Welcome to Majority.FM's AM QUICKIE! Brought to you by justcoffee.coop

TODAY'S HEADLINES:

The Greater Depression keeps getting... Greater... Again. Unemployment keeps rising, and government aid isn’t coming as promised for tens of millions of Americans.

Meanwhile, inmates and immigrants in federal custody are suffering perhaps more than any other group in this pandemic. Civil rights groups warn that racist far-right think tanks are pushing the White House to let COVID-19 spread among minority and foreign-born prisoners.

And lastly, Joe Biden makes his opening bid for the support of Democratic Party progressives and Bernie Sanders’ base: two quarters, three pennies, a nickel, and some lint. Oh, and thirty-year-olds can have health care in... thirty more years.

THESE ARE THE STORIES YOU NEED TO KNOW:

The chairman of the Federal Reserve, Jerome Powell, said yesterday that America’s economy is deteriorating with alarming speed. Hey, someone noticed! At least seventeen million Americans lost their jobs in the three weeks ending last Friday. That's more than the total job losses over the two-year duration of the most recent recession. The total comes after the latest unemployment filings were announced. They showed 6.6 million new claims last week alone. And as we previously reported, the national figures are an undercount because state unemployment systems are overwhelmed. And many millions more, including children, will lose their employer-provided health insurance as a result of these layoffs. Kind of a huge problem during a pandemic!

Small businesses were supposed to be able to apply for emergency federal loans. But it’s seems very little of the $350 billion promised in a recent Congressional spending package is actually reaching small business owners. Up to $2 million was supposed to be available to borrowers, but those who can get their paperwork approved are being offered $15,000 each – not close to enough to maintain their payroll. Republicans are seeking to come to the rescue of people suffering from problems they created. And depending how Democrats respond, they may be offering ideas pilfered from Europen liberals. A GOP Senator from Missouri, Josh

Hawley, yesterday proposed a bill that would have the federal government cover up to eighty percent of worker wages for the duration of the coronavirus emergency.

Things aren’t great for those who still have jobs, either. Especially for those who can’t work from home. Eighty employees at a single Smithfield meatpacking plant in Sioux Falls, South Daokta, tested positive for the coronavirus. Sick Smithfield workers reportedly accounted for one-fifth of the cases in the state. The local paper, the Argus-Leader, says the company saw its first coronavirus case March 26. But it stayed open. Yesterday, only after state health officials held a press conference, the company said it would close the plant for three days. Speaking of meat, there is a chicken wings surplus, because March Madness has been canceled. Millions of pounds of wings could go to waste. Crops are also reportedly beginning to rot in the fields. If you know a wholesaler, or a farmer, you might be able to score a deal.

ICE policy spreading coronavirus:

As bad as coronavirus has already been for the working sick and newly unemployed, it’s a living nightmare for several million people who live and work in America’s jails and prisons. At a federal prison in Oakdale, Louisiana, where five people have died from COVID- 19, there was a riot Wednesday night, reported yesterday. Guards used chemical bullets and tear gas on prisoners, who are forced into situations with coronavirus carriers and have restricted access to medicine.

The situation may be even uglier for thousands of people, including children, in Immigration and Customs Enforcement custody. The Southern Poverty Law Center reported that far-right think-tanks have been pushing the government to keep COVID-19 sufferers in ICE detention regardless of circumstance. Unknown numbers of people in ICE concentration camps are already dying as a result of the pandemic. Now it seems the Donald Trump administration wants to make sure the deadly disease spreads among refugees, asylum seekers, and separated families who committed no crime.

The groups pushing this cruel and genocidal policy are known to be influential inside the White House, according to the civil rights group’s report. The SPLC and the American Civil Liberties Union have sought an emergency injuction in US district court in Washington, DC, seeking the release of asylum seekers. It was also reported yesterday that federal immigration authorities denied due process to at least ten thousand immigrants as a result of

the pandemic. So minorities targeted by Trump’s racist policies may face a choice: get sick and die in custody without medical treatment -- or get sick in custody, then deported, then who knows what. Some choice.

Biden pitch offends progressives:

The presumptive Democratic Party presidential nominee, Joe Biden, made what his campaign and some media reports called his first gesture for the support of progressives who supported Bernie Sanders, who ended his campaign this week. But many Sanders supporters weren’t sure if that gesture was an open hand or an extended middle finger. People really shouldn’t be shaking hands, anyway. A polite wave will suffice. Social distancing!

What was the Biden campaign’s first offering to progressives? First, lowering of the age for Medicare eligibility from sixty-five to sixty years old. Sanders campaigned on free Medicare for All, regardless of age or income. He also ran on a promise to cancel all outstanding student debt. Biden yesterday offered a student debt forgiveness plan with a major asterisk. It would cancel debt for QUOTE low-income and middle class people who have attended public colleges and universities ENDQUOTE. Historically black colleges and universities would also be included. Some economists noted that the plan would not help people who attended for- profit universities, one of the fastest-growing and most predatory areas in higher education. There are further restrictions on income and other vague caveats in the plan.

A Sanders adviser told the Washington Post that Biden’s overtures are made with good intent. And that a lot is at stake. However, don’t expect Bernie to run around touting Joe’s plans just yet. The plan is to QUOTE give them space ENDQUOTE so Biden can make his own best case. Separately, it was reported that Sanders will cover, through November, the health insurance of some five hundred campaign workers who are losing their jobs. The Sanders team will also receive salaries through the end of May. It is, of course,unclear what a dollar will buy when June finally rolls around, one thousand years from now.

AND NOW FOR SOME QUICKER QUICKIES:

For the third time since March, a member of Germany’s far-right A.F.D. party discovered that his car had caught fire. The most recent case involved a local parlimentarian for A.F.D. in Berlin. No one has been injured. The party is blaming left-wingers for the vandalism, although police have not endorsed that theory. More Volkswagen defects?

The iconic Mad Magazine cartoonist Mort Drucker died yesterday. No cause of death was reported, but he was at his home in Woodbury, New York. He was 91. Drucker grew up in Brooklyn. In addition to his instantly recognizable celebrity caricatures in Mad, he drew newspaper strips, movie posters, and books, including a few coloring books starring John F. Kennedy and Oliver North.

At least one trade war might be winding down. The oil exporters’ cartel, OPEC, along with Russia and a few other countries, reached a tentative agreement to cut production and raise oil prices. Donald Trump spoke with Russia’s Vladimir Putin and Saudi Arabia’s King Salman after that meeting, but said he didn’t know the result. Lying, or just out of the loop?

The Chinese Professional Baseball League, based in Taiwan, will be putting robot mannequins in the front row at games. You know, instead of people. The league’s season starts this week, but without spectators, on account of the plague. Congratulations to the marketing department of the Rakuten Monkeys, currently, it seems, a team without a sponsor.

That’s all for the AM Quickie. Join us this afternoon on the Majority Report.

HOSTS - Sam Seder & Lucie Steiner

WRITER - Corey Pein

PRODUCER - Dorsey Shaw

EXECUTIVE PRODUCER - Brendan Finn

Welcome to Majority.FM's AM QUICKIE! Brought to you by justcoffee.coop

TODAY'S HEADLINES:

Bernie Sanders is ending his campaign for president. Joe Biden says has work to do to earn the support of Sanders voters.

Meanwhile, federal officials are seizing shipments of medical supplies bound for state agencies and local hospitals. If anybody knows why, they aren’t saying.

And lastly, the coronavirus pandemic has helped bring an end to one of the world’s great humanitarian disasters. Saudi Arabia said it is calling off its war in Yemen.

