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

TODAY'S HEADLINES:

World health officials warn that the coronavirus pandemic is far from over, as much as we’d like it to be. In the US, states on both coasts once again broke records for new cases.

Meanwhile, what purports to be secret, heavily edited recordings of Joe Biden have emerged in Ukraine. Whether real or not, they’re already making the rounds on Trump-friendly propaganda networks in the United States.

And lastly, journalists working for newspapers and broadcast stations across the country are treating old reliable police sources with long-overdue skepticism. Apparently the brilliant police strategy of shooting reporters in the face at protests has backfired.

THESE ARE THE STORIES YOU NEED TO KNOW:

Dire Warnings Over Coronavirus

Six months on, the World Health Organization warns that the coronavirus pandemic is actually speeding up – particularly in countries like the United States that flubbed the response. The consequences go beyond public health. Between the pandemic itself, the related economic crisis, and school closures affecting one-billion-and-a-half billion children, the United Nations warns that the most vulnerable people are being forced into some of the world’s most dangerous and exploitative jobs.

At least six states in the US again set records for new COVID-19 cases in a single day: Alabama, Florida, Montana, Nevada, North Carolina and Oklahoma. Cailfornia reported eight thousand new cases – breaking its daily record for the third time in eight days. In Washington, DC, Anthony Fauci, the federal government’s top infectious disease expert, told a Senate committee that the US could soon see a hundred-thousand new cases every day, up from forty-thousand currently. In Kansas City, Missouri, Mayor Quinton Lucas received a threat of lynching after announcing a mandatory mask order. And just over the border in Mexico, the first case of coronavirus was confirmed in a refugee camp with two thousand people.

Finally, the Guardian reported that the Trump administration bought up the entire global supply of the first drug it approved to treat coronavirus, remdesivir, for the next three months. The drug is under patent by Gilead pharmaceuticals, and the going rate is thirty-two hundred dollars for a six-dose course of treatment. But other countries may override the US patent if they deem it necessary to ensure public health.

Biden Ukraine Tapes Emerge

According to White House spokeswoman Kayleigh McEnany, speaking yesterday from the press room podium, Donald Trump is QUOTE the most informed person on planet Earth ENDQUOTE. If that’s true, maybe he could shed some light on some curious stories out of Ukraine. For about a week, the Washington Post reports, Ukrainian media have been reporting on heavily edited audio recordings of Joe Biden’s telephone conversations with former president Petro Poroshenko. From there, the recordings have made their way to the Trumpist propaganda outlet One America News. The Post says their authenticity cannot be verified. Poroshenko says the recordings are fake. The Biden campaign calls OAN a conduit for Kremlin disinformation and says the recordings show routine international diplomacy. Among other things, the tapes reveal Biden threatening to withhold a one billion-dollar loan guarantee from the US unless Poroshenko fires a certain prosecutor. Trump’s campaign claims this shows Biden bullying the Ukrainian leader to protect the business dealings of his family, as Biden’s son Hunter held a board seat on the energy company Burisma. The Post says there is no evidence to support that, and Poroshenko denies his involvement in international corruption. The scandal is useful for Republicans because their claims against Biden in many ways mirror the Democrats’ case against Trump during his impeachment trial. In the meantime, the current government of Ukraine wants to outlawing the publication of secret recordings of public officials. Well, that’s one way to fix the problem.

Also yesterday: Forbes reported that Biden has more billionaire donors than Trump: that’s one-hundred and six for Biden, and ninety-three for Trump. Congratulations to all the big winners!

Journalists Rethink Police Sources

American journalists have for many decades relied on law enforcement sources, often anonymous, to supply the most basic information in local news reporting. But rising awareness of police misconduct, caught on camera, combined with police assaults on working reporters, might finally put an end to that practice. According to the Washington Post,

newsrooms around the country are rethinking their over-reliance on police sources. Too often, video evidence has emerged showing a completely different series of events than police depicted in their internal reports, and in their public statements. As the Post noted, Minneapolis police failed to mention that an officer knelt on George Floyd’s neck for more than eight minutes. They said Breonna Taylor in Atlanta suffered no injuries though they shot her eight times. In Buffalo, police said Martin Gugino, who they shoved to the ground so hard his skull split open, QUOTE tripped and fell ENDQUOTE. And so on.

As one journalist told the Post, police statements are equivalent to rumors and should be handled as such in news stories. Because this awareness is growing, many newsrooms are shifting resources from old-fashioned if-it-bleeds-it-leads crime stories from the cops to more comprehensive coverage that takes systemic biases into account. And there is pressure from the public to go farther, and stop reporting routine crime stories entirely. A coalition of forty community groups in Philadelphia is asking their daily newspaper, The Inquirer, to stop running stories that rely on the police as the sole source of information. They are also asking for an appeals system so that people named in crime stories can have articles removed. That step will prove less popular in newsrooms, but expect to see more such efforts nationwide.

Separately, in Portland, Oregon, the American Civil Liberties Union filed a class-action lawsuit against the city on behalf of journalists and legal observers targeted by police in recent protests. The ACLU says the targeting of observers spreads fear among those who might otherwise bear witness to police abuse. Which is, of course, the point.

AND NOW FOR SOME QUICKER QUICKIES:

White centrist candidate Amy McGrath claimed victory yesterday in Kentucky’s Democratic party primary for US Senate. McGrath raised nearly $41 million according to the most recent Federal Election Commission filings. Her Black progressive challenger Charles Booker raised not quite $800,000, but still came close to winning. Maybe next time.

At least thirty-six members of the House of Representatives have signed on to a resolution that could lead to the impeachment of Attorney General Bill Barr. The resolution, introduced yesterday by Democratic Congressman Steve Cohen of Tennessee, calls for an formal inquiry into Barr and cites multiple cases where the AG abused his office to benefit Donald Trump. Cohen says Barr undermined our judicial system and perverted the rule of law. Among other things, yes.

A young woman in Oklahoma was shot four times after removing a Nazi flag from a man’s house in the town of Hunter north of Oklahoma City. The homeowner, Alexander John Feaster, forty-four, was arrested and charged with shooting with the intent to kill. The woman who tore down his swastika flag, age twenty-six, is reportedly expected to recover.

A New York State Supreme Court judge ordered a temporary halt to the publication of a new book by Donald Trump’s only niece, Mary Trump, detailing abusive behavior in the family. Judge Hal Greenwald reportedly plans to hold a hearing on July 10 to determine whether the book violates a confidentiality agreement signed during a dispute over the estate of Donald’s father Fred Trump. A lawyer for the author called the order prior restraint on core political speech that flatly violates the First Amendment. Where are the free speech warriors at?

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

July 1, 2020 - AM Quickie

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 Russian government allegedly placed bounties on American troops in Afghanistan, hoping to provoke the Taliban and other extremist fighters to further enflame the endless conflict there. New reports show that Trump was briefed months ago about this, and did, well, nothing. Remind me why we’re even in Afghanistan anymore?

Meanwhile, the Supreme Court struck down a Lousiana law that could have decimated the state’s remaining abortion clinics, thanks to Chief Justice John Robert’s switch to side with the liberals. He’s still a conservative, so don’t take this as any more than a lucky break.

And lastly, the Kentucky Senate primary between progressive Charlie Booker and establishment darling Amy McGrath in Kentucky is still too close to call, but should be resolved later today when the last of the state’s absentee ballots are counted up.

THESE ARE THE STORIES YOU NEED TO KNOW:

Russian Bounty Boogaloo

A new story involving the Russians and America’s neverending war in Afghanistan is sweeping through the media.

