Crisis exposes how America has hollowed out its government

The government's halting response to the coronavirus pandemic represents the culmination of chronic structural weaknesses, years of underinvestment and political rhetoric that has undermined the public trust - conditions compounded by President Donald Trump's open hostility to a federal bureaucracy that has been called upon to manage the crisis.
Federal government leaders, beginning with the president, appeared caught unaware by the swiftness with which the coronavirus was spreading through the