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President Trump on Monday accused Democrats who did not clap during his State of the Union address of being un-American and even treasonous. His remarks came in a rambling, discursive speech at a factory in Ohio, during which he celebrated his revival of the American economy as the stock market plummeted by more than 1,000 points.

“Can we call that treason?” Mr. Trump said of the stone-faced reaction of Democrats to his speech. “Why not? I mean, they certainly didn’t seem to love our country very much.”

While the president boasted of companies bringing billions of dollars back to America, the Dow Jones industrial average was shedding billions more. At one point, the rout become so drastic that CNN and MSNBC switched from the speech to report exclusively on the market gyrations.

behind all of that lies an important political development, one that explains the real rift between President Trump and his former chief strategist, Stephen K. Bannon. Trump seems to have abandoned populism.

Bannon must have watched with incredulity as the candidate who campaigned as a fiery outsider against the Republican establishment essentially handed over the reins of his government to House Speaker Paul D. Ryan (R-Wis.) and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.). McConnell is quoted in Wolff’s book as saying, “This president will sign whatever is put in front of him.”

Green points out that Trump originally had a mish-mash of political views that leaned in no particular direction. But he began going on talk radio and addressing conservative audiences and realized that it was not economics but social and cultural issues such as immigration that fired up crowds. Trump was initially “indifferent to the idea” of a wall, according to Green, but campaign aide Sam Nunberg is quoted as saying that when Trump tried out the idea for the first time at the Iowa Freedom Summit in

The tumultuous 2016 campaign is in a sudden limbo

Donald Trump and his team, facing widening deficits in the polls, insist the Republican nominee can still win. But he and his allies seem to be increasingly contemplating the possibility of defeat.

With just over two weeks remaining before Election Day, much of the drama is shifting to Capitol Hill, where anxious Republican leaders -- estranged from their nominee -- can do little more than fret about how bad it could get. Trump's stumbling campaign threatens to wipe out the GOP's majority in the Senate -- and maybe even the House.

t was a startling omission, even according to the peculiar moral norms of the Trump era. When Wendy Vitter, one of the US president’s judicial nominees, was asked whether she supported the supreme court’s 1954 Brown v Board of Education decision to end racial segregation in schools – a near sacred pillar of progress for civil rights in the 20th century – she did not say yes.

With just over a year in office, Donald Trump has already appointed 21 of America’s 167 current circuit judges and intends to fill an additional 20 or more vacancies by the end of the year. He is far outpacing Barack Obama, whose 21st circuit court nominee was approved 33 months into his presidency amid gridlock in Congress. Seventeen of Trump’s nominees for district courts, most of whom replaced Democratic appointees, have also been approved by the Republican-controlled Senate.

“This is stunning,” said Christopher Kang, former deputy counsel to Barack Obama, who for more than four years was in charge of the selection, vetting and confirmation of Obama’s judicial nominees. “Conservatives are using the courts to bring us back to a time when ‘religious liberty’ allowed discrimination. We’re seeing legal arguments we had hoped were consigned to the dustbin of history being dusted off and used again in the hope of turning back the clock on the way we treat all Americans.” Four cases relating to Trump’s ban on transgender personnel in the military are working their way through the courts. Employment and housing protections for LGBT individuals could be at risk. Battles over reproductive rights are also under way at state level. Last month a federal appeals court blocked an Ohio law that would cut taxpayer funding to 28 Planned Parenthood clinics, holding that conditions it imposed that denied funds to abortion providers were unconstitutional. But campaigners against abortion rights are unlikely to be deterred.

The number of confirmed cases of Covid-19 continues to grow in the US. Mike Pence, the vice-president, is overseeing the US response to the coronavirus.

