Speaking upon his arrival in Florida, Donald Trump suggested that the recent reports that Russia paid bounties to the Taliban to kill American soldiers was a conspiracy. Trump claimed to have not been told about it, though the New York Times reported the findings were briefed to Trump and the White House’s National Security Council discussed the problem at an interagency meeting in late March and that the administration discussed several potential responses. In these extraordinary times, the Guardian’s editorial independence has never been more important. Because no one sets our agenda, or edits our editor, we can keep delivering quality, trustworthy, fact-checked journalism each and every day. Free from commercial or political bias, we can report fearlessly on world events and challenge those in power. Your support protects the Guardian’s independence. We believe every one of us deserves equal access to accurate news and calm explanation. No matter how unpredictable the future feels, we will remain with you, delivering high quality news so we can all make critical decisions about our lives, health and security – based on fact, not fiction. Support the Guardian from as little as $1 – and it only takes a minute. Thank you. Many have noted that many among the small group of supporters greeting Donald Trump when he touched down in Florida were not wearing masks or adhering to social distancing guidelines. The president reportedly greeted dozens of supporters after his plane landed, working his way down a small rope line with no mask himself. Trump is there to meet with the governor regarding the explosion of Covid-19 infections in recent days. A Michigan teen who was detained for not doing online coursework has been ordered to be released “immediately” through an emergency motion filed by a Michigan Court of Appeals. The plight of the Black teenager, whose story was reported under the pseudonym “Grace,” drew public outcry over racism in school systems after ProPublica first reported on it earlier this month. Reporter Jodi Cohen of ProPublica said the teen’s mother was able to pick her up from detention within two hours of the ruling. The Joe Biden campaign team may soon be finalizing its decision on a running mate, the Associated Press reported Friday. The campaign hasn’t announced a date for naming a running mate, but three people who spoke on condition of anonymity with the Associated Press said a public announcement likely wouldn’t happen before the week of Aug. 10. That’s one week before Democrats will hold their convention to officially nominate Biden as their presidential nominee. The leading contenders include California Sen. Kamala Harris, California Rep. Karen Bass and Obama national security adviser Susan Rice. The deliberations remain fluid, however, and the campaign has reviewed nearly a dozen possible running mates. A court on Friday upheld a decision ruling adult film star Stormy Daniels cannot sue Donald Trump for defamation over a tweet he published about her in 2018. Daniels, whose legal name is Stephanie Clifford, accused Trump of defaming her after he publicly cast doubt on her claims she was threatened by a man in a Las Vegas parking lot for attempting to go public with her affair with Trump. Trump later retweeted a photo of a sketch she produced of the alleged strongman, saying he is “nonexistent” and that Daniels’ story was “a total con job, playing the Fake News Media for fools.” The court on Friday accepted arguments from Trump’s lawyers that “he was merely offering his opinion and not leveling any factual claims of his own”. The Trump administration has proposed a change to the Endangered Species Act that would reduce protections for imperiled animals, potentially putting more at risk as climate change upends ecosystems. The proposal, obtained in advance by the Associated Press, will restrict what land and water areas can be declared as “habitat” under the Endangered Species Act for the first time. The proposed definition says habitat includes “places that a species depend upon to carry out one or more life processes,” such as breeding or eating. It comes in response to a 2018 US supreme court ruling involving a highly endangered southern frog - the dusky gopher frog – in which a dispute arose after the Fish and Wildlife Service designated 1,500 acres (607 hectares) of land and ponds in neighboring Louisiana as critical habitat for the frog even though none lived there. In the gopher frog case, a unanimous court said the government had to decide what constitutes suitable habitat for the frogs before it could designate some of those areas as “critical habitat” for the species, which survives in just a few ponds in Mississippi. Trump administration officials said the proposal would apply to relatively few cases and provide “more consistency” and “more transparency” for private landowners, companies and states. But environmentalists say areas where a species does not yet live should be protected for future habitats as climate change pushes endangered species to new spaces. The recent proposal comes after Trump changed the Endangered Species Act in August 2019 to reduce protections for