‘Unlawful’: Coalition of states sues Trump over bid to omit undocumented immigrants from census – NBC News

A coalition of 20 states and 15 cities and counties filed suit Friday to block President Donald Trump's memo directing undocumented immigrants be excluded from the 2020 census count for purposes of deciding how many members of Congress are apportioned to each state, calling it "unlawful."

The suit, filed in New York federal court, charges that Trump's directive shows "blatant disregard of an unambiguous constitutional command" the 14th Amendment's directive that Representatives shall be apportioned among the several States according to their respective numbers, counting the whole number of persons in each State."

"For 150 years since the United States recognized the whole personhood of those formerly bound in slavery the unambiguous requirement that all persons be counted for apportionment purposes, regardless of immigration status, has been respected by every executive official, every cabinet officer, and every President. Until now," the suit said.

The Trump memo, signed earlier this week, said it will be the "policy of the United States to exclude from the apportionment base aliens who are not in a lawful immigration status under the Immigration and Nationality Act."

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It directs Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross, who oversees the census, to provide the president with data about the number of people who are undocumented so that when census officials present Trump with the final count, he can exclude them from the population totals used to determine how many House seats each state will have.

The lawsuit questions how the directive could feasibly be carried out, noting the administration "cannot reliably exclude undocumented immigrants from the apportionment count" because there are no accurate estimates of the undocumented population on a state-by-state basis. Any effort to remove undocumented immigrants from the census count using unreliable data is "arbitrary and capricious" and in violation of the Administrative Procedure Act, the suit said.

If the Trump move is successful, it could have a major impact on states with large numbers of undocumented residents, such as New York and California. A lower population count in the census would mean fewer seats in Congress, and potentially fewer federal dollars as well, the suit noted.

New York Attorney General Letitia James, who's leading the lawsuit, called the proclamation "the latest in a long list of anti-immigrant actions" by the president.

No one ceases to be a person because they lack documentation, which is why we filed this lawsuit," James said.

Another of the plaintiffs in the case, Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel, called Trump's actions "a clear breach of the U.S. Constitution and a blatant attempt to politicize a non-partisan process by targeting certain groups of people and advancing a biased agenda.

The suit seeks an order declaring the president's proclamation unlawful.

The Department of Justice, which would defend the case in court, did not immediately respond to an email for comment.

The administration tried last year to add a citizenship question to the census for the first time in 60 years, but the U.S. Supreme Court blocked the move.

Dareh Gregorian is a politics reporter for NBC News.

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'Unlawful': Coalition of states sues Trump over bid to omit undocumented immigrants from census - NBC News

Donald Trumps Niece Mary Tells Stephen Colbert That Her Uncle Could Not Function In The Real World On His Own – Deadline

While promoting her book Too Much and Never Enough, Mary Trump has said some harsh things about her uncle, President Donald Trump. She has said the president had someone else take his SAT. She has said he used racial and anti-Semitic slurs. She has said he should resign.

But what she told Stephen Colbert on Wednesday may, well, Trump them all.

Asked if her uncle displayed sociopathic traits Mary said, Donald has so many pathologies and theyre so complex, theres so much co-morbidity that its really difficult to tease out whats exactly going on without testing.

Clearly, hes comfortable doing heartless things, she continued. Clearly he doesnt seem to be interested in empathy. So I think its safe to say he demonstrates sociopathic tendencies. I think its safe to say hes not high-functioning at all.

And then came what for the president who presents himself as a stable genius and a man of the people may be her most damning indictment. Its one that strikes at the heart of his image as a wildly successful go-getter.

Were talking about a man who I believe could not function in the real world on his own, said Mary. A crucial reason hes gotten as far as he has is hes continually protected by what I consider institutions. Hes had all of his needs taken care of. Hes never been held accountable. Hes been protected from his failures and hes been allowed to fail upward spectacularly.

Given what she knows about Donald Trump, Colbert asks Mary how it is to have her uncle as the President of the United States? Its awful, she says.

Watch the clip below.

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Donald Trumps Niece Mary Tells Stephen Colbert That Her Uncle Could Not Function In The Real World On His Own - Deadline

Donald Trump Wants a Fight on the Green New Deal. So Do We. – The Nation

Firefighters from Stockton, Calif., fight a Southern California wildfire (Mel Melcon / Los Angeles Times via AP Photo)

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At the 2019 Republican Retreat, Donald Trump promised his allies that he would make this election about climate change: I want to bring them way down the pike, he said, before we start criticizing the Green New Deal.Ad Policy

At his Tulsa rally in June, and in many of the campaign speeches hes given since then, the presidents long riff on the climate proved he hasnt forgotten the promise he made to Republicans. Trumps obsession with the Green New Dealfrom his fixation on the completely debunked notion that windmills cause cancer, to his nonsense about cows and hamburgers, to his racist and misogynistic ramblings about Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who introduced the Green New Deal Resolutionis much more central to his reelection effort than it appears at first glance.

For whatever reason, Trump has decided that the Green New Deala proposal to save our country from environmental and economic disasteris going to be his main electoral punching bag in the 2020 campaign.

If thats the fight he wants to pick, we say: Bring it on. And new polling shows the Democratic Party should welcome the fight, too.Climate Action

Trump and the GOP appear poised to spend the election attacking Joe Bidens plan to create millions of high-paying jobs by falsely arguing that it will cost $100 trillion, and destroy all the cows, cars, and airplanes. The goal of these absurd lies is to distract us from the truth: He and his party have no plan to address the climate crisis aside from further lining the pockets of oil and gas executives. But the American people want climate action.

New polling from Climate Power 2020 finds 71 percent favor bold government action on climate change, while only 18 percent oppose it. And talking about climate moves votes for Democrats. When presented as a choice between a Democratic congressional candidate in favor of bold climate action and an anti-action Republican, the vote moves 14 points in the Democrats favor. This jump is even bigger21 pointsfor centrist Republican and Democratic voters. These numbers are astronomical, and they make clear that running aggressively on climate is the Democratic Partys biggest political opportunity this election.

Trumps record on climate is damning. He put oil and coal lobbyists in charge of protecting our environmentand they immediately went to work rolling back over 100 environmental safeguards, allowing corporate polluters to pump more toxic pollution and chemicals into our air and water. So that companies like Chevron can keep making billions in profits and pay zero in federal taxes, hes waged a war on our clean energy industry thats cost our economy over 1.1 million jobs. Future generations will face devastating health impacts and extreme weather disasters, all because Trump spent four years allowing fossil fuel lobbyists to dictate his every move on the climate, clean energy, and the environment.Current Issue

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Trump is picking this fight because he thinks he can convince voters that bold climate action is a threat, not a necessity. But hyperbolic attacks dont work. Polling shows the American people see it for what it is: another distraction from the same guy whos called both climate change and the novel coronavirus a hoax, who had the audacity to claim that thousands of Americans did not die under his watch in Puerto Rico after Hurricane Maria, and who never listens to scientists, expertsor even his own military leaders at the Pentagon, which have recognized climate change as a national security threat for years.

But heres the deal: Running boldly on tackling the climate crisis, running on a Green New Deal, these are policies that can be popular in all 50 states. Democrats should run toward, not away from these fights. The evidence is clear: If we loudly make the case for bold climate action, we will win.

Johns gray hair is a testament to our 44-year difference in age. Those familiar with each of us may not think we have a lot in common. One of us chaired Hillary Clintons 2016 campaign, and one of us was Bernie Sanderss leading climate surrogate in 2020. But were both clear: Weve never seen our country so eager to elect leaders who will take bold action to stop the climate crisis.

Neither have we ever known a country in such dire need of such bold action. In a moment of historic unemployment, Democrats want to put millions of people back to work now by investing in bold climate action that would create millions of clean energy jobs and begin to repair decades of environmental injustice. Thats what the American people want too. By 23 points, voters support investing trillions of dollars in clean energy infrastructure.

We have paid an inconceivable price for Trumps refusal to heed experts and science in a crisis. But as Americans claw out of unemployment, as folks scrape together the money to properly honor the lives they have lost, we have become unified by our acute fear of living through another crisis of this scale.

The climate crisis is the crisis we fear. Trump wants to fight about it. Thats good. So do we.

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Donald Trump Wants a Fight on the Green New Deal. So Do We. - The Nation

Donald Trump Bragged About It. Now You Can Wear It: Person. Woman. Man. Camera. TV. – Vogue

It was the phrase heard round the world. And now you can wear it on your chest and head and even over your mouth.

On Wednesday in an interview with Fox News, President Donald Trump, doubling down on a dubious claim he had first made on Sunday in an interview with Fox anchor Chris Wallace, went into a lengthy discussion of the cognitive test he had taken, claiming yet again that the doctors who administered the test deemed his performance amazing.

As an example, he discussed one particular question, in which he was told five words and then later asked to repeat them. As everyone now knows, those words were Person, woman, man, camera, TV. As the interviewer, Marc Siegel, looked on patiently (although a thought bubble might have read, What the hell is he talking about?), Trump continued to brag about his performance, saying that he had gotten extra points for not only remembering the words but also repeating them back in the right order. (Its actually not that easy, but for me it was easy.) He claimed the doctors had said to him, Thats amazing. How did you do that? He said he responded by saying, I do it because I have, like, a good memory, because Im cognitively there.

He then again repeated the sequence of wordsif somewhat more haltingly the second time around.

