision's Jorge Ramos withdrew as a moderator because he may have been exposed to the virus. 

The bottom line: Politics is fundamentally about engaging people. This is America's biggest test of what it means to campaign without crowds in the modern age — whether disenfranchisement and lower turnout are inevitable, or virtual interactions can fill the void.

Go deeper: Margaret and Dan Primack discuss the impact on campaigning on Pro Rata.

A campaign season without crowds

America faces a major test as candidates campaign in the age of coronavirus.

Deep Dive: Coronavirus 1

2020 conventions

2020 election

Joe Biden

Future

Axios Future

Now that the COVID-19 pandemic has fully arrived, how bad it gets will largely be a function of how our society responds at every level.

Why it matters: From pandemics to climate change to earthquakes, massive catastrophes lie in our future. But in a world that has the technological capability that ours does, we have the power to mitigate those disasters through our preparation and resilience — or to make them worse through our failures.

Today we can either directly see through technology a disaster coming or reasonably know our level of risk based on the experience of the past or the ability to model what's to come.

What this means is that in the truest sense, no disaster is really — or only — natural. The toll a catastrophe takes, especially in human lives, now has as much or more to do with our preparation, response and level of wealth as it has to do with the strength of the event itself.

One example: The 2010 earthquake that hit Haiti had a 7.0 magnitude and killed at least 220,000 people, while another temblor that struck a much better prepared Chile a month later was far stronger, yet killed fewer than 600 people.

The COVID-19 pandemic was entirely foreseeable, as I reported recently.

Yet by refusing to take that threat seriously, and even dismantling some of the response measures that were already in place, the U.S. effectively expanded its "bull's-eye of risk" for an infectious disease disaster.

Be smart: What happens next with COVID-19 will have far more to do with the steps we take in the days and weeks ahead than anything to do with the virus itself.

The New York Times reported on March 13 that worst-case projections by the CDC had as many as 214 million Americans being infected and as many as 1.7 million dying.

But those projections assume that nothing would be done to slow the spread of the novel coronavirus. The wide-scale canceling of social gatherings and distancing measures being put in place will almost surely bend that curve.

The apparent success of China and South Korea in curbing the outbreak, and places like Hong Kong and Singapore in preventing the disease from gaining a strong foothold in the first place, demonstrates the difference that action can make.

What's true of the pandemic now will also be true of threats from megatrends that will only intensify in the future, like climate change. What we do to directly mitigate global warming and adapt to its effects will determine our level of risk.

Actions that make us more vulnerable — like building up development on coastlines that face rising seas or allowing vaccination rates for preventable diseases to fall — expand the bull's-eye of risk.

Mismanagement of a disaster while it occurs or immediately after it can make a catastrophe far worse, as we saw with Hurricane Katrina in 2005.

The bottom line: There's no such thing as a natural disaster anymore. Our ability to prepare and respond to what nature throws at us is our strength — or, should we fail to do both, our vulnerability.

Go deeper: The new threat of unintentional coronavirus misinformation

The pandemic highlights the man-made disasters to come

There's no such thing as a natural disaster anymore.

Illustration of glowing globe with virus cells in it

Stay informed on the innovations in emerging technology, retail, society, cities and more

Sign up for the Axios Future newsletter

Vice President Mike Pence announced Saturday that all travel from Ireland and the United Kingdom to the U.S. will be suspended, effective midnight EST on Monday. He said Americans and legal residents abroad in those countries can return home.

Why it matters: The administration initially left the two off its restricted travel list, but that case has been weakened due to an uptick in cases in the UK.

Details: The travel restrictions do not apply to cargo or economic shipping, officials with the coronavirus task force said.

Flashback: President Trump announced earlier this week that European travel to the U.S. will be restricted for 30 days, with exemptions for Americans who undergo screening upon their return.

Prime Minister Boris Johnson "ruled out aggressive measures like school closings to fight the coronavirus" earlier this week, the New York Times reports.

By the numbers: The U.K. is currently reporting nearly 1,200 cases of COVID-19 — while the U.S. has 2,177 cases of the virus, per the Johns Hopkins University Coronavirus Resource Center. 


