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The official U.S.coronavirus death toll has soared past 200,000, President Trump continues to aggressively not give a shit, and in an enigma that historians will puzzle over for centuries to come, this is still shaping up to be a close election.
- The confirmed number of Americans lost to the virus is now equivalent to a 9/11 attack every day for 67 days, and the true number is much higher than that. The current death toll—by far the highest in the world—was once seen as an unimaginable worst-case scenario, and some experts now warn that it could nearly double by the end of 2020. While New Zealand celebrates bringing its second outbreak under control, the U.S. continues to report more than 750 deaths per day.
- Instead of leading a traumatized nation in grieving those victims, Donald Trump flatly dismissed them at his latest superspreader campaign event in Ohio on Monday night. “It affects virtually nobody,” said the president to a packed crowd making no attempt at social distancing. “It’s an amazing thing.” Trump meant to make the point that people under 18 are in no danger from coronavirus, which is itself a horrendous lie: Hundreds of children have been hospitalized, and dozens have died. As Trump himself told Bob Woodward on tape in March, “Now it's turning out it's not just old people, Bob...young people, too, plenty of young people.”
- It’s a lie Trump relies on to make the dangerous demand that followed: “Open your schools; everybody, open your schools.” A new study found that colleges and universities that reopened for in-person class have likely caused tens of thousands of additional infections—an estimated 3,200 extra cases nationwide per day. There’s no federal effort to monitor coronavirus cases in K-12 schools, and not all school districts report their own data, but one independent effort has counted more than 21,000 cases this school year.
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It is decidedly Not Great that thanks to decisions like these, the national caseload is once again growing as we head into the colder months.
- Over the past week the U.S. has seen an average of 41,812 new cases per day, a seven percent increase over just two weeks ago. Experts have repeatedly warned that the combination of cold weather forcing more activities into poorly-ventilated indoor spaces, flu season straining health care systems, and Republican unwillingness to promote masks and social distancing will set us up for a disastrous fall and winter. There are a lot of things the Trump administration should be doing about our high daily baseline, and none of them are encouraging Americans to let their guard down.
- Also not on the list is “spending pandemic money on military doodads,” and yet! A few weeks after Congress passed the Cares Act in March, the Pentagon diverted most of a $1 billion fund to shore up the country’s supply of medical equipment to buy things like jet engine parts and dress uniforms. The hospitals still struggling to find N95 masks will be relieved to know that defense contractors have made it through this frightening time unscathed.
Each dizzying coronavirus milestone is a reminder of the new normal we’ve been asked to accept, and of the collective mourning we’ve been denied—because the crisis isn’t over, because the president is a psychopath, because it would require a national reckoning. We can be sad about that, or we can channel that sadness into rage, and then action. 41 days.
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Happy National Voter Registration Day! If you read this newsletter, we assume you're already registered to vote. But now’s a great time to double check that you’re still registered at votesaveamerica.com/verify. This is especially important if you’ve moved since the last election, changed your name, live in a suppress-y state, or if you haven’t voted in a while. It's fast, it's easy, do it right now.
Once you’ve checked yourself, make sure your friends and family have verified their registration as well. Then head to votesaveamerica.com/everylast vote for volunteer opportunities to get new voters registered, and to donate to Register2Vote!
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The Pennsylvania Supreme Court’s ruling on “naked ballots” could land us in a huge post-election mess. Philadelphia’s top election official has warned that the court’s recent ruling, which invalidates ballots submitted without first being placed in secrecy envelopes, could spoil over 100,000 votes across the state. Donald Trump won Pennsylvania by all of 40,000 votes in 2016, so this is what we in the voting biz would call “clusterfuck conditions,” which could lead to a messy post-election legal battle reminiscent of the one in Florida in 2000. Pennsylvania’s GOP-controlled legislature isn’t likely to remedy this (because Republicans think spoiling your ballot is good for them) so our best bet is voter education: If you have family and friends in Pennsylvania, make sure they know to use the secrecy envelope. If you haven’t yet adopted a state, it’s a great day to commit to help save Pennsylvania.
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- Sen. Mitt “Black Lives Matter” Romney (R-UT) wants the Senate to vote on President Trump’s yet-to-be-announced Supreme Court nominee, which means Mitch McConnell has locked up the votes he needs to confirm *someone* even though nobody knows who Trump will actually pick—almost as if Republicans only really care about ruling without the consent of the governed in perpetuity. (It looks increasingly likely that he’ll pick Amy Coney Barrett, though.)
- Joe Biden refused to answer whether he would be open to expanding the Supreme Court if Republicans jam through a nomination, for a solid enough reason: “Let me tell you why I’m not going to answer that question. Because it will shift the focus, that’s what he wants, he never wants to talk about the issue at hand and he always tries to change the subject.”
- The FDA is set to announce tougher standards for emergency authorization of a coronavirus vaccine that would make it all but impossible for the administration to approve a vaccine before the election, so long as the Trump administration doesn’t override the FDA entirely, which would kinda give the game away.
- A top-secret CIA assessment concluded that Vladimir Putin and his top aides are “probably directing” a disinformation campaign meant to help Trump win the election. Anyway, here’s Trump holding up his end of the bargain with a persuasive “uhhhh” when asked who he thinks poisoned Alexei Navalny.
- The mayor of Louisville, KY, has declared a state of emergency ahead of a grand jury’s decision in Breonna Taylor’s case, and the city’s police have canceled all days off.
- The University of California system wrongly admitted at least 64 wealthy students over the last six years, which is still not as bad as Harvard University admitting one Jared Kushner in 384 years.
- Here it is, the most 2020 company that ever 2020’d: the gig economy, but for evictions.
- Mel Gibson, who still has a career for some reason, is reportedly making a sequel to The Passion of the Christ. Passion of the Christ II: Oops, All Antisemitism!
- Had a tough day? Need to unwind? Pour yourself a glass of merlot and let John Boehner’s book cover tell you about the time it met Frank Sinatra down at the racetrack.
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Senior congressional staffers believe that voters are much more conservative than they actually are. Researchers sent a survey to the chiefs of staff and legislative directors of every House and Senate office, who are largely responsible for setting lawmakers’ legislative agendas. The survey asked staffers to estimate public support in their own districts or states for five policy proposals, and the results found them to be way off base: Staffers from both parties significantly underestimated public support for progressive proposals. Lobbyists, to everyone’s shock and surprise, seem to be the main source of the problem: Offices that reported more reliance on special interest groups for policy-making, or received more money from corporate interests, had a much worse understanding of their constituencies. Let this be a reminder to keep on calling your reps, who will otherwise continue picturing you as Ronald Reagan with a gun.
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Mike Bloomberg has raised more than $6 million to pay the court fines and fees of nearly 32,000 Black and Hispanic Florida voters with felony convictions. (Seems like he could’ve just written a check, but listen, we’ll take it.)
North Carolina election officials have agreed to extend the deadline for absentee ballots and set up ballot drop-off stations. (Seems like that shouldn’t have required a lawsuit, but listen, we’ll take it.)
A whopping 750,000 (presumably young) people have now registered to vote through Snapchat.
The first large scale coronavirus-sniffing dog trial is upon us.
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