Confirmed cases 85,919 (Today: +2,083) Deaths 1,297 (Today: +88)

State/territory Confirmed cases Deaths New York 39,140 461 New Jersey 6,876 81 California 4,040 82 Washington 3,207 150 Michigan 2,844 61 Illinois 2,542 26 Florida 2,484 29 Massachusetts 2,417 25 Louisiana 2,304 83 Pennsylvania 1,813 18 Texas 1,658 24 Georgia 1,642 56 Colorado 1,430 19 Tennessee 1,097 3 Connecticut 1,012 21 Ohio 870 15 North Carolina 755 3 Wisconsin 728 10 Indiana 657 17 Maryland 583 4 Nevada 536 10 Alabama 531 1 Missouri 520 9 Arizona 508 8 Mississippi 485 6 Virginia 468 10 South Carolina 456 9 Utah 396 1 Arkansas 349 2 Minnesota 344 2 Oregon 317 11 District of Columbia 267 3 Oklahoma 248 7 Kentucky 247 5 Idaho 191 3 Iowa 179 1 Kansas 172 3 Rhode Island 165 0 Vermont 158 9 Maine 155 0 New Hampshire 154 1 Delaware 143 1 New Mexico 136 1 Hawaii 106 0 Montana 90 1 Nebraska 82 0 West Virginia 76 0 Puerto Rico 64 2 North Dakota 57 0 Alaska 56 1 Wyoming 56 0 South Dakota 46 1 Guam 45 1 Virgin Islands 17 0

(CNN)The first US case of the coronavirus was reported January 21 -- a Washington state man who had recently returned from China. Now, the country has at least 82,250 cases across all 50 states, the District of Columbia, Guam, Puerto Rico and the US Virgin Islands.

Alabama: 531 (including one death)Alaska: 69 (including one death)Arizona: 508 (including eight deaths) Arkansas: 349 (including three deaths)California: 3,006 (including 65 deaths)Colorado: 1,430 (including 24 deaths)Connecticut: 1,012 (including 21 deaths)Delaware: 143 (including one death)District of Columbia: 267 (including three deaths)Florida: 2,353 (including 28 deaths)Georgia: 1,643 (including 56 deaths)Guam: 45 (including one death)Hawaii: 106 Idaho: 189 (including three deaths)Illinois: 2,538 (including 26 deaths)Indiana: 645 (including 17 deaths)Iowa: 179 (including one death)Kansas: 168 (including three deaths)Kentucky: 248 (including five deaths)Louisiana: 2,305 (including 83 deaths)Maine: 155Maryland: 580 (including four deaths)Massachusetts: 2,417 (including 25 deaths)Michigan: 2,856 (including 60 deaths)Minnesota: 346 (including two deaths)Mississippi: 485 (including five deaths)Missouri: 502 (including eight deaths)Montana: 90Nebraska: 73Nevada: 535 (including 10 deaths)New Hampshire: 137 (including one death)New Jersey: 6,876 (including 81 deaths)New Mexico: 136 (including one death)New York: 37,258 (including 385 deaths)North Carolina: 636 (including two deaths)North Dakota: 52Ohio: 867 (including 15 deaths)Oklahoma: 248 (including seven deaths)Oregon: 316 (including 11 deaths)Pennsylvania: 1,687 (including 16 deaths)Puerto Rico: 64 (including two deaths)Rhode Island: 165South Carolina: 456 (including nine deaths)South Dakota: 46 (including one death)Tennessee: 957 (including three deaths)Texas: 1,424 (including 18 deaths)US Virgin Islands: 17Utah: 402 (including one death)Vermont: 158 (including nine deaths)Virginia: 460 (including 13 deaths)Washington: 3,207 (including 149 deaths)West Virginia: 76Wisconsin: 707 (including eight deaths)Wyoming: 55Repatriated cases: 70

CORRECTIONS: A previous version of this story included an incorrect number of cases for Florida. That number has been corrected. On March 14, CNN revised the US death count, taking it down by one after discovering a double count of one death. This article also has been updated with the correct number of deaths for Hawaii, and cases for Wisconsin, Alabama.

Across the country, state and local officials, frustrated by what they described as a lack of leadership in the White House and an absence of consistent guidance from federal agencies, took steps on their own to prepare for the pandemic and protect their communities. In some cases, these actions preceded federal directives by days or even weeks as local officials sifted through news reports and other sources of information to educate themselves about the risks posed by the coronavirus.

With scant information about the virus and no warnings against large gatherings, cities such as New Orleans moved ahead in February with massive celebrations that may have turned them into hotspots for the virus.

