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Mother Jones Daily Newsletter

August 11, 2020

Today's newsletter is not for billionaires. If you're a billionaire, please kindly move on to your next email.

OK, are all the billionaires gone? Good. Because here's something they might not want you to know: During the pandemic, 643 Forbes-certified billionaires have increased their wealth by $685 billion since mid-March.

Let that three-comma number sink in: $685,355,000,000! It's nearly impossible to visualize a billion of anything, let alone over six hundred billion things. So I animated a fascinating two-minute video that does just that. You can watch it here. (As part of my research, I calculated the cost of the Statue of Liberty's weight in gold—a cool $10 billion, if you're wondering.)

From Joe Biden to Kanye West to the hit Broadway show Hamilton—the video has it all.

—Mark Helenowski
The Experiment
Top Story
 
Top Story

Billionaires Have Made an Absolute Killing During the Pandemic. The Number Is Staggering.

Our new video reveals the eye-popping wealth accumulated by a tiny few across the crisis.

BY MARK HELENOWSKI
Trending
 
Trump accidentally told the truth about his executive orders. Whoops!

BY ABIGAIL WEINBERG

Police forces need to stop threatening to lie down on the job

BY KEVIN DRUM

Meet the company that writes the policies that protect cops

BY MADISON PAULY

The White House–Kodak controversy has a new angle: a billionaire's huge stock gift to a synagogue

BY DAVID CORN
The Experiment
Food
 
Special Feature

Industrial Hog Farms Are Breeding the Next Pandemic

And the government is doing a "very spotty" job of monitoring for dangerous strains of swine flu.

BY TOM PHILPOTT
Fiercely Independent
 

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SOME GOOD NEWS, FOR ONCE

A Native American Artist's Stunning Protest Mural Wins the "Art on the Streets" Award

The 66-foot-tall painting depicts the artist's 14-year-old daughter, her face covered by a handprint that symbolizes missing and murdered Indigenous women and girls, on the side of a downtown Colorado Springs building. Painting as an act of protest and education is artist Gregg Deal's way of calling attention to “a silent epidemic," he says. And his mural, Take Back the Power, just won the city's Art on the Streets award.

His daughter helped him paint it; she wanted to help her father give voice to the many who are voiceless. "As a Native person, I get to be up there representing Native people and this epidemic," she told the Gazette. "I think it's very important that we get that type of representation." To create the mural, her father partnered with the Haseya Advocate Program, a nonprofit resource for Native survivors of domestic violence and sexual assault. "Any amount of awareness" is essential, says Monycka Snowbird, an advocate with the program. "We're hoping people see this, google it, and get more background."

Watch the 5-minute video of the mural's creation, with inspiring comments from the artist and his daughter. A Recharge shoutout to the Gazette's visual team, including Katie Klann, for the powerfully produced video.

—Daniel King

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https://www.motherjones.com/coronavirus-updates/2020/08/trump-executive-order-health-care-affordable-care-act-individual-mandate-preexisting-condition/?utm_source=mj-newsletters&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=daily-newsletter-08-11-2020

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Trump Suddenly Cares About Health Care. I Think You Know Why.

    Abigail Weinberg
    Abigail Weinberg
    Digital Media FellowBio | Follow

Advertise with Mother Jones

Andrew Harnik/AP
For indispensable reporting on the coronavirus crisis and more, subscribe to Mother Jones' newsletters.

In the middle of a pandemic, in an election year, President Trump is realizing that Americans highly value the health care system he’s tried so hard to dismantle.

Last week, Trump suggested that he would sign an executive order requiring insurers to cover preexisting conditions—a key provision of the Affordable Care Act, which has been the law of the land for more than 10 years. Asked at a Monday press conference why he felt the need to reinforce an existing law, Trump all but admitted to the ploy for good PR. “Just a double safety net,” he said, “and just to let people know that the Republicans are totally, strongly in favor of preexisting condition, taking care of people with preexisting conditions.”

Trump also bragged on Monday about getting rid of the individual mandate, the requirement that uninsured Americans pay a yearly penalty, which was set to $0 as part of the 2017 tax cuts. What he didn’t mention is that the lack of an individual mandate is the basis of a lawsuit, filed by Republican attorneys general and supported by the Trump administration, that threatens to undo the entire Affordable Care Act—protections for preexisting conditions and all. Republicans argue that without the mandate, the ACA is unconstitutional; in other words, Trump has given the GOP the new ammunition to go after the health care law. (The suit is currently at the Supreme Court.) Not only would it eliminate coverage for preexisting conditions, but it would leave the 23 million Americans who currently rely on Obamacare uninsured.

The promised executive order on preexisting conditions is one of Trump’s numerous recent attempts to portray himself as a health care advocate amid a pandemic that has killed more than 160,000 Americans. With even red states like Oklahoma and Missouri voting to expand Medicaid, it has become obvious that health care is a winning issue. Just don’t let Trump fool you into thinking he’s been fighting for health care all along.

                  

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