About one-third of states faced housing insecurity in the month of July, according to the U.S. Census Bureau Household Pulse Survey.

The survey measures the percentage of adults who either missed last month’s rent or mortgage payment or who have slight or no confidence their household can pay next month’s bill on time.

In a tweet on Monday, Rep. Ro Khanna, D-CA, claimed that more than 30% of residents in some states missed their July rent or mortgage payment and have no confidence they could afford August’s payment.

During the week 12 period between July 16 and July 21, Texas (37.5%) held the largest amount of adults with housing insecurity.

But some metro areas have been hit the hardest. California’s Riverside-San Bernadino area held nearly a 40% view on housing insecurity despite the state’s total insecurity resting at around 30%.

Housing insecurity is also disproportionately affecting Black and Hispanic/Latino populations. More than one-fifth of these communities admitted their households either missed June’s rent or paid late, twice as many as that of white adults.

The U.S. Census Bureau, in collaboration with other federal partners, launched the Household Pulse Survey in April to measure the social and economic effects of COVID-19 on American Households. The survey collected data for 90 days on a weekly basis beginning April 23, asking questions about the loss of household income, whether families have enough food to eat and if they will be able to pay their rent or mortgage.

On Saturday, President Donald Trump signed an executive order to extend unemployment benefits to $400 a week, distressing Democrats who have demanded to keep the benefits at $600 through early next year.

But last month, Democrats rejected a proposal to extend the $600 a week benefits; however, the deal would have only kept the enhancements in place for a week.

“If they wanted to offer a piecemeal thing for one week, you only do that when you’re on the verge of closing, of passing a bill and having it signed into law,” House speaker Nancy Pelosi told PBS Newshour‘s Judy Woodruff on Tuesday. “Otherwise, it’s just showbiz.”

The $400 payouts start at the week ending Aug. 1 and run through Dec. 27.

In May, House Democrats passed the HEROES Act, a $3.4 trillion relief package that would have extended the $600 enhanced employment through January 2021.

But Senate Republicans balked at the proposal and last month introduced a $1 trillion counter proposal that slashed the unemployment bonus to $200 a week and called for individual states to adopt new systems providing laid-off workers with 70% of their previous earnings.

A GOP-proposed roughly $1 trillion coronavirus relief bill includes nearly $2 billion for a new FBI headquarters.

The new headquarters has been in the works for over a decade. Proponents of the funding say that the FBI has been helpful in fighting increased crime due to COVID-19 and cyber breaches against new vaccines. But opponents say the funding is not directly related to COVID-19 and that the Trump administration has something to gain by keeping the headquarters in downtown Washington, near a Trump hotel, rather than it’s proposed move to a suburb of Maryland or Virginia.

And many Senate Republicans have uncharacteristically parted with the Trump administration to rebuke the request.

“I would hope that all non-COVID related measures are out no matter what bills they were in at the start,” Sen. Mitch McConnell, R-Ky. told reporters on Tuesday.

The GOP and Democrats are still far apart on a new coronavirus relief package after Senate Republicans unveiled their proposal on Monday. Senate leaders have not given firm deadlines for negotiations.

Congress has already passed more than $2.5 trillion to combat the pandemic.

This week, state officials doled out federal funding from the CARES Act to cities and counties across the country. The move prompted some local officials to question if these funds can be used for programs that were severely impacted by the pandemic, including projects that have been in place for decades.

For state, local and tribal governments, expenses covered by the federal relief must meet three criteria:

1. Necessary expenditures incurred due to the public health emergency with respect to the Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID–19);

2. Not accounted for in the local or state budget most recently approved as of March 27, 2020 (the date of enactment of the CARES Act); and

3. Incurred between March 1, 2020, and Dec. 30, 2020.

In March, Congress passed the $2.2 trillion CARES Act, a stimulus bill in response to the economic fallout of the coronavirus pandemic.

About $150 billion of those funds are allocated as state aid. The criteria for distribution to the local level are broad and seem to leave discretion of fund allocation to local officers. But some city and county officials have urged Congress for more guidance on how to use these funds.

On May 28, the  Treasury Department updated its Frequently Asked Questions guidance page for local government to clarify the distribution by states to local governments.

Some of the clarifications included that 45% of funds received by states should be shared with local governments with populations of 500,000 or less. The updates also provided additional guidance on using the funds for public health and safety payroll costs.

