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TODAY'S HEADLINES:
As the U.S. struggles to prepare for the full weight of the coronavirus, President Trump is planning to take care of the important things: tax relief for airline corporations and hotel chains affected by the global panic.
Meanwhile, it’s Super Tuesday, again. Sort of. Six states will vote or hold caucuses today, which will set the stage for the next phase of the presidential race between Bernie Sanders and Joe Biden.
And lastly, the city of Detroit announced that it would stop shutting off residents’ water during the coronavirus crisis, ending a frankly barbaric practice for the time being.
THESE ARE THE STORIES YOU NEED TO KNOW:
The economy is in the tank, and the Trump administration still has no idea what to do about it.
On Monday, Trump advisor Larry Kudlow announced that the administration was considering tax relief policies for industries most affected by the disease, like travel and hospitality companies.
Hard-hit countries like Italy have adopted similar policies, attempting to correct for the mass cancelations of major events and for even more drastic measures -- the Mediterranean country restricted movement across the entire country on Monday, have adopted similar policies.
In the U.S., things aren’t quite that bad yet -- not that we’d know if they were. The Atlantic reports that the country’s testing capabilities are still quote “dangerously limited” endqoute.
But regardless of the severity of the disease, bailing out the cruise ship CEOs is a drop in the bucket considering the rest of the economy is imploding.
Stocks are spiraling, oil prices saw their sharpest decline since the first Iraq War, and working people around the country are mostly waiting to see how it will all blow back on them.
Trump, for his part, has not said he will stop holding campaign rallies, despite the risk of infection at large gatherings. Now that’s the mark of a man who really cares about his fans.
**It is a slightly-less super Tuesday today, with six states making the decision between Bernie Sanders and Joe Biden. **
Idaho, Michigan, Mississippi, Missouri, and Washington will all hold primaries, and North Dakota will try their hand at another dreaded caucus. The polls, thus far, do not look great for Sanders: he’s down by a lot in Mississippi and Missouri but could have a shot at an upset in Michigan.
Things are much closer in Idaho, Washington and North Dakota, where it’s pretty much anyone’s game.
Sanders got a boost on Monday as the Working Families’ Party, Justice Democrats, and several other progressive groups finally consolidated their endorsements. Still crickets from Elizabeth Warren, however.
The contrast between the candidates couldn’t be more clear. Take the current pandemic sweeping the nation: Sanders hosted a roundtable discussion with medical experts in Detroit on Monday afternoon, talking through solutions and management strategies for dealing with the coronavirus.
Biden, meanwhile, declined to answer questions about the disease, saying he would be quote “happy to talk about that later.” endquote. Well, it’s later, and all we’ve seen is a boilerplate statement about quote “risk mitigations.”
Biden did, however, allegedly float the idea of putting billionaires like Jaime Diamond and Mike Bloomberg on his cabinet.
That’s where we’re at going into today’s voting -- we’ll of course have more to say about the primary results as they come in later today.
The city of Detroit is finally turning the water back on. For years, the city has been manually shutting off the water to residents who cannot pay their city water bills, depriving them of a service that people literally need to live.
This policy has affected an estimated 100,000 households between 2014 and 2018. The U.N. at one point declared it an insult to human rights according to Abdul El-Sayed, a former head of the city's health department.
Activist groups have been lobbying the city for years to stop the practice, and it finally has, deciding that trying to strong-arm money from people too poor to pay their bills was less of a priority than making sure people have the means to combat coronavirus transmission.
City officials everywhere are telling residents to wash their hands frequently: but that doesn’t work so well if you don’t have running water.
The Coronavirus Water Restart Plan will start on Wednesday. The state of Michigan will cover the $25 water restart fee, but residents will have to pay $25 to continue the service after the fact.
They won’t, however, be liable for missed payments until after the crisis is over. And from what we know of the virus, that could be quite a while.
AND NOW FOR SOME QUICKER QUICKIES:
A Missouri judge overturned the conviction of Jonathan Irons, who was tried as an adult in 1998 when he was 16 and sentenced to 50 years in prison on shaky evidence for a burglary and armed assault. Irons’ case attracted the attention of WNBA star Maya Moore, who has been working to help free Irons’ for years.
It is day 363 of Chelsea Manning’s detention for refusing to participate in a grand jury investigation into her original leak of U.S. military secrets in 2010, and a petition at FreeChelsea dot com just passed 63,000 signatures attempting to release her from another potential nine months in jail.
The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau sued Fifth Third Bank on Monday, alleging that Bank employees opened bank accounts and credit cards for their customers without their consent in order to hit their sales targets. The CFPB is seeking a civil financial penalty and for full compensation for the defrauded customers.
Radical rock band Rage Against the Machine made a rare showing of solidarity with the government on Monday, posting the lyrics to their song “Killing in the Name Of” as an example of what to sing while washing your hands and joking on Twitter that on this occasion, it’s best you do what they tell ya.
That’s all for the Majority Report’s AM Quickie today. Make sure to tune in to the full show this afternoon.
#AMQuickie: March 10, 2020
HOSTS - Sam Seder & Lucie Steiner
WRITER - Jack Crosbie
PRODUCER - Dorsey Shaw
EXECUTIVE PRODUCER - Brendan Finn