Go deeper: Houses passes coronavirus emergency aid package with Trump's endorsement

Pence says European travel ban will extend to U.K. and Ireland

The U.K. is currently reporting more new cases than the U.S.

US Vice President Mike Pence speaks during a press briefing about the Coronavirus.

U.S. Vice President Mike Pence speaks during a press briefing about the Coronavirus. Photo: JIM WATSON/ Getty Images

President Trump told reporters on Saturday that he took a test for COVID-19 on Friday night and the test is currently pending in a lab.

Why it matters: The president was exposed to multiple people who have tested positive for the virus.

Details: The president has come in contact with at least two individuals who later tested positive for the novel coronavirus, according to a memo shared close to midnight on Friday by Sean Conley, the president's physician. 

Conley had said that there is no need for Trump to undergo a home quarantine or COVID-19 testing at this time. But, the CDC advises older adults, who are at a higher risk of getting sick from the virus, to "keep away from others who are sick, limit close contact and wash your hands often."

COVID-19 is thought to spread mainly between people who are within six feet of each other and through coughing and sneezing, per the CDC. Spread of the virus may be possible before symptoms are apparent.

Of note: "Out of an abundance of caution, temperature checks are now being performed on any individuals who are in close contact with the President and Vice President," White House spokesperson Judd Deere said in a statement to reporters on Saturday. Those "in close contact" include reporters in the White House, per a pool report.

Catch up quick: Trump indicated at a Friday press conference that he'd "most likely" get tested for coronavirus. 

"I don't know that I have exposure, but I don't have any of the symptoms," he said, adding that he spoke with White House doctors on the issue.

Three people visiting Mar-a-Lago last weekend have now tested positive for COVID-19, the Wall Street Journal reports, and Trump "is known to have interacted with two of them."

Trump was not in contact with the CPAC 2020 attendee who tested positive for COVID-19, the American Conservative Union said last week.

Read the memo from the president's physician:

Trump says he was tested for coronavirus

The president was exposed to multiple people who have tested positive for the virus.

In this image, Trump stands while wearing a tie

Trump declares a national emergency due to the COVID-19 pandemic on March 13. Photo: Yasin Ozturk/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images

Latin America and Latinos

U.S. Surgeon General Jerome Adams is asking hospitals to consider stopping elective surgeries as the coronavirus spreads. 

What Adams is saying: "Hospital & healthcare systems, PLEASE CONSIDER STOPPING ELECTIVE PROCEDURES until we can #FlattenTheCurve! Each elective surgery you do:  1) Brings possible #Coronavirus to your facilities 2) Pulls from PPE stores 3) Taxes personnel who may be needed for #COVIDー19 response," Adams tweeted on Saturday morning.

The state of play: Some hospitals already had started canceling or postponing elective surgeries, MarketWatch writes.

UCSF Health hospitals are postponing up to 7,000 appointments a day, per MarketWatch.

Doctors have noted high risk or elderly patients are currently canceling elective surgeries, such as knee replacements, that require general anesthesia, Modern Healthcare reports.

Go deeper: Coronavirus updates: House passes coronavirus emergency aid package

Surgeon general asks hospitals to stop elective surgeries

"Each elective surgery you do...brings possible #Coronavirus to your facilities."

U.S. Surgeon General Dr. Jerome Adams. Photo: Chris Usher/CBS via Getty Images

Sen. Bernie Sanders is the projected winner of the Northern Mariana Islands caucus, AP reports. 

Catch up quick: AP allocated 4 delegates to Sanders and 2 to former Vice President Joe Biden. Sanders' small win follows Biden's delegate haul across Michigan, Mississippi, Missouri and Idaho.

The big picture: Democratic voters are choosing between Sanders' revolution and Biden's so-called Return to Normal campaign, as the candidates compete for the party's presidential nomination and the chance to take on President Trump.

The Northern Mariana Islands have been a U.S. territory since 1975. They participate in the presidential primaries, but not in the general election. 

Go deeper... Democratic primary results: Biden projected to win Michigan, Mississippi, Missouri

Sanders projected to win Northern Mariana Islands Democratic caucus

AP allocated 4 delegates to Sanders and 2 to former Biden.

Axios

Saturday's top stories