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

TODAY'S HEADLINES:

The people who really decide the U.S. Presidential election have finally decided to weigh in, as the electoral college declares Joe Biden the victor.

Meanwhile, the U.S. crosses 300,000 deaths from coronavirus, as the first vaccines go out to healthcare workers and Congress waffles over another spending bill.

And lastly, Attorney General William Barr has resigned, after losing Trump’s favor at the very end of his tenure, largely because he couldn’t do enough to facilitate Trump’s clumsy attempts to overturn the 2020 election.

THESE ARE THE STORIES YOU NEED TO KNOW:

Joe Biden officially won the 2020 election today. Wait, didn’t he do that weeks ago? In fact he did not: but today, the Electoral College finally cast their votes, certifying Biden as the winner.

It’s kind of funny that we’ve spent the past month and a half agonizing over the votes of everyday people when we have a system where none of them actually matter, because technically a couple hundred handpicked people are the only ones who can say who our next president will be.

The electoral college voted as it should have, of course, with the electors for each state voting in accordance to which candidate won the popular vote there. Republican officials in Michigan had to specifically rebuff the petulant President in their remarks certifying the election in favor of Biden, which just highlights the fact that it’s absurd to have random middlemen anywhere near the process.

There are also signs that the President’s supporters may be going out with a whimper. Both the New York Times and the Washington Post reported that protests were minimal while electors voted in most states, which might have something to do with the fact that barely anyone knows anything about when and where state electors vote, but could also mean that even the die-hard Trumpists know that their guy is a big old loser by now.

The danger now is that liberals see this as a sign that everything is working well again and we shouldn’t change anything, which will come back around to bite us just as soon as the next time a Republican finds a way to lose the election by millions of votes but squeak by in the electoral college. See you in 2024!

COVID Deaths Cross 300,000

You’ve heard the phrase “grim milestone” so many times by now it’s probably almost meaningless. But once again, we’ve passed one. The U.S. broke 300,000 recorded coronavirus deaths on Monday, even as healthcare workers in New York, Florida and other regions got the first doses of a vaccine.

But the vaccine won’t come quick enough to stop what scientists fear is a rapidly increasing rate of death. They think we could see another 100,000 deaths in the next month, as hospitals overflow and case rates soar nationwide.

Meanwhile, in Washington, the gears of government bureaucracy are turning at a snail’s pace. Politico reports that Congress might be getting closer to a compromise on a relief deal that could go through before the end of the year, thanks to a $748 billion proposal by a centrist group of Senators.

If that last phrase sounds like doom to you, well, you’d be right: the bill that’s on the table only has money for education and vaccine causes, not the stimulus for state and local governments on the verge of mass layoffs across the country. That money is still tied up in a separate $160 billion add-on that Republicans have successfully linked to corporate liability protections.

House Democrats are still working on a larger combined bill, but we’ve seen how far those get with the GOP. In the Senate, Bernie Sanders is still fighting the good fight, insisting that he won’t vote for any bill that doesn’t include direct $1200 payments to every American. It’s a pity there aren’t more like him in the Democratic party.

Bye Bye Bill Barr

The President’s biggest law boy William Barr is out, resigned and done. Barr, the Attorney General who was perhaps most effective in stooging for the Trump administration’s moronic legal schemes and various rights abuses, had recently lost favor with the President when he was forced to admit that not even his incredibly corrupt underlings could find compelling evidence of voter fraud in the 2020 election.

This wasn’t the answer Trump wanted to hear of course, so in the month or so that Trump’s got left, he decided that Barr’s head would roll.

The parting was framed amicably, weirdly enough. Trump announced it in a tweet on Monday evening, saying that Barr’s last day would be shortly before Christmas. This is exactly his style -- he loves to announce things for his underlings just so it’s very clear they have no agency or dignity left. Remember when he told us all that Rudy had COVID?

Deputy Attorney General Jeff Rosen is stepping into the hot seat for the last days of Trumpland.

There’s a lot of talk in the mainstream press over what this will mean for Barr’s legacy, but we all know the score. He went out like he came in: as a corrupt sycophant for the stupidest president in modern history. Don’t let the door hit you on the way out.

AND NOW FOR SOME QUICKER QUICKIES:

This isn’t a news item, but today is the deadline for open enrollment in the healthcare marketplace. If you’ve been waiting to sign up for or purchase new health insurance, today’s the deadline. It’s absurd that you have to buy it, but here we are.

The United States removed Sudan from its list of countries who sponsor terrorism, giving it access to international financial systems that could speed its recovery and development. The Washington Post reports the deal was done in return for Sudan normalizing relations with Israel, a major push that the Trump administration has made in recent months.

In other world news, the U.S. dropped sanctions on Turkey over a 2017 deal where Turkey bought a Russian air defense system. The crackdown certainly won’t make things any easier between Turkish leaders and the incoming Biden administration.

And finally, there may be more momentum building at the FTC for a probe on some of the biggest social media companies. On Monday, the FTC said it had issued demands to Amazon, Facebook, and Youtube to turn over records about how they collect and use customers’ data.

That’s it for the majority report’s AM Quickie. Stay tuned for the full show this afternoon!

DEC 15, 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:

The coronavirus vaccine is rolling out to its first recipients in the U.S., and guess who vaulted themselves to the front of the line? The Trump White House, of course, which is nabbing dozens of early doses for the West Wing staff.

Meanwhile, Russian government hackers again appear to have carried out an expansive attack on U.S. government networks, breaching email services at both the Treasury and Commerce departments.

And lastly, a weekend of bloody clashes in Washington D.C. ends with four stabbings, as far-right militias including the Proud Boys stoke chaos in the nation’s capital.

THESE ARE THE STORIES YOU NEED TO KNOW:

There is some light at the end of our dark, national tunnel of disease. The coronavirus vaccine has begun to ship across the country, and high risk populations should be getting their first doses in a matter of days.

But the absolute first in line, of course, are all the greedy villains in the West Wing. White House staff members who work closely with President Trump himself were told they will receive the vaccine soon. There’s two issues with this: one, “staff” in this case doesn’t appear to mean the actual working people in the White House: the cooks, janitors, et cetera, it means the inner circle of Trump sycophants who have spent the past year passing coronavirus around to each other because they’re too stupid to wear masks.

You could argue that West Wing staffers are a high risk population, if only by the number of cases they’ve already had, but then again, those were entirely their own faults. But Trump is insistent on acting like a king, so we’ll have to deal with a few more selfish royal decrees before he gets kicked off the throne.

The rest of us will have to wait a bit. The first doses of a vaccine left the Pfizer facility in Michigan early on Sunday, en route to critical healthcare workers. Some nursing homes will start to get the vaccine next week. Everyone else, well, it’s pretty unclear. The New York Times notes that the U.S.’s rollout is more decentralized than other countries, like Great Britain, which have tightly controlled what’s going where.

We should know more in the coming days about when everyone will be able to get the shot, but if you want to skip the line, you could always apply for a last-ditch job as one of Trump’s yes-men.

Russian Hackers At It Again

What year is it? 2016? No, unfortunately, it’s now 2020, and we regret to inform you that the Russian hackers are at it again. This time, however, the operation doesn’t appear to have had much to do with the election.

Trump administration officials reluctantly admitted on Sunday that a team of hackers almost certainly from the Russian government had breached email systems in the Department of the Treasury and the Department of Commerce.