“The leader in global pandemics and protecting the United States starts at the federal level,” said Nick Crossley, the director of emergency management in Hamilton County, Ohio, and past president of the U.S. Council of International Association of Emergency Managers.

The strategy could not be clearer: From the Republican lawmakers blanketing Fox News to new ads from President Trump’s super PAC to the biting criticism on Donald Trump Jr.’s Twitter feed, the G.O.P. is attempting to divert attention from the administration’s heavily criticized response to the coronavirus by pinning the blame on China.

Republicans increasingly believe that elevating China as an archenemy culpable for the spread of the virus, and harnessing America’s growing animosity toward Beijing, may be the best way to salvage a difficult election.

Mr. Trump’s own campaign aides have endorsed the strategy, releasing an attack ad last week depicting Joseph R. Biden Jr., the presumptive Democratic nominee, as soft on China. The ad relied heavily on images of people of Asian descent, including former Gov. Gary Locke of Washington, who is Chinese-American, and it was widely viewed as fanning the flames of xenophobia.

We Americans have always fancied ourselves practical, can-do people who put old feuds aside when faced with a big collective problem.

Instead, Trump championed the extremists who continued their marches on several state capitals over the weekend demanding an abrupt and reckless end to the temporary shutdowns that have slowed the virus’s spread

This tradition acknowledges that we often have multiple goals. In the coronavirus crisis, this means beating the pandemic and getting the economy humming again.

When iHeartMedia announced this month it would fire hundreds of workers across the country, the radio conglomerate said the restructuring was critical to take advantage of its “significant investments … in technology and artificial intelligence.” In a companywide email, chief executive Bob Pittman said the “employee dislocation” was “the unfortunate price we pay to modernize the company.

But laid-off employees like D’Edwin “Big Kosh” Walton, who made $12 an hour as an on-air personality for the Columbus, Ohio, hip-hop station 106.7 the Beat, don’t buy it. Walton doesn’t blame the cuts on a computer; he blames them on the company’s top executives, whose “coldblooded, calculated move” cost people their jobs.

It “ripped my [expletive] heart out,” Walton said. “The people at the top don’t know who we are at the bottom. They don’t understand the relationships and the connections we had with the communities. And that’s the worst part: They don’t care.”

To stop the spread of the coronavirus, state and local governments have shut down as much of communal life as possible. People are also social distancing, staying out of public spaces to slow transmission of the disease. But this has destroyed demand for goods and services, putting the United States on the path to a recession that could easily become an outright depression.

policymakers have to go beyond stimulus or bailouts for select industries. They have to take responsibility for economic life on a scale not seen since the New Deal.

Bailouts are more controversial, but they could be worthwhile if the government offers cash with strings attached. To receive assistance, in Senator Elizabeth Warren’s view, companies would be forced to maintain their payrolls, provide a $15 minimum wage, bring worker representatives onto corporate boards and end share buybacks, among other requirements.

This is what happened at the start of the Great Depression. When President Herbert Hoover failed to adequately acknowledge and confront the crisis, Franklin D. Roosevelt, who was then the governor of New York, took aggressive steps at the state level, setting up an emergency relief program, for example, to help the unemployed.

This is exactly what is happening now. Millions of Americans have already upended their lives. While the coronavirus pandemic claims an increasing number of lives and cripples our economy, President Donald Trump continues to spread disinformation and attack the press, which is working to get accurate, timely information to the public.

In California, Gov. Gavin Newsom led the way earlier this month in calling for the closure of bars and nightclubs, while ordering those 65 and older to stay at home. After Bay Area residents were told to shelter in place earlier this week, Newsom extended the order to the entire state Thursday in an unprecedented move that affects 40 million people.

DeSmog, a blog and organization that tracks the culprits behind false information about the climate crisis, identified about 70 individuals and groups questioning the deadliness of the coronavirus and pushing for an end to social distancing, along with protesters who have been encouraged by Donald Trump.

From the conservative conspiracy theorist Alex Jones to the US-based Heartland Institute and UK-based James Delingpole, the review concludes that the same influencers trying to make the public question the severity of global heating are also discounting the science surrounding the coronavirus.

“The climate war has largely been about confusing the public and making people trust in science and government less,” said DeSmog’s executive director, Brendan DeMelle. “And here we are in a pandemic where science and global cooperation are critical, and that’s a threat to the ideology of a lot of these … organizations.

