Podcasts about endquote

Want to add strategic pricing to your marketing tool box? Go to InteliChek or call 877-827-7273 and ask about our InteliShare Series!   InteliShare contains all of our promotional tools that you can use to promote your favorable prices, including our InteliAds, the printable flyers that you can show off in easel displays, InteliMedia, for your Digital Media Boards AND InteliWidgets, so you can show off price comparisons on your website and even let your customers schedule from the widget.   If you've noticed a trend in previous episodes of The Multi-Point Inspection Podcast in the approach our guests have taken as leaders in their respective businesses, then you're not alone. I've noticed it as well.   It's called Servant Leadership and according to Sarah K. White in a CIO article from Feb. 20222, it is QUOTE " A leadership style that prioritizes the growth, well-being, and empowerment of employees. It aims to foster an inclusive environment that enables everyone in the organization to thrive as their authentic self.  When implemented correctly, servant leadership can help foster trust, accountability, growth, and inclusion in the workplace." ENDQUOTE   And Jami Alexander has implemented this approach, which according to her, has led to exponential growth of the seven Meineke stores that she oversees.   What We Talk About Servant Leadership Employee Retention Pay Structure Bridging The Gap Between The Counter & The Shop Bridging The Generation Gap Implementing Meineke's eInspection On Becoming A Rising Star On LinkedIn Meineke Commercial       Music:  Reveille-Autumnal Dreams   Reveille-Honest Living   Ends Of The Earth- The Gunslinger   Reveille-Highways

The Drive Thru is our monthly recap where we've put together a menu of automotive, motorsport and random car-adjacent news. Tune in for Episode #27 where we celebrate Halloween with some trunk-or-treating along with Open Wheel Racing & Formula One as our showcase!!  Showcase: OPEN WHEEL RACING & FORMULA 1 8 world champions who would've been rejected under F1's flawed superlicence rules Audi and Porsche are still setting F1 goals! Say it ain't so... Danny Ric is OUT! The HAAS-y future of Mick Schumacher? When does the Money Gram F1 book come out? #richenergy New news on Cadillac, BMW and Lamborghini LeMans Prototypes for LMDh Ford runs of out Blue Ovals and all Rivians recalled! Elon Musk says "Cybertrucks can serve *briefly* as a boat" Honda lawn mower sets Guinness World Record! Bubba Wallace & Kyle Larson! Corvette C8.R coming to SRO World Challenge, and 2023 schedule reveal. Best of Bathurst 1000 crash videos Community News, brought to us by CollectorCarGuide.net HPDEjunkie.com Track Day Report and much, much more!  Behind the Scenes content, along with video available through our Patreon. Check out the follow-on article for all the pixs and links to items talked about in this episode. The Drive Thru is sponsored in part by: HPDEjunkie.com, Hooked On Driving, AmericanMuscle.com, CollectorCarGuide.net, Project Motoring, Garage Style Magazine and many others. Learn how you can become a sponsor today. 

Welcome to Majority.FM's AM QUICKIE! Brought to you by justcoffee.coop TODAY'S HEADLINES: The Supreme Court yesterday struck down another challenge to the Affordable Care Act, also known as Obamacare. But it also said American companies can benefit from child slavery in Africa, so, you know, hold your applause for the honorable Justices. Meanwhile, audio recordings reveal that Bolivia's right-wing coup leaders were organizing yet another plot against the pro-democracy politician who won last year's election. And this time they planned to go big, and bring in hundreds of mercenaries from the United States. And lastly, US health officials announced a $3 billion program to speed up research on a pill to fight the coronavirus in people who've already been infected. The research could also help stop future pandemics in their tracks, which, after all we've been through, is an obvious win. THESE ARE THE STORIES YOU NEED TO KNOW: This legal news comes from the Washington Post. The Supreme Court yesterday said US chocolate companies cannot be sued for child slavery on the African farms from which they buy most of their cocoa. But the court stopped short of saying such a lawsuit could never go forward. Six African men sought damages from Nestlé USA and Cargill, alleging that as children they were trafficked out of Mali, forced to work long hours on Ivory Coast cocoa farms and kept at night in locked shacks. Their attorneys argued the companies should have better monitored their cocoa suppliers in West Africa, where two-thirds of the world's cocoa is grown and child labor is widespread. The companies asked the Supreme Court to toss the lawsuit, arguing that courts in the United States are the wrong forum and that the applicable law permits such cases against individuals but not corporations. The court's splintered decision was written by Justice Clarence Thomas. Also yesterday, the Post reports, the Court dismissed the latest challenge to the Affordable Care Act, saying Republican-led states do not have the legal standing to try to upend the law. Justice Stephen Breyer wrote the court's seven-to-two decision, which preserves the law that provides millions of Americans with health coverage. Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra called the court's decision, "a victory for all Americans, especially people with a preexisting condition." It's a bittersweet victory, though, because I can't stop thinking about those child slaves. Recordings Expose Bolivia Coup Plot Here's some retro Reagan-era intrigue! The Intercept reports that a top official in the outgoing Bolivian government plotted to deploy hundreds of mercenaries from the United States to overturn the results of the South American country's October 2020 election. The aim of the mercenary recruitment was to forcibly block Luis Arce from taking up the presidency for MAS, the party of former Bolivian President Evo Morales. The plot continued even though Arce, a protégé of Morales, trounced a crowded field, winning fifty five percent of first-round votes. Disagreements between ministers and divisions within the armed forces appear to have undermined the plan. It was never executed. According to the Intercept, Arce's eventual victory last fall was a stunning rejection of the right-wing shift overseen by coup leader Jeanine Áñez. The Bolivian right wing, however, was not ready to relinquish power. A recorded call with Áñez's defense minister sketches a coup plot even more flagrant than the one in October 2019. Several of the plotters discussed flying hundreds of foreign mercenaries into Bolivia from a US military base outside Miami. These would join forces with elite Bolivian military units, renegade police squadrons, and vigilante mobs in a desperate bid to keep MAS from returning to power. Two US military sources confirmed that Special Operations had gotten wind of the Bolivia coup plot. But nothing ever came of it, they said. All those out-of-work Yankee mercenaries will just have to wait until the next time a leftist wins a Latin American election. US Funds Anti-covid Pill Research This promising health news comes from the New York Times. The US government spent more than $18 billion last year funding drugmakers to make a Covid vaccine, an effort that led to at least five highly effective shots in record time. Now it's pouring more than $3 billion on a neglected area of research: developing pills to fight the virus early in the course of infection, potentially saving many lives in the years to come. The new program, announced yesterday by the Department of Health and Human Services, will speed up the clinical trials of a few promising drug candidates. If all goes well, some of those first pills could be ready by the end of the year. The Antiviral Program for Pandemics will also support research on entirely new drugs – not just for the coronavirus, but for viruses that could cause future pandemics. According to the Times, Doctor Anthony Fauci, a key backer of the program, said he looked forward to a time when Covid-19 patients could pick up antiviral pills from a pharmacy as soon as they develop Covid-19 symptoms. Fauci's support for research on antiviral pills stems from his own experience fighting AIDS three decades ago. In the 1990s, his institute conducted research that led to some of the first antiviral pills for HIV. Even if the next generation of pills doesn't arrive for a few years, scientists say the research will be a good investment. Imagine a future where Covid is no big deal. It's nice! AND NOW FOR SOME QUICKER QUICKIES: CBS News reports that the House yesterday approved a bill to repeal the 2002 authorization for use of military force in Iraq, a measure which has the backing of the White House. The bill now goes to the Senate, where Majority Leader Chuck Schumer has said he will bring it to the floor for a vote this year. Next we need a bill to make everyone who supported that stupid war publicly apologize. The Washington Post says today will be a holiday for federal employees following President Joe Biden's signing yesterday of legislation making Juneteenth a federal holiday. Juneteenth marks the end of slavery in Texas. Employers who don't honor this holiday are now officially on notice. Speaking of Texas: The Associated Press reports that Texas will now let people carry handguns without first getting a background check and training, becoming the latest and largest on a growing list of states to roll back permitting requirements for carrying guns in public. Republican Governor Greg Abbott called it a measure of freedom and self-defense. It's more like self-harm. Politico reports that a little-known GOP candidate in Florida was secretly recorded threatening to send a Russian and Ukrainian hit squad to a fellow Republican opponent to make her QUOTE disappear ENDQUOTE. During the call, William Braddock repeatedly warned a conservative activist to not support Anna Paulina Luna in the Republican primary for a Tampa Bay-area congressional seat because he had access to assassins. Look out, Texas – here comes Florida! AM QUICKIE - JUNE 18, 2021 HOSTS - Sam Seder & Lucie Steiner WRITER - Corey Pein PRODUCER - Dorsey Shaw EXECUTIVE PRODUCER - Brendan Finn

Welcome to Majority.FM's AM QUICKIE! Brought to you by justcoffee.coop TODAY'S HEADLINES: Nuclear weapons are high up on the agenda as the presidents of the United States and Russia meet today. Former top military commanders and diplomats from both countries have been urging the leaders to cooperate to reduce the size of nuclear arsenals. Meanwhile, emails just released by House Democrats investigating the January 6th Capitol insurrection show how Donald Trump tried to get the Justice Department to help overturn last November's election. The details are as loopy as you might imagine. And lastly, two of the biggest states, New York and California, have lifted many pandemic restrictions thanks to progress in their vaccination campaigns. Covid will be with us for a long time, but public health measures are working, and the return to normalcy is happening just about on schedule. THESE ARE THE STORIES YOU NEED TO KNOW: This read on the day's big diplomatic news comes from Politico. Expectations are low that Joe Biden and Vladimir Putin can reach any significant accommodation during their first presidential summit today in Geneva – with one possible exception: nuclear arms control. Washington and Moscow have publicly expressed a desire to use the summit to reestablish formal talks on the issue. In the days leading up to the tense meeting, ex-defense chiefs, foreign ministers and retired nuclear commanders from both nations also proposed a series of steps the two leaders could take to help constrain the world's deadliest arsenals. Those steps range from a simple pledge to resume regular negotiations, to a more ambitious public commitment to reduce current arsenals as a goodwill gesture. Politico says no one is banking on detailed agreements to emerge from Geneva. The definition of strategic threats has only grown more complex now that cyber attacks, political warfare and other forms of mischief can destabilize entire nations. But both governments have been striking a similar tone in recent days on the nuclear front, at least rhetorically. National security adviser Jake Sullivan expressed the administration's desire to get back to a regular dialogue with Moscow on nuclear matters. Sullivan's comments came a day after Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov also hinted at a desire to reach common ground on nuclear issues. The two countries may never agree on some things, but if Biden and Putin can agree to keep a lid on the nukes, that's no small victory. Trump Pressured Rosen On Election This deep dive into Donald Trump's outbox comes from the Washington Post. Trump's staff began sending emails to Jeffrey Rosen, the Number Two at the Justice Department, asking him to embrace Trump's claims of voter fraud in the 2020 election at least ten days before Rosen assumed the role of acting attorney general. That's according to new emails disclosed by the House Committee on Oversight and Reform. On the same day as the electoral college met to certify the election results, Trump's assistant sent Rosen an email with a list of complaints concerning the way the election had been carried out in Antrim County, Michigan. The file included a so-called forensic analysis of the Dominion Voting Systems machines the county employed, alleging they were calibrated to create fraudulent results. The claims were false. According to the Post, the email sheds light on the type of pressure Trump was putting on the Justice Department to take up his crusade against Joe Biden's 2020 victory. The campaign swiftly accelerated once Rosen was appointed acting attorney general. On January 1st, former White House chief of staff Mark Meadows forwarded Rosen a YouTube link. The subject line suggested it was a video in which a retired CIA station chief argued that the 2020 election totals were altered by the Italians. Rosen forwarded the email to his acting deputy, Richard Donoghue, who responded simply: QUOTE Pure insanity ENDQUOTE. So Trump's flunkies knew his election lies were crazy, but said nothing. More like pure cowardice! New York, California Lift Restrictions It's a mixed bag on the pandemic front. The Associated Press reports that the US death toll from Covid-19 topped six hundred thousand yesterday. That's the bad news. But the good news is that the vaccination drive has drastically brought down daily cases and fatalities and allowed the country to emerge from the gloom and look forward to summer. The milestone came the same day that California and New York lifted most of their remaining restrictions, joining other states in opening the way, step by step, for what could be a fun and close-to- normal summer for many Americans. The AP says that with the overall picture improving rapidly, California – the most populous state and the first to impose a coronavirus lockdown – dropped state rules on social distancing and limits on capacity at restaurants, bars, supermarkets, gyms, stadiums and other places. They're billing it as California's Grand Reopening, just in time for summer. Disneyland is throwing open its gates. Fans will be able to sit elbow-to-elbow and cheer without masks at Dodgers and Giants games. In New York, Governor Andrew Cuomo said yesterday that seventy percent of adults in the state have received at least one dose of the vaccine. And he announced that the immediate easing of many restrictions will be celebrated with fireworks. Massachusetts and Kansas yesterday lifted their states of emergency. And Maryland's governor announced that the emergency there will end on July 1, with the state no longer requiring masks. It's time for slightly socially anxious barbecues! AND NOW FOR SOME QUICKER QUICKIES: According to the Washington Post, more than forty million Americans are in the crosshairs of triple-digit heat this week, with some spots soaring over one hundred and twenty degrees. The heat in many areas is dangerous, prompting excessive-heat warnings in seven Western states. So there you go, homebodies: an excuse to stay inside post-vaccination. Stars and Stripes reports that Connecticut Democratic Senator Richard Blumenthal yesterday called on US Army leaders to investigate a QUOTE blood curdling ENDQUOTE news report that found nearly two thousand military firearms went missing during the last decade. An Associated Press investigation found that some of the lost or stolen firearms turned up at the scene of violent crimes. Whoops! The Los Angeles Times reports that Harvey Weinstein will soon be extradited to California to stand trial on charges that he sexually assaulted five women in LA and Beverly Hills. A New York judge's ruling yesterday sets the stage for a second trial focused on the mogul's alleged pattern of sexually abusing actresses and models. That'd make two trials and, let's see... eighty victims. Sounds like Harvey's still ahead! NBC News reports that the manager of a New York City Shake Shack said he was unlawfully detained and taunted by police after he was falsely accused last year of poisoning three officers' milkshakes. The manager, Marcus Gilliam, is now suing members of the New York Police Department, seeking damages for defamation and deprivation. Thank you for your service, Mister Shake Shack Manager, sir. The New York Times reports that President Biden has named Lina Khan, a prominent critic of Big Tech, as the chairwoman of the Federal Trade Commission. Her appointment was a victory for progressive activists who want Biden to take a hard line against big companies. Let's hope she makes Mark Zuckerberg sweat -- I mean, even more than usual. AM QUICKIE - JUNE 16, 2021 HOSTS - Sam Seder & Lucie Steiner WRITER - Corey Pein PRODUCER - Dorsey Shaw EXECUTIVE PRODUCER - Brendan Finn

Welcome to Majority.FM's AM QUICKIE! Brought to you by justcoffee.coop TODAY'S HEADLINES: The United States announced it will share up to 60 million doses of the AstraZeneca coronavirus vaccine with other countries -- but big pharma leaders still oppose opening up the patents so every country can make what it needs. Meanwhile, the CEO of the vaccine production company that screwed up 15 million doses of the Johnson and Johnson vaccine sold off $10 million in stock before the mistake was announced. And lastly, the new census numbers are in, and as we feared, Republicans are going to pick up a few key house seats in THESE ARE THE STORIES YOU NEED TO KNOW: The United States has finally agreed to share. On Monday, the White House announced it would send up to 60 million doses of the AstraZeneca vaccine around the world. The AstraZeneca vaccine isn’t even approved for use in the U.S., so it’s not like we have anything better to do with it, meaning it’s kind of absurd we hadn’t done this already. Still, the FDA wants to clear the drug before we send it overseas, though dozens of other countries are already using it and could use more. We’re not even the first major power to do this. Russia and China have both already actively shared vaccines outside their borders. Prior to this announcement, we’d only committed to sharing a measly 4 million doses with Mexico and Canada. It’s clear the U.S. could be doing a whole lot more to help as our own vaccine rollout continues relatively smoothly. Perhaps the biggest impediment to global vaccination, though, is once again the capitalists in charge. U.S. drugmakers have jealously guarded their patented vaccine formulas, and thus far, Biden has let them, despite making a promise not to while on the campaign trail. The Guardian reported recently on Biolyse, a small Canadian drug manufacturer that said it was ready and willing to devote its facility to cranking out doses of the vaccine to send to developing nations, if only one of the pharma giants would give them the recipe. So far, they’ve gotten nothing. Biolyse’s head of production Claude Mercure said quote: “I don’t understand pharma’s stance on this. Everyone needs to make money, sure. But this is a very serious situation and there’s no reason to be this harsh.” Endquote. The bigwigs in charge know this, but as we know by now: money comes first. Pharma CEO Dumped Stock Before Vax Screwup With that in mind, let’s turn to another story of unabashed corporate greed. Back in February, the pharma company Emergent Biosolutions completely messed up a massive order for the Johnson and Johnson vaccine, ruining 15 million doses in a plant in Baltimore. A new report by the Washington Post shows that at least one person saw this coming: Emergent’s CEO. Emergent boss Robert G. Kramer sold more than $10 million worth of stock in his own company in early February, right before Emergent reported the mistake and its stock price took a nose dive. If Kramer were to sell those same shares now, he’d only get $5.5 million. It seems pretty cut and dry what happened here. The top leaders at Emergent knew something was going wrong, so they dumped their stock and hoped for the best. The Post reports that other execs at the company also sold off stocks. In Kramer’s case, he set up the trades back in November, apparently trying to ward off complaints of insider trading. But the Post’s investigation found that Emergent’s plant was already having production problems back in October, including one earlier issue with making the J&J vaccine. If you heard yesterday’s story on CEO pay, you’ll love this: Kramer’s total compensation went up 50 percent in 2020. To seal the deal, Kramer’s last sell-off of his own company’s stock was in 2016 -- and guess what happened: investors sued him, saying that he had dumped his stock after misleading them about a government contract. Sure sounds like he was playing his favorite trick once again. Republicans Make Census Gains The Census results are in, and they don’t look good for the Democrats. Thanks to Trump’s pandemic-addled, count-disrupted Census attempt, the 2020 Census reported significant population gains in red-leaning states, which means they’ll get a bigger share of House of Representatives seats. Texas, Florida and North Carolina are set to gain a combined four new Congressional seats after the 2022 midterms, while California, Illinois, Michigan, Pennsylvania and New York — will each lose a single congressional seat. There are some other shifts, but those are the big ones The nuances of how this all works is a bit more tricky. It’s not as simple as handing seats directly to Republicans, as they’ll obviously have to win elections and the new districts will depend heavily on how the lines are drawn. But in Republican led states, the GOP will hold most of the power over that redistricting, so it follows that they’ll try to gerrymander as many new safely red seats as they can. Part of this is due to population shifts that are really happening, but the effects are likely more dramatic thanks to Trump’s efforts to disrupt the census project and add a citizenship question, likely suppressing the population of undocumented people who were accounted for. This matters for representation, but also for the share of federal tax dollars those communities receive, meaning in many cases they’ll be paying taxes to get very little in return. You can see who’s the clear winner in all this, and it’s not the Democrats or working people around the country. AND NOW FOR SOME QUICKER QUICKIES: The population of the United States grew at the slowest rate since the 1930s, the new census showed, fueled by both declining birth rates and stagnant immigration. You can pin some of that blame on Trump, but not all. The Supreme Court announced on Monday that it will hear arguments in a new major gun control case challenging a New York law on carrying guns outside of the home. The NRA has backed the challenge, which it clearly hopes will set a dangerous precedent further eroding any attempts at gun reform across the country. A Republican-led drive to remove California Gov. Gavin Newsom from office got enough signatures to qualify for the ballot, state officials reported Monday. The LA Times reports that Newsome could see a statewide vote of confidence before the end of the year. And finally, the Department of Homeland Security announced that it will undergo an internal review aimed at rooting out extremists and white supremacists inside it’s own ranks. The key word in that sentence is “internal.” We’ll see what they find, but don’t hold your breath for real change. APRIL 27, 2021 - AM QUICKIE HOSTS - Sam Seder & Lucie Steiner WRITER - Jack Crosbie PRODUCER - Dorsey Shaw EXECUTIVE PRODUCER - Brendan Finn

