President Trump will hold a press conference at the Rose Garden on Tuesday at 5 p.m., the White House announced, and a source familiar with the matter said the president will take the opportunity to speak about China during the event.
The press conference also comes as the president moves forward with his campaign to reopen schools in the fall, while some states face a surge in the coronavirus.
It was not immediately clear what the president could discuss regarding China. But the Trump administration has increased pressure on China for its handling of the coronavirus pandemic. Last week, the United States officially withdrew from the World Health Organization after Republicans accused it of being indebted to China.
On Monday, the administration rejected almost all of China’s claims in the South China Sea, entering one of Asia’s most delicate regional problems and increasing tensions between Washington and Beijing.
“Today we are strengthening American policy in a vital and contentious part of that region: the South China Sea,” Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said in a press release. “We are making it clear: Beijing’s claims about offshore resources in most of the South China Sea are completely illegal, as is its intimidation campaign to control them.”
TRUMP ADMINISTRATION REJECTS CHINESE CLAIMS TO THE SOUTHERN CHINA SEA
The press conference will also be the president’s first since he commuted the 40-month sentence of the Republican operation and Trump’s confidant Roger Stone. Stone was convicted last year of lying to Congress, witnessing the manipulation, and obstructing the House investigation into whether the Trump campaign colluded with Russia to win the 2016 election. Trump commuted his sentence just days before He turned up for prison, after saying he would wait to consider a pardon until Stone’s appeal had been served in court.
In the first months of the pandemic, the president and the White House coronavirus task force held a press conference every day to give an update on the administration’s response.
Trump has promised to “put a lot of pressure” on the nation’s governors to reopen schools in the fall, even threatening to withhold funds for schools that announce plans to teach virtually. Last week, the president said he disagreed with CDC’s “very harsh and expensive” guidelines for reopening schools.
“I disagree with @CDCgov on their very difficult and expensive guidelines for opening schools,” Trump tweeted Wednesday. “While they want them to open, they are asking schools to do very impractical things.” He added that he would meet with the CDC later that day.
A new coronavirus map shows that more than half of all states have a “poor trend” or “uncontrolled spread.”
The map, created by covidexitstrategy.org, measures and scores each state based on the number of positive cases over a 14-day period using a seven-day moving average, bed capacity in hospitals and intensive care units, and positivity rates.
NEW CORONAVIRUS MAP SHOWS THAT MORE THAN ALL STATES ARE ‘POORLY TRENDING’ OR HAVE ‘UNCONTROLLED SPREAD’
According to the map, only four states tend to improve: New York, Massachusetts, Maine, and New Jersey. Around 16 states, including Pennslyvania, Illinois, and Washington, are in limbo with caution if the number of cases increases.
California is listed with an “uncontrolled extension” with 219 cases per million people. The state has seen significant gains erased as infections continue to rise, forcing Governor Gavin Newsom to re-impose restrictions and close business.
Texas, Florida, and Georgia are also seeing huge increases in COVID-19 cases. Texas and Florida participated in some of the most aggressive reopens between states and have since enacted restrictive measures to combat the spread of the disease.
Florida posted a positivity rate of nearly 19 percent, compared to 15.6 percent two weeks ago.
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As of Monday night, the US reported more than 3.3 million confirmed cases of COVID-19 and more than 135,000 deaths, according to Johns Hopkins University. The map was created by a nonpartisan group of experts from the White House, the US Department of Health and Human Services, and on the Ebola epidemic in West Africa.
Blake Burman of Fox Business and Andrew O’Reilly and Louis Casiano of Fox News contributed to this report.