'He's under attack': pro-Trump rallies battle chill and opposing protesters

The anti-Trump group began chanting “T, R, U, M, P, are you fucking kidding me”, before moving on to “How much are they paying you?” – a reference to frequent claims by conservatives that liberal activists are being paid to protest.

In something of a blow for the expression of support, the pro-Trump rally was hampered by a dwindling turnout and a counter-protest.

catastrophe hovers, like low clouds that could pass or bring flood. The market cycles are imminently due for correction. The international order that has maintained peace and prosperity for generations is being destroyed out of the boomer petulance: if it’s not the gerontocratic Brexiteers, it’s the Trumpists calling for the end of free movement of people. The press is under threat, partly from the president but mostly from the fact that the American people are finding they can quite easily make do without facts. And a sense of despair about the nature of the American state itself is spreading across the country, leaving a vacuum in which a new kind of radical Americanism can flourish – a patriotism defined by its loathing for its own government.

You don’t have to look hard, at all, to find the rhetoric and philosophy of the new anti-government right inside traditional conservative politics. The Oath Keepers – a group the Southern Poverty Law Center describes as “one of the largest radical antigovernment groups in the US today” – would be providing security at the summit

As different as they are in geography and sensibility, Thiel and Finicum Finch share an idea: they both see America as an experiment in property rather than experiment in democracy. Liberty to them is not government of the people, by the people, for the people. Liberty is ownership. Taxation is legal plunder.

There is a hole at the heart of my story about Tony Hovater, the white nationalist and Nazi sympathizer.Why did this man — intelligent, socially adroit and raised middle class amid the relatively well-integrated environments of United States military bases — gravitate toward the furthest extremes of American political discourse?

“What Makes a Man Start Fires?”To me, that question embodies what good journalism should strive for, as well as the limits of the enterprise. Sometimes all we can bring you is the words of the police spokesman, the suspect’s picture from a high school yearbook, the acrid stench of the burned woods.

He spoke of a number of moments that soured him on mainstream politics, none of them particularly exotic. One was the Republican National Committee’s rule changes, during the 2012 convention, that worked against Mr. Hovater’s preferred candidate at the time, the libertarian Ron Paul, and in favor of Mitt Romney, the eventual Republican nominee. Mr. Hovater called it “the first time I thought about how a system will protect itself, and its own interests, to protect what it is they really want.”

We examined what factors predict a high level of Trump support relative to the total number of registered voters.The analysis shows that Trump counties are places where white identity mixes with long-simmering economic dysfunctions.

What they have in common is that they have largely missed the generation-long transition of the United States away from manufacturing and into a diverse, information-driven economy deeply intertwined with the rest of the world.

“It’s a nonurban, blue-collar and now apparently quite angry population,” said William Frey, a demographer at the Brookings Institution. “They’re not people who have moved around a lot, and things have been changing away from them, but they live in areas that feel stagnant in a lot of ways.”

Millions of disabled and retired Americans are still waiting for their $1,400 stimulus payments because of a holdup at the Social Security Administration, House Democrats said Wednesday. 

Several Democrats, including Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio) and Rep. John Larson (D-Conn.), had previously urged President Joe Biden to fire Saul, a Donald Trump appointee whose term doesn’t expire until 2025. Biden has hesitated to do so even though he’s fired other Trump holdovers in other agencies before their terms have ended. 

The IRS has sent more than 127 million payments so far. Neal and other members of his committee earlier this week asked Social Security and the IRS to explain the delayed payments to Social Security beneficiaries. 

The founder of the Oath Keepers militia had a 97-second phone call with a senior member of the group who minutes later took part in a military-style "stack" formation with other Oath Keepers to breach the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, according to federal prosecutors.

The allegation emerged in court papers the Justice Department filed overnight in the case against 10 alleged members or associates of the Oath Keepers facing conspiracy and other charges in connection with the Capitol riot.

Prosecutors allege that the call, along with a series of text messages in an encrypted chat group called "DC OP: Jan 6 21," amount to "substantial evidence" of a conspiracy to try to stop Congress' certification of the Electoral College count.