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TODAY'S HEADLINES:

Joe Biden won a few more states in yesterday’s Democratic Party primaries, but his supporters are more and more worried about exposing him to voters. And the Bernie Sanders campaign is not giving up.

Meanwhile, both Biden and Sanders are canceling rallies due to coronavirus fears. Donald Trump says there’s nothing to worry about, but folks -- would you believe it -- he is lying.

And lastly, schools and businesses are closing as the federal government suppresses coronavirus testing. Many businesses and state authorities are taking action in the absence of federal leadership, but experts say that won’t be enough to contain COVID-19.

THESE ARE THE STORIES YOU NEED TO KNOW:

It was not the night supporters of Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders hoped for. Voters in six states voted on their prefered Democratic candidate to run against President Donald Trump yesterday in the largest contest since Super Tuesday early this month.

Former Vice President Joe Biden won by large margins in Mississippi and Missouri. He also won Idaho. Elections officials in Michigan said they were unable to count all the absentee votes and would delay an announcement until today. Reports from the scene showed three- hour lines full of young people in some precincts after polls had closed. But in order to win there, Sanders would need to claim an overwhelming majority of votes that have not yet been counted. Which is one reason why all the major news networks called Michigan for Biden last night, but newspapers were more cautious. The Sanders campaign did not concede the state and says it expected its margins to grow through the night and into today.

Sanders beat Biden in North Dakota. In Washington State, he and Biden were virtually tied according to the latest counts this morning. Officials there are predicting a record turnout,

which could benefit Sanders. But the overall picture is that Biden’s delegate lead after Super Tuesday continued to grow.

Biden called for unity as his establishment supporters called on Sanders to drop out. Biden's big day of campaigning marked by an interaction in Michigan where he told a factory worker to shut up and threatened to slap him after the man asked biden a question about gun control. Biden supporters including House Rep. Jim Clyburn of South Carolina and political consultant James Carville went on CNN to say the Democratic Party should effectively shut down the primaries, cancel future debates, and limit Biden’s contact with voters and the press. The thinking is that the more voters see of Biden, the less they will like him. Which is strange because it is an argument Trump might make.

Politics is already being affected by the coronavirus pandemic, which is shutting down commerce, travel, education, and disrupting lives while threatening to provoke an economic crash on top of the health crisis. Top independet epidemelogists said yesterday the US was perhaps a week and a half away from scenes of empty streets and overwhelmed hospitals such as in Italy, which enacted an unprecedented national curfew.

Both Sanders and Biden canceled upcoming campaign events in Cleveland, Ohio, on account of the pandemic. The Sanders campaign said future events would be considered on a case by case basis. The president’s rally schedule is still on track. Trump’s mouthpieces, such as Presidential Medal of Freedom winner Rush Limbaugh, said the coronavirus was a Democratic Party conspiracy to interfere his reelection. The president himself said yesterday QUOTE Just stay calm. It will go away. ENDQUOTE. Leading infectious disease experts compared the likely impact of the pandemic to the devastating 1918 flu.

At the same time he denies the crisis, Trump is taking advantage. The White House is seeking new subsidies for the fossil fuels industry, which was especially hard-hit in this week’s stock market crash. And yet, the administration remains committed to cutting the Centers for Disease Control.

House Rep. Matt Gaetz, one of dozens of Congressional Republicans exposed to coronavirus at CPAC, told a Florida newspaper he self-quarantined by sleeping in his car in a Walmart parking lot. This was after he met Trump aboard Air Force One. In the United Kingdom, a member of parliament who tested positive for the virus was reportedly in close contact with Prime Minister Boris Johnson. Like Trump, he’s been downplaying the virus in public while no doubt obsessively washing his hands in private.

Politics aside, coronavirus dominated the news as the potential scope and rapid growth of the pandemic became impossible to ignore for hundreds of millions of people.

More than fifty universities in North America have moved classes online. Elite private schools such as Harvard and Yale began sending students home, but many state schools were carrying on as normal. Conferences and other events were being canceled around the world. Coachella is postponed. In New York, a Council on Foreign Relations event titled Doing Business Under Coronavirus was canceled for fear of contagion. Target announced it would be limiting customers’ purchases on many items. Rationing has come to American strip malls.

Confirmed US cases passed the one thousand mark. But more reports emerged of Trump’s CDC preventing widespread testing. Federal officials gave gone so far as to tell doctors who tested patients without prior approval to QUOTE cease and desist ENDQUOTE testing, per The New York Times. To be clear: to help Trump politically, officials are suppressing the truth about a dangerous pandemic, which will lead to thousands of preventable deaths. Scientists told the Los Angeles Times that coronavirus cases in the US are well above the official tally. If the federal government continues to prevent testing, that will continue to be the case.

AND NOW FOR SOME QUICKER QUICKIES:

Thousands of public school teachers and staff in St. Paul, Minnesota, went on strike yesterday. Their union is demanding more funding for student mental health services,

multilingual interpreters, and special education funding. Solidarity with striking workers everywhere!

The Federal Bureau of Investigation believes that a neo-Nazi terrorist group called The Base that was running training camps and preparing for civil war in the remote Pacific Northwest might have been directed by Russian intelligence. The theory, floated in The New York Times, builds on earlier reporting about the group by the Guardian and the BBC. Separately, the Russian parliament yesterday changed the constitution to allow president Vladimir Putin to stay in power through 2036.

A US Customs and Border Patrol agent was charged with smuggling sixteen bricks of cocaine in his carry-on luggage from the Virgin Islands into Atlanta. Federal prosecutors claim the forty-year-old white male agent, Ivan Van Beverhoudt (BEAVER-HOOT), was carrying his government-issued handgun, which allowed him to bypass security screening. Being a police officer is an increasingly popular career choice for criminals.

Pro-Trump conspiracy theorist Alex Jones was charged with drunk driving in his home state of Texas just after midnight on Tuesday. Police arrested Jones following a domestic dispute that included physical violence, according to an affidavit. Jones responded to the charges on his show by criticizing his breathalyzer test and saying he had QUOTE basically one beer... I did not have zero buzz. Zero ENDQUOTE. Tell it to the judge pal.

That’s all for the AM Quickie. Join us this afternoon on the Majority Report, where we’ll no doubt be arguing about what all of these stories add up to.

#AMQuickie: March 11, 2020

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WRITER - Corey Pein

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