The government says it’s looking to make sure they didn’t get into any other departments as well, which is always something you want to hear from the people supposedly running the country.

The worrying thing is that the Trump administration doesn’t appear to fully understand what the hackers were looking for, or why they did it. The Commerce Department admitted that a sub-agency that helps determine policy for tech issues like imports and exports of technology that are considered a national security risk was one of the targets, which seems... not great.

A government official told the ​_Times_​ that it was too soon to tell how damaging the attacks were or what exactly was taken. So to wrap up: we’re not sure what data the hackers took, or why they took it, but we are sure that someone big did a really big hack.

For the everyday American, this probably isn’t a top concern. But the fact that our government does not appear to be fully in control of its own digital security doesn’t exactly inspire confidence.

Proud Boys Provoke Violence In D.C.

A Proud Boy rally in D.C. once again devolved into chaos and violence on Saturday night, as a group of the violent right-wing militia allegedly surrounded a black man, who then wounded four of them with a knife.

The rally saw clashes between Proud Boys and left-wing counterprotesters throughout the day, as the Proud Boys rampaged around the city tearing down Black Lives Matter banners and signs. Social media video shows a group of proud boys tearing down a BLM banner from a church and lighting it on fire shortly before the stabbings.

Video of the stabbings itself shows a chaotic, dangerous scene. The Proud Boys and other Trump supporters had surrounded a black man wearing dark clothing outside a bar that the

Washington Post reported was a rallying point for the Trumpist crowd. At some point, the crowd of Proud Boys rushed in and began attacking him, at which point he pulled a knife. D.C. police reports that four people were stabbed. The New York Times was unable to confirm if the knife-wielding man was still in custody or if he had a lawyer.

DC police say 33 people were arrested total on Saturday. The Proud Boys rarely show up in town without inciting some sort of violence, and they certainly got what they came for this weekend.

AND NOW FOR SOME QUICKER QUICKIES:

In sports news, Cleveland’s baseball team announced that it would finally drop its racist mascot and name, the latest major sports franchise to finally capitulate to what native activists and generally nonracist people have been asking for for decades.

The Wall Street Journal published an incredibly dumb op-ed this weekend arguing that Jill Biden shouldn’t use the title Doctor, as she doesn’t have an MD, only a PhD. This set off a wild uproar over who gets to call themselves a doctor and the relative value of womens’ achievements that nevertheless does not have anything to do with either of the Bidens’ ability to govern the country.

Pressure is mounting for President Trump to pardon NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden before he leaves office, with several elected officials including prominent GOP provocateurs Matt Gaetz and Senator Rand Paul calling for Trump to make the call.

And finally, you may have missed it on Friday but the Supreme Court shot down the Texas Attorney General’s bid to overturn the election, dealing what is probably, maybe, hopefully the final legal death blow to Trump’s ridiculous challenge to the 2020 election.

That’s it for the Majority Report’s AM quickie today! Stay tuned for the full show with Sam this afternoon.

DEC 14, 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:

Republicans are trying to suppress the vote in future elections by attacking mail-in balloting at the state level. They blame it in part for Donald Trump’s loss in November, but they also think anything that makes it easier for people to vote is a threat to their power.

Meanwhile, there is a growing fissure in the Black Lives Matter movement. At least ten local chapters have taken aim at national organizers over, among other things, money.

And lastly, in a unanimous decision, the Supreme Court took the side of Muslims targeted by the Federal Bureau of Investigation. Three Muslim men were targeted with reprisals after refusing to work as informants, so they sued – and won.

THESE ARE THE STORIES YOU NEED TO KNOW:

Sore losers that they are, Republicans are attempting to undermine the future use of vote-by-mail, the New York Times reports. Absentee ballots constituted nearly half the votes cast in the 2020 election. Experts call the experiment in mass voting by mail a remarkable success. But that hasn’t stopped Republicans eager to appease Donald Trump, who falsely and cravenly equated mail-in ballots with voter fraud.

This week in Georgia, the Times reports, Republican state senators pledged to eliminate no- excuse absentee voting, require a photo ID to obtain a ballot, and outlaw drop boxes. They also want to scrap a court agreement to quickly tell voters about signature problems on ballots so that they can be fixed. Separately, the GOP filed a lawsuit in Atlanta seeking to curtail the use of drop boxes in next month’s runoff elections for the United States Senate. The suit claimed it was illegal to let absentee voters deposit ballots after business hours, which has to be one of the stupidest legal arguments ever committed to paper.

And Georgia has company, the Times reports. In Pennsylvania, Republicans are seeking co- sponsors for bills to stiffen identification requirements for mail ballots, tighten standards for signature matching and to repeal the law that allows anyone to vote absentee without an excuse. Michigan Republicans want to review a 2018 ballot initiative approved by two-thirds of voters that authorized no-excuse absentee balloting as well as same-day registration and

straight-ticket voting. Texas Republicans have filed bills that would crimp officials’ ability to distribute absentee ballot applications and even make it a felony to offer to help a voter fill out a ballot. They really do hate democracy, don’t they?

Internal Feud Threatens BLM

Movement politics can get messy. Now Politico reports that the Black Lives Matter movement is buckling under the strain of its own success, with tensions rising between local chapters and national leaders over the group’s goals, direction – and money. After a summer of protests that made BLM a household name, those atop the movement are organizing a political action committee, forming corporate partnerships, adding a third organizing arm and demanding an audience with President-elect Joe Biden.

The moves have triggered mutiny in the ranks, Politico reports. Ten local chapters are severing ties with the Black Lives Matter Global Network, as the national leadership is known. They are furious that Patrisse Cullors, its remaining co-founder, named herself executive director of the group and made these decisions without their input. Local BLM activists say national leaders cut them off from funding and decision-making, leaving them broke and taking the movement in a direction with which they fundamentally disagree. Sheri Dickerson, lead organizer of BLM Oklahoma City, told Politico QUOTE We're not a brand. We are a revolution ENDQUOTE.

Ten chapters signed an open letter last week that laid out a half-dozen points of contention and long-standing grievances. They said there’s a lack of transparency over $13 million in donations the movement has raised and how chapters can access it. Local organizers said they saw little or no money and were forced to crowdfund to stay afloat. Some organizers say they were barely able to afford gas or housing. With so much money and energy going toward this movement in the past year, it seems wrong for local organizers to get left out in the cold.

SCOTUS Ruling Favors Muslims

It’s not every day that Christian activists rally for the civil liberties of Muslims targeted by the US government. But yesterday the Supreme Court – minus new Justice Amy Coney Barrett – ruled unanimously that three Muslim men may seek monetary damages from

individual government agents, the Washington Post reports. The agents reportedly placed the men on a no-fly list because they refused to become FBI informants. In response, the men filed a lawsuit in 2013 under the Religious Freedom Restoration Act, which provides relief from government actions that substantially burden a person’s religious beliefs.

Muhammad Tanvir and two other men alleged that they were asked to spy on their friends and fellow congregants at mosques in the New York area, the Post reports. They refused, and later discovered that they were placed on the no-fly list. As a result, Tanvir lost the ability to fly home after trips he made as a long-haul trucker. He also lost money on plane tickets he had purchased to see relatives in Pakistan. Throughout the years, he said, agents told him they could get him off the list if he became an informant. Tanvir and the others sued instead.