Welcome to Majority.FM's AM QUICKIE! Brought to you by justcoffee.coop TODAY'S HEADLINES: Protests erupted across the Twin Cities area in Minnesota yet again on Sunday and Monday after police officers shot and killed a black man at a traffic stop in the suburb of Brooklyn Center. Meanwhile, Texas lawmakers propose one of the most barbaric and inhumane anti-trans bills yet, which would seek to separate children who identify as trans from their parents. And lastly, New Mexico became the latest state to legalize recreational marijuana, as Governor Michelle Lujan Grisham signed a bill that included recreational use and key social justice provisions around marijuana use that advocates have been seeking for years. THESE ARE THE STORIES YOU NEED TO KNOW On Sunday, a police officer in Brooklyn Center, Minnesota shot and killed 20-year-old Daunte Wright during a traffic stop, in a shocking incident that was capture on body camera video. Wright’s killing immediately sparked protests, and officials called for a strict 7 p.m. curfew. As of script time, large street protests after that curfew were being met with the now-familiar levels of brute force by several different police departments. The mayors of Minneapolis and St. Paul declared states of emergency, and professional sports games in the state were postponed. Remember, this is all happening in the middle of the Derek Chauvin trial, who is being charged with murder for the killing of George Floyd last spring. The Brooklyn Center police said that Wright was mistakenly killed, as the officer who shot him once in the chest believed she was reaching for her taser. Regardless of intent, Wright’s death was absurd. The police department’s immediate investigation will surely not satisfy a city and national already on edge. Speaking from the oval office, President Biden said: “We do know that the anger, pain and trauma amidst the Black community is real.” Endquote. But then he continued quote. “In the meantime, I want to make it clear again: There is absolutely no justification — none — for looting. No justification for violence. Peaceful protest? Understandable.” Minnesota Governor Tim Walsh was more direct, saying what Biden apparently wouldn’t: “Our time was made clear last May in Minnesota. Our time to get one shot at fixing it was there. And in the midst of this trial that the world’s watching, the situation repeated itself yesterday.” Texas lawmakers are attempting to outdo their bigoted colleagues in Georgia and other Republican-led states, proposing one of the most barbaric anti-trans bills yet. The bill, designated Senate Bill 1646, would separate trans children from their families for providing them with gender-affirming care, according to Insider. Specifically, the bill’s language criminalizes families who consent to allow their children to begin hormone therapy to match their preferred gender, naming such behavior so-called “child abuse.” In other words, simply by trying to care for their children as best they could, sympathetic parents would be named as abusers. Adri Perez, a policy and advocacy strategist for the ACLU of Texas said: “Gender-affirming care is essential and life-saving care. Make no mistake, restricting and even criminalizing access to healthcare for transgender people will cost lives." Arkansas’s state legislature passed the first similar bill regulating trans healthcare for minors on April 6, and it’s clear that Texas is eager to follow in its footsteps. Several other conservative-led states are considering similar bills, meaning that the GOP’s dominance over state houses is about to get even more dangerous for marginalized groups in the coming months. Things are about to get a little more mellow down in New Mexico. After years of work by advocates and months of specific interest by top leadership, Governor Michelle Lujan Grisham, a Democrat, signed legislation that legalized the adult recreational use of marijuana. Lujan Grisham made this issue one of her pet projects, at one point calling a special session of the state’s legislature in late March to reinvigorate legalization efforts. Advocates say the bill does a lot more than just legalize taking a toke or two, however. Crucially, it includes sentencing provisions that could release thousands of low-level cannabis offenders from jails and prisons across the state. Lujan Grisham said: “Legalized adult-use cannabis is going to change the way we think about New Mexico for the better—our workforce, our economy, our future. We're ready to break new ground. We're ready to invest in ourselves and the limitless potential of New Mexicans. And we're ready to get to work in making this industry a successful one." The Governor also mentioned that the adult-use cannabis industry could create more than 11,000 jobs over the next few years, and top $318 million in sales in the first year. That last point is what likely makes legal weed so attractive for progressive governors: in short, it’s going to make them money. And if it’s also the right thing to do, well, we aren’t complaining. AND NOW FOR SOME QUICKER QUICKIES: Biden’s dog major is headed to the big house. He’s fine of course, but he is headed for a doggie re-education camp in the D.C. area to receive anti-biting training from the professionals. It should last a couple weeks -- if he doesn’t return after then, we’ll have an update on this very important national story. A high school student was shot and killed after exchanging gunfire with police officers on a school campus in Tennessee, just days after the state’s governor signed a bill allowing adults to carry handguns without a permit. Thanks to centrist Democratic spoilers like Joe Manchin, Biden is already being forced to find compromise on his ambitious infrastructure bill, meeting with a bipartisan group of congresspeople on Monday to discuss how to find some middle ground. Doesn’t bode well for the final project! Arkansas is poised to finally pass anti-hate crime legislation, and while the bill does enforce some penalties for crimes against certain groups of people, critics say that the bill’s omission of any mention of race, sexuality or gender renders it largely useless. APRIL 13 , 2021 - AM QUICKIE HOSTS - Sam Seder & Lucie Steiner WRITER - Jack Crosbie PRODUCER - Dorsey Shaw EXECUTIVE PRODUCER - Brendan Finn

Welcome to Majority.FM's AM QUICKIE! Brought to you by justcoffee.coop TODAY'S HEADLINES: The trial for George Floyd’s killer Derek Chauvin began on Monday, as the former officer’s legal team mounted a victim-blaming, morally repugnant defense. Meanwhile, President Biden begs states to reinstitute mask bans to curb surging coronavirus cases, although early studies show the vaccines are working well. And lastly, Jeff Bezos personally told Amazon’s PR to push back against critics ahead of a historic union drive in Bessmer, Alabama, prompting a wave of tweets that were so ludicrous some staffers at the company thought they’d been hacked. THESE ARE THE STORIES YOU NEED TO KNOW: Derek Chauvin’s trial for the killing of George Floyd began monday, and the former Minneapolis police officer’s lawyers wasted no time in creating an alternative set of circumstances from the ones the entire country witnessed on video last summer. Chauvin’s defense team claimed that Floyd died because he ingested drugs to conceal them from police, not because Chauvin knelt on Floyd’s neck for almost nine minutes while he struggled for air. His lawyers also blamed the crowd, painting the witnesses who did all they could and recorded the scene as a threat to the four heavily armed officers holding Floyd down. These tactics are both sick and unnecessary: as we well know, many defenses have gotten cops off for murder with far less callous strategies. The prosecution, meanwhile, confronted Chauvin’s defenders with a lineup of witnesses who had been on the scene, testifying one by one that what they saw was a murder. It seems that’s the way the trial will continue, as the New York Times reports that the case will center around Floyd’s specific cause of death. This in itself is an injustice: no matter what was in Floyd’s system when he died, anyone who has seen the video knows that the police’s conduct was immoral. At around 4:30 p.m. on Monday, the Judge abruptly adjourned the trial for the day, as a so-called “major technical glitch” had disrupted the proceedings’ live stream. We’ll see what tone day two strikes today. Biden Asks For More Masks President Biden urged states to restore mask mandates on Monday, after several mostly GOP-led states had started dropping all their reluctant precautions at the first sight of relief. This is basically the opposite of what disease experts want to happen, but it seems unlikely that Biden will be able to put this particular Republican cat back in the bag. Still, Biden tried, saying quote: “People are letting up on precautions, which is a very bad thing. We are giving up hard-fought, hard-won gains.” Endquote Other national officials were even more dire. Dr. Rochelle Walensky, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, said she felt a sense of quote “impending doom.” As we reported yesterday, cases are still rising around the country. The only good news is that vaccines appear to be working well, and more and more people will be able to get them soon. New York announced on Monday that everyone over the age of 30 would be eligible starting today, and everyone over 16 would be eligible on April 6. Additionally, a new CDC report confirmed the early promising numbers in early clinical trials of the Moderna and Pfizer vaccines, which showed that they were highly effective against the disease. We had already been taking that for granted, but it’s nice to know that assumption has the official seal on it. Bezos Bozo Amazon PR Plan Recode reported on Sunday that Amazon’s bizarre, aggressive PR blitz last week was directly urged by CEO Jeff Bezos, who told his underlings that they weren’t pushing back hard enough on pressure from lawmakers like Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren. According to Recode, this was almost certainly timed to exert as much power as possible during the NLRB election currently going down in Bessemer, Alabama. In practice, it could explain Amazon Worldwide SVP Dave Clark’s extremely aggro tweets, where he smeared Bernie Sanders with old attack lines about the Senator’s staff and tried to do some Twitter dunks with tired corporate propaganda. Following that, Amazon’s own public relations account started popping off, famously claiming quote “you don’t really believe the peeing in bottles thing, do you?” endquote. That was in response to House Rep. Mark Pocan’s criticism of the company, which has a well-documented history of workers being forced to relieve themselves in bottles while on the job. These last tweets were so inflammatory and unprofessional that Amazon’s internal security team flagged them, thinking they had possibly been hacked, according to documents obtained by the Intercept. The only good thing you can say about all this is that finally, Amazon isn’t pretending to be the nice guy anymore. And that means more people might see it for what it is. AND NOW FOR SOME QUICKER QUICKIES: A collection of civil rights groups including the Atlanta NAACP filed suit on Sunday against Georgia’s new voter suppression laws, indicating their willingness to fight the anti-democratic law in court as hard as they can before the next election cycle. The ship is free! In the early hours of Monday morning, tugboat and dredging crews successfully floated the massive cargo ship Ever Given, clearing the way for other ships to pass through the Suez Canal for the first time in days. A new indictment for the first time charged Ghislane Maxwell, Jeffrey Epstein’s longtime confidant, with sex trafficking of a minor. The charges are the most serious pursued by federal prosecutors since Maxwell’s arrest last summer. The Biden Administration announced a plan on Monday to designate a large swathe of coastline between New Jersey and New York as a priority offshore wind zone, hoping to dramatically expand the region’s production of wind power. That’s it for the Majority Report’s AM Quickie today! Emma will be with you in the afternoon. MAR 30, 2021 - AM QUICKIE HOSTS - Sam Seder & Lucie Steiner WRITER - Jack Crosbie PRODUCER - Dorsey Shaw EXECUTIVE PRODUCER - Brendan Finn

Welcome to Majority.FM's AM QUICKIE! Brought to you by justcoffee.coop TODAY'S HEADLINES: The pace of vaccinations is stepping up in the United States. But one group of holdouts – Republican men – now threatens the collective goal of reaching widespread immunity. Meanwhile, with his business empire on the ropes and his social media accounts suspended, Donald Trump has more urgent and costly problems to worry about. Since losing the White House, he’s become a magnet for legal actions both civil and criminal. And lastly, Seattle got sued by big business after passing a measure mandating pandemic hazard pay increases for workers at large grocery chains. Now a federal court has ruled in favor of the city – and those essential workers. THESE ARE THE STORIES YOU NEED TO KNOW: With the US closing in on President Joe Biden’s goal of injecting one hundred million coronavirus vaccinations, officials announced yesterday the nation is now in position to help supply neighbors Canada and Mexico, the Associated Press reports. The Biden administration announced the outlines of a plan to loan vaccines to Canada and Mexico even as the president announced that the US is on the cusp of meeting his one hundred-day injection goal today. The US is injecting an average of about two point two million doses each day – and the pace of vaccination is likely to dramatically rise later this month in conjunction with an expected surge in supply. Meanwhile, the Washington Post reports that Mississippi on Tuesday joined Alaska in making the vaccines available to all residents age sixteen and older. A number of individual counties, from Arizona to North Carolina, have also beckoned everyone to make appointments. These places offer the rest of the country a glimpse of the future. Some residents are thrilled to have the chance to be inoculated. But many other people are holding back, spotlighting challenges related to equity, access and trust that could complicate the quest to reach the high levels of immunity needed to stop the virus’s spread. Nirav Shah, director of Maine’s Center for Disease Control and Prevention, told the Post he has been hearing from colleagues across the country that they are starting to see appointments go unfilled. Polling suggests rural residents and Republicans are among the least likely to get in line for a coronavirus vaccine. A recent NPR-PBS survey found white Republicans were more hesitant than any other subset of the population. Republican men were especially disinclined, with forty nine percent saying they don’t plan to get vaccinated. What can you say, except stupid is as stupid does? Trump Drowning In Lawsuits This update on the legal woes of a certain former Twitter user comes from the Washington Post. The district attorney is sifting through millions of pages of his tax records. The state attorney general has subpoenaed his lawyers, his bankers, his chief financial officer – even one of his sons. And that’s just in New York. Donald Trump is also facing criminal investigations in Georgia and the District of Columbia related to his efforts to overturn the 2020 election. And Trump must defend himself against a growing raft of lawsuits: twenty nine are pending at last count. No charges have been filed against Trump in any of these investigations. The outcome of these lawsuits is uncertain. But the sheer volume of these legal problems indicates that – after a moment of maximum invincibility in the White House – Trump has fallen to a point of historic vulnerability before the law. The Post identified six ongoing investigations that could involve Trump. Of the investigations, the broadest appear to be two in New York: a criminal probe begun by Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus Vance Junior in 2018, and a separate civil inquiry begun by state Attorney General Letitia James in 2019. In addition, Trump faces three probes related to his efforts to overturn his loss to President Biden. Two are in Georgia, where Trump, in a phone call, pressured Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger to find enough votes to let him win. In Washington, DC Attorney General Karl Racine has also opened a criminal investigation into Trump’s actions on January 6th, when his supporters sacked the Capitol. Among the twenty nine lawsuits Trump is facing, about eighteen result from disputes with his properties. The rest seem to have been brought on by his presidency. This may sound bad, but he’s getting off very, very easy. Seattle Hazard Pay Upheld Here’s some news about a legal victory for workers on the left coast. A federal judge has dismissed a grocery industry lawsuit that sought to block Seattle’s new law granting $4- an-hour raises to grocery store workers for the duration of the coronavirus pandemic, the Seattle Times reports. The law applies to large grocers, those with more than five hundred employees worldwide and stores larger than ten thousand square feet, in Seattle. It mandates a $4-an-hour pay boost for all workers in retail locations. And that pay boost must remain in effect for as long as Seattle remains in a declared civil emergency. The City Council passed the wage hike law unanimously in late January, the Times says, after advocacy from the United Food and Commercial Workers Local 21. Seattle City Attorney Pete Holmes, whose office defended the law, said QUOTE This is a big win for grocery store employees who have been critical and vulnerable frontline workers since the start of the pandemic ENDQUOTE. The lawsuit, filed in US District Court in Seattle, alleged the city’s law interferes with the collective-bargaining process between grocery stores and unions and also picks winners and losers by singling out large grocery companies. Holmes countered that the law is well within the city’s purview of protecting workers and regulating business. Other cities, mostly along the West Coast, including Los Angeles, Berkeley and Long Beach, California, have also recently forwarded or approved similar hazard pay boosts for grocery workers, according to the Times. Seattle has made several efforts to boost the pay of lower- wage essential workers who are often far more exposed to the virus than higher-wage office workers, many of whom have shifted to remote work. These are good ideas that more cities should copy, especially now that there’s court precedent behind them. AND NOW FOR SOME QUICKER QUICKIES: The Senate approved William Burns yesterday as director of the CIA, the New York Times reports. Burns was approved by unanimous consent in the Senate. A former ambassador in Russia and Jordan and a senior State Department official, Burns, sixty four, is the only career diplomat chosen to lead the CIA. And now he’s just another old white spy. Republican Representative Chip Roy of Texas said he had no apologies after he made what appeared to be a pro-lynching remark during a congressional hearing on combatting anti-Asian American violence, NBC News reports. In a tirade about free speech, Roy said Congress should QUOTE find all the rope in Texas and get a tall oak tree ENDQUOTE. In response, New York Democratic Representative Grace Meng said such rhetoric put a QUOTE a bull's-eye on the back of Asian Americans across this country ENDQUOTE. Indeed. ProPublica reports that nine months after racial justice protests swept across New York City and videos showed police punching, kicking and trapping demonstrators, the city agency responsible for investigating abuses has revealed the number of officers who have so far faced serious disciplinary charges. Two. One involved an officer who flashed a white power sign, and the other concerned an officer who hit a protester with a baton. Oink, I mean oy. Tanzania’s president, John Magufuli, one of Africa’s most prominent Covid-19 deniers, has died after a two-week absence from public life that prompted speculation that he had contracted the disease, the Guardian reports. He was sixty one. Magufuli denied the spread of Covid-19 in Tanzania and claimed vaccines were dangerous, suggesting instead that people pray and inhale herb-infused steam. What, no bleach injections? Trust the science! MAR 19, 2021 - AM QUICKIE HOSTS - Sam Seder & Lucie Steiner WRITER - Corey Pein PRODUCER - Dorsey Shaw EXECUTIVE PRODUCER - Brendan Finn

