US politics: Trump rages after supreme court verdict over tax records – live updates

Trump said Tropical Storm Fay had “forced” his campaign to postpone his planned rally in Portsmouth, New Hampshire, which was supposed to take place tomorrow night.

But as the blog has noted, the tropical storm is not expected to make landfall in Portsmouth, and the announcement comes as some campaign officials have reportedly expressed concerns about turnout at the event.

Here’s where the day stands so far:

• Trump postponed his planned rally in New Hampshire tomorrow night due to weather. The Trump campaign blamed the delay on an incoming tropical storm, but the storm is not expected to make landfall in Portsmouth, New Hampshire. The announcement comes as campaign officials have reportedly expressed concerns about the turnout for the event because of coronavirus.
• Approval of the president’s handling of the pandemic hit a new low in one poll. According to a new ABC News/Ipsos poll, disapproval of Trump’s response to the pandemic now stands at 67%, up from 43% in March.
• Trump said he is “looking at” a pardon for his former associate Roger Stone. The president said Stone, who is expected to report to prison on Tuesday, “was very unfairly treated.”

The blog will have more coming up, so stay tuned.

Trump campaign officials were reportedly concerned about how much of a crowd would show up for his rally tomorrow in Portsmouth, New Hampshire, which has now been postponed.

The AP reports:

The Portsmouth rally was scheduled after aides spent weeks studying what went wrong in Tulsa three weeks ago. It was billed as a massive, defiant return to the political stage but instead produced a humiliating sea of empty seats and questions about the campaign’s ability to attract people to large events in a pandemic. …

It was unclear how many people would attend the New Hampshire rally, campaign officials acknowledged. Conceding that another sparse crowd would raise questions about the future of Trump’s rallies, the campaign [had] taken additional steps to make attendees feel safe. …

[W]hile masks were distributed in Tulsa, few rallygoers wore them after weeks of Trump deriding their use. This time, the campaign [had] strongly encouraged their use.

Some New Hampshire officials had called on Republican governor Chris Sununu to issue a statewide mask requirement in the days leading up to the rally, but Sununu refused to do so.

The announcement that Trump’s rally in New Hampshire tomorrow will be postponed comes weeks after the president’s Tulsa rally saw disappointing turnout.

Campaign officials told NBC News that they were determined to avoid “a repeat of Tulsa,” when thousands of seats in the indoor arena chosen for the rally went unfilled.

Instead, the campaign planned to hold tomorrow’s rally in Potsmouth at an open-air airport tarmac hangar to mitigate concerns about the spread of coronavirus at the event.

However, the large event still raised alarms with local officials, and Republican governor Chris Sununu said he would not attend the event out of an abundance of caution.

The announcement that the Trump campaign rally in New Hampshire was being delayed due to weather struck one local meteorologist as odd, considering the forecast for tomorrow night is currently party cloudy and 78 degrees.

The Trump campaign has confirmed that tomorrow’s planned rally in Portsmouth, New Hampshire, has been delayed because of a tropical storm headed for the region.

“The rally scheduled for Saturday in Portsmouth, New Hampshire has been postponed for safety reasons because of Tropical Storm Fay. It will be rescheduled and a new date will be announced soon,” communications director Tim Murtaugh said in a statement.

Some local New Hampshire officials had criticized Trump for the planned rally because of the pandemic, but the campaign and the White House press secretary both said the cancellation was due to weather, not coronavirus.

The president’s planned rally tomorrow in Portsmouth, New Hampshire, has been delayed due to weather.

White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany told reporters aboard Air Force One that the event would be delayed “a week or two” because of a “big storm” headed for the region.

The rally was supposed to take place partly outdoors — reportedly because the president’s advisers were trying to avoid a repeat of his Tulsa rally, when thousands of seats in the indoor arena went unfilled.

Coronavirus testing sites in the most populous Texas county will close early today due to a heat advisory.

Officials in Harris county said testing sites would close at noon because of the high temperatures today. The announcement comes as Texas, and Harris county specifically, grapple with a surge in new cases.

The early closure raises questions about how southern states in particular will ensure testing continues amid the hot summer months and hurricane season later in the year.

Texas reported a record number of new cases in a single day on Tuesday, recording more than 10,000 new cases. Harris county and Dallas county, home to Houston and Dallas, have reported the highest number of cases across the state.

The Guardian’s Maanvi Singh reports from California:

A dozen California firefighting camps that house incarcerated firefighters have been quarantined and taken out of commission after a coronavirus outbreak at a state prison, highlighting the precarious situation for these crews.

Since the second world war, California has trained and deployed thousands of prisoners to fight fires each year, recruiting those who are willing to fight wildfires at great personal risk in exchange for low wages and reduced sentences.

This year, after a historically dry winter followed by a hot spring, thousands of inmates have been among those battling blazes in the state, doing the backbreaking work of clearing the dead wood and vegetation that fuel the most destructive fires.

“Every fire season it’s the same,” said Romarilyn Ralston, who leads Project Rebound, a California State University program that supports formerly incarcerated students. “The pay is so little, the work is so dangerous. Now we add Covid-19 to the story, and it gets even worse.”

In June, as California prisons saw a dramatic surge in Covid-19 cases and more than two hundred prisoners at the California Correction Center (CCC) in the north of the state tested positive for coronavirus, officials stopped all movement in and out of the prison and placed 12 camps that house more than a thousand prisoners training to fight fires under lockdown. There were no confirmed cases of Covid-19 at those dozen camps – though one member initially tested positive, a second test came back negative.

Across the state, devastating outbreaks at prisons have left more than 5,700 people who are incarcerated sick with the infection. Of the 192 crews of incarcerated firefighters, only 94 are currently available, Governor Gavin Newsom announced on Thursday.

South Carolina is setting a curfew for alcohol sales at bars and restaurants as the state grapples with a surge in new cases of coronavirus.

Republican governor Henry McMaster announced restaurants and bars would no longer be able to sell alcohol after 11 pm starting tomorrow night.

The announcement marks South Carolina’s first step to roll back its reopening process, and it comes after states like Texas and Florida decided to reimpose limits on bars in an effort to limit the spread of the virus.

South Carolina’s number of coronavirus cases has jumped in recent days, with 21,560 cases recorded in the past two weeks. The state has confirmed more than 50,000 cases total since the start of the pandemic.