THESE ARE THE STORIES YOU NEED TO KNOW:

The presidential primaries are effectively over. Bernie Sanders announced the end of his campaign yesterday. In a short recorded speech thanking supporters, the insurgent democratic socialist Senator from Vermont conceded the Democratic Party nomination to the establishment choice, former Vice President Joe Biden. Sanders said he saw no path to victory. Yet he will remain on the ballot in the twenty-seven states that have yet to hold primaries, in order to amass as many delegates as possible for the Democratic National Convention. The hope is to use that leverage to advance his campaign’s agenda of Medicare for All, the Green New Deal, debt cancelation, higher wages, and other policies overwhelmingly favored by younger Americans on the party platform.

Sanders called Biden a very decent man who can beat Donald Trump with a united party behind him. Biden, on Twitter, thanked and complimented Sanders as QUOTE one of the most powerful voices for change in our country ENDQUOTE. Not every Democrat who opposed Sanders was so gracious. BuzzFeed reported that a group of former Hillary Clinton staff planned a Zoom toast titled Bye-Bye Bernard to celebrate his announcement. Clinton herself had no comment. But in a cruel twist of the knife, major health insurance company stocks surged between five and ten percent following the news.

In his concession speech, Sanders said his movement has transformed American consciousness and won the ideological struggle. Sanders said, QUOTE If we don’t believe that we are entitled to health care as a human right, we will never achieve universal health

care. If we don’t believe that we are entitled to decent wages and working conditions, millions of us will continue to live in poverty... The fight for justice is what our campaign has been about. The fight for justice is what our movement remains about ENDQUOTE.

Godspeed.

STORY TWO

The official death toll across Europe surpassed sixty thousand people yesterday. The continent accounts for seventy percent of the officially recorded deaths worldwide, with Italy and Spain faring worst. Things are not going well in the USA, either. And especially not in New York and New Jersey, where nearly eight thousand people have been killed by COVID- 19 as of yesterday. That’s more deaths in two states than in the entire rest of the country.

Why? Thomas Frieden, a former head of the Centers for Disease Control as well as the New York City health department, told the New York Times that if the state and city had acted faster -- by a week or two -- it could have cut the death toll by up to eighty percent. A good share of blame falls to Governor Andrew Cuomo and Mayor Bill DeBlasio for failing to follow the lead of West Coast cities and states that were also hit early by the virus, and quickly closed schools and businesses. As New York officials dragged their feet, California and Washington State were already telling people to stay home and keep far apart from one another when in public. And now we’re digging graves in parks.

Obstruction and mismanagement from the White House certainly made things worse. ABC News revealed yesterday that a military intelligence report warned Trump’s National Security Council as early as last November about the coronavirus threat. And outright interference in state and local public health efforts may be even worse than the stories we’ve already heard about federally organized bidding wars between states and auctions for medical supplies. The Los Angeles Times reported that federal agents have been seizing large and small shipments of medical supplies destined for hospitals and public health authorities around the country, sometimes without a word of explanation. Hospital officials said it wasn’t clear whether the seized supplies were being stockpiled or distributed, or whether they’d receieve any portion of what they ordered should they need the supplies to deal with COVID-19 patients. Officials from the Federal Emergency Management Agency refused to provide any answers. Maybe they should have asked Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, the guy who has it all figured out.

STORY THREE

Here’s another story you can file under Silver Linings. After five bloody and terrible years, Saudi Arabia called a halt to its war in Yemen. Backed by the United States with military training, equipment and protection, the Saudi bombing campaign and blockade has led to the starvation of more than seventeen million people. Some thirteen thousand civilians have been killed. And millions have been made refugees.

Saudi Arabia -- a country with near-unlimited cash thanks to its oil reserves – risked little in its war. Even before yesterday’s announcement, the Saudi military was beginning to seem outmatched by untrained militia from one of the world’s poorest countries. Armed groups in Yemen received some support from Iran, while Saudi had the unflinching support of major Western powers.

Explaining their decision to call a unilateral cease-fire, Saudi officials said they hoped to advance peace talks through the United Nations. They also said they feared the conflict could spread coronavirus in Yemen, killing those who’ve survived famine and bombardment. Zero cases have been reported in Yemen, but there is virtually no testing. The Saudi elite has been hit hard by the pandemic, however, with at least one-hundred and fifty members of the royal family reported to be suffering from COVID-19. Too sick to bomb villagers? We’ll take it.

AND NOW FOR SOME QUICKER QUICKIES:

A former federal employee with a major role in the impeachment of President Bill Clinton, Linda Tripp, died yesterday at age seventy. Tripp secretly taped conversations with former White House intern Monica Lewinsky to supply evidence to Republican prosecutor Ken Starr. Lewinsky Tweeted her condolences to Tripp’s family.

Five US Senators led by Cory Booker of New Jersey wrote to the billionaire Jeff Bezos to question Amazon’s firing of a worker in the company’s Staten Island warehouse, Christian Smalls. Amazon workers are on the front-lines of the coronavirus pandemic, and Smalls helped organize a protest over conditions. The Senators’ letter called the right to organize QUOTE a bedrock of our economy, responsible for many of the greatest advances achieved by workers over generations ENDQUOTE.

Zoom, the group video-chat program many schools and companies are using during the pandemic, has had a lot of security problems lately. So many that large companies like Google and even countries like Taiwan and Germany are forbidding employees from using it. Yesterday Zoom announced a new hire to deal with these problems: the former security chief of Facebook. You know, because human beings find Mark Zuckerberg so trustworthy.

Many families are celebrating Passover via videoconference this year on account of an honest-to-God plague. May this one also end in freedom.

That’s all for the AM Quickie. Join us this afternoon on the Majority Report.

HOSTS - Sam Seder & Lucie Steiner

WRITER - Corey Pein

PRODUCER - Dorsey Shaw

EXECUTIVE PRODUCER - Brendan Finn

Welcome to Majority.FM's AM QUICKIE! Brought to you by justcoffee.coop

TODAY'S HEADLINES:

Doctors and hospital officials across the United States begin making decisions about whose lives to save as the COVID-19 toll climbs higher. In the United Kingdom, it’s still not totally clear who is in charge as Prime Minister Boris Johnson remains in intensive care with breathing problems.

Meanwhile, amid fears of deadly contagion, Wisconsin – or some of it -- went to the polls. Who won? Who knows! Can we call it a real election? Let’s consult the Magic Eight Ball.

And lastly, the pandemic economy has hit the oil and gas business harder than most. Which could be, belive it or not, good news for renewable energy projects.

THESE ARE THE STORIES YOU NEED TO KNOW:

The US reported its largest one-day total of deaths due to coronavirus so far: more than eighteen hundred people. And that’s not including a number of states that had yet to report statistics last night. America’s worse-than-useless president said QUOTE our strategy is totally working... I will protect you ENDQUOTE_._ If you believe that, Donald Trump has a miracle cure to sell you.

Speaking of which: Surpise, surprise! It turns out there were some problems with the French research on the malaria drug Trump has been pushing as a COVID-19 treatment, hydroxychloroquine (HI-DROXIE-CHLOR-O-QUEEN). Bottom line, as the Guardian reported: the one hundred percent cure rate claimed on Fox News for this drug is false.

Rationing and triage in American hospitals is inevitable, the Washington Post reported, based on interviews with doctors and administrators around the country. This means that doctors -- and their employers – are now be making decisions about who gets access to life-saving equipment, and who gets left to die. Most jurisdictions are likely to prioritize pregnant women. Some may give preference to medical workers on the grounds that they can help save others. Some are debating whether to give preference to politicians, police and other officials. The elderly and disabled don’t carry a lot of weight with the people who will make these decisions, the Post reported. And then there is the matter of who can afford treatment. In the absence of

federal leadership, corporations will be deciding who lives and dies. These questions are hugely political. They are no longer theoretical. And they’re not confined to the United States.