animals in danger of extinction. The rules, lauded by industry, would draw more attention to the economic impact of protecting a species. A final decision on the proposal to define “habitat” is expected by year’s end. A court on Friday upheld a decision ruling adult film star Stormy Daniels cannot sue Donald Trump for defamation over a tweet he published about her in 2018. Daniels, whose legal name is Stephanie Clifford, accused Trump of defaming her after he publicly cast doubt on her claims she was threatened by a man in a Las Vegas parking lot for attempting to go public with her affair with Trump. Trump later retweeted a photo of a sketch she produced of the alleged strongman, saying he is “nonexistent” and that Daniels’ story was “a total con job, playing the Fake News Media for fools.” The court on Friday accepted arguments from Trump’s lawyers that “he was merely offering his opinion and not leveling any factual claims of his own”. “Viewed through the eyes of an objectively reasonable reader, the tweet here reflects Mr. Trump’s opinion about the implications of the allegedly similar appearances of Ms. Clifford’s ex-husband and the man in the sketch,” the court said in its nine-page ruling. In the ruling the judges also rejected Daniels’ claim Trump’s tweet was a denial of her underlying claim of the sexual encounter. The Supreme Court on Friday declined to halt the Trump administration’s construction of portions of the border wall with Mexico as proceedings over its legality continue. The vote means the wall will continue to be built until the judgement is heard, which could be until after the November election, and follows a recent lower court ruling that the administration improperly diverted money to the project. The vote was split 5-4, with all four liberal justices dissenting, saying they would have prohibited construction while a court challenge continues, after a federal appeals court ruled in June that the administration had illegally sidestepped Congress in transferring the Defense Department funds. “The Court’s decision to let construction continue nevertheless I fear, may operate, in effect, as a final judgment,” Justice Stephen Breyer wrote in a brief dissent for the four liberals. The case has its origins in the 35-day partial government shutdown that started in December of 2018. Trump ended the shutdown after Congress gave him approximately $1.4 billion in border wall funding, but that was far less than the $5.7 billion he was seeking. Trump then declared a national emergency to take cash from other government accounts to use to construct sections of wall. The Supreme Court is on break for the summer but does act on certain pressing items. It will begin hearing cases again in October. James Murdoch, British-American businessman and son of media mogul Rupert Murdoch, announced Friday he has resigned from the board of News Corp. Murdoch was previously CEO of 21st Century Fox from 2015 until 2019. He cited “disagreements over certain editorial content published by the Company’s news outlets and certain other strategic decisions” as reasons for his resignation. US Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg was discharged from the hospital on Friday after her latest medical procedure, the court announced. Ginsburg was hospitalized earlier in the week for a “minimally invasive non-surgical procedure” at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer City in New York City to revise a bile duct stent originally installed in August 2019. Stent revisions are routine, doctors said, and the procedure was low-risk. “She is home and doing well,” the court said, according to CNN. Hello, lovely readers. Kari Paul here in San Francisco to blog you through the news this afternoon. Stay tuned for updates. Late afternoon summary It’s been a very lively day in US political news so far, dominated by the coronavirus crisis, where the US now has 4.5 million confirmed cases and a death toll of almost 153,000, according to the latest data from Johns Hopkins University. Congress has failed to reach a deal on continued federal unemployment supplements as economic aid amid the Covid-19 pandemic, and the nation heads into a tense weekend in terms of public health and financial news. My west coast colleague Kari Paul will take readers through the next few hours of events. Here are the main events so far today: Not only is there a lack of a comprehensive national plan for getting the coronavirus pandemic under control in the US, there appears also to be no clear plan for how any successful vaccine will be distributed to Americans. There have been three arrests in the case of the giant Twitter hack earlier this month affected the accounts of prominent figures including Joe Biden, Barack Obama, Kanye West, Elon Musk, others. The DoJ made an announcement. A federal appeals court overturned the death sentence of Boston Marathon bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev. He will be sentenced anew for helping carry out the 2013 attack, which killed three people and wounded more than 260. Donald Trump is visiting Tampa, Florida, where governor Ron DeSantis plans to meet him to discuss next