Live Coronavirus News Updates and Full Analysis

Wisconsin’s Supreme Court blocks the governor from extending the state’s stay-at-home order.

Wisconsin’s Supreme Court on Wednesday rejected the extension of a stay-at-home order by Gov. Tony Evers, siding with Republicans in one of most high-profile challenges of its kind to the emergency authority of a statewide official during the coronavirus pandemic.

Mr. Evers, a Democrat, had extended the prohibition on most travel and operations of nonessential businesses until May 26.

But in a 4-to-3 ruling, the conservative-leaning court said that measure had exceeded the authority given to Wisconsin’s top health official under state law.

“An agency cannot confer on itself the power to dictate the lives of law-abiding individuals as comprehensively as the order does without reaching beyond the executive branch’s authority,” the justices wrote in the ruling.

There have been legal challenges to stay-at-home orders in Michigan, California, Kentucky and Illinois, but none of those were successful in persuading a court to fully strike down the order, as the plaintiffs in the Wisconsin case were.

The ruling, a spokeswoman for Mr. Evers said, appears to immediately end all provisions that have required Wisconsin residents to stay home.

“We’re definitely concerned,” the spokeswoman, Melissa Baldauff, said of the safety and health of residents.

The ruling did not provide a mechanism for a stay so that Republicans and Democrats could reach a compromise on reopening Wisconsin, which the dissenting justices wrote could endanger people in the state.

“The lack of a stay would be particularly breathtaking given the testimony yesterday before Congress by one of our nation’s top infectious disease experts, Dr. Anthony Fauci,” one of the dissenting opinions said. “He cautioned that if the country reopens too soon, it will result in ‘some suffering and death that could be avoided [and] could even set you back on the road to trying to get economic recovery.’”

Trump pushes to reopen schools, and criticizes Fauci’s testimony.

President Trump pushed Wednesday to reopen the country’s schools and criticized the testimony delivered a day earlier by Dr. Anthony S. Fauci, the nation’s top infectious disease expert, who had cautioned the Senate about the unknown effects that the coronavirus has on children.

“I was surprised by his answer,” Mr. Trump told reporters. “To me it’s not an acceptable answer, especially when it comes to schools.”

The remarks came a day after Dr. Fauci and some of the federal government’s leading scientists had warned the Senate that the nation could face dire consequences if it eases restrictions and reopens the economy too soon.

The president’s impatience to regain a strong economy — initially seen as his main case for re-election — has often led to public clashes with the guidance provided by Dr. Fauci. A month ago, Mr. Trump made headlines for sharing a tweet with the hashtag “#FireFauci” after a series of reports detailed the president’s slow response at the beginning of the outbreak.

Dr. Fauci told the Senate panel on Tuesday that a vaccine for the virus would almost certainly not be ready in time for the new school year. Facing criticism from Senator Rand Paul, Republican of Kentucky, who said Dr. Fauci should not be “the one person that gets to make the decision,” Dr. Fauci said that humility in the face the virus meant embracing all that he did not know about the illness, including its effects on children, who generally fare well against the virus but have recently shown new vulnerabilities.

“I think we better be careful, if we are not cavalier, in thinking that children are completely immune to the deleterious effects,” Dr. Fauci said. “You’re right in the numbers that children in general do much, much better than adults and the elderly and particularly those with underlying conditions. But I am very careful and hopefully humble in knowing that I don’t know everything about this disease. And that’s why I’m very reserved in making broad predictions.”

At the White House on Wednesday, Mr. Trump made clear that he had not been satisfied with that response and reiterated his belief that schools should reopen. “Now where you have an incident, one out of a million, one out of 500,000, will something happen? Perhaps,” he said. “But, you know, you can be driving to school and some bad things can happen, too. We’re going to open our country. We want it open.”

But the actual incidence and effects of the coronavirus in children remain unknown. The National Institutes of Health announced last week that it was starting a large study to learn more.

The Texas attorney general moves to limit mail-in voting.

The Texas attorney general on Wednesday told the state’s Supreme Court that voters who fear getting infected with the coronavirus do not qualify as disabled and therefore cannot vote by mail-in ballot.

In the state’s latest voting-rights dispute, the attorney general, Ken Paxton, a Republican, asked the court to order election officials in five Democratic-led counties to follow state law on mail-in ballots. Mr. Paxton argued that Texas law requires in-person voting.

The state’s election code “does not permit an otherwise healthy person to vote by mail merely because going to the polls carries some risk to public health,” read Mr. Paxton’s filing, which was directed at elections officials in the counties containing Dallas, Houston, Austin, El Paso and the border city of Brownsville.

Mr. Paxton’s move outraged Democrats and civil rights groups in Texas, who said it was part of a long line of actions by Republicans to make it harder for minority and low-income voters, who tend to vote Democratic, to cast ballots.