In the United Kingdom, conservative Prime Minister Boris Johnson entered his second night in the intensive care unit of a public hospital. Johnson was immediately put on oxygen when he arrived, and more than twenty-four hours later is still having trouble breathing. The latest word was, the prime minister may be in line for a ventilator. His friends and associates told the British press he thought disease was for the weak and believed himself largely immune to infection. Johnson left his foreign secretary, Dominic Raab, in charge. But the Cabinet will not, or cannot, say who among them has the launch codes to the country’s nuclear weapons. Blimey!

Some encouraging news, from Wuhan, the Chinese city where COVID-19 was first detected: train service resumed for the first time since the government imposed a strict lockdown in late January. That’s eleven weeks, for those of you still able to comprehend time.

STORY TWO

Against the best advice of pretty much everyone in a position to give it, including the governor, the state of Wisconsin held an election yesterday. It was – predictably! -- a farce. Only five polling locations – out of one-hundred and eighty – were open in Milwaukee, a city of six hundred thousand people. Lines stretched on for hours in some places. As well as a farce, it was a spectacle. A Republican election official appeared on television to tell people it was safe to come out and vote. He was covered, head to toe, in protective gear – masks, gloves, a gown, the whole shebang. Easy for you to say, guy! Most poll workers – and voters -- had far less protection.

When the US Supreme Court overruled Wisconsin’s own governor and lower federal district judges to ensure the election proceeded on its pre-pandemic schedule, their order allowed for delayed reporting of the results. At least, that’s what state election officials determined. So we probably won’t know who won until next Monday, April 13. There were no exit polls. Turnout stands to be low. Biden is likely to win. Sanders suspended his get out the vote efforts.

Biden wanted the vote to proceed on schedule, as did Republicans, who were hoping to win a powerful state judgeship. Sanders joined local Democratic officials, as well as election integrity advocates in calling for delays and adjustments in light of the pandemic. Whatever

the result for the Democratic primary, the Supreme Court’s intervention in Wisconsin means it matters for the general election. Responding to reports of long lines and voter suppression, vote-by-mail advocate Senator Ron Wyden of Oregon said, QUOTE this cannot happen in November ENDQUOTE. He is pushing for nationwide vote-by-mail to be included in the next COVID-19 relief bill. In another ludicrous press conference last night, Trump called vote-by- mail corrupt, even though he recently voted by mail in Florida. Make of that what you will.

Also yesterday, Biden got a formal endorsement from influential Georgia Democratic Congressman and civil rights leader John Lewis. And before the polls closed in Wisconsin, Sanders held an online panel discussion on why the coronavirus is hitting African-American communities harder, and what to do about it.

STORY THREE

Despite the best efforts of the Republican Party and the failing global oil and gas industry, the US is on track for record renewable energy usage this year. That’s according to a forecast cited a New York Times report on the collapsing fossil fuels business. If the Greater Depression has a silver lining, it may be the end of the oil-powered economy.

Fossil fuels took an even bigger dive than the rest of the stock market since the coronavirus basically shut down the global economy. But renewable energy sources are likely to expand their share of the energy market this year, despite the overall economic stagnation. This year, renewables will account for more than twenty percent of US electricity consumption for the first time, the Times reported.

In some markets, including California and Texas, electricity from wind and solar is cheaper than from coal and natural gas – even after oil prices tanked. And the federal government has declared electricity production an essential activity, so even in states whose governors have ordered construction to be paused, new solar and wind projects can move forward.

And the sooner the better: a new study linked air pollution to places hit harder by coronavirus.

AND NOW FOR SOME QUICKER QUICKIES:

The world’s largest facial recognition company, Clearview A.I. employed a number of alt-right and neo-Nazi extremists, according to a Huffington Post immigration. Clearview contracts with law enforcement and immigration agencies and the far-right employees may have had access to inside information on police and intelligence investigations. The company was backed by Trump’s biggest booster in Silicon Valley, Facebook investor Peter Thiel.

Trump’s acting Navy secretary, Thomas Modly, resigned yesterday and was replaced in his musical chair by an undersecretary from the Army. This was after a recording emerged of Modly being heckled on a call with sailors from a nuclear carrier who were exposed to COVID-19. Their former captain, Brett Crozier, was fired for trying to get them treated onshore. Modly called Crozier stupid and naive. Famous last words!

Trump signed an executive order this week laying claim to resources on asteroids in space, as well as on the moon, for American corporations. The order may contradict existing international treaties. Last person off the planet loses!

The Spanish social democratic government will be permanently expanding unemployment benefits in response to the coronavirus. Some reports called it a universal basic income program but that’s not quite right – only the poorest will benefit from the new monthly payments, and those who’ve been thrown out of work during the nationwide lockdown. Still, it’s a lot more than we’re getting.

That’s all for the AM Quickie. Join us this afternoon on the Majority Report.

HOSTS - Sam Seder & Lucie Steiner

WRITER - Corey Pein

PRODUCER - Dorsey Shaw

EXECUTIVE PRODUCER - Brendan Finn

Welcome to Majority.FM's AM QUICKIE! Brought to you by justcoffee.coop

TODAY'S HEADLINES:

The Supreme Court, in a dramatic, overtly partisan decision, voted 5-4 to void thousands of mail-in ballots in Wisconsin’s election today, which is still somehow going on, which the dissenting court members said would result in quote “massive disenfranchisement.”

Meanwhile, Donald Trump continues to push the unapproved malaria drug hydroxychloroquine as a cure for coronavirus. And would you look at that: several Republican megadonors and Trump himself have financial stake in companies that manufacture it.

And lastly, a tiny shred of hope in New York City: data released by the Governor’s office suggests that the city’s monumental death and hospitalization rates may be flattening out. Make no mistake, an obscene amount of people are still sick and dying, but there are signs that eventually, conditions will improve.

THESE ARE THE STORIES YOU NEED TO KNOW:

Wisconsin’s election today is still dangerous disarray.

The only safe option is to shut down and postpone the vote, but the time for that has passed, and what happens now will almost certainly leave the state’s voters worse off than they were before.

Yesterday, Governor Tony Evers made the brave call to try to unilaterally shut down the election, which is almost certain to exacerbate the state’s coronavirus epidemic, as Wisconsin voters try to pack into a fraction of the number of usual polling stations. But the conservative-controlled State Supreme Court overturned his executive order and is forcing the election to proceed as planned.

To make matters worse, applications for mail-in ballots have been surging as the pandemic spreads, and the state can’t keep up -- leaving tens of thousands of voters without a ballot today, on election day.

To account for this, a federal district court ordered the state to extend the absentee ballot deadline to April so that voters who waited for late mail-in ballots could still vote, even past election day. That decision made it all the way to the Federal Supreme Court, where the conservatives… shot it down.

The Supreme Court’s decision is shocking, because it’s pretty much just blatant voter suppression. As Ruth Bader Ginsberg noted in her dissent, the move will undoubtedly result in quote “massive disenfranchisement.” Endquote.

The irony of it all? One of the key seats up for grabs in the election today is a State Supreme Court post. And instead of a free and fair election, we have an ugly mess.

Stop me if this seems far-fetched: the President of the united states has a vested financial interest in the future of the un-proven malaria drug he’s been publicly touting at every possible opportunity for weeks?

Sound plausible to you? Well, you’re right! It’s real!

