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Helen Sullivan (now), Julia Carrie Wong ,Lauren Gambino and Martin Belam (earlier)

Trump downplays Covid dangers after removing mask at White House – as it happened

We’re closing this live blog now, but I’ll be carrying on the coverage over on our US politics live blog for Tuesday, so join me there.

Summary

That’s it from me, Helen Sullivan, for today. Thanks for following along – and as always, to those who got in touch on Twitter or via email.

We’re pausing this blog for a moment, but our global Covid blog is still going strong here.

For those just joining us, below is a recap of the last few hours:

  • Donald Trump left Walter Reed hospital, where he was being treated for coronavirus, on Monday evening. He wore a mask while leaving the hospital and again as he walked from Marine One to the White House. He then removed his mask to pose for photographs, while standing near photographers. Trump still has coronavirus, is still contagious, and according to CDC guidelines, should remain in isolation until at least 10 days after his diagnosis, which came in the early hours of Friday.
  • Trump’s personal physician, Sean Conley, said the president met the discharge requirements but was “not entirely be out of the woods yet”. He said Trump would take another dose of remdesivir before leaving the hospital, his fourth. Conley repeatedly refused to say when Trump’s last negative test was, which would have implications for contact tracing and provide more context to the timeline of when the president knew he had Covid. It also raised questions about whether Trump was being tested for coronavirus every day, which the White House said it would do. “I don’t want to go backwards,” Conley said.
  • Trump tweeted a video in which he said of the virus, “Don’t let it dominate you. Don’t be afraid of it.” Coronavirus has already killed 210,117 Americans – or one in every 1,560 people in the country. He also said: “The vaccines are coming momentarily,” just as the New York Times published a report saying senior White House officials are blocking guidelines designed to make sure the vaccine is safe – but which mean it it is unlikely to be approved before the election.
  • Shortly after Trump’s maskless moment at the White House, Joe Biden held a town hall in which he repeatedly stressed the importance of masks to protect others. He also tweeted several times about this. “I would hope that the president having gone through what he went through will communicate the right lesson to the American people: Masks matter. They save lives,” Biden said.
  • Trump plans to participate in next debate, a spokesman for the president’s campaign said. The debate is due to be held on 15 October. On Thursday last week, before Trump announced that he had tested positive, his re-election campaign rejected calls to change the rules of the next two presidential debates after the first chaotic event in Cleveland was marred by constant interruptions and outbursts. The debate’s host, Chris Wallace, has since said that Trump also did not wear a mask while on a walk-through before the debate, and that “there was an honour system” when it came to testing negative.
  • Trump’s name was on a list of people who had tested negative before last Tuesday’s presidential debate, the Cleveland Clinic said on Monday, but added that it had not reviewed the results. “The submitted names, including that of the president and former vice president Joe Biden, were reviewed by the Cleveland Clinic. However, the clinic did not have to review actual test findings or see proof of negative results,” the clinic spokesperson told CNN. “She also said the date of the test was not required.”
  • Anthony Fauci warned on CNN that Trump could experience a “reversal” in his progress. The top US infectious diseases expert and White House Coronavirus Task Force member said: “The issue is that he’s still early enough in the disease that it’s no secret that if you look at the clinical course of people sometimes, when you’re five to eight days in, you can have a reversal.”
  • The president’s schedule for Tuesday remains clear. The White House published Trump’s daily guidance and schedule events for Tuesday, which lists no public events, though this isn’t an indication that Trump won’t make an appearance. Sunday’s drive past fans outside Walter Reed and Trump’s departure from Walter Reed on Monday were not listed on his schedules.
  • When vice president Mike Pence and California Senator Kamala Harris debate on Wednesday, they will do so separated by plexiglass shields. Frank J Fahrenkopf Jr, chairman of the debate commission, said: “The Trump campaign agreed to that so long as we don’t surround Vice President Pence all the way around. He doesn’t want to be in a box.”
  • Trump’s top spokesperson, Kayleigh McEnany, announced she had tested positive for coronavirus on Monday, in yet another escalation of an outbreak that has thrown the White House into disarray.
  • Donald Trump Jr was worried by his father’s behaviour and had sought help from his siblings in “staging an intervention”, Vanity Fair magazine reported citing two anonymous Republican sources. Trump Jr has denied the report.
  • The White House will not perform contact tracing for attendees of the Rose Garden event celebrating the supreme court nomination of Amy Coney Barrett, despite the confirmed infections of at least 11 attendees, according to a new report by the New York Times. The Rose Garden ceremony for Barrett has drawn scrutiny as a potential “super-spreader” event.

Updated

Legal scholar Richard L Hasen has written an analysis piece for CNN in which he argues that states must pass laws now in preparation for the possibility that either Trump or Biden is incapacitated or killed by the virus before the Electoral College votes are counted on 6 January next year.

Hasen is the Chancellor’s Professor of Law and Political Science at UC Irvine School of Law.

With coronavirus infections raging through the White House and the state of the President’s health unclear, it’s time to face up to an unsettling reality. We need to start thinking about what to do if the disease incapacitates or kills President Donald Trump or his opponent, Joe Biden – or even both of them – between now and January 6, 2021, when Congress meets to count Electoral College votes.

These scenarios may be unlikely, but they need to be considered because being unprepared for any of them would be a calamity for our democracy.

There is one thing each state can do now to minimize the risk: pass a law providing that voters’ votes for a deceased or incapacitated presidential candidate count toward a replacement chosen by that candidate’s party, and that state’s electoral college votes for the deceased or incapacitated candidate also go to the party replacement.

Updated

Finding the news from the US presidential election overwhelming to follow from afar?

I’m writing a news briefing each day for Guardian readers in Australia, pulling together the biggest US news of the day and essential Guardian analysis, videos and podcasts, all explained and presented from an Australian viewpoint.

You can sign up to receive the daily briefing note here.

Updated

The push to put conservative Judge Amy Coney Barrett on the high court before 3 November is like nothing seen in US history so close to a presidential election.

A promotional video released by the Senate Republicans shows several shots – including many of people not wearing masks – from the White House event announcing Donald Trump’s nomination Barrett.

A number of people who attended have since tested positive.

Three GOP senators, including Johnson, have tested positive for the virus and several more are quarantined at home, denying Republicans a functioning majority.

Senator Lindsey Graham, chair of the Judiciary Committee, said after talking by phone Monday with Trump that the president is very excited” about Barrett being confirmed to the Supreme Court.

The rush to confirm Trump’s third court nominee is as much about securing a conservative court for a generation to come as it is about giving Republicans what they see as their best chances at reelection. With Trump trailing Democrat Joe Biden in polls and their own Senate majority at risk, Republicans hope a Supreme Court vote in the week before Election Day will save their jobs.

Updated

Shuttered by Covid-19 infections, the Republican-led Senate is refusing to delay confirmation of President Donald Trump’s pick for the Supreme Court.

They are even willing to make special arrangements so sick senators can vote for Judge Amy Coney Barrett, and Democrats appear powerless to stop them.

AP reports that Republican Wisconsin Senator Ron Johnson said Monday that he’ll go to the Capitol “in a moon suit” to vote if he’s still testing positive for the coronavirus, which has killed more than 209,000 Americans and infected millions.

Updated

Some more reaction now to Trump saying of the virus, “Don’t let it dominate you. Don’t be afraid of it.”

“I was aghast when he said Covid should not be feared,” William Schaffner, a professor of preventive medicine and infectious diseases at Vanderbilt University Medical Center in Nashville told AP.

“This is a disease that is killing around a thousand people a day, has torpedoed the economy, put people out of work. This is a virus that should be both respected and feared,” he added.

Democrats also weighed in. “This is a tragic failure of leadership,” Democratic Senator Chris Coons tweeted:

Even Biden’s former primary rival, Bernie Sanders, has resumed in-person campaigning for the first time since the coronavirus outbreak in March. The progressive Vermont senator held socially distanced rallies in the battlegrounds of New Hampshire and Michigan, proclaiming, We need Joe Biden as our president.

Senator Bernie Sanders speaks to the crowd at a car rally campaign event for Democratic presidential candidate former Vice President Joe Biden on Monday, 5 October 2020, in Warren, Michigan.
Senator Bernie Sanders speaks to the crowd at a car rally campaign event for Democratic presidential candidate former Vice President Joe Biden on Monday, 5 October 2020, in Warren, Michigan. Photograph: Nicole Hester/AP

Joe Biden, meanwhile, is capitalizing on having the campaign trail largely to himself by hitting critical swing states and investing in longtime Republican bastions that he hopes might expand his path to victory, AP reports.

The Democratic presidential nominee made his second trip to Florida in a little over two weeks on Monday. His visit to Miami was designed to encroach on some of Trump’s turf, even swinging through Little Havana, a typically conservative area known for its staunch opposition to the communist government that Fidel Castro installed in Cuba.

He’ll follow up with a trip later this week to Arizona, which hasn’t backed a Democratic presidential candidate since 1996.

Democratic US presidential nominee Joe Biden speaks during a campaign stop at Little Haiti Cultural Complex in Miami, Florida, US, 5 October 2020.
Democratic US presidential nominee Joe Biden speaks during a campaign stop at Little Haiti Cultural Complex in Miami, Florida, US, 5 October 2020. Photograph: Brendan McDermid/Reuters

Sitting on a massive pile of campaign cash less than a month before Election Day, Biden is trying to put Trump on defence across the country and build an advantage in the Electoral College so large that the president might struggle to contest it.

That’s especially important since Trump, who lost the popular vote in 2016, has said he may not accept the election results this year and has raised unfounded allegations that the increased use of mail-in voting amid the coronavirus pandemic could lead to fraud.

Dr. Jill Biden attends a ‘Women for Biden’ drive-in rally at Century Village in Boca Raton on 5 October 2020 in Boca Raton, Florida.
Dr. Jill Biden attends a ‘Women for Biden’ drive-in rally at Century Village in Boca Raton on 5 October 2020 in Boca Raton, Florida. Photograph: Johnny Louis/Getty Images

Updated

Vice President Mike Pence took the lead role in campaigning on Monday, starting a swing through key states to bolster the president’s chance for reelection.

“When the president told me that he was headed back to the White House, he told me to head to Utah,” said Pence. “And we’re looking very much forward to the vice presidential debate,” he said.

US Vice President Mike Pence and his wife Karen arrive ahead of the vice presidential debate in Salt Lake City, Utah, on 5 October 2020.
US Vice President Mike Pence and his wife Karen arrive ahead of the vice presidential debate in Salt Lake City, Utah, on 5 October 2020. Photograph: Brian Snyder/Reuters

From AP: The spotlight on Pence will be especially bright Wednesday when he participates in the vice presidential debate with California Senator Kamala Harris.

Pence will almost certainly be pressed to explain shifting accounts of the president’s health over the weekend and justify Trump’s decision to hold large in-person campaign rallies during a pandemic events that often flouted public health guidelines by congregating thousands of mostly mask-less supporters.

“Normally, the vice presidential debate is inconsequential. That is not the case in 2020,” said Alex Conant, a Republican strategist who worked on Florida Sen. Marco Rubios 2016 presidential bid. “The public has so many questions about how we got here and it’s an opportunity for Pence to answer some of those.”

