Welcome to Majority.FM's AM QUICKIE! Brought to you by justcoffee.coop

TODAY'S HEADLINES:

The coronavirus numbers continue to hit new records. Amid the crisis, overtaxed hospitals and health authorities are taking desperate measures to recruit more nurses.

Meanwhile, Donald Trump is stoking a nasty intra-party fight in Georgia, which Republicans need to hold in order to keep control of the Senate. And in Wisconsin, his campaign loses once again in the courtroom.

And lastly, how much do we need to worry about Trump’s civil servant stay-behind network? Maybe not too much, according to a new investigation by ProPublica.

THESE ARE THE STORIES YOU NEED TO KNOW:

It’s not letting up. Figures released yesterday show the United States recorded over thirty one hundred Covid-19 deaths in a single day, obliterating the record set last spring, the Associated Press reports. For the first time, the number of Americans in the hospital with the virus has eclipsed one hundred thousand. New cases have begun topping two hundred thousand a day. And Robert Redfield, head of the Centers of Disease Control and Prevention, said this week that the next three months are going to be QUOTE the most difficult time in the public health history of this nation ENDQUOTE. Nearly twenty thousand Americans could die of Covid-19 during the week of Christmas, according to a CDC forecast.

Across the US, the surge has swamped hospitals and left nurses and other health care workers shorthanded and burned out, the AP reports. Hospitals are trying to lure nurses and doctors out of retirement, recruiting students and new graduates who have yet to earn their licenses and offering eye-popping salaries in a desperate bid to ease staffing shortages. Nurses who work in intensive care are the most in demand. Employers also are willing to pay extra for nurses who can work up to sixty hours per week instead of the standard thirty six.

Doctor Eli Perencevich, an epidemiology and internal medicine professor at the University of Iowa, told the AP that health care workers are paying the price for other people’s refusal to wear masks. He said QUOTE It’s sending everyone to war, really. We’ve decided as a society

that we’re going to take all the people in our health care system and pummel them because we have some insane idea about what freedom really is ENDQUOTE. Well put, doc.

Trump Divides Georgia GOP

In his final weeks in office, Donald Trump is turning the Republican Party against itself. He will hold a rally in Georgia on Saturday to support Republican Senators David Perdue and Kelly Loeffler against Democrats Jon Ossoff and Raphael Warnock. The January 5 runoff election will decide which party controls the US Senate. But, as the Washington Post reports, Trump has some Republicans worried he could do more harm than good by repeating false claims about the voting system and attacking GOP officials.

The competing GOP factions are growing increasingly angry and distrustful, according to the Post. Leading the charge on one side are two Trumpista attorneys who are urging Republicans to withhold their votes from the runoffs if leaders don’t fight to overturn the November election. Following their lead, Republican state lawmakers held a hearing yesterday about alleged voting irregularities. On the other side, there is Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger and a senior member of his staff, Gabriel Sterling, who blame Trump’s inflammatory rhetoric for a surge of threats against election officials. And more than a dozen longtime Georgia Republicans penned a letter urging the party to come together and focus on winning the Senate seats, the Post reports.

Elsewhere, Trump’s campaign to subvert democracy keeps sputtering. The Wisconsin Supreme Court yesterday refused to hear Trump’s lawsuit attempting to overturn his loss to Biden. Justices ruled four to three that the case must first wind its way through lower courts, the AP reports. Trump had asked the court to disqualify more than two hundred and twenty one thousand ballots in the state’s two biggest Democratic counties.

Finally, the AP reports, Arizona Governor Doug Ducey confirmed that it was Trump on the phone when he silenced a call while in the middle of signing papers certifying election results showing Trump lost the state. A video capturing the moment went viral on social media. Good show by Ducey there. What good could possibly come of taking a call from lame duck Trump?

Trump 'Burrowers' Plague Federal Agencies

LUCIE: Some government-watchers are raising concerns over how Trump might exert influence after he’s out of office. ProPublica looked into a phenomenon known as burrowing that occurs at the end of every administration. Last week, House Democrats sent a letter to sixty-one federal agencies asking for information on political appointees who have been hired into career jobs.

ProPublica found thirty-two political appointees whom the Trump administration has sought to hire into civil service positions in the first three quarters of this year. In 2019, ProPublica reports, the Office of Personnel Management approved twenty-eight conversion requests. The Trump administration list of burrowers includes a longtime staffer for Grover Norquist’s group, Americans for Tax Reform; a former chief of staff to Republican Senator Ted Cruz; and a lawyer for energy and mining companies.

The Interior Department accounts for several approved transfers this year. Gregory Sheehan, for instance, was appointed deputy director of the Fish and Wildlife Service in June 2017. In that position, he opened vast swathes of federal land to hunting and fishing and weakened protections for endangered species. Sheehan served fourteen months before resigning, ProPublica reports. But in August, Sheehan was hired for a $167,000-a-year job as director of the Bureau of Land Management’s office in his home state.

Susan Jane Brown of the Western Environmental Law Center told ProPublica Trump’s efforts to burrow employees are coming too late. She said it seems they are looking for QUOTE anybody with a pulse to put into some of these positions for the remainder of the lame duck ENDQUOTE. Overall, some progressive advocates said they don’t think the conversion of political appointees into career positions will be as deep or influential as it was in the last Bush administration, when one hundred and thirty-nine officials found their way into civil service jobs. So that’s a relief.

AND NOW FOR SOME QUICKER QUICKIES:

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi spoke yesterday about finally moving forward on a new coronavirus relief deal. They also discussed reaching a deal on a spending bill to avert a government shutdown on December 11, the Post reports. Go on, take your time, it’s no big deal.

Politico reports that prominent California Democratic strategist Nathan Ballard -- a longtime friend and adviser to Governor Gavin Newsom -- was arrested and jailed on two felony domestic violence charges. The allegations include attempting to suffocate a child with a pillow. In November 2019, Ballard was profiled in Better magazine as one of the Bay Area’s most successful dads. There’s a story that needs an update.

The top US military officer said yesterday that the US should reconsider stationing troops and their families in large overseas bases, the AP reports. Joint Chiefs of Staff chairman Mark Milley said he thinks we have too much permanent infrastructure overseas. Defund the empire, now there’s a snappy slogan!

Protests by farm workers demanding better wages in Peru raged on for a fourth day yesterday, Reuters reports. Protesters say they’ve been attacked by police in large numbers, and one person has died. All we can say is: Solidarity!

That’s all for the AM Quickie. Join us this afternoon on the Majority Report.

DEC 4, 2020 - AM QUICKIE

HOSTS - Sam Seder & Lucie Steiner

WRITER - Corey Pein

PRODUCER - Dorsey Shaw

EXECUTIVE PRODUCER - Brendan Finn