The New York Times reported on Monday that Trump has a financial stake in Sanofi, the French drug company that makes Plaquenil, otherwise known as hydroxychloroquine. One of Sanofi’s largest shareholders is a Republican megadonor as well. Who would have thought!

And it goes deeper than that. New reporting by the investigative crew at Sludge shows that the Conservative dark money groups propping up hydroxychloroquine in a surge of digital ads are being funded by some of the U.S.’s biggest drug manufacturers, who all stand to gain if the country starts using the drug widely.

The Times reports that another domestic drug manufacturer that plans to start making the drug is run by one of Trump’s golfing buddies. They’re really not subtle about all this.

And a just as a reminder: we don’t know for sure if hydroxychloroquine works, and we do know that it can have some pretty serious side-effects. But that has in no way stopped Trump from talking about it every chance he gets. At least now we know why he’s so gung-ho about it!

New York City has had a rough go of it in the past few weeks, but there are some signs that this particularly bleak spell may not last forever.

For days, the daily death toll in New York has been climbing steadily. But over the weekend, it appeared to level out, based on new data from the Governor’s office.

There were 594 and 599 deaths on Sunday and Monday, respectively, keeping the daily toll below 600 for two days in a row.

Hospitalizations are still up, but the rate of new people being admitted only grew by 2 percent, as opposed to recent days when the rate jumped 20 or 30 percent every day.

The end result of this is that there are still a lot of people who are very very sick, and a lot of people who will get sick soon. But the insane rate that the New York City epidemic was growing at appears to have slowed down somewhat, which may give the city a chance to breathe again if hospitals can catch up to their massive caseloads.

When that will be is still unclear, but the numbers right now could be a lot worse.

AND NOW FOR SOME QUICKER QUICKIES:

The first prisoner at RIkers island has died of COVID-19. His name was Michael Tyson. He had been there for a month on the pointless charge of violating his parole. There was no reason for him to be in prison, and now he’s dead.

China reported no new COVID-19 deaths for the first time today. It wouldn’t be unlike the Chinese government to fib on the numbers, but the country is showing other promising signs: on Wednesday, the city of Wuhan is set to allow people to leave the city for the first time since January.

The Supreme Court ruled that police officers can stop cars just on suspicion if the registered owner of the car’s license has been suspended. In other words, a whole lot of family members could get pulled over if their vehicle’s owner has a suspended license, even if their license is just fine.

Police in New Jersey broke up a loud party of over 30 individuals, all allegedly in their 40s and 50s, who were gathered at a home where the homeowner and a friend were performing Pink Floyd songs in violation of the state’s ban on large gatherings. As officers broke up the party, the duo was midway through “Wish You Were Here,” prompting one attendee to shout quote “welcome to Nazi Germany.”

That's all for today's AM Quickie. Tune into the Majority Report live today at noon, or later as a podcast!

HOSTS - Sam Seder & Lucie Steiner

WRITER - Jack Crosbie

PRODUCER - Dorsey Shaw

EXECUTIVE PRODUCER - Brendan Finn

Welcome to Majority.FM's AM QUICKIE! Brought to you by justcoffee.coop

TODAY'S HEADLINES:

The Trump Administration has been busy trying to slip a whole handful of draconian laws and decisions under the radar while the country is distracted by the deadly epidemic. We’ve got a rundown of what you might have missed.

Meanwhile, the Wisconsin primaries are in turmoil, as Republicans in the state legislature refuse to advance bills to shift to a vote-by-mail system, which could force thousands out of their homes to vote in person, risking exposure to the virus.

And lastly, the Supreme Court gave the final go-ahead to a novel democracy voucher program in Seattle that could break the grip that dark money has on our politics.

THESE ARE THE STORIES YOU NEED TO KNOW:

STORY ONE

The news for weeks has been all about the coronavirus epidemic sweeping the nation, and rightly so.

But during the national crisis, the Trump administration’s efforts to make everything else worse have not slowed down. Here’s a short rundown on what they’ve tried to slip under the radar in just the past few days.

On Friday night, Trump fired Michael Atkinson, the intelligence community inspector general who first tipped off Congress about the whistleblower complaint that eventually led to impeachment. In a letter to Congress, Trump wrote that he no longer had confidence in Atkinson, which makes sense, seeing as Atkinson did his job properly, which is not a trait Trump likes in his civil servants.

Next up, the Trump-controlled National Labor Relations Board finalized a rule late last week that critics think could make unionizing quote “nearly impossible for workers” endquote.

The rule change effectively makes it so a minority of workers could mess with union election results or decertify a newly-formed union, even if the majority of employees want to organize. Considering organized labor is one of the only safeguards against predatory capitalism amidst a global recession this… doesn’t look good!

Trump rounded out the week by nominating two hard-right, quote “anti-healthcare” endquote judges to lifetime seats on the country’s appellate courts.

And finally, after all that, Trump is still determined to play warmonger.

Per a new report by the Guardian, Trump’s state department is still determined to withdraw from the Open Skies Treaty, which lets nations do routine surveillance flights over each others borders as a way to increase transparency between rival powers.

Just what we need right now -- more international tension!

STORY TWO:

Wisconsin is supposed to hold a primary election on Tuesday, which is probably the worst possible idea as the coronavirus epidemic continues to spread through the country.

The state’s Democratic governor, Tony Evers wants to postpone the election and switch to a safe vote-by-mail system, but Republicans in the statehouse refuse to bring the issue to a vote. And so far, Evers seems unwilling to force the issue, telling reporters on Saturday that he wouldn’t take further action to block the election.

And make no mistake, holding an in-person election right now is a dangerous thing. An infections disease expert told the Cleveland Plain Dealer that Michigan’s in-person primary earlier in March may be partially responsible for that state’s high rate of infections.

Back in Wisconsin, mayors of the state’s largest cities wrote to Evers, begging him to stop the election and protect their constituents.

Politico notes that Evers would face a pretty big political fight if he did try to step in: unilaterally cancelling the election would probably make Republicans take the issue to the State Supreme Court.

Some may argue that spending all your political capital is worth it if it means you save lives, but that’s not really how politicians think. We’ll see what kind of person Evers is.

STORY THREE:

There is some good news on the non-pandemic front, however. The U.S. Supreme Court has effectively given the green light to a Seattle program to use property taxes to give every resident a $100 coupon they could use to donate to local political candidates of their choice.

The program is a fantastic way to shore up local candidates and counteract the effects of special interests and dark money in politics, giving poor residents some measure of political power and agency.

Unfortunately, it immediately came under fire, as two land-owners, backed by a right-wing legal organization, sued the city, saying that the voucher program could force property owners to indirectly support candidates they don’t like.

The case, Elster v Seattle, made it all the way to the Supreme Court, which on Friday declined to hear it, effectively stopping it in its tracks. The Supreme Court noted that tax dollars indirectly going to another candidate through a public financing program did not constitute as compelling the plaintiff’s free speech.

That means Seattle’s groundbreaking program, first passed in 2015, is pretty much good to go, and will be used again in the 2020 campaign cycle.

AND NOW FOR SOME QUICKER QUICKIES:

Remember the tenuous Afghan peace deal with the Taliban? Well, it looks to be in danger again, as the Taliban accuse the U.S. of continuing drone strikes and the Afghan government of delaying a prisoner swap. Meanwhile, the Taliban continues to attack Afghan government forces, so clearly everything is going very well.

United Kingdom Prime Minister Boris Johnson has been hospitalized with COVID-19, after battling the disease for 10 days. The announcement was made shortly after the Queen made a rare televised speech reassuring the nation that the crisis would pass.