Here are the broad strokes: multiple outlets have now reported that starting as early as 2019, the Russian military was offering bounties to the Taliban and other extremist groups in Afghanistan for successfully killing U.S. troops. The U.S., of course, has been half-heartedly trying to negotiate and uphold a peace deal with the Taliban, but it makes sense that Russia would want to throw a wrench in that process by any means necessary.

But the scandal now has become when, exactly, the Trump administration was aware of the fact that a foreign power was putting out hits on its troops. The Trump administration has stressed that the president wasn’t briefed on the issue, but several reports say that’s B.S. The Associated Press reports that quote “top officials” in the White House were aware of the intelligence report way back in 2019. The New York Times, meanwhile, reports that our spies gave Trump himself a written briefing on the matter in February.

Russia, of course, denies putting out the bounties. Sure.

If Trump knew about it month or even a year ago, many Republicans and Democrats in Congress are understandably pissed off that he didn’t do anything or respond in any way.

The problem is there’s no real winner here: if Trump knew about it and did nothing, that sucks, but at the same time, Trump’s response to Russia’s action could have been disastrous. He can’t exactly be trusted to put out a logical, measured response, let alone a decent one, like, say, just getting all of our troops out of Afghanistan in the first place.

Warhawks will want to weaponize this story to goad the U.S. to further conflict with Russia, or Afghanistan, or whoever else gets in the way, which we should have learned by now is a bad idea. Whichever way you look at it, it’s a mess, but it’s almost certainly going to dominate headlines for the next few days, so keep an eye out for updates.

John Roberts Temporarily Rescues Abortion Rights

The Supreme Court delivered its second shock ruling in as many weeks on Monday, as Chief Justice John Roberts sided with the Court’s four liberal justices to strike down an abortion law in Louisiana.

If upheld, the law could have reduced the state to a single solitary abortion clinic, and obvious massive barrier to a woman’s right to choose in the state. Roberts’ decision to side with the liberals enraged conservatives: Ted Cruz, for instance, ranted about Roberts’ quote “political gamesmanship,” endquote.

But before we get too hopeful, it’s useful to look at why Roberts made the decision he did. Sure, he sided with the liberals on this one case, but not really for altruistic reasons. The law in question was almost identical to a Texas law the Supreme Court rejected in 2016.

Roberts only voted against the Louisiana law because of stare decisis -- the theory that courts should be bound by their past decisions.

But what he also did was point the way that conservatives could write a more legally sound law that would get through the court, and crush abortion rights that way.

This is similar to Robert’s ruling on the DACA program, which he upheld last week. He sided with the liberals, but only because the conservative case was so legally sloppy he didn’t want to rubber stamp it.

In other words, Roberts is just telling the conservatives who want to do more fascism toward immigrants and women that they need to do their homework and get back to him.

For now, abortion clinics in Louisiana are safe, relatively speaking. But if the courts stay in Roberts’ hands, it’s only a matter of time before the conservatives come for them again.

Kentucky Primary Too Close to Call

Elections aren’t one-night affairs anymore, and Kentucky’s Democratic Senate Primary has lasted a whole week.

The race, between progressive Charles Booker and the former fighter-pilot, Democratic establishment darling Amy McGrath, is way, way closer than anyone thought it would be. A few months ago, it looked like McGrath had the whole thing locked up, with a massive campaign warchest and the endorsement of pretty much everyone who’s anyone in the Democratic old guard.

But with just weeks to go before the election, Booker started surging, as people realized there wasn’t much to Amy besides a fat wallet of DNC cash. Booker, meanwhile, stepped up during the nationwide protests against police brutality and continued to push his progressive, medicare-for-all and universal basic income platform.

Now, the two are neck and neck. As of early Tuesday morning, McGrath is up by under 3,000 votes, and there’s still a ton of absentee ballots to count. Booker has been crushing it in in-person voting, but the worry is that some of the mail-in ballots were cast before he got his big surge in momentum.

Most of the absentees that are still out are from Fayette and Jefferson Counties, the state’s most populous areas. The county election boards are expected to convene early Tuesday morning to tally up final results, which should be announced sometime in the late morning today, but could very well get pushed to the afternoon. You know how these things go. I’m sure we’ll be discussing it on the full show this afternoon.

AND NOW FOR SOME QUICKER QUICKIES:

China passed a sweeping, controversial new law that gave the mainland government a massive amount of power to crack down on dissent in Hong Kong, a move which is almost certain to enflame the massive protest movement there. This would be a huge change for Hong Kong, which until now has largely existed with civil liberties the heavily repressive Chinese government denies the rest of its people.

In New York City, Mayor Bill de Blasio and the city council appear to have agreed on a budget that sort-of-not-really cuts $1 billion from the NYPD’s budget. Activists warn though that the bill is mostly a load of B.S. aimed at shuffling money around, and not actually defunding the department.

Elsewhere in out-of-control police, Aurora, Colorado’s local CBS outlet reports that at least three Aurora Police officers are under investigation for taking inappropriate, disrespectful photos after violently breaking up a peaceful vigil for Elijay McClain, a young man who was killed by the same department last year. Officers reportedly re-enacted the chokehold that killed him.

And lastly, big pharma continues to take lives for money, as Gilead Sciences announced an absurd price of around $520 per dose of a new coronavirus treatment drug. Advocates claim the drug could be produced for as little as $1 a dose, but you can’t tell that to the capitalists in charge of healthcare in this country.

June 30, 2020 - AM Quickie

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 retweeted, then deleted, a video of a clash between elderly protesters and senior citizen Trump fans at a retirement community, in which one of the Trump supporters clearly and loudly chants white power.

Meanwhile, Black Lives Matter protesters weathered a weekend of violent attacks, as a man shot into a crowd of demonstrators in Louisville, Kentucky, and a driver plowed through protesters outside of Tampa, Florida.

And lastly, tensions are boiling over at coronavirus testing sites in hard hit states like Arizona, Florida, and Texas, as panicked crowds jostle through long lines to get a test. Meanwhile, VP Pence is still pushing the lie that increased case numbers are just a result of increased testing, not an explosion in the virus.

THESE ARE THE STORIES YOU NEED TO KNOW:

Trump Tweets White Power Clip

Look, by this point we all know Donald Trump is a white nationalist. The evidence is overwhelming at this point. But in case it’s not, let’s present the latest data point!

This weekend, Trump retweeted a clash between geriatric protesters and elderly residents of The Villages, a 98 percent white enclave of Florida where 56 percent of the population is over the age of 65. Just so you know what we’re dealing with here.

In the video, a procession of tricked-out golf karts covered in Trump signs and flags rolls past several counter-protesters. The key moment of the video is when a protester yells “where’s your white hood” at a Trump kart, and the man inside shakes his fist and yells “white power, white power!”

Trump retweeted the video and added quote “Thank you to the great people of the Villages!” endquote. Just so you know where he stands!

The administration’s response to this scandal has been about as dumb as it gets, of course. Deputy Press Secretary Judd Deere said the President quote "did not hear the one statement made on the video,” endquote. That’s almost believable except for the fact that the white power part is literally 8 seconds in. We know Trump has a short attention span but come on.

And even if he didn’t hear it, the White House didn’t even bother to say “yeah, our bad,” or decry the statement itself. They’re pretty much cool with that!

What this ends up as is another explicit endorsement of white nationalism for Trump’s white nationalist supporters to run with, and another idiotic, not-so-plausible deniability excuse for the press office’s talking heads to run with. Where are we at the end of it? With a white nationalist in the White House, still

Protesters Weather Attacks

Protesters demonstrating against police brutality weathered a striking weekend of violence, as various elements of the country’s racist core started to rear their heads against them.