Immediately, it became the phrase of the 2020 campaign, though perhaps without the majesty of such previous slogans like Morning in America or the pop-culture knowingness of Wheres the beef? Suddenly mocking tweets, memes, and even a catchy music video appeared. Sarah Cooper, who has become a TikTok star by lip-synching Trumps speeches to hilarious effect, rushed out a funny new video. And The Late Show With Stephen Colbert produced a minute-and-a-half trailer for a new movie that examines one of the great minds in history. As a series of clips of Trump played in sequence, including him reciting those five now famous five words, an announcer intoned, He saw the world in a way no one could imagine, adding, From the makers of A Beautiful Mind comes A Good Brain...coming soon to a person, woman, man, camera, TV near you.

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Donald Trump Bragged About It. Now You Can Wear It: Person. Woman. Man. Camera. TV. - Vogue

Mary Trump’s book likely outsells ‘Art of the Deal’ in first week – Business Insider – Business Insider

During its first week, Mary Trump's tell-all book about her uncle, Donald Trump, has sold over 1.3 million copies across all formats, the publisher, Simon & Schuster, said a statement.

"Too Much and Never Enough: How My Family Created the World's Most Dangerous Man" discusses the Trump family as a whole, with Mary Trump writing about how the president's childhood and parents led him to be the divisive leader he is today.

The book makes a number of shocking claims, including that Donald Trump cheated on his SAT by having someone else take the exam.

The book will be receiving a 17th printing because of high demand, bringing the total of hardcover copies to 1.35 million. The Los Angeles Times reported that the book set a first-day-sales record for Simon & Schuster.

This hardcover book has likely done better in hardcover sales than Donald Trump's most popular book "Trump: The Art of the Deal."

Trump has claimed that that book is "the best-selling business book of all time."

As of 2016, the book has sold 1.1 million copies since its release in 1987, CBS News reported, citing a source familiar with the book's sales.

Donald Trump's brother tried to ban the release of the book, arguing it was an "attempt to sensationalize and mischaracterize our family," a person familiar with the matter told The New York Times.

It's not uncommon for tell-all books about the Trump administration to have strong first-week sales.

"The Room Where It Happened" the memoir by former national-security adviser John Bolton sold 780,000 copies its first week in production.

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Mary Trump's book likely outsells 'Art of the Deal' in first week - Business Insider - Business Insider

Donald Trump backtracks on the full reopening of US schools – Euronews

Donald Trump said schools in US coronavirus hotspots "may need to delay reopening for a few weeks" as he spoke at a White House press conference on Thursday, adding that the decision will fall on local governors.

The move marks a slight shift from his previous positions, as the US president claimed in recent weeks that it was safe to reopen schools and that students needed to return so their parents could go back to work - denouncing an attempt by the Democrats to block this for allegedly political reasons.

His push has at times put him at odds with his own health officials.

Earlier this month, he said school guidelines from the US health agency, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), were too tough, prompting the agency to update its guidance on Thursday.

The CDC did not appear to remove any of its earlier suggestions, but its website emphasises the importance of reopening schools, echoing many of Trump's arguments.

"School closure disrupts the delivery of in-person instruction and critical services to children and families, which has negative individual and societal ramifications," it reads.

"The best available evidence from countries that have opened schools indicates that COVID-19 poses low risks to school-aged children, at least in areas with low community transmission, and suggests that children are unlikely to be major drivers of the spread of the virus."

The updated guidance lays out a range of measures depending on the level of spread. If there's minimal or moderate spread, it recommends social distancing, masks and increased sanitation.

But in areas with substantive and uncontrolled spread, school closures should be an important consideration.

However, some of the nation's largest districts, like Los Angeles and San Diego, have already ruled out reopening schools, while New York City plans to offer a mix of online and in-person instruction.

Education Secretary Betsy DeVos has said that students should be in the classroom every day if their families want and that any alternative fails students and taxpayers.

In many states, education leaders said the lack of funding to implement safety measures is preventing students from returning to school.

Trump on Thursday said he's asking Congress to provide some 90 billion in education funding as part of the next virus relief bill, with the aim to help schools reducing class sizes, hire teachers, rearrange spaces and provide masks.

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Donald Trump backtracks on the full reopening of US schools - Euronews

Donald Trump Explains Why No Medical Experts Are At Coronavirus Briefings: I Am Giving The Information To You – Deadline

Donald Trump again held a press briefing focused on the coronavirus crisis, and he again went solo: No Vice President Mike Pence, who is leading the White House task force on the pandemic, and no medical experts.

Asked by CNNs Kaitlin Collins on Wednesday why they were not present, Trump said, They are briefing me. I am meeting them. I just spoke to Dr. [Anthony] Fauci. Dr. [Deborah] Birx is right outside. And they are giving me everything they know as of this point in time and I am giving the information to you, and it seems to be a very concise way of doing it. It seems to be working out very well.

Fauci is the longtime director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, and Birx is the coronavirus response coordinator for the White House task force.

Related StoryJoe Biden And Barack Obama Debut New Video Where They Chide Donald Trump For Taking 'No Responsibility'

On Tuesday, Trump held his first coronavirus briefing since April, acknowledging the rising number of cases around the country means that the pandemic may get worse before it gets better, while encouraging Americans to wear masks and socially distance. Like his briefing today, the president appeared alone at the lectern.

That is a contrast to the briefings last spring, when figures like Fauci and Birx, along with Pence and others, would give remarks and answer questions from reporters.

Trump said the medical experts are very much involved. The relationships are all very good.

There has been much attention to the friction between the White House and Fauci, who has become somewhat of a celebrity in his own right as a ubiquitous medical voice on the crisis. Peter Navarro, Trumps trade adviser, published an op-ed in USA Today discrediting Fauci, and the president told Fox News Chris Wallace that the infectious diseases doctor was a little bit of an alarmist.

Wednesdays briefing also was notable for its length 22 minutes, a contrast to some of the marathons from the spring, which stretched to more than two hours. The abbreviated format left little time for the president to get into tussles with reporters.

With Trumps poll numbers sagging, including on the question of how hes handling the coronavirus crisis, his return to the briefings is a way for him to garner the spotlight at a more opportune time: the early evening, just as broadcast and cable news networks are leading into their evening newscasts and signature nightly shows. Earlier this week, Trump boasted of getting record numbers watching.

The president also touted a new deal that the administration reached with Pfizer for the delivery of 100 million doses of a COVID-19 vaccine. Although the vaccines have not been found safe an effective, the idea is to get production in place so that there can be a speedy deployment once that happens.

Trump also did have a chance to make one of his superlative declarations. A reporter had asked him about Joe Bidens comment from earlier in the day, in which he said that Trump was the first racist to get elected president.

After talking about employment, opportunity zones and criminal justice reform, Trump responded, Ive said this and I say it openly, and not a lot of people dispute it, I have done more for Black Americans that anybody with the possible exception of Abraham Lincoln.Nobody has even been close.

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Donald Trump Explains Why No Medical Experts Are At Coronavirus Briefings: I Am Giving The Information To You - Deadline

These 5 words may cost Trump a second term – CNN

"I have joined the political arena so that the powerful can no longer beat up on people that cannot defend themselves. Nobody knows the system better than me, which is why I alone can fix it."

Even at the time, those words were odd. Trump was casting himself as the only person in America -- a nation of 330 million people -- who could fix the problems with inequity? Who could bridge the gap between the haves and the have nots? Who could make the country more, well, equal?

Almost four years to the day since Trump made the "I alone can fix it" claim, it now appears more likely than not that those five words will be the lead of his political obituary.

See, the problem with very publicly claiming that you are the only person in the country who can fix the problems that face the country is that when problems arise in the country, people expect you to fix them. Because, well, you said you would. Literally.

Now, there's no way Trump -- or anyone else -- could have known that we would be dealing with a global pandemic the likes of which we haven't seen in more than a hundred years when he said what he said at the Republican National Convention in 2016.

But since at least January, it was clear that a) Covid-19 was dangerous and b) it was very likely to wind up in the US. Despite that reality, Trump spent much of the late winter and early spring downplaying the threat.

Trump's downplaying of the threat did not solve the problem. In fact, his resistance to wearing a mask and his pressure campaign on governors to reopen their states and, now, to reopen schools in the fall, have made things objectively worse.

Far from being the only one who can solve this biggest problem facing the country, Trump has proven to many people over these past few months that he was -- and is -- simply not the right person to lead America through this sort of crisis.

That realization might have doomed his reelection chances no matter what. But that Trump voluntarily put himself forward as fixer-in-chief makes his botched handling of the coronavirus crisis all the more stark, and all the more damaging to his chances of getting reelected in November.

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These 5 words may cost Trump a second term - CNN

Ghislaine Maxwell hit reset button on Trump history with women – Los Angeles Times

At President Trumps news conference Tuesday, which was supposed to be about COVID-19, he was asked an easy question. Not about the pandemic. Not about reopening schools. About Ghislaine Maxwell, alleged accomplice of Jeffrey Epstein, who died in prison by suicide one year ago, or so official reports say, before he could be tried on sex trafficking charges.

Maxwell was arrested this month and now sits in jail in Brooklyn, accused of helping Epstein recruit, groom and sexually abuse underage girls.

A reporter asked Trump whether Maxwell might implicate any of the famous men in Epsteins circle. Prince Andrew, say. Or Bill Clinton.

