Trump news - live: White House insists Supreme Court did not rule against president in tax case as Michael Cohen is sent back to prison

Hello and welcome to The Independent's rolling coverage of the Donald Trump administration.

Trump insistence on reopening schools branded 'dangerous'

Donald Trump’s insistence that American schools reopen despite the raging pandemic, which has seen him threaten state governors with funding cuts if they ignore the order, has been branded “irresponsible and dangerous” by Bobby Scott, chairman of the House Education and Labour Committee.

Vice president Mike Pence said earlier on Wednesday that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) would be issuing additional guidance next week on how to go about safely reopening classrooms in the age of social distancing after Trump criticised the agency's current recommendations as "very tough and expensive" and threaten to withhold funding on Twitter (another quid pro quo, no?)

White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany was later forced to deny the CDC had been leant on, as Chairman Scott warned that looser guidelines without the provision of additional funds for adequate facilities and supplies risked further outbreaks of Covid-19. 

“Even before the pandemic, our nation’s public schools were chronically underfunded. Reopening schools now, without more investment, presents serious risks to the health and safety of our students and educators," Scott said in a statement.

“What’s worse, the administration is now threatening to ignore health experts and issue their own ‘less restrictive’ guidelines, prioritising politics over the health and safety of students, parents, and educators. This move is not only irresponsible, it is dangerous."

Coronavirus Task Force leader Dr Deborah Birx said yesterday that there has simply not been enough data collected yet on how under-18s fare with coronavirus. Trump was asked about this by CBS reporter Paula Reid at a press conference with his Mexican counterpart Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador and simply walked away, ignoring the question.

Here’s John T Bennett on the CDC, caught between a rock and a hard place.

US adds 1m new coronavirus cases in a month after ending lockdown

The country added 1m new cases of Covid-19 in June, taking it past 3m in total, after the president encouraged states to end their lockdown measures, with the likes of Florida, Texas, Arizona and California all since suffering the consequences.

Here’s Alex Woodward with the latest.

Melania Trump statue torched in Slovenia

In a sign of renewed global opposition to Trump and his administration over their handling of the crisis and subsequent Black Lives Matter demonstrations, a wooden statue of his wife Melania has been set on fire in her native Slovenia.

 Brad Downey - the American artist responsible, based in Berlin - had the charred sculpture of the US first lady removed on 5 July, exactly a year after it was unveiled.

Here's Rory Sullivan's report.

Supreme Court to rule on president's tax returns

The highest court in the land is expected to rule today on whether Congress and the Manhattan district attorney can finally get their hands on Trump's tax filings and other financial records the president has fought so hard to keep private.

The high-stakes dispute tests the balance of power between the White House and Congress, as well as Trump's claim that he can't be investigated while he holds office.

It's not clear, even if Trump loses, how much of the material would become public, since some records would go to a confidential grand jury investigation in New York and the rest, sought by committees of the Democratic-controlled House of Representatives, could contain highly sensitive information not just about

Trump, but also about other members of his family and businesses.

Trump has so far lost at every step, but the records have not been turned over pending a final court ruling.

The case was argued by telephone in May because of the coronavirus pandemic. The court said on Wednesday that all remaining cases would be decided on Thursday.

The fight over the congressional subpoenas has significant implications regarding a president's power to refuse a formal request from Congress. In a separate fight at the federal appeals court in Washington, DC, over a congressional demand for the testimony of former White House counsel Don McGahn, the administration is making broad arguments that the president's close advisers are "absolutely immune" from having to appear.

In two earlier cases over presidential power, the Supreme Court acted unanimously in requiring Richard Nixon to turn over White House tapes to the Watergate special prosecutor and in allowing a sexual harassment lawsuit against Bill Clinton to go forward.

In those cases, three Nixon appointees and two Clinton appointees, respectively, voted against the president who chose them for the high court. A fourth Nixon appointee, William Rehnquist, sat out the tapes case because he had worked closely as a Justice Department official with some of the Watergate conspirators whose upcoming trial spurred the subpoena for the Oval Office recordings.

There are two Trump appointees, Justices Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh, on the court.

The subpoenas are not directed at Trump himself. Instead, House committees want records from Deutsche Bank and Capital One, as well as the Mazars USA accounting firm. Mazars also is the recipient of Manhattan district attorney Cyrus Vance's subpoena.

Appellate courts in Washington, DC, and New York brushed aside the president's arguments in decisions that focused on the fact that the subpoenas were addressed to third parties asking for records of Trump's business and financial dealings as a private citizen, not as president.

Two congressional committees subpoenaed the bank documents as part of their investigations into Trump and his businesses. Deutsche Bank has been one of the few banks willing to lend to Trump after a series of corporate bankruptcies and defaults starting in the early 1990s.

Vance and the House Oversight and Reform Committee sought records from Mazars concerning Trump and his businesses based on payments that Trump's former personal lawyer, Michael Cohen, arranged to keep two women - Stormy Daniels and Karen McDougal - from airing their claims of decade-old extramarital affairs with Trump during the 2016 presidential race.