In Louisville, a gunman opened fire on a peaceful protest, killing a photographer and injuring one other. In a strange turn, the gunman, Steven Lopez, had also previously participated in protests, and the shooting appears to have been over a dispute he had with another participant. Bystanders shot back at him, wounding him in the leg, and he was arrested at the hospital later that evening.

In Tampa, meanwhile, a driver plowed through protesters in Hyde Park, carrying one who landed on his hood for several feet. When he eventually stopped, police arrested the protester and not the driver, setting up an extended, tense protest at the nearby jail. Things defused when it turned out that the protester had been taken to the hospital, not the jail.

That wasn’t the only vehicle incident this weekend: a video that surfaced on social media late Sunday night appears to show a Detroit Police Department vehicle driving aggressively through protesters, bowling them over in the street, reportedly causing a handful of injuries.

In New York City meanwhile, the NYPD resumed their violence against protesters, pepper spraying and charging a crowd of protesters in Washington Square Park who were protesting and celebrating Pride weekend. Nice of them to commemorate Stonewall with more police brutality!

And in perhaps the strangest example of violent posturing, two homeowners in the St. Louis area showed up on the front driveway of their megamansion to brandish guns at protesters walking by, repeatedly pointing the weapons at protesters in the street and yelling at the crowd. Luckily, they didn’t squeeze any rounds off, but judging by the instantly historic photos of the event, it was a pretty near miss.

Coronavirus Overwhelms Testing Centers

Last up for tonight: the coronavirus outbreak. The New York Times reports that testing sites in several states are being overwhelmed by a large number of scared patients, as the worldwide death toll tops 500,000.

In Texas, Florida and Arizona, the Times reports that some patients have been turned away from testing sites that simply can’t keep up with the demand. Those who make it in have to deal with pushing, yelling, and massive overcrowding, which certainly isn’t going to make things any better.

That’s not to say that you shouldn’t get tested: if you think you’ve been exposed to the disease, testing is the way to protect everyone around you. But check in with local networks to see what the wait times are like.

Nationwide, Coronavirus cases have gone up 65 percent in the past two weeks. The virus is surging all over the country, and it may be even worse than our data suggests. The CDC released a report last week that warned that infections could be ten times worse than we think in many regions.

Keep in mind that the Administration’s big lie on this is that the increase in cases is only due to an increase in testing -- that there isn’t actually a massive surge, it’s just that we’re testing more. This would only make sense if the rate of positive tests was holding steady, but guess what, it’s not: in Texas, for instance, the rate of positive tests has gone up from 4 percent to 13 percent in the past month.

By now, you all know the drill: wear a mask. Stay at home if you can, and keep your distance from others if you can’t. And if it’s at all possible, get the test.

AND NOW FOR SOME QUICKER QUICKIES:

The number of forest fires in Russia’s vast Siberian region has increased fivefold, according to Russia’s aerial forest fire management authority. It’s almost certainly a sure sign of climate change, considering much of the region has faced record-hot temperatures that have neared 100 degrees Fahrenheit.

A quick check in with the Senate shows that Mitch McConnell is still hammering the judiciary with more and more conservative judges, getting his 200th confirmed by the Republican-held Senate last week. That’s a pretty grim reminder that even if we get Trump out in November and or take back the Senate, there’s just so much work left to do to pull the country left.

CNN’s Van Jones fully sold out to the Trump administration, according to an explosive report by the Daily Beast. The CNN political commenter allegedly chatted with Jared Kushner about the administration’s new, lackluster police reform order, and then went right on CNN and praised it, without disclosing that he helped set it in motion. The NAACP, meanwhile, said Trump’s order showed that he had quote “no intention of advancing these critical reforms.” Endquote. Apparently Van disagrees.

John Hickenlooper, now running for Senate in Colorado after a limp attempt at the Presidency, is facing calls from Indigenous activists to drop out of the primary, after photos surfaced of him wearing a native headdress at a racist event called the One Shot Antelope Hunt. He faces a more progressive opponent Andrew Romanoff in Colorado’s election on Tuesday.

That’s all for the majority report’s AM quickie today. Stay tuned for the full show with Sam later this afternoon.

June 29, 2020 - AM Quickie

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:

Middle-aged white cops in North Carolina got caught on tape fantasizing about killing black people en masse. But Donald Trump says Black Lives Matter is the real problem.

Meanwhile, the Supreme Courts strip refugees of their lawful human right to a judicial hearing. Dissenting Justice Sonia Sotomayor suggests her liberal colleagues succumbed to political pressure.

And lastly, former Vice President Joe Biden continues to gain in key polls against Donald Trump. The signs are encouraging, but overconfidence has plagued the Democrats before.

THESE ARE THE STORIES YOU NEED TO KNOW:

Racist Cops Praise Murder

Trump yesterday on Twitter accused Black Lives Matter protesters of treason, sedition, and insurrection. Back in the real world, a second New York City cop was arrested and charged with violating a new state law banning the police from using chokeholds. In Wilmington, North Carolina, three cops were fired after accidentally recording themselves during an extended racist tirade. One, Officer Michael “Kevin” Piner, predicted BLM protests would lead to civil war, adding QUOTE we are just going to go out and start slaughtering them F-word N-words... Wipe 'em off the Eff-ing map. That’ll put 'em back about four or five generations ENDQUOTE. Another, Corporal Jesse Moore the Second, said a black woman recently arrested should instead have been shot. Moore said QUOTE She needed a bullet in the head right then and move on. Let’s move the body out of the way and keep going ENDQUOTE. Is that what they call cop humor?

A new study by the McClatchy news service links excessive force cases to police departments that received military surplus weapons. The analysis found that between 1990 and 1999, the Defense Department transferred more than thirteen thousand weapons to US police departments. In the past decade, it sent many times more wepons to police – nearly two-hundred and two thousand guns and gun accessories, such as assault rifles with night vision sights. What’s more, McClatchy found that seven of the top 15 police departments with the highest number of police officer-involved fatalities — when adjusted for population — also

received a higher share of the Defense Department’s excess guns. Those departments were in Orlando, Florida; Bakersfield, California; Spokane, Washington; Aurora, Colorado; Albuquerque, New Mexico.; and Tucson, Arizona. In 1990, the military transfered four- hundred and forty thousand dollars worth of guns to police departments. Last year, it shipped two-hundred and ninety millio dollars’ worth of hardware to the cops. And now those same cops are turning those weapons of war against peaceful members of the public. So who is really out there promoting insurrection? BLM or the DOD?

SCOTUS Sells Out Refugees

The US Supreme Court wants you to know that in spite of upholding the Obama-era program that protected the children of migrants from deportation last week, it is not in the business of doing good. Yesterday the court ruled that asylum seekers who get turn downed by federal immigration agents do not have the right to take their case to a judge. This ruling gives Trump what he wants: the power to turn away migrants to the US for any reason, without judicial review, and deport people more quickly – or at whatever pace he feels like.

The ruling was seven to two in Trump’s favor, with only Justices Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan dissenting. The liberal Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Stephen Breyer sided with the rightwing majority on the court. In her dissent, Sotomayor said QUOTE Today’s decision handcuffs the judiciary’s ability to perform its constitutional duty to safeguard individual liberty and dismantles a critical component of the separation of powers ENDQUOTE. She also alluded to political concerns and other, as she put it, burdens on the judiciary that influenced the outcome. The plaintiff in the case that led to the court’s decision was a Sri Lankan farmer who described being beaten by strangers before fleeing his country. He was arrested in California in 2017 only yards away from the Mexican border. Immigration agents said he failed to establish that he was persecuted. Justices Breyer and Ginsburg agreed, arguing, per The New York Times, that the farmer’s stories of being beaten were too vague to be considered credible. One wonders how they might have fared in his shoes.