As their lawsuit progressed toward a hearing, the men were told that they were no longer on the list, according to the Post. A federal judge said that made their case moot. But a panel of the US Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit disagreed, saying the men could bring their claims for damages. The Becket Fund for Religious Liberty filed an amicus brief in the case, and said the ruling was important because government officials often try to get rid of lawsuits by simply stopping the alleged illegal behavior. Senior counsel Lori Windham said QUOTE the government can’t expect to be let off the hook by simply changing its tune at the last second ENDQUOTE. It’s like many of us learned on the playground: No takebacks!

AND NOW FOR SOME QUICKER QUICKIES:

Joe Biden will nominate Denis McDonough, a former chief of staff to President Barack Obama, to lead the Department of Veterans Affairs, the Washington Post reports. Biden has also picked Susan Rice, Obama’s former national security adviser, to run the White House Domestic Policy Council. The more things change, huh?

British Prime Minister Boris Johnson said yesterday there was a strong possibility Britain and the European Union would fail to strike a new trade deal, Reuters reports. That would mean Britain would see trade barriers imposed with the EU, its main economic partner, in just three weeks. Another broken promise from the Brexit boosters – blimey!

The Justice Department is investigating the finances of Biden’s son, Hunter, including scrutinizing some of his Chinese business dealings, the Associated Press reports. There is no indication that the investigation has anything to do with Joe, but whoever he appoints as Attorney General will take over the case, assuming it’s still going on then.

The longest-serving nonviolent cannabis prisoner was released this week with help from activists, the AP reports. New Yorker Richard DeLisi, now seventy one, was sentenced to ninety years for marijuana trafficking in 1989 at the age of forty. Welcome back, dude!

DEC 11, 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:

Intensive care units are filling up with coronavirus patients across the country. Which means that some of the sick people aren’t going to get the care they need.

Meanwhile, Texas Republicans want the United States Supreme Court to overturn the presidential election in four other states. And Donald Trump wants every Republican in Congress to sign on to the case.

And lastly, New York’s massive state pension fund is divesting from fossil fuels companies. Experts say it could push more major investors to follow suit.

THESE ARE THE STORIES YOU NEED TO KNOW:

The death panels are coming. More than a third of Americans live in areas where hospitals are running critically short of intensive care beds, according to federal data analyzed by the New York Times. And one in ten Americans lives in an area where intensive care beds are either completely full, or fewer than five percent of beds are available. At these levels, maintaining existing standards of care for the sickest patients may be impossible.

The new data shows that some areas – like Amarillo, Texas, Coral Gables, Florida, and Troy, Michigan – are seeing rates of serious illness from Covid-19 that approach the levels seen in New York City during the worst weeks of the spring. Political leaders in many states are ramping up measures to try to slow the spread, the Times reports. Governor Michelle Lujan (LOO-HAN) Grisham of New Mexico, where ICUs are full across the state, is expected to soon announce that hospitals can ration care based on who is most likely to survive.

Survival rates from the disease have improved as doctors have learned which treatments work, the Times says. But hospital shortages could reverse those gains, risking the possibility of increasing mortality rates once again. There is some evidence physicians are already limiting care, according to Thomas Tsai, an assistant professor of health policy at Harvard University. For the last several weeks, the rate at which Covid-19 patients are going to hospitals has started decreasing. That suggests that there’s some rationing of care as hospitals remain full, Tsai told the Times. The best way we can ease the burden on hospitals is to stop the spread – so stay home or else mask up.

Texas Election Lawsuit 'Absurd'

No matter how hard he scrubs, the stink of failure clings to Donald Trump. Reuters reports that an attempt by Texas Republicans to have Trump’s election loss upended by the US Supreme Court is almost certain to fail. Texas on Tuesday sued Georgia, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin in a case brought directly to the high court. The suit asks justices to throw out the voting results in those four states. It argues that changes made by the states to expand mail-in voting amid the pandemic were unlawful, Reuters reports.

Election law experts who called the lawsuit laughable. Rebecca Green, a professor at William and Mary Law School in Virginia, told Reuters that Texas does not have legal standing to challenge how other states handled the election. She said QUOTE It is so outlandish. It is totally contrary to how our Constitution mandates that elections be run. The idea that a state could complain about another state’s processes is just absurd ENDQUOTE.

Trump said yesterday on Twitter that he'll intervene in the case, which was filed by Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton. Meanwhile, a Republican congressman who filed an amicus brief in the lawsuit said yesterday that Trump is anxiously awaiting a list of lawmakers who support the effort. The Washington Post reports that Trump called Congressman Mike Johnson of Louisiana yesterday morning. Trump asked Johnson to request that all Republican members of the House and Senate join their brief. In a letter to colleagues, Johnson said they are not seeking to litigate particular allegations of fraud – no doubt because the allegations are bogus. Rather, the Post reports, they are urging the Court to conduct a careful, timely review of the allegations. Seeing as how the Court just declined to hear another of Trump’s baseless election complaints, that’d be a big surprise.

Finally, the Post reports, the Nevada Supreme Court unanimously ruled on Tuesday night to reject an appeal from Trump’s campaign to overturn the state’s election results. Loooooser!

Fossil Fuels Divestment Spreads

Know any rich people? Let them know that the world’s wealthy will need to reduce their carbon footprints by a factor of thirty to help curb climate change. The figure comes from findings published yesterday by the United Nations Environment Program and reported in the Washington Post. Currently, the emissions attributable to the richest one percent of all people account for more than double those of the poorest fifty percent. Shifting that balance will require swift and substantial lifestyle changes, the Post says, including decreases in air travel. But there are also changes that only institutions, not individuals, can make. And some are.

According to the New York Times, one of the world’s largest and most influential investors – New York State’s pension fund – will drop many of its fossil fuel stocks in the next five years. It will also and sell its shares in other companies that contribute to global warming by 2040, the state comptroller said yesterday. With $226 billion in assets, New York’s fund holds sway over other major investors. Its decision to divest from fossil fuels could help push global markets away from oil and gas companies, experts and activists told the Times.

One thousand two hundred and forty six institutions have committed to shedding their investments in fossil fuels, the Times reports. Sixty thousand individuals have also divested. The total combined value of their portfolios is $14.1 trillion. The movement to dump fossil fuel stocks began as an effort to make an ethical statement and to cast polluters as pariahs, much like the push to divest from apartheid-era South Africa. But as the market shifts, coal and increasingly oil and gas have become riskier investments. It was bound to happen eventually – and hopefully not too late.

AND NOW FOR SOME QUICKER QUICKIES:

NBC News reports that immigrant and child advocates are increasing pressure on President-elect Joe Biden. They want him to commit to allowing parents separated from their children at the border by the Trump administration to return to the US to be reunited. Biden has said he would establish a taskforce dedicated to reuniting separated families, but his transition team has yet to reveal detailed plans. Get on that, Joe!

Trump is facing a rebellion among Congressional Republicans over his threat to veto the annual Pentagon spending bill, Politico reports. A House vote on Tuesday night suggests

Trump’s veto will be overridden, which hasn’t happened to him before. Well, there’s a first time for everything.

Cuba said this week it has attracted $1.9 billion worth of foreign investment over the past year despite tighter US sanctions. Reuters reports that Cuba has reduced obstacles to foreign investment. For example, only projects regarding extraction of natural resources and public services will now require a majority Cuban stakeholder. What would Che say?

