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TODAY'S HEADLINES:

More than a thousand former Department of Justice officials asked Attorney General William Barr to resign this weekend, amidst public worry that the a-political nature of the justice department was under threat. Gee, what could give people that idea? Oh that’s right -- it was Barr’s personal intervention to shave a few years off Roger Stone’s recommended sentence. Real subtle.

Meanwhile, the coronavirus continues to spread, as public health officials warn it may have reached a quote “turning point,” after potentially infected passengers disembarked a cruise ship en mass and headed for airports. Not great!

And lastly, the Trump administration’s proposed new plans for Medicaid could severely harm rural hospitals, as a push for so-called financial transparency will also result in cuts to the federal fund-matching for some of the most impoverished rural hospitals in the country. For all the love Trump claims to have for rural America, he sure has a funny way of showing it.

THESE ARE THE STORIES YOU NEED TO KNOW:

Over one thousand one hundred former Department of Justice officials came to a shocking revelation this weekend: Attorney General William Barr may not be quite on the level.

In an open letter, hundreds of DOJ Alumni called out Barr’s close ties to Donald Trump and his decision, in particular, to lower the sentencing recommendation for the president’s lackey Roger Stone.

Federal prosecutors recommended that Stone be found guilty of bstructing congress and witness tampering and sentenced to seven to nine years in prison. Trump, of course, did not agree, tweeting angrily through the whole thing and prompting Barr to swoop in and announce that he would reduce the sentencing recommendation.

Barr later tried to claim that Trump’s tweets were making it harder to do his job, which some saw as a sign of resistance, despite the fact that his actual actions have been basically whatever the president wants him to do at any given moment.

After Barr’s interference in the case, all four of the DOJ career prosecutors trying Stone immediately quit. This appears to have been the last straw for many former agency officials.

The DOJ, of course, is supposed to be an impartial, apolitical entity that carries out the law. But Trump and Barr have quote “openly and repeatedly flouted this fundamental principle,” endquote, according to the former officials, who called Barr’s conduct “outrageous.”

And it appears current DOJ officials are reaching the same conclusions. Supervisors in many of the DOJ’s satellite locations in major cities are privately reassuring their staff, and others wonder just how far Barr will go to protect the integrity of the greater organization. Our guess: not very far!

**The coronavirus is only getting worse. **

But before we go any further, some non-fear-mongering facts: estimates put the virus’s fatality rate at around 3 percent, much less than SARS. So while it’s contagious and can be deadly, it’s not exactly killing everything it touches.

That said: it sure is getting hard to contain! On Thursday last week, the cruise ship Westerdam made port in Cambodia with the assurance that it was completely disease free.

The passengers disembarked and went along their way… until one of them, an American woman, was stopped at an airport and tested positive for the disease.

One infectious disease expert told the New York Times that quote “this could be a turning point” endquote in containing the disease, as the cruise ship’s potentially infected passengers have now spread out all over the world.

Previously, local and global public health officials had been doing their best to keep the disease mostly contained in China, quarantining and dealing with sporadic, isolated cases as they popped up in other countries. Now, that part is going to be a whole lot harder.

The Westerdam had more than 600 Americans on board, including the passenger who eventually tested positive for the disease. Officials recommend finding and quarantining every passenger who left the ship, wherever they area, which sounds like a pretty tall order.

When you consider that the disease is often difficult to detect in early stages of infection, it all adds up to a giant mess.

**Another day, another draconian cut to the programs that support some of our country’s most vulnerable people. Today, Medicaid’s on the chopping block for the Trump administration. **

According to NBC News, Trump’s government is in the final stages of proposing a change to Medicaid that could result in massive cuts to overall spending, which would disproportionately affect states who lean on the program the most to cover rural communities.

The justification for the change is quote “financial transparency.” Essentially, the change makes hospitals and states share more data about what money they’re getting through Medicaid. But in the fine print, it also redefine what qualifies as public funds.

Medicaid usually helps state, county or city jurisdictions by matching money raised for healthcare through local taxes with federal funding. But under the new rules, critics of the plan say the government could use vague standards to reduce federal payouts to at-risk hospitals.

The effects of this would be felt -- surprise! -- in rural communities where hospitals and care centers are already on the edge of going under. The American Hospitals Association said as much to the Trump administration, which -- another surprise! -- isn’t budging.

The damage after all this? An estimated 39 to 47 billion dollar reduction in Medicaid funding nationwide. But hey, who says a government has to help people anyway?

AND NOW FOR SOME QUICKER QUICKIES:

Joe Biden called for Bernie Sanders to reign in his online supporters, which is particularly funny because like a week ago Biden himself was encouraging his own supporters to get more involved online on his behalf.

The New York Times published a massive investigation into former NYC mayor and current Presidential candidate Michael Bloomberg’s bribes, for lack of a better word, toward liberal organizations like Emily’s List and the Center for American Progress, which took his money despite his terrible politics.

The Trump Administration is sending specially-trained Border-patrol SWAT teams to intimidate residents of sanctuary cities like New York, LA, Chicago and others, edging the country ever closer to the fascist dystopia it now promises to become.

And finally, after an utterly surreal day online, it turns out that Pete Buttigieg’s number one Nigerian twitter fan is a real person, and not a sock-puppet profile created by Buttigieg’s communications advisor Lis Smith. The strange account, which at first glance appeared to be Smith adopting a bizarre alter-ego of a wine-loving Nigerian man, belongs to a real-life Nigerian man. What’re the odds.

#AMQuickie: Feb 17, 2020

HOSTS - Sam Seder & Lucie Steiner

WRITER - Jack Crosbie

PRODUCER - Dorsey Shaw

EXECUTIVE PRODUCER - Brendan Finn