Joan McCarter

In addition to announcing what is basically a “stay” on abortion rights on Monday, the Supreme Court also released a mixed opinion on the constitutionality of one of the key post-Great Recession reforms included in the Dodd-Frank Wall Street reform law. The constitutionality of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) was at issue, and the court decided to split the difference in a decision that is both good and bad for the agency. In short, it still exists.

In an extremely rare and impromptu deal, the Senate passed an extension of the CARES Act’s Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) for small businesses Tuesday night, just hours before its expiration at midnight. There’s $130 billion left in the program that’s been unspent, and this agreement would allow the Small Business Administration to keep paying it out through Aug. 8. (Disclosure: Kos Media received a Paycheck Protection Program loan.

Donald Trump has been nursing yet another grudge as he squats in the Oval Office: the Supreme Court that keeps thwarting him. He wants a fix figuring that a last-minute Supreme Court appointment would give him a big political boost ahead of November’s election. At least, that’s what CNN’s sources are saying.

Arizona Sen. Martha McSally, vying with fellow Republican Sen. Cory Gardner of Colorado for whose political career is most likely to be toast come November, is pretending that she cares about whether or not you have health care. She’s running an ad back home in Arizona, where coronavirus is raging out of control in which she says “Of course I will always protect those with preexisting conditions. Always.”

Hahahahahahahaha.

Months after direct coronavirus stimulus checks were sent and spent, Donald Trump is getting around to thinking another set of checks would be a good thing for his reelection prospects (because you know he’s not thinking about the well-being of individual Americans). First he’s going to have to convince Republicans in Congress and members of his own administration.

The rise in poverty many economists projected as a result of the coronavirus pandemic has been largely avoided, capped by the relief bills passed in March, two new studies posit. But the one time payment of $1,200 per person was just one time, and the extra assistance in unemployment benefits, as well as their extension to contract and gig workers, ends at the end of July with no apparent intention on the part of Mitch McConnell and the Republican Senate to extend it.

Impeached President Donald Trump is pushing health officials to speed up the timeline for a coronavirus vaccine in order to have it ready this fall. Administration sources tell The Washington Post that his “goal is to instill confidence among voters that the virus can be tamed and the economy fully reopened under Trump’s stewardship.” In other words, he wants to look like a president solving a crisis ahead of the election.

New York City has been electing more and more prosecutors who want to reform law enforcement, ones who see the racial disparities in policing and in the (in)justice system and are doing something about it. Right now, that includes refusing to prosecute Black Lives Matter protesters who police arrested simply for being at the protests, and who weren’t violent and weren’t destroying property.

The Association of State and Territorial Health Officials and the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security estimates that state and local health departments need $3.6 billion to effectively conduct contact tracing of the coronavirus to reduce transmission. They’ve received $631 million so far from Congress. Contact tracing is the process of finding out all the people an infected person might have exposed to the virus while carrying the disease.

The Trump administration is determined to steal everything it can for the rich in the COVID-19 crisis, and do it in secret. Last week, Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin decided that information about which businesses are getting taxpayer-funded loans and how much they are getting is going to be kept secret. Turns out, that’s just the start of it.

About one-third of unemployment benefits owed to the millions of people out of work because of the coronavirus epidemic still hasn’t been paid—some $67 billion owed. Jay Shambaugh, an economist at Brookings Institution who has been tracking the funds, says there is “a huge hole. […] There’s a lot more money that should have gone out that has not gone out.

About one-third of unemployment benefits owed to the millions of people out of work because of the coronavirus epidemic still hasn’t been paid—some $67 billion owed. Jay Shambaugh, an economist at Brookings Institution who has been tracking the funds, says there is “a huge hole. […] There’s a lot more money that should have gone out that has not gone out.

While some of the nation’s richest hospital chains have received billions in coronavirus bailouts, many of the hospitals that have been bearing the worst of the crisis and need the support haven’t gotten it. Some hospitals that the Trump Health and Human Services Department sent money returned it because they didn’t need it or because they were closed, the Wall Street Journal reports.

The Senate is dragging its heels over extending enhanced unemployment benefits, saying that people are choosing to stay on unemployment rather than go back to work. Well, some of them are. They’re doing so because they’re worried their bosses won’t protect them from coronavirus.

Like Jake Lyon and five of his coworkers in Colorado, who were ordered back to work at the tea shop where they were employed, but wanted to make sure that coming back was safe.