Updated

Podcast: how Covid-19 reached the White House

Donald Trump spent the weekend in hospital after developing symptoms following a positive test for coronavirus. But with confusing medical briefings and a controversial drive-by stunt, Americans are still trying to get answers as to how Trump became infected as the election approaches:

CBS White House correspondent Paula Reid has announced that she is working from home after sitting “in close proximity to two maskless, now COVID positive, White House staffers” on Thursday night last week:

Here is a fairly satisfying exchange between Reid and Kellyanne Conway, who has also tested positive in recent days, from a month ago:

Updated

The Atlantic has published a story looking at the White House employees who have been put at risk by Trump’s approach to the virus as well as by his decision to leave Walter Reed hospital – and to remove his mask after doing so.

Elaine Godfrey writes:

Asked to describe the mood inside the White House, one staffer, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because he fears for his job, called the fallout from the Trumps’ diagnosis ‘a huge mess.’ He found out about the president’s and first lady’s illness through news reports. ‘That happens all the time in this administration,’ he said.

...

Of all the employees working on the White House grounds, perhaps no one has more exposure to the first family than the roughly 100 members of the residence staff. Trump and the first lady (not to mention Trump’s political advisers) have rarely worn masks, and each time the president has held a rally or speech outside the White House, he’s created opportunities for the virus to migrate inside the executive mansion. (That’s especially true if the president’s personal testing regime has not been as stringent as the administration has led the public to believe.)

While it’s unclear whether residence staffers’ duties have changed during the pandemic, a handful of them usually work quite intimately with the president and first lady, namely the butlers, valets, and housekeepers. They ride elevators with the first couple, helping them get to their destination; they iron their clothes and change their sheets; they escort them across the White House grounds; and they deliver their meals.

“The West Wing and East Wing, plus the whole residence operation—from floral shop to ushers to chef to butlers [to the] curator’s office”—are all going to be directly affected by the recent outbreak, [Deesha Dyer, the White House social secretary under Barack Obama] said. (Stephanie Grisham, Melania Trump’s chief of staff, said in a statement that “in consultation with the White House Medical Unit, all precautions are being taken to ensure the health and safety of the residence staff.”)

Another Rose Garden event guest tests positive

Another attendee at the White House event announcing Donald Trump’s nomination of Judge Amy Coney Barrett for the supreme court has tested positive for coronavirus.

The exclusive Rose Garden gathering on 26 September is under scrutiny as multiple people who were there, including the president, have contracted Covid-19.

Megachurch Pastor Greg Laurie announced in a Facebook post that he tested positive on Friday, the San Francisco Chronicle reports. He is quarantining and described his symptoms as “mild”.

What we know so far

If you’re just joining us, here’s a recap of the last few hours.

If there’s anything you think I’ve missed, get in touch on Twitter @helenrsullivan.

  • Donald Trump left Walter Reed hospital, where he was being treated for coronavirus, on Monday evening. He wore a mask while leaving the hospital and again as he walked from Marine One to the White House. He then removed his mask to pose for photographs, while standing near photographers. Trump still has coronavirus, is still contagious, and according to CDC guidelines, should remain in isolation until at least 10 days after his diagnosis, which came in the early hours of Friday.

  • Trump’s personal physician, Sean Conley, said the president met the discharge requirements but was “not entirely be out of the woods yet”. He said Trump would take another dose of remdesivir before leaving the hospital, his fourth. Conley repeatedly refused to say when Trump’s last negative test was, which would have implications for contact tracing and provide more context to the timeline of when the president knew he had Covid. It also raised questions about whether Trump was being tested for coronavirus every day, which the White House said it would do. “I don’t want to go backwards,” Conley said.
  • Trump tweeted a video in which he said of the virus, “Don’t let it dominate you. Don’t be afraid of it.” Coronavirus has already killed 210,117 Americans – or one in every 1,560 people in the country. He also said: “The vaccines are coming momentarily,” just as the New York Times published a report saying senior White House officials are blocking guidelines designed to make sure the vaccine is safe – but which mean it it is unlikely to be approved before the election.
  • Shortly after Trump’s maskless moment at the White House, Joe Biden held a town hall in which he repeatedly stressed the importance of masks to protect others. He also tweeted several times about this. “I would hope that the president having gone through what he went through will communicate the right lesson to the American people: Masks matter. They save lives,” Biden said.
  • Trump plans to participate in next debate, a spokesman for the president’s campaign said. The debate is due to be held on 15 October. On Thursday last week, before Trump announced that he had tested positive, his re-election campaign rejected calls to change the rules of the next two presidential debates after the first chaotic event in Cleveland was marred by constant interruptions and outbursts. The debate’s host, Chris Wallace, has since said that Trump also did not wear a mask while on a walk-through before the debate, and that “there was an honour system” when it came to testing negative.
  • Trump’s name was on a list of people who had tested negative before last Tuesday’s presidential debate, the Cleveland Clinic said on Monday, but added that it had not reviewed the results. “The submitted names, including that of the president and former vice president Joe Biden, were reviewed by the Cleveland Clinic. However, the clinic did not have to review actual test findings or see proof of negative results,” the clinic spokesperson told CNN. “She also said the date of the test was not required.”
  • Anthony Fauci warned on CNN that Trump could experience a “reversal” in his progress. The top US infectious diseases expert and White House Coronavirus Task Force member said: “The issue is that he’s still early enough in the disease that it’s no secret that if you look at the clinical course of people sometimes, when you’re five to eight days in, you can have a reversal.”
  • The president’s schedule for Tuesday remains clear. The White House published Trump’s daily guidance and schedule events for Tuesday, which lists no public events, though this isn’t an indication that Trump won’t make an appearance. Sunday’s drive past fans outside Walter Reed and Trump’s departure from Walter Reed on Monday were not listed on his schedules.
  • When vice president Mike Pence and California Senator Kamala Harris debate on Wednesday, they will do so separated by plexiglass shields. Frank J Fahrenkopf Jr, chairman of the debate commission, said: “The Trump campaign agreed to that so long as we don’t surround Vice President Pence all the way around. He doesn’t want to be in a box.”
  • Trump’s top spokesperson, Kayleigh McEnany, announced she had tested positive for coronavirus on Monday, in yet another escalation of an outbreak that has thrown the White House into disarray.
  • Donald Trump Jr was worried by his father’s behaviour and had sought help from his siblings in “staging an intervention”, Vanity Fair magazine reported citing two anonymous Republican sources. Trump Jr has denied the report.
  • The White House will not perform contact tracing for attendees of the Rose Garden event celebrating the supreme court nomination of Amy Coney Barrett, despite the confirmed infections of at least 11 attendees, according to a new report by the New York Times. The Rose Garden ceremony for Barrett has drawn scrutiny as a potential “super-spreader” event.

Updated

Dr Anthony Fauci, the top infectious disease expert in the US, has warned that US president Donald Trump’s condition could worsen over the coming days. ‘He looks fine,’ Dr Fauci told CNN’s Chris Cuomo.

‘The issue is that it is still early enough in the disease’, Fauci said. ‘Sometimes when you’re five to eight days in you can have a reversal’. Dr Fauci also said he was ‘strongly suspicious’ that an experimental antibody drug given to Trump made by pharmaceutical company Regeneron helped the president fight Covid-19:

Arizona voter registration deadline extended to 23 October

The voter registration deadline in the key state of Arizona has been extended in a last-minute order from federal judge Steven Logan, Arizona Republic reporter Andrew Oxford reports.

Earlier on Monday Arizona Secretary of State Katie Hobbs, a Democrat, asked a federal judge not to grant more time to register voters.

Biden leads Trump by more than 4 points in the state, according to FiveThirtyEight. Trump won Arizona in 2016 by fewer than four percentage points, a far narrower margin than past Republican nominees:

“Voting rights advocates Mi Familia Vota argued pandemic prevented them from registering voters,” according to NBC reporter Brahm Resnik:

Updated

Seen any news you think we may have missed? Get in touch on Twitter @helenrsullivan.

Updated

Here is our full story on Biden’s Town Hall earlier:

The Democratic presidential candidate, has said he was not surprised by Donald Trump’s coronavirus infection and delivered a blunt rebuke: “Masks matter.”

Speaking at an NBC television town hall event in Miami, Florida, the former vice president drew a stark contrast with Trump, who on returning to the White House just an hour earlier instantly removed his face mask for a photo op.

The Biden campaign’s safety protocols have been very different from Trump’s laissez-faire approach. The candidate, who is tested regularly, has held small, low-key events where reporters and others are tested multiple times and required to physically distance. As Biden spoke to the media at an airport on Monday, his wife, Jill, pulled him back to ensure he was standing six feet away.

Updated

The ABC’s WKBW Buffalo reports that “prosecutors have charged a West Seneca man with criminally negligent homicide after a dispute over wearing a face covering left an 80 year-old man dead,” in what it says could be the first case of its kind in the US.

Donald Lewinski, 65 of West Seneca, was taken into custody Monday following an incident September 26 at Pamp’s Red Zone Bar and Grill on Southwestern Boulevard in West Seneca.

According to Erie County District Attorney John Flynn, Lewinski got into a verbal confrontation with Rocco Sapienza – another regular at the bar –after Sapienza noticed Lewinski was not wearing a mask while bringing buckets of beer to a band playing outside.

At one point, Flynn said Sapienza got up and confronted Lewinski. That’s when Lewinski stood up and pushed Sapienza “hard” with both hands, the D.A. said. Sapienza fell back and hit his head on the ground.

Sapienza was taken to ECMC, where he was unresponsive for four days. He died on September 30.

The cause of death is blunt force trauma to the head.

More from the LA Times on what Wednesday’s debate between Pence and Harris will look like:

The commission also decided to have its medical advisors talk with the campaigns’ physicians to make sure the candidates are tested before the debate, and to remove any person who takes off their face mask in the debate hall. These two changes were driven by uncertainty about when Trump was tested before the first presidential debate in Cleveland last week and his family members taking off their masks once they took their seats in the debate hall.

“You must pass the test, you must wear a mask, and if you remove the mask once you’re inside, you’ll be escorted from the room,” Fahrenkopf said. “No exceptions.”

Pence and Harris to debate through plexiglass

When Vice President Mike Pence and California Senator Kamala Harris debate on Wednesday, they will do so separated by plexiglass shields, the LA Times reports:

The Commission on Presidential Debates met virtually for two hours Monday over concerns about the vice presidential debate in Salt Lake City. Calls from political observers and health experts to postpone the meeting or to hold it virtually grew as a growing number of Republican elected officials, White House staffers and others who had contact with the president and Pence also tested positive.

...

“There will be a plexiglass divider between the two candidates, and the candidates and the moderator,” said Frank J. Fahrenkopf Jr., chairman of the independent, nonpartisan debate commission. “The Trump campaign agreed to that so long as we don’t surround Vice President Pence all the way around. He doesn’t want to be in a box.”

A cardiologist at George Washington University Hospital has told the Washington Post the following about the risks Trump faces by choosing to receive his medical care at the White House instead of a hospital.

In an emergency, he said, the White House’s medical unit:

‘Can do what an emergency room can do in the first 15 minutes’ — someone could be resuscitated and stabilized during a heart attack, for example, and then transferred to a hospital. Still for ongoing treatment, he said, it would be wise for Trump to remain hospitalized.”

