Michigan Rep. Justin Amash is really taking this whole Independence Day thing to heart. The congressman announced in a Washington Post op-ed Thursday that he is leaving the GOP to become an independent.

"Today, I am declaring my independence and leaving the Republican Party," Amash, a libertarian, wrote in a column that denounces the two-party system as an "existential threat to American principles and institutions." He said party loyalty has eclipsed Congress' true purpose of serving the American people, and called upon readers to "join me in rejecting the partisan loyalties and rhetoric that divide and dehumanize us."

Amash's departure from the GOP was "nearly a decade in the making," says HuffPost's Matt Fuller. Indeed, Amash has been at odds with the party for some time. He remains the only congressional Republican to call for President Trump's impeachment following the release of Special Counsel Robert Mueller's report detailing Trump's possible obstruction of justice. He has frequently joined Democrats in various votes against Trump's initiatives, like the border wall. In June, he resigned from the House Freedom Caucus that he co-founded in 2015 and faces a formal censure from that body.

Recently, CNN dubbed Amash "the loneliest member of Congress," and Amash himself told Vox that "a lot of the people who once stood with me are no longer there."

So, what does his departure mean? As Reason notes, Amash was facing a tough upcoming primary challenge for Michigan's third congressional district. His new affiliation means he can try to run for re-election as an independent. But there's also lingering speculation that he could launch a 2020 challenge against Trump. Unless or until he rules this out, Reason writes, the coming months "will be a festival of guessing, gamesmanship, and gossip." Oh, goodie. Jessica Hullinger

For the millions of Harry Potter fans growing increasingly restless in coronavirus quarantine, J.K. Rowling has dug into her attic and found something that might help.

The author has announced that starting Tuesday, she'll be publishing her new children's book The Ickabog for free, releasing new chapters online every weekday. Rowling explained that she wrote most of her first draft of this fairy tale in between working on Harry Potter installments and intended to release it after Deathly Hallows, but it "went up into the attic" after she decided to take a break from children's books.

"A few weeks ago at dinner, I tentatively mooted the idea of getting The Ickabog down from the attic and publishing it for free, for children in lockdown," Rowling said. "My now teenagers were touchingly enthusiastic, so downstairs came the very dusty box, and for the last few weeks I’ve been immersed in a fictional world I thought I’d never enter again."

Now, kids can read the book or have it read to them during "these strange, unsettling times," Rowling said. Kids are also being called on by Rowling to submit illustrations as they go through The Ickabog, and the best ones will be included in the book when it's published in print and as an eBook later this year; all of Rowling's author royalties from the book will go to COVID-19 relief, she said. Rowling noted the book isn't a Harry Potter spin-off.

New chapters of The Ickabog are to be published through July 10, so get reading — and drawing. Check out the first chapters here. Brendan Morrow

Biotechnology company Novavax rolled out its first human trials for its coronavirus vaccine on Tuesday.

Novavox already tested its vaccine on animals in low doses and found it successful, Axios notes. So the Maryland-based company will inject 131 volunteers in the Australian cities of Melbourne and Brisbane, with results of the clinical trial expected to be made public in July.

Phase 1 of the trial is a "randomized, observer-blinded, placebo-controlled trial" that assesses two different dosage sizes of the vaccine among healthy participants age 18 to 59, Novavax said in a press release. If that first phase goes well, Novavax said it expects a second phase to begin "promptly." That second phase will be conducted across several different countries, including the U.S., and across a broader age range.

Novavax shares spiked when markets reopened Tuesday after the holiday weekend, up from $46.11 per share to $54.20. Novavax is among several pharmaceutical companies racing to develop coronavirus vaccines, with Pfizer and Moderna launching human trials earlier this month. Kathryn Krawczyk

An Obama administration economist has reportedly left Democrats concerned about President Trump's re-election prospects with his prediction about the state of the economy leading up to November.

Speaking to a group of Republican and Democratic officials in early April, Politico reports Jason Furman, who was chair of the Council of Economic Advisers under former President Obama, surprisingly asserted that "we are about to see the best economic data we’ve seen in the history of this country."

As the coronavirus pandemic takes a devastating toll on the U.S. economy, bringing the unemployment rate to the highest level seen since the Great Depression, Furman continues to predict a "partial rebound" on the horizon, comparing the situation to the economic aftermath following a natural disaster and telling Politico that "you could easily have one to two million jobs created a month in those four reports before November."

