President Donald Trump has consistently sought to use funding, supplies, and his daily briefings to wage political war and target those he sees as his enemies. The President has now also suggested China is to blame for the coronavirus and has said, "a lot of strange things" happened surrounding the origin of the virus.

"It could have been stopped in China before it started and it wasn't, and the whole world is suffering because of it," Trump told reporters at a daily White House briefing. "If it was a mistake, a mistake is a mistake. But if they were knowingly responsible, yeah, I mean, then sure there should be consequences."

Trump has claimed that China hasn't been open about the spread of the virus in the country and has now cut off funding for the World Health Organization (WHO), an arm of the United Nations, because he says their efforts to contain the virus have been too "China-centric".

"Everybody knows what is going on there," he said. He blames the organization for what he calls their "disastrous decision to oppose travel restrictions from China and other nations."

The President moved to have traveled to and from China restricted in the early stages of the pandemic, but the WHO argued that this would only make it harder for the government to contain travel and identify entrants to the country. Unfortunately, Trump has been touting his decision to restrict travel as proof that he responded to early warnings concerning the virus. The President claims his decision saved "thousands and thousands of lives" while the WHO's efforts increased cases worldwide "20-fold". According to a recent Pew Research Center poll, 65 percent of Americans think the President reacted too slowly to the virus.

Trump didn't say whether U.S. funding for the WHO would be permanently stopped or not, only saying that the payments would be halted until the administration could review the organization's handling of the virus. Last year, contributions from the U.S. accounted for nearly $600 million of the WHO's $6 billion budget. This is a significant loss for the organization, one that is especially hard to take during a global pandemic.

Another body in the cross-hairs this week was the United States Congress. On Wednesday, the President told reporters at his daily briefing that he has "the power to adjourn Congress" in order to ensure his nominations for executive officers can be fully empowered. National Public Radio (NPR) reports that this probably wouldn't actually work.

After weeks of talking about how the "cure can be worse than the illness", announcing hopes to re-open the economy by Easter, postponing those hopes by never bringing them up again, and generally implying the virus is less dangerous and contagious than it truly is, the President has released a three-phase plan for governors to follow to reopen their states' economies.

The plan includes restrictions on when states can reopen based on the rate of new cases and testing capability. Some states have begun to lay out tentative plans to end lockdowns while their governors are still asking for more help from the Federal Government.

"Most other countries are doing it nationally," Colorado Gov. Jared Polis, a Democrat, told NPR. "I wish that we had more help from the federal government."

"We are still in dire need of critical resources from the federal government, including sufficient personal protective equipment (PPE) and increased testing capacity," Democratic Oregon Gov. Kate Brown told NPR. "We have current, large unfulfilled order requests with the federal government for both PPE and testing materials; these are vital components to reopening Oregon and remain necessary to prevent a resurgence of the disease."

The responses from Democrats are in sharp contrast with those from Republicans.

"I think the president and his team are headed in a very good direction," said Tennessee Gov. Bill Lee.

"I appreciate President Trump's guidelines for reopening pieces of the economy that have been closed temporarily," Nebraska Gov. Pete Ricketts told NPR. "It is critical that we get people back to work safely and continue to slow the spread of the virus as the country opens up."

According to Harvard epidemiologist Bill Hanage and reporting by Reuters, no state is prepared to reopen based on the availability of tests, hospital beds, and new cases. Experts also feel states are ill-equipped to track new infections and practice contact-tracing.

"Not one of the 50 U.S. states currently has surveillance capabilities sufficient to enable case-based interventions at the necessary scale," Duke University researchers wrote in a report on COVID-19 containment.

The three-phase plan doesn't tell governors how they are supposed to battle new infections or meet testing needs. It instead lays out a staged reopening to be carried out once states have already reached the minimum threshold for reopening.