steps in tackling a surge in coronavirus that has seen four consecutive days of record deaths from the virus in the state. As scientists and pharmaceutical companies work at breakneck speed to develop a vaccine for coronavirus, public health officials and senior US lawmakers are sounding alarms about the Trump administration’s lack of planning for its nationwide distribution. The federal government traditionally plays a principal role in funding and overseeing manufacturing and distribution of new vaccines during pandemics, which often draw on scarce ingredients and need to be made, stored and transported carefully, Reuters reports. At a congressional hearing this morning, top public health expert Anthony Fauci said the government was coordinating research and testing with the private sector players in the US. There won’t be enough vaccine for all 330 million Americans right away, so the government also has a role in deciding who gets it first, and in educating a vaccine-wary public about its potential life saving merits. Right now, it is unclear who in Washington is in charge of oversight, much less any critical details, some state health officials and members of Congress told Reuters. Last week, a senior Trump administration official told Reuters that Operation Warp Speed, the White House vaccine task force was “committed to implementing the (vaccine) plan and distributing medical countermeasures as fast as possible.” The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) believes it will spearhead distribution of the new vaccine when (hopefully rather than if) a safe and effective one is approved. Health officials and lawmakers say they worry that without thorough planning and coordination with states, the vaccine distribution could be saddled with the same sort of disruptions that led to chronic shortages of coronavirus diagnostic tests and other medical supplies. Senator Patty Murray, the senior Democrat on the health program funding committee, said a poorly-executed rollout would mean “we will be sitting here two years from now, three years from now, in the same economic and health position we are today,” she said. Donald Trump insists everything is in place. “We’re all set to march when it comes to the vaccine,” Trump said at a White House briefing on Thursday. The details of that plan, if there is one, are opaque. Three arrests in Twitter hacking case that targeted famous names inc Biden, Obama, Musk, West Three individuals have been charged today for their alleged roles in the Twitter hack that occurred on July 15, 2020, the US Department of Justice has announced. Nima Fazeli, aka “Rolex,” 22, of Orlando, Florida, was charged in a criminal complaint in the Northern District of California with aiding and abetting the intentional access of a protected computer, federal prosecutors said. One defendant is a juvenile. With exceptions that do not apply to this case, juvenile proceedings in federal court are sealed to protect the identity of the juvenile. Pursuant to the Federal Juvenile Delinquency Act, the Justice Department has referred the individual to the State Attorney for the 13th Judicial District in Tampa, Florida, the DoJ statement said. Also, Mason Sheppard, aka “Chaewon,” 19, of Bognor Regis, in the United Kingdom, was charged in a criminal complaint in the Northern District of California with conspiracy to commit wire fraud, conspiracy to commit money laundering, and the intentional access of a protected computer, the DoJ reports. “There is a false belief within the criminal hacker community that attacks like the Twitter hack can be perpetrated anonymously and without consequence,” said US Attorney David L. Anderson for the Northern District of California. “Today’s charging announcement demonstrates that the elation of nefarious hacking into a secure environment for fun or profit will be short-lived. Criminal conduct over the Internet may feel stealthy to the people who perpetrate it, but there is nothing stealthy about it. In particular, I want to say to would-be offenders, break the law, and we will find you.” “The hackers allegedly compromised over 100 social media accounts and scammed both the account users and others who sent money based on their fraudulent solicitations,” said Acting Assistant Attorney General Brian C. Rabbitt of the Justice Department’s Criminal Division. “Weeks ago, one of the world’s most prolific social media platforms came under attack. Various political leaders, celebrities, and influencers were virtually held hostage as their accounts were hacked,” said Kelly R. Jackson, IRS-Criminal Investigation Special Agent in Charge of the Washington DC field office. “The public was confused, and everyone wanted answers. We can now start answering those questions.” The cyber crimes unit “analyzed the blockchain and de-anonymized bitcoin transactions allowing for the identification of two different hackers. This case serves as a great example of how following the money, international collaboration, and public-private partnerships can work to successfully take down a perceived anonymous criminal enterprise,” agent Jackson said. The Guardian’s coverage of the hacking news.