“Expanding vote-by-mail is a no-brainer and many states across the country, both red and blue, have taken this necessary step to protect their voters,” Ed Espinoza, executive director of Progress Texas, said in a statement. “Unfortunately, it appears the priorities of conservative state leaders are clear: Suppress the vote at all costs, even if it puts lives at risk.”

Mr. Paxton’s filing came as the state faces several lawsuits over its mail-in ballot rules, and as he has heightened tensions with three of the state’s largest Democratic-led cities. Earlier, Mr. Paxton warned officials in Austin, Dallas and San Antonio that their local mask-wearing requirements and other restrictions — all more strict than Gov. Greg Abbott’s executive orders — were unlawful.

When Mr. Abbott ended his stay-at-home order this month and set the stage for the state’s partial reopening, he angered many local officials by contending that his reopening policies superseded any conflicting orders issued by cities or counties.

Mr. Paxton issued letters to leaders in Austin, Dallas and San Antonio and threatened legal action over several local restrictions, including extensions of stay-at-home orders, protocols for houses of worship and requirements for face masks.

The Trump administration is reviewing an order to extend its virus border restrictions indefinitely.

The Trump administration is moving to extend its virus border restrictions indefinitely, using the government’s broad public health authorities to severely limit immigration across its land borders until officials decide that there is no more danger of infection to Americans.

On March 20, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention imposed a 30-day restriction on all nonessential travel into the United States from Mexico and Canada, closing legal points of entry to tourism and immediately returning people who crossed the border illegally to their home countries.

The restrictions have significantly hindered opportunities to seek humanitarian protections in the United States.

Since March 21, Border Patrol agents referred 59 migrants to be interviewed by asylum officers, according to a United States Citizenship and Immigration official. Only two seeking the protections were allowed to remain in the United States.

An additional three migrants have pending cases while 54 were turned away. The Washington Post first reported the asylum statistics. Since the rule was enacted, the administration has used the public health authority to immediately return more than 20,000 migrants to Mexico or their home countries.

The order — which was extended for another 30 days on April 20 — was part of a broad effort, led by Stephen Miller, the architect of Mr. Trump’s immigration agenda, to aggressively use public health laws to reduce immigration as the government battles the virus.

But a new order under review by several government agencies is meant to extend the restrictions indefinitely. Once issued by Dr. Robert R. Redfield, the director of the C.D.C., the border restrictions would stay in effect until he decides the virus no longer poses a threat. The indefinite extension comes even as Mr. Trump has repeatedly pushed for states to reopen their economies, arguing that the threat from the virus will quickly recede.

“I am extending the duration of the order until I determine that the danger of further introduction of Covid-19 into the United States has ceased to be a danger to the public health,” the draft order read, according to a copy obtained by The New York Times.

The White House declined to comment.

The new order would require C.D.C. officials to review the dangers posed by the virus every 30 days.

It is not clear when the administration intends to formally issue the new order. The existing border restrictions are set to expire on May 21.

Powell suggests economic damage could become permanent as Congress debates providing more support.

Jerome H. Powell, the chairman of the Federal Reserve, delivered a stark warning on Wednesday that the United States was facing an economic hit “without modern precedent,” one that could permanently damage the economy if Congress did not provide sufficient policy support to prevent a wave of bankruptcies and prolonged joblessness.

Mr. Powell’s blunt assessment was the clearest signal yet that the trillions of dollars in support that policymakers had already funneled into the economy might not be enough to prevent lasting damage from a pandemic that has shuttered businesses and thrown more than 20 million people out of work.

It was also a rejoinder to lawmakers and the Trump administration, whose discussions of additional rescue measures have run aground as Democrats unveil a wish list and Republicans shy away from more federal spending, betting instead that reopening the economy will quickly and significantly lift growth.

“The recovery may take some time to gather momentum,” Mr. Powell said at a Peterson Institute for International Economics virtual event, where he lauded Congress’s early response packages and suggested that an uncertain outlook might call for more. “Additional fiscal support could be costly, but worth it if it helps avoid long-term economic damage and leaves us with a stronger recovery.”

His comments unnerved investors, and the S&P 500 fell nearly 2 percent, adding to its 2 percent loss on Tuesday.

Members of Congress remain divided along partisan lines over how aggressively to pursue additional relief spending, with Democrats proposing sweeping new programs and Republicans voicing concerns over the swelling federal budget deficit. Economic advisers to Mr. Trump have said that they are waiting to determine if another fiscal package is needed, watching to see how much the economy rebounds as states lift restrictions on business activity.

Mr. Powell and his central bank colleagues are stepping into their roles as economic experts and informal advisers to spur fiscal policymakers into action. They say the recovery remains highly uncertain, and if the policy response proves inadequate, the consequences could be long-lasting and painful.

“While the economic response has been both timely and appropriately large, it may not be the final chapter, given that the path ahead is both highly uncertain and subject to significant downside risks,” Mr. Powell said Wednesday. “Since the answers are currently unknowable, policies will need to be ready to address a range of possible outcomes.”

A study suggests a rare illness affecting children is related to the virus.