All Trump had to do was go boilerplate: These allegations against Maxwell are very serious, he could have said, and I hope justice is done. If that was too difficult, why not take a shot at Clinton, who traveled with Epstein and hosted Maxwell at his daughter Chelseas wedding.

But the president couldnt muster anything that suggested he disapproves of sexually abusing children. Instead, he sent his regards to Maxwell. Best wishes to Ghislaine, who has pleaded not guilty, as she stews in jail.

Trump, as he helpfully reminded the briefing room, was Epsteins and Maxwells neighbor in Palm Beach. After Epstein was first convicted, of soliciting a child for prostitution, the president claimed that their friendship had been over for years. But Trump once called Epstein a terrific guy, and as for Maxwell, I just wish her well, frankly, Trump said Tuesday.

I wish her well, he repeated.

Prosecutor Twitter started to pop off.

I can think of four times when Trump has publicly extended his best wishes to people charged with federal crimes by DOJ: Roger Stone, Michael Flynn, Paul Manafort and now Ghislaine Maxwell, tweeted former federal and state prosecutor Elie Honig.

What do Stone (convicted felon), Flynn (pleaded guilty to a felony) and Manafort (convicted felon) have in common? Theyre all people Trump has had a powerful interest in silencing.

Trumps mob-style verbal thuggery with witnesses and rivals is well known. Remember what he said about Marie Yovanovitch, the former U.S. ambassador to Ukraine? Shes going to go through some things.

But he uses carrots, too. Blowing Maxwell figurative kisses, the Twitterverse suggested, could be a way to signal that he has her back.

As early as the 1980s, Trump and Epstein swam in the same social pool, as the Washington Post put it. Epstein long bragged that he introduced Trump to his current wife, Melania.

In 1992, the Epstein and Trump were the sole male guests at a Mar-a-Lago party with 28 young women who had been flown in for entertainment. Video from another 1992 Mar-a-Lago party surfaced last year showing the two men appraising NFL cheerleaders and Trump pawing at one. Epstein, Trump told New York magazine in 2002, likes beautiful women as much as I do, and many of them are on the younger side.

Trump has never been implicated in Epsteins terrible history, detailed in Julie K. Browns omnibus expos last year in the Miami Herald. On Thursday, White House press secretary, Kayleigh McEnany, was at pains to point out that the president was ahead of this, banning this man from his property long before this case was even being played out in a court of law.

And yet Trumps sympathy for Maxwell not only put the two men together again in peoples minds; it also hit the refresh button on the presidents five decades of leering, exploitative history with women.

You may think youve heard enough about Trumps genital-grabbing, but dont go numb.

One late-breaking charge came a year ago, when journalist E. Jean Carroll accused Trump of raping her in a New York City department store dressing room in the mid-1990s. Trump denied knowing Carroll though a photo of the two together exists and went after her on Twitter. Carroll filed suit against him for defamation. She has asked Trump for a DNA sample to see if it matches substances on the dress she says she wore the day she encountered him at Bergdorf Goodman. His lawyers have sought to delay the proceedings.

Carrolls is just one of many womens stories of sexual assault and sexual harassment at Trumps hands. A group of beauty-pageant contestants say he barged into their dressing rooms while they were in various states of undress. Porn actress Stormy Daniels and Playboy model Karen McDougal say they had affairs with him, then got paid, one way or another, for their silence.

Trump denies it all, but there are those canceled checks Michael Cohen produced in court, and back in the day, Trump boasted to Howard Stern that he could sort of get away with the beauty-queen break-ins (and more) because he owned the Miss Universe, Miss USA and Miss Teen USA pageants. On the infamous grab-them-by-the-genitals Access Hollywood tape, the man who is now president says, When youre a star, they let you do it.

For four years, Trump has hoped that with payoffs, aggressive attorneys and Twitter intimidation he can avoid real consequences for his history of adultery, ritual humiliation of women, harassment and sexual abuse.

But its all in plain sight.

@page88

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Ghislaine Maxwell hit reset button on Trump history with women - Los Angeles Times

Trump Cancels Republican Party Convention in Florida – Voice of America

WHITE HOUSE - Citing safety concerns, U.S. President Donald Trump has announced he is pulling the plug on next months Republican Party convention in Jacksonville, Floridaa coronavirus hot spot.

Due to the flare-up in Florida it is not the right time to have a big convention, Trump told reporters in the White House briefing room on Thursday. I have to protect the American people. Thats what Ive always done. Thats what I always will do. Thats what Im about.

About 330 delegates will still meet in Charlotte, North Carolina, for the formal nomination of Trump as the Republican candidate for president.

Trump said it remains to be determined where he will make his acceptance speech which had been scheduled for Jacksonville on August 27 and that the other events will be replaced with tele-rallies.

Asked by a reporter what compelled him to totally cancel the Florida event, the president replied: I would just say safety. Just safety. I could see the media saying, Oh, this is very unsafe.

Trump said thousands of his supporters wanted to attend and were in the process of making travel arrangements.

About 10,000 people had been expected, which would have been a small fraction of the attendance at such a major political event in a normal year.

Planning for the event in Florida had been hampered by anemic fund-raising from prospective sponsors. Many potential attendees were worried about health risks, and local officials expressed concern to Trumps campaign about the difficulty of providing enough resources and personnel to safely host the event.

Jacksonville Mayor Lenny Curry and Sheriff Mike Williams posted a joint statement shortly after the presidents remarks.

We appreciate President Donald Trump considering our public health and safety concerns in making this incredibly difficult decision, Curry and Williams said in a joint statement after the White House announcement. As always, in Jacksonville, public safety is our number one priority. President Trump has once again reaffirmed his commitment to the safety of Jacksonville, Florida, and the people of the United States of America.

Florida on Thursday announced 173 additional COVID-19 fatalities, the most of any day throughout the coronavirus pandemic. More than 5,600 people have died in the state from COVID-19 and nearly 400,000 have been infected.

Across the United States, 4 million people have tested positive for the coronavirus and 144,000 have died the most reported by any country.

Coronavirus briefing

The surprise announcement of the conventions cancellation came at the start of the presidents coronavirus briefing, a gathering before the press he revived this week after a hiatus.

As has been the case this week, Trump did not share the podium with any members of the White House coronavirus task force, although Dr. Deborah Birx was seated on the side of the briefing room.

The president again blamed the outbreak of the virus on China, where the first cases were reported in late December of last year.

Its a different world and it will be for a little while, acknowledged Trump, who has been criticized for playing down for months the seriousness of the virus.

Trump emphasized that despite the concerns of educators and parents across the country, it is important for students to return to classroom education as soon as feasible.

Schools have to open safely. They have to open,"said the president, who noted that children are significantly less prone to get sick or die from COVID-19 than adults.

Most schools in the United States begin the academic year in late August or early September. Many are already delaying that timetable and choosing to hold some or all classes online amid the pandemic.

School districts located in coronavirus hot spots may need to delay reopening for a few weeks. Thats possible. Thatll be up to governors, said the president.

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Trump Cancels Republican Party Convention in Florida - Voice of America

Donald Trump is the reason COVID-19 is out of control – Los Angeles Times

To the editor: Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) and Rep. Adam Schiff (D-Burbank) make the case that we need a commission to obtain answers as to how this COVID-19 crisis grew in our country and how we can better prepare for such a crisis in the future.

I contend that the answer was clear the moment Donald Trump was elected president in November 2016: By selecting Trump, the American people had chosen to turn the presidency into an on-the-job training position.

This serves to answer both how we stumbled into our current crisis and how to better prepare for future problems. The presidency requires, among other traits, emotional and intellectual intelligence; it also requires prior government service.

Our current president has none of these.

Gary Valdez, San Diego

..

To the editor: With deep appreciation for Feinstein and Schiff, I believe the last thing we need is another congressional commission with more hearings on COVID-19.

Such media blame games may help elected officials go on record with sound bites for their constituents, but the answer to how we bring the virus under control is obvious and immediate: Review every step of the Trump administrations response to our pandemic, and do the absolute opposite next time.

Loretta Redd, Santa Barbara

..

To the editor: I heartily agree with Feinstein and Schiff on the need for a thorough investigation into the governments handling of the coronavirus disaster. I also agree that the 9/11 Commission provides an excellent model for that investigation.

Careful deliberation is in order. Following the 9/11 attacks, Congress acted in haste and left us with some of the mechanisms now being used by the forces of reaction. Both the establishment of the Department of Homeland Security and the odious Patriot Act were passed overwhelmingly by Congress in the time between the attacks in 2001 and when the 9/11 Commission issued its report.

These acts now give the Trump administration much of the legal cover and bureaucratic apparatus that it is using against free speech in Portland, Ore., and other places. Both Sen. Feinstein and Rep. Schiff voted for these measures. (Then-Rep. Bernie Sanders, in contrast, voted with the tiny, principled minority against both.)

I urge the authors to exert themselves to abolish the Department of Homeland Security, repeal the Patriot Act and reclaim the power of Congress under Article I of the Constitution.

Michael Deck, Altadena

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Donald Trump is the reason COVID-19 is out of control - Los Angeles Times

US scientists rebuke Trump over coronavirus response and other affronts – The Guardian

More than 1,200 members of the US National Academy of Sciences have rebuked Donald Trumps denigration of scientific expertise, an unusual move for a community which has historically avoided the political sphere.

The co-organizers of an open letter seeking to restore science-based policy in government say they have rapidly gained signatures during the coronavirus pandemic.