Welcome to Majority.FM's AM QUICKIE! Brought to you by justcoffee.coop TODAY'S HEADLINES: A group of Democratic Senators led by Bernie Sanders have introduced a bill to raise taxes on companies who overpay their executives. Members of Congress also heard testimony yesterday from an Amazon worker fighting for higher wages and better conditions. Meanwhile, President Joe Biden spoke to the fears of many Asian-Americans after the deadly mass shooting in Atlanta. Despite hemming and hawing from police, a local press report suggests there is no doubt the killer was motivated by racist hatred. And lastly, the IRS is planning to push back this year’s tax filing deadline by a full month. But the agency’s huge backlog also means delays in getting stimulus payments out to the public. THESE ARE THE STORIES YOU NEED TO KNOW: Amazon faced fresh scrutiny for its treatment of workers at a Senate hearing yesterday on income inequality, the Washington Post reports. The focus came as senators introduced a new bill to tax chief executives who make fifty times more than the median workers. Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont drilled into the gap between most Americans and billionaires during his opening remarks, pointing to data that billionaires have gained significant wealth during the pandemic. Sanders’s Tax Excessive CEO Pay Act would impose increased taxes on companies that have CEOs making significantly more than a median worker at the firm. It is also sponsored by Democratic Senators Elizabeth Warren and Edward Markey of Massachusetts, as well as Chris Van Hollen of Maryland. The bill includes stock options and awards as part of a CEO’s salaries, and if the CEO is not the highest-paid employee at the company, the equation would be based on who is. Sanders invited Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos to testify at the Budget Committee hearing, the Post reports, but he declined to appear. Jennifer Bates, an Amazon worker at the company’s warehouse in Bessemer, Alabama, testified about the unionization efforts there. Bates said the company had been holding meetings to discourage workers from joining the union, sometimes multiple times a week. Voting by mail is already underway in Alabama and will end March 29. President Joe Biden expressed support for the union late last month. Bates outlined why she believes workers need the union – to advocate for better working conditions and a higher living wage. Working at an Amazon warehouse is no easy thing, she said, adding QUOTE They seem to think you are another machine ENDQUOTE. Every worker deserves to be treated like a human. Biden Addresses Atlanta Killings President Biden yesterday addressed the spa shootings in Atlanta that left eight people dead, NBC News reports. He said he understands the concern among Asian Americans as investigators work to determine a motive. Biden said QUOTE Whatever the motivation here, I know Asian Americans, they are very concerned, because as you know I have been speaking about the brutality against Asian Americans, and it's troubling ENDQUOTE. Biden said that he had spoken on the phone yesterday with the attorney general and the FBI director and that a motive for the shootings was still being determined. A gunman shot and killed eight people at three massage spa parlors in the Atlanta area on Tuesday night, and six of the victims were women of Asian decent. Cherokee County sheriff's Captain Jay Baker said that after a brief manhunt, Robert Aaron Long, twenty one, was arrested and later confessed to the attack. According to NBC, Baker said in a news conference yesterday that Long claimed that the attack was not racially motivated. Baker said that Long told investigators that he had a sex addiction and that he saw the spas as QUOTE a temptation for him that he wanted to eliminate ENDQUOTE. But according to local Korean-language press translated by New York magazine writer E. Alex Jung, Long screamed during his attack that he would kill all the Asians. Last week we told you how anti-Asian hate crimes have spiked during the pandemic. According to a new study cited by CBS News, Asian Americans were subjected to nearly three thousand eight hundred hate incidents over the last year. Verbal harassment and shunning accounted for sixty eight percent of the incidents. Physical violence accounted for eleven percent. It’s gotta stop, and it would help if authorities didn’t dither about the perpetrators’ movitves. IRS May Delay Tax Deadline Good news for procrastinators: The Internal Revenue Service is expected to postpone the country’s tax-filing deadline to mid-May, the Washington Post reports. The agency is grappling with a backlog of twenty four million returns awaiting processing since the 2019 tax year. The workload has put the agency underwater – and under political siege – as lawmakers fret that long-unresolved troubles at the IRS could undercut the Biden administration’s economic recovery efforts. Millions of Americans still have not received some stimulus checks under prior coronavirus aid packages, even as the tax agency continued distributing payments yesterday. The IRS shared the full scope of its backlog with the House Ways and Means Committee and the agency’s own government watchdogs. The numbers, obtained by the Post, dwarf the data the IRS has shared with the public. The effects of the IRS backlog have been substantial: The delays have kept some Americans from receiving their tax refunds for months while preventing some cash-strapped workers and companies from taking advantage of some of the stimulus benefits that Congress authorized. The IRS communicated its plans to adjust the tax-filing deadline to House and Senate lawmakers yesterday. Ken Corbin, commissioner of the wage and investment division at the IRS, declined to discuss the potential changes to the tax-filing deadline during an interview with the Post yesterday. But he said the situation reflects the many, many challenges the country and agency have faced because of the virus and other more recent obstacles, including inclement weather. The delays threaten the IRS’s ability to deliver an array of new relief under the $1.9 trillion American Rescue Plan and could result in uncomfortable questions for IRS Commissioner Charles Rettig, who is set to testify before the House Ways and Means Committee today. I wonder if he’ll blame the weather, too. AND NOW FOR SOME QUICKER QUICKIES: FBI agents have arrested two organizers for the Proud Boys in Philadelphia and North Carolina, and prosecutors filed new charges against two other prominent members of the far- right group in Florida and Washington State as federal authorities continued their crackdown on its leadership ranks, the New York Times reports. Named in the indictment are Charles Donohoe, Zach Rehl, Ethan Nordean, and Joseph Biggs. They effed around and found out. Texas attorney general Ken Paxton said Griddy Energy will forgive the more than $29 million owed by customers in unpaid bills, NBC reports. As people struggled to survive the recent storm, Griddy debited enormous amounts from customer accounts, Paxton said. He had sued the company under the Texas Deceptive Trade Practices Act, and is still negotiating for relief to people who already paid their bills, which surged as high as $10,000 after the storm. The gall of these vultures! A United Nations report slammed multiple countries for flagrantly violating a global arms embargo by funneling weapons to warring sides in Libya, the Washington Post reports. A a UN-appointed panel of experts documented scores of shipments of illicit items, including drones and transport aircraft, as well as the deployment of mercenaries, to Libya’s two chief factions. Russia, Turkey, Egypt, the United Arab Emirates and others are implicated. What an awful, tragic mess. Donald Trump’s son Eric, who runs the family’s private company, touted the potential of transforming their Doral golf resort into a gambling destination, according to the Post. The business pivot comes amid a push among Florida Republicans to legalize casinos in areas of the state that have long opposed them. During Trump’s presidency, revenue at the heavily indebted club dropped steeply, falling forty four percent last year. A failing club: Sad. MAR 18, 2021 - AM QUICKIE HOSTS - Sam Seder & Lucie Steiner WRITER - Corey Pein PRODUCER - Dorsey Shaw EXECUTIVE PRODUCER - Brendan Finn

Welcome to Majority.FM's AM QUICKIE! Brought to you by justcoffee.coop TODAY'S HEADLINES: A subtle policy left in place by the Trump administration could let private interests hack up Medicare even further unless the Biden Administration steps in. Meanwhile, Europe’s wider vaccine rollout hits a major snag as new concerns over possible side-effects cause several nations to suspend use of the Astra Zeneca vaccine. Fortunately, the U.S. is mostly using Moderna and Pfizer. And lastly, new data shows that Elon Musk’s defiant reopening of Tesla factories during the pandemic could have caused hundreds of coronavirus cases among his employees. THESE ARE THE STORIES YOU NEED TO KNOW: We’ve known since well before the election that the first months, if not years of the Biden presidency will be defined by rooting out and undoing all the damage the Trump administration did in four years. As the Center for Health Journalism reports, one policy that’s flying under the radar could spell trouble for Medicare recipients, as subtly-hidden Trump-era program promises to hand off more of the nation’s only centralized healthcare program to private interests. The program is called the Geographic Direct Contracting Model, or Geo for short. Its goal is to cut costs for the government by putting Medicare patients on a semi-privatized managed care plan, rather than regular, government-run Medicare. One source told the CHJ that the Geo programs are so subtle and complex that QUOTE “someone might not know they’re in one.” endquote. But where they’ll feel it, often, is when they try to get medical care. The new model won’t necessarily raise out of pocket costs for the beneficiaries, but advocates worry that it could mean that complex health care becomes less accessible for people on the plans, similar to some of the problems people have faced on Medicare Advantage plans. All of this adds up to a system that the CHJ said could quote “potentially turn every senior into a customer of a privately-run managed care organization.” Your everyday customer may not even notice, but the insurance companies and big healthcare corporations are the ones that will make a killing on this. The big red flag is when this went into place: December 2020, right as Trump was on the way out. And due to the lack of media coverage of these small changes, advocates are worried that the Biden administration might drop the ball. Diane Archer, the president of healthcare watchdog Just Care USA, wrote in an op-ed for Common Dreams quote: “It's bad policy, a government giveaway to Wall Street, and a betrayal of the most basic principles of Medicare. The Biden administration should immediately kill this toxic legacy of the former president." Endquote. Hopefully we’ll see some movement on this soon. Europe Pauses AstraZeneca Rollout Meanwhile, problems continue to plague Europe’s vaccine rollout. On Monday, Germany, France, Italy and Spain became the latest countries to suspend use of the Astra Zeneca vaccine after unconfirmed reports of patients experiencing blood clots. Let’s be clear: the reports thus far aren’t backed up by any data or research yet, so they may be overblown. The company claims there’s no evidence of any link to an increased risk for blood clots. European authorities are doing a full assessment of the vaccine, but until that comes out they’ve paused its use. The risk, however, is that any pause to Europe’s rollout could enhance the spread of several more infectious and potentially more deadly variants of the virus. These variants are in the U.S. as well, but scientists think our vaccine rollout is on pace to head off the worst of them. The other big risk that European scientists want to avoid, is people refusing the vaccine after stories like this come out. They’re probably figuring that a short pause while they accumulate better research is the best move, rather than pushing ahead with a jumpy population that needs to get inoculated fast. This particular snag won’t hit the U.S., of course, as our primary vaccines are the Moderna, Pfizer, and Johnson and Johnson ones, which thus far have been found to be overwhelmingly safe. Mississippi, for instance, became the second state to open vaccine eligibility to every adult on Monday. Elon Musk Reopened Factories and His Workers Got Sick Tech overlord Elon Musk has had a pretty active pandemic, pushing the limits of government regulators on a national and local level alike. But at least one of his brazen decisions could have come with some serious consequences for the people who work underneath him. The Washington Post reports that Alameda County data shows that Tesla’s Bay Area production plant recorded hundreds of coronavirs cases following Musk’s defiant re-opening of the factory last May. Musk famously dared local officials to arrest him and re-opened facilities in defiance of stay-at-home orders early last year, and this is what he got. The ​_Post_ ​reports that the data shows 450 reported cases among the plant’s 10,000 workers between May and December. That’s only 4.5 percent of the workers of course, but it shows exactly what acceptable casualties were for the richest man in the world. Tesla was required to report its cases to the county, but the data stayed under wraps until it was unearthed by a legal transparency website earlier this year. On Monday, Musk announced that he had official changed his job title at Tesla to, and I quote, “the Technoking of Tesla,” making his CFO the “master of coin” on official SEC filings. The guy clearly would rather make epic internet jokes than protect his workers, which is about what we should expect from him at this point. AND NOW FOR SOME QUICKER QUICKIES: The Senate confirmed Deb Haaland, Joe Biden’s pick for Interior Secretary, by a 51 to 40 vote on Monday. Haaland was by far the most progressive pick for the post and will be the first Native interior secretary of the U.S. The Washington Post reports that the fencing around the U.S. Capitol put up after the January 6 riots will start to come down and the National Guard presence will decrease in the coming weeks, after finding no quote “credible threat” against Congress. It only took, what, two full months since Inauguration for them to demilitarize the capitol? CIA officials overseas are pissed at their superiors, the Intercept reports, after the U.S.’s lead spy agency vaccinated most of its Langley, Virginia staff in early January, while foreign bureaus are still trying to find supply of the vaccine for their members. And finally, the Guardian reports that noted fascist Steve Bannon has finally lost a years-long legal battle to set up a right wing political academy in an 800-year-old church in Italy. Darn! Real bummer for the whole world on that one. MAR 16, 2021 - AM QUICKIE HOSTS - Sam Seder & Lucie Steiner WRITER - Jack Crosbie PRODUCER - Dorsey Shaw EXECUTIVE PRODUCER - Brendan Finn

Welcome to Majority.FM's AM QUICKIE! Brought to you by justcoffee.coop TODAY'S HEADLINES: Joe Biden wanted you to know how much he’s accomplished in his first fifty days in office, so he gave a speech about it. He promised an accelerated coronavirus vaccination schedule, a new website to book appointments, and hope for normalcy by July 4th. Meanwhile, all across the country, Democratic efforts to expand voting rights are running up against the Republican campaign to restrict the vote. GOP-sponsored bills in thirty three states take aim at early or absentee voting, to give just one example. And lastly, the House of Representatives has again passed two bills that would expand background checks for gun purchases. Supporters say getting the bills through the Senate is not only a political but a moral imperative. THESE ARE THE STORIES YOU NEED TO KNOW: Keep an eye on your balance. The next batch of stimulus checks will be deposited into some bank accounts this weekend, the White House said yesterday, according to NBC News. At a press briefing after President Biden signed the American Rescue Plan yesterday afternoon, White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki said people can expect to start seeing direct deposits hit their bank accounts as early as this weekend. She said the checks are the first wave and that payments will continue to flow over the next several weeks. The majority of recipients will get a direct payment of up to $1,400. Married couples who make under $150,000 will receive $2,800. Higher earners will see payments phase out and then cut off above certain incomes. Parents who meet income eligibility requirements will get $1,400 per dependent. You know, they should do this every month. Now that would be a real relief. Biden addressed the country last night in his first televised prime-time address since moving into the White House, and one year since the pandemic shutdowns began. The big headline is that he is directing states to make all adults eligible to be vaccinated against the coronavirus by no later than May 1. He acknowledged the pandemic has extracted a terrible cost from the psyche of us all. He said the wave of hate crimes targeting Asian-Americans must stop. And he sought to reassure Americans that things could begin to return to something like normal by the Fourth of July. Biden called on Americans to do their part by wearing masks and getting vaccinated. He said QUOTE If we don’t stay vigilant, and the conditions change, we may have to reinstate restrictions to get back on track... This is not the time to let up. ENDQUOTE. Just keep that relief coming. Republicans Attack Voting Rights The GOP’s national push to enact hundreds of new election restrictions could strain every available method of voting for tens of millions of Americans, potentially amounting to the most sweeping contraction of ballot access in the United States since the end of Reconstruction, a Washington Post analysis has found. In forty-three states across the country, Republican lawmakers have proposed at least two hundred and fifty laws that would limit voting with such constraints as stricter ID requirements, limited hours or narrower eligibility to vote absentee, according to the nonpartisan Brennan Center for Justice. The measures are likely to disproportionately affect those in cities and Black voters in particular. The rush to crack down on voting methods comes after many states temporarily expanded mail and early voting in 2020 because of the coronavirus pandemic, leading to the largest voter turnout in more than a century, the Post reports. In many states, Democrats are trying to make those expansions permanent – and broaden voting access in other ways. Republican state legislators, meanwhile, echoing Donald Trump’s false claims that the election was stolen from him, are pushing hard in the other direction. Many of the most restrictive proposals have surfaced in states where the GOP has a total hold on power, including Arizona, Georgia, South Carolina, Missouri and Florida. Limits to early or absentee voting are the most common measures among the proposed restrictions, with such bills on the table in thirty three states, the Post reports. Democratic elections lawyer Marc Elias said long lines will be the story of 2022 unless something is done. He added QUOTE this is now the defining feature of the Republican Party... They don’t run on economic issues, or even social issues. They run on shrinking the vote ENDQUOTE. It’s the only way they can win. House Passes Gun Control Bills Democrats continue to test what’s possible with their narrow control of Congress. The House of Representatives passed a pair of bills yesterday that would expand background checks for gun purchases, which Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer vowed to put to a vote, NBC reports. One of the bills would require background checks on nearly all gun purchases, including transactions involving unlicensed or private sellers. The measure, sponsored by California Democratic Representative Mike Thompson, chairman of the House Gun Violence Prevention Task Force, advanced with support from eight Republicans, including Vern Buchanan, Carlos Gimenez and Maria Salazar of Florida, and opposition from one Democrat, Jared Golden, of Maine. The other measure would aim to close the Charleston loophole, which allows the sale of a firearm to proceed if a background check isn’t completed within three days, by expanding the review period to ten days. The bill was sponsored by House Majority Whip Jim Clyburn of South Carolina, who first introduced it after the June 2015 mass shooting at Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston. The House passed both gun-control bills in February 2019, but the Republican majority blocked them in the Senate, according to NBC. Democrats said there's public support for background checks for gun purchases. House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jerry Nadler of New York said the two bills would save many thousands of lives. For that reason, he said QUOTE we have a moral duty to pass it. We have a political duty to pass it given the polling. And if Republicans stand in the way, they'll pay a price both morally and politically ENDQUOTE. Schumer said that the last time they were passed, the bills landed in then- Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell’s legislative graveyard – but that time is now over. Let’s see how the Senate vote goes. AND NOW FOR SOME QUICKER QUICKIES: New York Governor Andrew Cuomo’s grip on power appeared increasingly threatened yesterday as a majority of state legislators called for his resignation, Democrats launched an impeachment investigation and police in the state capital said they stood ready to investigate a groping allegation, the Associated Press reports. The Times Union of Albany reported that an aide claimed Cuomo reached under her shirt and fondled her late last year. Cuomo said he never touched anyone inappropriately. Sure, guy. United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres made an urgent appeal yesterday for $5.5 billion to prevent a catastrophe for thirty four million people in over three dozen countries who are just one step away from famine driven by conflict, the Associated Press reports. Two hundred and seventy million people are facing a hunger crisis this year. For comparison: eight of the biggest food and drink companies paid out over $18 billion to shareholders last year. A hate crimes bill in South Carolina no longer protects gay or transgender people after a Republican leader said including them would likely lead members of his party to withdraw their support, the AP reports. Supporters of the bill as originally written questioned the worth of a hate crimes law that doesn’t include gay and transgender people, who they say are among those most in need of protection. Once again, keeping Republicans comfortable means pain, misery, and injustice for everyone else. Prince William yesterday became the first British royal to directly defend his family against accusations of racism made by his sister-in-law Meghan, Duchess of Sussex, and her husband Prince Harry in their interview with Oprah Winfrey, per CBS News. William told journalists that the royals are QUOTE very much not a racist family ENDQUOTE. Remind us where you got all that gold and jewels, mate? MAR 12, 2021 - AM QUICKIE HOSTS - Sam Seder & Lucie Steiner WRITER - Corey Pein PRODUCER - Dorsey Shaw EXECUTIVE PRODUCER - Brendan Finn