The Federal Trade Commission and more than forty states accused Facebook yesterday of becoming a monopoly by buying up its rivals to illegally squash competition, the New York Times reports. The prosecutors called for Facebook to break off Instagram and WhatsApp, and for new restrictions on future deals. Great, now when do we start redistributing Mark Zuckerberg’s personal fortune?

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

DEC 10, 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 Supreme Court unceremoniously shot down an attempt by Trump’s lackeys to overturn Pennsylvania’s election results, denying their requested injunction with no noted dissent, not even from Trump’s handpicked justices. Better luck next time!

Meanwhile, Treasury Secretary Stephen Mnuchin claims he’s presented Nancy Pelosi with a stimulus bill, and we have a few details as to what might be in it. Long story short? It’s something, but not nearly enough.

And lastly, Mega-soulless consulting firm McKinsey issues a rare apology for its role in perpetuating the opioid epidemic when it helped Purdue Pharma push OxyContin sales across the country, promising

THESE ARE THE STORIES YOU NEED TO KNOW:

Despite the fact that Donald Trump got to pick three of its members, the Supreme Court does not seem inclined to do him any favors in stealing the 2020 election.

On Tuesday, the court abruptly denied a petition filed by the President’s allies to request an injunction and potentially overturn Joe Biden’s win in Pennsylvania, one of many such bogus legal challenges. And when we say abruptly, we mean abruptly. Here is the entire text of the court’s response. Quote:

“The application for injunctive relief presented to Justice Alito and by him referred to the Court is denied.” endquote.

There’s no reason given and not even a whimper of dissent from Trump’s supposed ringers on the court. To give him credit though, he certainly tried, saying on Tuesday afternoon quote:

“Now, let’s see whether or not somebody has the courage, whether it’s a legislator or legislatures, or whether it’s a justice of the Supreme Court, or a number of justices of the Supreme Court — let’s see if they have the courage to do what everybody in this country knows is right.” Endquote.

While this probably isn’t the final say on the Trump camp’s raft of legal sewage, it does indicate that the Supreme Court can see which way the wind is blowing and isn’t willing to get its hands dirty on Trump’s account. That’s a welcome relief for everyone hoping for an actual transfer of

power in January, but it bears mentioning that Kavanaugh, Coney Barrett and the like are probably just doing this to save their own careers, not out of any sense of duty to the Republic. Still, we’ll take the wins we can get.

Mnuchin Offers Crumbs of a Bailout

Trump’s Treasury Secretary Stephen Mnuchin has approached Nancy Pelosi with his proposal for a $916 billion relief plan. Bloomberg reports that the plan is essentially a joint proposal from the White House, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and House Republican leader Kevin McCarthy, which puts the ball once again in the Speaker of the House’s court.

What Mnuchin’s offering, of course, is the crumbs. But here’s what’s on the table all the same.

The proposed bill does include another round of direct payments, but this time only $600 for every American. And it also eliminates the $300 a week expanded unemployment benefits, with some exceptions. It’s got $160 billion for state aid and $100 billion for educational aid, but what it also has is the corporate liability protections the GOP has been pushing in ever single relief bill thus far.

To make matters worse, Mnuchin’s bill links the liability protections to the state and local aid money that Democrats desperately want, giving them a Sophie’s choice of either taking both the corporate gift and the local aid or throwing them both out.

In other words, not exactly helpful.

Democrats don’t seem enthused by the plan so far, with House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer saying that removing unemployment benefits doesn’t really make sense right now. This plan broke late on Tuesday night, so we’ll see what Pelosi has to say today.

McKinsey Apologizes for Doing Evil Thing

And finally, another update in the years-long effort to hold companies accountable for the opioid epidemic. In a statement on Tuesday, soulless consulting giant and former Pete Buttigieg employer McKinsey Consulting admitted that its work with Purdue pharmaceuticals fell short of its own standards. That’s a pretty low bar, considering the company’s history helping to do everything from fix bread prices to overthrow governments.

The apology comes as court proceedings continue to mount over Purdue’s bankruptcy claim. The New York Times reported last month that McKinsey, while consulting for Purdue, brainstormed ways for the company to “turbocharge” OxyContin sales, proposing that it pay distributors rebates for overdoses linked to the pills they sold.

Court documents also revealed two McKinsey goons discussing whether or not to purge records relating to Purdue, which is probably the impetus that led the company to try to apologize things

away. As yet, McKinsey hasn’t been sued, but if there’s any justice in the world, they’ll catch one soon. It’s now promising a quote “full review of the work in question” endquote, and says that it will work with authorities. It’s about as clear of a “sorry, you got us, please let us go with a warning” as you’ll see in the corporate world.

The depressing part is often, that kind of cop-out works. We’ll see if McKinsey wriggles free on this one soon.

AND NOW FOR SOME QUICKER QUICKIES:

Joe Biden’s Administration announced on Tuesday that it would create a position for an official whose job is specifically to reach Conservatives. The only question is, how will we be able to tell the difference between them and any other Biden appointee?

The first people in the UK received coronavirus vaccines today, all high risk individuals like the elderly and healthcare workers. One of the first recipients was, implausibly, an 81 year old man named William Shakespeare.

But meanwhile, the pandemic continues to rage in the U.S. California in particular is in dire straits, with an average of 21,000 new cases every day. Joe Biden announced he would get 100 million vaccines in the arms of Americans in his first 100 days in office, but that will be much to late for thousands suffering in the mean time.

And finally, during a press conference on Monday, one of Rep. Louie Gohmert’s teeth appeared to fall out of his mouth, or at least out of the part of his mouth where teeth should be. There is video online -- look it up at your own risk.

DEC 9, 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:

The Georgia Runoff elections are in full swing, as Republican David Perdue ditched a debate with Jon Ossoff and Kelly Loeffler floundered at her meeting with Rafael Warnock. It looks like the Republicans are going all in on attacks with Warnock, even as their own party tries to provide some level of legitimacy to the general election results.

Meanwhile, Joe Biden will reportedly announce Former General and current Board Member at Raytheon Lloyd Austin as his pick for Secretary of Defense, while his advisors keep busy trying to shut out indigenous Congresswoman Deb Haaland from getting Secretary of the Interior.

And lastly, some good news from Los Angeles, where a new District Attorney has immediately committed to a sweeping set of reforms including a near-total abolishment of cash bail and new investigations into police use of force cases.

THESE ARE THE STORIES YOU NEED TO KNOW:

By now, you know the score: Joe Biden’s ability to get basically anything done could ride on the results of two runoff Senate elections in Georgia, which go down on January 5.

Reverend Raphael Warnock is running against uber-rich and uber-corrupt Senator Kelly Loeffler, while boring-boy Jon Ossoff is taking on also corrupt and certainly cowardly Senator David Perdue. The Democrats have to sweep both races if they want to even up the senate and give Kamala Harris the deciding vote on bills they want to get through.

So far, the Republican strategy seems to be a version of what they ran everywhere in 2020: attack Warnock primarily as a radical leftist and hope that Ossoff goes down with him. They’re taking this strategy to the extreme: because Ossoff is such a blank slate of a candidate, the GOP doesn’t see any positives in even acknowledging him. Purdue didn’t even show up to their debate on Sunday night, figuring people would instead tune in to Loeffler and Warnock instead.