Former CIA director John Brennan has just said on Rachel Maddow, “I don’t think the American people can have any confidence that what they’re hearing right now about Donald Trump’s health is accurate”:

The New York Times’ White House correspondent:

Fauci believes experimental antibody treatment helped Trump

More from that interview with Dr Fauci on CNN, where he said that he is “strongly suspicious” the experimental Regeneron antibody therapy given to Trump helped get the president well – by which he means that he does think it helped (not that he is suspicious of the idea it helped):

“The President got that as a compassionate use, and whether or not it was that that got him better, I’m strongly suspicious that it was, but obviously you can’t prove that until you do a number of studies that prove that it actually works,” Fauci said.

He explained that “monoclonal antibodies” are a treatment that scientists are “really quite optimistic about”.

The drug is a combination of two human neutralising antibodies against the virus. The company previously developed a similar antibody drug against Ebola, of which my colleague Sarah Boseley wrote in September:

Unlike dexamethasone, which Recovery proved saves the lives of one in eight acutely ill patients, this is a drug that has been invented for the pandemic. It has successfully come through animal studies and a phase one safety trial and is now in late stage trials in the United States.

You can read more about the treatment here:

Updated

Seen anything we’ve missed or that you think our readers might find interesting? Get in touch on Twitter @helenrsullivan.

Here is Biden being moved a few steps back from reporters by his wife Jill:

President's schedule for Tuesday clear

The White House has published Trump’s daily guidance and schedule events. There are no public events listed. This does not mean there will be no events – yesterday’s drive past fans outside Walter Reed and Trump’s departure from Walter Reed today were not listed on his schedules either.

Trump’s return to the White House has been good for Asia’s stock markets, which edged higher on Tuesday, cautiously adding to gains made with an improvement in both Trump’s health and prospects for a US stimulus package, Reuters reports.

Bonds and the dollar nursed losses.

U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin spoke by phone for about an hour on Monday and were preparing to talk again Tuesday, continuing their work towards a deal on coronavirus relief spending.

S&P 500 futures traded steady early in the Asian session, after the best daily gain on the S&P 500 index in a month overnight. Oil held sharp overnight gains.

MSCI’s broadest index of Asia-Pacific shares outside Japan rose 0.2% to a two-week high. Japan’s Nikkei rose 0.4%. South Korea’s Kospi rose 0.6% and futures point to a positive open in Hong Kong.

Australia’s ASX 200 dipped 0.2% in early trade. China’s markets remain closed for a holiday.

CNN White House correspondent Jim Accosta has described Trump standing on the balcony as not his “Evita moment” but, rather, his “Covita” moment:

Before Trump left Walter Reed, the ABC’s Emily Olson pointed out that nearby the hospital, “a line for a free Covid testing center stretches the length of three blocks. I counted more than 150 people waiting in a queue that’s not moving”:

Fauci: Trump could experience a "reversal" in his Covid-19 progression

Dr Anthony Fauci, the top US infectious diseases expert and White House coronavirus Task Force member sidelined by Trump over the course of the pandemic, has told CNN’s Chris Cuomo that Trump could experience a “reversal” in his progression.

“I’m not involved in his primary care,” Fauci said. “But the issue is that he’s still early enough in the disease that it’s no secret that if you look at the clinical course of people sometimes, when you’re five to eight days in, you can have a reversal”.

“Reversal meaning going in the wrong direction and getting into trouble.”

Fauci added that it is “unlikely that it will happen, but they ned to be heads up for it” and that doctors would be looking out for this “within the confines of the White House as opposed to in the hospital.”

The White House’s contradictory reports over the last few days have turned many of us into amateur detectives, trying to figure out how ill the US president actually is.

Now, people on Twitter are now sharing a clip of Trump after he had climbed the stairs to the Truman balcony, saying that it shows him “gasping”.

It is difficult to tell from a distance – and many people would be a bit puffed or out of breath after climbing a set of stairs. It may be an indication of still recovering rather than of being extremely ill, or simply of not being very fit.

“Gasping” is trending at number four on Twitter.

North Carolina Senator Thom Tillis, who tested positive for coronavirus, has tweeted saying he spoke to the president.

“Received a call from President @realDonaldTrump tonight. He’s feeling great and working hard for the American people. Told him I’m recovering and look forward to getting back to the Senate and confirming Judge Amy Coney Barrett,” Tillis tweeted.

Tillis is still self-isolating – per this tweet from five hours ago:

Speaking at an event in Ohio, Vice President Mike Pence said that Trump is “doing very well”.

“I’ve spoken to the President every day, and I must tell all of you that the President is doing very well. He has great spirits, and this is so grateful,” Pence said.

In Biden’s town all he also said that the President is responsible for the fact that he contracted the virus.

Biden said:

Anybody who contracts the virus by essentially saying, ‘masks don’t matter, social distancing doesn’t matter,’ I think is responsible for what happens to them,”

Here is a video of Trump removing his mask, in what the ABC’s John Santucci essentially described as a Trump-orchestrated television episode moment that went too far:

Trump also suggested he may now be immune to coronavirus, though he added he did not know. As far as we know, he is still ill with Covid-19 and presumably he meant immune from re-infection.

Biden: 'Masks matter. They save lives.'

Now that Trump is no longer in hospital, his election rival Joe Biden has lifted a moratorium on negative comments about the president.

Trump’s decision to remove his mask at the White House has prompted several tweets from Biden – most being comments the Democratic candidate also made during a Town hall he hosted this evening.

“I would hope that the president, having gone through what he went through, would communicate the right lesson to the American people: Masks matter. They save lives,” he said.

He also called on Trump to “take responsibility” for the pandemic’s toll in the US – as well as continued high daily case numbers:

Vice presidential nominee Kamala Harris – who is set to debate Mike Pence on Wednesday – is also tweeting about masks:

Trump’s campaign team has just sent out an email from the president, where he again repeats the line “I feel better than I did 20 years go” – he said this in the video he tweeted an hour ago in which he told people, speaking about the virus that has killed more than 210,000 Americans: “Don’t let it dominate you. Don’t be afraid of it.”

The messaging below seeks to tell voters the same thing – the virus and Trump’s brush with it (he is still infected and infectious), are nothing to worry about.

I just left Walter Reed after receiving incredible care and I’m feeling really good! In fact, I feel better than I did 20 years ago.

I’m telling you: Don’t be afraid of Covid. Don’t let it dominate your life! This is the greatest country in the world, and under the Trump Administration, we have developed some really great drugs and knowledge. WE WILL BEAT THIS, TOGETHER!

...

Now, I am fired up and ready to KEEP FIGHTING FOR YOU! This is the FINAL STRETCH of the Election and we can’t take any days off.

Here, from that same report, is some insight into what happened inside Walter Reed – and the talking points Trump didn’t quite manage to hit:

Itching to get out of the hospital, Mr. Trump got his wish on Monday evening. Doctors allowed him to leave for the White House, while acknowledging he hadn’t yet reached the critical seven- to 10-day window that doctors watch for with the coronavirus to see whether patients take a turn for the worse.

...

Over the weekend, Mr. Trump’s political advisers said they were clear eyed about who they were dealing with: Mr. Trump is widely seen as a figure incapable of empathy. But the hope was that discussing his own experience would help him manage the pandemic going forward, and could have political benefits.

...

Mr. Trump did little to adhere to the narrative aides were hoping would emerge, one that would benefit him politically. In videos filmed by aides of Mr. Trump behind the scenes, intended to show him working, the president did not mention the hardship the virus had caused to others or that anyone had suffered greatly from it. Nor did he mention the White House staff members who had fallen sick.

Here, per New York Times White House correspondent Maggie Haberman, is how Trump aides were hoping the virus might benefit the president:

If Mr. Trump recovered quickly from his bout with the coronavirus and then appeared sympathetic to the public in how he talked about his own experience and that of millions of other Americans, he could have something of a political reset. The health crisis, one campaign official said, was a setback in a re-election campaign that polls have shown him losing for months, but also a chance to demonstrate a new stance toward the virus that might win over some voters.

And the president could use that to show from now until the second presidential debate, scheduled for Oct. 15, that the disease is serious but can be combated, and that he was ready to re-enter the campaign.

Summary

Hi, Helen Sullivan joining you now. I’ll be bringing you the latest Trump coronavirus news for the next few hours.

Please do get in touch on Twitter with any questions, news, comments or feedback: @helenrsullivan.

Biden has just concluded a town hall, and I’ll bring you the highlights from that shortly.

In the meantime, here is a recap of the last few hours:

  • Donald Trump left Walter Reed hospital, where he was being treated for coronavirus. He wore a mask while leaving the hospital and as he walked from Marine One to the White House. He then removed his mask to pose for photographs, while standing near photographers. Trump still has the coronavirus, is still contagious, and according to CDC guidelines, should remain in isolation until at least 10 days after his diagnosis, which came in the early hours of Friday.
  • Trump plans to participate in next debate, a spokesman for the president’s campaign said. The debate is due to be held on 15 October. On Thursday last week, before Trump announced that he had tested positive, his re-election campaign rejected calls to change the rules of the next two presidential debates after the first chaotic event in Cleveland was marred by constant interruptions and outbursts. The debate’s host, Chris Wallace, has since said that Trump also did not wear a mask while on a walk-through before the debate, and that “there was an honour system” when it came to testing negative.
  • The Cleveland clinic said on Monday that Trump’s name was on a list of names of people who had tested negative for the coronavirus before last Tuesday’s presidential debate, but added that it had not reviewed the results. “The submitted names, including that of the President and former Vice President Joe Biden, were reviewed by the Cleveland Clinic. However, the Clinic did not have to review actual test findings or see proof of negative results,” the clinic spokesperson told CNN. “She also said the date of the test was not required.”
  • Trump tweeted a video in which he said of the virus, “Don’t let it dominate you. Don’t be afraid of it.” Coronavirus has already killed 210,117 Americans – or one in every 1,560 people in the country. He also said “the vaccines are coming momentarily”, just as the Times published a report saying senior White House officials are blocking guidelines designed to make sure the vaccine is safe – but which mean it would be unlikely to be approved before the election.
  • Shortly after Trump’s display, Joe Biden held a town hall in which he repeatedly stressed the importance of masks. He also tweeted several times about this. “I would hope that the President having gone through what he went through will communicate the right lesson to the American people: Masks matter. They save lives,” Biden said.
  • Donald Trump’s top spokesperson, Kayleigh McEnany, announced she had tested positive for coronavirus on Monday, in yet another escalation of a rampaging outbreak that hospitalised the president and threw the White House into disarray.
  • Citing an anonymous source, Vanity Fair magazine reported on Monday that Donald Trump Jr was worried by his father’s behaviour and had sought help from his siblings in “staging an intervention”.
  • White House blocks new coronavirus vaccine guidelines – report. The New York Times reported that senior White House officials are blocking new federal guidelines for the release of a coronavirus vaccine. The stricter guidelines include a provision “that would almost certainly guarantee that no vaccine could be authorised before the election on 3 November, according to people familiar with the approval process”, which is what the officials are objecting to.
  • The White House will not perform contact tracing for attendees of the Rose Garden event celebrating the supreme court nomination of Amy Coney Barrett, despite confirmed infections of at least 11 attendees, according to a new report by the New York Times.The Rose Garden ceremony for Barrett has drawn scrutiny as a potential “super-spreader” event. Attendees neither wore masks nor practiced social distancing. Attendees who subsequently tested positive for Covid include Donald Trump, Melania Trump, Kellyanne Conway, Senator Mike Lee, Senator Thom Tillis, the Rev John Jenkins, Chris Christie and Kayleigh McEnany.