Biden's Lead Still Growing

Polls show that Joe Biden’s lead over Donald Trump in key swing states continues to grow. A New York Times poll with nearly thirty-nine hundred respondents showed Biden up by eleven percentage points over Trump in Michigan and Wisconsin; ten percentage points in Pennsylvania, nine in North Carolina; seven in Arizona; and six in Florida. Those are all states that Trump won by some margin in 2016. The results indicate that if the election were held today, and Biden held all the states Hillary Clinton won in 2016, Biden would sweep with at least three-hundred and thirty three electoral college votes.

Trump is fully aware that his reelection effort is not going well and has been lashing out at the fake news, fake polls, and et cetera. He was in Wisconsin yesterday to visit a private shipyard with US Navy contracts. Fox News host Sean Hannity joined Trump on Air Force One. They also recorded a town hall event in Green Bay that was broadcast last night.

Biden is making the most of Trump’s malaise. The presumptive Democratic nominee compared Trump to a whining, self-pitying child, and said QUOTE this pandemic didn’t happen to him. It happened to all of us. And his job isn’t to whine about it, his job is to do something about it ENDQUOTE. Trump did do something, though. Remember? He told people to try injecting themselves with disinfectant chemicals, or maybe sunlight.

AND NOW FOR SOME QUICKER QUICKIES:

The head of the US Centers for Disease Control, Robert Redfield, told reporters yesterday that the actual number of coronavirus cases in the country is likely ten times higher than officially reported – so, twenty-three million instead of two-point-three million. Texas halted its reopening because the virus is so out of control. In Houston’s Texas Medical Center, the intensive care unit is entirely full – they have no beds – but the hospital CEO says that’s no cause for alarm. Whatever you say, pal.

A former Republican elected official in Mesa, Arizona, Paul D. Peterson, pleaded guilty on charges of conspiracy to smuggle humans. Peterson ran a scheme that paid pregnant woman in the Marshall Islands up to ten thousand dollars to travel to the US and give up their babies for adoption. He was reportedly arrested last October and resigned from his job as Maricopa County’s tax assessor in January.

A wild story about worker abuse in the Washington Post: Workers at the Tesla factory in Fremont, California, were fired for following instructions. When Elon Musk kept the factory open in spite of a county lockdown order, workers were told that if they felt uncomfortable returuning to work, they should stay home. But multiple workers who did just that were fired. That’s Elon for you. Whattaguy! Also yesterday, for the fourteenth week in a row, the latest Labor Department figures show that new unemployment claims exceeded one million.

Pakistan International Airlines grounded one-hundred and fifty pilots for having bogus aviation credentials. The action resulted from an official investigation following a PIA crash last month that killed ninety-seven people. Pakistan’s aviation minister said that more than one in three pilots had either cheated on their exams or had a fake license to fly. So hopefully at least one person in the cockpit actually knows what they’re doing, at any given time.

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

June 26, 2020 - AM Quickie

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:

Coronavirus surges around the United States as the country reaps the consequences of Donald Trump’s policy of denial. Republicans at all levels seem determined to expose the public to unnecessary harm.

Meanwhile, Trump’s steamrolling of the judiciary continues with a party-line vote favoring Republicans in the US Senate. But the House hears testimony that could spell bad news for Attorney General Bill Barr.

And lastly, state attorney generals push back on the power of big money. In California, Uber and Lyft may be forced to treat their so-called independent contractors like full employees.

THESE ARE THE STORIES YOU NEED TO KNOW:

Coronavirus Denialism Kills Thousands

Trump may be in physical and mental decline, but he still has great power over matters of life and death for the entire planet. Yesterday a Department of Health and Human Services spokesperson told NBC News that Trump plans to end federal funding for coronavirus testing around the country. As many have attested, it’s not easy in many cities to get tested, which is a problem, because testing is most effective in a limited window of time after exposure to the virus. This week there were no appointments available at any of the forty testing sites in Los Angeles, per the LA Times. And some sites were closed. Trump’s policy of denialism guarantees that the pandemic will get worse and worse. Let’s be clear: he owns this. As he recounted to all of six thousand people who showed up to his hate rally in Tulsa, QUOTE I said to my people, slow the testing down, please ENDQUOTE. May he choke on a swab.

Record case numbers were reported in at least five states. Nationwide, yesterday saw a record one-day surge in new COVID-19 cases. Texas is enduring what Republican Governor Greg Abbott called a massive outbreak, and Houston’s director of emergency medical services told reporters their infrastructure was overwhelmed. The governors of New York, New Jersey, and Connecticut announced a mandatory quarantine for visitors from nine other states where coronavirus was spreading out of control. According to the Philadelphia Inquirer, over the last two weeks, cases have risen by eight-four percent in states that don't require

masks. But in states with mask orders, cases actualy fell by twenty-five percent. Washington State Governor Jay Inslee yesterday announced a statewide mask order. It was immediately undermined by a rightwing county sheriff who went on TV news and told people not to act like sheep. That pretty much sums up where we’re at with the pandemic. Who, ladies and gentlemen, is the real sheeple? Someone who acts with care and concern for their neighbors, or someone who denies all reality because their precious leader told them to?

200 Judges For Trump

Assistant US Attorney Aaron Zelinsky testified to the House Judiciary Committee yesterday and, as expected, said he’d been pressured to give Roger Stone a break because Stone is friends with Trump. Zelinsky, who remains a federal prosecutor in Maryland, made Attorney General Bill Barr look even more corrupt than was previously evident. But until Barr can be impeached or otherwise removed, Trump continues to rack up wins within the judicial branch. Yesterday the Senate confirmed Trump’s two hundredth judicial nominee. Cory Wilson of Mississippi has joined the Fifth Circuit Court of appeals for life.

These federal judgeships are lifetime appointments. On a largely party-line vote of 52 to 48, the Republican-led chamber approved the nomination of Cory Wilson of Mississippi to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit. This new judge is another career Republican hack who called President Barack Obama’s Affordable Care act both illegitimate and perverse. Also yesterday, the US Court of Appeals for Washington, DC, overruled Judge Emmet Sullivan in the case against Trump adviser Michael Flynn. Sullivan had decided the case against Flynn must continue despite Bill Barr’s decision to drop it, but the appeals court said Sullivan did not have that power, as a judge. So it’s too soon to celebrate Barr’s evisceration in the House.

Uber, Lyft Mistreated Workers

There were a few victories in the struggle against greedy corporations yesterday. California Attorney General Xavier Becerra (HAV-EE-AIR BAY-SERRA) filed for a judicial injuction against Uber and Lyft to immediately halt the unlawful misclassification of their drivers as independent contractors. Per a press release, the California AG was joined in the motion against the companies by the city attorneys of Los Angeles, San Diego, and San Francisco. Their lawsuit says the gig economy giants are depriving workers of QUOTE critical

workplace protections such as the right to minimum wage and overtime, and access to paid sick leave, disability insurance, and unemployment insurance. Misclassification often results in workers being significantly more likely to draw on government-funded income supports to make ends meet, leaving taxpayers to foot the bill in lieu of big business ENDQUOTE.

In Minnesota, AG Keith Ellison sued ExxonMobil, three companies owned by the Koch family, and an oil industry trade group for lying to the public and the government about climate change. And Germany’s Bayer corporation, which owns Monsanto, agreed to a $10.9 billion settlement over the cancer-causing chemicals in Roundup, the widely available weedkiller. That was owing to a class action lawsuit filed against the companies in California.

