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

TODAY'S HEADLINES:

Which story indeed: there are curfews in place and war crimes underway across America. The world is watching in horror as Donald Trump, Bill Barr, the Pentagon brass and an army of cops turn the arsenal of an empire against its citizens.

Meanwhile, there were elections in a number of states yesterday. But Trump’s dictator act – not to mention corona – made a free and fair vote all but impossible.

And lastly, do not forget, that justice will be won for George Floyd, his family, African- Americans, and all of the oppressed people in this country. In Minnesota, where the uprisings in Floyd’s name began, elected officials are now talking seriously about disbanding a corrupt police department – and a lot more.

THESE ARE THE STORIES YOU NEED TO KNOW:

You may be hearing different things about what happened in the United States yesterday depending on where you live and who you are. Propaganda and disinformation abound -- and not just on social media. But here is what people in other countries are hearing about our situation. From The Guardian: Soldiers reportedly poised outside Washington as curfews set in. From the South China Morning Post, in Hong Kong: Protesters defy curfew in New York after Trump threatens crackdown. From Deutsche Welle: Germany urges press freedom at US protests.

This is a serious problem – for you, us, everyone. Journalists, dissidents, and human rights advocates are at this moment being targeted by police, paramilitaries, and at least some of the armed forces. Hundreds have already been have arrested around the country. Hundreds more have been attacked without provocation. Government agents are committing war crimes on American soil -- and it is no secret, it is streamed and broadcast live around the world. At the same time top military commanders have announced they were unaware of developments unfolding around them. By all evidence the ruling Republican Party in cooperation with Donald Trump, organized crime, and a faction of the state security forces at the direction or influence of Attorney General Bill Barr. Mainstream press reports including by correspondents

for national networks offered ample video evidence that the forces carrying out Trump’s crackdown have at times inflamed, exploited, and at times even stage-managed this crisis. A nationwide protest movement has in a matter of days led to a full-blown authoritarian crackdown by the executive branch. The integrity of the Congress and the judiciary is uncertain, as even federal court buildings have been seen filled with soldiers.

Here is more of our latest information. As of yesterday, before curfew, there were at least 550 active protests in all fifty states. Arrests of demonstrators began on both coasts before the announced start of the curfew. Shown among the marches in Washington, DC, Massachussetts Democratic Senator Elizabeth Warren told world press that Trump was QUOTE imposing violence on our people ENDQUOTE. The US Army’s Eighty-Second Airborne Division was deployed to Washington, DC from North Carolina – these were active- duty forces deployed against civilians, and armed with bayonets. Videos showed some soldiers mixing with crowds, and appearing ill at ease with their mission. Others, taking up riot formations, engaged in brutality. One resident reported his daughter picked up an unexploded police grenade that could have seriously injured her. Reporters spotted new secret police around DC who wear no insignia and who say only that they work for Barr’s Department of Justice. Barr granted the Drug Enforcement Agency extraordinary powers to surveil and arrest protesters, and Trump sought to federalize the DC police department.

In New York City, Mayor Bill DeBlasio, whose daughter was arrested and threatened by police yesterday, praised the police even as they attacked thousands of his constituents on Manhattan Bridge and around the city. Police even boasted over public radio channels about shooting protesters. In Portland, Oregon, protesters intentionally took a bridge and laid down in a show of passive resistance. But activists reported pre-curfew visits by police and they, along with journalists and the homeless, were gassed indiscriminately. In Los Angeles, police backed by soldiers dragged groups of people out of cars for no apparent reason. In Denver, one officer bragged on social media that the police were starting a riot. In Flordia and some other states, local law enforcement urged homeowners to take up arms to defend against any criminals who threaten their property. Across the country, mayors and Congressional representatives offered little in the way of substantive resistance. Even Republicans refused to comment on their own leaders’ violent and treasonous power grab. The alleged driver of a semi truck that plowed into a protest in Minnesota on Sunday night was released yesterday by the county attorney without charges being filed.

Curfews Undermine Election Integrity

There were primary elections in eight states and the District of Columbia. Joe Biden reportedly swept in most states with between sixty-one and eighty-five percent of the vote. Bernie Sanders, who suspended his campaign but also hoped to keep collecting delegates, did best in Rhode Island, with nearly thirty percent of the vote. He did worst in Marland with only six percent. In New Mexico, former Central Intelligence Agency operative Valerie Plame lost her bid for Congress to a progressive, Teresa Leger Fernandez. In Iowa, white nationalist Republican Representative Steve King lost his primary to Randy Feenstra. The results were a mixed bag for progressive candidates in Maryland, Montana, South Dakota, and DC, all of which also had elections scheduled for yesterday.

But it is hard to imagine anyone, including professional election monitors from this country and other countries, ever accepting the results as legitimate. And here’s the thing. You would expect some questions about the quality of yesterday’s vote, given the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, the miliitary and police curfews around the country, and widespread reports of voter intimidation and suppression by forces loyal to Trump. But that was only the beginning of the problems. The Washington Post reported that in several places, in-person voting was severly restricted as the number of polling locations were cut back. Complete results were not available. Some states said they won’t be ready until next week. Lines were long and voters reported feelings of intimidation and confusion around dates and deadlines.

Minneapolis Politicians Consider Abolition

As stark and frightening as the news has been, there are also many hopeful and heartening signs. In Minneapolis, where protests against the lynching of George Floyd by four city cops inspired the nationwide democratic uprisings, one ward representative spoke of dramatic changes that might have seemed impossible two weeks ago. The city’s Ward Three Representative, Steve Fletcher, said he was working with other members of the council to totally disband the MPD. From there the council could QUOTE start fresh with a community- oriented, non-violent public safety and outreach capacity ENDQUOTE. Fletcher also described how police had traditionally extorted councilmembers by allowing crime to increase in their districts as punishment for unfavorable votes, and by intimidating local business

owners to lobby on the department’s behalf. Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison filed a civil rights lawsuit against the MPD. The state’s Human Rights Commissioner, Rebecca Lucero, joined the complaint. She told local TV their first goal was to negotiate a consent decree with the city. Then, courts could enforce it by issuing injunctions and unspecified financial penalties. In the meantime, the popular movement for justice for George Floyd continue to take positive action that is too often underreported. A group of protesters took over a former Sheraton Hotel in an area that reportedly saw theft, vandalism and arson. The building now houses two hundred people who were previously homeless, for free, and it’s managed by volunteers. We’ll see how that goes, but in the meantime, at least people are not in the street, or more likely in this new age of arbitrary curfews, in jail.

AND NOW FOR SOME QUICKER QUICKIES:

The World Health Organization funded a major new study that suggests the US Centers for Disease Control has been dangerously compromised by Trump’s personal interests. The journal Lancet published an analysis, funded by the WHO, of one-hundred and seventy-two different studies about the effectiveness of N95 respirator masks, versus ordinary surgical masks, to protect against the coronavirus. The New York Times says the new study confirms what scientists were already saying about the importance of medical personnel and other high-risk workers actually having N95 masks to wear. Police seem to have plenty available!

When financial markets reopened this week, Goldman Sachs bet against the US dollar. Goldman, which looted the Treasury so thoroughly in 2008, has now established short positions on the value of the dollar. The details are complicated, but the upshot is that the more expensive and difficult things get for you as the economy suffers under Trumpism, the more Goldman wins.

A rare cyclone headed for Mumbai last night had prompted tens of thousands to evacuate the city on India’s west coast. According to the BBC, it would be the first major cyclone to hit the city in over a century. The Indian Meterological Department was calling it a severe cyclonic storm. The poor will suffer worst and the government is no help. Two weeks ago another cyclone hit the east coast of India, and Bangladesh.

Banking regulators in New York have been carrying out a secret investigation of Donald Trump’s lender of last resort, Deutsche Bank. But the investigation reported by The New York Times yesterday is not like other investigations into the bank’s ties to Trump. It involves Deutsche Bank’s relationship with the well-connected serial sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein, who died in prison last year. The state Department of Financial Services wants to know why the bank kept doing business with Epstein after employees raised concerns about his transactions with federal regulators. Unclear if they’ve tried asking Bill Barr, but he is pretty busy right now.

