You may look at your 401(k) or IRA, then the stock market, and assume that the wealthy — who own the lion's share of stock — have taken a huge hit. You would be wrong, according to a new report from the Institute for Policy Studies, a liberal think tank. Between March 18, when Forbes decided to catalog the wealth of the wealthiest, and April 10, "the combined wealth of America's billionaires increased by $282 billion," topping their 2019 levels, the report found.

The gist of Forbes' article on the world's super-rich "was, 'Hey, the pandemic is really affecting even the billionaires; their wealth is down from last year globally and in terms of the U.S.,'" study co-author Chuck Collins tells Fast Company. "What we found was, wait three weeks and they've now surpassed last year's collective wealth and now they're surging to new heights." Meanwhile, more than 26 million Americans have filed unemployment claims in the past 5 weeks and small businesses are teetering on the edge or closing up shop.

Congress expanded unemployment benefits, helping those workers able to successfully file claims with their states, and tried to help out small businesses, but many of the businesses that applied for Paycheck Protection Program loans never even got a call back from their bank before the initial $349 billion dried up. Many "small" businesses with enough money to use the private and commercial arms of major banks got "concierge treatment" from bank employees who guided their PPP applications to the front of the line, The New York Times reports, citing half a dozen bank employees and executives.

"Some of the nation's biggest banks, including JPMorgan Chase, Citibank, and U.S. Bank, prioritized the applications of their wealthiest clients before turning to other loan seekers," the Times reports. "Other business owners were left empty-handed, and many had struggled from the start" with "flaky online portals or backed-up queues." Read more about the two-tiered system at The New York Times. Peter Weber

The Federal Election Commission in a rare unanimous vote has urged Congress to ban a campaign donation tactic reportedly used by former President Donald Trump's team last year.

The FEC on Thursday unanimously voted to recommend Congress ban political campaigns from using prechecked boxes to steer supporters toward making recurring contributions by default, The New York Times reports.

"It's important that donors be able to exercise their choices freely," FEC Democratic commissioner Ellen Weintraub told the Times.
"If their money is being taken from them because of some reverse checkoff option they didn't notice, then they are not giving their money freely. It's almost like theft. I don't want to see donors tricked."

The Times previously reported that Trump's campaign in 2020 "deployed prechecked boxes to enroll every donor in weekly withdrawals — unless they unchecked the box," describing this as an "intentional scheme." The Trump operation also reportedly prechecked an additional box that doubled an individual's contribution unless it was unchecked, and they ended up having to refund over $122 million to supporters, according to the Times. This tactic has also been used by Democrats, including the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee and the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, The Hill notes.

The FEC said in its recommendation that "many contributors are unaware of the 'pre-checked' boxes and are surprised by the already completed transactions appearing on account statements." Adav Noti, who formerly served in the FEC's general counsel's office, told the Times that for the FEC's Republican and Democratic commissioners to come to a unanimous agreement on a "substantive campaign finance law" recommendation like this is "pretty rare." Brendan Morrow

Could the Friends cast have been any more miserable in that fountain?

Courteney Cox spoke with Ellen DeGeneres on Thursday about filming the famous opening credits sequence for Friends, describing it as not a particularly enjoyable experience.

"We were in that fountain for a long time," she said. "Somebody thought that would just be really fun, and let me tell you what happens: it's not fun to be dancing in a fountain for hours and hours."

The shots of the cast in the fountain apparently took so long to get, Cox recalled Matthew Perry declaring, "Can't remember a time that I wasn't in this fountain." Good luck forgetting that every time you catch a rerun from now on. It must have felt like they were in there for a day, a week, a month, or even a year.

"It was fun," Cox added, "but not really." Brendan Morrow

Twitter has brought down the ban hammer against accounts that imitated former President Donald Trump's new blog.

Twitter confirmed Thursday it has suspended @DJTDesk, an account that copied posts from Trump's web page "From the Desk of Donald J. Trump." The former president has been permanently suspended from Twitter, so the company said this account violated its policy against ban evasion.

"As stated in our ban evasion policy, we'll take enforcement action on accounts whose apparent intent is to replace or promote content affiliated with a suspended account," Twitter said, per Politico. Trump's team wasn't responsible for creating this account, The New York Post reports.

Twitter also suspended numerous other similar accounts that were sharing posts from the Trump blog, including @DJTrumpDesk, @DeskofDJT, and @DeskOfTrump1, Mashable reports.

