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TODAY'S HEADLINES:

Wall Street rallies after Donald Trump promises to sacrifice the lives of workers and their families to protect corporate profits. And so, of course, stocks rebound!

Meanwhile, Joe Biden says he will refrain from criticizing Trump for his coronavirus pandemic response. But Bernie Sanders is taking the opposite approach.

And lastly, the head of Italy’s coronavirus respone says there could be ten unreported cases for every confirmed case of COVID-19. Which would mean half a million cases in the United States, as opposed to the fifty thousand just reported.

THESE ARE THE STORIES YOU NEED TO KNOW:

Defying the express wishes of every public health expert – including the ones that still work for him -- Donald Trump said yesterday that he wants America back to business as usual by Easter. That’s in a couple of weeks – April 12 to be exact. Why that particular Sunday? He just thought it sounded beautiful. That’s what he said anyway. No doctors told Trump this was reasonable or realistic. In fact, they’ve been telling him the opposite. If lawmakers and employers follow Trump’s prescription, millions of people could die unnecessarily because workers were forced to return to their offices and job sites, thus spreading COVID-19 and overwhelming hospitals.

Just in case it wasn’t obvious, Trump’s advise is intended to benefit the top one percent of people who own the economy at the expense of everyone else. And for the capitalist elite, at least, the message was received. The stock markets gained back some of their coronavirus- related losses after Trump came out for blood sacrifice. His fellow Republicans quickly fell in line and are giving up on all talk of aiding affected workers. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell pushed forward with a $2 trillion so-called stimulus bill – though Trump economic adviser and designated bottle-opener Larry Kudlow said the total cost could total $6 trillion. I say so-called stimulus because none of the proposed measures in the latest Republican bailout come close to doing what other countries are doing to take care of their people during this pandemic. European countries including Britain, for instance, are covering up to eighty percent of people’s wages during the crisis.

If further proof were needed that the people of the United States are being systematically misinformed on a crucial life-or-death matter -- the reality of a deadly pandemic -- consider the following: Trump’s approval rating is higher than ever, according to a new poll by Gallup. Forty-nine percent of adults now approve of the job he’s doing as president. Sixty percent approve of how he’s handling the coronavirus pandemic – which, until recently, he refused to acknowledge was even a problem.

Despite what some corporate media talking heads would have you believe, the Democratic Party presidential primary continues.

Joe Biden appeared via video link on The View and said he had no intention to criticize Donald Trump, and wanted to avoid politicizing the coronavirus response – as though it hasn’t been already. Biden also garbled his ideas a few times, with statements that trailed off into gibberish. This happened again several times in interviews later in the day. The New York Times said the Democratic front-runner is struggling to be heard. The Intercept reported new details in the story of a Nevada politician who accused Biden of sniffing her hair and kissing her before a rally in 2014. The politician, Tara Reade, sought assistance from a prominent feminist organization in the wake of the MeToo scandals. But the group, the Time’s Up Legal Defense Fund, told Reade they would not take her case because Biden was a candidate for president. A spokesperson for Time’s Up said their decision to withhold support from Reade should not be interpreted as a statement of doubt about the truthfulness of her claims.

Bernie Sanders held another online panel discussion about the coronavirus response and spoke for the better part of two hours about what needed to be done to support displaced workers and overworked, under-supplied medical professionals through the crisis. The event featured Washington State Representative Pramila Jayapal, whose constituents were among the first Americans to face the brunt of the pandemic. A Centers for Disease Control viral outbreak specialist interviewed by Sanders told several truths that Trump refuses to: For instance, he said the US is now leading the world in new coronavirus cases. Heckuva job, Donnie! By this weekend, the CDC expert told Sanders, the US will have more cases than China -- and Trump’s incompetence and inaction are directly to blame.

Global confirmed coronavirus cases surprassed the four-hundred thousand mark yesterday. More than fifty thousand of those cases were in the US, with New York state alone accounting for half of the total. But there is growing reason to think that the official figures from various countries vastly understate the actual scale of the problem.

The chief of civil defense in Italy, one of the hardest-hit countries, is one official who is willing to come out and say as much. Career civil servant and Extraordinary Commissioner for the COVID-19 Emergency Angelo Borrelli said a more credible estimate was ten actual cases for every one confirmed case. Borrelli’s remarks were first reported in the Italian press and later publicized by Reuters news service. This knowledge has yet to filter in to the public conversation in the US, where denialism still rules at the top, as hospitalizations and fatalities mount. Atlanta, Georgia, hospitals yesterday reportedly ran out of space in their intensive care units.

As Republicans in the US ease up on public health measures, other countries are growing more stringent to save lives. India, home to over one billion people, went on national lockdown. People there have been ordered to stay in their homes for three weeks, although poverty and density will make that impossible or meaningless for many. Also, after much dithering by the organizers and the Japanese government, the Tokyo Olympics has been officially postponed until 2021. Easter Island reported its first coronavirus case, and the Washington Post called Antarctica, with zero cases as yet reported, possibly the safest place in the world. Hubei province in China, where the pandemic was first noted, is getting ready to start running trains again, after a long period of lockdown that helped slow the spread of the virus in that country.

QUICKER QUICKIES

A special commission mandated by Congress is recommending that women be made eligible for military conscription. The eleven-member commission set up in 2017 produced a final report that was presented to the White House yesterday, and may inspire new legislation. The report says registering women for the draft is both necessary and fair in times of national emergency. Is it though?

A German court convicted and sentenced eight members of a revolutionary neo-Nazi skinhead organization yesterday after a six month trial. The accused men, all between twenty-

two and thirty-two years of age, were sentenced to a little over two years in prison, with the ringleader getting five and a half years. The group systematically attacked minorities and were allegedly planning massacres with firearms.

The publishers of three major US news organizations – The New York Times, the Washington Post, and the Wall Street Journal – are publishing a rare joint declaration asking the government of China to let their reporters back in the country. The Chinese government last month decided to deny visas to reporters for those papers. The Trump administration has also been taking actions against Chinese news organizations in the US. The letter called on both countries’ leaders to let journalists do their important work in this time of crisis.

Britney Spears is making news again. The pop star posted took to Instagram to share demands for wealth redistribution and a general strike, which is a thing that’s never really happened in America when nobody goes to work until everyone gets what they need. Comrade Britney signed off with rose emojis, as often deployed by members of the Democratic Socialists of America. She’s a not a slave for you, or for anyone!

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

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