June 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:

Mass protests against police brutality continued across the country on Monday night, as Donald Trump ordered State governors to quote “dominate” protesters and seek retribution, threatened to invoke the insurrection act, and tear-gassed peaceful protestors so he could do a photo op.

Meanwhile, a private autopsy confirms what everyone who’s seen the traumatic video of George Floyd’s death could tell: asphyxiation was at least part of the reason he died.

And lastly, two spots of progress throughout the chaos: The police chief in Lousiville, Kentucky has been fired after it was revealed that two of his officers who murdered a store owner early Monday morning did not have their body cameras on. And in New York, lawmakers are already moving to repeal a law that shields police disciplinary records from the public.

THESE ARE THE STORIES YOU NEED TO KNOW:

The gloves are off and Donald Trump is out for blood. In a call with state Governors today, Trump was unhinged, raving that protestors were quote “going to run over you, you’re going to look like a bunch of jerks.” endquote.

He followed quote: “Someone throwing a rock is like shooting a gun. You have to do retribution. You have to arrest people, and you have to try people, and they have to go jail for long periods of time.”

Bear in mind, this is coming from a guy who is deeply, deeply scared. Earlier on Monday, Trump tear-gassed a group of peaceful protestors near the White House so he could walk to St. James Cathedral and hold up a bible in the air. Literally, that’s all he did -- wandered over and held up a bible.

At one of his deranged press conferences later Monday, Trump threatened to invoke the Insurrection act, which would allow him to deploy active duty troops to inflict further violence on protestors. That hasn’t happened since the 1992 Rodney King riots in L.A.

Even mayors and governors in the blue states are cracking down in support of the police. L.A. moved up its curfew to the absurd hour of 1pm on Monday, and NYC instituted an 11pm curfew despite plans for mass demonstrations.

Autopsy Confirms Floyd Was Suffocated

A private autopsy ordered by the family of George Floyd indicates what all of us pretty much already knew: he suffocated to death at the hands of police.

Dr. Allecia M. Wilson of the University of Michigan and Dr. Michael Baden, a former New York City medical examiner, found that Floyd died both from the knee on his neck and the other officers compressing his lungs as they held him down. A lawyer for the family said:

QUOTE: “Not only was the knee on George’s neck a cause of his death, but so was the weight of the other two police officers on his back, who not only prevented blood flow into his brain but also air flow into his lungs,” ENDQUOTE.

This appears to fit with recently uncovered security footage that shows other angles of the arrest. The New York Times published a video investigation of the event that in one image shows another officer, obscured from sight in the main video, also pressing on Floyd’s back while Derek Chauvin held him down.

So far, Chauvin is the only one who’s been arrested, although the three other officers clearly contributed to his murder. And even their chief isn’t denying it -- in an interview on CNN on Sunday, MPD chief Medaria Arradondo said that Floyd might not

Louisville Chief Out, NY Law on Chopping Block

Progress on police brutality has been slow to say the least, but the recent round of protests appears to be moving the needle ever so slightly. Or, at least acknowledging that there is a needle? We’ll take what we can get.

In New York, lawmakers are reportedly flirting with the idea of getting rid of a longstanding state law called 50-a, which hields police personnel records from public view.

It’s absurd that these anti-transparency measures are even on the books in the first place, so getting them out of here would be a huge step for some semblance of justice, and good precedent for other states.

The other bright point is in Kentucky, where the Lousiville police chief has been summarily ejected for his enabling of a reckless and violent department, particularly in the case of a shop owner killed by police early on Monday morning.

Chief Steve Conrad probably will never face charges, but it’s good to see a head rolling at the highest level. Two of his officers shot a business owner in the wee hours of Monday morning, and did not have their body cameras on, a serious breach of policy.

The killers have been placed on Administrative leave, so we can only hope they face some actual consequences as well.

We’ll either look back on these steps as the first inklings that things were getting better, or as a false hope of progress in an increasingly authoritarian state. Time will tell.

AND NOW FOR SOME QUICKER QUICKIES:

A new watchdog report found that the IRS has neglected to audit a large portion of rich people who haven’t filed tax returns, which means the government is missing out on billions of dollars in revenue. In other words, the government can’t even bring itself to enforce the pitiful amount of taxes it’s supposed to collect from the rich. Great going.

Facebook employees organized a virtual walkout on Monday, taking the day off from work to protest Mark Zuckerberg’s complete inaction on moderating Donald Trump’s violent posts. It’s the first walkout in Facebook’s history.

A white nationalist group got caught posing as Antifa on twitter. According to NBC news, the white nationalist group Identity Evropa [EUROPA] posed as a national antifa group in order to incite violence. This is an old tactic, and one that usually fails almost immediately, and this time was no different.

A federal judge denied a right-wing group’s request to block the use of absentee mail-in ballots in Virginia, handing a major victory to voting rights groups. If the law holds against future challenges, it’ll mean that anyone in Virginia can use an absentee ballot without needing an excuse, effectively legalizing vote-by-mail.

May 27, 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:

Massive protests against police brutality swept across the country this weekend, and in almost every major city the police responded with disproportionate, indiscriminate violence, attacking protestors, bystanders and journalists almost every weapon in their arsenal save for live rounds.

Meanwhile, Donald Trump declares Antifa a terrorist organization, making it the official position of the U.S. government that fighting fascism is an illegal act. That would make them the fascists, then.

And lastly, Trump announced on Friday that the U.S. is terminating ties with the World Health Organization, as the worldwide death toll from the novel coronavirus approaches 375,000.

THESE ARE THE STORIES YOU NEED TO KNOW:

The police are out of control. In almost every major city in America, widespread protests broke out on Friday night and continued through the weekend in response to the murder of Minneapolis resident George Floyd at the hands of the police.

Local police in nearly every city responded with indiscriminate violence, taking their cues from the bloodthirsty cops in Minneapolis.

In New York, police pepper sprayed crowds at Brooklyn’s Barclays center on Friday night and beat protesters in the street, setting off multiple clashes throughout the city that continued on Saturday and Sunday nights. Protesters burned multiple police vehicles, but came off far worse in the clashes, as cops rammed them with cars, beat them with clubs, and arrested hundreds.

Mayor and failed Presidential candidate Bill de Blasio’s own daughter was arrested with the protestors, which didn’t stophim from siding with the cops in a public statement.

Speaking of an incident in which the NYPD rammed protestors with cars, he said quote: “If those protestors had just gotten out of the way we wouldn’t be talking about this situation.” ENDQUOTE.

In Louisville, seven people were shot during the first night of widespread protests on Friday, though no one was killed. Police claim they weren’t behind the shootings. Demonstrations in Dallas saw chaos as well, as a man rushed protesters with a machete. In Salt Lake City, a man with a bow and arrow tried to shoot at protesters, who then burnt his car.

And in Minneapolis, a tanker truck tried to ram through protesters occupying a highway. Throughout it all, the police continued an all-out offensive on both demonstrators and the press, firing rubber bullets and pepper balls directly at journalists in multiple cities.

So where’s our leadership? Well, in Washington D.C., protesters set fires near the White House on Saturday night, forcing the Secret Service to turn off the building’s exterior lights and fire tear gas at protesters. Meanwhile, Donald Trump hid in the underground bunker reserved for terrorist attacks.

Joe Biden is largely silent, and many of the country’s governors or mayors are convinced the protests are being fueled by quote “outside agitators,” because they’re desperate for any excuse to not examine their own failures. The police are the only ones in power, and they’re just using it to inflict pain.

Trump Names ANTIFA Terrorists

While hidden in his bunker below the White House with all the lights off on Sunday, Trump tweeted that the U.S. government would be quote: “designating ANTIFA as a terrorist organization.” Endquote.

The wording here is important, mostly because it doesn’t mean anything legally -- the United States doesn’t have a domestic terrorism statute, so it can’t designate a homegrown group as a terrorist organization.

It also doesn’t mean anything because ANTIFA just stands for anti-fascist -- it’s not one organization or group. It’s more of a shared ideology and commitment to direct action against fascists.

