Happy Friday! Thank goodness the DNC is over—your Morning Dispatchers can finally start putting this newsletter to bed before 2 a.m. again. Oh, what’s that? The RNC starts on Monday?

Quick Hits: Today’s Top Stories

• The United States confirmed 48,266 new cases of COVID-19 yesterday, with 7.3 percent of the 661,228 tests reported coming back positive. An additional 1,278 deaths were attributed to the virus on Thursday, bringing the pandemic’s American death toll to 174,248.

• Longtime Trump aide Steve Bannon, along with three co-conspirators, was indicted on federal fraud charges for “orchestrat[ing] a scheme to defraud hundreds of thousands of donors” as part of an online crowdfunding campaign to build a wall on the United States’ southern border. Bannon pleaded not guilty.

• Initial weekly unemployment claims increased slightly week-over-week according to the Labor Department, from 971,000 two weeks ago to 1,106,000 the week ending August 15.