Good morning. Welcome to Axios today. It's Thursday the 1st of October. I'm Naila Boodoo.

Here's how we're making you smarter today. COVID patients are entering Wisconsin hospitals at record rates.

Plus America's other oncoming nightmare, the election.

But first, the looming wave of airline layoffs is today's one big thing.

The travel and tourism industry has been hit hard this week. On Tuesday Disney announced a decision to lay off 28,000 people.

And today the federal stimulus plan that's providing payroll support to the airlines is set to expire.

And we're already starting to see the effects.

American Airlines was the first to announce last night

they will begin furloughing 19,000 employees today.

Joanne Mueller covers transportation for Axios.

Joanne, if Congress can't come up with an extension to this program,

what more is at stake here?

The airlines have said they will begin laying off as many as 50,000 employees, flight

attendance and pilots and ticket clerks, mechanics, operations folks.

It's very grim unless Congress comes through with an extension for that

airline payroll support program.

And how likely is that extension?

This is tied to all of the stimulus package negotiations.

There seems to be really bipartisan support for helping the airline industry stay afloat because

it's so critical to the economic recovery.

The problem is that it's getting wrapped up

in the negotiations on other relief programs.

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