Welcome to Majority.FM's AM QUICKIE! Brought to you by justcoffee.coop TODAY'S HEADLINES: An international dispute highlights how little wealthy countries are contributing to the vaccination effort outside their borders. Poor nations could be waiting years to catch up. Meanwhile, the feds are honing in on members of two extremist groups, the Oath Keepers and the Proud Boys, as they prosecute the Capitol insurrectionists. Newly revealed messages show the groups’ plans for violence were both detailed and ambitious. And lastly, a journalist in Iowa was acquited yesterday after being arrested and charged for doing her job covering a protest last summer. Press freedom groups are hailing the verdict. THESE ARE THE STORIES YOU NEED TO KNOW: Are rich countries hoarding vaccines? The Washington Post reports that the European Union is defending itself against accusations of vaccine nationalism, highlighting its role in producing coronavirus vaccines for export and calling out the United States and Britain for not similarly sharing with the world. The EU came under heavy criticism after member Italy blocked the export of two hundred and fifty thousand AstraZeneca doses to Australia last week, citing vaccine shortages and delayed supplies. But now the EU is emphasizing that just one shipment was held back, while two hundred and fifty seven others have gone out. European Council President Charles Michel contrasted the European approach with that in the United States and Britain, which he singled out for having QUOTE imposed an outright ban on the export of vaccines ENDQUOTE. The EU, the United States and Britain have all invested heavily in coronavirus vaccine research and development, according to the Post. They are also key backers of Covax, a program co-led by the World Health Organization that primarily aims to secure equitable access to vaccines for poorer nations. President Joe Biden last month pledged $4 billion to the program over the next years – more than any other nation has vowed to donate. Still, high-income countries have so far bought up the majority of available vaccine doses, purchasing fifty five percent of coronavirus vaccine supplies worldwide, even though they represent only sixteen percent of the global population, according to data collected by Duke University. Some poorer nations may still have to wait years for sufficient supplies. Separately, the Post reports, President Biden announced yesterday that his administration will secure an additional one hundred million doses of the single-shot vaccine developed by Johnson and Johnson. Hopefully as production increases the poor aren’t left unvaccinated and vulnerable, not to mention contagious. Prosecutors Expose Insurrectionist Plots This Associated Press story brings us new details on the Capitol insurrection. Members of the Oath Keepers and the Proud Boys that traveled to Washington along with thousands of other Trump supporters weren’t whipped into an impulsive frenzy by Donald Trump on January 6th, officials say. They’d been laying attack plans. And their internal communications show how authorities are trying to build a case that small cells hidden within the masses mounted an organized, military-style assault on the heart of American democracy. The Proud Boys and the Oath Keepers make up a fraction of the more than three hundred Trump supporters charged so far in the siege, the AP reports. But several of their leaders, members and associates have become the central targets of the Justice Department’s sprawling investigation. It could mean more serious criminal charges for some rioters. The Oath Keepers began readying for violence as early as last November, authorities say. Communications show the group discussing logistics, weapons and training, including two days of wargames. Hours after the siege, Oath Keepers associate Thomas Caldwell was already talking about another attack. Caldwell said in a message to a friend QUOTE If we’d had guns I guarantee we would have killed one hundred politicians. They ran off and were spirited away through their underground tunnels like the rats they were ENDQUOTE. Nine people linked to the Oath Keepers have been indicted on charges that they planned and coordinated with one another in the siege, according to the AP. At least eleven leaders, members or associates of the Proud Boys charged in the riots are accused by the Justice Department of participating in a coordinated attack. Several from both groups remain in federal custody while awaiting trial. Trump may have escaped accountability, but his loyal minions may not be so lucky. Reporter Beats Police Rap Andrea Sahouri, the Iowa journalist who was arrested as she reported on racial justice protests last summer, was found not guilty in a case that drew widespread condemnation from free press organizations, USA Today reports. Sahouri, a Des Moines Register reporter, was acquitted yesterday of both misdemeanor charges against her, failure to disperse and interference with official acts. Both carried up to thirty days in jail. Sahouri, who covers public safety, was on assignment May 31 at a protest. Sahouri was with her then- boyfriend, Spenser Robnett, who was there for her safety. Robnett was also acquitted of both charges. Sahouri said QUOTE I’m thankful to the jury for doing the right thing. Their decision upholds freedom of the press and justice in our democracy ENDQUOTE. Sahouri testified Tuesday that she was a journalist on assignment determined to cover the historic protests unfolding in Des Moines, USA Today reports. She said she immediately identified herself as a reporter when first approached by the officer who arrested her. But she was pepper sprayed and handcuffed after the officer told her, QUOTE That's not what I asked ENDQUOTE. Prosecutors with the Polk County Attorney's Office tried to cast the case narrowly, according to USA Today. They said Sahouri's status as a journalist reporting on the scene was not relevant to whether she committed the acts. According to the US Press Freedom Tracker, Sahouri was one of just over a dozen reporters still facing charges for their arrests during the summer protests. More than one hundred and twenty reporters were arrested or detained in 2020, but in most cases, prosecutors dropped the charges. Let this verdict be a lesson to them that the free press is no pushover. AND NOW FOR SOME QUICKER QUICKIES: The Senate voted to confirm Merrick Garland yesterday to serve as attorney general. Garland was confirmed seventy to thirty by senators. He is expected to be sworn in at the Justice Department today. Separately, the Senate voted sixty six to thirty four to confirm Ohio Representative Marcia Fudge as secretary of housing and urban development. She is the first black woman to lead the agency in more than forty years. House Democrats have approved a bill that would provide protections for workers trying to organize, NPR reports. Union leaders say the PRO Act would begin to level a playing field that is unfairly tilted toward big business. Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders called on the Senate to pass the bill, saying QUOTE It was the trade union movement that built the middle class, and it will be the trade union movement that will rebuild the middle class once again ENDQUOTE. A former employee of a Panda Express in Santa Clarita, California alleges she was required to strip down to her underwear and hug a partially clad co-worker during a cult-like ritual at a training seminar, the Orange County Register reports. Oscar Ramirez, the woman’s attorney, said she is suing to send a message that Panda Express must stop requiring its employees to undergo horrific psychological abuse and harassment to be promoted. Sounds bad, even by the standards of corporate America. China and Russia have agreed to jointly build a research station on the moon, the Washington Post reports. The lunar base will be open to all interested international partners, according to a statement from the China National Space Administration. The announcement did not give a target date for when the station will be complete. If I were betting, I’d say before Elon Musk gets to Mars. MAR 11, 2021 - AM QUCKIE HOSTS - Sam Seder & Lucie Steiner WRITER - Corey Pein PRODUCER - Dorsey Shaw EXECUTIVE PRODUCER - Brendan Finn

Welcome to Majority.FM's AM QUICKIE! Brought to you by justcoffee.coop TODAY'S HEADLINES: Hate crimes were down overall last year across America, with a glaring exception. Asian-Americans were increasingly targeted for violence and abuse. Meanwhile, a new study puts sobering numbers on a global problem: violence against women. There are new calls for men to step up and end it. And lastly, Harry and Meghan’s big interview with Oprah could hasten the unraveling of the British Commonwealth. Don’t say they never did anything meaningful! THESE ARE THE STORIES YOU NEED TO KNOW: Hate has festered across America. NBC News reports that an analysis of police department statistics has revealed that the United States experienced a significant hike in anti-Asian hate crimes last year across major cities. The analysis was released by the Center for the Study of Hate and Extremism at California State University, San Bernardino, this month. It examined hate crimes in sixteen of America’s largest cities. It revealed that while such crimes in 2020 decreased overall by seven percent, those targeting Asian people rose by nearly one hundred and fifty percent. Experts said Donald Trump’s incendiary, racist rhetoric about the coronavirus played a role, but they also noted the problem is complex. According to NBC, the analysis revealed a surge in cities such as New York, where anti-Asian hate crimes rose from three in 2019 to twenty eight in 2020. Los Angeles and Boston also experienced notable rises, from seven to fifteen and six to fourteen, respectively. According to the analysis, it's likely that overall hate crimes declined due to the pandemic and a subsequent lack of interaction in public areas and other gathering places. The first spike in anti-Asian hate crimes occurred in March and April last year. However, it occurred alongside a rise in Covid-19 cases and ongoing negative associations of Asian Americans with the virus. NBC notes that the new report compares figures from 2019 and 2020, which does not include recent graphic attacks on Asian American elders earlier this year that have prompted significant media coverage in recent weeks. The longer this trend continues, the less blame can be heaped exclusively on Trump and his hateful legacy. One-Third Of Women Suffer Violence The numbers are horrifying. One in four women and girls around the world have been physically or sexually assaulted by a husband or male partner, the Guardian reports. The statistics come from the largest study yet of the prevalence of violence against women. The report, conducted by the World Health Organization and UN partners, found that domestic violence started young, with a quarter of fifteen- to nineteen-year-old women estimated to have been abused at least once in their lives. The highest rates were found to be among thirty- to thirty nine-year-olds. When figures for non-partner violence are included, the WHO estimates that about a third of women aged fifteen or older – up to eight hundred and fifty two million in total – will experience some form of sexual or physical violence in their lifetime. The WHO report focused on physical and sexual violence, but noted that actual rates would be far higher if other types of abuse were included, such as online violence and sexual harassment. Levels of violence were higher in low- and middle-income countries, the Guardian reports. South Asia and sub-Saharan Africa had some of the highest rates of intimate partner violence. The lowest rates of violence were found in southern and eastern Europe and central and eastern Asia. Doctor Claudia García-Moreno, who leads the WHO’s work on violence against women, said the figures should be a wake-up call to governments about the urgency of the situation. She said QUOTE There’s an urgent need to reduce stigma around this issue, train health professionals to interview survivors with compassion, and dismantle the foundations of gender inequality ENDQUOTE. Fundamentally, she said, violence against women had to be treated as a societal problem, with men and boys involved in tackling it. That’s a polite way of putting it. It’s all men’s fault! Commonwealth Sours On Monarchy The sun may finally set on what’s left of the British Empire, per this story from the Washington Post. On Monday, former British colonies from Antigua to Zambia observed Commonwealth Day, an occasion traditionally marked by addresses from the British royal family. But this year’s celebration was overshadowed by Oprah Winfrey’s explosive interview with Harry and Meghan, the Duke and Duchess of Sussex, which unfurled new allegations of racism against members of the royal family. The tell-all has ignited fresh debates about abolishing the monarchy in some of the fifty four nations that make up the commonwealth. Calls to remove the vestiges of a colonial past have gained momentum over the past year, fueled by protests against racism and oppression worldwide. Now some politicians have been forced to address whether it still makes sense to retain Queen Elizabeth II as a figurehead. Some of the loudest calls to sever ties with the monarchy have come from Australia, the Post reports. Members of Australia’s Labor Party have expressed hopes that the explosive interview will reignite the decades-old movement to make Australia a republic. Even before the interview aired, former British colonies in the Caribbean were growing increasingly queasy about their lingering ties to a nation that built its wealth through the slave trade. In September, Barbados announced plans to remove Queen Elizabeth II as its head of state. Meanwhile, support for a break with the monarchy is growing in Canada, where a February poll found record levels of support for removing the queen as head of state. But achieving that goal would be a challenge, since all ten provincial legislatures would need to get on board. Similarly, a symbolic split with the monarchy seems unlikely to occur in New Zealand anytime soon. When will the royals get real jobs? AND NOW FOR SOME QUICKER QUICKIES: The House is poised to approve a sweeping $1.9 trillion coronavirus relief bill today and send it to President Joe Biden to sign, according to the Washington Post. Final passage comes ahead of a prime-time speech Biden is planning for Thursday to mark the one-year anniversary of the nation plunging into widespread shutdowns. So, not a happy anniversary. The arduous task of seating a jury in the trial of Derek Chauvin, the former Minneapolis police officer charged in George Floyd’s death, began in earnest yesterday, the Post reports. Both sides agreed to dismiss sixteen of the first fifty jurors they reviewed for cause based on their answers to a sixteen-page questionnaire. No reasons were given. Maybe they expressed an opinion about the police. Arkansas Governor Asa Hutchinson yesterday signed into law legislation banning nearly all abortions in the state, a sweeping measure that supporters hope will force the US Supreme Court to revisit its landmark Roe versus Wade decision, the Associated Press reports. Abortion rights supporters said they plan to challenge the ban in court. Arkansas is one of at least fourteen states where legislators have proposed outright abortion bans this year. Yipes. The House Democrats’ campaign arm is officially ending its controversial ban on political consultants who work with candidates challenging sitting Democratic incumbents in primaries, Politico reports. New York Representative Sean Patrick Maloney, the newly installed chair of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, officially reversed the policy yesterday morning. Fellow New York Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez said QUOTE It's an enormous win ENDQUOTE. Hear hear. May the next class of Democrats be more progressive than the last. MAR 10, 2021 - AM QUICKIE HOSTS - Sam Seder & Lucie Steiner WRITER - Corey Pein PRODUCER - Dorsey Shaw EXECUTIVE PRODUCER - Brendan Finn

Welcome to Majority.FM's AM QUICKIE! Brought to you by justcoffee.coop TODAY'S HEADLINES: The number of migrant children detained at the U.S. border has tripled in the past two weeks, filling adult detention facilities as places in slightly-more-human shelters run out fast. If this is the new normal, it looks a lot like the old one. Meanwhile, Republican politicians start their legal onslaught against the Biden administration, as a dozen state attorneys general filed suit challenging an executive order regarding climate change. And lastly, DSA-backed candidates pull off a rout in the Nevada Democratic Party -- and establishment leaders threw a fit and took their ball home, quitting en mass rather than supporting the new progressive leadership. THESE ARE THE STORIES YOU NEED TO KNOW: President Biden is already facing a major immigration crisis, as the New York Times reports that the number of migrant children in federal custody has tripled in the past two weeks -- and his administration’s officials aren’t keeping up. The Times reports that immigration authorities have detained more than 3,250 children who crossed the border unaccompanied in the past two weeks. And instead of placing them in shelters, documents obtained by the Times show that more than 1,360 of the children have been detained in jail facilities. The law only permits children to spend 72 hours in federal detention before they have to be transferred to a shelter, and the documents show that the government is blowing right past that. Homeland security, which operates the jails, is blaming Health and Human services, which operates the shelters, saying that the latter has been slow to pick kids up. But either way, you’ve got children on the border being shuffled between one dismal situation and another perhaps slightly-less dismal one. It’s worth noting that adults and families are still largely being turned away en masse under pandemic restrictions. Unaccompanied children, however, are detained. None of this is humane, and all of it needs a fix. If Biden is committed to being a better leader than his predecessor, he’s got to take decisive action soon. GOP Starts Legal Onslaught on Biden The GOP’s legal gameplan against the Biden administration is kicking into gear. On Monday, a group of 12 attorneys general from Republican-led states filed suit against the administration challenging an executive order that biden sent instructing the federal government to analyze the social costs of greenhouse gas emission. The executive order itself was relatively mundane: signed on Biden’s first day in office, it basically audited where the federal government was at on climate change and reaffirmed Biden’s pledge to quote “advance environmental justice.” Endquote. In response, the GOP singled out a single section, which established a working group comprised of the OMB head and several cabinet members tasked with looking at the social costs of various greenhouse gas emissions. The Republican Attorney General gang jumped at that as some overreach of federal power, writing in their lawsuit that the directive was a threat to separation of powers and quoting an absurd Supreme Court dissent by Antonin Scalia. Quote:“Frequently,” a threat to the separation of powers “will come before the Court clad, so to speak, in sheep’s clothing.... But this wolf comes as a wolf.” Endquote. Clearly, these dudes are, shall we say, high on their own supply. But the legal tactic could represent a real hangup for the Biden administration, which is sure to get an avalanche of similar tactics as the GOP looks to derail his agenda at least as much as liberal lawsuits were able to forestall some of Trump’s most destructive actions. It doesn’t even matter if most of these cases fail or get thrown out -- if even one gets upheld or ruled in their favor, it’s a win for the GOP. And meanwhile, it costs the federal government time and money to be defending itself at every turn. This is how politics works now, so we better get used to it -- and hope that Biden’s lawyers are better at their jobs than Trump’s were. Progressives Take Over Nevada Democratic Party In case that last story convinced you that the GOP was the only party capable of throwing weird temper tantrums, you won’t believe what we’ve got next. In Nevada, the entire staff of the state democratic party quit this weekend, largely in protest to a slate of Democratic Socialist-backed progressive candidates sweeping internal leadership elections. The Intercept reports that on Saturday, a coalition of progressive candidates backed by the local chapter of the DSA took over all five party leadership elections in the Nevada Democratic Party. In response, party leadership pre-emptively moved $450,000 out of the party’s larger war chest into separate accounts controlled by the establishment-led Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, and then quit en masse. The background drama behind all this is a bit more complicated to parse, involving multiple factions that supported Bernie Sanders and the tightly-controlled old guard of the state’s party that was run by former Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, but the Intercept has the details. Judith Whitmer, the progressive who is now the new chair of the Nevada Democratic Party said quote: “We weren’t really surprised, in that we were prepared for it. But what hit us by surprise was the willingness to just walk away, instead of working with us.” Let’s hope that at some point, an adult in the room of the national party decides to give their new progressive colleagues a more friendly welcome. AND NOW FOR SOME QUICKER QUICKIES: Some encouraging news from Brazil, where the Supreme Court invalidated the criminal convictions of former President Lula da Silva. Da Silva is now eligible to challenge fascist Jair [JAI-YEER] Bolsonaro in 2022, and could have pretty substantial support, as he was leading the country’s polls when he was convicted in 2018. The first major poll of the New York City mayoral race has a familiar face out ahead. Andrew Yang leads all contenders with 32 percent, 13 points clear of his nearest challenger, former NYPD officer Eric Adams. The trial of Andrea Sahouri [SA-HOO-REE], a Des Moines Register reporter arrested while doing her job covering the Black Lives Matter protests last summer, began on Monday. The prosecution is trying to obscure the fact that Sahouri was actively reporting during her arrest, and throwing the book at her regardless, setting a dangerous precedent for reporters working during civil unrest in the future. And finally, Congress has a new frontrunner in its always-entertaining “biggest Nazi” competition, after Arizona Rep. Paul Gosar tweeted out a white nationalist group’s slogan on Sunday, a few days after speaking at their convention outside of CPAC. Seems like a great guy! MAR 9, 2021 - AM QUICKIE HOSTS - Sam Seder & Lucie Steiner WRITER - Jack Crosbie PRODUCER - Dorsey Shaw EXECUTIVE PRODUCER - Brendan Finn