Meghan Coates, deputy director of finance for Henrico County, told CNN that everything the county does has been affected by the pandemic and it is difficult to discern what is a coronavirus-related expense. Other officials worry that they may have to pay money back for expenses ultimately deemed non-COVID related.

On July 2, the Trump campaign aired “Abolished,” a political ad that suggests supporters of former vice president and presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden are calling to defund police departments across the country.

The ad was careful not to link Biden with calling to defund the police. As early as June, Biden said in an interview with CBS and an op-ed in USA Today that he does not support the move and has reiterated his position since.

“That’s why I’m proposing an additional $300 million to reinvigorate community policing in our country,” Biden wrote in the USA Today piece. “Every single police department should have the money it needs to institute real reforms like adopting a national use of force standard, buying body cameras and recruiting more diverse police officers.”

But some of Biden’s biggest supporters have advocated for defunding, including Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.), who said she wants to reduce the $6 billion budget of the New York City Police Department. Ocasio-Cortez joins 54 Democratic National Committee members, convention superdelegates and members of a criminal task force, organized by Biden and Sanders, that called for local governments to redirect more money toward social services, education and mental health agencies.

Defunding the police, according to a post by Rashawn Ray at the Brookings Institution, does not mean abolishing police but “reallocating or redirecting funding away from the police department to other government agencies funded by the local municipality.” And although Biden is careful not to directly use the phrase “defunding the police,” in a Now This interview between Biden and Ady Barkan, Biden agreed that some police funding can be redirected to other areas.

A data dump on Monday from the Trump administration revealed that the Ayn Rand Institute received a Paycheck Protection Program loan of between $350,000 and $1 million.

Ayn Rand, a Russian-American writer and philosopher who died in 1982, is best known for her two novels, “The Fountainhead” and “Atlas Shrugged.” She believed that natural rights should be enforced by a constitutionally limited government and argued for a philosophical system of Objectivism.

“My philosophy, in essence, is the concept of man as a heroic being, with his own happiness as the moral purpose of his life, with productive achievement as his noblest activity, and reason as his only absolute,” Rand wrote in “Atlas Shrugged.”

The Ayn Rand Institute was founded in 1985.

Opponents of the ARI loan argued on Twitter that ARI accepting the loan clashes with the institute’s belief against accepting government handouts. Many pointed to Rand’s own words: “Government ‘help’ to business is just as disastrous as government persecution. … The only way a government can be of service to national prosperity is by keeping its hands off.”

However in a May 15 article on New Ideal, an online publication from ARI, board member Harry Binswanger and senior fellow Onkar Ghate wrote that the organization would accept relief money offered by the CARES Act. The government doesn’t have funds of its own and cannot provide help, Binswanger and Ghate wrote, so it can only force others to provide that help.

“For advocates of freedom, individual rights, and limited government to turn down these relief funds means choosing to play only the victim’s role in the government’s bizarre game of ‘loot and be looted’,” they wrote.

And in a September 1964 letter to a fan, Rand even advocated not to hesitate when seeking public assistance “because you are certainly entitled to it – in view of the taxes you have paid and in view of the fact that today’s political system makes it impossible for anyone to provide for his own old age.”

The Ayn Rand Institute sought to preserve 35 jobs with the PPP funding, according to data released Monday.

Despite the rapper Kanye West announcing his bid for the presidency on July 4, it remains unclear if he has filed the appropriate paperwork with the Federal Election Commission (FEC).

Candidates typically begin their campaign by registering an exploratory committee as a non-for-profit corporation with the FEC. This allows the candidate and a small staff to legally conduct activities such as polling, traveling and making phone calls.

If a candidate decides to take the next step, they file a Statement of Candidacy that includes the candidate’s name, address, and the name and address of his or her principal campaign committee. Candidates have 15 days to send the form to the FEC and opposing candidates.

Another ten days are allotted for the candidate to fill out a Statement of Organization, which formally registers his or her campaign committee with the FEC.

And technically, a candidate doesn’t need to even file a statement at all with the FEC. A candidate can dodge all of these steps if they can manage to run for president without spending more than $5,000 of their own money. In the 1996 presidential campaign, Ralph Nader didn’t file a statement of candidacy and finished fourth in overall voting.

Typically about 250 to 300 people fill out the paperwork every presidential election cycle.  But that number skyrocketed in the 2016 presidential election when over 1,700 filings were submitted. So far in the 2020 presidential race, over 1,100 people have filled out paperwork to officially run (FEC).