He added, "And then toward the end of October, we will get GDP growth for the third quarter, at an annualized rate, and it could be double-digit positive economic growth. So these will be the best jobs and growth numbers ever." This assumes re-openings continue across the country and a second wave of coronavirus doesn't prompt major lockdowns.

Although Politico notes that a "rebound won't mean that Trump has solved many underlying problems," Democrats are reportedly "spooked" by the idea that the president "could be poised to benefit from the dramatic numbers" ahead of the 2020 election, with one former Obama White House official pointing to Trump's positive polling on the economy and arguing, "This is the challenge for the Biden campaign. If they can't figure this out they should all just go home." Read the full report at Politico. Brendan Morrow

Everything you've ever known is a lie, because apparently everyone has been pronouncing Steve Buscemi's name wrong for years.

In a profile published Monday in GQ, the endearingly humble actor (who, by the way, has survived getting hit by a bus, car, and stabbed by a stranger in a bar!) discusses topics like how he hopes to one day win the New Yorker caption contest and how he'd prefer to be murdered less in movies. But the real revelation comes in a parenthetical by the article's author, Gabriella Paiella: "He says it boo-sem-ee, not boo-shem-ee."

This information might, understandably, radically alter the way you see the world. Maybe now that you know the proper pronunciation, you'll sell all your earthly possessions to become a shepherd in the Scottish highlands, all the while muttering "boo-sem-ee, not boo-shem-ee" under your breath. If ever in doubt, though, you can always avoid the whole "potato, po-ta-to" headache and stick with plain old "Mr. Pink." Read the full profile here. Jeva Lange

Multiple authorities are investigating the death of a black man in Minneapolis police custody after a disturbing video showed an officer kneeling on the man's neck as he protested "I can't breathe."

Around 8 p.m. Monday, police were called to a report of a forgery in progress at a business in Minneapolis, the Minneapolis Star Tribune reports. When officers found a suspect matching the report's description, they ordered him out of his car and said he complied with their commands, police spokesman John Elder said. But the man later "physically resisted," Elder continued.

As bystander video shows, a white police officer ended up kneeling on the man's neck as he said "I can't breathe" and "everything hurts" over and over. One bystander noted the man's nose was bleeding, and another kept telling the officers "you're stopping his breathing right there" and "you could have put him in the car by now." "He's not responsive right now," one bystander later notes, and after an ambulance arrives for the man, another bystander tells the officer "You just really killed that man, bro." The man was taken to a hospital and later died.

The officers in the incident were wearing body cameras, and the footage has been turned over to Minnesota's Bureau of Criminal Apprehension, Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey said. "Being black in America should not be a death sentence," Frey said Tuesday, adding that "this officer failed in the most basic, human sense."

You can find the disturbing video at Fox 9, and read more at the Minneapolis Star Tribune. Kathryn Krawczyk

Houston, we have a problem.

Netflix's highly-anticipated new comedy Space Force, which stars Steve Carell and comes from The Office creator Greg Daniels, is being hit with unexpectedly brutal reviews from critics ahead of its streaming debut.

The series, inspired by President Trump's announcement of the creation of a new branch of the military called Space Force, is "largely unfunny" with "little to warrant a recommendation," and "there is an absence of a point of view," writes The Daily Beast.

Time agrees the show is "a bust," while Entertainment Weekly describes it as "an innocuous and startlingly unfunny sitcom" that "often plays like a show that was reverse-engineered around a title" and is surprisingly apolitical despite the subject matter. Variety says it's "just okay" and sometimes "buckles under the weight of its own ambition," while The Hollywood Reporter says the show "isn't close to consistent," and Consequences of Sound deems it a show "for people either desperate for new Office content, or who still find 'covfefe' funny."

Some slightly more positive reviews for Space Force were still fairly lukewarm, as IndieWire gave it a B rating while describing it as "serviceable."

This is Carell's first regular starring role in a comedy series since his departure from The Office, and it comes to Netflix as the streamer is set to lose The Office's streaming rights. Space Force is also the second Carell-starring streaming show that looked like a sure bet on paper but was met with unexpectedly mixed-to-negative reviews from critics after Apple's The Morning Show. For those interested in giving Space Force a shot, its liftoff is set for May 29. Brendan Morrow