🔴 One thing to be aware of: the expanded unemployment benefit – that extra $600 per check that folks have been getting along with their regular unemployment benefit – is set to expire in mere days.
Congress is fighting over whether it’ll be renewed or not, and if so, how, and etc. and so forth. Meanwhile, when it stops, a significant portion of Americans will fall off a fiscal cliff… and probably drag the whole damn economy over with them.
Republicans are all, “That extra $600 is paying people not to go to work!” and first of all, most of the jobs that people aren’t working right now? Don’t exist at the moment.
Second of all, if people are pissy about losing that extra $600 a week, it’s because this is probably one of the first times in their life they’ve been paid a living wage, and they’re a little annoyed about having to go back to a job that does not pay them a living wage. Try fixing that shit.
Read some stuff about it: NPR | CBS | Washington Post | NBC.
🔴 A new NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll shows that Americans are more aware of racial discrimination and more sympathetic towards those protesting against it.
🔴 Trump desperately wants to make sure undocumented immigrants are not counted in the 2020 census. He signed a memo about it today. I’m not exactly clear on what the memo does, legally speaking? Like, it’s not an executive order. So I dunno about that. But, as to why he’s doing it, 1) It’s because he hates brown people, and 2), It’s because doing it will deprive Democrat-controlled states of both money and congressional seats in the House. And I mean, maybe there’s an argument to be made about whether undocumented immigrants should count in the census? But I’m pretty sure the way the Constitution is written, you count everybody, regardless of immigration status. Read more: NBC | NPR.
🔴 Twitter just announced they’re taking action against QAnon accounts, which, good. QAnon is a batshit cult. Read about it here.
🔴 The hot goddamn mess in Portland with Trump’s Gestapo and the protests will be rolling out to the rest of the country soonish, apparently. I’m just gonna link to WTFJHT’s summary and list of sources on that one.
🔴 We currently have about 3.9 million active COVID-19 cases that we know of in the US, and 141,883 Americans have died of it as of today. [Johns Hopkins dashboard]
🔴 To wrap things up, you can check out this little nerd showing you his buck teeth.
Notes & Thoughts 