Big Majority Say Country Is on the Wrong Track

72%

A new AP-NORC poll finds 72% of the public, including 53% of Republicans and 90% of Democrats, say the country is headed in the wrong direction. “Most Americans disapprove of the President’s overall job performance and his handling of the coronavirus, health care, foreign policy, race relations, and policing. The public is divided in their assessment of the president’s management of the economy and the military.”

Ridge: Trump ‘Beyond Despicable,’ ‘Soulless’

“It’s so unworthy of a president. It’s beyond despicable. It’s soulless. It’s almost unspeakable in the middle of the pandemic to try to divide the country on a political basis when Covid-19 is really bipartisan.”

— Former Gov. Tom Ridge (R), quoted by the New York Times, on President Trump saying the coronavirus death toll from the coronavirus was actually not so bad “if you take out the blue states.”

Pandemic Continues to Take Toll on Jobs

860,000

“The number of Americans applying for unemployment benefits fell last week to 860,000, a historically high figure that reflects economic damage from the coronavirus outbreak,” the AP reports. “Before the pandemic hit the economy, the number signing up for jobless aid had never exceeded 700,000 in a week, even during the depths of the 2007-2009 Great Recession.”