Updated

Trump releases incoherent video with dangerous messages about Covid

Donald Trump has published a startlingly incoherent and dangerous video message on Twitter, in which he again encouraged Americans not to take the coronavirus seriously.

The approximately 90-second clip appears to have been recorded soon after Trump returned to the White House and removed his mask, potentially exposing the White House staff to his active coronavirus infection.

Trump began by thanking the staff at Walter Reed Medical Center, before repeating a line he tweeted earlier today about the virus that has thus far killed more than 1 million people worldwide:

Don’t let it dominate you. Don’t be afraid of it. You’re gonna beat it. We have the best medical equipment. We have the best medicines, all developed recently, and you’re gonna beat it.

More than 210,000 Americans have died from the coronavirus, for which there is no known cure. Trump has been treated with experimental drugs that are not available to the general public, and has received round-the-clock care from a dedicated medical staff. Approximately 28 million people in the US lack health insurance.

Trump then began to speak about his own health, saying:

I went, I didn’t feel so good, and two days ago, I could have left two days ago. Two days ago, I felt great, like better than I have in a long time. I just said recently, better than twenty years ago.

Trump and his medical team have not been transparent about his condition. On Sunday, his doctor admitted that Trump had twice required supplemental oxygen, but it is unclear exactly when. Trump is also receiving dexamethasone, a steroid which is normally only prescribed to Covid patients with severe cases.

Trump continued:

Don’t let it dominate. Don’t let it take over your lives. Don’t let that happen. We have the greatest country in the world. We’re going back. We’re going back to work. We’re going to be out front. As your leader I had to do that. I knew there was danger to it but I had to do it. I stood out front. I led. Nobody that’s a leader would not do what I did. And I know there’s a danger, but that’s okay.

It is very hard to understand what Trump is saying in this section of the video, or what he means by “I had to do that”. It is certainly not the case that as president Trump was required to defy basic public health guidelines, such as wearing a face mask and eschewing large crowds or indoor events. The vast majority of heads of state around the world have continued to lead their countries without taking unnecessary risks that expose both themselves and their staffs to a potentially deadly disease.

He continued:

And now I’m better. And maybe I’m immune. I don’t know.

According to his own doctor, Trump is not “better” yet. He is still symptomatic with Covid-19 and, crucially, still infectious. While those who recover from Covid-19 will likely have immunity from reinfection, Trump has not yet recovered. According to CDC guidelines, he should be in isolation.

And he concluded:

But don’t let it dominate your lives. Get out there. Be careful. We have the best medicines in the world. And it all happened very shortly. And they’re all getting approved. And the vaccines are coming momentarily. Thank you very much and Walter Reed – what a group of people. Thank you very much.

Again, while Trump has received experimental medicines and state-of-the-art care, there is no cure for Covid-19 and no indication that a safe and effective vaccine will be released “momentarily”.

If you are reading this, do not follow Trump’s advice. If you need to leave your home, wear a mask, wash your hands, and maintain social distance.

Updated

White House officials are interfering with efforts by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to release strict guidelines for the emergency authorization of a coronavirus vaccine, according to a new report by the New York Times.

The FDA has been trying to release guidelines for vaccine development that include a recommendation that participants in the trials be tracked for two months after they receive their final dose, according to the report. The proposed follow-up period would help to catch possible side effects, as well as ensure that a vaccine provides long-term immunity.

But the two-month period would also almost certainly delay any announcement of emergency authorization for a vaccine until after the 3 November election. White House chief of staff Mark Meadows is blocking release of the guidelines, according to the report.

The refusal to approve the guidelines is just the latest example of the Trump administration favoring potential political gains over the health and wellbeing of the public. Read the full report here.

Updated

The White House will not perform contact tracing for attendees of the Rose Garden event celebrating the supreme court nomination of Amy Coney Barrett, despite confirmed infections of at least 11 attendees, according to a new report by the New York Times.

The Rose Garden ceremony for Barrett has drawn scrutiny as a potential “super-spreader” event. Attendees neither wore masks nor practiced social distancing. Attendees who subsequently tested positive for Covid include Donald Trump, Melania Trump, Kellyanne Conway, Senator Mike Lee, Senator Thom Tillis, the Rev John Jenkins, Chris Christie and Kayleigh McEnany.

According to the Times, the CDC was prepared to perform contact tracing for the White House, but was not asked. Instead, the White House Medical Unit said it would handle the effort, but has chosen to focus only on events within a 48-hour window of Trump’s diagnosis.

Read the full report here.

Updated

My colleague Julian Borger has written about what’s behind Trump’s desperation to leave the hospital and return to the White House.

Many students of Trump’s life and career have warned that he would be prepared to sacrifice anyone – even those closest to him – to spare himself the humiliation of a one-term presidency, but even they surely could not have anticipated how literal that sacrifice would be.

It involved creating a culture in the White House in which the wearing of masks was scoffed at, and seen as a sign of disloyalty, the worst sin in the Trump court. It produced a toxic workplace to the point of potential lethality.

Updated

Here is video of the moment that Donald Trump took off his mask to pose for photographs on the White House’s Truman balcony, before walking inside, still maskless.

Waring a face mask is not a precaution for Trump, who has already contracted Covid-19, but for those around him. The president has an active case of the potentially deadly disease, which is highly contagious. Already numerous White House staffers and members of the White House press corps have been infected in the outbreak that has spread through the president’s inner circle since last week.

Today it was reported that two housekeeping staff at the White House have also tested positive for the disease.

The White House residence is staffed by approximately 90 people, including ushers, butlers, housekeepers and cooks, according to the Washington Post. The staff is predominantly Black, Latino and older.

Moments after returning to the White House, Donald Trump climbed a set of stairs to the balcony, took off his face mask and posed for photographs.

The president still has an active coronavirus infection that is contagious to others. According to CDC guidelines, he should remain in isolation until at least 10 days after his diagnosis, which occurred on Friday.

By removing his mask, Trump is most likely endangering those who work at the White House.

On Monday, the CDC updated its coronavirus guidance to make clear that the disease can spread more than six feet through the air, especially in enclosed spaces.

Trump leaves hospital to return to White House despite ongoing Covid case

Donald Trump left the Walter Reed National Military Medical Center to return to the White House, despite still having an active case of Covid-19, at 6.38pm on Monday.

The president walked out of the front doors of the hospital, pumped his fist, flashed a thumbs up, and entered a car. He did not respond to a question from a reporter about how many of his staff were sick, or whether he was a “super-spreader”. He was wearing a mask.

Trump said that he was “feeling really good” in a tweet earlier on Monday that downplayed the severity of the disease that has killed more than 1m people worldwide and nearly 210,000 in the US. “Don’t be afraid of Covid. Don’t let it dominate your life. We have developed, under the Trump Administration, some really great drugs & knowledge. I feel better than I did 20 years ago!”

Trump has been treated at the military hospital since late afternoon Friday, following his disclosure of a positive coronavirus test in the early hours of Friday morning.

Updated

As we await Donald Trump’s scheduled departure from Walter Reed medical center, the president is tweeting his intention to return to the campaign trail. Trump still has the coronavirus, is still contagious, and according to CDC guidelines, should remain in isolation until at least 10 days after his diagnosis, which came in the early hours of Friday.

Updated

Thirteen restaurant employees in Minneapolis are quarantining after they catered a Donald Trump fundraiser last Wednesday – the day before the president disclosed he had contracted Covid-19, the AP reports.

The high-dollar fundraiser was held at the private home of Marty Davis, the CEO of a company that manufacturers quartz countertops, and featured catering from Murray’s Restaurant.

“Our staff was there to work the party only and at no point did any staff come in close proximity to the president,” the restaurant said in a statement to the AP. “Upon learning of the president’s positive Covid-19 test, we immediately enacted a 14-day quarantine for all staff who worked the party. Additionally, each staff member who worked the party will be tested for Covid-19.”

Attendees of the fundraiser paid $100,000 a piece, or $200,000 per couple, to meet with the president. One guest said that attendees took photos with Trump, but from “6 to 8 feet away”.

Trump and the White House have refused to be transparent about the precise timeline of Trump’s exposure to Covid-19, onset of symptoms, and positive or negative test results. Trump’s own diagnosis was only made public after a reporter for Bloomberg broke the news that his aide, Hope Hicks, had tested positive for the coronavirus.

Despite the constant stream of coronavirus misinformation from the president, his administration, his campaign, and the Republican party, a National Geographic/Morning Consult poll taken over the weekend found that Americans are increasingly wearing masks and feeling positive toward others who wear masks.

The survey of 2,200 adults found that 92% “always” or “sometimes” wear masks when leaving the house, up from 85% in July. The percentage of people who “always” wear a mask when leaving the house increased from 60% to 74%.

Women were more likely than men to respond that they always wear a mask, despite consistent data showing that men are more likely to die from Covid than women. The survey also found higher rates of mask-wearing among Democrats than Independents or Republicans, and among Black, Hispanic, or “other” non-white ethnicities than among whites.

A plexiglass divider will separate Mike Pence and Kamala Harris during Wednesday night’s vice presidential debate, Politico reports.

The addition of a physical barrier is the latest change in safety protocol for the debate, following the major outbreak of Covid-19 among members of the Trump administration and campaign. Pence and Harris will also be positioned further apart – 13 feet rather than the seven feet that were initially planned.

In keeping with the Trump campaign’s dedication to undermining common sense safety precautions amid a global pandemic that has killed more than 1m people globally and 210,000 people in the US, a spokeswoman for Pence, Katie Miller, snarked: “If Sen Harris wants to use a fortress around herself, have at it.”

Still, there are some “safety” rules that Pence does take seriously. The 61-year-old vice president reportedly does not allow himself to eat meals alone with women who are not his wife.

Hello everyone, this is Julia Carrie Wong in Oakland, California, picking up the politics blog for the rest of the afternoon.

While all eyes are on Walter Reed Medical Center and Donald Trump’s scheduled departure at 6:30pm Eastern, we have breaking news here in Oakland, where district attorney Nancy O’Malley has just announced that her office will reopen the investigation into the 2009 police killing of Oscar Grant.

Here is the full statement from O’Malley:

Grant was a 22-year-old Black man who was shot and killed by Bay Area Rapid Transit (Bart) police on the platform of Oakland’s Fruitvale station on New Years Day 2009. Grant was unarmed, and had been pinned to the ground with his arms behind his back when officer Johannes Mehserle shot him in the back, killing him.

The killing was captured on cellphone video, which quickly went viral, touching off protests across the Bay Area. Mehserle was charged with second-degree murder but a Los Angeles jury found him guilty only of involuntary manslaughter.

The Ryan Coogler film Fruitvale Station, starring Michael B Jordon as Grant, portrayed the last day of Grant’s life.

Family members of Grant as well as community activists had gathered today at Fruitvale Station to demand the reopening of the case and draw attention to the role of Anthony Pirone, the Bart officer who pinned Grant to the ground.

