What A Day: Mork Zinkletink zonks on Fox

Another 2.1 million Americans filed for unemployment in the last week, bringing the known total of Americans who have lost their jobs over the past 10 weeks to 40.8 million. The good news is Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell thinks there will “likely” be another coronavirus-relief package “in the next month or so,” a unit of time that everyone loves to hear in an emergency. 
 

• The number of continuing claims—those who have been collecting unemployment for at least two weeks–dropped by 3.86 million to 21.05 million from the previous week, which is tempting to read as good news: The jobs are returning! Nature is healing! But that drop also reflects the fact that as states reopen, workers are being pushed off of unemployment and forced to choose between placing their health at risk and facing financial ruin. Workers who haven’t been rehired, and had just exhausted their weekly state benefits, would also be included in that number.
   
• The unemployment totals are still likely a significant undercount, as many states continue to process an enormous claims backlog. The eight million undocumented workers to have lost their jobs aren’t eligible for benefits to begin with, nor are new graduates just entering the workforce and unable to find jobs. Amid this economic hellscape, the White House has conveniently decided not to release updated economic projections this summer, as administrations have typically done since the 1970s. If we were the president and didn’t want to release a forecast indicating that our bungling of a deadly pandemic had caused an economic catastrophe just a few months before an election, we would simply stop bungling the deadly pandemic. 
   
• The only path to a real economic recovery is (sing along if you know this one) a huge national ramp-up in testing, along with widespread contact tracing and mask wearing. The Trump administration delivered a report to Congress on its plan to expand the country’s testing capacity which, once again, shunts most of the responsibility to the states. Supply-chain issues continue to hamper state testing programs, and they can’t be resolved without federal action. The latest roadblock to emerge is a shortage of the machines needed to process the tests themselves. 

We’ve also got some work to do on antibody testing, before it can be a useful tool for sending people safely back to work. 
 

•  The CDC warned that antibody test results are still too inaccurate to use in making policy decisions about allowing large groups to gather. Positive results from the tests might be false up to half of the time, which is not a quality you look for in a test determining potential immunity.
   
• To add to all of the legitimate uncertainty, President Trump appears to have made some headway on his Pressuring Scientists to Draw Smiley Faces initiative. The CDC released new estimates of coronavirus death rates that public health experts say are suspiciously low, and provided almost no data to support them. Right-wing commentators have predictably seized on those numbers to back up their claim that the coronavirus isn’t deadly enough to justify lockdowns.
   

Public approval of Trump's coronavirus response has tanked, but with tens of millions of jobs lost, recent polls show that Americans are still on the fence about his handling of the economy. It’s a straight line from Trump’s decision to ignore the oncoming pandemic to the annihilation of the robust economy he inherited, and the November election could hinge on whether Democrats successfully get that message across. 

What 2020 campaign messages are hitting—and missing—the mark? Former Obama Campaign Manager David Plouffe joins Dan Pfieffer this week to break down another set of political ads, including Project Lincoln's "Mourning in America" ad. Watch and subscribe →

Protests over the death of George Floyd continued and escalated on Wednesday night. Floyd, a black man, was killed in Minneapolis, MN, on Monday by police officers who pinned him to the ground by his neck while he was unarmed and restrained. During the second night of protests in Minneapolis, police officers fired rubber bullets and tear gas at demonstrators who had surrounded the Minneapolis Police 3rd Precinct building. From there the protest escalated into destructive fires and looting at a Target, and today Gov. Tim Walz (D-MN) activated the state’s National Guard. Other protests erupted on Wednesday in Memphis, TN, and Los Angeles, CA, and police chiefs across the country have denounced the brutality of the officers involved in Floyd’s death. While four officers on the scene were fired a day later, none have been arrested, not even the officer who was filmed kneeling on Floyd’s neck, and who had a history of conduct complaints. If you’re able, you can support Minneapolis protesters with a donation to the Minnesota Freedom Fund or the Minnesota ACLU.

• President Trump signed an executive order targeting social media companies’ liability protections, which may or not be constitutional, after Twitter fact-checked him all of two times. Just to make abundantly clear where his priorities lie, Mark Zuckerberg went on Fox (!) to say he does not think social media companies should fact-check politicians. (Just those who criticize politicians.) We gathered, Mark.
   
• Trump and ~right-wing voices~ are so censored on social media that last night Trump retweeted a video of the founder of Cowboys for Trump which began, “the only good Democrat is a dead Democrat,” and it’s still up. An unconscionable silencing of free speech.
   
• China’s legislature approved a highly controversial national-security law in Hong Kong, which gives China broad powers to stamp out political dissent.
   
• The Texas Supreme Court blocked an effort by Democrats to expand vote-by-mail in the state, ruling that a lack of immunity to COVID-19 doesn’t qualify voters for mail-in ballots. (Anyone over age 65 is eligible in Texas, though—gotta make sure Trump’s base can pop those votes in the mail.)
   
• Attorney General Bill Barr has appointed a(nother) U.S. attorney to investigate baseless, debunked conspiracy theories about the “unmasking” of Michael Flynn, in a subtle and valiant bid to keep OBAMAGATE! alive.
   
• Vice President Mike Pence’s chief of staff owns stock in companies doing work related to the administration’s coronavirus response, which may constitute a violation of conflict of interest laws. 
   
• Gov. Andrew Cuomo (D-NY) signed an executive order authorizing New York store owners to deny entry to people who aren’t wearing masks.
   
• A California health officer warned that the state may be reopening too quickly. The state has almost 100,000 confirmed cases, but Gov. Gavin Newom (D-CA) has given county health officers the authority to allow religious, political, and cultural gatherings of up to 100 people.
   
• Finally, some satisfying explanations for Georgia’s fishy COVID-19 data.

Republican state legislators in Pennsylvania kept a GOP lawmaker’s positive coronavirus diagnosis hidden for days, according to their Democratic counterparts. Republican state Rep. Andrew Lewis released a statement yesterday saying that he had been diagnosed with the coronavirus on May 20. It was the first Democrats heard of it, but four members of the Republican Caucus had already been told to self-quarantine. Republicans knew that the state capitol had been exposed to the virus, and kept it to themselves for over a week. This is...unhinged! Several Democrats have called for the resignation of Republican leaders, and investigations into Lewis’s withheld diagnosis.

An ACLU lawsuit successfully pressured seven Texas towns to change course on ordinances that deemed reproductive rights groups “criminal organizations.”

Renewable energy consumption in the U.S. surpassed coal consumption in 2019, for the first time in over 130 years.

Rock The Vote will launch a virtual summer initiative with the goal of registering 200,000 voters.

The Emeril Lagasse Foundation will donate $500,000 to coronavirus relief programs supporting youth programs and the families of hospitality workers in Louisiana, Nevada, and Florida.