Scientists have watched the Trump administration downplay the crisis and ignore expert advice, including the need to wear masks and the dangers of using unproven drugs.

In the latest affront to the scientific world, the White House is reportedly seeking to block funding for testing and tracing, which scientists widely agree is critical to slowing the spread of the coronavirus.

On Sunday, Trump called the nations top infectious disease expert, Anthony Fauci, a little bit of an alarmist.

The open letter began as a response to Trumps refusal to accept and act on warnings from climate scientists. In September 2016, 378 academy members wrote that withdrawal from the Paris climate agreement would have negative consequences for the worlds climate system and for US leadership and credibility.

In April 2018, more than 1,000 scientists signed a version of the letter which warned that Trumps dismissal of scientific evidence in policy formulation has affected wide areas of the social, biological, environmental and physical sciences.

The three organizers have since invited members who joined NAS in 2019 and 2020 to sign on to the letter. More than 62% did, bringing the total to 1,220 out of a membership of about 2,900. Some of the signatories work in government or have federal grants but felt compelled to add their names despite professional risks.

Benjamin Santer, a climate researcher at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory and a co-organizer, said the administration has changedwhat it means to be a scientist in America.

We no longer have the luxury, in my opinion, of retreating to our offices and closing the door and hoping bad stuff will go away, he said. Thats a singularly poor survival strategy when youre facing a global pandemic or global climate change. Bad stuff isnt going to go away.

The academy which was formed during the civil war exists to provide independent, objective advice to the nation. Members are elected by their peers for outstanding research contributions. About 500 current and deceased members have won Nobel Prizes.

Charles Manski, the second co-organizer, an economist at Northwestern University, acknowledged that some might view the letter as political but said the scientists do not. They just want policy to be informed by the best possible information.

Its one thing for the political establishment not to respond very well to a crisis that happens around the world, Manski said. Its quite another thing to be actively denigrating the science and making things up routinely.

Trump has recently attacked guidelines for school reopening from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), calling them expensive and impractical.

In response, four former directors of the CDC wrote an op-ed in the Washington Post, warning that public health experts face two opponents: Covid-19, but also political leaders and others attempting to undermine their work.

These repeated efforts to subvert sound public health guidelines introduce chaos and uncertainty while unnecessarily putting lives at risk, they said.

The Trump administration has ignored or silenced science so many times that the Union of Concerned Scientists maintains an archive of incidents. They range from contradicting hurricane forecasting to dismantling health protections at pork processing plants.

Ray Weymann, the third co-organizer of the open letter and a retired astronomer and astrophysicist, said frustration with the coronavirus response is just the latest reason scientists are signing.

Every single week practically you hear about scientists being dismissed or relocated and key positions not being filled, he said. Over the last two years this feeling just built up more and more and it was really highlighted by the pandemic.

See the original post:

US scientists rebuke Trump over coronavirus response and other affronts - The Guardian

Donald Trump’s assault on the WHO is deeply worrying for global health – The Guardian

The campaign by the Trump administration against the World Health Organization has often seemed faintly preposterous.

Over the months of the coronavirus pandemic its untruths and hyperbole have been dismissed by many as iterations of Trumpspeak, whose main purpose has been to distract from the USs catastrophic response to Covid-19, which has claimed almost 140,000 lives and devastated the economy.

In recent weeks, however, the actions of the Trump administration have moved from dodgy dossiers and fake claims to a far more sinister agenda, and one with real world consequences that may result in more lives lost, not least in the developing world.

After announcing the withdrawal of the US from the WHO, secretary of state Mike Pompeo has levelled an extraordinary series of accusations against the global health bodys head, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, denouncing him to a private meeting of British MPs as essentially an agent of Beijing and suggesting the WHO was responsible for British deaths.

Coming hard on the heels of the Trump administrations successful pressure to push the Chinese firm Huawei out of this countrys 5G network, the suspicion must be that the US is now lobbying for support from the UK for its destructive line against the UN health body.

This matters for multiple reasons. The WHO bureaucratic, inefficient and slow-moving as it can be serves a fundamental purpose as the primary clearing house on health issues worldwide, including communicable and non-communicable diseases, acting as the first line of defence in serious disease outbreaks such as the current pandemic.

It works for global reproductive health and rights, for the eradication of preventable childhood diseases such as measles, and in the struggle against some of the worlds biggest killers, such as malaria, as well as in health education.

None of which you would recognise from Pompeos characterisation of the body as some kind of covert Chinese-influenced stooge.

Increasingly one is forced to wonder whether the animus aimed by Trump at the Ethiopian Tedros in keeping with the long history of attacks on Barack Obama is as much to do with the colour of his skin as his expertise.

On one level, the attacks reflect the denigration of science and expertise that has long been a hallmark of Trump and his senior officials, aimed too at public health experts like Anthony Fauci.

All of which has more significance coming from one of the worlds leading nations, setting a tone for populists elsewhere.

Perhaps that should not be surprising given Trumps own largely unthinking history on public health that has seen him swerve from an anti-vax position to his clumsy attempt to scoop up potential Covid-19 vaccines and treatments for US use.

On a more practical level, the US withdrawal from the UN body, as the largest donor, is already causing stresses within the organisation, forcing it to focus in the midst of a pandemic that has claimed over 620,000 lives globally on how it will operate within renewed budget constraints.

Also at risk is the future of the US scientists seconded to the WHO and collaborative work with US public health bodies like the CDC (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention), the NIH (National Institutes of Health) and others that have been asked to look at what programmes should continue.

Perhaps most serious of all is the continued and misguided assault on any notion of multilateral institutions and the rejection that there is any reciprocal benefit to wealthy nations from organisations whose substantial function is helping the worlds poorest.

But above all this is what American diplomacy looks like in the Trump era.

It is ugly, dishonest, bullying and cruel, a pathetic trade in self-serving tittle-tattle that damages not only public health around the world, but undermines Americas claim to global leadership.

Here is the original post:

Donald Trump's assault on the WHO is deeply worrying for global health - The Guardian

Don’t be fooled: There is no ‘new’ Trump on coronavirus (or anything else) – CNN

"Trump's press conference today marks a change in tone and a more disciplined and realistic approach," tweeted Republican strategist Matt Mackowiak. "It will be a good message for the public and he will benefit from it politically. Welcome news."

Um, no.

If there is anything we have learned -- or should have learned -- about Donald Trump over these past five-ish years, it's that that there is no "new" Trump, no version 2.0, no new leaf to turn over. There is just Trump. He has been this same person -- bullying, blaming, convinced of his own brilliance, willing to bend and break facts for his own purposes -- his entire adult life. He may be able to subsume those natural characteristics for a day or even a week. But they will come back out -- sooner rather than later. They always, always do.

We've been down this road before. Like, a lot of times.

Go back to the spring of 2016 when Trump was trying to convince the Republican Party that he could rein in his more base instincts (sand Twitter fingers) and be the sort of presidential nominee they had grown to expect.

"His Tuesday night victory speech at Trump Tower in New York City was brief, relatively subdued, and relatively on-message. The roughly ten-minute speech was a far, far cry from the night in March when he celebrated primary wins by hawking Trump steaks, Trump wine and threw a Trump magazine into the crowd of supporters who had gathered at his lush Mar-a-lago resort in Florida."

Trump then went on a media blitz to sell the new him.

That was more than four years ago.

And yet, when Trump delivered his first address to a bicameral session of Congress in 2017, there was still talk of a new tone.

That was more than three years ago.

"For 30 minutes on Tuesday, President Donald Trump pretended to act like something approximating a normal human in discussing the COVID-19 crisis facing our country. He read some platitudes from a script. He expressed support for basic safety precautions in the face of a contagious virus. While not eliminating them entirely he kept the wishcasting and gaslighting and hyperbolic statements about his self-proclaimed greatness to a minimum."

Yes, that.

And, even within Trump's quasi-presidential performance on Tuesday night, there was evidence that the old Trump -- aka the only Trump -- was lurking right below the surface.

Right.

You can hate that Trump. Or love him. But you cannot reasonably think that there is any other iteration of Trump that is emerging. There is not. Trump is just Trump. Always has been. Always will be.

See the rest here:

Don't be fooled: There is no 'new' Trump on coronavirus (or anything else) - CNN

Revenge of the Never Trumpers: Meet the Republican Dissidents Fighting to Push Donald Trump Out of Office – TIME

Jack Spielman has been a Republican his whole life. But over the past four years, he has come to two realizations.

Increasingly upset by President Donald Trumps appalling behavior, his cozy relationships with dictators and the ballooning national debt, Spielman says his first epiphany was that he couldnt cast a ballot for Trump again. But for the retired Army cybersecurity engineer, the final straw was the Presidents retaliation against impeachment witness Lieut. Colonel Alexander Vindman, who retired in July after Trump fired him from the National Security Council in February. Spielman decided he had to do more than just vote for presumptive Democratic nominee Joe Biden; he had to persuade others to do the same. So Spielman filmed a video for a group called Republican Voters Against Trump (RVAT), explaining his views. I want to do some part, Spielman tells TIME, to try to correct the wrong that I did in voting for this man.