The proclamation comes hand in hand with the government’s insistence that much of the protesting has been inspired by outside agitators, a conspiracy that NBC News found had little bearing in fact.

But try telling that to Trump. It’s clear from this tweet that the president is paving the way to start cracking down on organized leftism, and scapegoating a familiar conservative media boogeyman at the same time -- which will surely be weaponized as protests continue across the country.

If Anti-fascists are considered terrorists, the U.S. might as well up and change the stars on its flag to a different symbol.

U.S. Cuts Ties to WHO

And lastly, even outside of the massive crisis of police violence, Trump’s government continues its slow erosion of every international norm we’ve ever worked to build.

On Friday, Trump announced that the U.S. would be terminating all ties to the World Health Organization, putting the cap on a months-long campaign to malign the international organization and deflect blame for his own abysmal leadership.

We’re just a few thousand deaths away from 375,000 worldwide. More than a quarter of those -- over 100,000 -- are in the U.S. There’s no way that’s the WHO’s fault, but Trump is grasping at straws and willing to drag the world down with him.

The U.S. provided $893 million to the WHO in 2018 and 2019. Hopefully, Trump won’t be in office long enough to really blow out the organization’s budget, but there’s no way around it: the U.S. cutting off the WHO will be disastrous for global public health.

Fortunately, it’s not like we’re in any kind of massive pandemic that’s expected to keep happening as new diseases arise. Oh wait

AND NOW FOR SOME QUICKER QUICKIES:

The New York Times has a new exhaustive video breaking down the moments of George Floyd’s death, which adds much needed context to the traffic stop that led to his murder, thanks to security camera and other witness videos that show how the police breached their own policy multiple times.

Protesters lit fires in the Daughters of the Confederacy building in Richmond, and defaced a statue of Robert E. Lee while they were at it. Couldn’t have happened to two nicer and more important parts of our country’s heritage, could it.

A new Washington Post and ABC News poll shows Joe Biden ahead of Donald Trump by 10 percent, 53 to 43 percent, as the president’s approval rating continues to drop during the pandemic. That said, there’s still a long way to go until November.

Democratic incumbents are massively out-raising Republicans in key House races coming up in November, and the GOP is pretty worried that it’s losing any shot of taking back the House. Money in politics may be a fundamentally broken game, but hey, at least the slightly-less-bad party is winning?

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

June 1, 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:

Minneapolis authorities again refused to hold local police accountable for the gruesome videotaped killing of a helpless man, a racist act of cruelty and impunity that has shocked the world. Instead of justice for the victims of police violence, they sent in the National Guard to clamp down on protests, which escalated as a result of the failures of accountability.

Meanwhile, Donald Trump managed to attack the First Amendment as well as the legislative powers of Congress with a single executive order yesterday. He’s mad that Twitter tagged a correction on one of his dangerous lies this week, and he wants to intimidate his critics.

And lastly, civil liberties groups are suing a company that sells powerful facial recognition tools to police. They hope the courts can avert a privacy-ending nightmare scenario and put Clearview A.I. out of business.

THESE ARE THE STORIES YOU NEED TO KNOW:

The Minneapolis uprising continued for a third night. Minnesota Governor Tim Walz, called in the National Guard after groups of angry protesters faced off with police around the city. Fires again broke out around – and, last night, amazingly, even inside -- the city’s Third Precinct station. News videos showed police driving near crowds and spraying chemical agents indiscriminately.

Solidarity protests sprung up in cities around the country to demand justice for George Floyd, the middle-aged black man slowly suffocated by a white officers while on camera, in a grisly mirror image of civil rights activists taking a knee. Some of those also turned violent – again, with the most egregious violence directed at those demanding justice. In Denver, Colorado, an SUV driver appeared to deliberately turn around to run over a protester.

Federal authorities said their criminal investigation into Floyd’s killing by Minneapolis police was a top Justice Department priority. The American Civil Liberties Union called for the state attorney general to appoint an independent prosecutor. The county district attorney gave a flustered press conference that failed to explain his decision not to prosecute. Even some police chiefs and unions expressed outrage and disgust over the conduct of the Minneapolis

officers. Chiefs in Houston, Miami, Tuscon, and Los Angeles, and unions in the Bay Area, issued statements supporting the immediate firing of the four officers involved in Floyd’s killing. But if local protests and online reactions are anything to go by, they also struggled to convince people that the police were not themselves a leading threat to public safety. The University of Minnesota said it would cut ties to the MPD after Floyd’s killing.

Various news outlets reported on the lengthy miscoduct record of officer Derek Chauvin, who killed Floyd. A man who was shot in his home by Chauvin during a domestic violence call twelve years ago told the Daily Beast the killer cop got a slap on the wrist. He added that if Chauvin was reprimanded after the shooting, George Floyd would still be alive. It also emerged that Senator Amy Klobuchar – now being vetted by Joe Biden’s campaign as a possible vice presidential pick -- declined to prosecute Chauvin for shooting a Native American man in 2011, when she was a prosecutor in Minneapolis.

TMZ reported that the seventeen-year-old girl who filmed Floyd’s killing was being hounded by vicious online trolls who questioned her motives. And what’s even worse than the compounded trauma is knowing that there is no public agency her family can trust to ensure their safety. And the same may be true for the entire community.

Trump Targets Online Critics

Donald Trump signed an executive order yesterday intended to punish Twitter for posting a disclaimer on one of his more egregious recent lies -- and potentially opening up critics of the president to libel claims. After Trump posted tweets earlier this week claiming the next election would be rigged by his enemies, Twitter decided enough was enough and posted a disclaimer to the president’s lies about mail-in voting, as a responsible news organization might have done in the age before social media. Trump responded by accusing the company of election interference and vowing retribution, which he delivered yesterday with the stroke of a pen.

Trump’s order seeks to override a law passed by Congress in 1996 giving widespread immunity to tech companies for content posted by users. The provision, known as Section 230, has always had critics from across the political spectrum. However, Trump is attempting here to brazenly rewrite the laws without regard to Constitutional processes – and he’s doing it to directly attack the First Amendment. All the while, he’s the one crying censorship.

Yesterday, Trump claimed there's nothing he’d rather do than get rid of his Twitter account. Yeah, sure. Without Twitter, he could not have so easily shared a video featuring the message, QUOTE the only good Democrat is a dead Democrat ENDQUOTE. As he did yesterday, at the stroke of midnight. Without Twitter, he’d have to have called a press conference. Or bought an ad. And then people might see that he was not really joking.

Facial Recognition Contractor Sued

The ACLU filed a lawsuit yesterday against one of the most disturbing tech companies around, which sells facial recognition software to police departments. Calling the company, Clearview A.I., the embodiment of a nightmare scenario, the civil liberties suit claims it also violated state law in Illinois. Companies doing business there are forbidden from using people’s fingerprints or face scans without consent. But this is exactly Clearview’s business model. They reportedly scraped the internet for more than three billion photos, then used them to build the company’s facial recognition database. They make money by renting the database out to law enforcement – but also to pretty much anyone who’s willing to pay. There are concerns that pretty sketchy customers have made use of this company’s services. And there are concerns that employees and insiders have improper access to law enforcement investigations as they are happening.

ACLU laywer Nathan Freed Wessler told The New York Times that if left unchecked, Clearview’s product will end privacy as we know it. And this is the outcome the lawsuit seeks to prevent. The law firm that helped in the preparation of the case, Edelson PC, has won previous class action suits against tech companies over privacy violations. For instance, they won a $550 million settlement from Facebook over facial recognition technology, and that was also in Illinois. Here’s hoping they drive put this monstrosity out of business for good.

AND NOW FOR SOME QUICKER QUICKIES:

Another week’s jobless claims offered no new hope for averting a Greater Depression. Another 2.1 million people, at least, filed for unemployment, bringing the total to 40 million out of work since mid-March. That means one in four American workers has lost their job in the pandemic. At least! And so far.

