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TODAY'S HEADLINES:

Donald Trump has found a scapegoat for his miserable handling of the coronavirus crisis: the World Health Organization. As punishment, he’s going to freeze its funding. Because if we’re going down, we might as well take an international aid organization with us!

Meanwhile, a new report shows that banks actually have the power to take away your stimulus check if you owe them money, while millionaires are getting yet another tax break.

And lastly, at least some people in charge have good ideas -- State Governors are quickly forming networks of their own outside the federal umbrella to manage the disease inside their states and listen to actual scientists for advice.

THESE ARE THE STORIES YOU NEED TO KNOW:

Donald Trump ordered his administration to freeze funding to the World Health Organization for an unspecified amount of time on Tuesday, lashing out at the international organization in the hopes that someone, anyone would stop blaming him for the horrific crisis in the U.S.

Trump told reporters during a briefing on Tuesday afternoon that quote “So much death has been caused by their mistakes.” Sounds like a classic case of projecting to me.

And listen to what he blamed the WHO for: trusting the Chinese government too much in the early stages of the pandemic. But recall back in January, Trump was the one heaping praise on the Chinese. And in February, he was praising the WHO.

But then the reality of the disease hit, he was drastically unprepared, and now he needs someone to blame. As a result, a massive organization will suffer -- in 2019, the U.S. donated $533 million of the WHO’s roughly $6 billion budget. That’s a pretty sizeable chunk!

Meanwhile, the country is still in crisis. New estimates of the death toll in New York City show that previous numbers were low, and that the real toll is somewhere north of 10,000 deaths in the city alone.

NYC’s outbreak, per capita, is far worse than Italy and accounts for more than a third of the deaths in the country overall. And that’s on Trump, and every leader who could have done something sooner -- not the WHO.

Banks and millionaires get bailout

The financial crisis caused by the coronavirus is only going to get worse -- unless you’re a millionaire, of course.

A new report by the Washington Post shows that some 80 percent of the tax benefits that got slipped into the coronavirus aid package will benefit millionaires. Less than three percent of those benefits will go to anyone making less than $100,000 per year. That’s the American Dream in action, baby!

For those of us at the bottom, there’s even worse news. A report by the American Prospect found that there’s absolutely nothing to legally stop banks from taking individual citizens’ $1200 stimulus checks if they owe money in debt.

How it works, basically, is that if the account the IRS is going to direct deposit your check into is in the red, or you owe money to that bank in another form, the bank can snag your check before you even get a chance to use it. The Trump administration knows this, and told the banks as much.

Meanwhile, printing of physical checks for people who don’t have direct deposit set up with the IRS also hit a snag: the Trump administration stalled the process so that Trump’s name could be printed on the checks. You heard that right.

And what are the Democrats doing during all of this? Glad you asked. Today, they released a plan to help laid-off workers keep their health benefits by subsidizing and extending the existing COBRA program.

Of course, that does nothing for the people who didn’t have employer-provided health insurance, like gig workers or freelancers or part-timers, who also lost their jobs. Real good opposition party we’ve got here.

Governors gang up

Seeing as the federal government has proven itself totally inept in handling the crisis, state Governors around the country are starting to take matters entirely into their own hands.

Illinois’s Gov. J.B. Pritzker is working on building a regional coalition of midwest governors to coordinate their response. On the west coast, California, Washington, and Oregon have agreed to do the same thing. And most of the North East is already cooperating in a similar group.

The key to these inter-state coalitions is to insulate their populations from any kind of hasty or downright crazy Federal mandate. Trump has insinuated time and time again that he wants to re-open the country and try to boost the economy, but most governors desperately want to wait for scientists and public health officials to make the call on when to re-open. The president did not reassure worried leaders much either, especially after he quipped that he had quote “total authority” endquote to open up the country himself.

Most of these governors are Democrats, of course. Republicans are taking their cues from Trump, but with some exceptions (Ron De Santis, we’re looking at you), they seem to be playing things cautiously as well.

AND NOW FOR SOME QUICKER QUICKIES:

Rita Wilson, who with her husband Tom Hanks was one of the first high-profile celebrities to contract coronavirus, says she was given hydroxychloroquine during treatment. The drug, she said, had quote “extreme side effects,” endquote, adding that we still don’t know how helpful it is.

Finally, after months of campaigning with the race almost certainly over, Joe Biden has Barack Obama’s endorsement. The former President endorsed his former VP in a live video on Tuesday.

Thousands of frontline healthcare workers who are in the country thanks to the DACA immigration program are currently waiting for the Supreme Court to decide whether or not Trump will be allowed to shut the program down. The Court is expected to announce its decision by the end of June.

In a move that should surprise no one, Trump’s Environmental Protection Agency decided on Tuesday that it would not tighten restrictions on industrial soot emission, despite a new study that showed the emissions could make people more likely to die from coronavirus.

That’s all for the Majority Report’s AM Quickie today. Sam will be with you later for the full show, available wherever your podcasts are found.

HOSTS - Sam Seder & Lucie Steiner

WRITER - Jack Crosbie

PRODUCER - Dorsey Shaw

EXECUTIVE PRODUCER - Brendan Finn