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TODAY'S HEADLINES:

The Supreme Court, in a dramatic, overtly partisan decision, voted 5-4 to void thousands of mail-in ballots in Wisconsin’s election today, which is still somehow going on, which the dissenting court members said would result in quote “massive disenfranchisement.”

Meanwhile, Donald Trump continues to push the unapproved malaria drug hydroxychloroquine as a cure for coronavirus. And would you look at that: several Republican megadonors and Trump himself have financial stake in companies that manufacture it.

And lastly, a tiny shred of hope in New York City: data released by the Governor’s office suggests that the city’s monumental death and hospitalization rates may be flattening out. Make no mistake, an obscene amount of people are still sick and dying, but there are signs that eventually, conditions will improve.

THESE ARE THE STORIES YOU NEED TO KNOW:

Wisconsin’s election today is still dangerous disarray.

The only safe option is to shut down and postpone the vote, but the time for that has passed, and what happens now will almost certainly leave the state’s voters worse off than they were before.

Yesterday, Governor Tony Evers made the brave call to try to unilaterally shut down the election, which is almost certain to exacerbate the state’s coronavirus epidemic, as Wisconsin voters try to pack into a fraction of the number of usual polling stations. But the conservative-controlled State Supreme Court overturned his executive order and is forcing the election to proceed as planned.

To make matters worse, applications for mail-in ballots have been surging as the pandemic spreads, and the state can’t keep up -- leaving tens of thousands of voters without a ballot today, on election day.

To account for this, a federal district court ordered the state to extend the absentee ballot deadline to April so that voters who waited for late mail-in ballots could still vote, even past election day. That decision made it all the way to the Federal Supreme Court, where the conservatives… shot it down.

The Supreme Court’s decision is shocking, because it’s pretty much just blatant voter suppression. As Ruth Bader Ginsberg noted in her dissent, the move will undoubtedly result in quote “massive disenfranchisement.” Endquote.

The irony of it all? One of the key seats up for grabs in the election today is a State Supreme Court post. And instead of a free and fair election, we have an ugly mess.

Stop me if this seems far-fetched: the President of the united states has a vested financial interest in the future of the un-proven malaria drug he’s been publicly touting at every possible opportunity for weeks?

Sound plausible to you? Well, you’re right! It’s real!

The New York Times reported on Monday that Trump has a financial stake in Sanofi, the French drug company that makes Plaquenil, otherwise known as hydroxychloroquine. One of Sanofi’s largest shareholders is a Republican megadonor as well. Who would have thought!

And it goes deeper than that. New reporting by the investigative crew at Sludge shows that the Conservative dark money groups propping up hydroxychloroquine in a surge of digital ads are being funded by some of the U.S.’s biggest drug manufacturers, who all stand to gain if the country starts using the drug widely.

The Times reports that another domestic drug manufacturer that plans to start making the drug is run by one of Trump’s golfing buddies. They’re really not subtle about all this.

And a just as a reminder: we don’t know for sure if hydroxychloroquine works, and we do know that it can have some pretty serious side-effects. But that has in no way stopped Trump from talking about it every chance he gets. At least now we know why he’s so gung-ho about it!

New York City has had a rough go of it in the past few weeks, but there are some signs that this particularly bleak spell may not last forever.

For days, the daily death toll in New York has been climbing steadily. But over the weekend, it appeared to level out, based on new data from the Governor’s office.

There were 594 and 599 deaths on Sunday and Monday, respectively, keeping the daily toll below 600 for two days in a row.

Hospitalizations are still up, but the rate of new people being admitted only grew by 2 percent, as opposed to recent days when the rate jumped 20 or 30 percent every day.

The end result of this is that there are still a lot of people who are very very sick, and a lot of people who will get sick soon. But the insane rate that the New York City epidemic was growing at appears to have slowed down somewhat, which may give the city a chance to breathe again if hospitals can catch up to their massive caseloads.

When that will be is still unclear, but the numbers right now could be a lot worse.

AND NOW FOR SOME QUICKER QUICKIES:

The first prisoner at RIkers island has died of COVID-19. His name was Michael Tyson. He had been there for a month on the pointless charge of violating his parole. There was no reason for him to be in prison, and now he’s dead.

China reported no new COVID-19 deaths for the first time today. It wouldn’t be unlike the Chinese government to fib on the numbers, but the country is showing other promising signs: on Wednesday, the city of Wuhan is set to allow people to leave the city for the first time since January.

The Supreme Court ruled that police officers can stop cars just on suspicion if the registered owner of the car’s license has been suspended. In other words, a whole lot of family members could get pulled over if their vehicle’s owner has a suspended license, even if their license is just fine.

Police in New Jersey broke up a loud party of over 30 individuals, all allegedly in their 40s and 50s, who were gathered at a home where the homeowner and a friend were performing Pink Floyd songs in violation of the state’s ban on large gatherings. As officers broke up the party, the duo was midway through “Wish You Were Here,” prompting one attendee to shout quote “welcome to Nazi Germany.”

That's all for today's AM Quickie. Tune into the Majority Report live today at noon, or later as a podcast!

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