Happy Friday, and Fourth of July Eve! Thanks to all of you who joined us for Dispatch Live last night! We had a great time discussing book recommendations, the Russia bounty story, ways to get out of our echo chambers, ranked-choice voting, Steve’s new dog, and more. 

If you weren’t able to make it, never fear: You can watch an archived version of the show here—password: dingo.

Quick Hits: Today’s Top Stories

• As of Thursday night, 2,739,092 cases of COVID-19 have been reported in the United States (an increase of 53,286 from yesterday) and 128,742 deaths have been attributed to the virus (an increase of 681 from yesterday), according to the Johns Hopkins University COVID-19 Dashboard, leading to a mortality rate among confirmed cases of 4.7 percent (the true mortality rate is likely much lower, between 0.4 percent and 1.4 percent, but it’s impossible to determine precisely due to incomplete testing regimens). Of 33,462,181 coronavirus tests conducted in the United States (634,822 conducted since yesterday), 8.2 percent have come back positive.

• The U.S. economy regained about 4.8 million jobs in June, lowering the national unemployment rate to 11.1 percent, down from 13.3 percent in May. A total of 1.43 million Americans filed initial unemployment claims last week, bringing the total number receiving benefits to 19.3 million. Economists cautioned that this economic rebound may “stall out” if the coronavirus continues to spread at current levels and states begin instituting new lockdown measures.