Nebraska Sen. Ben Sasse (R) went in on the Trump administration's new "no tolerance" policy of separating children from their parents at the border, calling it "wicked" and "harmful" in a powerful Facebook post published Monday. "The administration's decision to separate families is a new, discretionary choice," Sasse wrote. "Anyone saying that their hands are tied or that the only conceivable way to fix the problem of catch-and-release is to rip families apart is flat wrong."
Sasse joins a mounting, bipartisan chorus calling for President Trump to end the policy, which he has falsely blamed on Democrats. But while misinformation has been rampant, Sasse attempted to explain to his constituents that "this bad new policy is a reaction against a bad, old policy" that allowed for both unlawful immigration and human trafficking.
"This foolish catch-and-release policy had to be changed," Sasse wrote. "But changing from catch-and-release does not require adopting the wicked family separation policy. The choice before the American people does not have to be 'wicked versus foolish.'" Read his entire post at Facebook here. Jeva Lange
President Trump can't block a subpoena for his financial records from a New York prosecutor, the Supreme Court has ruled.
In a 7-2 decision on Thursday, the Supreme Court ruled that Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus R. Vance Jr. can see financial records from Trump's accounting firm, The Washington Post reports. Justices Brett Kavanaugh and Neil Gorsuch, who Trump nominated to the Supreme Court, sided with the majority, while Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito dissented, per CBS News.
"The president is neither absolutely immune from state criminal subpoenas seeking his private papers nor entitled to a heightened standard of need," Chief Justice John Roberts wrote.
Prosecutors in New York had subpoenaed eight years of the president's personal and business tax records as part of an investigation into hush money payments made to two women who allege they had affairs with Trump. Trump's legal team requested "temporary presidential immunity" while Trump is in office.
Vance in a statement celebrated the Supreme Court's ruling, saying it's a "tremendous victory for our nation’s system of justice and its founding principle that no one — not even a president — is above the law." Brendan Morrow
Italy has hit an incredible milestone in its fight against COVID-19.
As of Wednesday, Papa Giovanni XXIII Hospital in Bergamo, Italy has no more COVID-19 cases in its ICU ward, Italy's wire service ANSA reports. It's the first time the hospital can say that since it admitted its first coronavirus case on Feb. 23, 137 days ago.
Bergamo is at the center of Italy's Lombardy region, which was one of the earliest and hardest hit areas in the coronavirus pandemic. Italy at one point had the most COVID-19 cases and deaths in the world, and Lombardy led that count, ABC News notes. Nearly 35,000 people have died in Italy due to COVID-19, giving it the fourth highest death toll of any country.
Meanwhile the U.S. has taken over as the coronavirus capital of the world, and shows no sign of slowing down. Where Italy announced 193 new coronavirus cases on Wednesday, the U.S. reported a record 62,751 — and proportional differences between the two countries' populations don't explain away that yawning gap. Kathryn Krawczyk
Another 1.31 million Americans filed initial unemployment claims last week, the Labor Department said on Thursday.
This number of new claims was less than economists expected, as experts were projecting there would be about 1.39 million claims, CNBC reports. Last week, the number of new jobless claims was a bit more than economists expected, topping 1.4 million. This news on Thursday somewhat lessened "concerns of a renewed downturn in the labor market," Bloomberg writes.
Additionally, continuing unemployment claims on Thursday fell "sharply," CNBC reports, declining by 698,000 to 18.06 million. Still, CNBC notes that this is the 15th week in a row that new initial unemployment claims have topped one million; before the coronavirus pandemic, the record for most claims filed in a week was 695,000.
These new numbers come after last week, the Labor Department released a better-than-expected jobs report for June, which showed 4.8 million jobs were added and the unemployment rate declined to 11.1 percent. Experts were quick to note, though, that this unemployment survey was taken in June prior to COVID-19 cases surging in numerous states. Brendan Morrow
The total number of U.S. coronavirus cases reached 3 million on Wednesday as officials confirmed a record 60,000-plus new cases over the previous 24 hours, and the national death toll rose above 132,000. States in the South and West continued to report spiking new infections. California and Texas both reported more than 10,000 new cases on Wednesday. U.S. deaths, which had been trending downward, rose by more than 900 for the second straight day, the highest level since early June, Reuters reports. Hospitalizations also have increased in the states where infections have jumped, including Florida, where 56 intensive care units this week reached capacity, and Arizona, where ICUs are rapidly filling up, too. Infections have risen in 42 of the 50 states over the past two weeks, according to Reuters. Harold Maass
A "massive search operation" is underway for the mayor of Seoul, who has been reported missing, The Associated Press reports.
South Korean police on Thursday said they're searching for Seoul Mayor Park Won-soon after he was reported missing by his daughter, according to Reuters. She says Park left "a will-like" message before he left their home, and she called police after not being able to reach him on his phone, which officials say is turned off, the AP reports. A signal from Park's phone was reportedly last detected in Sungbuk.
A government official confirmed to the AP that Park, who was elected mayor of South Korea's capital in 2011, didn't come to work on Thursday and canceled his schedules. Police say the search operation for Park consists of 150 officers, as well as a drone and a police dog. Brendan Morrow
The Supreme Court will reveal Thursday morning whether Congress, New York state prosecutors, and ultimately the American public will be able to see what's in the tax documents President Trump has worked so hard to keep secret. But on Wednesday night, the White House finally addressed another, lower-profile accounting of Trump's finances, his annual financial disclosure report, that was supposed to be handed in more than a week ago. The filing, required under federal ethics rules, is the only official document publicly detailing Trump's personal finances.
A White House official told The New York Times that Trump had requested an extension because the report was "complicated" and Trump has "been focused on addressing the coronavirus crisis and other matters." This is Trump's second coronavirus extension: The partial disclosure of his assets, debts, and family business performance was actually due in May, but all White House employees had been given a 45-day extension, until June 29, because of the COVID-19 pandemic. Vice President Mike Pence filed his disclosure report by that deadline.
Trump's delay follows conversations between ethics officials and his representatives over a draft of the disclosure report, people briefed on the matter tell the Times. The Office of Government Ethics and Trump Organization declined requests for comment on the filing. Peter Weber