A rare case of real-life vote-by-mail fraud was reported yesterday. But it’s not the kind of fable you hear from Republicans in election years. Prosecutors in West Virginia charged a postal carrier, Thomas Cooper, with attempted election fraud after altering eight people’s ballot requests. On five of the ballot requests he handled, Cooper allegedly changed their party affiliation from Democrat to Republican. In an affidavit, prosecutors say he at first denied then later admitted to altering the voters’ preference – as a joke. Yet another reason as Harry Shearer says to leave comedy to the professionals.

The progressive British news site OpenDemocracy reported yesterday that the US State Department is funding a fake news site in Armenia that is spreading disinformation about the coronavirus. The website in question is part of a network of far-right propaganda sites that sprung up after the so-called velvet revolution there two years ago. It received $50,000 from the department’s Democracy Commission Small Grants program. Lately it has been urging Armenians to refuse any future vaccination for the coronavirus, described it as a fake pandemic, and claimed victimes families were being bribed to blame the pandemic. The State Department declined to comment on its funding for the propaganda site.

Vanity Fair reported this week that the Food and Drug Administration commissioner, Stephen Hahn, made a personal effort to help an obscure upstate New York doctor promote a bogus miracle treatment for COVID-19 favored by Trump. Hahn personally called Doctor Vladimir Zelenko to ask how he could help. The doctor responded with a demand for thousands of pills including hydroxychloroquine. Initially baffled, Hahn ensured Zelenko got everything he needed from the federal stockpile. Hey, we found the looters!

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

May 29, 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:

Multiple crises are unfolding with China as the country engages in a border standoff with India and cracks down on protests in the streets of Hong Kong. And Donald Trump’s government seems determined to make the most of the situation.

Meanwhile, one-hundred thousand Americans, per the official figures, have now died from COVID-19. As cases climb, why are Democratic governors reopening their states?

And lastly, demands for accountability grew in what Congresswoman Ilhan Omar called a police murder in Minneapolis. Protesters there took over a police station last night in a show of outrage over the killing by suffocation of an unarmed black man, George Floyd.

THESE ARE THE STORIES YOU NEED TO KNOW:

As of yesterday at least three-hundred and sixty people had been arrested in resurgent protests in Hong Kong. The central government in Beijing passed a new law restricting speech, assembly, and political autonomy for the former British colony. Beijing says the law is necessary to counter foreign interference. And however the US was already mixed up in the Hong Kong protests, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo yesterday threw gas on the fire. Pompeo sent a notice to Congress saying Hong Kong should no longer be considered autonomous. This is a prelude to diplomatic escalation. We could see more trade restrictions like higher tariffs and sanctions on Chinese officials. We could see visa restrictions. We could see more than that, depending.

Pompeo’s counterpart, Chinese foreign minister Zhao Lijian, said the country would QUOTE take necessary measures to fight back ENDQUOTE against the US. However the diplomacy plays out, it’s not a good time for the people of Hong Kong. Beijing has ordered thousands of armed police into the streets. They’ve shot pepper spray into crowds and are rounding up and detaining dissidents and students – again.

At the same time, China is engaged in a simultaneous border dispute with India. Both countries are sending large numbers of troops to a contested area in the Himalayas. Each

has claims about why the other made them do it. Yesterday Trump said he would be willing to mediate the border dispute. As though anyone asked.

China certainly wouldn’t see him as an honest broker. America’s relations with its largest trading partner keep getting worse under Trump. And this is no accident. He needs a great big scapegoat to distract from his failure to protect Americans from the coronavirus. And what bigger scapegoat could there be than the world’s most populous country?

100,000 US Coronavirus Deaths

The official pandemic death toll in the US passed one-hundred thousand yesterday. More people have died in this country from COVID-19 than any other in the world. And that’s entirely because of the failures of our government, mainly in the White House but to some degree at every level. Experts have reminded the public that those numbers are too low for a variety of reasons, from statistical manipulations to lack of testing and reliability problems with the tests themselves. Cases continue to rise as states reopen. California has become one of four states – after New York, New Jersey, and Illinois – to report a hundred-thousand corona cases. And state health officials there took the opportunity to deliver a grim warning: we are reopening too quickly.

As public health officer for Santa Clara County, Doctor Sara Cody led the campaign for a shelter-in-place order in the San Francisco Bay Area. That March 16 decision was one of the earliest lockdown orders in the country, and became the model for similar orders elsewhere. But now Governor Gavin Newsom is letting some counties reopen, and Cody says this will lead to a surge in cases. She says politicians need to wait for at least fourteen days after lifting restrictions to see if new cases subside. But American politicians aren’t heeding this advice. Instead they’re listening to business owners who want their workers to ignore the risk and don’t want to pay taxes to subsidize their wages during the pandemic.

According to the Los Angeles Times, the Bay Area has a coronavirus death rate of six per one hundred thousand residents. In New York, by contrast, the virus has killed one-hundred and forty nine people for every hundred-thousand residents. That’s because Newsom listened to Cody before. Government action matters. And what good work has been done to save lives in spite of Donald Trump could be undone because Democratic governors got scared about keeping campaign donors happy.

Rioters Occupy Minneapolis Precinct

The chorus demanding accountability in the police killing of George Floyd is getting louder. Yesterday the mayor of Minneapolis, Jacob Frey; Minnesota Congresswoman Ilhan Omar; and Governor Tim Walz all added their voices. Mayor Frey said the county attorney should bring charges against the arresting officer, Derek Chauvin. Videos showed Chauvin suffocating Floyd with his knee on Floyd’s neck for nine minutes as other officers look on.

Representative Omar said the officer who killed Floyd, a forty-six-year-old black man recently laid off from his job at a restaurant, should be charged with murder. Someone had called the police on Floyd, claiming he passed a counterfit $20 bill. Yesterday the Minneapolis police department fired four officers involved in Floyd’s killing. And the Federal Bureau of Investigation was reportedly investigating. But none of this was enough to quell growing public disgust with police violence against black and brown people.

Protests continued for a second night in Minneapolis. With riots ongoing, Governor Walz said QUOTE our feelings of anger, anguish, and disillusionment are justified ENDQUOTE. Police once again shot tear gas and rubber bullets into crowds indiscriminately. Angry locals took over a Target, an Arby’s, and a Dollar Tree. They also took over a police station, which is not something you see every day. A diverse assemblage of rioters threw bricks and broke windows at the city’s Third Precinct station, where the officers who killed Floyd were based. As night began to fall some got inside and took over the building. At last report, police were still dealing with that situation and with arsons in the immediate area.

In Los Angeles, Black Lives Matters protesters demanding for justice for Floyd’s murder shut down the one-oh-one freeway. A California Highway Patrol car drove through a crowd. Video shows a crowd surrounded the state police vehicle on the freeway. It then accelerated after several people were already on the hood. At least one person was injured.

It’s hard to miss the contrast in the police response, compared to the recent armed takeovers of multiple state capitols by white, Trump-supporting organized fascist groups. There was no official count of arrests, so you can credit the Chinese Communist Party with more transparency than some American police departments.

AND NOW FOR SOME QUICKER QUICKIES:

Anthony Fauci is now the first Trump official to clearly say that the president’s favorite miracle cure does not work. The federal infectious diseases director went on CNN last night and said the evidence against hydroxy as a COVID treatment was becoming clear. France this week banned the use of hydroxychloroquine to treat COVID-19. The World Health Organization also paused trials. Now it’s going to be a big scandal that an American official dared tell the truth. Just because one corrupt idiot took has a personal interest in the matter.

A new book by two young conservative journalists claims Bill Clinton was having an affair with Ghislaine Maxwell, alleged accomplice to the sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein. The book, A Convenient Death, will be published by Penguin Random House, so a libel lawyer at least looked at the claim. The source was reported to be someone who QUOTE witnessed the relationship ENDQUOTE. This was all reported by the New York Post yesterday and the book comes out on June 2, so expect a Trump tweet around then.

Police in Brazil raided more than two dozen key online boosters of the president, Jair Bolsonaro. The president’s son Carlos is reported to be a key figure in a well-funded propaganda ring being used to attack political opponents and intimidate dissidents. Opposition politicians praised the move but the regime said it was the victim of a leftwing attack. Several pro-Bolsonaro lawmakers were targeted in the police raids, along with political operatives, at least one far-right blogger and a real-estate tycoon.

