Happy Thursday! Reminder: We have another Dispatch Live tonight! It’s the perfect way to cap off another newsy week and transition to a (socially distanced) holiday weekend. Grab a snack, bring a beverage, and we’ll chat for about an hour. You can register here if you haven’t already, drop a question in the comments or in a reply to this email, and remember the new time this week: 5:30 p.m. ET / 2:30 p.m. PT. A happy hour for folks out East and an excuse to take a break from work or simply break up the afternoon for everyone else. If you haven’t been before, give it a shot. See you soon!

Quick Hits: Today’s Top Stories

• As of Wednesday night, 2,685,806 cases of COVID-19 have been reported in the United States (an increase of 51,374 from yesterday) and 128,061 deaths have been attributed to the virus (an increase of 651 from yesterday), according to the Johns Hopkins University COVID-19 Dashboard, leading to a mortality rate among confirmed cases of 4.8 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 32,827,359 coronavirus tests conducted in the United States (621,114 conducted since yesterday), 8.2 percent have come back positive.

• The U.S.-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA) officially went into effect yesterday, replacing NAFTA as North America’s new trade deal.

• Thousands of Hong Kong protesters demonstrated against Beijing’s new national security law Wednesday. Protesters were met with pepper spray and tear gas, and Hong Kong police officers made about 370 arrests.