Afternoon summary

It has been quite a day so far. Let’s recap where we’re at before I hand the blog over to my colleague Julia.

  • Trump will be released from Walter Reed Medical Center later tonight, where he has been hospitalized since Friday. His personal physician, Sean Conley, said he met the discharge requirements but was “not entirely be out of the woods yet”.
  • In a tweet, Trump, who is receiving state-of-the-art medication and care not available to most Americans, tweeted: “Don’t be afraid of Covid. Don’t let it dominate your life. We have developed, under the Trump Administration, some really great drugs & knowledge. I feel better than I did 20 years ago!”
  • The White House press secretary, Kayleigh McEnany, tested positive for Covid. She has refused to say how many White House aides and staff members have been affected.
  • The CDC has updated its guidance to acknowledge that coronavirus can spread through airborne transmission.

Updated

There was little good news for Trump in a new CNN poll released on Monday, which offered an early snapshot of how Americans are processing the president’s diagnosis and hospitalization.

Two-thirds of Americans say Trump has acted irresponsibly in handling the risk of coronavirus infection to himself and people who have been around him, according to a new CNN poll conducted by SSRS, conducted after the president was diagnosed with Covid.

Nearly 70% of Americans said they trusted little of what they had been told from the White House about the president’s health, while disapproval of his handling of the Covid-19 outbreak reached 60%, a high water mark for this survey. Moreover, few expect his personal experience with the virus will change his handling of it.

Find out more about the survey here.

Biden is currently in Miami speaking about how his plans to rebuild the economy for the Hispanic community. But he began with a plea to the president, who is expected to leave Walter Reed medical center this evening.

“I was glad to see the president speaking and recording videos over the weekend,” Biden said. “Now that he’s busy tweeting campaign messages, I would ask him to do this: Listen to the scientists. Support masks. Support a mask mandate nationwide. Require a mask in every federal building and facility ... urge every governor and mayor to do the same. We know it saves lives.”

The Trump campaign announced on Monday that is is launching “Operation Maga” to mobilize support while Trump is ill.

This will include a virtual event led by Mike Pence and Donald Trump Jr.

According to a press release from the campaign, Operation MAGA will pivot to in-person events following the vice-presidential debate on 7 October.

On Monday, Biden’s personal physician did not rule out Trump returning to the campaign trail.

Updated

Trump plans to participate in next debate, spokesman says

A spokesman for the president’s campaign says he is still planning to participate in the second debate on October 15.

Updated

Joe Biden is in Miami this afternoon, making stops in Little Haiti and Little Havana before an NBC News town hall later this evening.

During remarks at the Little Haiti cultural center, Biden, wearing a mask, vowed to extend temporary protected status for Haitian immigrants, an immigration program that allows foreign nationals from countries struck by natural disaster, war or other destabilizing events to remain legally but temporarily in the US.

“The most important thing we wanted to make clear is temporary protected status is guaranteed” to Haitians, Biden said. “This is not the time to lift it.”

Florida is one of the most consequential swing states, which Trump will almost certainly need to win the White House. Polls have showed a tight race in Florida, with the state’s diverse Latino electorate almost evenly split between the candidates.

“The Haitian community itself can determine the outcome of this election,” Biden said, adding: “Wouldn’t it be the ... irony of all ironies if it tunes out on election [night], Haitians delivered the coup de grâce?”

Updated

Taking a break from Washington politics for a moment to travel to the west coast, where Guardian reporter Vivian Ho reports that California’s governor has nominated a judge to the state supreme court who, if confirmed, would be the state’s first openly gay man to serve on the high court.

Justice Martin Jenkins, 66, previously served as an associate justice on the California court of appeal, and was appointed by Bill Clinton to the US district court for the northern district of California. A Bay Area native, he worked as a prosecutor for the Alameda county district attorney’s office and as a trial attorney for the US Department of Justice, litigating civil rights cases, before serving as a judge on the Alameda county superior court.

He came out of retirement to serve as Gavin Newsom’s judicial appointments secretary.

Newsom announced the historic nomination Monday, making a point to emphasize the importance of having on the bench a “living, breathing example of the idea that love means love”. Jenkins acknowledged the significance of the nomination, addressing the “the young person who may be out there today, who is struggling with their identity”.

I want to say today to those young people who may be watching and who may hear about what has transpired here that I am not here in spite of the struggle. I am here because of the struggle,” he said. “It is deep in my character, afforded me sensibilities about the world, about people who are not so willing to accept that people can love differently than they do but never less love sincerely and genuinely and effectively. I want these young people to know that living a life of authenticity is the greatest gift you can give yourself and if you do that then you too will find yourself in a position where people will see you, they really see you and who you are, your authentic self. The extraordinary opportunity that I am being offered today: I thank you, Governor Newsom, for seeing me.”

Updated

CNN medical correspondent Sanjay Gupta provided sobering context on Trump’s treatment regimen, which includes the steroid, dexamethasone and the antiviral drug, remdesivir.

Updated

The press conference has finished. Here’s a quick recap on what we learned:

  • Trump will be released from the hospital today
  • Conley stressed that he will continue to receive “world-class, 24/7” medical care at the White House
  • Conley repeatedly refused to say when Trump’s last negative test was, which would have implications for contact tracing and provide more context to the timeline of when the president knew he had Covid. It also raised questions about whether Trump was being tested for coronavirus every day, which the White House said it would do. ““I don’t want to go backwards,” Conley said.
  • Conley said that Trump “continued to improve” but “may not be entirely out of the woods yet.”
  • It has been more than 72 hours since Trump last spiked a fever, according to the team, and the president’s oxygen levels are normal.
  • However, Conley would not comment on the president’s lung exams.
  • Conley, who was in close contact with Trump in the days leading up to his diagnosis, said he is concerned about his own health but as an essential worker will continue to attend to the president unless he tests positive for the virus.
  • Trump will take another dose of remdesivir before leaving the hospital, his fourth, Conley said.

Updated

Asked about his mental and cognitive state, Conley pointed to the president’s tweets and the videos he’s posted online as evidence that he’s doing well. “He’s back,” Conley said.

“The president has been a phenomenal patient during his stay here,” Conley said, insisting that Trump did not push for his release from Walter Reed.

Asked if he agreed with the president’s tweet this afternoon that instructed Americans not to fear the virus, Conley refused to comment.

Updated

Asked why Trump was being sent home after starting dexamethasone, he said: “We send patients with medications all the time, in fact yesterday afternoon he probably met most of his discharge requirements.”

How is any of this safe, a reporter asks, referring to Trump’s drive by on Sunday and his return to the White House.

Conley said: “The president has been surrounded by medical and security staff for days wearing full PPE. And yesterday the US Secret Service agents were in that same level of PPE for a very short period of time.”

“The medical team has made recommendations on how to safely carry out his duties at the White House, where several aides have tested positive,” he said. He would not expand on these protocols.

Conley refused to say when the president had his last negative coronavirus test. He also said that he is not “at liberty” to discuss the president’s lung scans.

Updated

Dr Sean Conley said the president has been cleared to return to the White House.

“Over the past 24 hours the president has continued to improve,” Conley said. He said Trump will receive another dose of remdesivir and “then we plan to get him home.”

Conley said it had been more than 72 hours since his last fever and that his oxygen levels are normal.

“Though he may not entirely be out of the woods yet,” Conley said, his condition “support[s] the presidents safe return home.”

Over the weekend, briefings from the president’s medical team and comments from the White House left reporters and the public with an inconsistent and incomplete understanding of the president’s health and severity of his illness.

To recap, Trump was hospitalized at Walter Reed on Friday “out of an abundance of caution,” according to the White House.

On Saturday, his medical team painted a rosy picture of a president on the upswing, while avoiding questions about whether he had ever received supplemental oxygen. Moments later, the president’s chief of staff offered a much more somber analysis of the president’s health, sparking widespread confusion.

On Sunday, the president’s personal physician, Sean Conley, acknowledged that he had delivered an overly optimistic picture of the president’s condition.

““I didn’t want to give any information that might steer the course of illness in another direction, and in doing so, you know, it came off that we were trying to hide something, which wasn’t necessarily true,” he said.

According to Conley, Trump had a “high fever” on Friday and, on two occasions, his blood oxygen levels dropped and he was given supplemental oxygen.

Conley said that the president had been administered dexamethasone on Saturday, a steroid typically used to help treat patients who are severely ill with the virus. At that point, Trump had already begun taking the antiviral drug, remdesivir.

Trump says he will leave Walter Reed Monday night

Moments before his medical team is due to brief reporters, Trump tweeted that he will leave Walter Reed Medical Center on Monday at 6.30pm.

“Feeling really good! Don’t be afraid of Covid. Don’t let it dominate your life,” he wrote. “We have developed, under the Trump Administration, some really great drugs & knowledge. I feel better than I did 20 years ago!”

Updated

Damned if I do, damned if I don’t.

Or so Trump says. The president returned to Twitter on Monday - shortly before his medical team is due to brief reporters – to gripe about the media coverage of his joy-ride yesterday afternoon to greet supporters.

Trump was sharply criticized by doctors and public health experts who said he put the health and safety of the agents accompanying him at risk. The president’s allies defended the drive-by, in which Trump waved to supporters gathered outside Walter Reed, arguing that all necessary safety precautions were taken to protect the agents.

In his tweet, Trump complained that if he didn’t greet his supporters, “media would say RUDE!!!”

CDC: Covid can spread through airborne transmission

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) said on Monday that the coronavirus can spread through airborne transmission, a long-anticipated update to the agency’s website.

There is evidence that under certain conditions, people with COVID-19 seem to have infected others who were more than 6 feet away,” the CDC website says. “These transmissions occurred within enclosed spaces that had inadequate ventilation. Sometimes the infected person was breathing heavily, for example while singing or exercising.

Under these circumstances, scientists believe that the amount of infectious smaller droplet and particles produced by the people with COVID-19 became concentrated enough to spread the virus to other people. The people who were infected were in the same space during the same time or shortly after the person with COVID-19 had left.”

The new guidance comes after an incident last month when the agency removed a draft document posted online about airborne transmission that was still under review.

The previous language, officials said at the time, could be misinterpreted as suggesting that airborne transmission is the most common way of spreading the virus.

In fact, scientists believe the most common method of transmission is through larger respiratory droplets dispersed when someone sneezes, coughs, talks or sings.

Michael Cohen has a podcast, Mea Culpa – and it is advertised as a weekly “candid conversation with the self proclaimed ‘gangster lawyer’, as he sets to dismantle the Trump legacy and finds the truth and nothing but the truth”.

This week, the man who once made Donald Trump’s problems go away, then became a problem himself, has been speaking to Stephanie Winston Wolkoff, who as author of the tell-all book Melania & Me has become a problem for her former friend, the first lady.

Promotional material for the podcast, which even has an Alabama 3-do-the-Sopranos-esque-theme, says Wolkoff plays a tape in which Melania Trump refers to the adult film star and director Stormy Daniels, whom Cohen paid off regarding an affair which Donald Trump nonetheless denies, as a “porn hooker”.

Wolkoff’s tapes caused a headache for the White House last week, when she played one on CNN which contained Melania complaining about Christmas and criticism over the Trump policy of separating immigrant familes at the border.