Trump’s new campaign chief of staff had one big qualification, it turns out: in 2016, she was arrested and charged with conspiracy to violate state election laws. Business Insider broke the story last night. The campaign official, Stephanie Alexander, got promoted on Tuesday from her previous job . The charges were dropped without explanation in 2017, to the dismay of investigators. Alexander allegedly participated in a scheme to conceal dark- money donations. The crime was discovered through text messages after her Republcian operative boyfriend got busted for cocaine.

May 28, 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:

Minneapolis police killed George Floyd, an unarmed black man, in a horrific incident captured on video Monday night, which shows an officer kneeling on Floyd’s neck as he struggles to breathe. Widespread protests broke out across the Twin Cities on Tuesday night, which law enforcement responded to with more violence, firing tear gas and rubber bullets into the crowd.

Meanwhile, Amazon’s high-powered PR unit sent around a pre-prepared script and news package to local stations across the country -- and at least 11 of them fell for it, airing the uncritical segment just as the company wanted it.

And lastly, President Trump launches into the conspiracy theory that MSNBC Host Joe Scarborogh killed a staff member while he was a Congressman, and Twitter made the weakest possible response, despite the pleas of the staffer’s surviving husband.

THESE ARE THE STORIES YOU NEED TO KNOW:

The Twin Cities area of Minnesota erupted on Tuesday night following the tragic killing of an unarmed black man by police the previous day.

On Monday night, Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin killed George Floyd after kneeling on his neck for several minutes, all of which were captured on video by a bystander. According to the Minneapolis Star-Tribune, Chauvin had previously been involved in multiple shootings over his 19-year career, wounding a suspect in one.

Minneapolis mayor Jacob Frey said on Tuesday afternoon that Chauvin and other three officers who were on scene for Floyd’s death had been fired. But that action didn’t stop massive protests breaking out across the Twin Cities area, as thousands took to the streets to call for justice.

The cops, however, reacted about how you’d expect: meeting protestors with force, firing rubber bullets, marking rounds and tear gas into crowds that battled them for hours in the rain.

Floyd’s death was one of the most brutal captured on tape. In the video, Chauvin kneels directly on Floyd’s neck for an extended period of time while Floyd and several onlookers plead for Chauvin to release the pressure. Floyd eventually passes out, after saying quote “I can’t breathe, they’re going to kill me.” endquote. He was pronounced dead in the hospital.

Mayor Frey said he had originally been stopped on suspicion of forgery. That’s all it took for the police to murder him in broad daylight.

Local News Parrots Amazon PR

Amazon’s PR machine has kicked into overdrive during the coronavirus crisis, in large part due to the fact that it has fired organizers within its ranks left and right while neglecting its already oppressed workforce. While diligent reporting by Vice News, the New York Times and others has held Amazon’s feet to the fire, other outlets… aren’t doing so great.

On Sunday, Amazon sent around a prepared news segment specifically crafted to show the company in the best possible light. Most reporters, like Zach Rael at Oklahoma City’s ABC affiliate KOCO, who first publicized the pitch on Twitter, brushed it off. Rael, for example, instead asked Amazon to let journalists into the facility to do a story for themselves.

But reporting by Courier Newsroom found that at least 11 stations around the country fell for the obvious PR job and ran the story exactly as Amazon scripted it, with anchors repeating the spokesperson-provided lines verbatim.

The story is a troubling reminder of what our media could look like if corporations are allowed to completely control the conversation. There’s already a shortage of critical reporting in the country, and even the best-funded outlets often fall in line with what’s comfortable for the various powers that be. It’s just usually not this obvious.

Twitter Delivers Weak Rebuke of Trump

A strange, chaotic news day wouldn’t be complete without the president spreading conspiracies and lies online -- and it looks like Twitter, his platform of choice, isn’t willing to do much to stop him.

On Tuesday, Trump again tweeted several references to the 2001 death of Lori Klausutis, a congressional staffer for then-Representative Joe Scarborough. Trump and Scarborough have been feuding over the usual petty cable news crap for months, and recently the president has decided to bring up the popular conspiracy that Scarborough was involved in Klausutis’s death.

In a letter published in the New York Times, Klausutis’s husband plead for Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey to delete Trump’s tweets about the conspiracy. In response, a company spokesperson mustered up a pitiful response, expressing some token sympathy and saying QUOTE:

“We’ve been working to expand existing product features and policies so we can more effectively address things like this going forward.”

That means effectively nothing, obviously, but the company did take one concrete step. Late into Tuesday afternoon, it attached two advisory tags to Trump’s tweets -- not the ones about Kausutis, but instead Trump’s lies about vote by mail. The tags merely redirect users to Twitter’s news page for vote-by-mail stories and urge them to “get the facts.” Great job everyone, they fixed it.

AND NOW FOR SOME QUICKER QUICKIES:

The white woman who attempted to call police on a black man birdwatching in Central Park has been fired from her job at the investment bank Franklin Templeton. The woman, Amy Cooper, implied that she would use the police to inflict violence on the birdwatcher, repeatedly mentioning to the operator that he was “African American.” The altercation started after the man asked her to leash her dog.

Four Uber and Lyft drivers in New York filed suit with the New York Taxi Workers Alliance against Gov. Andrew Cuomo, arguing that the state had failed to provide drivers with unemployment benefits. A 2018 decision ruled app-based drivers should be classified as employees and eligible for unemployment, but the drivers say the state is failing to process their claims quick enough to help them pay the bills.

Congress’s pandemic EBT program, an emergency relief measure intended lessen child hunger during the pandemic, is way behind schedule and application, according to the New York Times. Congress approved the act in Mid March -- in Mid May, the Times reports only 15 percent of the kids it was supposed to feed are getting what they need.

And finally, the Trump Justice Department is closing insider trading investigations into three U.S. senators previously caught trading stock they may have had advance tips on due to their position on Congressional committees. The only one still under investigation is GOP Senator Richard Burr, the former head of the Senate Intelligence Committee -- but the other three appear to be getting off scott free. Funny how that works!

That’s it for the Majority Report’s AM Quickie today. Catch the full show this afternoon.

May 27, 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 have declared all-out war on vote-by-mail, suing the California government over its plans to mail out a ballot for the November general election to every voter. This is the hill they’re going to die on, so be ready.

Meanwhile, Trump’s decision last month to declare meatpacking plants part of the country’s critical infrastructure is having predictable consequences, as the virus rips through massive factories that are failing to track the number of sick employees.

And lastly, in a deranged demonstration started by gun rights activists in Kentucky, protestors hung an effigy of Governor Andy Beshear in front of the state capitol building, lashing out against the Democratic leader’s public health measures. Very normal country we’ve got here!

THESE ARE THE STORIES YOU NEED TO KNOW:

Every election cycle, the Republican party does whatever it possibly can to suppress voting, particularly among demographics it can’t win. The reason for this is simple: Democrats have the numbers, and Republicans know the only way they can win nationally is to keep turnout low and hope to squeak by in the electoral college.

This year, it’s now clear what their main attack will be: voting by mail. On Sunday, the Republican National Committee filed suit against the state of California to stop its government from distributing vote-by-mail ballots to ever voter in the state for the November election.

The Republican argument is that voting by mail quote “invites fraud” endquote. There’s no evidence that vote-by-mail or voting in general invites fraud, but that’s what they’re going with. According to CNN, the GOP is spending more than $20 million on various attempts to block vote-by-mail nationwide.

This lawsuit is aimed at California, but as every state prepares to figure out how to administer the November election and mitigate the risks of COVID-19, we’re bound to see many more battles like this along the way -- so keep an eye on California to see if the GOP’s lawsuit makes it anywhere in the courts.

COVID Grinds Through Meatpacking Plants

In the month since Trump declared America’s meatpacking plants part of the country’s critical industry, things have only gotten worse for the working people on the line.

The New York Times reports that hundreds of meatpacking plants across the country are being tight-lipped about their coronavirus cases, refusing to publish the number of employees who have fallen ill. State and local officials also won’t give or don’t have the data.

The CDC estimates that at least 5,000 meatpacking workers across the country have gotten the disease, but last week one nonprofit estimated that there could be as many as 17,000 cases in the industry.