RVAT, which launched in May, is among a growing number of Republicanled groups dedicated to making Trump a one-term President. Since December, longtime GOP operatives and officials have formed at least five political committees designed to urge disaffected conservatives to vote for Biden. The best known of these groups, the Lincoln Project, has since forming late last year gained national attention for its slick advertisements trolling the President. Right Side PAC, led by the former chair of the Ohio Republican Party, launched in late June; a few days after that, more than 200 alumni of George W. Bushs Administration banded together to form an organization called 43 Alumni for Biden. Theres also the Bravery Project, led by former GOP Congressman and erstwhile Trump primary challenger Joe Walsh. And plans are in the works for a group of former national-security officials from Republican administrations to endorse Biden this summer.

Since 2015, pockets of the party have bemoaned Trumps Twitter antics, his divisive rhetoric and key elements of his platform, from the Muslim travel ban to his trade tariffs to his family-separation policy at the U.S.-Mexico border. But with the Presidents approval rating in the party consistently around 90%, and GOP lawmakers terrified to cross him, the so-called Never Trump faction has proven largely powerless, with a negligible impact on federal policy.

Now, in the final stretch of the Presidents term, the Never Trumpers could finally have their revenge. Four years ago, Trump won the Electoral College by some 77,000 votes scattered across Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and Michigan. If even a small slice of disillusioned Trump voters or right-leaning independents defect to Biden in November, it could be enough to kick Trump out of office. They are the constituency that can swing this election, says Sarah Longwell, a longtime Republican operative and founder of RVAT.

This constituency now appears more willing to vote for Biden than they were six months ago, in no small part because of Trumps faltering response to the corona-virus, which has killed more than 140,000 Americans and ravaged the economy. Between March and June, according to a Pew Research poll, Trumps approval rating among Republicans and Republican-leaning voters dropped seven percentage points, to 78%. A June 25 New York Times/Siena College survey found that Biden has a 35-point lead over Trump among voters in battleground states who supported a third-party candidate in 2016. Any small percentage of voters who no longer support him could be critical in closely matched swing states, says Republican pollster Whit Ayres.

Its too early to gauge how effective the raft of Never Trump groups will be. Theyre dismissed by many Republicans as self-serving opportunists profiting off the polarization Trump has exacerbated. Trump also remains hugely popular among Republicans. President Trump is the leader of a united Republican Party where he has earned 94% of Republican votes during the primariessomething any former President of any party could only dream of, says campaign spokes-woman Erin Perrine.

Even if the Never Trump activists are able to help oust the President, its unclear what will become of a party thats vastly different from the one they came up in. Trump has transformed todays GOP into a cult of personality rooted in economic nationalism and racial division. And while the small anti-Trump faction wants to return to the conservative ideology that reigned for decades before Trump, many Republicans believe Trump has changed the party forever.

Sitting in front of a packed book-case, Rick Wilson looked surprised as he peered over hornrimmed spectacles at an overflowing screen: Theres 10,000 people on here, the onetime Republican operative marveled of the Zoom audience assembled for the Lincoln Projects first town hall on July 9.

The Lincoln Projects ads criticizing the Presidents performance have helped it raise nearly $20 million

Grant LancasterAM New York

Wilson formed the Lincoln Project in December, along with lawyer George Conway, the husband of Trumps senior adviser Kellyanne Conway, and veteran political strategists Steve Schmidt and John Weaver, among others. The Republican stalwarts had grown disgusted with the Presidents behavior and their partys acquiescence to it. The launch met little fanfare, but in the months since, the group has demonstrated a knack for quickly producing memorable videos and advertisements that get under Trumps skin. In early May, with the unemployment rate soaring toward 15%, the group released an ad dubbed Mourning in America, a play on the upbeat Ronald Reagan classic, which depicted the woes of sick and unemployed Americans under Trumps leadership. If we have another four years like this, the ads narrator intones as dead patients are wheeled out of hospitals on stretchers, will there even be an America? The President took notice. Their so-called Lincoln Project is a disgrace to Honest Abe! Trump tweeted. I dont know what Kellyanne did to her deranged loser of a husband, Moonface, but it must have been really bad.

Irritating the President is part of the point. Its not trolling if you get a fish in the line, says Reed Galen, a veteran of George W. Bushs presidential campaigns and one of the projects co-founders. We kept dropping a hook in the water, and eventually the President bit. The attention has been a boon to the groups finances. The Lincoln Project raised nearly $17 million between April 1 and June 30.

If the Lincoln Project tries to needle the President, other groups in the Never Trump ecosystem have found complementary roles. Instead of using polished editing and ominous music to make a splash online, RVAT has gathered more than 400 testimonials from disheartened Republicans like Spielman. I did only vote for Donald Trump because I couldnt believe someone who acted as goofy as he did on TV actually meant it, Monica, a self-described evangelical Christian from Texas, says in one video. Since that time, I have been riddled with guilt.

Longwell, RVATs founder, believes hearing from people like Monica will show waffling conservatives that theyre not alone in their dislike of the President, and encourage them to break away. The thing that people trusted wasnt elites, it wasnt Republican elites, it certainly wasnt the media, Longwell says of her focus-group research. But they did trust people like them. The group says it plans to showcase those voices in an eight-figure ad campaign in five swing states before Election Day.

RVAT identified recalcitrant Republicans through email lists Longwell had built at Defending Democracy Together, its parent organization. Founded in 2019, Defending Democracy Together created online petitions whose signatories often offered clues of their disillusionment with Trump. Petitions supporting Vindman and thanking Utah Senator Mitt Romney for voting to convict Trump of abuse of power during the impeachment trial proved especially fruitful in finding former Trump supporters, according to Tim Miller, RVATs political director and a veteran Republican communications strategist.

To test new video messages, Longwell held a Zoom focus group on July 15 with seven Florida voters and allowed TIME to watch. Each participant voted for Trump in 2016 but was now dissatisfied with his leadership. Several mentioned his handling of COVID-19 in the meeting, noting Floridas dramatic spike in cases. Long-well showed the group a few of RVATs testimonials. It resonates with me, one woman who works in the travel industry in Orlando said. It does make me feel less alone. But while three people on the call said theyd likely vote for Biden, two said they were unsure and two said they would still vote for Trump again. I dont think theres any hope for him, the Orlando woman said. But I dont see Biden doing a good job either.

Matt Borges of Right Side PAC recognizes that Republican voters uncertainty about Biden needs to be addressed. As the former chair of the Ohio Republican Party watched Never Trump groups roll out advertisements, he worried there was too much focus on why Trump was bad and not enough on why Biden was a good alternative. We need these people who know they are not [going to] vote for Trump but are not sold on Joe Biden to hear some messaging from fellow Republicans that says, No, its O.K. to vote for this guy,' says Borges, a lifelong Republican who disavowed Trump three years ago. In an unrelated development, Borges was arrested on July 21 for allegedly participating in a $60 million bribery scheme involving top political officials that the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of Ohio decried as the biggest money-laundering effort in the states history.

In June, Borges teamed up with former Trump communications director Anthony Scaramucci to form Right Side PAC, which plans to spend up to $7 million targeting these voters through mailings, digital ads and phone banks. Their first focus is Michigan, where Borges commissioned a pollster to conduct research on Republican voters in swing districts. After spending more than a week in the field, the pollster delivered the results to Borges and Scaramucci on a Zoom call, which TIME observed. Support for Trump among Republican voters in Michigans Eighth Congressional District had dropped from 80% in January to 67%, the pollster said. The district had swung for Trump in 2016, then voted for a Democratic Congresswoman, Elissa Slotkin, two years later. Voters who ranked the coronavirus as their top concern were seen as more likely to break for Biden. While the group had planned to target all white Republican women over the age of 50 in Michigan, the pollster said the data suggested those over 65 were immovable in their support for Trump. These insights, Borges says, will form the basis of Right Side PACs final sale to voters on Bidens behalf.

As the presidential race heads into its final months, another group of Republicans aims to help Biden in a different way. A group of more than 70 former national-security officials from GOP administrations, led by John Bellinger, the senior National Security Council and State Department lawyer under George W. Bush, and Ken Wainstein, Bushs Homeland Security Adviser, plans to endorse Biden and publish a mission statement describing the damage they say Trump has done to Americas national security and global reputation. They will also fund-raise for the former Vice President and do media appearances in battleground states when the group launches later this summer. Some of the same people wrote an open letter denouncing Trump in 2016. But, says Wainstein, our effort this time is going to have some staying power throughout the campaign.

How much impact these groups will ultimately have on voters remains unclear. As they try to unseat an incumbent with a massive war chest, their first hurdle is money. Right Side PAC raised just over $124,000 in the first two weeks, disclosure filings show. The bulk of that haul came from one person, New York venture capitalist Peter Kellner, a long-time Republican donor who began giving to Democrats in 2018 and who has forked over the maximum amount to Bidens campaign, according to Federal Election Commission filings. The groups prospects were also clouded by Borges July 21 arrest. Borges did not respond to requests for comment.

43 Alumni for Biden, the group of former George W. Bush officials, announced its formation on July 1, which means it doesnt have to file disclosure reports until October; had it announced a day earlier, it would have had to publicize its finances in mid-July. A member of the group declined to provide specific figures but said it had received contributions from more than 500 individuals. The Bravery Project officially launches July 23, and a representative declined to provide any fundraising figures.

Longwell tells TIME that RVAT has raised $13 million this year. As a 501(c)4, or political nonprofit, the group does not need to disclose its donors or exact figures. But the number she provides puts the group on par with the Lincoln Project, whose biggest donors are primarily prominent Democrats. While disclosure filings show that nearly half of the Lincoln Projects donations were unitemized or under $200, it raked in $1 million from billionaire hedge-fund manager Stephen Mandel and $100,000 apiece from business mogul David Geffen and Joshua Bekenstein, the co-chairman of Bain Capital.