Welcome to Majority.FM's AM QUICKIE! Brought to you by justcoffee.coop TODAY'S HEADLINES: Centrist Democrats in the Senate have convinced Joe Biden to limit how many people will qualify for direct $1,400 payments in his pandemic relief bill. But progressive members of Congress are still pushing for expanded eligibility. Meanwhile, a new study shows how hard the nonprofit sector has been hit by the economic fallout of the pandemic. For smaller arts organizations in particular, the news is very bad. And lastly, a hate crimes bill has been introduced in the Wyoming legislature. It’s one of three or four states that still don’t have such a law on the books. THESE ARE THE STORIES YOU NEED TO KNOW: Here’s what’s new with the incredible shrinking pandemic relief bill. President Biden has agreed to narrow eligibility for a new round of $1,400 stimulus payments in his $1.9 trillion coronavirus relief bill, under pressure from moderate Senate Democrats, the Washington Post reports. Biden and Senate Democratic leaders are scrambling to keep their caucus united since they cannot lose a single Democrat in the fifty-fifty Senate with Republicans united against the legislation. The Post reports that under the changes agreed to by Biden and Senate Democratic leadership, individuals earning $75,000 per year and couples earning $150,000 would still receive the full $1,400-per-person benefit. However, the benefit would disappear for individuals earning more than $80,000 annually and couples earning more than $160,000. That means singles making between $80,000 and $100,000 and couples earning between $160,000 and $200,000 would be newly excluded from a partial benefit under the revised structure Biden agreed to. About twelve million fewer adults and five million fewer kids would get the stimulus payments under the new Biden-Senate compromise. Centrist Senate Democrats had initially pushed for even more aggressive restrictions on the stimulus payments, according to the Post. Senior Democratic officials had at one point considered dropping the full benefit for those making more than $50,000 per year, a change they ultimately abandoned after a backlash led by Senate Finance Chair Ron Wyden of Oregon and Senate Budget Chair Bernie Sanders of Vermont. Presuming the Senate passes the package later this week, it would still have to go back to the House for final approval. Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York said QUOTE I don’t understand the political or economic wisdom in allowing Trump to give more people relief checks than a Democratic administration ENDQUOTE. AOC, you are not alone there. Many Nonprofits Face Closure Here are some more stark numbers for you. More than one-third of US nonprofits are in jeopardy of closing within two years because of the financial harm inflicted by the pandemic, the Associated Press reports. That figure comes from a study released yesterday by the philanthropy research group Candid and the Center for Disaster Philanthropy. The study’s findings underscore the perils for nonprofits and charities whose financial needs have escalated over the past year, well in excess of the donations that most have received. The researchers analyzed how roughly three hundred thousand nonprofits would fare under twenty scenarios of varying severity, the AP reports. The worst-case scenario led to the closings of thirty eight percent of the nonprofits. Even the scenarios seen as more realistic resulted in closures well into double digit percentages. Among the most vulnerable nonprofits, the study said, are those involved in arts and entertainment, which depend on ticket sales for most of their revenue, cannot significantly their reduce expenses and don’t typically hold much cash. Other studies have concluded that smaller arts and culture groups, in particular, are at serious risk. Californians for the Arts, for example, surveyed arts and culture nonprofits in the state and found that about sixty four percent had shrunk their workforces. And a report last week from New York State Comptroller Thomas DiNapoli found that employment in New York City’s arts, entertainment and recreation sector tumbled sixty six percent during 2020. The AP says that while arts and entertainment groups may be at particular risk, nonprofits from all sectors are in danger. According to the study, the District of Columbia was expected to lose the most nonprofits per capita, followed by Vermont and North Dakota. We’re gonna need a bigger relief bill to save this sector of the economy. Wyoming Tackles Hate Crimes Progress moves slowly but it is still moving. Wyoming lawmakers on Tuesday introduced a bill aimed at combating hate crimes in the state, CBS News reports. It is one of three remaining states with no laws against bias-motivated crimes on its books. The move comes after a push by advocates in the state where gay college student Matthew Shepard was killed in 1998. More than two decades later, Wyoming remains without a hate crimes law even though the 2009 federal anti-hate crime law bears Shepard's name. Though Wyoming's tagline is The Equality State, named so for being the first to grant women the right to vote, the state is known to many outsiders for Shepard's brutal murder. Shepard's mother Judy Shepard told CBS News that while she was traveling several years ago wearing a Wyoming shirt, she was asked, Isn't that where that gay kid was murdered? Pressure has been increasing on lawmakers in Wyoming and the two other states that remain without hate crime legislation – South Carolina and Arkansas, where bills have been introduced. Some advocates also include Indiana on the list of states without hate crime laws, calling a law passed in that state in 2019 problematically broad. Some similar laws in other states mandate enhanced sentences for those convicted of a crime motivated by bias. Wyoming's proposed legislation, however, would not mandate enhanced sentences. CBS reports that the bill will likely be assigned to the legislature's judiciary committee, where a hearing is expected in the coming weeks, said Democratic Representative Cathy Connolly, a co-sponsor of the bill. While questions remain to be hashed out – including over the scope of incidents that law enforcement should be required to report – Connolly said the introduction of the bill is a big deal. Especially for marginalized people in The Equality State. AND NOW FOR SOME QUICKER QUICKIES: In his first public remarks since a sexual harassment scandal enveloped his administration, Governor Andrew Cuomo said yesterday that he was embarrassed by his actions and apologized, but said that he would not resign, the New York Times reports. He also said he has learned, adding QUOTE I will be the better for this experience ENDQUOTE. Well then, congratulations are in order! The far-right party Alternative für Deutschland will be spied on by Germany’s intelligence agency under suspicion of posing a threat to democracy, the Guardian reports. It is currently the largest opposition party in parliament. The state intel agency is now able by law to monitor the phones of AfD members and spy on its activities as a suspected extreme rightwing organisation. Suspected? Surely it’s confirmed by now. The Department of Homeland Security and the FBI sent a joint intelligence bulletin to law enforcement agencies late Tuesday warning that some domestic groups have discussed plans to take control of the US Capitol and remove Democratic lawmakers on or about March 4 – today – according to NBC News. Also yesterday, the Capitol Police said it has uncovered a possible plot to breach the Capitol by a militia group. The House canceled its session today out of caution. Supporters of the QAnon conspiracy theory have set this as the date they believe Donald Trump will return to office. Good luck with that, jabronis. Myanmar security forces dramatically escalated their crackdown on protests against last month’s coup, killing at least thirty-four protesters yesterday in several cities, according to the AP. That is highest daily death toll since the February 1st takeover. Videos from yesterday also showed security forces firing slingshots at demonstrators, chasing them down and even brutally beating an ambulance crew. Solidarity with the people of Myanmar. That’s all for the AM Quickie. Join us this afternoon on the Majority Report. MAR 4, 2021 - AM QUICKIE HOSTS - Sam Seder & Lucie Steiner WRITER - Corey Pein PRODUCER - Dorsey Shaw EXECUTIVE PRODUCER - Brendan Finn

Welcome to Majority.FM's AM QUICKIE! Brought to you by justcoffee.coop TODAY'S HEADLINES: The Biden Administration announced that there will be enough available coronavirus vaccine for every adult in the country by May, though it will take a bit longer than that to actually get every shot in someone’s arm. Meanwhile, Texas governor Greg Abbot declares a full re-opening of his state and a repeal of the universal mask mandate, basically ensuring that health officials worst nightmares come true for the next few months. And lastly, a lawyer who partly inspired California’s extremely worker-hostile Proposition 22 finds a new job: in the Biden Administration as a senior advisor on labor issues. Great! THESE ARE THE STORIES YOU NEED TO KNOW: The vaccine tidal wave is here. Thanks to the quick approval of the one-shot Johnson and Johnson vaccine and increased supply of the already-approved Pfizer and Moderna vaccines, President Biden announced on Tuesday that the country was on track to have enough vaccine for every adult American by the end of May. That doesn’t mean we’ll all have our shots by then, of course, but it means that distribution will be the only problem to solve, not supply. The Administration claims that it helped create the new rush of doses by brokering a partnership between Johnson and Johnson and fellow big pharma giant Merck, which failed to develop a vaccine of its own but still has the capabilities to manufacture millions of doses. The prior target for this step was the end of July, so it’s clear that the administration feels pretty confident in moving up its timetable. The numbers so far aren’t overwhelming, but they’re definitely something: so far, about 51.7 million people had received at least one dose of a coronavirus vaccine, and 26.1 million are fully inoculated. The best case scenario is that the U.S. ends up with a massive surplus of vaccines this summer, and can start donating them to other countries in need. But on the other hand, we may need more for booster shots if virus resistant variants of the disease continue to circulate. Either way, the supply looks like it’s coming in. Abbott Reopens Texas to Death But as the country takes some steps forward on a national level, the GOP establishment in Texas is determined to take as many massive steps backward as possible. On Tuesday, Texas Governor Greg Abbott announced a quote “full reopening” of the state and a full lifting of the statewide mask mandate, effective March 10. That means every business will be allowed to reopen at full capacity and no one will be required to wear masks. Here’s his tweet, quote: I just announced Texas is OPEN 100%. EVERYTHING. Endquote. That’s everything in all caps, just in case it wasn’t Texas enough for you. Abbot’s plan is exactly what the experts we mentioned in yesterday’s quickie were afraid of. In a follow-up tweet, Abbot cited the state’s increasing vaccination rates and low positivity and hospitalization rates as justification for the move. The irony of course is that his decision will almost certainly send those rates skyrocketing again, but he’s clearly betting that the political goodwill he’ll get from the state’s conservative establishment will make it all worth it. Gilberto Hinojosa, the state’s Democratic party chairman, summed it up bluntly, saying quote: “What Abbott is doing is extraordinarily dangerous. This will kill Texans. Our country’s infectious disease specialists have warned that we should not put our guard down, even as we make progress towards vaccinations. Abbott doesn’t care.” Endquote. He’s right. Abbott is wrong. And once again, it’s the people of Texas who will suffer. Biden Hires Labor Lackey And finally, one more story of a bad Biden administration hiring. It’s been a few days since we had one of those! Here we go. On Tuesday, Bloomberg reported that Biden had hired Former Obama Labor Department official Seth Harris top adviser on labor issues. For people not tracking the minutiae of every hiring and firing in Washington, this news might not mean that much. But Harris is a name every person concerned with the future of workers’ rights in this country should know. That’s because after working in the Department of Labor under Obama, he departed for the far more lucrative private sector, landing at the law firm Dentons, which counts on its list of clients little mom and pop companies like, say, Walmart. Bloomberg’s report cited top labor leaders like AFL-CIO president Richard Trumpka saying positive things about Harris, but the disappointing bits of his record are still pretty hard to swallow. For instance: Harris’s best-known act in the past few years is a 2015 paper he wrote for the Hamilton Project on quote “modernizing labor laws for twenty-first century work” by creating a new class of workers that weren’t employees or independent contractors, but something in between. That paper went on to be positively cited by ridesharing giants Uber and Lyft in their celebration of the passage of Proposition 22, the California law that made it so gig workers in the state would receive a pittance of benefits, just enough that they wouldn’t be entitled to the full protections of an actual employee. Let’s hope that his advice to the most pro-labor president of our lifetimes is a little better than that last idea! AND NOW FOR SOME QUICKER QUICKIES: An internal Justice Department document obtained by the Intercept reveals that Donald Trump referred a whopping 334 internal leaks to the FBI for prosecution, far more than any other president. Looks like old Donny didn’t mind the Deep State when he was trying to get it to do his dirty work. Neera Tanden’s fraught nomination to lead the Office of Management and Budget is done, after she withdrew her candidacy on Tuesday night. We wish her well in whatever other Administration job she’s quietly shuffled into! The Washington Post reports that the conservative-majority supreme court may be bending towards the worst possible outcome in the voting rights case we mentioned yesterday, indicating that they may support making it more difficult to challenge the glut of Republican voting laws aimed at suppressing votes across the country. And finally, despite the mounting calls for New York Governor Andrew Cuomo to resign, the Post reports that the State’s top party leadership isn’t joining in yet, instead siding with calls for an independent investigation before we know Cuomo’s fate. Playing it safe, in other words, in case Cuomo somehow wriggles out of this one. MAR 3, 2021 - AM QUICKIE HOSTS - Sam Seder & Lucie Steiner WRITER - Jack Crosbie PRODUCER - Dorsey Shaw EXECUTIVE PRODUCER - Brendan Finn

Welcome to Majority.FM's AM QUICKIE! Brought to you by justcoffee.coop TODAY'S HEADLINES: Scientists warn in a new study that global warming is seriously messing with Atlantic Ocean currents. The consequences for marine life, not to mention people living on the Eastern Seaboard, could be catastrophic. Meanwhile, whistleblowers and the family of a police shooting victim point to a violent gang inside the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department. A newly elected district attorney has pledged to tackle the problem. And lastly, the Biden administration has expanded eligibility for unemployment benefits to cover some workers whose employers flouted pandemic safety standards. Although the new rules won’t apply to everyone affected, they’re a step in the right direction. THESE ARE THE STORIES YOU NEED TO KNOW: The Atlantic Ocean circulation that underpins the Gulf Stream, the crucial global weather system, is at its weakest in more than a millennium, the Guardian reports. Climate breakdown is the probable cause. Further weakening of the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation, or AMOC, could result in more storms, more intense winters, and an increase in damaging heatwaves and droughts. Scientists predict that the AMOC will weaken further if global heating continues, and could reduce by up to forty-five percent by the end of this century. That could bring us close to a tipping point at which the system could become irrevocably unstable. A weakened Gulf Stream would raise sea levels on the Atlantic coast of the US, with potentially disastrous consequences. Stefan Rahmstorf of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research, who co-authored the study published yesterday in Nature Geoscience, told the Guardian that circulation had already slowed by about fifteen percent and the impacts were being seen. Scientists have long predicted a weakening of the AMOC as a result of global heating, and have raised concerns that it could collapse altogether. The new study found that any such point was likely to be decades away, but that continued high greenhouse gas emissions would bring it closer. Rahmstorf said QUOTE The consequences of this are so massive that even a ten percent chance of triggering a breakdown would be an unacceptable risk ENDQUOTE. As well as causing more extreme weather across Europe and the east coast of the US, the weakening of the AMOC could have severe consequences for Atlantic marine ecosystems, the Guardian reports. Karsten Haustein, of the Climate Services Center in Germany, said the US could be at risk of stronger hurricanes as a result of the Gulf Stream’s weakening. Another reason we need the Green New Deal. Police Gangs Stalk LA A CBS News investigation has uncovered allegations of gangs existing within the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department, possibly for decades. Current deputies out of the East Los Angeles station say the existence of gangs within law enforcement has been a problem. The deputies, who do not want to be identified for fear of reprisal, claim the most prevalent are called the Banditos – comprised of mostly Latino deputies who serve predominantly African American and Latino neighborhoods. One deputy told CBS QUOTE They operate as a gang. They commit crimes, they assault people ENDQUOTE. The deputy said the gang is based out of East LA, and that Banditos there have been promoted and spread all over the county. Members of the gang identify themselves with a tattoo. Sources said the initiation process could involve getting in a shooting, which the deputy called QUOTE a definite brownie point ENDQUOTE. Members would plant weapons on suspects to justify those shootings. The deputy told CBS the gang targets other young Latinos. That targeting is what grieving mother Lisa Vargas has contended happened to her twenty one-year-old son Anthony Vargas, who aspired to be a chef. He was shot thirteen times by sheriff's deputies while on his way home. Vargas claimed her son's death was part of the gang's initiations. She filed a lawsuit against Los Angeles County and the deputies who shot her son. The suit alleges that the individuals who shot Anthony were members of the Banditos gang, or prospects. Los Angeles County Sheriff Alex Villanueva has denied the existence of gangs within his department. Newly-elected Los Angeles County District Attorney George Gascón said his department takes the allegations seriously. A federal grand jury investigation has been convened. After they break up the Banditos, they need to bust some white police gangs, too. Biden Expands Unemployment Eligibility The Biden administration expanded unemployment insurance eligibility yesterday to include workers who refused job offers at unsafe worksites, the Washington Post reports. The new rule makes good on Joe Biden’s pledge to reduce the pressure on people who say they have been forced to choose between staying healthy or getting a paycheck. The Department of Labor made the shift in response to an executive order from President Biden in January, broadening the eligibility of Pandemic Unemployment Assistance to include workers whose unemployment benefits were denied because they refused to return to workplaces that were not in compliance with coronavirus health and safety standards. The change in eligibility goes into affect immediately, according to the Post. But officials cautioned that it could take at least a month for workers claims to be approved, if not longer. Eligible workers will be able to receive backdated payments for unemployment claims dating to the beginning of the pandemic, as well as the supplemental $600 a week bonus that the federal government has approved through the end of July. The change in exemptions does not appear to help people who quit work in the last year, many presumably because they felt unsafe – another category of unemployed workers who have been denied benefits. The Post reports that the guidelines will also expand eligibility for some workers who have lost hours at work, like at restaurants, but have not been eligible for unemployment insurance due to technicalities, like not making enough in wages to qualify. For workers at unsafe workplaces to qualify, they will be required to attest, under the threat of perjury, that their workplace was not in compliance with either local, state or national standards about the coronavirus, the DOL said. The new rules don’t go far enough, but they’re an improvement. AND NOW FOR SOME QUICKER QUICKIES: The House of Representatives yesterday voted to pass the Equality Act, which would prohibit discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity, the Washington Post reports. It is a top legislative priority of President Biden. In twenty-seven states, a person can be denied housing because of their sexual orientation or gender identity. It’s time for that to end. Tax and financial records that Donald Trump fought to keep secret for nearly eighteen months have been turned over to the Manhattan district attorney’s office, which is investigating fraud by Trump and his company, the New York Times reports. The records, including eight years of personal tax returns, were handed over on Monday, the same day that the Supreme Court rejected Trump’s final bid to block a subpoena for them. Fingers crossed for indictments to follow. The US Capitol Police plans to maintain enhanced security around the Capitol through at least Biden's first official address to Congress because intelligence suggests extremists could be planning an attack, acting Chief Yogananda Pittman said yesterday, according to NBC News. She said members of the militia groups present on January 6th QUOTE want to blow up the Capitol and kill as many members as possible with a direct nexus to the State of the Union ENDQUOTE. So DC will look like a fortress for a while still. A secretive Israeli nuclear facility at the center of the nation’s undeclared atomic weapons program is undergoing what may be its biggest construction project in decades, satellite photos analyzed by the Associated Press show. Daryl Kimball, executive director of the Washington-based Arms Control Association, said the Israeli government needs to come clean about whatever it’s doing at the plant. Is that too much to ask? Apparently. FEB 26, 2021 - AM QUICKIE HOSTS - Sam Seder & Lucie Steiner WRITER - Corey Pein PRODUCER - Dorsey Shaw EXECUTIVE PRODUCER - Brendan Finn

