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TODAY'S HEADLINES:

New federal numbers released Thursday show that 6.6 million people have applied for unemployment in the past two weeks. The recession we were all afraid of? It’s here, but it hit so fast we’ve barely begun to feel the pain.

Meanwhile, Amazon fires, then smears a worker who organized a walkout at its Staten Island facility over the company’s negligence toward employee safety during the coronavirus panic, according to leaked documents obtained by Vice News.

And lastly, those $1,200 checks from the government everyone is expecting? Well, we might have to wait a little longer. Sorry, I mean a LOT longer -- officials are now saying some Americans might not see the cash for five months.

THESE ARE THE STORIES YOU NEED TO KNOW:

Yesterday we talked a bit about how the government’s unemployment numbers undersold the real impact of the coronavirus panic. Well today, the new numbers are in, and they’re underselling it quite a bit less.

Take this number: 6.6 million people out of work in a week, and that may just be the tip of the iceberg.

According to the Labor Department’s latest numbers, released Thursday, roughly 6,648,000 people have filed for unemployment in the last week alone. Combined with over three million who filed the week before, that’s almost ten million Americans who have recently lost their job.

That blows every record we’ve got for unemployment claims out of the water by a factor of 10 -- the most claims in a week before this was 695,000 in 1982.

And again, those numbers don’t even count all the people who lost their jobs but were ineligible for benefits, or who tried to file and were turned away or just simply unsuccessful because unemployment offices were too full to see them.

Landlords across the country still collected rent in April, but we’re only just beginning to feel the pain of all of these losses. Come May, the country could be at a breaking point, and the $1200 checks Trump has promised will be far too little, far too late.

At Amazon, one brave warehouse worker tried to force the company to change -- and he paid the price. On Tuesday, Amazon fired Chritian Smalls, a worker at its Staten Island facility, after Smalls organized a widespread walkout on Monday to protest the company’s insufficient response to the coronavirus pandemic.

Smalls led the walkout after seeing first hand the company’s lack of protective equipment for employees, and urged the company to close the plant after a coworker tested positive for the disease.

Instead, Amazon fired him, claiming that he repeatedly broke “social distancing” rules and returned to the plant after he had been quarantined for coming into contact with the infected employee.

Smalls says he was one of many workers who came in contact with the employee, but was singled out because he was pleading with management to sanitize the warehouse.

But on Thursday, Amazon’s paid army of PR goons jumped all over Smalls, spinning the story so that he was the villain and placing as much of the focus on him as possible for reasons that smack directly of racism.

Vice News obtained leaked notes from an Amazon executives meeting, where General Counsel David Zapolsky said Smalls, a black man, was QUOTE “not smart, or articulate,” ENDQUOTE and urged other execs to make Smalls QUOTE “the face of the entire union/organizing movement.” ENDQUOTE.

Racism and capitalism, two disgusting peas in a pod.

The government has very bad news for the presumably millions of Americans banking on a $1200 check from the Federal government to get them through April: sorry, but the check’s going to be a little bit late.

NBC News got their hands on a memo circulated on the House Ways and Means Committee this week, which reports that Americans who already have direct deposit information on file with the IRS will probably get their money by around April 13. But the memo also shows that everyone else is about to get screwed.

If you’re waiting for a paper check, the memo says the government won’t even start sending out the money until the week of May 4th. But the office that handles those checks can only process 20 million a week, which means some of us could be waiting as long as 20 weeks, or five months, to see a check from Uncle Sam.

I’d be shocked -- shocked -- if the corporations who will benefit from the stimulus’ bills’ $500 billion slush fund have to wait that long to get their money. But hey, priorities, right?

AND NOW FOR SOME QUICKER QUICKIES:

The U.S. Navy fired the commander of the U.S.S Roosevelt after he pleaded with his superiors to evacuate the ship amid a coronavirus outbreak on board. For the crime of trying to save his sailors’ lives, the Navy says they lost confidence in him as a leader.

Elon Musk garnered quite a bit of good will and cheer when he announced he’d bought 1,255 ventilators from China and brought them to the U.S. to donate to needy hospitals in major cities. But according to the Financial Times, what he bought were CPAP and BIPAP sleep apnea machines, which are technically ventilators, but not the type that doctors desperately need, and that cost a fraction of the price.

The USNS Comfort, a massive hospital ship that sailed into New York to help the city’s already-slammed hospitals: So far, it’s taken on just 20 patients. Not exactly the most efficient use of space.

And finally, mortgage lenders are preparing for the worst crisis in modern history as the economic wreckage of the coronavirus epidemic could make defaults pile up far faster than they did in 2008, according to new analysis by Moody’s Analytics.

That’s it for the Majority Report’s AM Quickie today. Make sure to catch the full show later today.

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