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Donald Trump lost an estimated $1bn of his paper fortune in the past month as the coronavirus lockdown forced the closure of offices, shopping centres, hotels and golf courses he owns.

The US president’s fortune has fallen from an estimated $3.1bn (£2.5bn) on 1 March to $2.1bn on 18 March (at the height of stock market panic caused by the coronavirus pandemic) according to Forbes magazine’s annual billionaires list.

The Covid-19 induced collapse in global stock markets led to 267 of the world’s richest people losing their billionaire status, in the magazine’s 34th annual wealth ranking. There are now 2,095 dollar billionaires in the world – and a record 1,062 of them have lost money compared with last year.

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Former  Secretary of Defense James Mattis defended Glenn Fine, the Pentagon inspector general tasked with overseeing the $2 trillion stimulus package passed in response to the coronavirus pandemic, after President Trump replaced Fine earlier in the week.

“Mr. Fine is a public servant in the finest tradition of honest, competent governance,” Mattis told Yahoo News in an email. “In my years of extensive engagement with him as our Department of Defense’s acting Inspector General, he proved to be a leader whose personal and managerial integrity were always of the highest order.”

President Donald Trump on Wednesday directed Republicans to “fight very hard” against efforts to expand mail-in voting amid the coronavirus pandemic, suggesting that such a shift in ballot-casting practices would yield unfavorable electoral results for the GOP.

“Republicans should fight very hard when it comes to statewide mail-in voting. Democrats are clamoring for it,” Trump wrote on Twitter. “Tremendous potential for voter fraud, and for whatever reason, doesn’t work out well for Republicans.”

The president’s social media post comes amid escalating anxiety among national Democrats, election officials and voting rights activists regarding the coronavirus’ effects on upcoming state primaries and November’s general election.

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Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont is dropping out of the Democratic presidential race on Wednesday, concluding a quest for the White House that began five years ago in relative obscurity but ultimately elevated him as a champion of the working class, a standard-bearer of American liberalism and the leader of a self-styled political revolution.

Mr. Sanders’s exit from the race establishes former Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. as the presumptive nominee to challenge President Trump, and leaves the progressive movement without a prominent voice in the 2020 race.

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A top White House adviser starkly warned Trump administration officials in late January that the coronavirus crisis could cost the United States trillions of dollars and put millions of Americans at risk of illness or death.

The warning, written in a memo by Peter Navarro, President Trump’s trade adviser, is the highest-level alert known to have circulated inside the West Wing as the administration was taking its first substantive steps to confront a crisis that had already consumed China’s leaders and would go on to upend life in Europe and the United States.

President Donald Trump has removed the inspector general who was named to oversee implementation of the $2.3 trillion coronavirus economic relief, Politico reported on Tuesday.

Trump removed Glenn Fine, the acting inspector general for the Pentagon who was named last week to chair a committee acting as a sort of uber-watchdog over the historic economic stimulus plan, from his post on Monday. He has been replaced by the Environmental Protection Agency’s inspector general, according to Politico.