Welcome to Majority.FM's AM QUICKIE! Brought to you by justcoffee.coop TODAY'S HEADLINES: With businesses and residents struggling, states are getting impatient waiting for pandemic aid from the federal government. Some passing their own relief packages before Congress acts. Meanwhile, McDonald’s reportedly and illegally spies on workers it suspects of activism and labor union support. Inside sources say the company even created fake social media accounts to infiltrate employee networks. And lastly, Illinois will become the first state to eliminate cash bail under a new law passed following a grassroots campaign. The law also includes police reforms such as a ban on chokeholds and increased protections for people detained by the police. THESE ARE THE STORIES YOU NEED TO KNOW: Joe Biden’s $1.9 trillion coronavirus relief plan is working its way through Congress this week. Not waiting for more federal help, states have been approving their own coronavirus aid packages, the Associated Press reports. They are spending hundreds of millions of dollars to help residents and business owners. Maryland and California recently moved forward with help for the poor, the jobless, small businesses and those needing child care. New Mexico and Pennsylvania are funneling grants directly to cash-starved businesses. North Carolina’s governor wants additional state aid for such things as bonus pay for teachers and boosting rural internet speeds. Other states are considering significant spending to provide more relief, according to the AP. Governors and lawmakers have said they are concerned the economy and job prospects will deteriorate even further before Congress acts on the Biden plan. A slow start to the nationwide vaccination program also has tempered expectations that inoculations will be widespread soon enough to rescue businesses that have struggled with shutdown orders. In Pennsylvania, Governor Tom Wolf, a Democrat, signed legislation using $145 million in reserves from a worker’s compensation fund for grants of up to $50,000 to owners of hard-hit bars, restaurants and hotels. Susan Williams, who with her sister owns a bar in Pittsburgh and another just outside the city, told the AP she plans to apply for the grants. Her businesses remain under restrictions that include serving at twenty five percent capacity. The bars are closed part of the week to keep from losing money, and there’s nothing left over to pay tax bills that arrived this week. Williams said QUOTE They know damn well we haven’t been open. They basically choked our income, but they’re still sending our tax bills. It’s insane ENDQUOTE. Welcome to Pandemic Year Two. McDonald's Spies On Workers Would you like spies with that? For years, McDonald's has internally labeled activists and employees working with the Fight for $15 campaign a security threat and has spied on them, Vice News reports. The fast food giant's secretive intelligence unit has monitored its own workers’ activities with the movement, which seeks to increase the minimum wage to $15 per hour, including by using social media monitoring tools. A team of intelligence analysts in the Chicago and London offices keep an eye on the activities of Fight for $15 labor organizers across the world, figure out which McDonald's workers are active in the movement, and who they are working with to organize strikes, protests, or attempt to form unions. As Vice explains, the surveillance is particularly notable given the current political battle being fought over a $15 minimum wage, which has been proposed in Joe Biden's pandemic relief package. Specifically, McDonald's was worried about tracking workers who may be involved in activist groups advocating for higher wages, better working conditions, and the right to join unions. Two former McDonald's corporate employees, who asked to remain anonymous, told Vice details of the intelligence program. As part of this program, since at least last year, McDonald's intelligence analysts have used a social media monitoring tool to collect and scrape data. The sources told Motherboard that the company's intelligence analysts have attempted to use the tool to reconstruct the friends lists and networks of workers involved in the labor movement using fake Facebook personas. McDonald's denies this specific aspect of the program. Matthew Finkin, a professor at the University of Illinois College of Law, said spying on workers with the purpose of learning about their labor organizing is a violation of federal labor law. No wonder they deny it! Illinois Ends Cash Bail Here’s an example worth following. Illinois Governor JB Pritzker has signed off on a new law that not only institutes major police reforms, but also makes the state the first in the nation to completely abolish cash bail, according to NBC News. House Bill 3653 aims to make sweeping changes to the state’s existing policies on policing and adjudication. The legislation, which was signed Monday, comes as nationwide calls to address racial bias in the justice system have intensified, Pritzker said after signing the law. The law came together through a grassroots mobilization of more than one hundred reform organizations, as well as the Illinois Legislative Black Caucus, NBC reports. Democratic state Senator Elgie Sims Junior, who sponsored the bill, said QUOTE History will judge how we responded in this moment, which called for big, bold, transformative changes. This is not a moment for incrementalism ENDQUOTE. Among the most notable facets of the law is the abolishment of the cash bail system, per NBC. The new law eliminates wealth-based detention and instead gives judges a more strictly defined decisionmaking process based on a real risk of present threat or willful flight. This will not go fully in effect until 2023, while other parts of the law will go into effect as early as July. The law also includes a requirement that all police officers wear body cameras by 2025, a ban on all police chokeholds, and new guidelines for decertification of police officers. Detainee rights have also been expanded to include the right to make three free phone calls within three hours of arrival at the police station and before questioning occurs, and the ability to retrieve phone numbers contained in their cellphone’s contact list prior to the phone being placed in inventory. Sounds like a good start. AND NOW FOR SOME QUICKER QUICKIES: A Food and Drug Administration review released yesterday of the single-shot coronavirus vaccine made by pharmaceutical giant Johnson and Johnson found it was safe and effective and completely prevented hospitalizations and deaths in a large clinical trial, according to the Washington Post. The review sets the stage for a third coronavirus vaccine to be authorized as soon as this weekend. The more the merrier. A former aide to Governor Andrew Cuomo published an essay yesterday accusing the governor of sexual harassment and outlining several unsettling episodes, including an unsolicited kiss in his Manhattan office, the New York Times reports. The aide, Lindsey Boylan, described several years of uncomfortable interactions with Cuomo, including an invitation to play strip poker on a government airplane. Cuomo’s press secretary calls Boylan’s claims false. Maybe Cuomo should use his own words. A US Navy veteran who was experiencing a mental health crisis died after a police officer called out to help him knelt on his neck for several minutes, asphyxiating him, the Guardian reports. Angelo Quinto, thirty, was suffering a bout of paranoia, anxiety and depression in his family home in Antioch, California, when his sister called police on December 23rd. According to the family, the responding officer grabbed Quinto from the arms of his mother, then knelt on his neck for almost five minutes. Terrible. The Daily Beast reports that Christopher Cantwell, dubbed the Crying Nazi after recording a tearful video about his violent role in the 2017 Unite the Right march in Charlottesville, cried in court yesterday as he was sentenced to forty-one months in prison. Cantwell, who was convicted last fall of threatening another neo-Nazi, had already spent thirteen months in jail since his arrest. Please pass the Kleenex. FEB 25, 2021 - AM QUICKIE HOSTS - Sam Seder & Lucie Steiner WRITER - Corey Pein PRODUCER - Dorsey Shaw EXECUTIVE PRODUCER - Brendan Finn

Welcome to Majority.FM's AM QUICKIE! Brought to you by justcoffee.coop TODAY'S HEADLINES: First, the bad news: A new variant of the coronavirus has emerged in California, and doctors are warning that it’s both fast-spreading and deadly. The good news is, drug companies say they are ready and able to boost vaccine production. Meanwhile, the most populous county in Texas is opening an investigation into who’s responsible for the infrastructure crisis that followed last week’s storms. And the Bidens are planning to visit Houston later this week. And lastly, in Minneapolis, a new federal grand jury has been impaneled to hear evidence against Derek Chauvin, the cop who killed George Floyd. The city is calling in outside police and National Guard forces ahead of Chauvin’s state trial early next month. THESE ARE THE STORIES YOU NEED TO KNOW: A coronavirus variant that emerged in mid-2020 and surged to become the dominant strain in California not only spreads more readily than its predecessors, but also evades antibodies generated by Covid-19 vaccines or prior infection, researchers told the Los Angeles Times. This California variant is associated with severe illness and death. In a study that helps explain the state’s dramatic surge in Covid-19 cases and deaths – and portends further trouble ahead – scientists at UC San Francisco said the mutations that characterize the strain mark it as a variant of concern on par with those from the United Kingdom, South Africa and Brazil. Doctor Charles Chiu, who led the UCSF team, said QUOTE The devil is already here ENDQUOTE. According to the Times, they call the new variant B-1-427 slash B-1-429. It will probably account for ninety percent of California’s infections by the end of next month. The new evidence that the California variant could make people sicker, and vaccines less effective, should spur more intensive efforts to drive down infections, Chiu said. He added that those should include both public health measures, such as masking and limits on public activities, and a campaign of rapid vaccinations. About those vaccines: Drug companies told lawmakers yesterday that they project a major increase in vaccine deliveries that will result in one hundred and forty million more doses over the next five weeks, the Washington Post reports. The companies say they have solved manufacturing challenges and are in a position to overcome scarcity that has hampered the nation’s fight against the coronavirus. But achieving a surge on that scale remains daunting. Pfizer and Moderna will need to deliver twenty-eight million doses each week by March 31st, far greater than their performance so far. Come on, Big Pharma, you can do this. Biden's Will Visit Houston After the storm comes the search for accountability. According to the Texas Tribune, Harris County officials are launching an investigation into the events that led up to Texas’ recent electricity disaster. They will be probing decisions made by the board that operates the state’s power grid, energy providers and the Public Utility Commission. Dozens of Texans died because of last week’s winter storm, which caused damages throughout the state that experts say could cost billions. Governor Greg Abbott blasted the Electric Reliability Council of Texas for its handling of the emergency. He declared reform of the organization an emergency item for the 2021 legislative session. Harris County Attorney Christian Menefee will request authorization to take legal action from county comissioners on Friday, the Tribune reports. He said that operators should have been prepared after 2011’s hard freeze that exposed weaknesses in Texas’ electrical grid system. Menefee said there was nothing unpredictable about this last freeze, but QUOTE the people running the grid were woefully unprepared and failed to take immediate action ENDQUOTE. State Representative Trey Martinez Fischer, Democrat of San Antonio, sent a letter to the Travis County District Attorney’s Office urging it to launch its own investigation. Meanwhile, the Tribune reports, President Joe Biden plans visit Texas on Friday. The president and first lady Jill Biden will travel to Houston – that’s the Harris County seat. Biden has engaged from afar with state and local officials but stated a reluctance to come to Texas too soon because he didn't want his traveling entourage to pull resources from the crisis at hand. Over the weekend, Biden approved a major disaster declaration for more than one hundred Texas counties. Impacted individuals and business owners in those counties can apply for assistance by registering online at www.DisasterAssistance.gov. New Floyd Grand Jury Some updates on the quest for justice, thanks to the New York Times. A new federal grand jury has been empaneled in Minneapolis and the Justice Department has called new witnesses as part of its investigation of Derek Chauvin, the former police officer who will go on trial in state court next month on a murder charge for the death of George Floyd. The fresh slate of witnesses subpoenaed to give testimony about Chauvin is an early sign that the federal investigation into the death of Floyd, which began last year and then languished, is being reinvigorated under the Biden administration. It is unlikely that the Justice Department is hoping for a quick indictment of Chauvin before his state trial, which is scheduled to begin March 8, the Times reports. But if there was an acquittal or a mistrial, attention would immediately shift to the federal investigation. As Chauvin’s trial looms, Minneapolis is consumed with fears about more unrest. The National Guard has been activated, and law enforcement agencies from around the state are descending upon the Twin Cities. Meanwhile, the Times reports, a man whose skull was fractured after he was shoved to the ground by police officers at a protest in Buffalo, New York last year has filed a lawsuit against the city and members of its police force. The man, Martin Gugino, claims in the lawsuit that he was forcibly assaulted by the police, and that officers walked by as he lay unconscious on the sidewalk, blood pouring from his fractured skull. The suit, filed on Monday in federal court, also alleges that officials tried to conceal the assault. The Buffalo Police Department said at the time that he tripped and fell during a skirmish after an 8 PM curfew. Likely story. AND NOW FOR SOME QUICKER QUICKIES: Steven Mnuchin, who was treasury secretary in the Trump administration, is planning to start an investment fund that is expected to raise money from sovereign wealth funds in the Persian Gulf region, the Washington Post reports. His planned investment effort, coming so soon after leaving office, raises concerns over whether government policy was influenced by Mnuchin’s future pursuits. Of course, the whole administration worked that way. Politico reports that Al Jazeera is launching Rightly, a new digital platform aiming to serve conservative audiences. According to the Guardian, some Al Jazeera staff have privately expressed dismay at the launch of Rightly, wondering how it squared with the network’s previously stated commitments to giving voice to marginalized communities. But nobody’s more marginalized that American conservatives – just ask them! Senator Jeff Merkley of Oregon yesterday introduced a bill that would sanction Honduras President Juan Orlando Hernández, the Associated Press reports. Hernández in recent years has leaned on his support within the US government when facing domestic opposition and allegations of connections to drug traffickers. Merkley’s bill also seeks to prohibit the export of items such as tear gas, pepper spray and rubber bullets that Honduran security forces have deployed against protesters. Officials in charge of security for the US Capitol on January 6th blamed poor intelligence for the deadly riot that threatened the peaceful transfer of power, NBC News reports. Asked about a January 5 threat report from the FBI that detailed specific calls online for violence at the Capitol, former Capitol Police Chief Steven Sund testified that he had not seen it. The former House and Senate sergeants-at-arms also testified that they did not see the FBI memo. Whoops! FEB 24, 2021 - AM QUICKIE HOSTS - Sam Seder & Lucie Steiner WRITER - Corey Pein PRODUCER - Dorsey Shaw EXECUTIVE PRODUCER - Brendan Finn

Welcome to Majority.FM's AM QUICKIE! Brought to you by justcoffee.coop TODAY'S HEADLINES: Power is slowly being restored in Texas and other states where the electric grid buckled under severe weather. But millions remain without drinking water, and at least forty people around the country have died due to the storms and the resulting infrastructure crisis. Meanwhile, grocery workers and their union representatives say they are going unvaccinated despite having essential front-line jobs. This is as their employers bask in record profits during the coronavirus pandemic. And lastly, Joe Biden sent his immigration bill to Congress. It’s being called the most sweeping overhaul proposed in more than three decades, and it comes as good news for new Americans and their families. THESE ARE THE STORIES YOU NEED TO KNOW: We hope this newscast finds you safe, warm, and with access to running water. More than one hundred million people live in areas under winter weather warnings, according to the Associated Press. Blackouts are expected to continue in some parts of the country for days. As Texas and other states battled winter storms that blew past the worst-case planning of utilities, governments and millions of shivering residents, experts said deadly weather will be hitting the US more often, and America needs to get better at dealing with it. This week’s storms – with more still heading east – fit a pattern of worsening extremes under climate change. They also show that local, state and federal officials have failed to do nearly enough to prepare for more dangerous weather. According to the Texas Tribune, experts blamed the power system failure on the legislators and state agencies who did not properly heed the warnings of previous storms, or account for more extreme weather events warned of by climate scientists. Instead, Texas prioritized the free market. Tom “Smitty” Smith, a former director of Public Citizen in Austin, said QUOTE Clearly we need to change our regulatory focus to protect the people, not profits ENDQUOTE. Power has been restored to nearly two million homes in Texas, according to the Washington Post, though hundreds of thousands of residents remain without electricity. In Mississippi, more than one hundred and forty thousand households are still without electricity, while another hundred thousand are powerless in Louisiana. Finally, Texas Republican Senator Ted Cruz confirmed yesterday that he traveled to Cancun, Mexico, as millions were without power and safe drinking water. In a statement, Cruz said he flew with his daughters Wednesday and would return yesterday amid calls to resign over the family trip. Can you believe this mook? Grocery Workers Demand Vaccination This story of classism in vaccine distribution comes via the Washington Post. Though hailed as heroes early in the pandemic, the nation’s three million grocery workers lag other essential workers when it comes to vaccine priority. Just thirteen states – including Maryland, Virginia, California, New York and Pennsylvania – have begun inoculating such employees as the broader vaccine rollout is hampered by widespread delays. At least one hundred and seventy grocery employees have died and thousands more have tested positive for coronavirus, the Post reports. Though many companies offered hazard pay early on in the pandemic, nearly all have stopped. Workers say their vaccine challenges are further proof of how they have been shortchanged, especially as their employers are pulling in record profits. Kroger, the nation’s largest grocery chain, made $3 billion in profit last year, an eighty eight percent increase from 2019. Other big retailers, including Walmart, Target and Albertsons, also reported explosive sales gains. According to the Post, the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommends including grocery workers in the second stage of the vaccine rollout, along with firefighters, police officers and other front-line essential workers. But states are free to set their own guidelines. Eleven states, including Florida, Indiana, Ohio and Texas, do not have a clear plan to prioritize grocery workers. In Tennessee, grocery workers aren’t expected to qualify for the vaccine until the second half of the year, along with camp counselors and prison inmates. Addie James, marketing director for several grocery stores in Memphis, said their employees are not being given the protections necessary to do their job. James added QUOTE It feels like you’re screaming into the void but nobody is listening ENDQUOTE. But we hear you! Biden Unveils Immigration Bill onald Trump’s toxic legacy is nearing its expiration. President Biden’s allies on Capitol Hill introduced his immigration overhaul in the House yesterday morning, the New York Times reports. Senator Bob Menendez, Democrat of New Jersey, said part of Biden’s mandate is QUOTE fixing our immigration system, which is a cornerstone of Trump’s hateful horror show ENDQUOTE. The centerpiece of the legislation, according to the Times, is an eight-year path to citizenship for most of the eleven million undocumented immigrants living in the US. After passing background checks and paying taxes, they would be allowed to live and work in the US for five years. After that, they could apply for a green card, giving them permanent status in the US and the opportunity to win citizenship after three more years. The bill would sweep away restrictions on family-based immigration, making it easier for spouses and children to join their families already in the country. And it would expand worker visas to allow more foreigners to come to the US for jobs. The legislation does not include a large focus on increased border enforcement. Instead, it adds resources to process migrants legally at ports of entry and invests $4 billion over four years in distressed economies in the hopes of preventing people from fleeing to the US because of security and economic crises. Separately, the Washington Post reports that US Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers will need preapproval from a senior manager before trying to deport anyone who is not a recent border crosser, a national security threat or a criminal with an aggravated-felony conviction. The change stems from an interim enforcement memo issued by the Biden administration yesterday. The narrower priorities should result in a steep drop in immigration arrests and deportations. Here’s to more humane policy for everyone. AND NOW FOR SOME QUICKER QUICKIES: NASA’s rover Perseverance landed safely on Mars yesterday, the Post reports. It’s on an ambitious mission to search for signs of past Martian life and obtain samples of soil and rock that could someday be hauled back to Earth for study. Good luck, little robot. LUCIE: federal prosecutor to help scrutinize financial dealings at the former president’s company, the New York Times reports.The former prosecutor, Mark Pomerantz, has deep experience investigating and defending white-collar and organized crime cases. Good luck to him, too. Top lobbying groups backed by Amazon, Facebook, Google and other technology giants sued Maryland yesterday, according to the Post. The Silicon Valley companies are seeking to scuttle a new state tax on their massive online-advertising revenue – and stop other local governments from following its lead. The Maryland law seeks to raise money for education and targets technology companies that do more than $100 million in ad sales each year. Obviously they can afford to contribute to the society, they just don’t want to. South Dakota’s Republican attorney general was charged yesterday with three misdemeanors for striking and killing a man with his car last summer, avoiding more serious felony charges, according to the AP. Jason Ravnsborg could face up to thirty days in jail and up to a $500 fine on each charge: careless driving, driving out of his lane and operating a motor vehicle while on his phone. Relatives of the man killed in the collision said they were disappointed but not surprised that the AG was only facing misdemeanor charges. That’s American justice for you. That’s all for the AM Quickie. Join us this afternoon on the Majority Report. FEB 19, 2021 - AM QUICKIE HOSTS - Sam Seder & Lucie Steiner WRITER - Corey Pein PRODUCER - Dorsey Shaw EXECUTIVE PRODUCER - Brendan Finn

