Welcome to Majority.FM's AM QUICKIE! Brought to you by justcoffee.coop
TODAY'S HEADLINES:
Tuesday was election day in both Kentucky and New York, where voters mostly embraced vote-by-mail, with some hiccups. We’ll take you through the big primary races at stake.
The European Union is considering banning travelers from the United States, claiming that our government’s abject failure to control the coronavirus presents a direct risk to its own member states.
And lastly, guess what? More corruption! A federal prosecutor is expected to tell the House today that the highest levels of Trump’s Justice Department pressured lawyers to cut Roger Stone a break during the notorious con-man’s trial, mostly because he was buddies with the President.
THESE ARE THE STORIES YOU NEED TO KNOW:
Bowman Blasts Off
New York may have pulled off the second major progressive upset of an incumbent Democrat in as many election cycles. In the state’s 16th House District primary, Jamaal Bowman seems almost certain to beat incumbent Eliot Engel, an entrenched centrist who serves as head of the House Foreign Relations Committee.
Engel had been completely checked out of the race until it was too late, at one point getting caught on a hot mic saying that he wouldn’t even be there if he didn’t face a primary challenger. But oh boy, did he get a challenger. Bowman is a middle school principal backed by Justice Democrats who racked in the support of AOC, Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren, and a whole host of other progressive figures. Meanwhile, the entire establishment rallied to try to save Engel’s seat, including Hillary Clinton.
As of Wednesday morning, it’s not looking so good for the incumbent, who was elected in 1988. Bowman is currently up by around 25 points, a huge lead despite the fact that there are still a ton of votes to count thanks to vote-by-mail. Bowman took a victory lap anyway on Tuesday night, saying quote: Bowman, speaking earlier tonight at a not-quite-victory-yet party:
"Eliot Engel -- I'll say his name once -- used to say that he was a thorn in the side of Donald Trump. But you know what Donald Trump is more afraid of than anything else? A black man with power.”
We won’t know the real outcome for a few days most likely, but right now Bowman’s in a very, very good spot.
Let’s talk about some of the other races while we’re at it. AOC crushed her primary, beating her weak challenger with over 70 percent of the vote. She’s sure to get another term, but it was always hard to see her losing that seat anytime soon. In New York’s 15th district, openly-gay city councilman Ritchie Torres has a double-digit lead over his nearest competition in a wide-open primary.
In Kentucky’s primaries we’ve got an interesting race. Progressive Charlie Booker is down by 8 points or so to the centrist wing of the party’s handpicked candidate Amy McGrath. The winner there will challenge Mitch McConnell for his Senate seat -- definitely a tall order, but a race the Democrats really want to hit hard in November. Again, still a lot of votes left to count.
E.U. Doesn't Want U.S.
The European Union is poised to give Trump a taste of his own closed-border medicine, as it considers whether or not to ban Americans from traveling to its member states due to the government’s complete failure to control the coronavirus pandemic.
The New York Times viewed a couple of early draft lists of who will or won’t be able to go to the EU as international travel starts back up over the next few months, and right now, Americans are on the chopping block. That would put us on the same level as Russia and Brazil, two other countries ruled by open fascists who have decided to let the disease run rampant through their people.
Some of this could be petty payback by the E.U. leadership in Brussles, which was reportedly furious when Trump banned most EU citizens from traveling to the U.S. in the early days of the pandemic.
This would effectively be an extension on a travel ban that’s been in place since the middle of March. The EU is going to open back up to travel on July 1 to pretty much everywhere else, including China and many less-developed countries than the U.S. Right now, it’s not looking good that we’ll make it on the list: cases are surging across the country, throwing a massive wrench in reopening plans in Texas, California, Florida and Arizona. With that in mind, the E.U. is probably smart to keep Yankees away for the time being.
DOJ Goes Corrupt for Stone
Roger Stone is one of the most fascinatingly weird figures associated with the Trump administration, and seems to function as a magnet for the dumbest attempts at corruption possible.
Today a federal prosecutor is expected to tell members of the House of Representatives that the non-partisan government officials prosecuting Stone were pressured by some of the senior-most Department of Justice officials to give Stone a break. In other words, Trump’s pet AG Bill Barr tried to get Trump’s buddy Stone a cushy deal, and it didn’t work.
Aaron Zelinsky, an assistant U.S. attorney in Maryland who previously served on former special counsel Robert S. Mueller III’s team, and another DOJ employee are both expected to tell the House that Barr ordered them to do Trump’s bidding. This isn’t surprising in the slightest, but it is one of the most blatant instances of corruption the Trump administration has gotten up to lately, which is a pretty high bar to clear.
According to a copy of Zelinsky’s prepared remarks obtained by the Washington Post, Barr and DOJ leaders wanted prosecutors to quote “to water down and in some cases outright distort events” endquote, in order to give Stone a break. Their reason, Zelinsky wrote, was that Stone had a relationship with the president.
Cool! Honestly, there’s not much Trump has to lose by just throwing out a pardon to Stone. It’s not like he’s being subtle about things at this point, might as well go ahead and pull the trigger. What’s gonna happen, the House impeaches him again? We all saw how far that got in the Senate.
AND NOW FOR SOME QUICKER QUICKIES:
A new poll by the Associated Press shows that a vast majority of Americans favor a number of key police reforms, including body camera requirements and use of force guidelines. These measures don’t fully address the systemic problem of police violence, but it’s clear that the public is coming around to the fact that the status quo just doesn’t work anymore.
Washington D.C. Mayor Muriel E. Bowser ordered the dispersal of an autonomous zone occupied by protesters on Tuesday, sending in riot cops who deployed pepper spray. DC’s autonomous zone is one of several small areas of protester-occupied space in cities around the country modeled on Seattle’s original community near a police precinct.
Minneapolis’ Police chief said in a statement that Derek Chauvin’s killing of George Floyd was murder, noting that Chauvin had recently attended training in how to restrain suspects without preventing them from breathing. Sounds like maybe more training and reform aren’t what the police system needs, if the murders won’t stop.
And finally, the White House Correspondents Dinner, a strange excuse for DC politicos to lick each other's boots that should have died long ago, will be canceled this year due to the coronavirus. Spare a thought for all the cable news types who won’t get to do mild dunks on the Trump administration this year.
June 24, 2020 - AM Quickie
HOSTS - Sam Seder & Lucie Steiner
WRITER - Jack Crosbie
PRODUCER - Dorsey Shaw
EXECUTIVE PRODUCER - Brendan Finn