The fact that the big corporations are keeping mum about the stats doesn’t look good, because it only benefits them to keep things quiet. As more and more workers get sick, it could cause the shortages that keeping the plants open was supposed to prevent -- one study estimated supply drops of 35 percent and price increases for whatever’s left.

To give you an idea of what the government thinks of all this, on CNN on Monday Kevin Hassett, a senior economic advisor to the president, said quote “Our human Capital stock is ready to get back to work,” endquote.

That’s right -- he referred to the people putting their lives on the line in the same terms as the animals they butcher. That about says it all.

Protestors Hang Beshear Effigy

The ill-advised protests against public health measures reached a new, surreal height in Kentucky on Sunday, when a group of gun-rights protestors got agitated about Governor Andy Beshear’s policies and decided to hang him in effigy.

The protestors strung up a stuffed dummy with a picture of Beshear’s face on it in a tree on the Capitol lawn. A freelance journalist, Gary Seavo James, got the whole thing on video. He told CNN that the effigy was a final extreme act even though many people had already left the protest, calling it quote “chilling.”

Beshear has been relatively evenhanded in his approach to public health, relaxing restrictions on his state very gradually compared to some of his fellow governors in the midwest and south. The protests against these measures are limited -- polling shows that these are mostly a very loud minority.

But hanging Beshear in effigy is a good signifier of the level these people are playing on -- their goal is to polarize and further inflame the discourse around the issue in the hopes of forcing more people to take a side. Seeing as the president appears to be mostly on their side, it could work -- which makes it all the more important for the rest of us to stay the sane and rational

course of maintaining social distance and not toting guns around government buildings. Big ask, I know, but that’s not the move right now.

AND NOW FOR SOME QUICKER QUICKIES:

The first of two oil tankers from Iran has arrived in Venezuela to alleviate the country’s dire gas shortage, brought on both by the dysfunction of the authoritarian Maduro regime and crippling U.S. sanctions on the country, which have largely harmed its civilian population. The move was strongly opposed by the Trump administration, which has pushed to further cripple or even overthrow Maduro’s government, pushing Venezuela even closer to Iran.

Progressive influencer Shaun King’s strange money troubles continue to mount -- after raising a significant subscriber base bringing in up to $1.5 million a year, King’s latest venture into journalism has failed to materialize, according to a new report by the Daily Beast. The project, called the North Star, has largely fallen apart, according to more than half a dozen former staffers, who called King, in so many words, an incompetent control freak.

Joe Biden made his first public appearance in an unannounced visit to a veterans park near his home in Delaware, where he and his wife Jill placed a commemorative wreath. Both wore masks, which quickly inspired a truly dumb take by Fox News analyst Brit Hume, who implied that Biden looked stupid in the mask. Got him!

And finally, a royal commission in Australia found that the summer of devastating brushfires caused an estimated 445 deaths and hospitalized 4,000. The deaths are more than four times the country’s death toll from coronavirus to date, highlighting how dire the climate crisis is outside of the pandemic currently dominating headlines.

That’s all for the Majority Report’s AM Quickie. Stay tuned for the full show with Sam this afternoon.

#AMQuickie - May 26, 2020

HOSTS - Sam Seder & Lucie Steiner

WRITER - Jack Crosbie

PRODUCER - Dorsey Shaw

EXECUTIVE PRODUCER - Brendan Finn

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

TODAY'S HEADLINES:

Coronavirus deaths in the U.S. are approaching 100,000, as experts warn of a second wave sweeping the country and the President responds by banning travel from Brazil, and pretty much nothing else.

Meanwhile, in Florida, a federal judge delivered a massive victory for voting rights, ruling a draconian, racist law that forced felons to pay fines in order to vote unconstitutional.

And lastly, Joe Biden went on the Breakfast Club, a hugely-popular, nationally-syndicated radio program, and you’ll never guess what happens next. Spoilers: he said something cartoonishly stupid and racist. In that respect, he’s truly a match for Trump.

THESE ARE THE STORIES YOU NEED TO KNOW:

The U.S. is about to reach a grim milestone in the coronavirus pandemic -- 100,000 deaths. The number is staggering in its own right, especially as it didn’t have to be this way.

Trump’s latest action on Saturday was to ban travel from Brazil, citing the fact that it had the third highest number of cases in the world -- and ignoring the fact that the U.S. is already number one in the world.

The president then spent the rest of the weekend playing golf and throwing tantrums on Twitter, as usual, rambling about Obamagate, mail-in ballots, and Hillary Clinton. Let’s take a look at the few words he’s said lately that matter:

Trump insisted last Thursday that he won’t shut the country down again, even though experts worry that we’re going to see a second wave of the virus -- or just a perpetual continuation of the first wave -- as states start to re-open.

Lockdown orders are usually the purview of state governors, of course, but what Trump is signaling here is that he’ll likely give flak to any governor who tries to crack down on the virus if things start to get out of hand.

And we’re already seeing some distressing trends across the country: the Washington Post reports that the disease is already starting to surge in rural areas even as it slowly wanes in major metropolitan areas like New York City. We’re still at the beginning of a long fight, and the President and his ilk are doing everything they can to pretend that they’ve already won.

Voting Rights Victory for Florida Felons

On Sunday, a federal judge resoundly struck down one of Florida’s worst voting laws, and singlehandedly paved the way for thousands of felons to reclaim their right to vote.

The fact that many federal prisoners -- people who are literally wards of the State -- cannot vote is a peculiar injustice in American society. But even those states that allow felons to reclaim their right to vote often impose restrictions or further punishments on citizens after they get out.

In 2018, Republicans in Florida passed a restriction that said felons have to pay any and all court fees or fines they’re responsible for to get back their right to vote.

Judge Robert L. Hinkle, who presides over a district court in Tallahassee, wrote that imposing this condition creates quote “a tax by any other name,” endquote on these citizens’ right to vote.

The implications of this are huge -- the 2018 fine rule was itself an attempt by Florida Republicans to keep felons from voting, even after the state gave them back their right to vote through an Amendment that year. This was a sneaky way to do it, as few voters knew that every felon also gets slapped with hundreds of dollars in fines and fees as their case goes through the court.

But fortunately, Judge Hinkle saw through the obvious injustice at play here. And now thousands of prospective voters may be back on the rolls, and likely not very predisposed to vote for the party that stripped them of their right in the first place.

Biden Decides Who's Black

And now, let’s check in on the Joe Biden campaign. On Friday morning, Biden himself stopped by the Breakfast Club, a huge radio show hosted by emcee Charlamagne Tha God that’s considered a cultural touchstone for black America.

That’s about all the context you need -- If you haven’t heard the quote, brace yourself. In the final minute of the interview, Biden leaned forward and said QUOTE: “If you have a problem figuring out whether you’re for me or Trump, then you ain’t black.” ENDQUOTE.

This is, as you can imagine, not a great thing to say in any context.

Biden had been forced to play defense for much of the 18-minute interview, thanks to Charlamagne’s confrontational questions about his atrocious record on busing, marijuana, and the 1994 crime bill. This is probably exactly why the Biden campaign tried to prevent the candidate from going on the show for so long -- according to Charlamagne, they repeatedly tried to send a black surrogate on the show instead of Biden.

Eventually, though, the campaign caved to pressure and sent the candidate himself. And this is what happened. It’s almost like he may not be the right guy for the job.

AND NOW FOR SOME QUICKER QUICKIES:

The actress Lori Loughlin pled guilty on Friday in the obscene college admissions case, which hauled in several B and C-list celebrities and other various rich people on charges of wire and mail fraud for their roles in buying their childrens’ way into prestigious colleges. It’s not exactly justice for years of a discriminatory education system leaving behind millions of deserving children, but hey, it’s a start!

As if Murder Hornets weren’t enough to deal with, the CDC issued a warning on Sunday that the rat populations of major cities are becoming more and more aggressive -- mostly to each other, as their usual steady supply of leftover restaurant food has been interrupted by the pandemic. It sounds funny and dystopian, but you know something’s gone truly wrong when even the rats are feeling the pain of a crisis.