Loeffler played her part, repeatedly referring to Warnock as a “radical liberal” and his past critiques of the police and military from his pulpit. Warnock, of course, has countered with the Democrats typical centrism. We’ll see how well that works, as disappointing as it is. For what it’s worth, the GOP has basically nothing else: Republican election officials have created a rift with the President and his party’s official line in recent days by certifying the general election results.

We’ll be keeping an eye on how this all plays out for the next month or so.

More Bad Biden Cabinet Picks

Ah, feels like just yesterday we had a story about Joe Biden’s disappointing cabinet picks. Let’s check... nope, sorry it’s been almost five days. Wow. Well here’s another one.

On Monday night, the New York Times reported that Biden is expected to nominate retired General Lloyd J. Austin III to be his secretary of defense. Austin would be the first black SecDef, but he certainly won’t be the first secretary who has ties to defense giant Raytheon! He’s a board member there. We really do hate to see it.

Austin is well respected in the military community, and will probably go through without much protest from everyone who doesn’t see a problem with the fact that everyone who controls our active military also has incredibly close entanglements with all the private companies who make their weapons. Just business as usual there!

Meanwhile, the race for Biden’s Secretary of the Interior position is looking extremely messy. Progressives have been openly pushing for Congresswoman Deb Haaland to get the nod, as she’s one of the country’s first high-profile indigenous politicians and supports a proactive climate agenda including the Green New Deal.

But according to the Huffington Post, some of Biden’s advisors are pushing for another native candidate, Michael Connor, despite dozens of tribal leaders telling Biden, publicly and privately, that they back Haaland. The line they’re pushing is that Haaland is unqualified, and that Connor is a better pick because he was a deputy secretary for the department under Obama.

But progressive activists suggest the insiders’ objections to Haaland may have more to do with her politics than with her preparedness for the job. As Huffington Post noted, Connor’s own tribe signed a letter urging Biden to back Haaland. We’ll see how that one shakes out in the coming days.

LA's New DA Begins Reform

On a brighter note, there seems to be a real push for criminal justice reform in Los Angeles County, thanks to the election of new District Attorney George Gascon.

According to the LA Times, Gascon has committed to a sweeping, extensive slate of reforms on his first day in office. The first major change was an almost-complete elimination of cash bail, one of the most predatory systems in the prison pipeline in most cities. There’s some details to work out there -- cash bail will still exist until the end of the year for violent felonies, but will get phased out in 2021.

The other huge changes are almost too many to list in the quickie, but we’ll try. Gascon is immediately banning prosecutors from trying children as adults, as well as ending the “sentencing enhancements” cities have used to assign more jail time for everything from gang affiliations to gun infractions and three-strikes laws. He’s also seeking to change some peoples’ sentences who were convicted under these systems to get them time off.

Crucially, Gascon is also opening new investigations and re-opening old investigations into LA cops’ use of force cases, and a new use-of-force review board for police shootings and other incidents.

One of the changes that might fly a bit under the radar: Gascon is also trying to institute a policy of diversion, where non-violent arrests don’t make it to actual charges, but instead try to get people help instead of locking them up, which would be a huge change for mentally ill and homeless people caught in a cycle of legal trouble. In a speech, Gascon said quote:

“I recognize for many this is a new path ... whether you are a protester, a police officer or a prosecutor, I ask you to walk with me. I ask you to join me on this journey. We can break the multigenerational cycles of violence, trauma and arrest and recidivism that has led America to incarcerate more people than any other nation.” endquote.

If more officials with different jurisdictions and powers get on board, he just might be right.

AND NOW FOR SOME QUICKER QUICKIES:

In an extremely distressing sign of where we’re headed, the investors on Wall Street are now trading futures for ​_water_​, predicting that it will be a scarce commodity in the future like gold, oil, and other commodities. And of course, nothing has ever gone wrong with Wall Street speculating on things before.

A new report by Brown University’s Costs of War project shows that Donald Trump’s incredibly destructive bombing campaign in Afghanistan increased civilian casualties by a staggering 330 percent since 2016. In 2019 alone, airstrikes killed 700 civilians, the most in a single year since the war started in 2001.

One bit extremely sketchy Biden Cabinet news we skipped earlier: Maya Harris, Kamala Harris’s sister, is reportedly lobbying hard to get her husband, Tony West, the nod for Attorney General under Biden. West, you may know, is the top lawyer for Uber, one of the most openly evil companies in Silicon valley that just spent millions on pushing through an anti-labor proposition in the 2020 election.

Here’s a late-breaking story you’ll definitely want to watch today: on Monday, Florida state police raided the house of Rebekah Jones, a former Department of Health employee who was unceremoniously fired for trying to keep up accurate information of the state’s COVID cases. She continued her project independently, but was violently raided at gunpoint on Monday.

DEC 8, 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’s legal taskforce is crumbling in front of our eyes. After last weeks’ ridiculous court proceedings ended in scandal, his top man Rudy Giuliani came down with the coronavirus.

Meanwhile, Nancy Pelosi and Mitch McConnell appear to be a bit closer on another stimulus bill that could get through by the end of the year, but it certainly looks like crumbs compared to what the American people actually need.

And lastly, public transit systems could be another brutal casualty of the coronavirus, as services in major cities across the U.S. are facing massive cuts.

THESE ARE THE STORIES YOU NEED TO KNOW:

Well, here we are. Rudy Giuliani has coronavirus, which we know because Trump himself announced it on Twitter. You couldn’t have written the sequence of events better if you tried.

On Wednesday, a mask-free Giuliani showed up in court for an absolutely deranged hearing in Michigan. At one point in the proceedings, he audibly farted on camera.

His star witness in the bizarre conspiracy he was pushing also turned out to be in the middle of a criminal sex scandal involving her sending graphic videos to her boyfriend’s ex-wife.

Then, later in the week, Giuliani traveled to Atlanta to testify before a Georgia State Senate Subcomittee, where he was seen hugging, handshaking, and back-slapping supporters all over the place. CNN reported he could have exposed hundreds to the virus.

Giuliani is now at Georgetown University Medical Center in D.C., according to the New York Times. It’s not clear if he’s symptomatic or not, though his presence in the hospital could suggest he’s not doing so hot.

Meanwhile, the Times also reports that Georgia Republicans are worried that Giuliani and Trump’s insane legal fights could actually hurt their chances in the run-off elections on January 5.

Trump has been blasting Georgia state officials, most of whom are Republicans, over the fact that he lost the state in the general election, which the GOP fears will depress his supporters

that they need to win the runoffs. Voter suppression in Georgia usually doesn’t swing that way, so it must be really hard for the GOP there. Couldn’t have happened to a nicer bunch of people.

Congress Nearing Compromise on Bill Nobody's Seen

Democratic and Republican leaders are reportedly getting closer to a new COVID relief bill, which could get passed before the end of the year. Nancy Pelosi says that she’s redoubled efforts to find a compromise with Mitch McConnell that could get worked into a year-end spending package, but the obvious worry is that any such bill will be woefully insufficient to actually bail out the people who need it.

Right now, it’s pretty unclear what any bill would actually look like, as nobody’s written it yet, only that the general number is around $908 billion.

