Tomorrow, September 3, from 5 – 7 p.m. ET TPM is hosting a virtual Zoom event focused on the unique challenges of holding an election during the crisis that is 2020.

TPM staff will be joined by Hannah Fried, All Voting is Local’s national campaign director and the former national director and deputy general counsel for voter protection on Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign, and Tammy Patrick, senior adviser at the Democracy Fund and an expert on vote by mail, to discuss efforts to take advantage of the crisis to suppress votes.

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UPDATE: We are back up. We believe we have a resolved the source of the issue that has been causing systemic site issues over the last week or so. Thank you again for continued support and your patience.

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Since about 5 a.m. ET this morning, you may have noticed a number of technical issues when visiting the site, including:

• seeing ads despite being logged into a TPM member account
• slow page load times
• failed page loads
• difficulty signing into your account

Our tech team is aware of these issues and is working to fix the underlying cause. We apologize for the inconvenience and appreciate your patience and support.

Yesterday, amidst global protests about police brutality, the venerable New York Times published an op-ed by Sen. Tom Cotton (R-AR) titled “Tom Cotton: Send In the Troops.”

“The nation must restore order,” the sub-headline read. “The military stands ready.”

This piece was met with visceral anger. The union representing New York Times staff, the NewsGuild, issued a statement that Cotton’s message “undermines the journalistic integrity of our members, puts Black staff members in danger, promotes hate, and is likely to encourage further violence.” Countless journalists tweeted “Running this puts Black @nytimes staff in danger.”  Read More 

International Workers’ Day, or May Day, comes on the heels of one of the worst periods for workers in quite some time. In the last six weeks, more than 30 million Americans filed for unemployment. At the same time, the S&P 500 gained more than 12 percent and recorded its best month since 1987.

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My routine as a kid was pretty simple. I’d wake up, grab the Cleveland Plain Dealer (or The News-Herald, published in the neighboring county) sports section, read every single story and then try as best I could to memorize every box score, statistic and name for every sport. I loved (and love) sports. I also loved the Plain Dealer, but sadly the Plain Dealer is being murdered.

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The congressional budget office (CBO) put out a report today on the impacts of coronavirus to the economy and it is bleak. Perhaps the most jarring nugget is they think the country could have a 9% unemployment rate at the end of 2021.

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I wrote last week about how the economic relief package known as the CARES Act is severely lacking. One particularly troubling aspect is that the Small Business Administration is tasked with overseeing a $350 billion dollar fund designed to provide cash for small businesses so they can avoid laying people off. This is problematic because it’s something like 10 times the volume of emergency loans they usually deal with on an annual basis. 

The devil is in the details, but the gist of that fund, known as the Paycheck Protection Program, is that businesses with fewer than 500 employees can apply for a loan. At the end of the set period of time, if the employer has not laid anyone off, the loan is completely forgiven. There are of course a host of details about how much money a business can receive and some other things but they are irrelevant for the purposes of this post.

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