This influx of cash has enabled the Lincoln Project to ramp up advertisements against vulnerable Republican Senators like Susan Collins of Maine, Cory Gardner of Colorado and Steve Daines of Montana. We made it very clear that this is not just about Trump but Trumpism and its enablers, says Galen. The Republican Senators we have held to account are the Presidents greatest enablers.

The strategy of going after Senators has provoked the ire of many Republicans, who say the group is prioritizing profit over party. Its purely grifting and making a name for themselves. Its not based on principle at all, says Matt Gorman, a Republican strategist who worked for Jeb Bushs and Romneys presidential campaigns. The Lincoln Project, he says, is essentially meant for raising money off the resistance and lining their own pockets.

The groups finances have also raised some eyebrows among government watchdogs. Two consulting firms, one run by Galen and another by co-founder Ron Steslow, received nearly a quarter of the $8.6 million the group spent between January and July. While other committees use similar methods, it is not at all standard, says Sheila Krumholz, executive director at the nonpartisan Center for Responsive Politics. It raises red flags about whether the operation is taking advantage of a situation where donors are giving to what they think is supporting one effort, but there are other patterns at play.

Krumholz notes that the Lincoln Project does not publicly disclose all of the vendors who have done work for them, which suggests they are funneling money to organizations that then hire subcontractors. This method is not unheard-of, but the lack of transparency makes it difficult to discern who is ultimately profiting. The public doesnt know the extent to which Lincoln Project operatives may be profiting, or if theyre profiting at all, Krumholz says. When asked about the groups finances, Galen says, We abide by all reporting requirements laid down by the FEC. No one at the Lincoln Project is buying a Ferrari.

For now, the Never Trump Republicans say they arent looking beyond November. Were all in a grand alliance to beat a very big threat, says Miller of RVAT. Well see how the chips fall after. But regardless of the elections outcome, Miller and his cohorts face challenges ahead. They will either be failed rebels, cast out by a party taken over by its two-term President, or facing down a Biden Administration, which would bring unwelcome liberal policies and perhaps Supreme Court vacancies.

If Biden wins, Trumpism wont disappear with Trump. The Presidents rapid rise revealed the extent to which many of the ideological pillars of modern conservatismits zeal for unfettered free markets, its devotion to deficit reduction, its attachment to global alliances, its faith in a muscular foreign policywere out of step with actual Republican voters. Many of the ambitious lawmakers rising in the party, like Arkansas Senator Tom Cotton, have seen in Trumps political success an example to emulate. The next generation of Republican leaders may try to replicate his policies without the self-defeating behavior.

Its led many to wonder whether traditional conservatives will have a home in the GOP after Trump is gone. There is a growing feeling that we need to burn the whole house down to purify the party of Trump enablers in the Congress, says a former White House official in George W. Bushs Administration. Some see the prospect of a rupture, with disaffected Republicans cleaving off and either forming a new party or making a tenuous peace with the moderate wing of the Democratic Party. Theres a very real possibility that the party will split, says Richard Burt, former ambassador to Germany under President Reagan.

The modern Republican Party was always an uneasy alliance in some ways, with fiscal conservatives, religious conservatives and neoconservatives jostling for influence, and a white working-class base voting for policies that often favored the wealthy. Steven Teles, co-author of Never Trump: The Revolt of the Conservative Elites, envisions a Republican Party in which Trumpism dominates but the dissenters make up a vocal resistance faction. I dont think anyone is going to have control of the Republican Party the way weve seen in the past, he says.

The irony of the Never Trumper activists is that while they are encouraging Republicans to vote Democratic for the first time in their lives, that is bringing some Republicans back into the party by creating a community of the disaffected. Spielman, the retired Army cybersecurity engineer, had become so disenchanted with Trump that he turned his back on the party altogether, voting for Democrats in Michigans 2020 primaries. But the Never Trump groups are giving me hope that there are still some people out there with some decency that want to go back and save the party, Spielman says. Its allowed me to come back and say, Yeah, Im a Republican. Im not leaving the party, but I want to fight for whats right for the party.

With reporting by Leslie Dickstein, Mariah Espada, and Josh Rosenberg

This appears in the August 03, 2020 issue of TIME.

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See the article here:

Revenge of the Never Trumpers: Meet the Republican Dissidents Fighting to Push Donald Trump Out of Office - TIME

Trump Returns to the Coronavirus Daily Briefing and Still Refuses to Face Reality – The New Yorker

Donald Trump spent much of his coronavirus press briefing on Tuesday trying to persuade Americans that the coronavirus has little to do with them, or with him, except as a cause for self-congratulation. Within the first two minutes, he had referred twice to the China virus; he then immediately emphasized the advanced age and prexisting illnesses of those who had diedmost young adults wont even know theyre sicksuggesting that we now know, as if we didnt before, who the vulnerable are, and so the rest of the country can go back to doing other things. Other issues, such as COVID-19s ability to ravage the health of even those who survive it, the many ways that people of all ages can be vulnerable, and the difficulty of sheltering anybody when infections are rampant, were shunted aside. Most of all, Trump wanted everyone to know that we are winning. Were leading the world, he said, which is true only if the destination is off a cliff.

Trumps appearance was billed as his return to heading coronavirus-task-force briefings; those appearances were more or less discontinued in late April, as part of Trumps effort to pretend that the crisis was over. In contrast to those early appearances, Trump was alone, with no public-health officials to answer questions or provide a modicum of realism. When a reporter asked, Why are your doctors not with you here today? Wheres Dr. Fauci, Dr. Birx? Trump replied, Well, Dr. Birx is right outside, then quickly called on someone else. (Deborah Birx, the cordinator of the task force, stayed outside; Anthony Fauci told CNN that he wasnt invited to the briefing.) The reason for the renewal is obvious: the number of new confirmed infections has grown to more than sixty thousand a day, and the charts of the number of cases in states in the South and West, led by Arizona, California, Florida, and Texas, show increasingly sharp rises to precipitous heights. Georgia, where Governor Brian Kemp is engaging in something akin to deciding to let his constituents die by trying to block local governments from mandating masks, is also registering alarming numbers. (Last week, when Keisha Lance Bottoms, the mayor of Atlanta, defied him, Kemp sued to stop and silence her; that litigation is pending.) In all those states, hospitals are filling up.

Increased testing does not explain the numbers; the percentage of tests that are coming back positive is above ten per cent in the worst-affected states, which, given the current numbers, is far too high for epidemiologists to be confident that most cases are being caught. (Roughly speaking, in the current circumstances, a lower positivity rate means that fewer marginal or asymptomatic cases are missed; testing is not confined to those who show up at hospitals. In New York, the current positivity rate is around one per cent.) Around the time that Trump spoke, the daily tally of deaths exceeded a thousand for the first time since late May, and the total number of confirmed deaths in the United States now exceeds a hundred and forty thousandalmost a quarter of the planets total COVID-19 fatalities.

Trump, though, still thinks hes doing great. At the briefing, he displayed a chart claiming that the case fatality rategenerally, deaths per laboratory-confirmed casesfor the United States was lower than for a string of other countries and the world as a whole. But, in the absence of comprehensive testing, that number is not viewed as the most reliable measure of the pandemics toll. The chart for deaths per hundred thousand inhabitants would look different. By that measure, according to Johns Hopkins Universitys numbers, the United States is among the worst affected, with forty-three dead per hundred thousand. Some European countries have fared worse than the United States, such as the United Kingdom, Belgium, Italy, Spain, and Sweden. (Others have done far better: Germany and Denmark have lost just under eleven people per hundred thousand; for Canada and Mexico, the numbers are twenty-four and thirty-two, respectively.) But those European countries now have their outbreaks relatively under control, with tallies of new daily cases in the hundreds, not the thousands or tens of thousands. As the United States adds many more fatalities to its total, its relative position will only get worse. We are now, basically, in a race to the bottom with Brazil.

Trump is very wrong about how the United States is doing relative to the rest of the world. And yet even arguing the point misses how sordid his basic position is. When large numbers of Americans are dying, how much of a consolation, when it comes down to it, is the worse fatality rate for Belgium meant to be? Trump seems to believe that Americans would be satisfied, or even pleased, to hear that even more people in places they are unfamiliar with are dying, and to be frustrated that that message isnt getting through. If you watch American television, you would think the United States is the only country involved with suffering from the China virus, he complained in the briefing. (Blaming the media comes even more naturally to Trump than blaming China.) The larger failing is that he doesnt offer a conception of winning that goes beyond being able to claim that countries or populations his voters dont identify with are doing worse than they are. (This is a domestic issue, too, rather than just a matter of xenophobia: one of the shocking aspects of the pandemic has been how willing many Americansespecially, but not exclusively, Republican politicianshave been to write off the vulnerable.) Another vision of winning might involve a true engagement in the international effort to contain the pandemic. In that respect, Trump never seems to get tired of losing.