NBC reported that the bipartisan group is unlikely to meet their self-imposed deadline to release the text of the bill today, instead shooting to have a more thorough outline and the full text tomorrow. So we’ll know a bit more as the day goes on.

But the compromise isn’t looking all that positive. The effort is reportedly being spearheaded by Joe Manchin, a Democrat who is basically a Republican, alongside Mitt Romney and Susan Collins. That’s not exactly the dream team when it comes to providing economic relief to struggling Americans.

The big things to look out for are whether or not the bill includes another immediate round of $1200 stimulus checks. Bernie Sanders has said he won’t vote for any bill that doesn’t have them, and it’s unlikely he’ll be the only one who tries to push for something better. We should have more for you on this tomorrow once we know more.

Public Transit on the Chopping Block

One of the under-the-radar stories of this whole pandemic could be the effects it has on public transit. Because general ridership of cities’ buses and trains is way down right now, we maybe aren’t feeling what a gutted system would look like, but new reports show that the systems that move people around their cities are on the chopping block all over.

The Times reports that 19 metro stations are closing in Washington DC, as is weekend and late-night service. 70 of Atlanta’s 110 bus routes are already suspended, and there are fears that will become permanent. And New York City isn’t spared either subway service could get slashed by 40 percent, while commuter rail service gets cut in half, if some transit officials have their way.

Put together, these cuts and others in cities like San Francisco, LA, and all over the country could decimate the infrastructure that allows people to get to work, which would be a brutal blow to the economies of all these places.

The lifeline here is a plan to get $15 billion for public transit agencies in the spending package Congress is going over. That’s about half of the $32 billion transit leaders think they’ll need, and Joe Biden supports getting it to them. But right now it’s still in the hands of Congress.

And even if aid comes, some authorities say they’ll still need to slash service. So even if most other things get back to normal sometime next year, our cities may never run quite the same.

AND NOW FOR SOME QUICKER QUICKIES:

Joe Biden nominated California Attorney General Xavier Becerra to be his next head of the Department of Health and Human Services. Becerra is one of Biden’s most promising appointees thus far, as he’s previously backed Medicare for All and urged the Obama administration to crack down on pharmaceutical companies, but we’ll see if those ideals stay strong once he’s in the middle of the centrist, big pharma-friendly Biden administration.

Investigators at ICE issued a shocking demand to BuzzFeed News this week, issuing a subpoena to force the media outlet to reveal its sources in for several key stories critical of the Trump administration. The outlet’s leadership is vehemently pushing back, of course, but it’s still a pretty troubling precedent.

On Friday, President Trump ordered all U.S. ground troops out of Somalia, a major step of U.S. force drawdowns that he had promised for weeks. The question now becomes, how long will it take for Erik Prince’s newest mercenary company to fill in behind them?

And finally, the strange, pitiful protests over election results are getting slightly more scary. On Saturday night, dozens of armed individuals showed up outside Michigan Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson’s home to shout “Stop the Steal” and other pro-Trump conspiracy slogans at her.

DEC 7, 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:

The coronavirus numbers continue to hit new records. Amid the crisis, overtaxed hospitals and health authorities are taking desperate measures to recruit more nurses.

Meanwhile, Donald Trump is stoking a nasty intra-party fight in Georgia, which Republicans need to hold in order to keep control of the Senate. And in Wisconsin, his campaign loses once again in the courtroom.

And lastly, how much do we need to worry about Trump’s civil servant stay-behind network? Maybe not too much, according to a new investigation by ProPublica.

THESE ARE THE STORIES YOU NEED TO KNOW:

It’s not letting up. Figures released yesterday show the United States recorded over thirty one hundred Covid-19 deaths in a single day, obliterating the record set last spring, the Associated Press reports. For the first time, the number of Americans in the hospital with the virus has eclipsed one hundred thousand. New cases have begun topping two hundred thousand a day. And Robert Redfield, head of the Centers of Disease Control and Prevention, said this week that the next three months are going to be QUOTE the most difficult time in the public health history of this nation ENDQUOTE. Nearly twenty thousand Americans could die of Covid-19 during the week of Christmas, according to a CDC forecast.

Across the US, the surge has swamped hospitals and left nurses and other health care workers shorthanded and burned out, the AP reports. Hospitals are trying to lure nurses and doctors out of retirement, recruiting students and new graduates who have yet to earn their licenses and offering eye-popping salaries in a desperate bid to ease staffing shortages. Nurses who work in intensive care are the most in demand. Employers also are willing to pay extra for nurses who can work up to sixty hours per week instead of the standard thirty six.

Doctor Eli Perencevich, an epidemiology and internal medicine professor at the University of Iowa, told the AP that health care workers are paying the price for other people’s refusal to wear masks. He said QUOTE It’s sending everyone to war, really. We’ve decided as a society

that we’re going to take all the people in our health care system and pummel them because we have some insane idea about what freedom really is ENDQUOTE. Well put, doc.

Trump Divides Georgia GOP

In his final weeks in office, Donald Trump is turning the Republican Party against itself. He will hold a rally in Georgia on Saturday to support Republican Senators David Perdue and Kelly Loeffler against Democrats Jon Ossoff and Raphael Warnock. The January 5 runoff election will decide which party controls the US Senate. But, as the Washington Post reports, Trump has some Republicans worried he could do more harm than good by repeating false claims about the voting system and attacking GOP officials.

The competing GOP factions are growing increasingly angry and distrustful, according to the Post. Leading the charge on one side are two Trumpista attorneys who are urging Republicans to withhold their votes from the runoffs if leaders don’t fight to overturn the November election. Following their lead, Republican state lawmakers held a hearing yesterday about alleged voting irregularities. On the other side, there is Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger and a senior member of his staff, Gabriel Sterling, who blame Trump’s inflammatory rhetoric for a surge of threats against election officials. And more than a dozen longtime Georgia Republicans penned a letter urging the party to come together and focus on winning the Senate seats, the Post reports.

Elsewhere, Trump’s campaign to subvert democracy keeps sputtering. The Wisconsin Supreme Court yesterday refused to hear Trump’s lawsuit attempting to overturn his loss to Biden. Justices ruled four to three that the case must first wind its way through lower courts, the AP reports. Trump had asked the court to disqualify more than two hundred and twenty one thousand ballots in the state’s two biggest Democratic counties.

Finally, the AP reports, Arizona Governor Doug Ducey confirmed that it was Trump on the phone when he silenced a call while in the middle of signing papers certifying election results showing Trump lost the state. A video capturing the moment went viral on social media. Good show by Ducey there. What good could possibly come of taking a call from lame duck Trump?

Trump 'Burrowers' Plague Federal Agencies

LUCIE: Some government-watchers are raising concerns over how Trump might exert influence after he’s out of office. ProPublica looked into a phenomenon known as burrowing that occurs at the end of every administration. Last week, House Democrats sent a letter to sixty-one federal agencies asking for information on political appointees who have been hired into career jobs.

ProPublica found thirty-two political appointees whom the Trump administration has sought to hire into civil service positions in the first three quarters of this year. In 2019, ProPublica reports, the Office of Personnel Management approved twenty-eight conversion requests. The Trump administration list of burrowers includes a longtime staffer for Grover Norquist’s group, Americans for Tax Reform; a former chief of staff to Republican Senator Ted Cruz; and a lawyer for energy and mining companies.