Trump's new blog includes a feed with the former president's statements, and buttons on the side allow supporters to share them on Facebook and Twitter — even though Trump himself isn't allowed to post on either platform. According to Politico, Twitter says it's generally fine for users to share Trump's statements on their own pages as long as they don't break the platform's rules. But creating an entire account devoted to essentially replacing his is evidently a no-can-do. Brendan Morrow

The Force wasn't with Michael B. Jordan when he auditioned for Star Wars.

The actor opened up to Variety this week about once auditioning for a role in Star Wars: The Force Awakens — and completely bombing.

"I think that was probably my worst audition to date," the actor said.

Jordan explained the extreme secrecy of J.J. Abrams' film threw him off, noting that "when you're reading for these high-level projects, there's never really any specificity in the sides."

"Everything's like super vague," he said. "Everything is in secret. Reading through, I just couldn't connect it. I definitely bombed that one for sure."

The Creed star was evidently going for the role that John Boyega ended up being cast in, which IndieWire notes Tom Holland says he also failed to get. In Holland's case, he apparently couldn't stop laughing during his audition at a woman making "bleep bloop bloop" sounds while trying to act like a droid.

"I obviously didn't get the part," Holland said. "That wasn't my best moment." Brendan Morrow

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) just signed the state's restrictive new voting bill into law, but local reporters who wanted to see him do so evidently had to tune into Fox News.

The Florida governor signed the controversial new law on Thursday morning that implements new restrictions on drop boxes and requires voters to sign up for mail-in ballots more often, among other measures, Axios reports. But DeSantis received additional criticism after signing it not in front of a whole group of reporters from various outlets, but live on Fox & Friends as an exclusive to the network.

"Local media outlets told CNN that they were not allowed to go inside the morning signing event and that it was a Fox News exclusive," CNN writes. This, according to The Washington Post, "came as a surprise to local journalists, who had arrived to cover the event."

DeSantis' decision to make this bill signing a Fox exclusive drew criticism from reporters, with CBS News' Kathryn Watson writing, "If I worked at Fox, I would refuse to cover the bill signing unless all my colleagues at other outlets could. It's the right thing to do." The New York Times' Maggie Haberman also wrote, "Can't say I've ever heard of an act like a bill signing being treated like a commodity to trade with Fox."

The Society of Professional Journalists' Florida chapter also slammed the move, with its president saying, "Actions like this openly defy against a free press. We condemn DeSantis' office barring journalists from doing their job for the sake of good TV." A Fox News spokesperson in a statement said that Fox & Friends "did not request or mandate" that the governor's event or interview "be exclusive to Fox News Media entities." Brendan Morrow

CNN's Sanjay Gupta is calling out Fox News' Tucker Carlson for his latest "dangerous" vaccine comments.

Carlson during a segment on his highly-rated Fox show on Wednesday cited a federal reporting system to baselessly suggest COVID-19 vaccines could be responsible for 30 deaths in the United States every day. But PolitiFact writes that not only is this an "open system, where anyone can submit a report," but the system warns users that its reports shouldn't be used "on their own to determine whether a vaccine caused or contributed to a particular illness." Indeed, radiologist Pradheep J. Shanker writes that "the vast majority" of the complications found in the system "are likely not from the vaccine," noting, "If you had a vaccine today, and then had a heart attack unrelated to the vaccine, your death would be in" the system.

With this in mind, Gupta, CNN's chief medical correspondent, on Thursday blasted Carlson's "reckless" and "dangerous" segment and said it's "absolutely not true" that 30 people are dying from COVID-19 vaccines every day.

"It's absolutely, 100 percent false," Gupta said. "The problem is that it continues to stir up this vaccine hesitance, or outright vaccine reluctance. It is so frustrating."

Gupta, who recently revealed his uncle died from COVID-19 amid India's surge in coronavirus cases, pointed to the fact that this same reporting system found a "one-in-a-million" chance of an adverse reaction to the Johnson & Johnson vaccine as evidence the CDC isn't somehow overlooking over two dozen daily deaths from vaccines. He added that "we could be in a much better position" in the pandemic "if it were not for people like Tucker Carlson." Carlson previously drew criticism after baselessly speculating that COVID-19 vaccines might not work "and they're simply not telling you that."

CNN host John Berman put things far more bluntly, asking of Carlson, "Does he want his viewers to live?" Brendan Morrow