AP

Tulsa rally 'likely' cause of Oklahoma Covid spike, says health official

The president’s controversial and decidedly underwhelming return to the campaign trail in Tulsa, Oklahoma, in late June, along with the considerable protests that accompanied it, “likely contributed” to a dramatic surge in new coronavirus cases, Tulsa City-County health department director Dr Bruce Dart said on Wednesday.

Tulsa County reported 261 confirmed new cases on Monday, a one-day record high, and another 206 cases on Tuesday.

Although the health department’s policy is to not publicly identify individual settings where people may have contracted the virus, Dr Dart said those large gatherings “more than likely” contributed to the spike.

“In the past few days, we’ve seen almost 500 new cases, and we had several large events just over two weeks ago, so I guess we just connect the dots,” he said.

Statewide, Oklahoma health officials reported 673 new confirmed cases of coronavirus yesterday, the state’s second-highest daily total since the start of the pandemic.

The new cases reported by the Oklahoma State Department of Health follow a record high of 858 cases that were reported on Tuesday and bring the total number of confirmed cases in the state to 17,893. 

Here’s Gino Spocchia’s report.

Mexico’s president improbably praises Trump despite tariff threats, border wall and racism but CEOs shun banquet over coronavirus fears

Trump, who has long denigrated Mexican migrants and threatened the US ally to the south with crippling tariffs, yesterday welcomed his counterpart Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador to the White House, calling him a cherished partner and claiming the countries' economic and security ties were reaching new heights.

The president’s warm words were in stark contrast to the days when he called Mexicans "rapists" and railed against migrants entering the States illegally. Lopez Obrador had cordial words for Trump, too, saying that while they have disagreed, it was better to find common ground and avoid slinging insults.

The meeting was billed as a celebration of economic ties and the new US-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA), but critics in Mexico worried Lopez Obrador was being used as a political pawn to bolster the Trump campaign and his "America first," anti-illegal migration agenda. Despite the verbal backslapping in the Rose Garden, thorny issues - from immigration to investment - remain.

Trump has dialed back his harsh words since Lopez Obrador took office a year and a half ago and the latter signaled he wanted to leave insults to the past.

"As in the best times of our political relations, during my term as president of Mexico, instead of insults toward me and more importantly against my country, we have received from you understanding and respect," Lopez Obrador said in the Rose Garden.

Their relationship is an odd bromance: Lopez Obrador is a veteran leftist and Trump tacks right.

"Some thought that our ideological differences would have led us inevitably to confrontation," Lopez Obrador said. "Fortunately, this bad omen didn't materialise and I consider that in the future there will be no need to break our good political relations, nor the friendship between our governments."

Later, Lopez Obrador said: "The forecasts failed. We didn't fight. We are friends, and we're going to keep being friends."

Trump said their friendship had developed "against all odds."

You’re telling me.

Trump's national security adviser Robert O'Brien said the two leaders have "really hit it off" and exchanged gift baseball bats during their meeting. Trump signed and gave Lopez Obrador a custom Louisville Slugger and the Mexican president gave the president a bat manufactured by indigenous people in southern Mexico, O'Brien said on Fox Business Network's Lou Dobbs Tonight.

The two signed a declaration highlighting US-Mexico relations and the USMCA. Canadian prime minister Justin Trudeau decided not to come to Washington to celebrate the agreement, citing (ahem) scheduling conflicts.

Trump and Lopez Obrador also pledged to cooperate in responding to the coronavirus, which has rocked both nations. Since March 2020, movement across the border has been restricted to essential travel while allowing the flow of goods and services. Last year, Mexico became the largest goods trading partner of the United States.

A 52-guest East Room banquet for the Mexican delegation had several notable absentees, however, including American Farm Bureau president Zippy Duvall, who had just tested positive for coronavirus.

Detroit automaker CEOs Jim Hackett of Ford, Mary Barra of General Motors and Mike Manley of Fiat Chrysler were also missing, interestingly.

Additional reporting by agencies

Meidas Touch's #CreepyTrump video trends on Twitter

The anti-Trump campaign group have released this frankly horrifying video of the president being inappropriately touchy-feely with women, not least his dear daughter Ivanka, who admits on a chat show he is not "a typical father".

You're going to need a strong stomach for this one, trust me.

Not to be outdone, the Lincoln Project's latest is this scathing attack on Republican senators who they feel have enabled the president and therein facilitated the "circus of incompetence" that has been his first term.

Ivy Leaguers sues Trump administration to block international student ban

Two prestigious institutions not taking Trump's insistence on a return to in-person teaching lying down are Harvard University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), who are taking legal action to stop foreign students being sent home if they are found to be taking online courses only. 

Trump has 91 per cent chance of winning second term, professor’s model predicts

Stony Brook academic Helmut Norpoth is here to ruin your morning with an alarming 2020 forecast.

Louise Hall is here to explain his nightmare scenario.