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TODAY'S HEADLINES:

The Democratic presidential candidates are bragging about their labor union support. And nobody is showing off their Wall Street cash -- except Michael Bloomberg.

Meanwhile, World health officials released more information about a deadly new contagious disease. Governments all over are beginning to curtail travel.

And lastly, a case of racist policing that shocked even some jaded activists. In Oregon, a police gang squad set up a black man who complained about Confederate flags at work.

THESE ARE THE STORIES YOU NEED TO KNOW:

More and more news outlets are calling Bernie Sanders the front-runner in the Democratic Party presidential primaries, after he won the popular vote in both Iowa and New Hampshire. Yesterday, all the other campaigns began to unveil their strategies to overcome Sanders’ early lead.

The next vote is a caucus that takes place in Nevada on the twenty-second of February. The South Carolina primary follows one week later. And then on March three, Super Tuesday, fourteen states will hold primaries. Sanders announced he would visit Denver this Sunday for a rally. Early voting is underway in Colorado.

Yesterday, Sanders faced a challenge over the electoral prize of organized labor endorsements. In Nevada, the leadership of a large and influential Culinary union local made a statement criticizing Sanders supporters. Meanwhile, the leadership of the International Brotherhood of Electrical workers, with more than a quarter-million members nationwide, endorsed Joe Biden. Biden fell farther than anyone in early voting states. Many union locals are expected to endorse Sanders regardless of national leadership.

After her fourth-place finish in New Hampshire, Warren launched a new fundraising appeal. Also, her campaign reportedly canceled more than half a million dollars in advertising in South Carolina. Those ads were set to begin this week.

Michael Bloomberg continued to deploy his wealth to compensate for his long record of racist comments. Honestly, it was hard to keep track of how many things the billionaire businessman apologized to minorities for – just yesterday. A protester stormed the stage of Bloomberg’s rally in Tennessee and shouted, QUOTE this is not democracy, this is plutocracy ENDQUOTE.

Amy Klobuchar benefited from a wave of television coverage that suggested third place is the new first place, and announced a large ad buy in Nevada. And Pete Buttigieg touted an endorsement from an African-American lawmaker in South Carolina.

The World Health Organization announced a name for the disease caused by the deadly new coronavirus originating in Wuhan, China: it’s called COVID-19.

Concern over the spread of the flu-like virus grew as the Chinese government escalated efforts to contain the outbreak, which include expansive quarantines. Other governments in Europe and the Americas took new measures that signaled their growing concern. Diagnoses and fatality numbers continued to rise rapidly in China’s Hubei province, and the top Communist Party official there resigned. The Dalai Lama canceled all of his travel engagements. The government of Singapore reported struggling with public mistrust and rumors spreading online. A large global tech conference in Spain was canceled. In the United States, the Centers for Disease Control said some of its test kits for the virus do not work.

A top university public health official from Hong Kong told the press that if COVID-19 spreads unchecked by governments, the disease could reach sixty percent of the human population. Given the reported low-single digit fatality rate of the dease, that is a frightening prospect – especially in countries where the government is barely functioning.

The story is shocking even by the standards of racist police abuses in America. Police in a suburban jurisdiction coordinated with a major metropolitan gang squad to stalk and set up for charges a black man who’d blown the whistle about racism on his job.

The case involved the leadershp of the West Linn, Oregon police, as well as officers from the Portland Police Bureau gang squad. As a favor to a fishing buddy, the former West Linn police chief, Terry Timeus, and his personal posse set up a man for arrest who had no connection their overwhelmingly white suburban jurisidction.

Police secretly recorded their victim at work, coordinated with their counterparts in the city to arrest him without cause, and seized his cash and property without a warrant. Text messages between the officers confirmed their racist intent. But there was more to it.

The victim, forty-eight-year-old Michael Fesser, was also a whistleblower. Fesser had angered his former boss at a Portland towing company by raising concerns about racist harrassment,

such as Confederate flags hanging around the workplace. The towing company owner contacted his friend, the suburban police chief -- and soon enough Fesser was being slandered as a gang member, which provided a pretext for investigation.

The abuses of power took place in 2017 and went to court the following year. They only came to light this week when The Oregonian newspaper published an investigation, based on a six- hundred thousand dollar settlement paid out by the city. Local news, folks! We need it.

AND NOW FOR SOME QUICKER QUICKIES:

Police in Northern Ireland announced charges against four people including a 52-year- old man in the killing last April of a friend of the show, Lyra (LEE-RA) McKee. Lyra was a lively and determined twenty-nine-year-old investigator, writer, and editor who died because she was standing in the wrong place at the wrong time in Derry. A Catholic and out lesbian, she was engaged to be married. Lyra was covering a protest when members of a small I.R.A. splinter group took some potshots at riot police. The killing was denounced by politicians across the United Kingdom and Ireland. Also this week, the pro-unification party Sinn Fein won a plurality of votes in Irish parliamentary elections after running on a left-wing platform.

Donald Trump went off yesterday on the four federal prosecutors who resigned over interference into the sentencing of Trump’s adviser, Roger Stone. Trump called the prosecutors QUOTE corrupt people ENDQUOTE who owed Stone an apology for treating him QUOTE very badly ENDQUOTE. Trump also congratulated Attorney General Bill Barr for intervening on Stone’s behalf to secure a lighter sentence, and effectively taking over as Trump’s personal lawyer. On Twitter, Trump suggested he might pardon Stone as well as the admitted perjurer and former top military intelligence chief Michael Flynn.

Amazon chairman and leading global oligarch Jeff Bezos bought a new house. It was the most expensive property in Los Angeles, at one hundred and sixty-five million dollars. And it cost Bezos one eighth of one percent of his total wealth. It’s not even the first residence Bezos has procured this year. Amazon paid zero dollars in federal income taxes in the year before last. This year, after earning more than thirteen billion dollars in profit, Amazon expects to pay -- well, about what Bezos spent on his new L.A. mansion.

#AMQuickie: Feb 13, 2020

HOSTS - Sam Seder & Lucie Steiner

WRITER - Corey Pein

PRODUCER - Dorsey Shaw

EXECUTIVE PRODUCER - Brendan Finn