Welcome to Majority.FM's AM QUICKIE! Brought to you by justcoffee.coop TODAY'S HEADLINES: A brutal cold snap and snowstorm has brought multiple cities to a halt across Texas and the midwest and left millions without power, trapped in their homes in far-below-freezing temperatures, in an ongoing crisis that doesn’t have a clear end in sight. Meanwhile, House Democrats are working to get Joe Biden’s first COVID stimulus bill over to the Senate by the end of next week. Certainly took them long enough! And lastly, Amazon’s anti-union tactics at the Bessemer, Alabama warehouse reach a new low. THESE ARE THE STORIES YOU NEED TO KNOW: The winter storm catastrophe in Texas has spiraled wildly in the past 48 hours, as abnormally frigid temperatures and the widespread failure of the state’s mismanaged power infrastructure have left millions without power and thousands without heat. If you caught the show with Emma Tuesday afternoon, you got most of this, but here’s where we’re at now. In parts of the midwest and south that usually don’t see freezing temperatures, the thermometer has plunged into the 20s and teens with a sharp windchill. The weather alone would be a hardship, but thanks to years of neglect and mismanagement by state officials, Texas’s power grid has crumpled under the harsh conditions. The Texas Tribune reports that over 2 million people don’t have electricity. Part of the problem is that Texas’ power administration, known as the Electric Reliability Council of Texas, or ERCOT, was completely unprepared for a storm of this size. Texas’s energy demands are usually pretty light in the winter, and many of its power plants aren’t built to withstand cold in the way that ones in more northern states are. It’s also worth noting that ERCOT is separate from the rest of the U.S.’s interconnected power grid, in large part because it wanted to skirt federal regulations in the 1930s. This system, according to the Washington Post, created an electric grid that puts an emphasis on cheap prices over reliable service, and gives power providers no financial incentive to prep for cold weather. As one analyst told the Post, Texas’s grid is a quote “Wild West market design based only on short-run prices,” endquote. And now, ordinary Texans are feeling the brunt of this systemic mismanagement. The GOP is already trying to shoehorn the disaster into a strange attack on clean energy, blaming frozen wind turbines for the outages, despite the fact that gas and coal power plants were also knocked out in the storm. What they don’t want to admit is that GOP leadership could have lessened the impact of this crisis, just like the pandemic. But once again, their constituents have been left out in the cold, and the crisis is only getting worse. House Moves Slowly On Stimulus We’ve got an update on the much-awaited first COVID stimulus bill during the Biden administration. It’s coming... well... sometime. House Democrats on Tuesday said that they hope to have a finalized bill on the floor of the House by next Friday. That seems like a pretty long timeline given that the country is currently still wracked by the pandemic and a worsening weather crisis in Texas, but this is Congress after all. Majority Leader Steny Hoyer called this quote “bold and resolute action.” Endquote. We’ll believe that when we see it, Steny. The House, like the Senate, is on recess after all. But when they’re back from their little break, we’ll hopefully see action on the proposed $1.9 trillion bill, which the Democrats want to pass through the budget reconciliation process. Their reluctance to do away with the filibuster makes all of this more difficult, of course, and all of these bureaucratic hangups delay the aid Americans need. And of course, the $2000 payments we were promised during the Georgia runoffs are still going to come in as $1400. The question now is how progressive Democrats fare at getting other vital measures, like a minimum wage increase, into the bill. McDonalds, Burger King, and Wendys employees are once again preparing for a Fight for 15-led strike. The reconciliation process could make such a provision difficult in this stimulus package, so Bernie Sanders and other lawmakers are working on a separate bill. For what it’s worth, Biden said at a town hall on Tuesday night that he supported a $15 minimum wage, but didn’t indicate he’d be making it a priority. Amazon Pulls Out All the Stop(Lights) Our last story today is a detail from the ongoing union battle at an Amazon warehouse in Bessemer, Alabama. To catch you up: workers in Bessemer are currently in the middle of an official NLRB election to decide whether or not they’ll be represented by the Retail, Wholesale, and Department Store Union. If they succeed, they’ll be the first major union shop in Amazon’s sprawling empire. But Amazon is pulling out all the stops -- literally -- to prevent that. According to More Perfect Union, Amazon literally asked county officials to change the timing of stoplights outside of the Bessemer warehouse so union campaigners would have less time to chat with employees waiting at the lights or in parking lines to get into work. Other employees claim that Amazon has been forcing them into anti-union meetings, texting them up to 5 times a day, and posting anti-union messaging in bathrooms. All of that is, sadly, pretty standard stuff. But the traffic lights is a new one. Amazon claims that the traffic light change is a rumor. But More Perfect Union reports that the Jefferson County Roads & Transportation Department was quote “notified by Amazon of traffic delays” late last year, when the union campaign was already underway. The county came down for an inspection, and eventually gave Amazon what it wanted: an increase in what they call “maximum green times” at the stoplights outside the warehouse. No red lights, no time for the pesky red shirts of the RWDSU organizers to chat with workers about what the union means. Voting in the NLRB election is ongoing throughout this month and next, and should wrap up around March 29. There’s no telling what tricks Amazon will try to pull before then, so stay tuned. AND NOW FOR SOME QUICKER QUICKIES: Former President Donald Trump released a lengthy statement on Tuesday blasting Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, calling him a quote “dour, sullen, and unsmiling political hack,” and giving the true sickos among us a long-awaited hit of incoherent Trump venom to laugh at for a little while. The New York Times reports that Trump’s initial draft of the statement was even nastier -- too bad he’s not on Twitter anymore! Sad! George Conway, resistance grifter and husband to the notorious Kellyanne Conway, said that he backs shuttering the Lincoln Project after numerous scandals have tanked the Centrist PR firm’s reputation. Sounds like the rats in charge of that one got their money, and now they’re fleeing a sinking ship. Some highlights from Biden’s town hall late on Tuesday night, aside from what we mentioned above: he expects vaccines to be available to everyone by July, and wants K-8 schools reopened by the end of his first 100 days. But he said no to $50,000 in student debt relief and was uninterested in defunding police departments. Trump’s feud with Mitch McConnell is making other GOP leaders take sides. In an interview with Hannity on Tuesday night Senator Lindsey Graham said quote “We don’t have a snowball’s chance in hell of taking back the majority without Donald Trump,” endquote. We can only hope that he’s right, and that Trump and McConnell keep tearing their own party apart. FEB 17, 2021 - AM QUICKIE HOSTS - Sam Seder & Lucie Steiner WRITER - Jack Crosbie PRODUCER - Dorsey Shaw EXECUTIVE PRODUCER - Brendan Finn

Welcome to Majority.FM's AM QUICKIE! Brought to you by justcoffee.coop TODAY'S HEADLINES: Democrats have wrapped up their arguments in Donald Trump’s second impeachment trial. But it’s not time to vote yet: first, the defense gets a turn. Meanwhile, governments around the world are using internet shutdowns more and more often, and always for nefarious purposes. Experts say this tactic favored by authoritarians is migrating to democracies. And lastly, federal housing officials are expanding civil rights protections for transgender people. The Biden administration says it’s the first of many such planned announcements. THESE ARE THE STORIES YOU NEED TO KNOW: And that’s a wrap. The House Democrats prosecuting Donald Trump rested their case yesterday, the New York Times reports. They branded him a clear and present danger to democracy who could sow new violence if he was not barred from holding office again. The nine impeachment managers closed their case by laying out the grave damage the January 6th insurrection had caused not just to lawmakers or police officers at the Capitol, but to the democratic system and America’s standing around the world. None of it would have happened without Trump. Representative Jamie Raskin of Mayland, the lead manager, said QUOTE If you don’t find this a high crime and misdemeanor today, you have set a new terrible standard for presidential misconduct in the United States of America ENDQUOTE. The prosecutors returned for the trial’s third day with new video clips, court documents and interviews in which the rioters defended their actions by citing Trump’s directives, according to the Times. Representative Diana DeGette of Colorado said QUOTE Their own statements before, during and after the attack made clear the attack was done for Donald Trump – at his instructions and to fulfill his wishes ENDQUOTE. They also argued that Trump had encouraged and celebrated violence before January 6th – such as a white supremacist rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, in 2017 and scuffles during his campaign rallies. By turn, the managers sought to appeal to Republicans’ sense of patriotism and decency, the Times reports. (That’s rich, I know.) Seventeen Republicans would have to join every Democrat to achieve the two-thirds majority needed for conviction. Trump’s lawyers are expected to present his defense beginning at noon today. Senators could reach a verdict by the end of the holiday weekend. Either way, we’ll be here to fill you in. Governments Increasingly Block Internet This update about growing threats to free speech comes from the Associated Press. When army generals in Myanmar staged a coup last week, they briefly cut internet access. In Uganda, residents couldn’t use Facebook, Twitter and other social media for weeks after a recent election. And in Ethiopia’s northern Tigray region, the internet has been down for months amid a wider conflict. Around the world, shutting down the internet has become an increasingly popular tactic of repressive regimes and illiberal democracies. Digital rights groups say governments use them to stifle dissent, silence opposition voices or cover up human rights abuses. Last year there were ninety three major internet shutdowns in twenty one countries, according to the AP. Shutdowns can range from all-encompassing internet blackouts to blocking social media platforms or severely throttling internet speeds. The humanitarian costs are exacerbated by Covid-19 lockdowns that are forcing activities like school classes online. The shutdowns play into a wider battle over control of the internet, the AP reports. In Belarus, the internet went down for sixty-one hours after the August 9th presidential election, marking Europe’s first internet blackout. Service was cut after election results handed victory to authoritarian President Alexander Lukashenko but the vote was widely seen as rigged and sparked enormous protests. Access remained unstable for months, particularly around weekend protests, when mobile internet service repeatedly went down. Internet shutdowns are also common in democratic India, where Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government has increasingly used them to target his political opposition. Darrell West, a vice president of governance studies at the Brookings Institution, said the practice is becoming more common in democracies. He said QUOTE It may start at the local level to deal with unrest, but then spread more broadly ENDQUOTE. Seems like a more serious problem than cancel culture. HUD Expands LGBTQ Protections Good news for transgender rights: The Department of Housing and Urban Development said yesterday it will investigate complaints of discrimination based on sexual orientation or gender identity, the Washington Post reports. This means expanding civil rights protections for LGBTQ people seeking housing or temporary shelter across the country. The announcement comes three weeks after President Joe Biden issued an executive order directing all federal agencies to implement a June ruling by the Supreme Court; the ruling held that civil rights law prohibiting sex discrimination includes gender identity and sexual orientation. HUD is the first agency to respond. The HUD directive builds on the Obama administration’s efforts to end housing discrimination against gay and transgender people, protections that the Trump administration attempted to dismantle. Transgender people have faced discrimination – and danger – at homeless shelters because they were often denied access to emergency shelter that corresponds to their gender identity, the Post reports. A HUD official told the Post that Thursday’s move expands the universe of people who can file a fair-housing complaint because individuals will no longer have to make a nonconformity allegation in discrimination claims. The agency will accept and investigate complaints from people who think they have been subject to housing discrimination based on sexual orientation or gender identity going back to January 20th, 2020, one year before Biden’s executive order, the Post reports. HUD officials said the fair housing office has received about two hundred complaints alleging such discrimination in the past year, but expect those numbers to rise. In a call with reporters, HUD officials characterized Thursday’s action as the first step the Biden administration is taking to uphold LGBTQ rights and said future announcements can be expected. We’ll be waiting. AND NOW FOR SOME QUICKER QUICKIES: President Biden announced yesterday that his administration has secured deals for another two hundred million doses of coronavirus vaccine as promised last month, according to the Washington Post. The new deals are unlikely to make the vaccine widely available much sooner, but they would prevent a shortfall later in the year. The purchases increase supply in the United States by fifty percent. Let’s get those shots in arms! Days before Donald Trump’s second impeachment trial began, more than one hundred former GOP officials reportedly hopped on a Zoom call, the Post reports. Talk touched on whether to launch a new center-right party. Only about forty percent of those on the call appeared to support that course of action. The rest argued they could have more impact by nurturing the anti-Trump faction within the GOP. Let them fight. The New York Times reports that Royal Dutch Shell yesterday made a bold statement about the waning of the oil age, saying its production reached a high in 2019 and is now likely to gradually decline. But as Europe’s largest oil and gas producer, Shell has faced skepticism about how willing or able it will be to shift to green energy. Count us among the skeptics, but the announcement was surprising regardless. Here’s a real shocker: The Times reports that Trump was sicker with Covid-19 in October than publicly acknowledged at the time, with extremely depressed blood oxygen levels at one point and a lung problem associated with pneumonia caused by the coronavirus. His prognosis became so worrisome before he was taken to Walter Reed hospital that officials believed he would need to be put on a ventilator. This explains all those weird, cagey press briefings by Trump’s doctors. With luck he was terrified. FEB 12, 2021 - AM QUICKIE HOSTS - Sam Seder & Lucie Steiner WRITER - Corey Pein PRODUCER - Dorsey Shaw EXECUTIVE PRODUCER - Brendan Finn

Welcome to Majority.FM's AM QUICKIE! Brought to you by justcoffee.coop TODAY'S HEADLINES: Democrats showed shocking new video of the January 6th insurrection on Day Two of Trump’s second impeachment trial. And Senators were asked to reflect on the meaning and history of the gallows that Trump’s mob erected outside the Capitol. Meanwhile, a prosecutor in Georgia is investigating Trump’s attempts to meddle with the November election results. Multiple criminal charges are possible – what fun! And lastly, as counterfeit masks proliferate, federal health officials recommend double- masking for better protection against the coronavirus. A new study backs up that advice. THESE ARE THE STORIES YOU NEED TO KNOW: The case against Donald Trump is, well, unimpeachable. The second day of Trump’s Senate trial featured more detailed arguments by the House impeachment managers. Using video and documentary evidence, Democrats offered a minute-by-minute breakdown of the events of January 6th, when Trump’s mob stormed the Capitol to prevent the certification of Electoral College votes making Joe Biden President. It wasn’t pretty. As the New York Times put it, yesterday Democrats showed disturbing, never-before-seen video footage of Trump’s supporters rampaging into the Capitol and searching for former Vice President Mike Pence and Speaker Nancy Pelosi to harm or even kill them. Footage from Capitol security cameras showed Pence, who alienated Trump’s supporters by refusing to try to overturn the election, being rushed by Secret Service officers down a staircase to escape invaders calling for his death. Pelosi’s staff members were shown barricading themselves into an office just minutes before the mob arrived and tried to break down the door. The man famously photographed sitting at her desk was shown carrying a nine hundred and fifty thousand-volt stun gun. The managers labeled Trump’s long barrage of distortions the Big Lie, borrowing an expression from the Nazi era used to describe a falsehood so enormous and widely disseminated that it became difficult to deny. According to the Washington Post, several Republican senators appeared moved by the managers’ presentation, though the senators did not indicate whether the evidence had convinced them to convict Trump. Senator Mitt Romney said he did not know how close he was to danger, after watching security video that showed him initially walking toward a pro- Trump mob. Romney bumped into Capitol Police officer Eugene Goodman, who directed him away from the mob. In the footage, Romney can be seen running away along with Goodman. Impeachment managers resume their case today. Georgia Prosecutor Targets Trump The impeachment is not a criminal proceeding. But there could be more of those in store for Donald Trump. The Washington Post reports that an Atlanta-area prosecutor has opened a criminal investigation into efforts to overturn the 2020 election result in Georgia in the wake of calls Trump placed to state officials, urging them to invalidate Joe Biden’s victory in the state. In a letter Wednesday to several state Republican officials, Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis stated that her office is examining a raft of potential criminal charges related to attempts to influence the administration of the 2020 election in the state. In early January, per the Post, Trump pressured Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger to find enough votes to reverse Biden’s victory in the state. He also called the top Georgia state elections investigator shortly before Christmas, asking the person to QUOTE find the fraud ENDQUOTE. In a third call placed in early December to Governor Brian Kemp, Trump urged him to persuade the state legislature to overturn Biden’s victory. Prosecutors are scrutinizing all three of those calls. Yesterday, as part of the ongoing Senate trial, House impeachment managers argued Trump’s calls were part of his long-running attempt to overturn the results of the 2020 election. Willis, a Democrat, told state officials that her office will examine whether anyone illegally solicited election fraud, the Post reports. She’ll also examine whether anyone made false statements to state and local government officials, made threats, or participated in a criminal conspiracy as part of attempts to influence the election outcome. Legal experts have said Trump’s call to the secretary of state may have broken state or federal laws that bar the solicitation of election fraud, among other potential crimes. Throw the book at him! Throw the whole library! CDC Endorses Double-Masking LUCIE: We told you previously it might be a good idea. Now, it’s official. Double-masking – specifically, wearing a surgical mask underneath a cloth mask – may provide an extremely high level of protection against the viral particles that cause Covid-19, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported yesterday, according to NBC News. CDC researchers found that in simulated breathing experiments, a surgical mask alone blocked forty two percent of particles small enough to transmit the coronavirus. One cloth mask did not fare much better, blocking about forty-four percent of particles from an unmasked individual. Double-masking, with a surgical mask and a cloth mask, they found, upped the protection for the wearer significantly, blocking eighty three percent of small particles from an unmasked individual. Separately, the Associated Press reports that federal authorities are investigating a massive counterfeit N95 mask operation in which fake 3M masks were sold in at least five states to hospitals, medical facilities and government agencies. The foreign-made knockoffs are becoming increasingly difficult to spot and could put health care workers at grave risk for the coronavirus. Officials could not name the states or the company involved because of the active investigation. Nearly a year into the pandemic, fraud remains a major problem, the AP reports. There have been already more than twelve hundred raids by law enforcement that resulted in the seizure of ten million counterfeit 3M masks alone. The company has filed more than a dozen lawsuits over reports of fraud, counterfeiting and price gouging. There are many other reports of fraudulent masks that have reached frontline workers. Officials in Washington state examined their mask supply and discovered that three hundred thousand masks they had purchased for about $1.4 million were counterfeit. Officials are investigating. Pandemic scammers are among the lowest of the low. AND NOW FOR SOME QUICKER QUICKIES: President Joe Biden yesterday announced sanctions on the military leaders who directed the coup in Myanmar, according to CBS News. The first round of targets will be identified this week. Biden said QUOTE As protests grow, violence against those asserting their democratic rights is unacceptable and we're going to keep calling it out. The people of Burma are making their voices heard and the world is watching ENDQUOTE. Facebook said yesterday that it will begin testing ways to lessen the amount of political content its US users see, according to Politico. The company offered few if any concrete details of how these new steps would work. But political campaigns and grassroots activist say Facebook is undermining crucial tools they use to raise money and attract supporters. Anyway, don’t worry, we’ll be here with all the political news you need. The US Coast Guard rescued three Cuban nationals who were stranded for more than a month on a desert island in the Bahamas on Tuesday, CBS reports. The two men and a woman survived by eating conchs (CONKS) and rats. A Coast Guard surveillance plane spotted the castaways during a routine patrol Monday. They are now in the custody of Immigration and Customs Enforcement, in case you worried this story might have an unambiguously happy ending. The current unemployment rate, as reported by the Bureau of Labor Statistics, is six point three percent. But the real unemployment rate in the US is closer to ten percent, Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell said yesterday, according to NBC News. He said reaching maximum employment will QUOTE require a society-wide commitment ENDQUOTE. Somebody should tell those CEOs who visited the White House this week. FEB 11, 2021 - AM QUICKIE HOSTS - Sam Seder & Lucie Steiner WRITER - Corey Pein PRODUCER - Dorsey Shaw EXECUTIVE PRODUCER - Brendan Finn