After a few months of pandemic-enforced peace, major street protests broke out in Hong Kong on Sunday, as protestors lashing out against the authoritarian mainland government’s new proposed security legislation, which would tighten its grip over the semi-autonomous region.

Mitt Romney spends a lot of his time cosplaying as an honorable person, but new reports in Politico Common Dreams suggest that the Republican Senate could be trying to slip a bill gutting social security benefits into the next coronavirus relief package. He can tut-tut Trump all he wants, but we all know what team he plays for in the end.

That’s it for the Majority Report’s AM Quickie today. Catch the full show with Sam this afternoon.

AM Quickie - May 25, 2020

HOSTS - Sam Seder & Lucie Steiner

WRITER - Jack Crosbie

PRODUCER - Dorsey Shaw

EXECUTIVE PRODUCER - Brendan Finn

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

TODAY'S HEADLINES:

Donald Trump – flouting the state’s mask order -- rolled out some blatant Nazi rhetoric while giving a speech at a Ford factory in Michigan. This criminal ghoul, who is responsible for thousands of deaths, has not lost the power to disgust.

Meanwhile, young adults need to be looking out for symptoms of an inflammatory condition that was, until recently, thought to affect only children. It is linked to the coronavirus and doctors are still trying to figure it out.

And lastly, the University of California system is getting rid of the SAT and ACT admissions tests. It’s a victory for critics who argued the tests were biased against minorities.

THESE ARE THE STORIES YOU NEED TO KNOW:

Most Americans know the name Henry Ford, founder of Ford Motor Company. Many, although probably not most, know Ford was one of this country’s most notorious anti-Semites. At the peak of his wealth and power, Ford bought a newspaper in Dearborn, Michigan, and published conspiracy tracts ranting against Jews. He was, in fact, one of the only Americans to earn a medal from Adolf Hitler. He and Ford had a real mutual admiration society going, back in the day. Donald Trump’s defenders will tell you that the president is one of those Americans – maybe the majority -- who know nothing about this history. Maybe. Maybe not. One of his ex-wives claims Trump used to keep a book of Hitler speeches by the bed. He likes to talk about his good German genes. However he feels about them, Nazis certainly love him. Whatever the case, it doesn’t excuse what Trump pulled yesterday. He went to Michigan, a disaster area, to speak to workers at a Ford factory. The main point seemed to be to flaunt the fact that he wasn’t wearing a mask, even though the company – and top state officials -- asked him to. Because everyone there is required to. You know, to keep everyone safe. But Trump didn’t. Of course. And then he went and talked about how Henry Ford, the friend of Hitler, had, QUOTE, good bloodlines. Good bloodlines. If you believe in that stuff. He’s got good blood! ENDQUOTE. Draw your own conclusions, folks, what he meant by that. Blood and soil is what they chanted in Charlottesville. And Munich before that.

No word on Trump’s plans to invade Poland. However, he did withdraw from another crucial arms control treaty yesterday – the third such peace-keeping agreement he has gotten rid of since taking over the White House. The Open Skies Treaty, signed in 2002, allows thirty-five – well, now, thirty-four – countries to fly over each other’s territory and observe their militaries. The US is out of the treaty as of today. Trump says Russia made him do it, by violating the treaty. European diplomats said they saw this coming and will still honor the treaty.

Syndrome threatens young adults

There is mystery syndrome, an inflammatory condition, that doctors think is linked to COVID-19, with symptoms a lot like something called Kawasaki disease. When they first noticed the trend in cases, they thought it only affected children. Now, according to the Washington Post, doctors say they are seeing the condition affect young adults as well.

In fact, the mystery syndrome may be more severe when it attacks young adults as opposed to children. A pediatric diseases specialist at New York University, Jennifer Lighter, has been studying the condition. She told the Post that the Kawasaki-like symptoms – like swollen blood vessels – seem to occur in children with the condition. But when it hits older adults, the response is more severe and can involve the heart and other organs.

The children with Kawasaki symptoms began showing up in US hospitals in March and April. Many had trouble breathing and active coronavirus infections. The Post says the newer wave of patients are mostly previously healthy children, as well as young adults, who all of a sudden come down with fever, abdominal pain, nausea or vomiting and rashes. These symptoms, they say, can can be sign of a more serious problem that is under-diagnosed and not fully understood. The reason doctors think it is linked to coronavirus is that patients with the condition test positive with corona antibodies. So they think the mystery condition might be a delayed immune system response to coronavirus infection. And they say doctors and the

public need to be aware, even though the syndrome is relatively rare. They are calling it MIS- C, for multi-system inflammatory syndrome in children. Again, it is rare but can be dangerous. Most are said to recover, but parents who think their kids might have this condition are advised to seek an urgent medical evaluation

California ditches SAT, ACT

There is some better news, for young adults, not to mention teachers and students everywhere. One of America’s largest education systems, the University of California, will be doing away with the SAT and the ACT, two out-dated, pointless, and demonstratably racist admissions tests. The vote by the board of regents was unanimous. There are ten schools in the UC system, plus a law school and a national research laboratory, and thousands of people have been denied access to these public institutions because of these biased tests. And the regents admitted as much in taking this vote. One said enough was enough boasted that the decision marks the beginning of the end for the SAT. And honestly who will shed a tear for it? The UC system plans to come up with its own admissions test within five years. But they did allow for the possibility that a new test won’t be ready by then. In which case, decisions about how to admit new students will be left up to the judgment of campus admissions officials. Even if some of them do a bad job, they won’t be forced to consider the results from a test they know is both bogus and racially biased. Plus: one less piece of stress- producing busywork to torture young people with. Like we don’t have enough forms to fill out.

There is some better news, for young adults, not to mention teachers and students everywhere. One of America’s largest education systems, the University of California, will be doing away with the SAT and the ACT, two out-dated, pointless, and demonstratably racist admissions tests. The vote by the board of regents was unanimous. There are ten schools in the UC system, plus a law school and a national research laboratory, and thousands of people have been denied access to these public institutions because of these biased tests. And the regents admitted as much in taking this vote. One said enough was enough boasted that the decision marks the beginning of the end for the SAT. And honestly who will shed a tear for it? The UC system plans to come up with its own admissions test within five years. But they did allow for the possibility that a new test won’t be ready by then. In which case, decisions about how to admit new students will be left up to the judgment of campus admissions officials. Even if some of them do a bad job, they won’t be forced to consider the results from a test they know is both bogus and racially biased. Plus: one less piece of stress- producing busywork to torture young people with. Like we don’t have enough forms to fill out.

AND NOW FOR SOME QUICKER QUICKIES:

Much of the country is being prodded to go back to business as usual. And business as usual, in the USA, means mass shootings are back too. A twenty-year old man who self- described as an incel shot up a shopping center in Glendale, Arizona. Three people were injured and one is in critical condition. Prosecutors say the wannabe-mass murderer was targeting couples and hoped to kill at least ten. And in Texas, someone with a gun was killed while attacking Naval Air Station Corpus Christi. No details were released but the shooting was said to be terrorism-related.

Another weekly tally of unemployment claims was released. Add 2.4 million new filings for a total of 38.6 million Americans who’ve lost their jobs in the nine weeks since the lockdowns began. And that’s an undercount because most people who’ve lost work either aren’t eligible for unemployment benefits for whatever B.S. reason, or literally can’t file a claim because the states were caught flat-footed. What’s worse, a study reported in the New York Times estimates that forty-two percent of these new layoffs will be permanent. Which means those jobs aren’t coming back. What are leaders not getting? People. Need. Help.

Hong Kong, which has seen massive a popular upheaval over the past couple of years, may be losing what remains of its political autonomy. The Chinese central government yesterday imposed a new national security law intended to put an end to what it called foreign interference in last year’s massive street protests. The former British colony was returned to Chinese government control in 1997. Anonymous officials told the South China Morning Post the new law targeted QUOTE secessionist and subversive activity as well as foreign interference and terrorism in the city ENDQUOTE. Foreign interference all over, huh!

