Democratic presidential candidate Sen. Elizabeth Warren (MA) said during her CNN town hall on Wednesday that she will come out with a plan to divert money from President Trump's "racist" border wall and use it to fight the Coronavirus epidemic.
Trump held a press conference at the White House Wednesday evening to assure Americans the federal government is doing everything it can to prevent the Coronavirus from reaching high levels within the Untied States. Vice President Mike Pence was tapped to lead the government's effort to contain the disease.
"So the way I think about this is first we think about allocation. Our overall approach. I’m going to be introducing a plan tomorrow to take every dime that the president is now spending on the racist wall at the southern border and divert it to work on the Coronavirus," Warren said.
"We also need someone in the White House who is coordinating all of the work and all the messaging and all the information and we need someone who is not actively disqualified from doing that the way the vice president is," she continued.
Coronavirus poses a serious health, diplomatic, & economic threat, & we must be prepared to confront it head-on. So I’m introducing a bill to transfer all funding for @realDonaldTrump's racist border wall to @HHSGov & @USAID to combat coronavirus. https://t.co/8IEhBWRjeL pic.twitter.com/9oAF0A2lGT
— Elizabeth Warren (@SenWarren) February 27, 2020
The White House has requested Congress appropriate $2.5 billion to fight the virus, which originated in Wuhan, Hubei Province, China in December 2019. It has since spread to 31 other countries and territories, according to the CDC. As of February 23, fourteen cases of coronavirus have been diagnosed in the U.S., and an additional 39 cases have occurred among those who were evacuated from countries with high infection rates. There have been no reported deaths in the U.S. from the virus.
In contrast, to fulfill a new request from the Department of Homeland Security, Secretary of Defense Mark Esper authorized his department to spend $3.8 billion to build approximately 177 miles of fencing along the southern border.