The Morning Dispatch: Is Trump Sowing Seeds of Electoral Doubt?

Happy Tuesday! We are reserving judgment on the news that Major League Baseball will kick off a 60-game season around July 24 until it becomes clear whether the commissioner is—through a cheap, backdoor maneuver—foisting the monstrosity that is the designated hitter upon the sanctity of the National League.

Quick Hits: Today’s Top Stories

  • As of Monday night, 2,311,997 cases of COVID-19 have been reported in the United States (an increase of 32,122 from yesterday) and 120,402 deaths have been attributed to the virus (an increase of 433 from yesterday), according to the Johns Hopkins University COVID-19 Dashboard, leading to a mortality rate among confirmed cases of 5.2 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 27,553,581 coronavirus tests conducted in the United States (468,681 conducted since yesterday), 8.4 percent have come back positive.

  • President Trump signed an executive order extending the suspension of certain worker visas through the end of 2020. The order includes a temporary ban on H-1B and H-2B visas, but exempts workers with a “nexus to the food-supply chain.”

  • The Trump administration has designated four Chinese media organizations operating in the United States as “foreign missions,” with State Department officials saying the move is intended to emphasize to Americans that the sources operate as arms of the Chinese Communist Party. The action comes on the heels of the administration’s February designation of five other Chinese media companies as state-run operations.

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