Trump Signs Order Effectively Banning TikTok – President Trump on Thursday signed an Executive Order that prohibits US companies from doing transactions with the Chinese company ByteDance, which owns the wildly popular TikTok. President Trump had previously given the company until September 15th to sell the US portion of TikTok to an American company, but with the new Order, the president accelerated the ban of the company from the United States. The Order comes amid worries that the personal information of TikTok users is being shared with the Chinese government for intelligence purposes, and a brewing cold war between the US and China.
Biden Makes Apparently Racist Remark – Presumptive Democratic nominee Joe Biden found himself in hot water this week after making a comment that black people all think alike. In an interview, Biden remarked that “unlike the Black community, Hispanics are an incredibly diverse community.” The comment received immediate, widespread backlash, prompting Biden to backtrack the comments and say that he of course believes there are diverse perspectives within the Black community.
US Household Debt Falls – For the first time in six years, the combined debt of US households fell amid a cutback on credit card and other spending as the coronavirus shutdown froze the economy during the second quarter. The Federal Reserve Bank of New York said total household debt fell 0.2% to $14.27 trillion, with outstanding credit card balances dropping to $76 billion. Mortgages rose by $63 billion in the quarter to $9.78 trillion.
Vaccine May Be Available Before Election Day – President Trump told a radio host this week that it is possible for a Covid-19 vaccine to be ready for use by November 3rd. Trump’s claims were made on Geraldo Rivera’s radio show, where he said that the vaccine could be available “much sooner” than the end of the year, even prior to Election Day. Hundreds of potential vaccines are currently being created, with dozens of companies racing toward ending the global pandemic which has killed hundreds of thousands and wiped out trillion of economic output.
Trump Considering Nomination Speech From WH – President Trump is officially weighing whether he should accept the Republican nomination for president from the White House, a week after announcing that the GOP convention would be held mostly remotely. Some, including Republican Senator John Thune, have questioned whether a nomination speech from the White House would be in violation of the Hatch Act. Joe Biden also announced this week that he would not be traveling to Milwaukee to give his speech accepting the Democratic nomination for president, instead opting to give it remotely from his home.
Twitter Temporarily Blocks Trump Campaign – Twitter briefly suspended the @teamtrump account after it posted information pertaining to Covid-19 that the company deemed false. The suspension came after the account posted a video of President Trump saying in an interview that children are “virtually immune” to coronavirus. Twitter has been recently removing tweets and suspending accounts that it says are posting information about the virus that is disputed by major medical experts.