Michael Cohen, President Trump’s former personal lawyer and “fixer,” has reportedly had his approval for early release from prison reversed, ABC News reports.

Separately, Cohen received a letter from lawyers representing the Trump Organization demanding Cohen halt writing a “tell-all book” about his time working for the president.

“President Trump’s new spokeswoman, Kayleigh McEnany, is to face reporters for the first time in the White House Briefing Room on Friday, something her predecessor never did during a nine-month stint as press secretary,” ABC News reports.

Michael Caputo, the new top spokesman for the Department of Health and Human Services, “repeatedly directed crude and sexist comments toward women in now-deleted tweets,” CNN reports.

“If it seems odd to stage a town hall with no in-person audience at the Lincoln Memorial, a site for huge rallies and events in more normal times, you’re missing the point: President Trump’s plan for Sunday night is packed with strategic signaling,” Axios reports.

Said a White House aide: “We wanted a powerful image of American strength and the idea of what reopening looks like.”

A new PRRI poll shows that President Trump’s favorability rating has dropped seven points over the last four weeks to 43% while a 54% majority who hold mostly or very unfavorable views of him.

“Trump benefited from a brief rally around the flag effect as the coronavirus pandemic began to spread in the U.S. But over the last four weeks — as the total number of reported U.S. cases of the coronavirus increased exponentially from around 33,000 cases to more than 900,000 cases — this boost has rapidly dissipated.”

New York Times: “As the death toll from the coronavirus over eight weeks surpasses the total American military casualties in eight years of major combat in Vietnam, Mr. Trump has led no national mourning. In his daily news conferences, he makes only perfunctory references to those who have died as he stiffly reads opening remarks, exhibiting more emotion when grieving his lost economic record than his lost constituents.”

“Empathy has never been considered one of Mr. Trump’s political assets. He views public displays of sadness as weakness and has made a point of stressing resolve, even at the risk of overlooking the deep pain afflicting so much of the country. His favorite words in his televised appearances of recent weeks are ‘powerful’ and ‘strong.’ He talks of ‘incredible’ days ahead without dwelling on the miserable days of now. He plans fireworks while Americans plan funerals.”

President Trump contradicted a rare on-the-record statement from his own intelligence community by claiming that he has seen evidence that gives him a “high degree of confidence” the novel coronavirus originated in a laboratory in Wuhan, China, CNN reports.

The comments undercut a public statement from the Office of the Director of National Intelligence issued just hours earlier which stated no such assessment has been made.

“The Secret Service rented a room at President Trump’s Washington hotel for 137 consecutive nights in 2017 — paying Trump’s company more than $33,000 — so it could guard Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin while he lived in one of the hotel’s luxury suites,” the Washington Post reports.

“Mnuchin, a financier from New York, lived in the Trump International Hotel for several months before moving to a home in Washington.”

Vice President Mike Pence’s wife, Karen Pence, told Fox & Friends that her husband didn’t know about the Mayo Clinic’s requirement that visitors wear face masks when he toured the facility earlier this week.

Said Mrs. Pence: “It was actually after he left Mayo Clinic that he found out that they had a policy of asking everyone to wear a mask. Someone who’s worked on this whole task force for over two months is not someone who would have done anything to offend anyone or hurt anyone or scare anyone.”

“After a pained and somewhat public debate over discontinuing the daily White House coronavirus briefings, President Trump this week has attempted to bridge the gap between the wishes of his advisers and his own inclinations by moving the event elsewhere,” CNN reports.

“Instead of the blue-hued James S. Brady Briefing Room — where the last time he took questions he found himself veering into bleach and sunlight peril — Trump has convened with reporters each day this week: in the Oval Office, the East Room, the State Dining Room and the Rose Garden.”

“With a more limited crowd and — with the help of visiting governors and executives — a narrower focus, Trump and his aides hope to avoid the devolving spectacle they saw the previous briefings becoming.”

“Top White House policy adviser Joe Grogan is leaving his post, the latest sign of turnover as the administration grapples with a coronavirus pandemic,” the Wall Street Journal reports.

“Mr. Grogan has been deeply involved in the administration’s response to the coronavirus pandemic.”

“Last summer, on his final day of work at the nation’s consumer finance watchdog agency, a career economist sent colleagues a blunt memo,” the New York Times reports.

“He claimed that President Trump’s appointees at the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau had manipulated the agency’s research process to justify altering a 2017 rule that would have sharply curtailed high-interest payday loans.”

“The departing staff member, Jonathan Lanning, detailed several maneuvers by his agency’s political overseers that he considered legally risky and scientifically indefensible, including pressuring staff economists to water down their findings on payday loans and use statistical gimmicks to downplay the harm consumers would suffer if the payday restrictions were repealed.”

PBS Newshour/NPR/Marist Poll: “When asked about how the president has handled the coronavirus pandemic, 55% of Americans said they do not think he is doing a good job, up slightly from 49% in March.”

Fintan O’Toole: “Over more than two centuries, the United States has stirred a very wide range of feelings in the rest of the world: love and hatred, fear and hope, envy and contempt, awe and anger. But there is one emotion that has never been directed towards the US until now: pity.”

“However bad things are for most other rich democracies, it is hard not to feel sorry for Americans. Most of them did not vote for Donald Trump in 2016. Yet they are locked down with a malignant narcissist who, instead of protecting his people from Covid-19, has amplified its lethality. The country Trump promised to make great again has never in its history seemed so pitiful.”

“Will American prestige ever recover from this shameful episode? The US went into the coronavirus crisis with immense advantages: precious weeks of warning about what was coming, the world’s best concentration of medical and scientific expertise, effectively limitless financial resources, a military complex with stunning logistical capacity and most of the world’s leading technology corporations. Yet it managed to make itself the global epicentre of the pandemic.”