There were moments when Trump acknowledged that the picture was not entirely rosy. It will probably unfortunately get worse before it gets better, he said. And he cannot be entirely blind to the polls that show him falling further behind Joe Biden, the presumptive Democratic nominee. Trump has, in the past week, tweeted a picture of himself wearing a mask, and during the press conference he pulled one from his pocket. There was no contrition, of course, regarding his fatal mockery of masks for much of the pandemic. Instead, the President who recently summoned crowds to hear him speak in Oklahoma and Arizona claimed that he has been a voice for social distancing. He thought that he might have saved millions of lives. He certainly wasnt to blame: Its a nasty horrible disease that should never have been allowed to escape China, but it did. When a reporter pressed him on his earlier prediction that the virus would disappear, and whether he was responsible for the fact that the trajectory has been very different, he said, Well, the virus will disappear. It will disappear. He launched into a disjointed soliloquy about how good his relationships with various governors are and how wise his own decisions have been, and he repeated that China should have stopped it.

The next reporter Trump called on asked him about another topicGhislaine Maxwell, a former associate of Jeffrey Epsteins, who was arrested earlier this month and is facing charges related to the sexual abuse of girls. (She has pleaded not guilty.) Trump said that he hadnt been following the story, but that he knew Maxwell from Palm Beach. I wish her well, whatever it is. His good wishes seem, to say the least, misdirected. An optimist might think that his lack of focus on the latest in the Epstein-Maxwell story might mean that he was, at last, paying more attention to Floridas hospital capacity than to the Palm Beach social scene. An optimist would be wrong.

Excerpt from:

Trump Returns to the Coronavirus Daily Briefing and Still Refuses to Face Reality - The New Yorker

Trumps campaign is in freefall, with COVID-19 on voters minds – Brookings Institution

It is never a good sign when a candidate is forced to replace his campaign manager less than four months before the election. In Donald Trumps case, it is an indication that his reelection campaign is in a crisis so pervasive that it threatens to take down not only his presidency but his entire party.

At the national level, former Vice President Joe Biden now leads President Trump by an average of about 9 percentage points according to FiveThirtyEight, which adjusts for the timing and quality of individual surveys. Focusing on the highest-quality surveys released during the past three weeks, the picture gets even darker for the president.

TABLE 1

A 9-point win for Biden would give him the largest margin of victory since Ronald Reagan, while an 11.5-point win would exceed even Reagans victory margin over one-term president Jimmy Carter in 1980.

The outlook for the president is no brighter in the most closely contested states, whose results will determine the outcome in the Electoral College. Table 2 compares the polling averages according to FiveThirtyEight and Real Clear Politics with the results in 2016. A positive number indicates a Trump lead in 2020 or victory in 2016; a negative number indicates a lead for Biden in 2020.

TABLE 2

Here are the takeaways from Table 2:

President Trumps weak political standing is having an impact on other Republican candidates. It has created tougher-than-expected battles for Republican Senate incumbents in Arizona, Georgia, Iowa, and North Carolina, and it is dimming the hopes of the Republican challenger in Michigan. The presidents double-digit deficits in Colorado and Maine, both of which Hillary Clinton carried by smaller margins in 2016, is making life more difficult for Republican incumbents in these states as well.

President Trumps impact is also apparent in two deep-Red states that should be slam-dunks for Republican Senate candidates. In 2016, Trump prevailed in Montana by 20.4 percentage points and in Kansas by 20.6 points. As of now, his lead in both these states is down to 9 points. The Democrats Senate candidate in Montana, the current governor, is running about even with the incumbent Republican senator, and Kansas Republicans openly worry than if they nominate a Trump-style populist conservative in their primary, they could end up with a Democratic senator for the first time since 1932.

President Trump is reshaping public assessments of the two major parties to the disadvantage of the Republicans. A Gallup survey released on July 16 found that the 2-point edge in party affiliation the Republicans enjoyed as recently as January of 2020 had turned into an 11-point Democratic advantage by the end of June. The bulk of this Republican erosion has occurred during the past two months.

For years, majorities of Americans have rendered negative judgments on President Trumps character and personal conduct while giving him high marks for his management of the economy. But circumstances have changed. Fewer Americans approve of his handling of the COVID-19 pandemic, which pulled the country into a deep recession. For the first time ever, a high-quality survey has found a majority trusting Joe Biden to manage the economy better than Donald Trump, and they prefer him over the president as the countrys pandemic manager by a margin of 59 to 35.

The more the 2020 election turns into a referendum on President Trump as crisis manager, the worse the outcome will be for him. As recently as June 7, 47% of Americans thought the coronavirus situation was getting better, compared to just 30% who thought it was getting worse. Just three weeks later, after the massive upsurge in COVID-19 cases, the share of Americans who thought the situation was getting better fell by half to just 23% while the share who thought it was getting worse had more than doubled to 65%. An ABC/Washington Post poll released on July 17 found that approval of the presidents handling of the pandemic fell from 51% in March and 46% in May to just 38% in mid-July, while disapproval rose from 45% in March to 53% in May and 60% today.

Americans are losing hope, at least for the near-term. Seventy-four percent expect the coronavirus disruption that has upended their lives to last through the end of 2020 or longer. Fifty-six percent worry about catching COVID-19, the highest since April, and 72% say that it is better to hunker down at home rather than resuming normal activities. Until these attitudes become more positive, it is hard to see how the economy can regain its vigor.

Have President Trumps chances of reelection disappeared altogether? Not quite. If a vaccine demonstrates its safety and effectiveness by early fall and new cases begin to drop, the public mood could shift. The president could admit error and change course in both substance and tone, as savvy Republican analysts have recommended. Joe Biden could commit a gaffe as damaging as Hillary Clintons basket of deplorables comment, or he could perform badly enough in the debates to raise doubts about his fitness for the presidency. But as things now stand, President Trump would have better odds of drawing to an inside straight, and changing campaign managers wont help him very much.

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Trumps campaign is in freefall, with COVID-19 on voters minds - Brookings Institution

Fact-checking Hillary Clinton on Donald Trump’s response to reports of Russian bounties on US troops – PolitiFact

Hillary Clinton said Russia succeeded in its effort to influence the U.S. presidential election four years ago when she was the Democratic presidential nominee, and that Russia was working again to help elect someone "who is favorable to their agenda."

In a July 20 interview with MSNBCs Joy Reid, Clinton characterized President Donald Trumps foreign policy as incoherent and inconsistent. She said she was glad that Joe Biden, the presumptive Democratic nominee for president, was trying to warn Americans "that what happened in 2016 is sadly underway again."

Reid then said: "Yeah, to say nothing of putting bounties on American troops."

"Its unbelievable, Joy," Clinton replied. "I mean, he is still yet to say anything, as the president of the United States, about bounties on American troops."

The "bounties" story is about reports that Russia offered Taliban-linked militants bounties to kill American troops in Afghanistan.

PolitiFact decided to fact-check whether Clinton was right that Trump hasnt said anything on the matter. A spokesperson for Clinton, Nick Merrill, told PolitiFact that Clinton was referring to Trump "abdicating his responsibilities as commander-in-chief to hold a foreign adversary thats killing our troops to account, and ensuring it stops."

Trump has not challenged Russia over the bounties reports, but he has not been silent on the issue either. Trump has dismissed New York Times reporting as "just another hoax," said the story of Russian bounties wasnt "credible" and that he wasnt briefed about it.

New York Times reporting says Trump was briefed

The New York Times reported June 26 that American intelligence officials concluded that a Russian military intelligence unit secretly offered bounties to Taliban-linked militants for the killing of coalition forces in Afghanistan, including U.S. troops. A Taliban spokesman told the New York Times that the report was baseless and the press secretary for Russian President Vladimir Putin said the Russian government was not aware of the accusations. The New York Times story relied on officials who spoke on the condition of anonymity. Other news outlets, including the Associated Press, Washington Post, CNN and Fox News, have also reported on the information, citing officials familiar with the issue.

"While officials were said to be confident about the intelligence that Russian operatives offered and paid bounties to Afghan militants for killing Americans, they have greater uncertainty about how high in the Russian government the covert operation was authorized and what its aim may be," the New York Times story said.

That story and subsequent reporting said Trump was briefed on the U.S. intelligence finding.

Trumps response: just another hoax

Trump hasnt condemned or warned Russia over the information reported by the New York Times because he has said the reporting isnt credible.

"Nobody briefed or told me, @VP Pence, or Chief of Staff @MarkMeadows about the so-called attacks on our troops in Afghanistan by Russians, as reported through an "anonymous source" by the Fake News @nytimes. Everybody is denying it & there have not been many attacks on us....." Trump tweeted June 28.

In a follow-up tweet, Trump claimed that no other administration has been tougher on Russia and veered off into a campaign-related talking point on Ukraine and Hunter Biden. Trump ended that tweet with: "Probably just another phony Times hit job, just like their failed Russia Hoax. Who is their source?"

Trump also tweeted June 28: "Intel just reported to me that they did not find this info credible, and therefore did not report it to me or @VP. Possibly another fabricated Russia Hoax, maybe by the Fake News @nytimesbooks, wanting to make Republicans look bad!!!"

On July 1, Trump reiterated his argument that the story was made up and intended to damage him and Republicans. "The secret source probably does not even exist, just like the story itself. If the discredited @nytimes has a source, reveal it. Just another HOAX!" Trump wrote.

Later that day, Trump repeated that there was no corroborating evidence and that he was never briefed because "any info that they may have had did not rise to that level."

In a Fox Business Network interview, Trump was asked, "if there's ever a scenario in which Russia puts a bounty on U.S. troops, how would you respond?"