The Interior Department accounts for several approved transfers this year. Gregory Sheehan, for instance, was appointed deputy director of the Fish and Wildlife Service in June 2017. In that position, he opened vast swathes of federal land to hunting and fishing and weakened protections for endangered species. Sheehan served fourteen months before resigning, ProPublica reports. But in August, Sheehan was hired for a $167,000-a-year job as director of the Bureau of Land Management’s office in his home state.

Susan Jane Brown of the Western Environmental Law Center told ProPublica Trump’s efforts to burrow employees are coming too late. She said it seems they are looking for QUOTE anybody with a pulse to put into some of these positions for the remainder of the lame duck ENDQUOTE. Overall, some progressive advocates said they don’t think the conversion of political appointees into career positions will be as deep or influential as it was in the last Bush administration, when one hundred and thirty-nine officials found their way into civil service jobs. So that’s a relief.

AND NOW FOR SOME QUICKER QUICKIES:

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi spoke yesterday about finally moving forward on a new coronavirus relief deal. They also discussed reaching a deal on a spending bill to avert a government shutdown on December 11, the Post reports. Go on, take your time, it’s no big deal.

Politico reports that prominent California Democratic strategist Nathan Ballard -- a longtime friend and adviser to Governor Gavin Newsom -- was arrested and jailed on two felony domestic violence charges. The allegations include attempting to suffocate a child with a pillow. In November 2019, Ballard was profiled in Better magazine as one of the Bay Area’s most successful dads. There’s a story that needs an update.

The top US military officer said yesterday that the US should reconsider stationing troops and their families in large overseas bases, the AP reports. Joint Chiefs of Staff chairman Mark Milley said he thinks we have too much permanent infrastructure overseas. Defund the empire, now there’s a snappy slogan!

Protests by farm workers demanding better wages in Peru raged on for a fourth day yesterday, Reuters reports. Protesters say they’ve been attacked by police in large numbers, and one person has died. All we can say is: Solidarity!

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

DEC 4, 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:

A major police training association is feeding thousands of cops wild lies about left- wing protesters, saying they’re terrorists and fronts for the Chinese government. A racial justice group is calling on departments to cut ties with the organization.

Meanwhile, as 2020 shapes up to be one of the hottest years on record, the United Nations secretary general warns that humanity is engaged in a suicidal war against nature. He says apocalyptic fires and floods, cyclones and hurricanes are the new normal, which is terrifying.

And lastly, a San Francisco startup has won approval in Singapore for meat grown in a lab without killing an animal. Folks, they’re making chicken nuggets minus the chicken.

THESE ARE THE STORIES YOU NEED TO KNOW:

The cops are reading some crazy stuff, let me tell you. A prominent law enforcement training group is promoting a research document riddled with falsehoods and conspiracies, the Associated Press reports. The document urges local police to treat Black Lives Matter activists as terrorists plotting a violent revolution. It falsely alleges BLM and antifa aim to overthrow the United States government using extreme violence.

The International Law Enforcement Educators and Trainers Association in October sent a link to the one hundred and seventy six-page paper, Understanding Antifa and Urban Guerrilla Warfare, in an email news update to its thousands of members. Among its many whoppers, the AP reports, is that the two movements have trained snipers stationed in certain cities. It says antifa and BLM are fronts for Russia and China, and planned attacks around the presidential election. The paper claims that those who protested earlier this year in Portland and Seattle were useful idiots designed to give cover to the hard-core, terrorist trained troops that would follow. It argues the FBI is largely clueless about the threat and, along with the news media, has wrongly focused on violence carried out by white supremacists.

The group’s executive director, Harvey Hedden, told the AP that fact-checking the paper or restricting its distribution would amount to censorship. Oh please. An official with Color of Change, a nationwide racial justice organization, called on police departments yesterday to

cut training ties with the association, saying it encourages a warrior-style mindset that creates more conflict in communities. Can we at least defund whatever part of the police budget is paying for this nonsense? After all, it seems like they’re the ones promoting radical ideas.

UN Warning On Climate

This year will be one of the three hottest on record, the Washington Post reports. Marine heat waves swelled over eighty percent of the world’s oceans, and triple-digit heat invaded Siberia, one of the planet’s coldest places. These and other troubling signs of global warming are laid out in a United Nations State of the Climate report published yesterday.

UN Secretary General António Guterres summarized the findings in unusually stark terms. In a speech at Columbia University, he said QUOTE humanity is waging war on nature. This is suicidal. Nature always strikes back, and it is already doing so with growing force and fury ENDQUOTE. To emphasize that time is running out, he cited reductions in biodiversity, the bleaching of coral reefs, and the fact that the past decade was the hottest in human history.

Guterres said nations need to slash greenhouse gas emissions by at least six percent per year through 2030 to have a chance at holding warming to slightly above preindustrial levels, the Post reports. But instead, he said, we’re headed in the opposite direction, with increasing global emissions each year. He had a number of other demands for the governments of the world, according to other reports. They included putting a price on carbon, ending fossil fuel subsidies, and helping those around the world who are already facing the dire impacts of climate change. Guterres said he firmly believes that 2021 can be QUOTE the year of a quantum leap towards carbon neutrality ENDQUOTE. It had better be – or else.

Lab-grown Meat Approved

An American startup has become the first company to win government approval to sell meat grown in a laboratory to the public. The company, Eat Just, is based in San Francisco, the New York Times reports. It describes its product as real, high-quality meat created directly from animal cells for safe human consumption.

Singapore’s Food Agency said yesterday that it had approved the product for sale as an ingredient in chicken nuggets. Eat Just’s chief executive, Josh Tetrick, called it a historic

moment. He told the Times QUOTE We’ve been eating meat for thousands of years, and every time we’ve eaten meat we’ve had to kill an animal — until now ENDQUOTE.

Singapore’s Food Agency said it had approved the nuggets after Eat Just submitted a safety assessment to an agency working group with experts on food science, toxicology, nutrition, epidemiology and other fields. Tetrick told the Times that an unnamed Singapore restaurant would begin selling the product soon. He said he hoped that Singapore’s decision to approve his company’s chicken nuggets would spur regulators elsewhere to move faster to regulate lab-grown meat. In the US, the Food and Drug Administration’s approval is not required for most new ingredients, including imitation meat from vegan brands, according to the Times.

Whether or not lab-grown meat sounds appetizing to you, it’s good news for animal rights activists and everyone worried about climate change.

AND NOW FOR SOME QUICKER QUICKIES:

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention yesterday issued a revised guidance shortening the recommended fourteen-day coronavirus quarantine to ten or even seven days. The decision is an effort to boost compliance. People were blowing off the two-week quarantine after traveling but the CDC hopes they might submit to a single week in isolation.

The Transportation Department issued a new rule yesterday covering animals on airlines. Now only dogs can fly as service animals. The new rule will force passengers with emotional-support animals to check them into the cargo hold – and pay a pet fee – or leave them at home, the AP reports. The government estimates airlines will gain up to $59.6 million a year in pet fees. Is that what this is really about?

The federal government’s only underground nuclear waste dump could run out of room by 2025, the AP reports. The Government Accountability Office in a recent report said better planning is needed at the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant in New Mexico to avoid potential disruptions. You’re telling me in four years Donald Trump didn’t solve this problem? Shocking.