AND NOW FOR SOME QUICKER QUICKIES:

Prosecutors in The Hague indicted the president of Kosovo, Hashim Thaçi (HASH-EEM THAT-CHI), on war crimes yesterday for his role in a campaign of murder and torture. Nearly one hundred victims were claimed in the indictment that named nine other commanders in the Kosovo Liberation Army. Thaci cancelled his imminent visit to the White House, which he was traveling to when the news was announced.

A grand jury in the state of Georgia indicted three white men for the killing of Ahmaud Arbery, who they chased and shot down for jogging while black. In Oregon, the self- proclaimed foot soldier for Hitler Jeremy Christian was sentenced to two life terms without parole. Christian killed two men and injured a third who rose to defend two black women he was harrassing on a train. The survivor of Christian’s attack, Micah Fletcher, said he hoped Christian would spend the rest of his life in jail, but still hopefully benefit from therapy.

A Bank of America analyst named Kamal Sharma called the British Pound QUOTE an emerging market currency in all but name ENDQUOTE. This is the bank’s way of saying rightwing austerity policies combined with pandemic denialism and the rejection of international agreements has put the former imperial power in the same place as one of its former colonies. Blimey!

A great plume of dust from the Sahara Desert is blanketing the globe and causing severe air quality problems in the Carribean. The dust plume, kicked up by powerful storms over central and western Africa, should hit the US today -- beginning with Texas. Another good reason to mask up!

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

June 25, 2020 - AM Quickie

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:

Tuesday was election day in both Kentucky and New York, where voters mostly embraced vote-by-mail, with some hiccups. We’ll take you through the big primary races at stake.

The European Union is considering banning travelers from the United States, claiming that our government’s abject failure to control the coronavirus presents a direct risk to its own member states.

And lastly, guess what? More corruption! A federal prosecutor is expected to tell the House today that the highest levels of Trump’s Justice Department pressured lawyers to cut Roger Stone a break during the notorious con-man’s trial, mostly because he was buddies with the President.

THESE ARE THE STORIES YOU NEED TO KNOW:

Bowman Blasts Off

New York may have pulled off the second major progressive upset of an incumbent Democrat in as many election cycles. In the state’s 16th House District primary, Jamaal Bowman seems almost certain to beat incumbent Eliot Engel, an entrenched centrist who serves as head of the House Foreign Relations Committee.

Engel had been completely checked out of the race until it was too late, at one point getting caught on a hot mic saying that he wouldn’t even be there if he didn’t face a primary challenger. But oh boy, did he get a challenger. Bowman is a middle school principal backed by Justice Democrats who racked in the support of AOC, Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren, and a whole host of other progressive figures. Meanwhile, the entire establishment rallied to try to save Engel’s seat, including Hillary Clinton.

As of Wednesday morning, it’s not looking so good for the incumbent, who was elected in 1988. Bowman is currently up by around 25 points, a huge lead despite the fact that there are still a ton of votes to count thanks to vote-by-mail. Bowman took a victory lap anyway on Tuesday night, saying quote: Bowman, speaking earlier tonight at a not-quite-victory-yet party:

"Eliot Engel -- I'll say his name once -- used to say that he was a thorn in the side of Donald Trump. But you know what Donald Trump is more afraid of than anything else? A black man with power.”

We won’t know the real outcome for a few days most likely, but right now Bowman’s in a very, very good spot.

Let’s talk about some of the other races while we’re at it. AOC crushed her primary, beating her weak challenger with over 70 percent of the vote. She’s sure to get another term, but it was always hard to see her losing that seat anytime soon. In New York’s 15th district, openly-gay city councilman Ritchie Torres has a double-digit lead over his nearest competition in a wide-open primary.

In Kentucky’s primaries we’ve got an interesting race. Progressive Charlie Booker is down by 8 points or so to the centrist wing of the party’s handpicked candidate Amy McGrath. The winner there will challenge Mitch McConnell for his Senate seat -- definitely a tall order, but a race the Democrats really want to hit hard in November. Again, still a lot of votes left to count.

E.U. Doesn't Want U.S.

The European Union is poised to give Trump a taste of his own closed-border medicine, as it considers whether or not to ban Americans from traveling to its member states due to the government’s complete failure to control the coronavirus pandemic.

The New York Times viewed a couple of early draft lists of who will or won’t be able to go to the EU as international travel starts back up over the next few months, and right now, Americans are on the chopping block. That would put us on the same level as Russia and Brazil, two other countries ruled by open fascists who have decided to let the disease run rampant through their people.

Some of this could be petty payback by the E.U. leadership in Brussles, which was reportedly furious when Trump banned most EU citizens from traveling to the U.S. in the early days of the pandemic.

This would effectively be an extension on a travel ban that’s been in place since the middle of March. The EU is going to open back up to travel on July 1 to pretty much everywhere else, including China and many less-developed countries than the U.S. Right now, it’s not looking good that we’ll make it on the list: cases are surging across the country, throwing a massive wrench in reopening plans in Texas, California, Florida and Arizona. With that in mind, the E.U. is probably smart to keep Yankees away for the time being.

DOJ Goes Corrupt for Stone

Roger Stone is one of the most fascinatingly weird figures associated with the Trump administration, and seems to function as a magnet for the dumbest attempts at corruption possible.

Today a federal prosecutor is expected to tell members of the House of Representatives that the non-partisan government officials prosecuting Stone were pressured by some of the senior-most Department of Justice officials to give Stone a break. In other words, Trump’s pet AG Bill Barr tried to get Trump’s buddy Stone a cushy deal, and it didn’t work.

Aaron Zelinsky, an assistant U.S. attorney in Maryland who previously served on former special counsel Robert S. Mueller III’s team, and another DOJ employee are both expected to tell the House that Barr ordered them to do Trump’s bidding. This isn’t surprising in the slightest, but it is one of the most blatant instances of corruption the Trump administration has gotten up to lately, which is a pretty high bar to clear.

According to a copy of Zelinsky’s prepared remarks obtained by the Washington Post, Barr and DOJ leaders wanted prosecutors to quote “to water down and in some cases outright distort events” endquote, in order to give Stone a break. Their reason, Zelinsky wrote, was that Stone had a relationship with the president.

Cool! Honestly, there’s not much Trump has to lose by just throwing out a pardon to Stone. It’s not like he’s being subtle about things at this point, might as well go ahead and pull the trigger. What’s gonna happen, the House impeaches him again? We all saw how far that got in the Senate.

AND NOW FOR SOME QUICKER QUICKIES:

A new poll by the Associated Press shows that a vast majority of Americans favor a number of key police reforms, including body camera requirements and use of force guidelines. These measures don’t fully address the systemic problem of police violence, but it’s clear that the public is coming around to the fact that the status quo just doesn’t work anymore.

Washington D.C. Mayor Muriel E. Bowser ordered the dispersal of an autonomous zone occupied by protesters on Tuesday, sending in riot cops who deployed pepper spray. DC’s autonomous zone is one of several small areas of protester-occupied space in cities around the country modeled on Seattle’s original community near a police precinct.

Minneapolis’ Police chief said in a statement that Derek Chauvin’s killing of George Floyd was murder, noting that Chauvin had recently attended training in how to restrain suspects without preventing them from breathing. Sounds like maybe more training and reform aren’t what the police system needs, if the murders won’t stop.

And finally, the White House Correspondents Dinner, a strange excuse for DC politicos to lick each other's boots that should have died long ago, will be canceled this year due to the coronavirus. Spare a thought for all the cable news types who won’t get to do mild dunks on the Trump administration this year.

June 24, 2020 - AM Quickie

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 moved to suspend new work visas, barring hundreds of thousands of workers from getting jobs in the U.S. as skilled workers and seasonal laborers that drive massive parts of our economy.

Meanwhile, multiple reports show that a U.S. army soldier plotted a terrorist attack on his own unit after joining a neo-Nazi satanist group.