"First of all, theyd hear about it," Trump said July 1. "But we never heard about it, because intelligence never found it to be of that level where it would rise to that. From what I hear and I hear pretty good, the intelligence people didn't even, many of them didn't believe it happened at all. I think it's a hoax. I think it's a hoax by the newspapers and the Democrats."

Trump added that "many of the intelligence people didn't think it was something that even happened, and if it did happen, the Russians would hear about it and anybody else would hear about it that was involved."

While the White House has said Trump was never orally briefed, warnings that a Russian intelligence unit placed bounties on American forces appeared in the Presidents Daily Brief, according to multiple news reports.

RELATED: Whats the Presidents Daily Brief? Not like a mini novel, as Fox News host says

White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany in press briefings has not directly denounced Russia over the New York Times reporting, offering instead broad warnings to all countries and saying there are dissenting opinions on the intelligence reported by the New York Times.

A reporter on July 13 asked McEnany if Trump or the administration planned to "make it very clear to the Russian Federation that there should not be bounties placed on the heads of American soldiers serving in Afghanistan.

McEnany said, "We tell each and every country that." But the information on Russia was uncorroborated and there were "varying views" about it, she said.

"Im not going to answer a question based on unverified intelligence, but rest assured, every country in this world is put on notice that bounties on the heads of U.S. troops is unacceptable, and this president will stand for U.S. troops at home and abroad," McEnany said.

McEnany said "yes" when she was asked if that included Russia.

Trump and Putin spoke on the phone July 23 and discussed the coronavirus pandemic and arms control issues, the White House said. There was no mention of the presidents talking about the news of Russian bounties to kill U.S. troops.

Our ruling

Clinton said Trump "is still yet to say anything as the president of the United States about bounties on American troops."

There is an element of truth in that Trump has not condemned Russia over the reports. But hehas talked about the topic several times. His reaction has been to blast the reporting and the intelligence about Russia bounties as not credible. That would support why he hasnt publicly condemned Russia.

We rate Clintons statement Mostly False.

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Fact-checking Hillary Clinton on Donald Trump's response to reports of Russian bounties on US troops - PolitiFact

Trump properties have made over $17 million from the campaign and the RNC since 2016 – CNBC

President Donald Trump speaks on the "Rebuilding of America's Infrastructure: Faster, Better, Stronger" in Atlanta on July 15.

Jim Watson | AFP | Getty Images

President Donald Trump's properties have made over $17 million from the Trump campaign and his joint fundraising committees since 2016.

That includes close to $400,000 recently paid by Trump Victory, Trump's joint fundraising committee with the Republican National Committee, to the Trump Hotel Collection.

The payments to the president's business came in the second quarter, as the coronavirus pandemic was spreading. The payments were largely for the RNC donor retreat at Trump's private Mar-a-Lago resort in early March, just before the end of the first quarter, according to a Republican official familiar with the matter.

At the weeklong event, Trump tried to reassure donors that his administration had everything under control regarding the virus, as CNBC first reported. Vice President Mike Pence at the time echoed Trump's sense of calm.

President Donald Trump's Mar-a-Lago resort is seen on November 1, 2019 in Palm Beach, Florida.

Joe Raedle

Following that gathering, Trump and the RNC opted to go to a fully virtual campaign, including for fundraising events.A person familiar with the matter said that even though the meeting was in March, the payments showed up on the second-quarter filing due to a delay in processing the payments during the start of Covid-19. The second-quarter filing shows data ranging from April through June.

The second-quarter payments to Trump Hotels were first flagged by Anna Massoglia, a researcher at the nonpartisan Center for Responsive Politics, or CRP.

Beyond Trump's hotels getting paid the massive six-figure totals, a company run by a business ally of the president's also saw campaign expenditures come its way. Las Vegas Sands, the massive casino company owned by longtime Trump and GOP donor Sheldon Adelson, saw payments from Trump Victory last quarter.

The payments totaled nearly $250,000 and they came on the heels of the president looking to take part in a fundraiser in March at Adelson's home. That gathering and the Republican Jewish Coalition's annual event were eventually cancelled. The RJC conference was supposed to take place at the Venetian, a property of Sands.

Adelson and many other large casino owners have had their facilities mostly shut down for months due to the pandemic.

The vendor payments to Trump's hotels have rankled government ethics experts and triggered debates over whether his company is benefiting from his presidency.

An RNC official defended holding events at Trump-owned facilities.

"We hold some of our events at Trump properties because they are great venues that fit our needs," the official said.

Tim Murtaugh, a spokesman for the Trump campaign, said: "The campaign pays fair market value and abides by all FEC laws and regulations."

A representative from the Trump Organization did not respond to a request for comment.

The data from CRP shows that in the 2020 election cycle alone, Trump's properties have been paid close to $4 million by the president's campaign, RNC and joint committees, including thousands of dollars to Trump Tower, Trump Restaurants and Mar-a-Lago.

The same groups paid Trump's businesses nearly $13 million during the 2016 election, data shows.

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Trump properties have made over $17 million from the campaign and the RNC since 2016 - CNBC

Trump concedes pandemic to ‘get worse before it gets better’ – BBC News

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President Donald Trump has warned the US pandemic may "get worse before it gets better", as he revived his virus briefings with a more scripted tone.

Mr Trump also asked all Americans to wear face coverings, saying "they'll have an effect" and show "patriotism".

The president, who was not wearing a mask at the briefing, has previously disparaged them as unsanitary.

His aides have reportedly pressed him to adopt a more measured approach as virus caseloads spike across the US.

The daily White House news conferences ended soon after Mr Trump suggested in April during freewheeling remarks from the podium that the virus might be treated by injecting disinfectant into people.

In his first White House coronavirus briefing for months on Tuesday, a less off-the-cuff president echoed what public health officials on his pandemic task force have been saying as he warned: "It will probably unfortunately get worse before it gets better.

"Something I don't like saying about things, but that's the way it is."

He added: "We're asking everybody that when you are not able to socially distance, wear a mask, get a mask.

"Whether you like the mask or not, they have an impact, they'll have an effect and we need everything we can get."

Mr Trump - who more than once referred to Covid-19 as the "China virus" - took a mask from his pocket in the briefing room, but did not put it on.

The president is facing an uphill climb to re-election in November against Democratic challenger, Joe Biden, according to opinion polls.

Mr Biden on Tuesday accused Mr Trump of having failed Americans in his handling of the pandemic. "He's quit on you, he's quit on this country," the former US vice-president said.

Donald Trump's afternoon coronavirus press briefings are back. Regardless of what the president said during his brief appearance on Tuesday, the simple fact of their return speaks volumes about the dismal course the pandemic has taken in the US in the past three months.

Cases are rising, particularly in the south and west, perhaps most directly as a result of the administration's support for states to end mitigation measures before public-health benchmarks were met.

And so the president, sticking closely to his prepared remarks, sombrely noted that things "will probably get worse before they get better". After previously dismissing a mask-wearing reporter as being "politically correct", he now encouraged people to wear face coverings.

A number of recent polls have indicated that sinking public support for the president's handling of the virus has been dragging down his re-election prospects. The White House reportedly hopes getting the president back in front of the American people will help rebuild their confidence in his leadership.

A real solution to the president's dilemma, however, won't come until coronavirus cases once again go down, the hospitals empty, Americans go back to work, schools reopen and life returns to some semblance of normal. That day still seems a long way off, while election day is drawing close.

Mr Trump appeared without the medical experts who used to address the briefings. He kept his remarks brief and focused, avoiding sparring with reporters who asked a few questions.

He continued: "We're asking Americans to use masks, socially distance and employ vigorous hygiene - wash your hands every chance you get, while sheltering high risk populations.

"We are imploring young Americans to avoid packed bars and other crowded indoor gatherings. Be safe and be smart."

Mr Trump has been reluctant to wear a mask himself in front of the media, claiming that some people only wore such face coverings as a political statement against him. The press pictured him recently wearing a mask for the first time as he visited a military hospital.

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When asked on Tuesday about his shifting support for masks, the president pointed out that even health experts had changed their minds.

Back in March, both Dr Anthony Fauci, one of the leading members of the president's coronavirus task force, and US Surgeon General Jerome Adams said there was no reason people in the US should wear a mask.

Since at least April, the US Centers for Disease Control has recommended Americans wear face coverings in public.

Dr Fauci now argues US authorities should be more "forceful" in compelling mask wearing, though Mr Trump has rejected calls for the White House to issue a national order on the issue.

During the briefing, the president continued to assert the virus would one day "disappear".

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He also wrongly claimed the US has a lower coronavirus death rate than "almost everywhere else in the world".

According to Johns Hopkins University, the US mortality rate is ranked 10th out of the 20 worst-hit countries.

The United States has recorded nearly 3.9 million Covid-19 cases and over 141,000 deaths - the highest by volume in the world.

Mr Trump was also asked by a reporter about the case of Ghislaine Maxwell, the British socialite who was charged this month by US authorities with sex-trafficking children for her ex-boyfriend, the late convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.

The president said: "I haven't really been following it too much. I just wish her well, frankly. I've met her numerous times over the years, especially since I lived in Palm Beach [Florida], and I guess they lived in Palm Beach."

"I don't know the situation with Prince Andrew," added Mr Trump, mentioning the British royal who denies claims he had sex with a teenage girl who says she was trafficked by Epstein.

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Trump concedes pandemic to 'get worse before it gets better' - BBC News