The Morning Dispatch: Democratic Senate Candidates Raise ‘Staggering’ Amounts of Cash

Plus, revisiting Sweden’s choice not to enforce strict lockdowns.

Happy Wednesday! Let’s do this thing.

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Quick Hits: Today’s Top Stories

  • As of Tuesday night, 2,993,759 cases of COVID-19 have been reported in the United States (an increase of 58,043 from yesterday) and 131,455 deaths have been attributed to the virus (an increase of 1,171 from yesterday, likely due to a holiday weekend backlog), according to the Johns Hopkins University COVID-19 Dashboard, leading to a mortality rate among confirmed cases of 4.4 percent (the true mortality rate is likely much lower, between 0.4 percent and 1.4 percent, but it’s impossible to determine precisely due to incomplete testing regimens). Of 36,878,106 coronavirus tests conducted in the United States (845,777 conducted since yesterday), 8.1 percent have come back positive.

  • The Trump administration formally alerted the World Health Organization of its plans to pull out of the U.N. agency on Tuesday. The withdrawal won’t take effect until next July, meaning the move hinges on November’s election: Biden said the U.S. would remain a member if he wins.
  • The Chinese-owned video streaming app TikTok announced on Tuesday its plans to pull out of Hong Kong, citing concerns over Beijing’s new national security law. India banned the app last week in response to the country’s recent border dispute with China. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said on Monday that the United States is considering banning the app as well.
  • As part of the Trump administration’s Operation Warp Speed, the Department of Health and Human Services awarded $1.6 billion to Novavax in exchange for 100 million doses of the biotech company’s COVID-19 vaccine, which is currently in early testing. If the vaccine is determined to be safe and effective, it could begin being distributed by the end of this year.
  • Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro tested positive for the coronavirus on Tuesday.
  • After a violent weekend across Atlanta—during which 31 people were shot and five, including an 8-year-old girl, were killed—Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp issued an executive order declaring a state of emergency and authorizing the activation of 1,000 national guard troops to protect state buildings and patrol the streets of Atlanta.

Democratic Senate Candidates Shatter Fundraising Records

For political hobbyists, end-of-quarter campaign fundraising deadlines carry with them the excitement of an NFL playoff game. Four months from a presidential election, they’re the Super Bowl.

We covered the top-of-the-ticket numbers for Q2 last Thursday: Joe Biden and the DNC out-raised President Trump and the RNC $141 million to $131 million. Now, fundraising hauls for U.S. Senate races have begun trickling out—and Democrats have to like what they see.

Amy McGrath—who just won the right to square off against Majority Leader Mitch McConnell in Kentucky—raised $17.4 million. Jaime Harrison, running against Sen. Lindsey Graham in South Carolina, brought in $13.9 million. Sara Gideon, challenging Susan Collins in Maine, raised more than $9 million. Steve Bullock in Montana, $7.7 million, and Cal Cunningham in North Carolina, $7.4 million. Several of those payloads shattered single-quarter records in their respective states.

We texted a GOP operative working with a Senate campaign this cycle about the news. Their response: “Hiding under covers dot gif.”

An Update on the Swedish COVID Contrarians

When most nations went into some form of lockdown to combat the spread of the coronavirus in March, Sweden made the controversial decision to remain open, only banning gatherings of more than 50 people and closing schools for students ages 16 and up. The government discouraged nonessential travel, but kept its public institutions—bars, restaurants, schools, gyms, museums and so on—open to the public.

The country’s laissez-faire approach stood in stark contrast to the government-imposed shelter-in-place orders in most other countries, rendering Sweden essentially a control variable in the COVID-19 intervention experiment. What would happen if a government allowed life to proceed as normal in the midst of a global pandemic?

The results of that experiment are becoming more apparent. And they don’t look good.

The Coming China Technology Squabble

We’ve repeatedly written about the diplomatic and economic tug-of-war taking place between the U.S. and China over the building of the United Kingdom’s next-generation wireless network. China has been pushing the U.K. (and much of the rest of the world) to build out 5G networks with help from their own telecom giant Huawei; the U.S., which sees Huawei-built networks as a serious intelligence and privacy risk, has rallied its allies to freeze the corporation out.

In early 2020, it seemed the U.S. had lost that fight. Prime Minister Boris Johnson was facing a powerful Chinese carrot-and-stick approach, which included heavy subsidies that allowed Huawei to offer unbeatable prices and dire warnings of economic withdrawal if Huawei were not allowed in for business. He announced in January that Huawei would be heavily involved in building non-“core” parts of Britain’s 5G network—a largely meaningless face-saving distinction.

Worth Your Time

  • Yesterday, Harper’s Magazine published a public letter highlighting the importance of “justice and open debate,” featuring signatories such as Jonathan Haidt, Francis Fukukama, Margaret Atwood, Michael Walzer, J.K. Rowling and Noam Chomsky. “The way to defeat bad ideas is by exposure, argument, and persuasion, not by trying to silence or wish them away,” the letter reads. “We refuse any false choice between justice and freedom, which cannot exist without each other.”
  • The Daily Beast recently uncovered a network of fake personas that have published more than 90 opinion pieces in 46 different publications, many on the right, including NewsmaxThe Washington ExaminerRealClear Markets, and The American Thinker. “The articles heaped praise on the United Arab Emirates and advocated for a tougher approach to Qatar, Turkey, Iran and its proxy groups in Iraq and Lebanon,” Adam Rawnsley writes. “This vast influence operation highlights the ease with which malicious actors can exploit the identity of real people, dupe international news outlets, and have propaganda of unknown provenance legitimized through reputable media,” said Marc Owen Jones, the first person to recognize the network’s suspicious activity.
  • Tech millionaires are creating a new species of political affiliation: the “liberaltarian.” Stanford political economists Edith M. Cornell and David Brockman discussed the origins of this great migration of tech entrepreneurs to the left in a recent Stanford Graduate School of Business interview, where they explain why this demographic is “moving the Democratic Party to the left on almost every issue except government regulation.”

Presented Without Comment

Toeing the Company Line

  • In the latest French Press (🔒), David makes the case for “healthy federalism” as an antidote to toxic polarization. As the United States grows increasingly diverse—in religion, race, and ideology—government better serves the needs of the individual at the local level. “A highly polarized nation is ill-suited for continued consolidation of power in the federal government, much less in the executive branch of federal government,” he writes.
  • Columbia University linguist John McWhorter joined Jonah on The Remnant yesterday to talk about the shifting nature of language, “literally,” and the grammar police.
  • Although Gen-Zers have splashed across headlines for partying en masse and engaging in other coronavirus spreading activities, data show us that these incidents don’t speak for the whole. AEI fellow and politics professor at Sarah Lawrence College Samuel J. Abrams explains why for the most part, young people are doing their part to stave off the spread of COVID-19.

Reporting by Declan Garvey (@declanpgarvey), Andrew Egger (@EggerDC), Sarah Isgur (@whignewtons), Charlotte Lawson (@charlotteUVA), Audrey Fahlberg (@FahlOutBerg), Nate Hochman (@njhochman), and Steve Hayes (@stephenfhayes).