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

TODAY'S HEADLINES:

The United States has agreed to send a further 20 million doses of the coronavirus vaccine abroad, in addition to the 60 million doses currently stuck in FDA limbo. Hopefully this batch will get out the door ASAP.

Meanwhile, the Supreme Court says it will hear arguments in a case from Mississippi that could directly challenge Roe V. Wade and change the future of abortion rights in America.

And lastly, new emails uncovered by the NLRB show the corrupt lengths Amazon went to to disrupt the union vote in Bessemer, Alabama.

THESE ARE THE STORIES YOU NEED TO KNOW:

The United States is finally getting its act together and shipping some of our massive surplus of vaccines to the countries who need it most.

On Monday, the Biden administration announced that it would send 20 million doses of the Johnson and Johnson, Pfizer, and Moderna vaccines to countries still struggling with the pandemic.

That’s in addition to the 60 million doses of the Astra Zeneca vax that we’ve already pledged. The AZ doses, unfortunately, are still held up by FDA approval, so they haven’t gone out yet.

Biden says the new doses should be shipped by the end of June.

Biden said, “Just as in World War II America was the arsenal of democracy, in the battle against the Covid-19 pandemic our nation’s going to be the arsenal of vaccines for the rest of the world. We’ll share these vaccines in the service of ending the pandemic everywhere.”

That might be getting ahead of things a little.

While the U.S.’s contribution is large, it’s still a drop in the bucket of what the world needs. India, which is currently still in the throes of one of the worst outbreaks since the pandemic began, has only fully vaccinated 3 percent of its population. That means there are over a billion people who still need a shot in that country alone.

As we reported yesterday, we also need Biden to stand firm on his promised patent waivers, so big pharma can’t swoop in to extract their price.

Supreme Court Takes Abortion Case

The big one that liberals have feared for years may be coming. The Supreme Court annonced on Monday that it would hear a case from Mississippi that could directly challenge the judicial protection of abortion outlined in Roe v Wade.

According to the New York Times, the new case concerns a state law that seeks to ban abortions after 15 weeks of pregnancy. This won’t be a quick process: the Times reports that the court will hear arguments in the case during its next term, which starts in October, and probably make a decision in the spring or summer of 2022.

But by now we all know the score. Conservatives have a 6-3 majority on the court, and Donald Trump’s hand-picked justices all seem poised to tear up Roe V Wade at their first opportunity.

The Supreme Court last heard a major abortion case in 2020, when it struck down a restrictive Louisiana law. But that was before Ruth Bader Ginsberg’s death, and only went down because of centrist Chief Justice John Roberts tiebreaking vote.

Now, liberals are outnumbered, which means the Biden administration has a choice: make changes to the structure of the court, or go down as the administration who sat and watched as Donald Trump’s legacy of bigotry and injustice came to pass.

NLRB Finds Amazon Union Shenanigans

It’s been a minute since we checked in with the union-busting activities of Amazon, but it feels like just yesterday. Today, new National Labor Relations Board documents show that Amazon specifically lobbied the U.S. Postal Service to install an illegal ballot dropbox in its Bessemer facility during its vote-by-mail election.

In emails about the mailbox surfaced by the NLRB and reported by More Perfect Union, an Amazon executive writes:

“This is of the utmost importance for our senior leadership. I am not joking at all when I say that I will drive to Alabama myself to install it if need be.”

The order reportedly came from Dave Clark, Amazon’s SVP who oversees warehouse operations. What happened next was even more blatant. Not only did Amazon security guards have the key to the USPS mailbox, the company then installed a tent around the mailbox with anti-union messaging on the side.

The postal service claimed it didn’t know about the tent, but it’s pretty easy to see the score here. The only question now is what the NLRB is prepared to do about it.

AND NOW FOR SOME QUICKER QUICKIES:

President Biden had a phone conversation with Israeli Prime Minster Benjamin [BIN YA MIN] Netanyahu on Monday, and reportedly pushed for a ceasefire in the country’s assault on Gaza. Meanwhile, of course, he’s continuing to push for a new $735 millon weapons deal to Israel. Congress has the power to block that, but do they have the will?

Andrew Cuomo’s disgustingly self-serving book about leadership during COVID fetched a whopping $5.12 million book deal, which is being paid out over the next few years. Of the 1.4 mil he got this year, Cuomo donated 500 thousand to United Way and put the rest in a trust for his daughters. Lucky them! Unlucky for the thousands of New Yorkers who died under his leadership.

LiveScience reports that the reactors under the Chernobyl nuclear site have started to smolder again, like “the embers in a barbecue pit.” This isn’t cause for global panic, as any resulting accident would be on a far smaller scale than the original meltdown, but certainly sounds ominous!

And finally, the Intercept reports that the Pentagon will begin monitoring the social media of military members for extremist content, as part of a wider attempt to crack down on extremism in the service. This attempt, however, raises some pretty severe privacy concerns, as such policies inevitably aren’t just used to root out Nazis.

AM QUICKIE - MAY 18, 2021

HOSTS - Sam Seder & Lucie Steiner

WRITER - Jack Crosbie

PRODUCER - Dorsey Shaw

EXECUTIVE PRODUCER - Brendan Finn