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TODAY'S HEADLINES:

It’s official – the United States economy has endured the largest decline since the invention of modern statistics. How’s your week going?

Meanwhile, Donald Trump doubles down on a threat to push back the date of the November election. Other Republicans aren’t quite sold on that idea – not yet, anyway.

And lastly: Funeral services were held in Atlanta for the late Congressman John Lewis. In his eulogy for the late civil rights leader, former president Barack Obama called on Americans to summon Lewis’s courage for the struggles ahead.

THESE ARE THE STORIES YOU NEED TO KNOW:

It seems the economists who warned of a Greater Depression were not off-base. The US economy shrank by nine point five percent in the last quarter, measured by Gross Domestic Product and as reported by the Department of Commerce. That’s one point eight trillion dollars worth of economic activity gone. At an annualized rate, which is the standard way of reporting these figures, the drop was closer to thirty-three percent. It’s the largest recorded GDP decline ever. But there are other ways to measure the economy. And they don’t look good either. For the nineteenth week in a row, new unemployment claims exceeded one million. New claims for Pandemic Unemployment Assistance, a program intended to cover freelancers and other workers who aren’t eligible for traditional unemployment benefits, totaled eight hundred and thirty thousand, according to the New York Times. Consumer spending dropped by over ten percent, the largest drop on record by far. The stock markets fell too. And according to Bloomberg News, thirty million Americans reported that they hadn’t gotten enough food to eat at some point in the week ending July 21. That represents approximately one in ten Americans going hungry, at least for a while. Five million of those surveyed by the Census Bureau said they were often without enough food.

Millions more are facing eviction. Ananya Roy, director of the Institute on Inequality and Democracy at the University of California, Los Angeles, told the Guardian that the scale of eviction and mass displacement was almost unimaginable. According to Roy, QUOTE This

will be worse than the Great Depression ENDQUOTE. Activists are calling on state leaders to cancel rent-related debts and keep people in their homes. In the meantime, they’re taking action with or without the help of elected leaders. In New Orleans, housing justice activists surrounded and effectively shut down a municipal courthouse where evictions are processed. It’s a start. This week has been a very long year, folks.

Trump Threatens Election Delay

Donald Trump said on Twitter yesterday morning that he might try to change the date of the November general election. Before proposing an unspecified delay, he said that mail-in voting would make 2020 QUOTE the most inaccurate and fraudulent election in history...[and] a great embarrassment to the USA, ENDQUOTE.

Legally, the date of the election is not something Trump can do. The date is set by the Constitution and only Congress has the power to change it. But the record of his first term shows that Trump’s Republican Party cares more about holding power than following the law. Many Congressional Republicans suggested Trump was joking. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky told a local television station that the country has voted as scheduled through wars and depressions and that QUOTE we’ll find a way to do that again this November 3, ENDQUOTE.

As election experts interviewed by the Washington Post pointed out, there are other things Trump can do to muck with the process as well as the result. Rick Hansen, a professor of law and political science at UC-Irvine, suggested Trump could claim emergency powers to keep people in cities from going to polling places in person. Or, Hansen said, Trump could pressure state legislatures to take voting for president away from citizens entirely in the name of public safety. That is to say, state lawmakers could select presidential electors without direct public input, as they did prior to 1824 – and this would be, theoretically, constitutional. Like I said, it’s gonna be a looooong year.

Obama Eulogizes John Lewis

A litany of American dignitaries attended the funeral services for the late Congressman and civil rights icon John Lewis yesterday. Lewis helped organize the 1963 March on

Washington with the Reverand Doctor Martin Luther King, Junior. He joined Congress in 1987 and represented Georgia in the US House until his death two weeks ago today. He was eighty years old. Lewis lay in state this week after a horse-drawn carriage carried his casket over the bridge in Selma, Alabama where police attacked civil rights marchers on Bloody Sunday – March 7, 1965.

Yesterday’s services were held at Doctor King’s church, Ebenezer Baptist in Atlanta, Georgia. Speakers at the service honoring Lewis yesterday included former Presidents Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, and Barack Obama. Jimmy Carter offered a written rememberance. Trump did not attend. Delivering his eulogy, Obama asked Americans to imagine the courage of young Lewis as he challenged an entire infrastructure of oppression through non-violent civil disobedience. He also called Lewis one of the founding fathers of a fuller, fairer, better America. Obama’s eulogy was also a call to action. He said QUOTE Democracy is not a state. It is an act, and each generation must do its part to help build what we called the Beloved Community, a nation and world society at peace with itself ENDQUOTE. Rest in power, Congressman.

AND NOW FOR SOME QUICKER QUICKIES:

The Associated Press analyzed the more than two hundred arrest records related from the protests in Portland, Oregon. They found that most of the protesters were not engaged in violent conduct before their arrests. Ninety-five percent were local residents, contradicting police claims of a transcontiental conspiracy. The vast majority had no criminal record, and the average age was twenty-eight. Keep up the good work, kids.

Former Republican presidential candidate Herman Cain has died after contracting COVID-19. Reports suggested he may have contracted the disease at a Trump rally in Tulsa, Oklahoma, in June, where he and others refused to wear masks. Cain was seventy-four.

A fifteen-year-old girl in Michigan who was jailed because she didn’t do her homework may be released soon. The girl, known has Grace, has been in juvenile lockup since May. Her lawyers asked for an emergency hearing on Monday. According to ProPublica, prosecutor Jessica Cooper has reversed her position and now supports Grace’s release. Cooper is up for reelection next week.

Lawmakers from more than a dozen countries decried the obstruction of the democratic process in Hong Kong, the South China Morning News reported. The international group, led by Republican US Senator Marco Rubio and Britain’s Conservative leader, Iain Duncan Smith, condemned the government’s decision to disqualify twelve opposition candidates from upcoming Legislative Council elections. Four of those disqualified under a new national security law are incumbents. Meanwhile, several Hong Kong media outlets reported the government might delay the election for a year. How about that.

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

July 31, 2020 - AM Quickie

HOSTS - Sam Seder & Lucie Steiner

WRITER - Corey Pein

PRODUCER - Dorsey Shaw

EXECUTIVE PRODUCER - Brendan Finn