Heads up! What A Day will be taking Monday off for patriotic day-drinking purposes. Happy Fourth of July, and see you on Tuesday.

A year ago the unemployment rate was over 10 percent and the president saw it as an opportunity to transform independence into a celebration of himself. Oh what a difference an election makes. 
 

• The economy created 850,000 jobs in June, according to the Labor Department’s monthly jobs report. Between that growth and net-upward revisions to previous months estimates, President Biden has overseen the creation of three million jobs in his first months in office. Economic growth was robust enough heading into the summer that the unemployment rate technically increased a tick to 5.9 percent, as people quit their jobs and unemployed people who had given up on finding work re-entered the job market. 
   
• The June jobs numbers fit a larger trend of positive economic news. Consumer confidence is higher than it’s been since the coronavirus pandemic began, businesses report plans for further capital investments, and the Congressional Budget Office now estimates that we’ll recoup all the jobs we lost under President Trump’s pandemic mismanagement by the middle of next year.
   
• The pace of job creation has a bunch of ancillary benefits, too: With more, different kinds of jobs available, people are voluntarily leaving jobs they don’t like in search of ones they prefer; and employers continue raising wages to fill vacancies. Wage growth is up overall driven by rapid gains at the lower end of the income scale. And unlike the last recession, the private sector recovery isn’t offset by a crushing loss of employment in state and local government, which added 229,700 jobs in education alone.

There’s still some awkwardness out there, and a long way to go. And don’t forget the pandemic isn’t over. 
 

• Part of the wage growth story is that post-pandemic spending has been lopsided in favor of durable goods, while some of the service-job industries hardest hit by the pandemic remain starved for demand. That’s why you’ve been reading and hearing stories about inflation in this or that sector, while there are still way fewer jobs in other sectors than there were before the pandemic. 
   
• And the reason it’s gonna take a year to get back to where we were before the pandemic is that we lost a veritable fuckton of jobs last year! We need to add 6.8 million before we reach the employment level we enjoyed before the pandemic, and another two to three million on top of that to get back to where we would have been if the pandemic had never struck. 

There are more concrete steps Democrats can take to make the recovery bigger and faster. Most particularly, they can pass Biden’s jobs and families plans as soon as possible! But there’s nothing they can do to stop right-wing propagandists from discouraging their followers from getting vaccinated, creating localized hot zones where the Delta variant has started to thrive. That’ll reduce the pace of the economic recovery all on its own, which—shockingly, disgustingly—seems to be the point. 

Whether you're looking for a quick hit of news while you walk your dog, a better understanding of politics here and abroad, or something to laugh along to while you’re doing the dishes, Crooked Media has a show for you. Head over to Amazon Music where you can find the "Best of Crooked Media" collection, curated by your friends here at Crooked. Listen for free on Amazon Music.

Former Trump spokesman Jason Miller launched a new MAGA social media app on Thursday, and it’s off to exactly the kind of start you’d expect—sort of. GETTR, a bug-riddled Twitter clone, was immediately overrun with neo-Nazi acolytes of Nick Fuentes seeking to make it their own. The backstory is less predictable: GETTR turns out not to be a new app at all, but rather the rebranded project of exiled Chinese billionaire Guo Wengui, a major funder of various events promoting Trump’s election lies. Guo also owned the yacht on which Steve Bannon was arrested last year, and he may or may not be a spy for China with a Mar-a-Lago membership? In any case, GETTR was originally Getome, a Chinese language app that promoted Guo’s (fake?) anti-CCP movement, before it was wiped clean and turned into a sanctuary for white nationalist trolls. Donald Trump has not joined, but a pathetic Miller holds out hope: “He knows that we would love him to join the platform. We have ‘RealDonaldTrump’ saved for him.”

• All U.S. troops have quietly left Bagram Airfield in Afghanistan after 20 years, effectively ending major U.S. military operations in the country.
   
• Eric Trump went on Fox News to rail against the Trump Organization indictments and casually admit to defrauding the government, but he’s not worried about getting indicted himself because he and his family have “always lived amazingly clean lives.”
   
• Top U.S. sprinter Sha’Carri Richardson has been suspended from the Olympic team and will miss the Olympic 100-meter race after testing positive for marijuana, a drug famous for boosting athletes to superhuman speeds. (Commonly known as "the cheetah's herb.") Richardson used marijuana in a state where it is legal after finding out from a reporter that her mother had died.
   
• The death toll in the Surfside, FL, condo collapse has risen to 20, with 128 people still missing. One of the victims recovered on Thursday night was the 7-year-old daughter of a Miami firefighter.
   
• Some local health officials (particularly in under-vaccinated areas) are warning about rising coronavirus numbers ahead of the Fourth of July weekend. President Biden said he was worried for the unvaccinated, but “not concerned that there's going to be another major outbreak.”
   
• Anthony Aguero, a pal of Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) who stormed the Capitol on January 6, accompanied GOP members of Congress on a trip to the border earlier this week.
   
• A Boeing 737 cargo plane (not a 737 Max) made an emergency landing in the ocean off of Honolulu on Friday morning. Both pilots were rescued. 
   
• Hurricane Elsa, the unusually early first hurricane of the 2021 Atlantic season, could get close to Florida early next week.
   
• The CDC has warned doctors about a mysterious cluster of melioidosis, a serious illness caused by a bacteria that’s rarely found in the U.S., but which has now infected at least three people in three non-adjacent states. 
   
• Richard Branson has heard the unwashed masses crying out for a Narcissistic Billionaire Space Race, and he is here to help. 

Federal prosecutors told a judge on Friday that they’re in plea discussions with a dozen Oath Keepers members charged with conspiracy in the January 6 insurrection and said those talks have been “productive” so far. They do seem like a snitch-prone bunch: On Wednesday, a third Oath Keepers member pleaded guilty and agreed to cooperate with investigators, a tough blow for Tucker Carlson’s otherwise rock-solid conspiracy theory that the attack was organized by the FBI. Prosecutors have charged yet another Oath Keeper in the conspiracy case, bringing the number of defendants to 17, and the judge has indicated the case might be split into two trials with the first to begin in February 2022 at the earliest. Attorney General Merrick Garland announced last week that the total number of January 6 arrests had topped 500, and 13 more were announced or unsealed on Wednesday alone.

Why would you buy a mattress made for someone else? With Helix, you’re getting a mattress that you know will be perfect for the way YOU sleep. They have soft, medium, and firm mattresses, and even a Helix Plus mattress for plus-size sleepers. Helix even has mattresses with specialized cooling technology, if you and your family can never agree on the temperature. 

Helix has a quiz that takes just two minutes to complete and matches your body type and sleep preferences to the perfect mattress for you. They have a 10 year warranty and you get to try it out for a hundred nights, risk free. 

Take Helix’s two minute sleep quiz and get up to $200 off your mattress order and 2 FREE pillows.

Anyone who has received unemployment benefits in 2021 now qualifies for free or low-cost health coverage through the ACA, thanks to the American Rescue Plan. 

The incidence of Alzheimer’s in rich countries has been falling at a rate of 16 percent each decade since 1988, and scientists believe it to be a preventable disease in some 40 percent of cases.

President Biden held a naturalization ceremony for 21 immigrants at the White House on Friday, as part of a federal effort to swear in nearly 10,000 new citizens in celebration of the Fourth. 

Gov. Jared Polis (D-CO) has signed a law allocating $15 million to help workers and localities transition from coal to clean energy.