San Francisco residents who live in apartment buildings with three or more units will no longer be allowed to smoke tobacco inside their homes, the San Francisco Chronicle reports. However, they can still smoke cannabis. Fair enough. It would be pretty messed up would it be if all these places legalized weed but only for homeowners.

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

DEC 3, 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:

Donald Trump’s flunkies are getting more and more desperate in their attempts to overturn the election. It doesn’t help their case that Attorney General Bill Barr now says there’s no evidence of massive fraud, as Trump claims.

Meanwhile, progressives are seething over some of Joe Biden’s staff picks. The latest name to draw fire from the left: Rahm Emanuel.

And lastly, the Supreme Court hears arguments for holding American corporations responsible for child slavery in Africa. Your holiday sweets may taste more bitter after you hear this report, folks.

THESE ARE THE STORIES YOU NEED TO KNOW:

The world’s stupidest coup attempt continues. Donald Trump filed a lawsuit yesterday in Wisconsin seeking to disqualify more than two hundred and twenty one thousand ballots in two Democratic counties, the Associated Press reports. It’s a longshot attempt to overturn Joe Biden’s win there. Trump filed the day after Democratic Governor Tony Evers certified Biden as the winner. Trump asked the Wisconsin Supreme Court to take the case directly. He also wants it to order Evers to withdraw the certification, the AP reports. Could it work? Wisconsin’s high court is controlled four to three by conservatives, but conservative judges didn’t favor his lawsuits elsewhere. The Biden campaign called the lawsuit QUOTE completely baseless ENDQUOTE. So, typical.

Trump is running out of time to undo the election. The Electoral College meets on December 14. Congress will count the votes on January 6. With that timetable in mind, Politico reports that Trump will soon be down to one final, desperate maneuver: pressing his allies on Capitol Hill to step in and derail Biden’s presidency. Federal law gives individual members of the House and Senate the power to challenge the results from the floor. Several House Republican lawmakers, including Florida Congressman Matt Gaetz, told Politico they’re considering this rarely used mechanism to aid Trump. An obscure 1887 law called the Electoral Count Act spells out the process. It also gives a tiny number of lawmakers enormous

power to challenge the results, per Politico. If a single House member and a single senator join forces, they can object to entire slates of presidential electors.

Still, for this to work, Politico says Trump would need a legal victory akin to a miracle. A court, perhaps the Supreme Court, would have to embrace the Trumpistas’ effort and scrap federal statutes giving governors the power to certify results. And that hypothetical court would need to ignore findings by Trump’s own Justice Department. Attorney General Bill Barr yesterday told the AP that to date QUOTE we have not seen fraud on a scale that could have affected a different outcome in the election ENDQUOTE. Sounds like Barr isn’t on board!

Biden Picks Infuriate Progressives

Joe Biden’s selection of Neera Tanden, a Hillary Clinton loyalist, to lead the Office of Management and Budget isn’t the only staffing decision he’s made that’s annoying progressives. The New York Times reports that lefties are looking askance at Biden’s likely pick for a Covid-19 czar: Jeffrey Zients [ZYE-ENTS].

Zients was the head of the Obama administration’s National Economic Council and is currently co-chairman of Biden’s transition team. A progressive advocacy grop called the Revolving Door Project has been urging Biden to keep corporate influence out of his administration, the Times reports, and has compiled a thirteen-page document about Zients. The file highlights his wealth, his appetite for deficit reduction and his recent work as chief executive of an investment fund called Cranemere. The group points to the majority stake that Cranemere took in NorthStar Anesthesia in 2018. It cites negative reviews that NorthStar Anesthesia received through the Better Business Bureau, including allegations of surprise billing and a threat to send a dental patient’s bill to a collection agency. Seems a little dodgy!

Meanwhile, the Intercept reports that workers who helped elect Biden are outraged that he is considering former Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel to lead the Department of Transportation. John Samuelsen, international president of the Transport Workers Union of America, AFL- CIO, told the Intercept that an Emanuel appointment would be a nightmare – and a betrayal. He went on QUOTE We didn’t work our asses off [for Biden] to have Rahm Emanuel as the secretary of transportation... The truth of the matter is that Rahm Emanuel is the type of Democrat that got Trump elected to begin with ENDQUOTE. That about says it.

Corporations Defend Child Slavery

Chocolate lovers may want to sit down for this one. The Supreme Court heard arguments yesterday about whether United States chocolate companies should be held responsible for child slavery on the African farms from which they buy most of their cocoa, the Washington Post reports. Six Africans are seeking damages from Nestlé USA and Cargill. They allege that as children they were trafficked out of Mali, forced to work long hours on Ivory Coast cocoa farms and kept at night in locked shacks. Their attorneys argue that the companies should have better monitored their cocoa suppliers in West Africa, where about two-thirds of the world’s cocoa is grown and child labor is widespread.

According to a recent report sponsored by the US Department of Labor, the world’s chocolate companies depend on cocoa produced with the aid of one point six million West African child laborers. Most of those laborers were involved in tasks considered hazardous such as wielding machetes, carrying heavy loads or working with pesticides, per the Post.

Court filings for the six Africans argue that these companies could end the system, but instead they chose profits over ending their exploitation of children. Nestlé USA and Cargill have asked the Supreme Court to toss the lawsuit, arguing that courts in the US are the wrong forum for the Malians’ complaint. They also claim that the applicable law permits such cases against individuals but not corporations. Is that what they call good corporate citizenship? Both sides faced skepticism from the justices yesterday, the Post reports. Here’s hoping the plaintiffs succeed and the corporations learn that society won’t tolerate child slavery. Because we’d really like to believe that’s the case.

AND NOW FOR SOME QUICKER QUICKIES:

Food banks across the country are bracing for a dwindling supply of food as federal aid nears its end, NBC News reports. The head of one South Florida food bank said shipments have plummeted from one hundred and sixty trailer loads of food per week at the start of the coronavirus pandemic down to fourteen – though demand has not let up. Consider making a donation, folks.

An influential government advisory panel convened yesterday to decide who should be at the front of the line when the first coronavirus vaccine shots become available, the AP reports. The Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices is reportedly prioritizing health care workers and nursing home patients, two groups comprising nearly twenty four million people. It will meet again later to decide who should be next in line, though state authorities and ultimately doctors get the final say.

Former federal cybersecurity chief Christopher Krebs, who was fired last month for contradicting Donald Trump’s election-related conspiracy theories, suggested yesterday that he may pursue legal action against a Trump campaign attorney who said he should be shot, Politico reports. Trump lawyer Joe DiGenova said in a Monday interview on right-wing talk radio that Krebs should QUOTE be drawn and quartered. Taken out at dawn and shot ENDQUOTE. Sounds like someone needs a nap!

CNN reports that the Justice Department is investigating a potential crime related to funneling money to the White House in exchange for a presidential pardon, according to a court record unsealed on Tuesday by the chief judge of the DC District Court. The news broke after it was reported that Trump lawyer Rudy Giuliani had requested a pardon, and after Attorney General Bill Barr visited the White House. It all sounds too obvious to be real.

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

DEC 2, 2020 - AM QUICKIE

HOSTS - Sam Seder & Lucie Steiner

WRITER - Corey Pein

PRODUCER - Dorsey Shaw

EXECUTIVE PRODUCER - Brendan Finn