And lastly, less than two weeks after NASCAR banned any display of the Confederate Flag at their races, Bubba Wallace, the only black driver in the competition’s top tier, found a noose in his garage ahead of the Geico 500.

THESE ARE THE STORIES YOU NEED TO KNOW:

Trump Pulls Visas

Donald Trump made another stupid, destructive immigration policy on Monday, moving to suspend broad categories of new work visas and extend restrictions on new green cards in order to further make our country into an isolationist state.

This one has Stephen Miller written all over it, obviously: the ban blocks both skilled workers here on the H1-B visa as well as seasonal or temporary workers like students on work-study, hospitality workers, and many others.

All told, it could keep around 525,000 people out of the country for at least the rest of the year.

Miller has been pushing for a policy like this for years, using the familiar racist argument that anyone coming here to work from another country takes American jobs away. In reality, the move is only going to hurt American businesses, who often depend on the visa system to recruit talent from abroad.

Trump is also reportedly planning changes to existing immigration laws that would further persecute people applying for asylum in the U.S., making it even harder for them to get a work permit after they’ve fled violence in their home country.

It’s all pretty much more textbook closed-border fascism at work, and he’ll keep doing it as long as he’s in office.

The bright side is that like most of Trump’s hasty immigration plans, most of these changes can be challenged in the courts, so expect to see more lawsuits soon.

U.S. Soldier Helped Satanist Nazis

Federal Prosecutors accused a U.S. army soldier on Monday of taking part in a criminal conspiracy to murder members of his own unit and other military personnel alongside a satanic white-supremacist group.

That may sound like the devil’s version of mad-libs, but it’s all in the report. According to an indictment released Monday, Private Ethan Phelan Melzer gave confidential information to a group called the Order of the Nine Angles. O9A is a British occult Nazi group that’s popular with the U.S.-based white-supremacist milita Atomwaffen, which has also recruited current or former U.S. service members.

Their deal, broadly, is worshiping Hitler, although their founder at one point converted to Islam and said nice things about Al Qaeda. The ideology may be a bit inconsistent, but their thirst for violence isn’t.

Per the indictment, the O9A people said their plans were quote “literally organizing a jihadi attack” on U.S. troops.

Melzer allegedly shared info relating to his own unit’s movement, location and security, hoping to help the Nazi satanists plot an ambush during the units upcoming deployment to Turkey. Unfortunately, one of the people he was chatting with was an FBI informant.

Their plan wasn’t to attack the unit themselves, but instead pass the information to a Turkish terrorist group with the intention of dragging the U.S. into another bloody, costly and endless war.

Fortunately for, well, everyone but the Nazi satanists, they were not successful.

NASCAR Noose

The top level of NASCAR racing, one of the most popular sports in the country, has precisely one black driver: Bubba Wallace. On Sunday, he found a noose in his garage, right before the Geico 500 race in Talladega, Florida.

Wallace has resisted engaging with the more racist elements of NASCAR fandom for years. But after the killing of Ahmad Aubry, the New York Times reports that he felt compelled to push back, wearing Black Lives Matter shirts before races and pressuring his fellow drivers to speak up.

Two weeks ago, NASCAR finally banned the Confederate flag from being flown at any of its events.

This decision was met with appreciation from some fans, of course, but others, well. On Sunday, someone with access to his garage left a noose there. NASCAR has opened an investigation, and the garage reportedly had security cameras, but it’s still a grim sign for the sport as a whole. As Wallace said quote:

“Today’s despicable act of racism and hatred leaves me incredibly saddened and serves as a painful reminder of how much further we have to go as a society and how persistent we must be in the fight against racism.”

Wallace finished the race in 14th, after making a strong push for the lead in the race’s second half. At the finish line, he left the car and walked toward the crowd, right fist raised

AND NOW FOR SOME QUICKER QUICKIES:

Seattle Mayor Jenny Durkan said on Monday night that the city would move to reclaim the Capitol Hill Occupied Protest, the autonomous section of the city that had become a police-free haven for protestors, but unfortunately was the site of two shootings over the weekend, one of them fatal. It’s unclear how this process will go, but considering the Seattle Police have been brutal with protesters so far, it probably won’t be pretty.

The Nashville Tennessean fired an ad manager who somehow approved a full-page, extremely racist, utterly incoherent anti-Muslim ad in the paper’s Sunday print edition. A sales executive flagged the ad for review, but the manager let it in the paper anyway. If you’ve seen a picture of it, you’ll understand immediately why that was such a bad call, it’s completely unhinged.

Saudi Arabia will severely limit the number of people it allows to participate in the Hajj, the traditional journey to Mecca that is one of the five pillars of Islam. Almost 2 million people traveled to the Kingdom last year to participate, this year the government says only “very limited numbers” will be allowed in due to the coronavirus pandemic.

An off duty LAPD officer claimed he found a tampon in his Starbucks Frapuccino, joining the proud tradition of cops screaming bloody murder about their food being sabotaged. They’re usually just lying, of course, like the viral story of the NYPD officers who thought they’d received poisoned milkshakes.

That’s all for the Majority Report’s AM Quickie today. Stay tuned with the full show with a still mustache-free Sam this afternoon.

June 23, 2020 - AM Quickie

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 threw a rally in Tulsa on Saturday evening, and it was a total dud. Coronavirus concerns and some shrewd maneuvers by teens on social media combined to make the administration think it was getting a record crowd, when only a few thousand showed up.

Meanwhile, Trump made it official and fired Geoffrey Berman, the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York, who’s prosecuted several cases against his inner circle.

And lastly, even the White House admits that the fall could bring a very dire spike in COVID-19 infections. Cases are on the rise in 18 states already, and the projections for coming months don’t look good.

THESE ARE THE STORIES YOU NEED TO KNOW:

Teens Help Sink Trump Rally

Donald Trump tried his very hardest to get another hit of that old rally feeling this weekend, but fell massively short.

The massive crowd the Trump team was predicting in Tulsa on Saturday didn’t really show up. Before the rally, Trump’s campaign boasted that it would completely fill Tulsa’s BOK Center, which seats more than 19,000 people. On the day of, only 6,200 showed up, according to Tulsa’s Fire Marshal.

Part of this huge gap might have to do with a massive social media prank pulled by teenagers on Tiktok and Korean pop music fans, who directed followers to sign up en masse for spots at the rally to make the campaign think they were pulling huge numbers. Trump’s campaign manager Brad Parscale appears to have bought it hook line and sinker, claiming last monday that they’d gotten more than one million requests for a ticket.

Those fake registrations wouldn’t have necessarily taken spots from Trump fans, as the rally was free and you could just walk in -- no mask required!. Still, they certainly delivered an ego-blow to the Trump baby-brigade, who spent most of the weekend blaming protesters and trolls for keeping attendance low. Sure, it’s a far cry from an electoral victory, but anything that makes that moron-in-chief feel shame is probably a net win.

Trump Fires Berman

Geoffrey Berman, the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York, is out. Why is he out, you may ask? Well, Berman had the inconvenient habit of investigating and prosecuting several members of Trump’s inner circle, including former legal fixer Micheal Cohen.

Trump has been gunning for Berman for a while, and late on Friday night, his pet Attorney General Bill Barr tried to get Berman to step down. Berman refused, forcing Barr into an awkward position -- he’s not used to direct defiance.

Barr was trying to replace Berman with a transparent Trump crony, SEC chairman Jay Clayton, last seen golfing with the president in New Jersey last weekend. Berman wasn’t having any of it.

So Barr had to go above his head, instead saying that Trump was firing Berman instead of just replacing him. Berman agreed to go this time, because instead of Clayton, his longtime deputy Audrey Strauss would be taking over.

