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TODAY'S HEADLINES:

The coronavirus vaccine is rolling out to its first recipients in the U.S., and guess who vaulted themselves to the front of the line? The Trump White House, of course, which is nabbing dozens of early doses for the West Wing staff.

Meanwhile, Russian government hackers again appear to have carried out an expansive attack on U.S. government networks, breaching email services at both the Treasury and Commerce departments.

And lastly, a weekend of bloody clashes in Washington D.C. ends with four stabbings, as far-right militias including the Proud Boys stoke chaos in the nation’s capital.

THESE ARE THE STORIES YOU NEED TO KNOW:

There is some light at the end of our dark, national tunnel of disease. The coronavirus vaccine has begun to ship across the country, and high risk populations should be getting their first doses in a matter of days.

But the absolute first in line, of course, are all the greedy villains in the West Wing. White House staff members who work closely with President Trump himself were told they will receive the vaccine soon. There’s two issues with this: one, “staff” in this case doesn’t appear to mean the actual working people in the White House: the cooks, janitors, et cetera, it means the inner circle of Trump sycophants who have spent the past year passing coronavirus around to each other because they’re too stupid to wear masks.

You could argue that West Wing staffers are a high risk population, if only by the number of cases they’ve already had, but then again, those were entirely their own faults. But Trump is insistent on acting like a king, so we’ll have to deal with a few more selfish royal decrees before he gets kicked off the throne.

The rest of us will have to wait a bit. The first doses of a vaccine left the Pfizer facility in Michigan early on Sunday, en route to critical healthcare workers. Some nursing homes will start to get the vaccine next week. Everyone else, well, it’s pretty unclear. The New York Times notes that the U.S.’s rollout is more decentralized than other countries, like Great Britain, which have tightly controlled what’s going where.

We should know more in the coming days about when everyone will be able to get the shot, but if you want to skip the line, you could always apply for a last-ditch job as one of Trump’s yes-men.

Russian Hackers At It Again

What year is it? 2016? No, unfortunately, it’s now 2020, and we regret to inform you that the Russian hackers are at it again. This time, however, the operation doesn’t appear to have had much to do with the election.

Trump administration officials reluctantly admitted on Sunday that a team of hackers almost certainly from the Russian government had breached email systems in the Department of the Treasury and the Department of Commerce.

The government says it’s looking to make sure they didn’t get into any other departments as well, which is always something you want to hear from the people supposedly running the country.

The worrying thing is that the Trump administration doesn’t appear to fully understand what the hackers were looking for, or why they did it. The Commerce Department admitted that a sub-agency that helps determine policy for tech issues like imports and exports of technology that are considered a national security risk was one of the targets, which seems... not great.

A government official told the ​_Times_​ that it was too soon to tell how damaging the attacks were or what exactly was taken. So to wrap up: we’re not sure what data the hackers took, or why they took it, but we are sure that someone big did a really big hack.

For the everyday American, this probably isn’t a top concern. But the fact that our government does not appear to be fully in control of its own digital security doesn’t exactly inspire confidence.

Proud Boys Provoke Violence In D.C.

A Proud Boy rally in D.C. once again devolved into chaos and violence on Saturday night, as a group of the violent right-wing militia allegedly surrounded a black man, who then wounded four of them with a knife.

The rally saw clashes between Proud Boys and left-wing counterprotesters throughout the day, as the Proud Boys rampaged around the city tearing down Black Lives Matter banners and signs. Social media video shows a group of proud boys tearing down a BLM banner from a church and lighting it on fire shortly before the stabbings.

Video of the stabbings itself shows a chaotic, dangerous scene. The Proud Boys and other Trump supporters had surrounded a black man wearing dark clothing outside a bar that the

Washington Post reported was a rallying point for the Trumpist crowd. At some point, the crowd of Proud Boys rushed in and began attacking him, at which point he pulled a knife. D.C. police reports that four people were stabbed. The New York Times was unable to confirm if the knife-wielding man was still in custody or if he had a lawyer.

DC police say 33 people were arrested total on Saturday. The Proud Boys rarely show up in town without inciting some sort of violence, and they certainly got what they came for this weekend.

AND NOW FOR SOME QUICKER QUICKIES:

In sports news, Cleveland’s baseball team announced that it would finally drop its racist mascot and name, the latest major sports franchise to finally capitulate to what native activists and generally nonracist people have been asking for for decades.

The Wall Street Journal published an incredibly dumb op-ed this weekend arguing that Jill Biden shouldn’t use the title Doctor, as she doesn’t have an MD, only a PhD. This set off a wild uproar over who gets to call themselves a doctor and the relative value of womens’ achievements that nevertheless does not have anything to do with either of the Bidens’ ability to govern the country.

Pressure is mounting for President Trump to pardon NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden before he leaves office, with several elected officials including prominent GOP provocateurs Matt Gaetz and Senator Rand Paul calling for Trump to make the call.

And finally, you may have missed it on Friday but the Supreme Court shot down the Texas Attorney General’s bid to overturn the election, dealing what is probably, maybe, hopefully the final legal death blow to Trump’s ridiculous challenge to the 2020 election.

That’s it for the Majority Report’s AM quickie today! Stay tuned for the full show with Sam this afternoon.

DEC 14, 2020 - AM QUICKIE

HOSTS - Sam Seder & Lucie Steiner

WRITER - Jack Crosbie

PRODUCER - Dorsey Shaw

EXECUTIVE PRODUCER - Brendan Finn