New York State health officials are investigating 102 cases of a rare and dangerous inflammatory syndrome that afflicts children and appears to be connected to the coronavirus, Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo said on Wednesday.

A new study, published Wednesday in the journal Lancet, sheds light on the condition’s distinctive characteristics and provides the strongest evidence yet that the syndrome is linked to the coronavirus. In the study, doctors in Italy compared 10 cases of the illness with cases of a similar, rare condition in children called Kawasaki disease.

The authors found that over the five years before the coronavirus pandemic — January 2015 to mid-February 2020 — 19 children with Kawasaki disease were treated at Hospital Papa Giovanni XXIII in Bergamo Province, which has an advanced pediatric department.

But between Feb. 18 and April 20 alone, the hospital, located at the epicenter of Italy’s coronavirus outbreak, treated 10 children with similar hyperinflammatory symptoms. Eight of them tested positive for coronavirus antibodies.

Ten cases in two months — about 30 times the rate of the Kawasaki disease cases, which occurred at a pace of about one every three months — suggests a cluster that is driven by the coronavirus pandemic, especially since overall hospital admissions during this time were much lower than usual, the authors said.

Trump says he’ll keep his distance from Pence.

President Trump said Wednesday that he would be keeping his distance from Vice President Mike Pence, whose press secretary tested positive for the virus.

“I haven’t seen Mike Pence, and I miss him,” Mr. Trump said. “He did not test positive, he tested the opposite. He’s in good shape. But I guess we said for a little while we’ll stay apart; you don’t know what happens with this very crazy and horrible disease.”

The White House on Monday ordered all West Wing employees to wear masks at work unless they were at their desks, and Mr. Pence and members of his security detail were photographed wearing them when they arrived on Wednesday morning.

The White House frequently screens its staff members, but a study by researchers at NYU Langone Health found that the rapid test the administration uses can miss infections nearly half the time.

Renewable power is poised to eclipse coal for the first time in the U.S., partly because of the pandemic.

The United States is on track to produce more electricity this year from renewable power than from coal for the first time on record, new government projections show, a transformation partly driven by the pandemic that has profound implications in the fight against climate change.

It is a milestone that seemed all but unthinkable a decade ago, when coal was so dominant that it provided nearly half the nation’s electricity. And it comes despite the Trump administration’s three-year push to try to revive the ailing industry.

As factories, retailers, restaurants and office buildings have shut down nationwide to slow the spread of the virus, demand for electricity has fallen sharply. And because coal plants often cost more to operate than gas plants or renewables, many utilities are cutting back on coal power first in response.

Hospitals try a low-tech way to help some patients: turning them over.

Hospitals across the country are filled with a curious sight these days: patients lying on their bellies.

The surprisingly low-tech concept, called proning, can improve breathing in patients with the respiratory distress that is the hallmark of the virus, doctors have found. Lying on one’s stomach helps open airways in lungs that have become compressed by the fluid and inflammation caused by infection.

When patients are on their backs, “the heart is now sitting on top of the lungs and compressing it even more,” said Dr. Michelle Ng Gong, the chief of the divisions of critical care and pulmonary medicine at Albert Einstein College of Medicine and the Montefiore Health System in the Bronx. “The rib cage cannot move in the usual way because it’s now up against the bed.”

But, she said, “when you flip the patient onto the belly, now the back of the lungs can start to open,” allowing more air sacs to function. A larger share of the lungs is also in the back of the body than the front, meaning that patients on their stomachs do not have to support as much lung weight.

Stay-at-home orders have changed the way Americans shop online.

Online sales in the United States have surged since mid-March, when shelter-in-place measures shuttered brick-and-mortar stores throughout the country.

While the shutdowns immediately altered how people spent their money, the patterns have continued to shift, new data shows, shaped by waves of panic buying and payouts of government aid. (Online groceries and video games are big.) The latest bump in online spending came after the government sent stimulus payments to tens of millions of households beginning April 11.

Beyond what might be temporary shifts, consumer habits appear to be changing in ways that may endure beyond the pandemic and determine who will become the most important online players, writes Nathaniel Popper, who covers finance and technology.

Reporting was contributed by Alexandra Alter, Karen Barrow, Pam Belluck, Alan Blinder, Helene Cooper, Michael Cooper, Carla Correa, Maria Cramer, Gabriel J.X. Dance, Manny Fernandez, Lazaro Gamio, Thomas Gibbons-Neff, Michael Gold, Dana Goldstein, Denise Grady, Matthew Haag, Maggie Haberman, Jack Healy, Shawn Hubler, Zolan Kanno-Youngs, Sheila Kaplan, Annie Karni, Sharon LaFraniere, Michael Mason, Sarah Mervosh, Brad Plumer, Katie Rogers, Marc Santora, Eric Schmitt, Dionne Searcey, Michael D. Shear, Jeanna Smialek, Sheryl Gay Stolberg, Eileen Sullivan, Katie Thomas, Neil Vigdor and Daisuke Wakabayashi.