Hawaii’s Democratic party primary concludes today. On-site voting was canceled due to coronavirus and everyone there is voting by mail. And they’re one of five states to use ranked-choice voting, so the results will be interesting, even if Joe Biden remains the presumed presidential nominee. Yesterday Biden’s campaign said they would begin vetting Amy Klobuchar as a possible vice presidential nominee. Does that Biden picked Klobuchar for VP? Not necessarily! But people seem to like having this to talk about.

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

HOSTS - Sam Seder & Lucie Steiner

WRITER - Corey Pein

PRODUCER - Dorsey Shaw

EXECUTIVE PRODUCER - Brendan Finn

#LEFTISBEST

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

TODAY'S HEADLINES:

Dramatic flooding in Michigan takes out two dams, threatens a nuclear reactor, and forces ten thousand people to evacuate. And that’s just one natural disaster related to climate change that is happening, very inconveniently we might add, during this pandemic.

Meanwhile, health authorities are warning the world that, whatever the state of lockdown is were you are, this week saw the single largest daily increase in cases since coronavirus began to spread. The places where things are getting worse have something in common: terrible far-right governments.

And lastly, a wave of wildcat strikes sweeps the United States as essential workers are pushed to the breaking point. Hundreds of agricultural workers in Washington State walked off the job, as did McDonald’s employees around the country – and more power to them.

THESE ARE THE STORIES YOU NEED TO KNOW:

There are massive floods in Somalia. India is getting hit hard by a cyclone. And the state of Michigan also cannot catch a break. Ten thousand people evacuated their homes yesterday after two separate dams failed on the Tittabawassee River (TIT-UH-BUH-WAH- SEE) in the city of Midland near the Saginaw Bay. The flooding followed days of heavy rains. What’s worse, the floodwaters threatened a toxic Superfund site as well as a Dow chemical plant that has produced Saran Wrap and Styrofoam as well as Agent Orange and mustard gas. The factory also contains what The New York Times described as a tiny nuclear reactor, and Dow filed a so-called unusual event notice with the federal Nuclear Regulatory Commission over the floodwater threat. As it happens, a former Dow lawyer who helped the company mislead regulators is now in charge of the Environmental Protection Agency’s Superfund cleanup program. Thanks to Donald Trump. Dow Chemical will be fine, but the public sewer and water systems are at risk. Not to mention members of the general public. No casualties were yet reported, but any disease from pollutants could take years to manifest.

Five hundred people who were forced into emergency shelters were being tested for coronavirus. Governor Gretchen Whitmer, a Democrat, declared a state of emergency and called the situation devastation. The National Weather Service said it was catastrophic.

On the very day of this disaster, Donald Trump threatened to revoke federal aid from Michigan. His beef is that the state might go for mail-in voting. In recent weeks Trump has cheered on armed goons as they stormed the state capitol and shut down democracy. Now Michigan faces a disaster on top of a pandemic, and he’s threatening the right to vote.

According to the Washington Post, sixty percent of Superfund sites are in flood-prone areas. Last year, an Associated Press investigation found more than sixteen hundred dams around the country to be at high risk of failure. Experts say climate change played a role in this Michigan flooding. So maybe two dams failing in one big storm is part of this horrifying new normal we all share. We desperately need better leaders.

WHO Warns Coronavirus Surging

If you got fooled into thinking -- even for a second -- that the coronavirus was on the way out, pretty please, reconsider. Yesterday the World Health Organization reported the largest increase in confirmed cases in one day since the pandemic started. In a single twenty- four hour period, the WHO recorded one-hundred and six thousand new cases around the world. WHO director Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus (TED-ROSS AD-ANOM GAY-BREE- ASUS) said two-thirds of the new cases were in four countries: Russia, Brazil, India, and the great US of A.

Is it a coincidence that these countries have fascist leaders who are all buddies with each other? It could be a coincidence! Doctor Tedros didn’t say. But it’s probably not. Trump, Putin, Modi, and Bolsonaro have all denied and stonewalled as the coronavirus spread. Millions live inside their alternate reality bubble where this historic plague is fake news. Here are a couple of headlines you won’t be hearing in today’s White House press briefing: Montgomery, Alabama, is one-hundred percent out of room in its intensive care units. The mayor said hospitals through the region are at capacity and that if you need an ICU bed, QUOTE you’re in trouble ENDQUOTE. In Georgia, a church has closed two weeks after reopening, because several families came down with coronavirus – expect to see many versions of this story as states re-open. Finally,

a new survey of twenty-three thousand nurses in all fifty states by National Nurses United found that eighty-seven percent had been forced to re-use protective gear like masks. The union’s executive director, Bonnie Castillo, said QUOTE They did not sign up to die needlessly on the front lines of a pandemic. ... For our sake, for the public’s sake: give us PPE. ENDQUOTE. Seems like a reasonable ask!

Wildcat Strikes Across US

The PayDay Report, a labor news publication that keeps track of these things, counted two-hundred and ten strikes ongoing in the US as of yesterday. They’re calling it the COVID-19 Strike Wave. This figure includes wildcat strikes that aren’t legally recognized. The website’s Mike Elk reports as follows:

In some places, workers are simply calling out sick en mass and refusing to show up so bosses shut dow their plants. Many areas have no reporters with connections to the labor movement so many strikes are going completely uncovered. In other places, workers have protested for an hour or two before bosses have agreed to workers’ demands. Also, some union leaders are hesitant to get the media involved out of fear of retalation.

That was from PayDay report. McDonald’s workers around the country were on strike in their Fight for Fifteen campaign. And in Yakima, Washington, fruit workers entered their second week on strike. The local newspaper there reported that two workers commenced a hunger strike. Other striking agricultural workers said they’d gotten threats violent threats. We’re talking about white men with guns threatening Latino workers holding only signs. Charges have not yet been filed. These people on strike, facing threats, are keeping us fed. They’re demanding hazard pay and safety measures during the pandemic. Hundreds have walked off the job. And there is a verified GoFundMe for these essential workers, please check the Majority Report and its Twitter account for those details.

Elsewhere in labor news, New Zealand’s increasingly popular prime minister, Jacinda Ardern, proposed moving to a four-day work week. Sold!

AND NOW FOR SOME QUICKER QUICKIES:

The US Supreme Court yesterday blocked House Democrats from accessing material from Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into Donald Trump. The decision overturned an appeals court opinion, and effectively blocks the opposition party from accessing the full Mueller report. Justices gave no explanation. None dissented. The Supremes went along with what Trump wanted and didn’t even explain why they were snubbing Congress. It’s a bit weird.

Thousands of ballots are still uncounted in Oregon after Tuesday’s primary election. Republicans there nominated a Q-Anon nut as a candidate for the US Senate. Jo Rae Perkins swept with over fifty percent of the vote in a four-way race. Perkins posted, then deleted, a video promoting that conspiracy theory ahead of the election. Apparently she thinks Trump is Q, or one of the Qs? I don’t know. The good news is, a progressive district attorney won in Portland, and city voters passed a big business tax to fund homeless services.

The only man convicted over the nine-eleven terrorist plots, Zacarias Moussaoui (ZACK-UH-RYE-ASS MOOSE-OWIE) said in a court filing that he is renouncing terrorism and Al Qaeda. Moussaoui is fourteen years into a life sentence at a federal prison in Colorado. His handwritten petition for a reprieve denounced Osama Bin Laden as QUOTE a useful idiot of the CIA slash Saudi ENDQUOTE. He also requested that either Rudy Giuliani or Alan Dershowitz be appointed to represent him in future court proceedings. Sure why not.

Scientists working for NASA in Antarctica detected the existence of a parallel universe where time runs backwards. A series of experiments with NASA’s Antarctic Impulsive Transient Antenna, known as Anita, made the conclusion after looking closely at the paths of neutrino particles. The scientists reportedly saw the particles moving in impossible ways. They decided the simplest explanation was that the particles were coming from another universe, right next to ours, where time moves in reverse. Count me first, or last, in line to go.

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

May 21, 2020 #LEFTISBEST

HOSTS - Sam Seder & Lucie Steiner

WRITER - Corey Pein

PRODUCER - Dorsey Shaw

EXECUTIVE PRODUCER - Brendan Finn