Updated

Donald Trump Jr plans 'intervention' – report

A fascinating dispatch from Gabriel Sherman of Vanity Fair, who cites “two Republicans briefed on the family conversations” in reporting that Donald Trump Jr is worried by his dad’s car-ride-and-tweet-storm response to being hospitalised with Covid-19:

‘Don Jr has said he wants to stage an intervention, but Jared and Ivanka keep telling Trump how great he’s doing,’ a source said. Don Jr is said to be reluctant to confront his father alone. ‘Don said, ‘I’m not going to be the only one to tell him he’s acting crazy,’’ the source added.

One area where the family seems united is over the president’s manic tweeting early Monday morning. After Trump sent out more than a dozen all-caps tweets, the Trump children told people they want Trump to stop. ‘They’re all worried. They’ve tried to get him to stop tweeting,’ a source close to the family told me.

Sherman also notes that “last night the New York Times reported that steroids, which Trump is reportedly taking, specifically dexamethasone, are known to ‘affect mood, causing euphoria or a general happiness’, and added a paragraph about “a long history in the Trump family of denying serious illness”.

“According to a Trump family friend,” Sherman wrote…

…Trump’s father, Fred Trump Sr, insisted on working even after his Alzheimer’s disease advanced in the 1990s … Every day Fred Sr would go to the office in Brooklyn and they would give him blank papers to sort through and sign. The phone on Fred’s desk was set up so that it could only dial out to his secretary. “Fred pretended to work,” the family friend said.

On Saturday night, the White House released pictures of Trump at work at Walter Reed. The internet noticed that a paper he was signing in one shot appeared to be blank.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, the White House did not immediately comment.

A new Times/Siena survey has Joe Biden ahead of Donald Trump in Arizona, a traditionally conservative state-turned presidential battleground.

Biden leads Trump 49% to 41% in Arizona, with just 6% of likely voters saying they were undecided. He is buoyed by his lopsided support among Hispanics, women and young people. The candidates are effectively tied in their support among seniors, a critical voting block in the state that has soured on Trump amid the Covid-19 outbreak.

The state has not voted for a Democrat for president since 1996.

The poll also shows Republican senator Martha McSally running far behind her Democratic opponent, Mark Kelly. McSally was appointed to the seat held by Senator John McCain after losing the race for Arizona’s other senate seat.

Kelly is leading McSally 50% to 39%, according to the Times-Siena poll.

Biden is scheduled to visit the state for the first time this cycle on Thursday. Trump and his family have been blanketing the state for months. The president was scheduled to hold rallies in southern and northern Arizona on Monday and Tuesday, but was forced to cancel due to his coronavirus diagnosis.

Negotiations over a new coronavirus relief package are ongoing.

A spokesman for Nancy Pelosi said the House Speaker and Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin spoke on Monday for nearly an hour. They will speak again tomorrow.

Talks over a second major stimulus deal appeared to fall apart last month, but have been revived in recent weeks.

Trump, tweeting from Walter Reed, offered support for more stimulus funding: “WORK TOGETHER AND GET IT DONE.”

Joe Biden’s gamble this election has been that the American people will reward him for following public health guidance and demonstrating how the leader of a nation in crisis should behave. He wears a mask, practices social distancing and even – to the delight of his opponents and dismay of some allies – limits campaign travel.

Trump’s diagnosis seemed to validate the approach. The president flouted public safety guidelines, only wearing a mask occasionally and holding big campaign events and fundraisers, sometimes indoors.

But his campaign is now trying to turn the tables, arguing that Biden’s failure to contract an infectious disease that officials the world over are trying to contain somehow puts him at a disadvantage.

Trump has said he has learned a lot from his personal experience with the virus. But that may come as cold comfort to the families of the nearly 210,000 Americans who have died of the disease. Polling consistently shows that voters disapprove of Trump’s handling of the virus, a factor that is hurting his re-election prospects.

Updated

ABC news is reporting that Chad Gilmartin, the principal assistant press secretary, has tested positive for Covid-19. Bloomberg, confirming the reporting, said Karoline Leavitt, an assistant press secretary, has also tested positive, along with other mid-level staffers.

McEnany has refused to provide details on the number of White House staff who have tested positive for the virus.

Updated

The White House Correspondents’ Association has released a statement on McEnany’s diagnosis.

“We wish Kayleigh, the president and everyone else struggling with the virus a swift recovery,” president Zeke Miller said in a statement,

“As of this moment we are not aware of additional cases among White House journalists, though we know some are awaiting test results,” Miller said. “We strongly encourage our members to continue following CDC guidance on mask-wearing and distancing — especially when at the White House — and urge journalists to seek testing if they were potentially exposed.”

At least three White House reporters have tested positive for the virus, and the WHCA said several more are awaiting results.

Updated

For a moment of levity, here’s footage of Jill Biden physically pulling back her husband as he speaks to reporters.

“Come back,” she says, steering him backward.

“I’m sorry,” he replies.

As we learned during the primary, Jill Biden is not one to cross.

Updated

Senator Lindsey Graham, the South Carolina Republican and a close friend of Trump’s, said the president sounded “engaged and ready to get back to work” in a recent phone conversation.

Graham chairs the Judiciary Committee, which is barreling ahead with the Supreme Court confirmation of Amy Coney Barrett despite at least two senators on the panel testing positive for the virus. Democrats have pleaded with Graham to postpone the hearing, which they argue should not be done virtually given the great consequence of a lifetime appointment to the nation’s highest court.

Graham, who is locked in a competitive re-election battle, added that Trump was “very excited about Judge Amy Coney Barrett being confirmed to the Supreme Court”.

Graham, who may have been exposed to the virus last week by Senator Mike Lee of Utah, a member of the committee who tested positive, on Saturday participated in a debate with his opponent, Democratic Senate candidate, Jaime Harrison.

Jaime Harrison brings a plexiglass divider
Jaime Harrison brings his own plexiglass divider to the debate. Photograph: Joshua Boucher/AP

In a dramatic measure to limit his chances of exposure, Harrison brought a plexiglass divider on stage.

As mentioned previously, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommends people quarantine for 14 days after exposure.

Updated

On the tarmac ahead of a campaign trip to Miami, Joe Biden said he was “reluctant” to comment on questions related to Trump’s health and said he would follow the advice of experts on whether to go forward with the second presidential debate, scheduled for October 15.

“If the scientists say that it’s safe, the distances are safe, then I think that’s fine,” he said. “I’ll do whatever the experts say is the appropriate thing to do.”

At one point during the exchange with reporters, Dr Jill Biden had to physically pull her husband back when he risked getting too close to the press, according to a pool report. Everyone wore a mask.

Updated

McEnany tests positive for coronavirus

White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany announced on Twitter that she has tested positive for the coronavirus.

In a statement, McEnany said she had tested positive on Monday morning, but is not experiencing any symptoms. She said she had previously tested negative for the virus every day since Thursday.

“No reporters, producers or members of the press were listed as close contacts by the White House medical unit,” she said. “Moreover, I definitively had no knowledge of Hope Hicks’ diagnosis prior to holding a White House press briefing on Thursday.”

McEnany said she will begin the quarantine process and work remotely.

The CDC guidelines recommend someone with exposure to the virus immediately self-quarantine. McEnany spoke to reporters – without a mask – as recently as yesterday.

She is at least the 11th person close to the president to be diagnosed with coronavirus.

Updated

First Lady Melania Trump, who tested positive for the virus along with her husband, said she was “feeling good & will continue to rest at home.”

Melania Trump, 50, remained at the White House while her husband is being treated at Walter Reed.

Senator Patrick Toomey, a Republican of Pennsylvania, formally announced on Monday that he plans to retire at the end of his term, in 2022. He also made clear that he had no plans to run for governor.

This sets up an intense fight over his seat in one of the most important electoral battlegrounds.

The Supreme Court begins a new term today, amid a rushed and tumultuous battle to replace the late justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg.

The fate of the Affordable Care Act, the scope of religious freedom exemptions and potentially, disputes over the president election results are among the major cases that will or will likely come before the court this term.

On Monday, two of the court’s conservative justices said of the landmark 2015 decision that required all states to grant same-sex marriage threatened religious liberty.

“This petition provides a stark reminder of the consequences of Obergefell,” justice Clarence Thomas wrote in a four-page opinion on Monday. “By choosing to privilege a novel constitutional right over the religious liberty interests explicitly protected in the First Amendment, and by doing so undemocratically, the court has created a problem that only it can fix.”

Trump has nominated – and the Senate is expected to confirm – conservative judge Amy Coney Barrett to replace Ginsburg.

Mike Pence and wife Karen reportedly test negative for virus

Both Mike Pence and his wife, Karen, have tested negative for the virus, according to CBS.

Pence has a busy week of travel scheduled: he will head to Utah on Monday ahead of his debate with vice presidential nominee Kamala Harris in Salt Lake City. He is also scheduled to hold a MAGA rally in Arizona and stop in his home state of Indiana, where he will cast an early ballot for president.

This travel contravenes public health guidance, which recommends anyone who has been exposed to the virus self-quarantine for 14 days.

Updated

The pool of White House reporters charged with covering the president is headed to Walter Reed hospital. Previously, that has indicated that there will be an update from Trump’s medical team. We are standing by.

White House Press Secretary Kayleigh McEnany on Sunday declined to release the number of staff infected with coronavirus after the First Couple, aides and allies tested positive for the virus, citing “privacy concerns.”

Removing her mask to briefly answer questions, McEnany also refused to say when the president was tested for coronavirus prior to his diagnosis.

“I’m not going to give you a detailed readout with timestamps of every time the president is tested,” she said. “He’s tested regularly and the first positive test he received was when he returned from Bedminster.”

The White House has been widely criticized for its lack of transparency and conflicting messaging in the wake of the president’s diagnosis.

Updated

New Jersey governor Phil Murphy said Trump should have canceled a big-dollar fundraiser at a golf club in his state after a top aide tested positive for the coronavirus, rather than risk contagion among the hundreds of attendees and staff at the event.

“This borders on reckless in terms of exposing people not just in New Jersey, but looks like from folks around the country, who have now scattered by the way,” he told CNN.

Authorities are working to contact trace for the more than 200 people who may have been exposed at the fundraiser Trump held last week, hours before the White House said the president received his own positive diagnosis.

But Murphy called on the federal government to assist with contact tracing, particularly given that a number of guests traveled to the event from out of town.

“We’re taking the lead. We got on it immediately, both at the state level and the local level. But, you know, we need cooperation from the feds,” he said in the interview. “Remember, the staff all live in New Jersey even though the attendees were from around the country.”

He also urged all attendees to self-quarantine.

“Please, god, if you know you’re exposed to someone who is Covid-positive, you need to quarantine,” he said. “I don’t want to be the grinch here but that’s the way we have got to deal with this virus.”

Sources told CNN that Trump had demanded to be released from the hospital on Sunday.

Trump, as ever, is concerned about the optics of staying in the hospital, according to CNN’s Jim Acosta. He worries the visual of him being hospitalized “makes him look weak,” a source told the network.

White House chief of staff Mark Meadows said earlier that a decision on whether to release Trump from the hospital would after a meeting with his medical team later in the afternoon.

