Your Daily Roundup for September 17th

Good morning. As the COVID-19 pandemic takes a toll on life in America, our team at Future Majority is tracking the latest updates: 

Russia is actively interfering in American elections … again:

FBI Director Christopher Wray testified today that, “We certainly have seen very active, very active efforts by the Russians to influence our election in 2020...to both sow divisiveness and discord and...to denigrate Vice President Biden."

This assessment is in line with the rest of the intelligence community that the foreign adversary that meddled in 2016 is increasing their efforts in 2020 to harm former Vice President Joe Biden and lift President Donald Trump’s campaign.

Almost 800,000 Americans newly filed for unemployment benefits last week:

Marking a slight drop-off from last week, 790,000 American workers filed new claims for state unemployment benefits last week. This is down from 866,000 the prior week, and this does not include the additional 659,000 who applied for the federal pandemic assistance program. While the labor market is improving slightly, unemployment remains high. The economy still has a long way to go to recover fully.

Gallup shows President Trump’s job approval is holding steady in the low 40’s:

A new Gallup poll out this week shows President Trump’s job approval has not budged in their polling from last month:

• Approve: 42%
• Disapprove: 56%

Trump’s support remains very high among Republicans (92%), while Independents showed a slight dip from their last poll (36% compared to 39%). Only 4% of Democrats approve of Trump’s job performance. Trump’s approval is running between former presidents who won re-election and those who did not. President Obama’s approval in September of 2012 was 49% -- while President Carter’s approval at this time in history was 37%.