Strauss is ostensibly an actual public servant, like Berman, so it’s highly possible that Barr will be coming for her next, but for the time being she’s promised to continue Berman’s investigations.

The New York Times reports that Barr wasn’t able to strongarm Clayton into the spot because multiple Republican Senators indicated that the corruption apparent was too obvious even for them, and they wouldn’t confirm him.

Man, if what you’re trying to pull is too sketchy for Lindsey Graham, you’re really doing something wrong.

Government Braces For Fall Covid Spike

The coronavirus is still spreading and in some cases increasing drastically. California reported 4,515 new cases on Sunday -- the highest increase in a single day in that state. 12 other states also hit their record for new cases in the past week.

What this means is that this thing is going to hit the rest of the country hard, despite the fact that it’s a bit more under control in hot zones like NYC. But the parts of the country who reopened way before their peak show no signs of attempting to put new restrictions in place, meaning things are going to get much worse. While Trump is convinced the whole thing is going to go away, Peter Navarro, the White House director of trade and manufacturing policy said on CNN that the government is quote “doing everything we can,” endquote to get the country ready for another spike in the fall. It’s hard to take a quote like that at face value considering the administration’s abysmal record so far, but at least someone in the building is willing to admit there’s still work to do.

The good news is overall deaths are still down. But new infections have risen 15 percent nationally over the last two weeks, which means the toll could start to climb back up as patients get sicker. Epidemiologists now aren’t saying the disease will come in waves, but continue to spread like a quote “forest fire” endquote. Epidemiologist Dr. Michael Osterholm told NBC quote: “I don’t think this is going to slow down. I think that wherever there’s wood to burn, this fire is going to burn it.”

And if there’s one thing Trump’s shown so far, it’s that he doesn’t care who he feeds to the flames.

AND NOW FOR SOME QUICKER QUICKIES:

The Los Angeles Sheriff’s Department shot and killed 18-year-old Andres Guardado on Thursday. Guardado was working as a security guard at an auto shop, and ran from police who showed up responding to reports of a man with a gun. Deputies pursued him and killed him, claiming he was armed. His killing has sparked a fresh round of protests across the city.

The New York Times reports that after Derek Chauvin was arrested for the murder of George Floyd, the superintendent of the jail he was taken to ordered only white officers to supervise him. According to complaints filed by multiple staffers of color, the superintendent prevented them from even being on the same floor as Chauvin, solely because of the color of their skin.

A new, strange detail emerges from the devastating shooting rampage in Nova Scotia, Canada in April. According to Macleans, the shooter withdrew $475,000 Canadian dollars in cash using the same procedures the Canadian police use to get cash to confidential informants -- but the cops there claim they had no “special relationship” with the killer.

And finally, it was the hottest day ever recorded in the Arctic circle on Saturday, as Verkhoyansk, Siberia hit 100.4 degrees Fahrenheit. The reading hasn’t been fully verified yet, but either way, that kind of heat in the Arctic circle is a pretty dire warning that despite our other global woes, climate change is only getting worse.

That’s it for the Majority Report’s AM Quickie today! We’ll have some slightly more fun topics this afternoon than the earth’s gradual heat death and police brutality, so keep your eyes on YouTube and your favorite podcast app for the show.

June 22, 2020 - AM Quickie

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:

California becomes the sixth state to require masks out of doors. But a lot of other states have leaders who are happy to pretend the pandemic is over and done.

Meanwhile, Facebook penalizes Donald Trump’s reelection campaign for promoting organized hate. This may or may not surprise you, but Trump’s advertisements featured genuine Nazi iconography from the 1930s.

And lastly: good news for millions of American families. The Supreme Court intervened to stop Trump from deporting DACA recipients.

THESE ARE THE STORIES YOU NEED TO KNOW:

California Says Mask Up

As the global death toll from COVID-19 nears half a million people, the overall government response in the US remains chaotic. California’s Democratic Governor, Gavin Newsom, announced a new statewide order requiring masks outside the home. Masks will now be required in public indoor settings, and outdoors when it’s not possible to stand six feet apart. California joins Michigan, New York, Maine, Delaware and Maryland in requiring masks during the pandemic. Newsom’s order includes several exceptions, including walking, hiking, running and bicycling – but social distancing is expected for those exercising outside. The announcement did not mention any penalties for people who break the rules. The mayor of Costa Mesa in Orange County told the Associated Press QUOTE nobody wants to have to arrest people for not wearing a facial covering. We just want people to care about others, so people don’t die ENDQUOTE.

It’s a different story over in Nebraska. Republican Governor Pete Ricketts has threatened to deny federal aid money to local governments that require pepole to wear masks in public. And in China, where COVID-19 was first detected, lockdown measures are being reinstituted in light of a new wave of cases in Beijing. The pandemic isn’t over folks, don’t kid yourselves. Even the communications director for Donald Trump’s reelection campaign is advising supporters in high-risk categories to watch tomorrow’s presidential hate rally in Tulsa, Oklahoma on television, rather than expose themselves and their families.

Facebook Permitted Trump Propaganda

If the Trump’s public health messaging seems confused, at best, his campaign’s neo- Nazi propaganda is crystal clear. Yesterday Facebook removed Trump ads targeting disparaging antifascists that featured unmistakable Nazi symbolism. The campaign placed eighty-eight ads different in all fifty states featuring a large inverted red triangle. The accompanying text spoke of QUOTE dangerous mobs of far left groups...running through our streets and causing absolute mayhem ENDQUOTE. Back in the 1930s and ’40s the German Nazi Party used the red triangle to identify suspected communists, social democrats, liberals, Freemasons, and other opposition members in their concentration camps.

As for the eighty-eight placements – that number is widely used by neo-Nazis as a kind of code for praising Adolf Hitler. The paid posts on Facebook featuring this iconography were reportedly sponsored by accounts belonging to Trump and Vice President Mike Pence, as well as the official Team Trump campaign page. It’s not the first time Trump campaign or his administration has used Nazi iconography, but it is one of the more egregious.

The ads were viewed nearly a million times before Facebook removed them yesterday, after getting questions from the Washington Post. The company says the ads violated its policy against organized hate.

Supreme Court Upholds DACA

The Supreme Court intervened yesterday to stop Trump from canceling the DACA program that protects child migrants from deportation. In a five-to-four decision, the Court ruled that Trump lacked sufficient justificatin to end the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, instituted by President Barack Obama in 2012. DACA confers a temporary protected status to non-citizens who came to the US as children and are American in every sense that counts except for some paperwork. Because of the ruling, some eight-hundred thousand people may be spared deportation. More than a million families will be spared the pain of separation.

One of the beneficiaries the program – a Dreamer named Marisol Montejano (MONTAY- YANO) – told the New York Times QUOTE I feel like I can breathe. I feel like I can tell my kids it’s going to be OK ENDQUOTE.

As the Times reported: the decision not only paves the way for immigrants to continue renewing their protected status, it also opens the program to some 66,000 undocumented young people who had been excluded from the program since the Trump administration began winding it down.

Chief Justice John Roberts voted with the liberal wing of the Court to secure the decision. Trump seemed caught off guard, accusing the court of firing QUOTE shotgun blasts into the face of people that are proud to call themselves Republicans or Conservatives ENDQUOTE. Not quite, but we’re only halfway through the year 2020.

AND NOW FOR SOME QUICKER QUICKIES:

Washington State activated the National Guard to help process unemployment claims. Not coincidentally, the federal Department of Labor released new figures yesterday showing another one-and-a-half million Americans filed for jobless benefits last week.