Donald Trump said in March he “didn’t have a lot of time” to meet the top public health expert Dr Anthony Fauci for a briefing about the coronavirus outbreak that was then gathering pace, according to a new recording released by the reporter Bob Woodward.

The Guardian’s Martin Pengelly has a nice summary on the latest tape to be released by the veteran journalist, whose interviews with Trump revealed that the president was aware of the dangers of the virus in February even as he downplayed its seriousness publicly.

As Pengelly notes, “Trump, who has been widely criticized for failing to advocate mask-wearing, social distancing and other public health measures to contain the virus, said he had learned a lot” from his positive diagnosis.

“This is the real school,” Trump said from Walter Reed, to which he was admitted on Friday. “I get it and understand it. [It is] a very interesting thing and I’m going to be letting you know about it.”

Read more:

As they say in Trump’s America, there’s always a tweet.

The president on Sunday was sharply criticized for leaving the hospital to greet supporters. Doctors and experts said he put the health of the personnel riding with him in the car at risk.

In 2014, during the Ebola outbreak, Trump had a word for such behavior: “selfish”.

In a pair of 2014 tweets being shared online, Trump attacked a New York doctor who had returned from treating Ebola patients in Guinea. Craig Spencer’s positive diagnosis set off a sprawling contact tracing effort, made difficult by the fact that he rode the subway, went to a bowling alley and rode in a taxi.

But here, context is key. Spencer did not know he had the Ebola virus when he used public transport or met up with friends. And, critically, people infected with Ebola cannot spread the disease until they begin to show symptoms, and it cannot be spread through the air.

As such, his travel and activities were not deemed to be a risk to the public because it occurred before he displayed symptoms. No one is known to have contracted the virus from Spencer.

Trump’s allies have defended his decision to leave Walter Reed. On Monday, Corey Lewandowski said he was told the Secret Service agents “volunteered for that assignment.”

Updated

Whoever is writing the headlines at Reuters this morning has summed up the scenario very succinctly with “Trump’s Covid-19 status unclear, could return to White House Monday”. Unclear is something of an understatement.

There’s been the optimism on Fox News from chief of staff Mark Meadows that Trump is ready to return to a normal working routine, but Reuters note that if the medical information supplied to the public is accurate, Donald Trump has some way to go yet on the path of recovery.

They point out that the 74 year old is being treated with a steroid, dexmethasone, that is normally used only in the most severe cases.

Even if he does return to the White House later today, he will need to continue treatment as Trump is still undergoing a five-day course of an intravenous antiviral drug, remdesivir.

The normal quarantine period for anyone testing positive for the coronavirus is 14 days.

Michael D. Shear, who is a White House correspondent for the New York Times, is one of the journalists who has tested positive for coronavirus in recent days, and he believes that he probably picked it up while covering events at the White House. He has told CNN this morning that he’s had no official messages from the administration to try and do contact tracing with him, saying:

It’s now, you know, 10 days … 11 days, whatever, since I think that I was probably infected on that Saturday. I’ve not been contacted by the White House. Nobody from the White House has said ‘boo’ and asked anything about where I was or who I talked to, or who else I might have infected. And so I think that that just shows you that they’re not taking it seriously, at least as it pertains to themselves.

You can watch the interview segment here:

Meadows 'optimistic' Trump will be able to return to White House today

Here’s a reminder that White House chief of staff Mark Meadows has spoken to Fox News this morning, and is optimistic about the president’s progress.

The fact that the president is in hospital with Covid has inevitably monopolised coverage to an extent, but there have been developments with the US coronavirus response elsewhere as well. New York’s city mayor Bill de Blasio is bidding to shut schools and businesses in Covid hotspots:

The action, if approved, would mark a disheartening retreat for a city that enjoyed a summer with less spread of the virus than most other parts of the US, and recently celebrated the return of students citywide to in-person learning in classrooms.

Shutdowns would happen starting on Wednesday in nine zip codes in the city, de Blasio said on Sunday.

About 100 public schools and 200 private schools would have to close. Indoor dining, which just resumed a few days ago, would be suspended. Outdoor restaurant dining would shut down in the affected neighborhoods as well, and gyms would close. Houses of worship would be allowed to remain open with existing restrictions in place, de Blasio said.

He said he was taking the action in an attempt to stop the virus from spreading deeper into the city and becoming a “second wave”, like the one that killed more than 24,000 New Yorkers in the spring.

“We’ve learned over and over from this disease that it is important to act aggressively, and when the data tells us it’s time for even the toughest and most rigorous actions we follow the data, we follow the science,” de Blasio said.

Read it here: New York mayor bids to shut schools and businesses in Covid hotspots

Speaking of registering to vote, Donald Trump’s election campaign in 2016 targeted nearly 3.5 million Black Americans to deter them from voting, and the battle for the right to vote is just as important in 2020. Kenya Evelyn has travelled to Florida for us, where it’s the Democrats’ most loyal bloc, Black women, who are also bearing the brunt of the coronavirus outbreak, with its impact accelerating the fight for voting rights. From mail-in ballots and early voting, to felon disenfranchisement, Black voters are wielding their power to demand more from Democrats ahead of November

Fox News are citing White House chief of staff Mark Meadows saying that Trump will meet with his medical team this morning, and that there is still optimism that the president will be well enough to return to the White House later today. Meadows said Trump continued to improve overnight, and that he had spoken with Trump earlier today.

The president’s Twitter account is active again, reminding voters in Arizona, Florida, Georgia, Ohio and Texas that today is their last day to register to vote.

Updated

The Washington Post has described the reports coming out about Donald Trump’s health as “limited and contradictory”, and that has raised a conspiratorial sense of mystery which extended to the scrutiny of the photographs of Donald Trump that have been released.

Social media users were not slow to pick up on strange aspects of the official pictures of the US president in the Walter Reed National Military Medical Center.

Trump’s daughter Ivanka was one of those who shared the photographs, saying “Nothing can stop him from working for the American people” and describing her father as “relentless”.

However questions have been raised about how much work the images depict the president actually doing.

There were also questions about the timings of the photograph. Digital images have embedded data in them indicating when they were taken, and the timings in the versions that were made public showed the president working in two different locations within a very short space of time.

For some, that suggested that the president was just being propelled from photo op to photo op, rather than actually working.

It has also been noted that photographs issued from Walter Reed over the last couple of days have been credited to different photographers, increasing the number of people we know to have been exposed to Donald Trump during the period when he has tested positive for Covid-19 and should be as much in isolation as possible.

Here's a summary of what we know so far…

Here’s a quick re-cap of where we are:

  • The White House’s medical team said Donald Trump “has continued to improve” since Saturday and could be released as early as Monday. The team confirmed the president had lowered oxygen levels at one point and refused to answer questions about whether the president has suffered lung damage.
  • Trump made an impromptu appearance outside of the hospital on Sunday afternoon, waving from inside an SUV to a crowd of supporters who gathered outside the hospital. Concerns were raised about the other people who were in the car with Trump, who was wearing a mask.
  • An attending physician at Walter Reed Medical Center condemned Trump’s drive, calling it “insanity”. Dr James Phillips wrote: “Every single person in the vehicle during that completely unnecessary Presidential ‘drive-by’ just now has to be quarantined for 14 days. They might get sick. They may die. For political theater. Commanded by Trump to put their lives at risk for theater. This is insanity.”
  • Trump’s former campaign manager, Corey Lewandowski, has claimed today that the staff inside the car “volunteered” for the role.
  • The president has spent 27 minutes this morning issuing a barrage of campaigning tweets from hospital in all capital letters.
  • A Reuters/Ipsos poll indicated a majority – 65% – of Americans believe Trump would not have been infected with the virus if he took it more seriously. A separate poll showed the widest lead in a month for Joe Biden over Trump. The poll, taken on Friday and Saturday, showed Biden with a 10-point lead.
  • NBC reported that Melania Trump would not leave her residence to visit her husband because it would put agents and staff at risk.
  • Joe Biden has again tested negative for Covid-19. It was his second test since it became public that Donald Trump had contracted Covid-19.

Donald Trump’s drive-by of supporters outside his hospital yesterday sparked criticism that he had endangered the lives of the staff who were in the car with him.

Corey Lewandowski, a former campaign manager for Donald Trump, has been on TV this morning asserting that the staff in Trump’s SUV drive-by yesterday had in fact volunteered for the role. He told Savannah Guthrie:

The President wanted to thank all the supporters who had been standing out there for days supporting him. It’s my understanding, from the information I’ve obtained, that the detail leader of the secret service and the driver both volunteered for that assignment. As you know they have very, very, difficult jobs, but they were not required to do that, they both volunteered. And there was a piece of plexiglass I believe between the President and the two Secret Service agents who are in the vehicle.

You can watch Lewandowski here:

While the full extent of precautions taken on behalf of the staff is unclear, images did appear to show the driver wearing personal protective equipment while driving the president.

Trump rides in front of the Walter Reed National Military Medical Center.
Trump rides in front of the Walter Reed National Military Medical Center. Photograph: Cheriss May/Reuters

The SUVs used by motorcade are sealed, with heavy duty bullet-proof glass protecting the occupants, making it a very enclosed sealed space to sit with a potentially infection patient. Yesterday’s motorcade used 10 vehicles in all.

For the record, the president of the United States, Donald Trump, has spent 27 minutes so far this morning tweeting out a string of campaign slogans in all capital letters. He is currently in the Walter Reed Army Medical Center having been diagnosed with coronavirus.

One suspects, with the partisan nature of US politics, that Trump supporters will see this as evidence that the president is up and well and campaigning again. And others will see the behaviour somewhat differently.

Former director of the US office of government ethics and frequent Trump critic Walter Shaub, has given his view of the president’s tweeting this morning.

Donald Trump is just currently tweeting out a series of all caps shouted election slogans.

Sam Baker writes for Axios this morning about why, in his view, the US has done a poorer job of controlling and containing the coronavirus despite having had warning time to prepare and immense resources at its disposal.

He attributes it to the US repeatedly trying to “fend off the virus with the kind of show of strength you’d use to deter a strategic, thinking enemy. He writes:

We saw it in the early reopening debate and the political and legal battles over whether churches should be exempt from bans on large indoor gatherings. The virus doesn’t know it’s spreading through a church. It doesn’t know what religion is.

The political rush to open the economy before controlling the virus itself caused cases and hospitalizations to soar. The virus isn’t cowed by economic growth.

If you don’t take it seriously and don’t do much to protect yourself, the virus is likely to find you, no matter who you are. It doesn’t know it’s infecting the president.

Those errors are reflected, he says, in the US having relied on testing as the main tool against Covid, especially in the White House itself.

Testing is a source of information: It tells you who has the virus. But it has gaps. Recently infected people may be able to spread the virus before they test positive for it.

Sen. Mike Lee has said he felt comfortable going maskless and ignoring social distancing at the Rose Garden event for Amy Coney Barrett because he had just recently tested negative. He is now infected, as are many other people who attended that event.

And if you don’t do anything with the information it gives you, it’s not going to be much help. Sen. Ron Johnson, for example, tested positive and then went to a public event anyway.

The results speak for themselves: Even with abundant testing, the West Wing is very obviously the locus of a significant outbreak.

