Watch live: Trump announces U.S. funding for W.H.O. will be withheld

President Trump announced the U.S. will be withholding funding for the World Health Organization, pending a review. The president also announced his administration has reached an agreement with airlines to keep them afloat.

The president on Tuesday blamed the W.H.O. for helping accelerate the pandemic. Countries that listened to the W.H.O. and didn’t impose travel restrictions are experiencing terrible problems, the president said. Mr. Trump imposed travel restrictions from China in late January, but has struggled to explain what he did with the time he bought. 

“Travel bans work for the same reason quarantines work,” Mr. Trump said. 

The president also accused the W.H.O. of failing to earlier report the dangers of the virus, including that it could be spread by human-to-human contact. The W.H.O. “pushed China’s misinformation about the virus,” the president said. 

“So much death has been caused by their mistakes,” he said. 

The U.S. has the most confirmed cases of any country in the world, according to Johns Hopkins University data, although it’s unclear how accurate China’s reporting is. The death toll from the coronavirus continues to climb and on Tuesday surpassed 25,000 in the U.S. 

President Trump said Monday his administration will soon release guidelines for how states can start reopening their economies. He told reporters that as president, he has “total” authority, and the decision on when to reboot the economy lies with him. But governors, who were responsible for issuing stay-at-home orders, and constitutional law experts disagree.

How to watch the Coronavirus Task Force briefing today

“The Constitution does not go out the window in an emergency,” Cuomo told CNN in a phone interview. “We don’t have a king. We have an elected president.”

Governors of states from the East and West Coasts have formed regional coalitions to study when it’s best to begin easing restrictions put in place to curtail the spread of the coronavirus.