Amazon workers in Chicago are organizing an upstart protest campaign like the workers in Staten Island, pushing the company for better protections for workers and a temporary shutdown at the facility, which has seen two confirmed cases so far. To keep themselves safe, they’re picketing in their cars.

The U.S. is assigning the label of terrorist to a white nationalist group based in Russia. While it’s an important step to broaden the definition of terorrism from “groups of brown people we don’t like,” the government could look a whole lot closer to home than Russia if it’s trying to find white nationalist terror organizations.

HOSTS - Sam Seder & Lucie Steiner

WRITER - Jack Crosbie

PRODUCER - Dorsey Shaw

EXECUTIVE PRODUCER - Brendan Finn

Welcome to Majority.FM's AM QUICKIE! Brought to you by justcoffee.coop

TODAY'S HEADLINES:

New federal numbers released Thursday show that 6.6 million people have applied for unemployment in the past two weeks. The recession we were all afraid of? It’s here, but it hit so fast we’ve barely begun to feel the pain.

Meanwhile, Amazon fires, then smears a worker who organized a walkout at its Staten Island facility over the company’s negligence toward employee safety during the coronavirus panic, according to leaked documents obtained by Vice News.

And lastly, those $1,200 checks from the government everyone is expecting? Well, we might have to wait a little longer. Sorry, I mean a LOT longer -- officials are now saying some Americans might not see the cash for five months.

THESE ARE THE STORIES YOU NEED TO KNOW:

Yesterday we talked a bit about how the government’s unemployment numbers undersold the real impact of the coronavirus panic. Well today, the new numbers are in, and they’re underselling it quite a bit less.

Take this number: 6.6 million people out of work in a week, and that may just be the tip of the iceberg.

According to the Labor Department’s latest numbers, released Thursday, roughly 6,648,000 people have filed for unemployment in the last week alone. Combined with over three million who filed the week before, that’s almost ten million Americans who have recently lost their job.

That blows every record we’ve got for unemployment claims out of the water by a factor of 10 -- the most claims in a week before this was 695,000 in 1982.

And again, those numbers don’t even count all the people who lost their jobs but were ineligible for benefits, or who tried to file and were turned away or just simply unsuccessful because unemployment offices were too full to see them.

Landlords across the country still collected rent in April, but we’re only just beginning to feel the pain of all of these losses. Come May, the country could be at a breaking point, and the $1200 checks Trump has promised will be far too little, far too late.

At Amazon, one brave warehouse worker tried to force the company to change -- and he paid the price. On Tuesday, Amazon fired Chritian Smalls, a worker at its Staten Island facility, after Smalls organized a widespread walkout on Monday to protest the company’s insufficient response to the coronavirus pandemic.

Smalls led the walkout after seeing first hand the company’s lack of protective equipment for employees, and urged the company to close the plant after a coworker tested positive for the disease.

Instead, Amazon fired him, claiming that he repeatedly broke “social distancing” rules and returned to the plant after he had been quarantined for coming into contact with the infected employee.

Smalls says he was one of many workers who came in contact with the employee, but was singled out because he was pleading with management to sanitize the warehouse.

But on Thursday, Amazon’s paid army of PR goons jumped all over Smalls, spinning the story so that he was the villain and placing as much of the focus on him as possible for reasons that smack directly of racism.

Vice News obtained leaked notes from an Amazon executives meeting, where General Counsel David Zapolsky said Smalls, a black man, was QUOTE “not smart, or articulate,” ENDQUOTE and urged other execs to make Smalls QUOTE “the face of the entire union/organizing movement.” ENDQUOTE.

Racism and capitalism, two disgusting peas in a pod.

The government has very bad news for the presumably millions of Americans banking on a $1200 check from the Federal government to get them through April: sorry, but the check’s going to be a little bit late.

NBC News got their hands on a memo circulated on the House Ways and Means Committee this week, which reports that Americans who already have direct deposit information on file with the IRS will probably get their money by around April 13. But the memo also shows that everyone else is about to get screwed.

If you’re waiting for a paper check, the memo says the government won’t even start sending out the money until the week of May 4th. But the office that handles those checks can only process 20 million a week, which means some of us could be waiting as long as 20 weeks, or five months, to see a check from Uncle Sam.

I’d be shocked -- shocked -- if the corporations who will benefit from the stimulus’ bills’ $500 billion slush fund have to wait that long to get their money. But hey, priorities, right?

AND NOW FOR SOME QUICKER QUICKIES:

The U.S. Navy fired the commander of the U.S.S Roosevelt after he pleaded with his superiors to evacuate the ship amid a coronavirus outbreak on board. For the crime of trying to save his sailors’ lives, the Navy says they lost confidence in him as a leader.

Elon Musk garnered quite a bit of good will and cheer when he announced he’d bought 1,255 ventilators from China and brought them to the U.S. to donate to needy hospitals in major cities. But according to the Financial Times, what he bought were CPAP and BIPAP sleep apnea machines, which are technically ventilators, but not the type that doctors desperately need, and that cost a fraction of the price.

The USNS Comfort, a massive hospital ship that sailed into New York to help the city’s already-slammed hospitals: So far, it’s taken on just 20 patients. Not exactly the most efficient use of space.

And finally, mortgage lenders are preparing for the worst crisis in modern history as the economic wreckage of the coronavirus epidemic could make defaults pile up far faster than they did in 2008, according to new analysis by Moody’s Analytics.

That’s it for the Majority Report’s AM Quickie today. Make sure to catch the full show later today.

HOSTS - Sam Seder & Lucie Steiner

WRITER - Jack Crosbie

PRODUCER - Dorsey Shaw

EXECUTIVE PRODUCER - Brendan Finn

Welcome to Majority.FM's AM QUICKIE! Brought to you by justcoffee.coop

TODAY'S HEADLINES:

Military and intelligence agencies warned three years ago about the dangers of a new viral pandemic, and guess what the White House did? The answer starts with N and ends with O_t-A-Goddamn-Thing_.

Meanwhile, it seems like the Democratic National Convention won’t happen as scheduled. But party officials haven’t yet come up with a Plan B, and people are getting agitated.

And lastly, the record unemployment claims don’t capture how bad the economic picture really is. As for those $1,200 stimulus checks: turns out there’s some fine print there, too.

THESE ARE THE STORIES YOU NEED TO KNOW:

Donald Trump keeps saying nobody could have known how bad it would be. That’s a lie. A classified 2017 report given to The Nation magazine by a Pentagon official warned that new, highly contagious respiratory diseases were among the most likely and significant threats the country could face. Military planners and intelligence agencies have been warning White House officials about coronaviruses, specifically, for at least five years. The 103-page plan anticipated a shortage of hospital beds and medical ventilators, along with protective gear – all of which is now in desperately short supply. The Pentagon report was not the first clear warning that Trump ignored. But of course he is blaming everyone else for the consequences of his own catastrophic negligence. In short, the problem was not that Trump and his people weren’t warned about this pandemic – it’s that they didn’t listen.

Let it not be said that the ruling Republicans have done nothing. They’ve done a lot worse than nothing. Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, who has be acting as a de facto White House chief of staff, was apparently the one who decided to punish New York state for disloyalty. New York is so far the hardest-hit place in the country for COVID-19 cases. Vanity Fair reported yesterday that Kushner believed New York Governor Andrew Cuomo was being alarmist when he requested thirty thousand additional ventilators. Kushner said, according tothe magazine, QUOTE I have all this data about I.C.U. capacity. I’m doing my own projections, and I’ve gotten a lot smarter about this. New York doesn’t need all the ventilators

ENDQUOTE. Days later, Trump made similar comments in an interview with his advisor and booster Sean Hannity on Fox News.