Read it here: Axios – The coronavirus is in control

Ryan Lizza and Daniel Lippman have this analysis to offer over at Politico this morning. They suggest that the president’s Covid diagnosis has added to a swirl of problems facing Republicans – and has complicated the trade-off senior members of the party were making in supporting Trump to achieve their longer-term goal of locking in a conservative majority to the US supreme court.

Trump’s Republican critics have long argued that he was a virus infecting their party that would eventually destroy it. Trump skeptics-turned-supporters, which could describe most Washington Republicans, made a different calculation: If the worst elements of Trump could be contained, then Republicans could keep a Democrat out of the White House, lock in a majority on the Supreme Court and protect their redoubt in the Senate. Even before Trump’s diagnosis, the cost of the deal with Trump was starting to look high. But the path to pushing through Barrett and retaining the Senate and even White House was hardly insurmountable.

That an actual virus has now infected Trump, his wife, his campaign manager, the head of the RNC, several advisers, and three senators — many of them at a celebration of Barrett’s nomination — thus throwing all three of the GOP’s 2020 goals into chaos, is a plot twist that would be rejected by any writer as just a little too on the nose.

“Trump has done more to derail the Barrett nomination than any Democrat,” said one dejected former senior White House official. “They are screwing themselves, that’s for sure.”

Read it here: Politico – Republicans gripped by dread as multiple crises swirl

We don’t normally as a matter of habit treat every single time Donald Trump tweets as news, but given that he is currently hospitalised for coronavirus, with some considerable mystery hanging over exactly what his condition is, it seems worth noting that he’s back on the ‘shouting all caps’ Twitter campaign trail this morning.

Away from the president’s illness for a moment, there’s still an election to be fought. David Smith in Washington reports for us on how, for some people, it is a battle just to vote at all, due to Republican efforts to suppress the vote.

Maxine Waters, a Democratic congresswoman from California, told MSNBC: “They’re subtly targeting minority communities, targeting low income communities and making sure that they do everything possible to intimidate and frighten and keep people from voting. We’ve got to see to it that the local police are there when his hoodlums drive up on their motorcycles with their guns.”

Trump fuelled such concerns at the debate when he failed to denounce white supremacists, telling the rightwing Proud Boys group to “stand back and stand by”.

Katie Hill, a former Democratic congresswoman from California, said: “I certainly worry that the purpose of this is to stir up trouble and to scare people away from the polls because of a very real fear of the white supremacists that are enabled and encouraged by by Trump and his rhetoric.

If people are hearing that the Proud Boys are going to show up at the polls, some people are going to be afraid and that’s exactly what they want to have happen. They want them to not vote.”

Read it here: ‘We can’t let them win’: activists warn against Trump’s voter intimidation tactics

It’s not a health bulletin, but it appears the president is awake and watching and tweeting about Fox & Friends, which is a fairly normal weekday routine for him.

Maeve Reston brings us this analysis of the current situation for CNN, saying that the White House has had its focus on the optics, while leaving the US in the dark about what is really happening with the president. She writes:

For much of this year, Trump has spun an alternate reality about the dangers of coronavirus — disputing science and the efficacy of masks, downplaying the risks to the American people, and making false statements about how 99% of coronavirus cases in America are “totally harmless” or that the virus “affects virtually nobody.”

He encouraged his aides and advisers to live in that dangerous fantasy land, pushing his luck to the limits as late as this past week when he again recklessly gathered thousands of unmasked Americans at his political rallies and packed the top officials in government into a Rose Garden ceremony for his Supreme Court nominee. All the while, White House officials embraced the fallacy that administering rapid coronavirus tests frequently at the White House could provide a shield of immunity.

There’s no sign of that approach changing, if Sunday night’s events are anything to go by. Reston reports:

The White House Management Office sent its first staff-wide email Sunday night since Trump tested positive for coronavirus early Friday morning. Until then, staffers had gotten no word about whether to come into work or to remain home given that several of their colleagues tested positive. Stunningly, the email, which was viewed by CNN, states they should not contact the White House testing office if they have symptoms.

The list of people in Trump’s inner circle who have tested positive for Covid in the last few days now include the president himself and his wife Melania, presidential aides Hope Hicks and Nicholas Luna, and campaign manager Bill Stepien.

Republican senators Mike Lee, Thom Tillis and Ron Johnson, as well as former counselor to the president Kellyanne Conway and former governor of New Jersey Chris Christie have all also tested positive.

Read it here: CNN – White House focuses on optics while America wonders about health of the President

With the US rapidly approaching 7.5m confirmed coronavirus cases, it isn’t just the virus itself causing problems, but also the knock-on effects. Michael Sainato has been reporting for us on how the pandemic has worsened the opioid addiction crisis in the US:

Destiny Rozek, 22, of Holbrook, New York on Long Island has struggled with opioid addiction for the past four years, a struggle she said has worsened during America’s coronavirus pandemic.

Rozek explained that several detox facilities have closed and coronavirus safety protocols have limited the assistance several other facilities once provided. She went to a detox facility several weeks ago, but was discharged after a couple of nights because they needed space in the ward.

“There was no therapy or anything to help me. They didn’t even help me find an outside place to go to after and I was still sick when they let me out but they needed space because it was busy,” Rozek said.

“Drug users are doubly vulnerable right now. They are vulnerable in terms of increased risk of relapse, increased risk of misuse during the pandemic, but they’re also at increased risk for being infected by Covid and having adverse reactions to Covid,” said Dr Magdalene Cerda, of NYU Langone Health.

Read it here: ‘There was nothing to help me’: how the pandemic has worsened opioid addiction

Moira Donegan has written for us this morning, pondering that now coronavirus has reached Republicans, maybe they will have to know what the rest of the world feels like? She says:

The administration’s handling of the president’s illness has had the shambolic quality of Wile E Coyote attempting to catch Road Runner. They are caught in such absurdly transparent lies that one almost expects their noses to grow long as they speak, or a cartoon anvil to drop on their heads in divine retribution. It would be funny, if only these people did not also possess such terrifying power along with their ostentatious incompetence.

Donegan also questions the motivations of Donald Trump still attending a fund-raiser when it seems likely that he knew he had been exposed to the coronavirus, even if he hadn’t yet tested positive for it himself.

It has long been clear, both from their own statements and from reporting done by outlets such as Vanity Fair, that the Trump administration considers deaths and illness from the virus in blue states to be insignificant, acceptable casualties. But the choice in Bedminster to endanger his own supporters defies that logic. Unless of course, you are Donald Trump, who views ever interaction as transactional and every human being as a number. The Bedminster event, remember, was a campaign fundraiser – it ultimately raised more than $5m for his re-election bid. To Trump, even those who fulfill his own need for constant adulation are less valuable as human beings than they are as sources of revenue. And Trump certainly does not care about the workers whose labor is necessary to put on such events – the security and janitors and caterers and tech staff whose health, lives and families are threatened by his carelessness.

Read it here: Moira Donegan – America has a super-spreader president. He put us all – and himself – at risk

President Trump’s medical team said on Sunday that he could be discharged from Walter Reed as early as today. It’s caused some confusion, because the idea that Trump is well enough to leave hospital appears to conflict with other medical information we have been told about the president. As Katie Thomas and Roni Caryn Rabin reported for the New York Times:

The few medical details they disclosed suggested to many infectious disease experts that he is suffering a more severe case of Covid-19.

In photos and videos, there is hardly any sign that Mr. Trump is sick. But Trump’s doctors said his oxygen levels had dropped to a level that can indicate that a patient’s lungs are compromised.

The president’s medical team also said that he had been prescribed dexamethasone. The drug is reserved for those with severe illness, because it has not been shown to benefit those with milder forms of the disease and may even be risky.

“The dexamethasone is the most mystifying of the drugs we’re seeing him being given at this point,” said Dr. Thomas McGinn, physician-in-chief at Northwell Health, the largest health care provider in New York State. The drug is normally not used unless the patient’s condition seems to be deteriorating, he added.

“Suddenly, they’re throwing the kitchen sink at him,” Dr. McGinn said. “It raises the question: Is he sicker than we’re hearing, or are they being overly aggressive because he is the president, in a way that could be potentially harmful?”

Here’s a little bit on the background of Sean Conley, the doctor whose updates are raising questions.

A couple of tweets regarding the administration’s handling of Trump’s Covid case have gone viral overnight.

David Nakamura, a reporter at the Washington Post, noted that the official photographs of Trump working through his illness have been credited by the White House to different photographers – meaning that more staff are potentially being exposed to the virus.

The photographs were taken in indoor spaces, and the president was not wearing his mask.

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez has taken the opportunity to make a point about healthcare, in a tweet which has proven to be extremely popular on the social media service.

Here, if you missed it, is that drive-by sequence from yesterday. President Donald Trump is currently hospitalised with coronavirus. He should, according to his own CDC recommendations, be isolating as much as possible. Instead he’s in a car, waving at supporters camped outside the Walter Reed National Military Medical Center.

James Phillips, doctor of emergency medicine at George Washington University, who is an attending physician at Walter Reed, called the stunt “insanity”.

“Every single person in the vehicle during that completely unnecessary Presidential ‘drive-by’ just now has to be quarantined for 14 days. They might get sick. They may die,” he wrote in a tweet.

“For political theater. Commanded by Trump to put their lives at risk for theater. This is insanity.”

In a second tweet, Phillips added: “That Presidential SUV is not only bulletproof, but hermetically sealed against chemical attack. The risk of COVID19 transmission inside is as high as it gets outside of medical procedures. The irresponsibility is astounding. My thoughts are with the Secret Service forced to play.”

Good morning, and welcome to our live coverage of US politics for Monday, which will no doubt again be dominated by news of president Donald Trump’s health. Here’s a quick catch-up on what we know.

  • The White House’s medical team said Donald Trump “has continued to improve” since Saturday and could be released as early as Monday. The team confirmed the president had lowered oxygen levels at one point and refused to answer questions about whether the president has suffered lung damage.
  • Trump made an impromptu appearance outside of the hospital on Sunday afternoon, waving from inside an SUV to a crowd of supporters who gathered outside the hospital. Concerns were raised about the other people who were in the car with Trump, who was wearing a mask.
  • Kayleigh McEnany, White House press secretary, refused to commit to releasing to the public how many White House officials have tested positive for Covid-19
  • Mary Trump has said the US is “in the horrible place we’re in” because members of the Trump family, including the president, see illness as “a display of unforgivable weakness”.
  • A Reuters/Ipsos poll indicated a majority – 65% – of Americans believe Trump would not have been infected with the virus if he took it more seriously.
  • The US reported 50,044 new coronavirus cases on Sunday, taking the country’s total – the highest in the world and a fifth of global cases – to nearly 7.5m. 690 new deaths were confirmed, according to Johns Hopkins University.
  • Understandably, Donald Trump has no public engagements in his diary for today – although that didn’t stop him making a public appearance yesterday. An attending physician at Walter Reed Medical Center condemned that drive-by as “insanity”.
  • Joe Biden has a busy day in Florida. In the afternoon he and his wife Jill will visit a cultural center in Miami, and then give remarks in Little Havana on how to ‘Build back better’ for the Hispanic community. At 8pm, he will participate in an NBC News town hall.
  • In-person voting starts today in California, Iowa, Maine, Montana, Nebraska and South Carolina.
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