As cases in the national capital region of Maryland, Washington D.C., and Virginia nearly quadruple in just the past week, Governor Hogan is leading a unified and bipartisan regional response, while sounding the alarm about the threat to essential federal workers.
On Monday, Governor Hogan issued a stay at home order for Maryland. Only hours later, Virginia Democrat Governor Ralph Northam and D.C. Democrat Mayor Muriel Bowser followed suit. According to reporting from Politico, Hogan, Northam, and Bowser are “holding regular conference calls and coordinating daily among their offices.”
As Governor Hogan wrote in a joint bipartisan Washington Post op-ed with Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer, “more than 400,000 federal workers are based in the national capital region, including workers at the National Institutes of Health and FEMA,” posing the risk of a “major outbreak among our critical federal workforce…crippling the national response” to the pandemic. Governor Hogan has appealed to the federal government that a federal testing site in the national capital region is essential to “identify sick federal workers and prevent them from infecting their colleagues.”
Yesterday, Governor Hogan also sent a message to thank NSA and US Cyber Command workers for their “important work” and to affirm that the stay at home directive will “in no way impede” them “from fulfilling their duties,” as “our state and our nation need you now more than ever.” Governor Hogan has repeatedly warned that an outbreak at key agencies like the NSA and the US Cyber Command – which are both based in Maryland – could put our national security at risk.