Separately, Congressman Adam Schiff of California, who led the House impeachment, wants to set up a special commission to investigate the coronavirus response. No details yet other than it would be bipartisan. Certainly there’s plenty to investigate.

Democratic Party officials are grappling with a big problem: when, where, and how to hold the party’s national convention.

Currently scheduled for mid-July in Milwaukie, Wisconsin, more delegates and party leaders – including the presidential front-runner, Joe Biden -- are saying the event should be canceled, because restrictions on travel and large public gatherings will make holding a traditional convention impossible. This is a big deal because the convention is where the party will pick its nominee for president. Although former Vice President Biden holds a sizable delegate lead over his opponen, Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders, nothing is a done deal until the convention. But as CBS News reported yesterday, delegates are growing frustrated that contingency plans are not being made quickly enough. Many have already canceled flghts. All are waiting on guidance from top party officials like DNC chairman Tom Perez. Patience is wearing thin.

Yesterday the Sanders campaign requested that the upcoming Wisconsin primary, scheduled for April 7, should be postponed. The campaign’s statement called on Wisconsin to join fifteen other states in delaying their primary elections, and joined with growing calls for a complete transition to a vote-by-mail system on account of the coronavirus pandemic. A national new survey of nearly two thousand respondents showed support for Sanders’ signature policy, Medicare for All, at a nine-month high. The new Morning Consult poll showed support for single-payer healthcare growing fastest among independents.

Also yesterday, Sanders said Trump’s inaction has cost the lives of many, many Americans. And Biden, who has said he would wait and see how Trump performed in the crisis, responded to a demand by Trump spokeswoman Kellyanne Conway that he call the WhiteHouse and offer his support. How did Biden respond? By offering to call the White House and give Trump his advice. The White House did not respond publicly to Biden’s offer.

Americans are acting out on their pandemic fears in the same way they tend to grapple with many other anxieties: by loading up on guns. The Guardian reported that over 3.7 million background checks for firearm sales were conducted by the Federal Bureau of Investigation last month. It was the highest number on record – and up by one million in March over February. Unemployment claims are hitting record levels, too. And according to Politico, the hodgepodge of state systems for processing benefits is overwhelmed. The computer systems in Michigan crashed this week. California is experiencing major delays. And some in New York have been forced to call hundreds of times before getting through to a human being. What this means: last week’s record numbers, of nearly 3.3 million new unemployment claims, were too low. States are actually receving more claims than the US Labor Department was able to record and report. So much like coronavirus cases and casualties, the official numbers don’t reflect reality. The reality is worse.

Also yesterday the Washington Post reported that at least 15 million Americans on Social Security will not receive $1,200 stimulus checks they were promised, because like many people, they didn’t make enough money to file a tax return. Most high school seniors and college students won’t get money either, because children over age sixteen were specifically excluded from the bill passed by Congress.

Elsewhere: Italy is extending its national lockdown. Spain reported a new spike in cases. Russia is declaring an emergency, and officials in Moscow want to introduce a mandatory surveillance app for infected people.

Turkmenistan banned the word coronavirus. People who talk about it, or who wear face masks, could be arrested. Bosnia is forcing thousands of refugees into camps. India is undergoing the largest internal migration since the end of British rule, with millions of hungry people fleeing cities on foot. In the United Kingdom, only thirty ventilators were delivered as promised by manufacturers this week. The government promised eight thousand.

AND NOW FOR SOME QUICKER QUICKIES:

Donald Trump threatened Iran, Venezuela, and Mexico yesterday, possibly to distract from his other failures. But Iran, at least, isn’t taking chances. A top Iranian general, and the successor to Qassim Soleimani – assassinated on Trump’s orders this year – visited Baghdad to try to build alliances among the ruling factions. Reports indicate that if Trump’s act of war accomplished anything, it was to increase Iranian influence in Iraq.

With a few exceptions, yesterday’s annual online April Fools’ Day festivites were canceled, according to the Washington Post. Major brands like Google and T-Mobile canceled their promotional pranks. Did anyone miss them? It’s true, there’s no going back to normal.

A new study in the journal Nature by German and British researchers confirmed that the icy continent of Antartica used to be covered in a great rainforest. Granted, this was when dinosaurs roamed the earth. The new findings come from core samples drilled out of Antarctic glaciers that are now rapidly melting due to human-caused climate change. They found roots and pollen down there. Maybe a few missing socks, too.

The US Census began yesterday. The sooner you fill it out, the less likely it is that a worker will be dispatched to knock on your door during the pandemic. There are no questions about immigration status. The population count is used to decide how many members of Congress each state gets. It’s important! Go to My 2020 Census dot gov if you didn’t get a form.

That’s all for the AM Quickie. Join us this afternoon on the Majority Report.

HOSTS - Sam Seder & Lucie Steiner

WRITER - Corey Pein

PRODUCER - Dorsey Shaw

EXECUTIVE PRODUCER - Brendan Finn

Welcome to Majority.FM's AM QUICKIE! Brought to you by justcoffee.coop

TODAY'S HEADLINES:

Donald Trump says maybe one or two hundred thousand Americans will die from COVID-19 in the weeks ahead. And for this, you should thank him.

Meanwhile, New York institutions are struggling to cope with pandemic casualties, and those yet to come. Elsewhere, corporations are imposing censorship on front-line workers.

And lastly, a Trump ally in Europe seizes absolute power with the blessing of a captive opposition. But will neighboring countries go along with the fascist power grab in Hungary?

THESE ARE THE STORIES YOU NEED TO KNOW:

The US government expects up to a quarter million will die of COVID-19 in the weeks and months ahead – and that’s the goal. Depending on what states and cities do, the death toll could rise into the millions. This is according to the federal government, which under Trump has all but completely abrogated its responsibility to coordinate a pandemic response.

In another briefing yesterday evening with Vice President Mike Pence and public health officials, Trump tried to portray himself as the last reasonable Republican. He now says coronavirus is a grave threat, and he alone has been pushing for concerted action. But one month ago he was calling the pandemic a Democratic hoax – fake news. A week ago he was saying he wanted to have this whole thing wrapped and people going back to work by Easter. Now he says he expects hundreds of thousands to perish, and more if they don’t do what he says. So it’s a safe bet that the official casualty counts will rise further.

In reality, Trump is still denying aid to states based on how nice their governors play with his insane demands. Florida, and its Trump-friendly governor, Ron DeSantis, reportedly received one-hundred percent of its first two requests for federal aid. DeSantis has still failed to announce a stay-home order. State officials from around the country reported disastrous interactions with the Federal Emergency Management Agency and other agencies run by

Trump appointees. By Trump’s own admission, politics and his own whim influence who gets aid. But states also reported chaos and general disarray. For instance, North Carolina requestsed five hundred thousand medical coveralls and recieved just over three hundred. Oklahoma asked for sixteen thousand face shields and for some reason was sent one- hundred and twenty thousand. New York wants thirty thousand ventilators and got fewer than five thousand. Governor Andrew Cuomo compared the process of states acquiring emergency medical gear to bidding against each other on eBay. And, he said, FEMA is outbidding states on the private market. Massachussetts Senator Elizabeth Warren confirmed her state is having the same problem and called the federal actions inexplicable and unacceptable. Last night, Trump himself said he decided some states don’t need as much medical equipment as they say they do. Also yesterday, the White House decided not to re- open Obamacare enrollment to millions of uninsured Americans during the pandemic. So when the new official death estimates turn out to be far too low, everyone should know who to blame: Trump, and every one of his supporters.

