The Morning Dispatch: Politics vs. Public Health

Happy Tuesday! We didn’t know slow news days were still possible, but yesterday was one—we’ll get you up to speed in a jiffy.

Quick Hits: Today’s Top Stories

  • As of Monday night, 3,363,056 cases of COVID-19 have been reported in the United States (an increase of 60,361 from yesterday) and 135,605 deaths have been attributed to the virus (an increase of 429 from yesterday), according to the Johns Hopkins University COVID-19 Dashboard, leading to a mortality rate among confirmed cases of 4 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 41,002,876 coronavirus tests conducted in the United States (720,700 conducted since yesterday), 8.2 percent have come back positive.

  • California’s two largest public school districts, Los Angeles and San Diego, announced their schools will be online-only to begin the fall semester, adding they will “continue planning for a return to in-person learning during the 2020-21 academic year, as soon as public health conditions allow.” The move comes as a part of California’s broader rollback of reopening efforts, including Gov. Gavin Newsom’s reclosing of bars, restaurants, and movie theaters statewide, and gyms, barbers, and places of worship in the state’s most affected counties.

  • Driven primarily by the CARES Act, the U.S. budget deficit hit $864 billion in June, an all-time high for this early in the year.

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