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Sept 28, 2020: Trump Pays No Taxes
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TODAY'S HEADLINES:

The New York Times has Donald Trump’s tax returns, and you’ll never guess what they show. Oh, you guess that they show he’s barely paid any taxes through nefarious means? Well. You’re right. You guessed it.

Meanwhile, President Trump has officially nominated Seventh Circuit Judge Amy Coney Barrett to the U.S. Supreme Court, and the GOP is full steam ahead to get her on the bench before he has the chance to get voted out of office.

And lastly, Portland Oregon weathers another contentious weekend, even as a far-right rally fizzled. Police continued to crack down hard on protesters, catching journalists and some bystanders in the crossfire.

THESE ARE THE STORIES YOU NEED TO KNOW:

Trump Pays No Taxes

Want to know how much Donald Trump paid in taxes in 2016? $750. He paid about that much in 2017 as well, taking full advantage of a broken system set up to help the rich get richer and greasing the wheels with some underhanded deals along the way.

The New York Times published a massive report on Sunday evening based on more than two decades of tax return data for President Trump and his companies. For 11 of the 18 years the Times examined, Trump paid nothing in federal income taxes.

He did this, in a large part, by reporting massive amounts of losses every year. Basically all of his signature businesses report losing huge amounts of money. By reporting gigantic losses, he’s been able to keep his tax burden extremely low -- which also helped him get a questionable $72.9 million ​_refund_​ from the government. That transaction is under audit by the IRS.

But he’s kept up the billionaire charade by writing off basically all his personal expenses, taking tax deductions on everything from $70,000 in TV hairstyling to aircraft and private residences.

The full report is absurd -- there are just so many ludicrously crooked details. The full picture it paints is of a man under a massive amount of debt staying afloat, and in luxury, through loopholes that exist just to protect the super rich. It remains to be seen if it will actually affect voters, but one thing is for sure: the system that enabled Trump isn’t anything new. It’s just that one of its worst abusers managed to get elected president.

ACB Nominated to Succeed RBG

President Donald Trump nominated Amy Coney Barett to the Supreme Court on Sunday, offering up the Seventh Circuit Judge as his pick to replace Ruth Bader Ginsberg.

We talked a little bit about Coney Barrett last week, so we’ll spare some of the details. Suffice to say, she’ll be gunning for Roe V Wade, Obamacare, and a whole host of other social and economic landmarks right after that.

A recent poll by the New York Times and Siena College showed that 56 percent of likely voters would prefer to have whoever wins the election nominate the next justice, but that probably isn’t what’s going to happen.

That’s because as expected, Mitch McConnell and the Senate Republicans have set up a lightning-fast timeline to get Coney Barrett confirmed, and they most likely have the votes to do it. What the Democrats can do to stop them is still up in the air, but activists are turning up the pressure on leadership to pull out all the stops.

Protesters gathered outside of Senate minority leader Chuck Schumer’s home on Saturday to urge the leading Democrat to publicly and vocally refuse to hold hearings to confirm a new justice, use every procedural block they can to gum up the works, and fully commit to ending the filibuster and packing the court the next time Democrats take back the Senate.

Hopefully, that’ll be this year. If it’s not, we may see a far grimmer country by the time the Democrats can take back the court again.

Portland Cops Plaster Protesters

Violence on the streets, much of it perpetrated by the police, rocked the city of Portland again this weekend, as rival demonstrations gave way to street protests that were brutally broken up by Portland authorities.

Police presence was aggressive over the weekend because of a large rally organized by the far-right Proud Boys group. But fortunately, a last minute location change for the rally kept it isolated from most counterprotests. Still, there were some skirmishes and assaults when Proud Boys attacked people they suspected of being antifa activists.

After the right wingers had gone home, though, the cops returned to their regularly scheduled crackdowns on protesters, arresting more than two dozen according to the Oregonian.

In one video captured online by journalist Sergio Olmos, police smashed a cyclist off his bike in the street and arrested him while he screamed that he was an UberEats delivery rider just trying to do his job.

In another instance, Portland police knocked 73-year-old photographer John Rudoff to the ground while aggressively arresting and striking protesters with their baton.

According to Gregory McKelvey, Rudoff’s friend and the vice Chair of the Oregon Democrats Black Caucus, Rudoff said quote: “I shot the Syrian Refugee Crisis, I shot Paris Protests, I shot Bangladesh, I shot Hong Kong, and it was Portland Police who beat the shit out of me.”

AND NOW FOR SOME QUICKER QUICKIES:

Clashes broke out on Sunday between Azerbaijan and Armenia, who have been in conflict over the breakaway province of Nagorno-Karabakh [NA GOR NO, KAR AH BACH] for years. Wire reports describe the recent fighting as much more severe than typical border skirmishes, with both sides reporting civilians dead or wounded.

ABC reports that Donald Trump’s former campaign manager Brad nwas taken into custody on Sunday night by Fort Lauderdale Police after allegedly threatening to harm himself and briefly barricading himself in his home.

Meanwhile, the Covid pandemic churns on. The World Health Organization warned on Friday that the global death toll from the virus could top two million if world governments don’t take collective action.

And finally, zoomers rejoice! A U.S. judge temporarily blocked Trump’s ban on the TikTok app just hours before it was scheduled to go into effect, ruling that TikTok could have a temporary injunction against the ban on downloading the app that was supposed to go through on Sunday night.

Sept 28, 2020 - AM Quickie

HOSTS - Sam Seder & Lucie Steiner

WRITER - Jack Crosbie

PRODUCER - Dorsey Shaw

EXECUTIVE PRODUCER - Brendan Finn