STORY TWO

There’s more grim news from New York, especially Rikers Island – which may have one of the highest concentration of COVID-19 cases in the world. The Intercept reported that city officials are offering inmates $6 an hour to dig mass graves for victims of the pandemic. Elsewhere around the city, residents reported freezer trucks parked near hospitals taking and storing bodies until they can be taken away to funerary rites. Similar scenes will no doubt be coming to other parts of the country soon.

The Pentagon ordered commanders of military bases to stop reporting coronavirus case numbers. The captain of a nuclear aircraft carrier, the Theodore Roosevelt, docked in Guam, sent a letter to superiors in Washington begging for assistance, according to the San Francisco Chronicle. Coronavirus has been spreading among the crew of four thousand sailors, and the outbreak is worsening as the government has failed to provide quarantine facilities on shore. Captain Brett Crozier wrote QUOTE We are not at war. Sailors do not need to die ENDQUOTE. Yesterday Trump’s Defense Secretary, Mark Esper, said he had not read the letter.

Hospitals around the United States are threatening to fire doctors, nurses, and other front-line workers who speak up about their working conditions and what they are witnessing during the pandemic. Some who’ve shared their stories on social media or with news reporters have already faced reprisals, others say they are being warned by management on a daily basis not to tell the truth. And people are still complaining about China’s authoritarian response!

STORY THREE

One day after the fascist Hungarian Prime Minister and Trump ally Viktor Orban seized total dictatorial power under the guise of an emergency decree, there were stirrings of discontent in European institutions. Luxemboug representatives said Hungary needed to be, in their words, politically quarantined from European Union meetings. But it is unclear whether the EU as a body will take any formal action against Hungary. The new dictatorship is also a member of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, a mutual defense pact that includes the US – for now. Both NATO and the EU consider democratic governance and respect for human rights as an entrance requirement. We’ll see how that holds up.

On Monday, Hungary’s parliament passed a law giving Orban the right to rule by decree for the duration of an indefinite state of emergency, already declared in response to coronavirus earlier last month. The law allows the new fascist dictator to put people in prison for up to five years for spreading what they deem to be fake news. And for encouraging people to ignore curfews, Orban’s flunkies may impose prison terms of eight years. The groundwork for this power grab was laid years ago, with dissidents attacked and independent media organizations suppressed. When the vote was taken this week, even the so-called opposition parties supported the imposition of dictatorship. Whatever this is, let’s hope it isn’t contagious.

AND NOW FOR SOME QUICKER QUICKIES:

Vermont Senator and presidential candidate Bernie Sanders yesterday demanded answers from Trump’s Postmaster General, Megan Brennan, over reports of dangerous conditions for postal workers during the pandemic. Another report indicated that the US Postal Service could run out of cash and cease operations by June without federal action. Sanders is scheduled to appear on ABC’s The View today, but who knows what they’ll talk about.

Former employees of the Mike Bloomberg for President campaign told reporters their final paychecks came yesterday and had been docked by as much as $800. The reason? The campaign the deductions went to cover taxes on company-issued laptops and smartphones. More inspiring leadership from the billionaire former Republican mayor of New York City.

Last week, Trump pal, the South Carolina Republican Senator Lindsay Graham, threatened to sink a stimulus bill because he didn’t want workers to get unemployment benefits. Yesterday it emerged that the interfered in a State Department funding bill to ensure that Egypt was not held accountable for the medical bills of April Corley, an American tourist critically wounded by a military helicopter that strafed her bus by mistake. The US had sold the helicopter to Egypt. Graham’s office said he wants to preserve that relationship.

Exerpts are hitting the news from a new book by one of the lawyers in a twelve-year legal battle against the late sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein. The laywer, Brad Edwards, represented one of Epstein’s many victims, and his book contains new details about the career criminal’s associates with Trump, Bill Clinton, and others. Most intriguing: when Epstein in jail in Florida, he sent his Russian bodyguard to a week-long training course at Central Intelligence Agency headquarters in Virginia. Probably just normal stuff!

That’s all for the AM Quickie. Join us this afternoon on the Majority Report.

HOSTS - Sam Seder & Lucie Steiner

WRITER - Corey Pein

PRODUCER - Dorsey Shaw

EXECUTIVE PRODUCER - Brendan Finn

Welcome to Majority.FM's AM QUICKIE! Brought to you by justcoffee.coop

TODAY'S HEADLINES:

The working people of America have enough of the craven corporate response to the coronavirus panic. Machinists at GM demand to make ventilators, Amazon workers walk out on the job, and gig workers quit delivering groceries until their bosses show them some respect.

Meanwhile, new data suggests that the social restrictions recommended by experts and derided by Trump are working. Who would have thought? Besides nearly every expert, that is.

And lastly, social networks may finally be growing a spine when it comes to banning conspiracies and lies, even when they come from top government officials. But will Trump ever get the block he deserves?

THESE ARE THE STORIES YOU NEED TO KNOW:

Something is happening in America, and it’s starting in warehouse aisles, customer service cubicles and factory floors.

Workers at Amazon, Instacart, General Motors and more all staged strikes, protests, sick-outs or work-stoppages on Monday to fight back against their corporate bosses’ negligent response to the coronavirus.

On Monday, many of Instacart’s nationwide network of grocery delivery drivers, who are classified as contractors for the company and not employees, walked off the job. They’re asking for hazard pay on deliveries and free safety equipment.

The same day, workers at Staten Island’s Amazon Fulfillment center joined them, walking out of their warehouse into the rain to protest the lack of protective measures for workers.

In a despicable turn of corporate evil, Amazon fired the worker who organized the impromptu walkout, Chris Smalls, alleging that he repeatedly violated social distancing guidelines. They couldn’t even bother to make up a good excuse for giving him the boot!

Elsewhere in the Bezos empire, workers at Whole Foods are planning a sick-out on Tuesday, calling out of work en masse to pressure the company for better sick leave, hazard pay, and more.

In Pittsburgh last week, a group of mostly black garbage workers went on a wildcat strike to protest unsafe working conditions.

Workers at General Motors’s aviation facility in Massachusettes staged a silent protest on Monday, asking the company to let them convert their machines to produce ventilators, not jet engines, and distributing a list of other GM facilities that could be converted to do the same. General Motors has signed on with Ford to produce at least 50,000 ventilators over the next 100 days, but for some employees, that’s not good enough.

What this says is clear: working people are trying to save the country. If the CEOs at the top don’t let it happen, they’ve got blood on their hands.

Well after all that, it turns out the experts might have known what they were talking about.

According to data collected by medical technology company Kinsa Health, harsh containment measures like social distancing, business closures, and stay-at-home orders are contributing to a rapid drop in the number of fevers

The results aren’t exactly hard science -- Kinsa makes online-compatible thermometers that it tracks data for, so it’s basically just saying fewer people have fevers in areas where these measures have been enacted. But the company uses similar models to track the spread of the flu every year, and experts told the New York Times that Kinsa’s research is pretty solid.

The Times also reports that public health data from New York and Washington State, the two biggest epicenters of the virus in the U.S., seems to support the conclusion that containment measures are working.

Some of this data may have influenced Trump’s decision to put off relaxing the federal guidelines on social distancing until the end of April. It’s clear at this point that at least some people in the room with him are making sense.

We can only hope that they last a long time.

Twitter, Instagram and Facebook have cracked down on false, misleading, and medically dangerous content in the past few days, even if it’s coming from heads of state.

For the past week or so, Twitter has been cracking down on tweets from Rudy Giuliani and other conservative fever-swamp denizens as they attempt to flog the president’s pet theory that the coronavirus can be stopped by a drug called hydroxychloroquine.

