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TODAY'S HEADLINES:

The ACLU filed suit against the Trump administration on Friday over its allegedly unconstitutional use of federal stormtroopers to curb protests in Portland, Oregon -- action which continued unabated over the weekend.

Meanwhile, congress ponders a new stimulus bill, and lobbyists and special interest groups are already scheming to get in on the new wave of cash.

And lastly, Trump came a little unglued during his Sunday media appearances, spouting lie after lie until even the Fox News anchor questioning him had to call him out. Spiraling poll numbers and nationwide outrage seem to be getting to the big guy.

THESE ARE THE STORIES YOU NEED TO KNOW:

The Feds were hard at work in Portland this weekend, clashing with protesters again and again on the streets and hauling more people into unmarked vans. Trump’s personal secret police, made up of federal agents from Customs and Border Protection’s specialized BORTAC teams, U.S. Marshals, and others all reinforced the already out-of-control Portland Police and have been running amok all across the city.

The Feds in particular have been so out of line that the ACLU of Oregon filed suit against the Trump administration. The ACLU says its first suit is one of many, which is a good thing as it’s pretty limited: it only aims to block federal agents from using force on journalists and legal observers. Obviously, the protesters are taking the brunt of Trump’s secret police violence.

If you’re wondering just how absurd the feds’ actions have been, a DHS memo obtained by the New York Times notes that the BORTAC goons weren’t even trained in riot control or responding to mass demonstrations. Of course, proper training may have just given them more tools to beat protesters up, but as it stands it sure looks like Trump released DHS’s tactical units onto the streets with far more violence than planning.

Portland officials including Mayor Ted Wheeler have called for the feds to stay away, but police leadership seems more than happy to have them there.

On Saturday night, however, protesters did carry out a pretty significant action: they burned the headquarters for the Portland Police Association, the union that represents most of the city’s cops. Despite local officials wishes, the Feds don’t appear to be going anywhere anytime soon

-- although their presence appears to be backfiring. Since they started rounding people up, the size of the protests has swelled, with more and more people hitting the streets.

Corporate Vultures Eye New Relief Bill

It’s a tale as old as time, or at least as old as the current crisis. Congress is currently mulling another coronavirus relief package, of indeterminate size. The House wants $3 trillion, the Senate wants about $1 trillion. And as soon as those numbers started floating around, the vultures started circling.

The New York Times reports that big industries and special interests are all lobbying fiercely for a piece of the pie. Some of these groups, like Broadway actors, probably deserve a bailout, but others -- like the giant airline corporations and military contractors, are all just trying to milk as much slush money from the Trump administration as possible, and they’ve got the suits in DC to do it.

This isn’t a new story, if you remember: most of the aid packages passed by Congress so far have been utterly pillaged by special interest groups and big businesses that made off with the majority of the cash.

The Times reports that most of the lobbyists are focusing on the Senate, figuring the GOP-controlled house is where they’ll be able to slip in the favorable provisions they want. What’s important is looking for what the groups are fighting for: the Broadway actors, for instance, are lobbying for an expansion to unemployment insurance to include people like them with unconventional jobs.

But now take the airlines, for instance, who are effectively holding their own employees hostage and forcing them to help lobby for them, saying that their jobs could go away unless their industry gets a bailout. Business as usual for the CEOs, in other words.

Trump Melts Down on Fox News

Donald Trump got pushback from an unlikely source on Sunday, lying so much that even Fox News was forced to check his facts on live air.

Trump went on a ludicrous lying spree about his response to the coronavirus in an interview with Fox’s Chris Wallace, which the network teased on Friday. In it, Trump insists that the U.S. had quote “one of the lowest fatality rates in the world” endquote from coronavirus. In reality, we have third worst mortality rate.

The lie was so bad Wallace had to insist quote “That’s not true, sir.” endquote. Trump clearly did not expect someone on his personal propaganda network to suggest he was utterly full of crap, and the interview was noticeably tense. Wallace also didn’t let Trump get away with saying that

Joe Biden wants to defund the police -- because he doesn’t, which prompted the President to insist that his staff bring him highlights of a charter Biden worked on with Bernie Sanders about police reform.

Wallace, to his sort-of-credit, is one of Fox’s few token actual journalists who largely provide cover for the rest of the network’s propaganda.

Case in point: when confronted by his sinking poll numbers in a Fox News poll, Trump had this to say quote: “I’m not losing, because those are fake polls.” Endquote. For his most loyal fans, that’s probably all he’s gotta say.

The question now is what that means for the general transfer of power if Trump loses. In the same interview, he refused to say whether or not he’d accept the results of an election he loses, adding that he thinks mail-in voting is going to rig the results. Right now it’s all lies and bluster, but come November, who knows?

AND NOW FOR SOME QUICKER QUICKIES:

Roger Stone wasted no time after having his sentence commuted by his buddy the president, and promptly went right back to his old ways. By that we mean referring to his interviewer, a black man, by a racial slur while appearing on a radio show. Did we mention this is a guy the president let out of jail?

Marco Rubio made a classically Marco Rubio mistake on Saturday in his haste to pretend he’s not a racist GOP stooge. Rubio tweeted a picture memorializing the late Representative and Civil Rights icon John Lewis. Except it wasn’t a picture of Lewis -- it was a photo of Rubio and another late black politician, Rep. Elijah Cummings. And he wasn’t the only one -- Sen. Dan Sullivan of Alaska made the same error. Telling on yourselves a little there guys.

The Congressional Progressive Caucus, which comprises 90 members of the House of Representatives, announced that it would formally oppose the National Defense Authorization Act, which sets the Pentagon’s massive budget, unless the military agreed to eliminate wasteful spending. Leaders proposed an amendment that would cut the $740 billion budget by at least 10 percent.

And finally, according to a new report by the New York Times, professional internet troll and sometimes-entrepreneur Elon Musk talked about starting a new media publication with coronavirus contrarian Alex Berenson, one of the leading voices on the lunatic “this isn’t a big deal” fringe. We’ll be giving that one a miss!

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

July 20, 2020 - AM Quickie

HOSTS - Sam Seder & Lucie Steiner

WRITER - Jack Crosbie

PRODUCER - Dorsey Shaw

EXECUTIVE PRODUCER - Brendan Finn