About 1.5 million laid-off workers applied for U.S. unemployment benefits last week, evidence that many Americans are still losing their jobs even as the economy appears to be slowly recovering with more businesses partially reopening.
The latest figure from the Labor Department marked the 10th straight weekly decline in applications for jobless aid since they peaked in mid-March when the coronavirus hit hard. Still, the pace of layoffs remains historically high.
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As the United States copes with the aftermath of the horrific killing of George Floyd by police in Minnesota and the massive protests that came after, we must not forget our previous crisis – the COVID-19 pandemic.
It is clear that the blatant lies, destruction of samples, and silencing of doctors orchestrated by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) during the coronavirus pandemic amplified the devastation and tragedy the world has endured throughout the past few months.
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Republican Missouri Sen. Josh Hawley called for an investigation into free speech double-standards, saying that state officials have favored protests while targeting religious freedom.
He asked Attorney General William Barr and the Department of Justice to launch a “full civil rights investigation” into violations of “free exercise and free speech rights of religious Americans” in a Tuesday letter.
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Every major city—and probably every community for that matter—has some form of a police commission. Police commissions are entrusted to monitor the activities of the police department as a whole, and in most cases determine appropriate discipline for individual officers who break the public trust. These commissions have existed for decades. Most major cities also have some form of an office or department for civil rights or civil liberties or human rights. Police review boards are often housed within those offices, as in Minneapolis.
So let’s talk about Minneapolis, where a police officer who was identified for nearly 20 years as a problem had 18 complaints since 2001. Officer Chauvin faced multiple complaints and formal reviews for his actions but he was left on the street, with a badge, harassing people of all races, and ultimately killing a black man.
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Former Vice President Joe Biden’s campaign poured more than $1 million into Facebook ads in one day skewering President Donald Trump for fanning the flames of hatred amid protests over police brutality, an archive of ad spending showed.
The presumptive Democratic nominee spent roughly the same amount of money in less than a week on Facebook as he did throughout the past year of his campaign, The New York Times reported Monday.
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Confronted with an economy gripped by recession and high unemployment, the Federal Reserve signaled Wednesday that it expects to keep its key short-term interest rate near zero through 2022.
At the same time, the Fed said it will keep buying about $120 billion in Treasury and mortgage bonds each month to maintain low longer-term borrowing rates in an effort to spur spending and growth.
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The coronavirus pandemic has led to the largest drop in small business ownership in the United States, hurting black business owners the most, according to a June study from an economic research organization.
3.3 million business owners are not actively working, and 22% of the closures came during the February-to-April window of coronavirus restrictions, reported Axios, citing a National Bureau of Economic Research working paper. In the whole Great Recession of 2008, small business owners shrank by 730,000 at 5% reduction, the study noted.
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The U.S. national debt has just reached 120.5% of the nation’s annual economic output, breaking a record set in 1946 for the highest debt level in the history of the United States. The previous extreme of 118.4% stemmed from World War II, the deadliest and most widespread conflict in world history.
Today’s unprecedented debt-to-economy ratio—which is economists’ primary measure of government debt—includes $2.5 trillion in new debt since the outset of the Covid-19 pandemic. However, it doesn’t account for the vast bulk of economic damage inflicted by government-mandated business shutdowns, which will soon make the debt ratio significantly larger by decreasing its denominator. Although this decline has already begun, most of it is not yet reflected in the official data on the size of the U.S. economy.
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Protesters attacked Christopher Columbus statues in Richmond, Virginia and Boston Tuesday night.
The Columbus statue in Richmond’s Byrd Park was toppled, set on fire, and thrown into a nearby lake, ABC affiliate WRIC News reported. The Boston statue, located in Christopher Columbus Park, was discovered decapitated Wednesday morning, according to Boston 25 News.
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