Steven Ray Baca, the New Mexico man who fired into a crowd of protesters this earlier week, managed to avoid charges in the shooting. Albuquerque press say the state police have taken over the investigation, which the District Attorney called fundamentally incomplete. Baca’s lawyers are claiming self-defense.

The US House of Representatives will hold a vote on statehood for the District of Columbia on next Friday, June 26, Democratic leadership announced. House rules prevent DC Congresswoman Eleanor Holmes Norton from participating in the vote. She first brought a statehood bill to Congress in 1993.

Dutch police are chasing a new lead in the case of a stolen Vincent Van Gogh painting from a museum in The Netherlands this past March. A famous art detective, Arthur Brand, tipped police after he found a photo of the painting being shared in QUOTE mafia circles ENDQUOTE. The oil-on-paper work by Van Gogh depicts a garden, and is valued at $6.3 million. But what about the movie rights?

That’s all for the AM Quickie. Join us this afternoon on the Majority Report, with guest Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez! Please have a good Juneteenth.

June 19, 2020 - AM Quickie

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:

Another killer cop catches a murder charge, this time in Georgia. But human rights advocates say we are a long way from justice for police brutality.

Meanwhile, essential delivery workers are having a lot of problems with police during this time of curfews. Millions more people each week face an untenable economic situation.

And lastly, why is it so satisfying to see conservatives lose their minds over the police-free zone the lefties set up in Seattle? We bring you the latest from the CHAZ – or the CHOP – whichever, take your pick.

THESE ARE THE STORIES YOU NEED TO KNOW:

Killer Atlanta Cop Charged

The United Nations Human Rights Council held an urgent session in New York yesterday on racism and police brutality. The UN’s chief of human rights, Michelle Bachelet (BATCH-EH-LETT), said during the proceedings that QUOTE Too little has changed over too many years. The scale of today's protests point at the sea change. We need a decisive action around the world ENDQUOTE.

It’s far from decisive, but there was one sign of progress in yesterday’s headlines. The fired Atlanta cop who shot and killed Rayshard Brooks, a twenty-seven-year-old restaurant worker, caught felony murder charges yesterday. In addition to the murder charge, Garrett Rolfe will face 10 other offenses for shooting Brooks twice during a suspected drunk driving stop. Prosecutors say they have video showing Rolfe kicked Brooks on the ground after shooting him. The Brooks family’s attorney told reporters QUOTE Was this justice today? Not yet ENDQUOTE.

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution yesterday reported on a sudden string of hangings that has killed six black and Hispanic Americans in four states. The people fear lynchings, but police have ruled each case a suicide. Across the country, Oakland, California’s mayor announced a hate crimes investigation after nooses were found hanging from trees on public land. But after the mayor’s announcement, Oakland police put out a statement that the ropes could simply have been part of someone’s exercise routine.

So, yeah, we need decisive action around the world to end racism and police brutality.

Curfews Punish Gig Workers

If anybody’s essential, it’s the person delivering your Phad Thai. Gig workers are increasingly facing arrest for violating curfew, the Washington Post reported yesterday. Many delivery apps like Caviar, Uber and Instacart have kept operating during periods of coronavirus curfew around the country. But they aren’t always letting their drivers know the legal risks they might face – not to mention threats to life and limb from the police. The companies say they have instituted changes to keep workers safer, like distributing face masks, but critics and labor advocates say it’s not enough. What’s more, their workforce has expanded dramatically as a result of the pandemic and economic crisis. Hundreds of thousands people have joined the gig economy labor pool in recent months. And they’re finding out the hard way just how cruel and unjust the lords of Silicon Valley can be.

One in thirteen San Francisco renters has broken their lease in the past hundred days. That’s according to the San Francisco Chronicle, which says that people are walking out on their leases rather than fall behind on rent. The top category of renters to bail on their leases were those between eighteen and twenty-five years old. But all kinds of people are suffering all over the place. Reports from Kentucky yesterday showed eight-hour unemployment line. That’s thousands of people standing for hours in the sun, lined up along along a road. And, presumably, getting more angry by the minute. This is what you get with a capitalist economy in free-fall that provides no meaningful safety net.

CHAZ Freaks Out Squares

The Capitol Hill Autonomous Zone, or CHAZ -- also known as the Capitol Hill Organized Protest, or CHOP – continues to drive Republicans insane. The gentrified Seattle neighborhood has been occupied by protesters who are determined to keep the cops at bay. They’ve held their ground for eleven days now, and reclaimed some public land in the process. This week some members of the CHOP community met with elected officials and bureaucrats from the city of Seattle to agree on new borders. These were described by local alt-weekly The Stranger as slightly smaller, but more permanent.

The newspaper reported fruitful conversations between residents and the city over the last few days[. Now] the Seattle Fire Department, Seattle Public Utilities, and the Seattle Department of Transportation are removing the old flimsy barriers at the intersections and

installing concrete barriers wrapped with particle board... Honey Buckets are being rearranged. [And] The No Cop Co-Op is moving down the street a bit.

The idea is to allow greater access for emergency vehicles, including fire trucks. It seems the only people who are taking the words autonomous zone literally work in conservative media. Far-right websites put out a call for so-called patriots to QUOTE end domestic terrorism ENDQUOTE in the CHOP with an event scheduled for today. Local activists don’t seem too worried, as past incursions by the far right ended in humiliation for the reactionaries.

Showing just how obsessed the right is with this anarchist experiment in Seattle, Florida drunk driver and Congressman Matt Gaetz yesterday went on a wild rant about the CHOP. He asked the majority Democrats if they’d host a Congressional delegation to Seattle so they could assess conditions for themselves. Evidently he believes Trump, who claimed Seattle has been taken over by domestic terrorists. Gaetz then got into a heated back-and-forth with Louisiana Congressman Cedric Richmond, who suggested Gaetz might have a conscious racial bias. Gaetz responded by shouting Who in the hell do you think you are?! This is outrageous! But Richmond, who chaired the Congressional Black Caucus until last year, had the final word: If the shoe fits, he said. Matt Gaetz? Racist? Yeah, that shoe fits just fine.

Here’s what Gaetz could see happening in the CHOP if he actually cared to look: A young black Stanford graduate with training in degrees in energy and sustainability, who started a vegetable garden in a Capitol Hill park. The urban farmer, Marcus Henderson, told The Stranger his work on the CHOP farm seeks to remedy historic injustices. One way systemic racism in America has worked is by depriving blacks of land. Henderson runs a small organization called Black Star Farmers, which is also the name of his website and his Instagram page. If you’re in the Seattle area, they are seeking donations of organic compost, mulch, river rocks, cinder blocks, worms, and other small-farm necessities. Oh no: anarchy!

AND NOW FOR SOME QUICKER QUICKIES:

Former Trump national security adviser John Bolton’s book is the talk of the Beltway, especially since the White House is basically trying to ban it. In excerpts widely reported yesterday, Trump is revealed to have asked Chinese leader Xi Jinping for held getting re- elected. The walrus moustache always laughs last.

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer endorsed New York Representative Eliot Engel yesterday. Engel, a hawkish centrist, faces progressive favorite Jamaal Bowman in the New York Democratic primary next Tuesday, June 23. Chuck would’ve been smarter to sit this one out.

Honest-to-goodness pirates are menacing the Gulf of Mexico, or so says the US State Department. The latest travel advisory for Mexico warns that armed criminal groups have been known to target and rob commercial vessels, oil platforms, and offshore supply vessels in the southern Gulf_._ Good to know someone out there is still making an honest living.

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

June 18, 2020 - AM Quickie

HOSTS - Sam Seder & Lucie Steiner

WRITER - Corey Pein

PRODUCER - Dorsey Shaw

EXECUTIVE PRODUCER - Brendan Finn