No clear filing has yet been submitted by West. On July 6, two filings were submitted to the FEC that may be from him, although numerous issues with the filings may prompt the FEC to investigate whether the forms include “false or fictitious information,” according to an agency spokesperson.

One filing under “Ye West” states the candidate will use their own money to run as a Libertarian under the banner of VISION2020. The Libertarian Party’s official candidate, however, is Jo Jorgensen.

The second filing is listed under  “Mr. Kenye Omari West” under the party of “PEACE AND FREEDOM”. The campaign banner is “Ye for America.”

Both filings list the White House as the candidate’s address.

A spokesperson for the FEC said the agency receives many false and fictitious filings and these two filings may be bogus.

A tweet on June 28 by President Donald Trump cited voter fraud in a New Jersey election in order to bolster his argument against mail-in voting. Trump claimed that nearly 20% of ballots in a special election for city council representatives were fraudulent.

The municipal election was held in May in Paterson, New Jersey for several city council seats. It was among a handful of elections that New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy ordered be completed exclusively by mail-in voting due to the coronavirus pandemic. To make the process easier, Murphy signed an executive order in March for ballots to be sent to all registered voters without the need for an application.

But claims of fraud began appearing in local media as early as election day.

According to a report by NPR, the fraud investigation began after the U.S. Postal Inspection Service informed local law enforcement that hundreds of mail-in ballots were stuffed inside a Paterson mailbox.

Over 1,200 ballets were initially tossed due to issues with voter signatures and another 1,000 were dumped because the person who dropped off the ballots did not correctly fill out the envelope to indicate they were the “bearer” of the ballot. New Jersey law allows a “bearer” to collect and deliver up to three ballots per election; however,  this right does not extend to candidates.

Three months after the election, four men were charged by state attorney general Gurbir Grewal with illegally collecting or possessing ballots, including two winning city council candidates. The Paterson Press, a local non-profit publication, found that deceased individuals tried to vote. And another resident listed as having voted admitted to not receiving vote-by-mail ballots, according to NBC New York.

In total, election officials admitted that over 3,000 mail-in ballots, about 19% of those submitted, were disqualified.

The federal government invoked a clause in the Patriot Act to indefinitely detain a Palestinian man living in the United States after he completed a 15-year prison term for a terrorism-related charged.

Adham Hassoun, born in Lebanon as a Palestinian, was living in the United States for three decades when he was found guilty of sending support to Islamic militants in the 1990s. After completing his prison sentence in the United States in 2017, the government had no place to send him so they sought open-ended custody under two justifications.

First, the government invoked a regulation that allows for continued detention of removable aliens on account of special circumstances, stating that Hassoun proved a national security risk.

That argument was rejected by a district court in December.

The government also argued that, under a never-before used provision of the Patriot Act (1226a), the executive branch could keep a believed dangerous person in detainment indefinitely with no review by a judge.

Opponents argued the government cannot invoke the Patriot Act and that if the government has a reason to detain Hassoun, he must either be charged with a crime or evidence must be presented against him before a court and then he would need the ability to defend himself.

A judge ordered a hearing for Hassoun on April 28 that required the government prove that Hassoun’s detention was justified. On Monday, a federal judge in New York rejected the Trump administration’s argument to hold him.

Passed in 2001 immediately following the 9/11 attacks, the Patriot Act tightened U.S. national security as it related to foreign terrorism. The act focused on three areas: expanding law enforcement’s surveillance capacity, improving interagency communication and increasing penalties for terrorism crimes.

Lynda Bennett was running to represent North Carolina’s 11th Congressional District.

She would be replacing former Rep. Mark Meadows, who announced just 30 hours before the state’s December filing deadline that he was retiring in order to become Trump’s chief of staff.

Local Republicans in the state criticized the former Congressman for announcing his retirement so late in order to help Bennett, a real-estate agent and friend of Meadows.

Despite announcing his retirement in late December, Bennett’s campaign website domain was registered by Mark’s brother, Scott, in October. And Bennett created her campaign’s Facebook page in early December, still weeks before the announcement.

Critics of Meadows’ last-minute announcement said the move discouraged other potential party candidates, including sitting state legislators who had already filed to run for reelection in other districts.

Bennett received the backing of Meadows and received a Twitter endorsement from Trump; however, Bennett lost on June 23 in the Republican primary runoff.