This is an incredibly important oped. You should take a moment to read it. It’s by Michael T. Osterholm, a respected epidemiologist who runs a major center in Minneapolis and Neel Kashkari, now President of the Minneapolis Fed but earlier a key player in the Bush portion of 2008 financial crisis response and a Republican candidate for Governor of California. Their argument is simple: we need another lockdown.

Here is an example of where visualizing data can be very illuminating even if you’ve been steeped in the data in numerical terms. As I mentioned earlier, here is a graph of per capita COVID fatalities to date in the US and the other peer nation states around the globe.

We already knew that GOPer and ex-Ohio governor John Kasich would have a speaking role at the Democratic National Convention in a few short weeks.

But a new report out of Politico this morning takes a look at some of the behind-the-scenes about how Democrats will cast their convention, and provides details on who a few more high profile convention speakers might be — the Obamas, the Clintons, Jill Biden, Sens. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) Kamala Harris (D-CA) and Elizabeth Warren (D-MA). But it may be who ends up left out of the coveted speaking gigs that’s more intriguing.

We now have a new projection of 300,000 US COVID fatalities by December. I’ve wanted over recent days to put together a chart showing just how much worse the death toll already is in the US compared to almost any other peer country – ‘peers’ here meaning countries with comparable affluence, state capacity, etc.

The US is now well over 150,000 fatalities. Japan has had just over one thousand. Germany is approaching 10,000 fatalities. These countries have small populations of course. If Germany had the same population as the US that number would be about 40,000. Japan would be about 3,000. But the magnitude of the difference speaks for itself. How many of these 150,000 and counting US fatalities are the product of negligence and policy abdication? 100,000? 75,000? The number is staggering.

We have a special briefing on Friday at 1 PM for Inside members. We’ll be talking to Annette Gordon-Reed. Gordon-Reed is one of the country’s preeminent Jefferson scholars and the leading scholar of the Jefferson/Hemings family in all its dimensions. We’re going to talk about that story, Annette’s scholarship and how we do see or should see Jefferson in the light of this history and particularly in the light of the season of iconoclasm we are currently living through after the murder of George Floyd. I’m really looking forward to this conversation. So I hope you’ll join us. An email invitation should be in your inbox.

Yesterday I sat down with Senior Editor David Taintor and Reporter Kate Riga to discuss this week’s news. We talked COVID, COVID relief negotiations and the 2020 elections. If you’re a member watch our conversation right here.

Vice President Mike Pence was speaking directly to the audience he knows best when he went after Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts yesterday.

As I’ve tried to make clear repeatedly, I think an audit of the executive branch after Trump leaves office (whenever that is), is absolutely essential. Equally so, disclosure – a full airing of everything that happened during this corrupt, transgressive era – is a higher priority than punishment or criminal investigations.