But on Monday, the platform took it even further -- banning Brazilian President Jair [JAI-EER] Bolsonaro for posting similar content, saying that his live video violated new global standards on contradicting public health information.

Facebook and Instagram also took down the video shortly after. Last week, Twitter also deleted a post by Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro, who claimed that a quote “brew” unquote could cure coronavirus.

The elephant in the room, of course, is that Trump is basically promoting the same kind of stuff. And yet, his account’s still up! Funny how that works out.

AND NOW FOR SOME QUICKER QUICKIES:

A new FBI analysis reported by ABC News warns that a surge in hate crimes against Asian Americans is possible due to the spread of the coronavirus. Gee, I wonder where the violent racists are getting their cues from?

The Massachusetts Democratic Party announced that it will cancel its statewide convention this summer due to the risk of the coronavirus, which is big news for a key Senate primary race. Incumbent Senator Ed Markey, a loyal progressive, will be considered the winner of the convention and get the party’s endorsement, although his rival, Rep. Joe Kennedy III will still get on the Democratic ballot.

A pentacostal megachurch pastor was arrested in Tampa, Florida on Monday for holding regular services on Sunday despite the statewide rulings against large gatherings. Rev. Rodney Howard-Browne has encouraged his parish to flaunt social distancing and shake hands anway, because quote: “we are raising revivalists, not pansies.” Yikes.

Sen. Elizabeth Warren and Rep. Ayanna Pressley petitioned Trump’s Health and Human Services department to collect and release further demographic data on coronavirus infection, arguing that without it, the government could not adequately protect communities of color or low-income citizens who may be hit harder by the disease.

That’s it for the Majority Report’s AM Quickie. Stay tuned for the full show later today!

#AMQuickie March 31, 2020

HOSTS - Sam Seder & Lucie Steiner

WRITER - Jack Crosbie

PRODUCER - Dorsey Shaw

EXECUTIVE PRODUCER - Brendan Finn

Welcome to Majority.FM's AM QUICKIE! Brought to you by justcoffee.coop

TODAY'S HEADLINES:

Donald Trump says he will extend the federal government’s social distancing guidelines until at least the end of April, as total U.S. cases top 140,000. He still might let thousands die for a stock market bump, but not for another month at least.

Meanwhile, Joe Biden is facing a sexual assault allegation by a former Senate Staffer, and reporting by the Intercept finds that sex-crime justice organization Times Up refused to take on the victim’s case, citing Biden’s presidential run and its own nonprofit status.

And lastly, gig workers at Instacart are planning a nationwide strike today, pressuring the company to give them hazard pay for the risks they’re taking during the epidemic and provide free safety equipment like gloves, masks and sanitizer.

THESE ARE THE STORIES YOU NEED TO KNOW:

We can all expect to stay inside for at least another month, as Donald Trump says the federal government's social distance guidelines will remain in place until at least April 30.

In reality, we should all be prepared to self-isolate for a lot longer than that, as nearly every scientist with an actual brain says that restrictions are extremely important for the foreseeable future until the virus’s spread is slowed.

But in Trump-world, April 30 is at least an improvement on the alternative: ditching the federal restrictions by Easter and risking hundreds of thousands of lives if cases of the disease spike.

Over the weekend, the U.S. topped 140,000 confirmed cases of the virus this far, with 2,469 deaths. During a wave of TV appearances, Dr. Anthony Fauci, the highest-ranking infectious disease expert in the country, predicted that the U.S. could see 200,000 deaths before the epidemic is controlled.

There is some good news, however: The Times reports that early data out of Seattle, the first epicenter of the U.S. outbreak, shows that the social restrictions and harsh containment methods may be working.

In Washington, Congress is reportedly mulling a second potential aid bill, just in case the corporations out there are going hungry with only $500 billion in slush money to much on. Maybe there’ll be more for actual Americans in this one.

And it’s very likely that even after Trump relaxes national restrictions, cities and states will continue shelter-in-place or social-distancing orders, so those of us in major metropolitan areas probably won’t be getting things back to normal anytime soon.

Joe Biden faces a sexual assault accusation, but his accuser is having trouble getting her voice heard.

A woman named Tara Reade claims that in 1993, when she was working as a Senate aide, Biden held her against a wall and penetrated her with his fingers.

Reade has mentioned the incident in the past, first to a local news outlet in California, but gave what she says is a fuller account of her experience to the podcast host Katie Halper.

According to new reporting by the Intercept, Reade has been trying to make her allegations heard for quite some time.

In January, she contacted representatives at Times Up, the nonprofit organization which has advocated for and provided legal defense funding for prominent sexual assault victims like Harvey Weinstein’s accusers.

Reade was seeking extra help because of backlash she faced after the local news story, when critics attempted to discredit her based on social media posts she made that were complimentary toward Russian President Vladimir Putin, all of which made her reluctant to share any more of her story.

Times Up, however, turned her down. The Intercept reports that the organization decided not to take the case as it could have meant risking the 501(c)(3) status of their parent organization, the National Women’s Law Center.

Biden’s status as a presidential candidate could mean that Times Up backing Reade’s case could be ruled as electioneering.

Workers on the front lines of the coronavirus epidemic -- specifically, the ones delivering much of our food -- are fighting back against their corporate bosses. Today, a nationwide group of contract workers at Instacart plan to walk out on the job, refusing to make deliveries for the grocery shopping app until the company provides them with a $5 hazard pay fee for each delivery that goes directly to the driver, as well as free safety gear like hand sanitizer, gloves, and masks.

They’re also fighting for paid sick leave benefits, a vital contingency for people whose livelihoods do not allow them to self-isolate.

Instacart worker and strike organizer Vanessa Bain noted as well that Instacart’s full time employees -- the techies working in San Francisco and the company’s 16 other offices around the country -- get sick leave, life insurance, and many other benefits.

The gig workers get nothing, and it’s putting them at risk.

Baid told Vice quote: "We deserve and demand better. Without [us], Instacart will grind to a halt.” endquote.

The company’s current policy allows workers to take two weeks paid sick leave -- but only if they actually test positive for the virus. Considering the U.S. still has a massive shortage of tests, this doesn’t seem like a particularly efficient plan.

So if you were planning to order groceries from Instacart today, know that you’re crossing a picket line, even if you don’t see it from the comfort of your home.

AND NOW FOR SOME QUICKER QUICKIES:

Two major health insurance providers, Cigna and Humana, have agreed to shield their patients from out-of-pocket costs if they require treatment for COVID-19, most likely attempting to score some good PR while they charge life-threatening amounts for every other shred of non-corona coverage they provide.

Charles Koch’s pro-corporation political advocacy group really, really wants businesses to open back up. That’s funny, because the Intercept reports that the group also lobbied for a $1 billion cut to the CDC in 2018. It’s almost like they don’t have Americans’ best interests at heart!

Two more Congressmen have tested positive for coronavirus -- Democratic Rep. Joe Cunningham of South Carolina and Republican Rep. Mike Kelly of Pennsylvania, bringing the total to 4 Representatives and 1 Senator who are confirmed to have the disease.

The coronavirus infection rate in New York City’s Riker’s Island jail is 77 times higher than the rest of the U.S., on average, according to new numbers released by the Legal Aid Society. That makes even the lowest-level crimes in the city a potential death sentence, and it’s certainly not the only prison where this will play out.

HOSTS - Sam Seder & Lucie Steiner

WRITER - Jack Crosbie

PRODUCER - Dorsey Shaw

EXECUTIVE PRODUCER - Brendan Finn