Welcome to Majority.FM's AM QUICKIE! Brought to you by justcoffee.coop TODAY'S HEADLINES: Senators yesterday voted to proceed with the second impeachment trial of Donald Trump after watching dramatic videos of last month’s insurrection. Democrats will begin presenting formal arguments later today. Meanwhile, Lloyd Austin, the first black secretary of defense, is trying urgently to curtail right- wing extremism in the military ranks. But first the Pentagon needs to figure out how to track the problem. And lastly, a small group of Inuit hunters in remote northern Canada has blockaded an iron mine that threatens their food supply. It’s an inspirational story that should also make you feel relatively warmer this winter, wherever you are. THESE ARE THE STORIES YOU NEED TO KNOW: Let’s get up to speed on Donald Trump’s second impeachment trial, via the New York Times. Yesterday the Senate voted to proceed with the trial. The vote was a rejection of Trump’s defense team’s claim that it would be unconstitutional to prosecute a president after leaving office. But the final tally signaled that his Republican allies could muster enough support to potentially block the two-thirds necessary for conviction. The fifty six-to-forty four vote, with six Republicans joining all fifty Democrats, paved the way for House Democrats to formally open their arguments this afternoon. They are seeking to prove that Trump incited an insurrection by encouraging supporters who stormed the Capitol last month. According to the Times, yesterday’s vote came after House managers moved immediately to their most powerful evidence: the explicit visual record of the deadly Capitol siege, juxtaposed against Trump’s own words encouraging members of the mob at a rally beforehand. On the screens, senators saw extremists storming barricades, beating police officers, setting up a gallows and yelling, Take the building, Fight for Trump and Pence is a traitor! Traitor Pence! Representative Joe Neguse of Colorado, a House impeachment manager, told senators QUOTE Presidents can’t inflame insurrection in their final weeks and then walk away like nothing happened ENDQUOTE. Trump’s lawyers argued that his words at the rally on January 6th constituted free speech akin to typical political language and hardly incited the violence, the Times reports. They condemned the violence but rejected the suggestion that Trump was responsible for it. They maintained that the Constitution did not permit an impeachment trial of a former president because it was meant to lead to removal, which is now moot. If he committed a crime, they said, he could be prosecuted criminally. Excellent suggestion – let’s do that next. Pentagon Tackles Soldiers' Extremism How do we prevent the next insurrection? Among the one hundred and ninety people charged in the Capitol siege, at least thirty are veterans, the Washington Post reports. Now Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin is facing an early test as he races to advance a major initiative targeting far-right extremism in the ranks. The military is slated to pause normal operations in coming weeks so troops can discuss internal support for extremist movements. Austin’s highly unusual order for a military-wide stand-down underscores the urgency of the task ahead. Even as they seek to get the effort off the ground, the Post says, Pentagon officials are grappling with legal and institutional issues. First among the challenges for Austin and his aides is the lack of centralized means of tracking incidence of extremism. Last month, Pentagon officials said the FBI had informed them about sixty-eight domestic extremism cases in 2020 involving current or former troops. Little other data exists. One reason for the military’s limited understanding of the problem is that current rules permit troops to join extremist organizations, so long as they don’t become active members who fundraise, recruit or take part in other prohibited activities. While the distinction is rooted in troops’ First Amendment rights, it means supporters of extremist causes can go undetected. What’s more, the Post reports, some extremism experts say the military’s screening procedures for recruits are insufficient. Lawmakers including California Democratic Congresswoman Jackie Speier are calling for stronger screening of social media for service members. Speier chairs the House Armed Services’ military personnel subcommittee. Under her proposal, recruits would be required to provide social media handles when they apply for security clearances. Wait, they don’t check those already? Crazy. Inuit Hunters Blockade Mine Here’s a remarkable tale of community organizing. A group of Inuit hunters have braved nearly a week of freezing temperatures to blockade a remote iron mine in northern Canada, the Guardian reports. The hunters are protesting an expansion plan they say will harm local wildlife. The blockade has prompted solidarity rallies in other Nunavut communities. Since February 5th, seven hunters have created a makeshift barrier of snowmobiles and sleds to block the airstrip and service road of the Mary River ore mine, halting operations. Temperatures in recent days have dipped to twenty degrees below zero, Farenheit. At issue are controversial plans drawn up by the mine’s operator, Baffinland Iron Mines Corporation, to double output, the Guardian reports. To bring twelve million tons of iron ore to market, the mine has said it needs to build a railway to a port near the community of Pond Inlet. But hunters have pushed back over fears that the expansion could threaten the populations of caribou and narwhal – two key sources of food – if approved. As the standoff entered its fifth day, seven hundred workers were stranded at the Mary River site, according to the Guardian. The company claims the blockade on the airstrip means food supplies cannot be delivered. Residents of Clyde River plan to bring supplies to the Mary River protesters in the coming days, a journey that could take three days by snowmobile and requires travellers to brave mountain valleys and perilous sections of ice. Jerry Natanine, mayor of Clyde River, said QUOTE We’ve been clearly and repeatedly telling the mine that their plans were unacceptable. And they haven’t listened to any of our suggestions. So now we’re left fighting for our culture and way of life ENDQUOTE. Solidarity with the Inuit hunters. AND NOW FOR SOME QUICKER QUICKIES: Joe Biden, along with vice president Kamala Harris and Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen, met with corporate executives at the White House yesterday. It was an attempt to rally support for Biden’s $1.9 trillion coronavirus relief bill. Those invited included Jamie Dimon of JPMorgan Chase, Tom Donohue of the US Chamber of Commerce, and Doug McMillon of Walmart. What a diverse crew. I guess the Monopoly Man wasn’t available. It is extremely unlikely that the coronavirus leaked from a lab in the Chinese city of Wuhan, where Covid-19 first emerged, NBC News reports. The new assessment comes from the head of a team of experts that yesterday released details of its fact-finding mission into the virus's origins. Doctor Peter Ben Embarek from the World Health Organization said it was more likely that the virus had jumped to humans from an animal – possibly bats. Take heed and don’t cuddle up with those those furry, winged fiends. The Biden administration yesterday asked the remaining US attorneys appointed by Donald Trump and confirmed by the Senate to submit their resignations, the Washington Post reports. The request applies to fifty-five federal prosecutors and spared only two, who are conducting politically sensitive probes, including of President Biden’s son. One way or another, Hunter Biden is going to stay in the news. German prosecutors have charged a one hundred-year-old man with three thousand, five hundred and eighteen counts of accessory to murder, the Guardian reports. The man served during the second world war as a Nazi SS guard at a concentration camp on the outskirts of Berlin. His name was not released. The prosecutor called him QUOTE part of the functioning of [a] machinery of death ENDQUOTE. Old fascists are still bound to lose. FEB 10, 2021 - AM QUICKIE HOSTS - Sam Seder & Lucie Steiner WRITER - Corey Pein PRODUCER - Dorsey Shaw EXECUTIVE PRODUCER - Brendan Finn

Welcome to Majority.FM's AM QUICKIE! Brought to you by justcoffee.coop TODAY'S HEADLINES President Trump’s second impeachment trial begins today! Aren’t we all excited? Here’s what we might see as it plays out. Meanwhile, the deadline is fast approaching for the Biden administration to continue pursuing the extradition case against Julian Assange, and a broad coalition of civil liberties and human rights groups are urging the new president to drop it. And lastly, in Austin, the city council is taking a bold approach to alleviating the housing crisis: buying hotels to provide permanent, supportive homes for unhoused people. THESE ARE THE STORIES YOU NEED TO KNOW: Today, the second trial of one Donald J. Trump begins. His crime this time? Inciting an insurrection that briefly occupied the U.S. Capitol building and left five people dead. Will he get away with it? All signs point to probably! Here’s where we stand. On Monday, Trump’s crack legal team, made up of random people he cobbled together after most of his actual lawyers quit, argued that the president didn’t commit the crime he was accused of, and even if he did that trying a former president after he had left office was unconstitutional. The facts point to Trump being a significant driving force in inciting the January 6 insurrection. But when it comes down to it, there’s a good chance he’ll skate simply because of the numbers: 17 Republicans would have to flip on their most recent president in order to get the two thirds majority the Senate needs. Still, we might see some fireworks in the proceedings, which Senate leadership has set up to be lightning-fast. The initial arguments will take place over about four hours early today, which will set up a vote on whether or not the whole thing is constitutional or not on Tuesday afternoon. If the Senate votes that the trial is constitutional, things will go on a little longer. Starting Wednesday, each side will have 16 hours to present their arguments. That means that even with the Senate’s usual glacial pace, we could have a final verdict as early as next week. Both Democrats and Republicans want this thing to be over as quickly as possible, largely so they can go back to fighting over the stimulus bill that actually affects Americans and not this trial, which, well, doesn’t. But hey, now you know, and if we’re lucky we might see some GOP ghouls squirm in the process. Will Biden Drop Julian Assange Case? A broad coalition of civil liberties and human rights groups are pushing the Biden administration to finally drop the extradition case against Julian Assange. The government has until Friday to file a brief with the British court that currently holds Assange’s fate in their hands. The Trump administration had pursued Assange relentlessly, filing their final brief appealing the court’s decision to block Assange’s extradition on January 19, the day before Biden took office. Assange’s case and the media company he founded, Wikileaks, have taken many twists and turns over the years. But regardless of his personal actions, the U.S. government’s aggressive persecution of him would set an extremely dangerous precedent for press freedom across the world. That’s what the coalition is arguing, with signatures from the ACLU, Amnesty International, the Committee to Protect Journalists, Human Rights Watch, Reporters Without Borders, and many more. Kenneth Roth, the executive director of Human Rights Watch, said in a statement quote: “Most of the charges against Assange concern activities that are no different from those used by investigative journalists around the world every day. President Biden should avoid setting a terrible precedent by criminalizing key tools of independent journalism that are essential for a healthy democracy.” endquote. That about sums it up. We’ll see how the Biden administration decides to play it: whether they follow in Trump’s draconian footsteps, or ease off the gas. Austin Buys Hotel for Homeless In Austin, the local city council has taken a bold approach to the housing crisis plaguing many major cities. At the end of last week, the council approved its second purchase of a hotel that it will convert into permanent, supportive housing for people without a home. This is the progressive solution that advocates have been clamoring for years: use government funding to just give people a home. If hotels are empty, buy them and let people live in them. The new measure will use about $9.5 million to acquire the hotel, and use some funding from the police department’s budget to provide services to its residents. At full occupancy, the operation costs are expected to be about $2.2 million per year: not exactly cheap, but also not an exorbitant expense for a city like Austin. The city councilmembers leading the charge note that this summer’s transformative racial justice movement directly inspired the policy. Council Member Gregorio Casar, who led the effort to cut police funding, said quote: “In the wake of Black Lives Matter protests this summer, we made a significant cut to policing dollars and reinvested that in things like this. That’s how we’re paying for this. That’s the only reason we’re able to do this.” Endquote. Together, the two hotels can provide about 140 units of supportive housing for people in need. That won’t cover all 2500 or so people in Austin experiencing homelessness, but it’s a pretty good start. AND NOW FOR SOME QUICKER QUICKIES: U.S. Representative Ron Wright, a Republican of Texas, died on Monday of COVID-19, marking Congress’s first fatality from the disease. Wright had previously battled lung cancer. A lower court in New York ruled that the state cannot prosecute Paul Manafort under the double jeopardy rule, after the Trump insider skated off with a pardon from the former president. Manafort had been released to home confinement after his lawyers successfully argued that he was in danger of contracting coronavirus, so it’s unlikely he would have seen the inside of a jail again either way. An unidentified hacker broke in to a water treatment plant in Oldsmar, Florida last week and attempted to raise chemical compositions in the city’s water supply to dangerous levels, according to a new story by Wired. Authorities aren’t sure who did it, or why, or how they got in. Iran’s foreign minister played the “no, you” card on the Joe Biden’s fledgling foreign policy team this week, saying that it was on the U.S. to rejoin the Iran nuclear deal, not the other way around. The Biden administration had previously demanded that Iran halt its uranium enrichment program before rejoining the deal, so now the ball is back in their court. We’ll see how this tennis match goes! FEB 9, 2021 - AM QUICKIE HOSTS - Sam Seder & Lucie Steiner WRITER - Jack Crosbie PRODUCER - Dorsey Shaw EXECUTIVE PRODUCER - Brendan Finn

Welcome to Majority.FM's AM QUICKIE! Brought to you by justcoffee.coop TODAY'S HEADLINES: Democrats in Congress are doing their best to weaken their own Coronavirus relief bill, considering a last-minute plan to further narrow down the list of people who will receive direct stimulus payments. Meanwhile, a new study finds that the more infectious UK variant of the coronavirus is spreading through the U.S. at an alarming rate. And lastly, the pandemic has destroyed housing stability for millions of Americans, and new reporting shows that even eviction moratoriums aren’t enough to offset the cost on working families. THESE ARE THE STORIES YOU NEED TO KNOW: Last week, it looked like we had a pretty good thing going. Democrats seemed determined to forge ahead with a coronavirus stimulus bill that was ambitious, at least by their standards, despite Republican opposition. But after a few days, it’s looking more and more like Joe Biden and the centrist core of the party will start to eat away at their own bill with their habit of “means testing.” That’s a term that gets slung around a lot in political reporting, but it basically just means the bureaucratic tinkering that is the difference between “Medicare for All,” and “Medicare for all people who qualify in a certain income bracket, live in three specific zip codes and go to precisely 2 professional sports games per year.” That’s not a real situation but you get the idea. What this looks like for stimulus bills, however, is a bit grim. Biden and Democratic leadership are reportedly considering a proposal to narrow down the eligibility requirements for Americans to get a second stimulus payment of $1400. Remember, this is the same check that was supposed to be $2000, but is now $1400, and now may be, well, nothing for a whole lot of people. According to the Washington Post, the proposal could phase out stimulus checks for people making as little as $50,000 a year in its strictest form. As politicians like Rep. Alexandria Ocasio Cortez also pointed out, if Democrats use income estimates from the 2019 tax year to make the cutoff, it could mean that, say, anyone who lost their job in 2020 would miss out on a check because they made too much money before the world as we know it ended. The solution, as progressives like AOC and Bernie are pointing out, is to do away with the stupid thresholds, and just give everyone the cash. It’s basically the only way to make sure everyone who needs something gets at least a little. UK Virus Spreading in US The more-infections strain of Coronavirus first detected in the United Kingdom is spreading quickly across the United States, according to a brand-new study. The study is still awaiting peer-review, but the Washington Post reports that it appears to confirm the CDC’s forecast from a few weeks ago, when the agency warned that the new strain would become the dominant form of the virus by late March. There’s good news and bad news there. The bad news is right up top: this strain is more infectious and spreads faster. The good news is that the typical ways of combating the virus like masks, social distancing, and crucially, vaccines, all still work. And while the UK version is more dangerous than what we’ve dealt with so far, it’s not the South African variant, which is resisting the Oxford AstraZeneca vaccine. South Africa has suspended its rollout of that particular vaccine, which, fortunately, is just one of many. If that variant makes its way to widespread prevalence in the U.S., we’ll still be able to fight it, but it’s certainly not ideal. What the presence of these new strains means is that we need to get as many people vaccinated as fast as possible. Report Shows Housing Crisis Growing Throughout the pandemic, one of the most devastating trends has been people losing their homes in the widespread economic recession. A new report by the New York Times found that millions of Americans are still struggling with housing insecurity, and that the government’s haphazard eviction moratoriums are woefully inadequate to deal with the fallout. The data is grim: one study the Times surveyed showed that renters who lost their jobs in the pandemic have incurred $53 billion in back rent, utilities, and late fees. The question now becomes what the Biden administration will do to fix this. Because eviction moratoriums, one of the most prominent treatments for the problem, aren’t enough. The Times reports that millions more families move out of apartments due to financial instability before they’re even evicted. Davin Reed, an economist at the Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia told the Times quote: “What happens in housing court will miss most of the people who need help. Endquote. And for those in other situations: behind on rent, bills, or struggling to find a place to stay, a mere moratorium won’t get them back on their feet. It’s going to take drastic, sweeping overhauls and relief to end a new recession wave of homelessness and insecurity, and it remains to be seen whether our government is up to the task. AND NOW FOR SOME QUICKER QUICKIES: Florida, the state that hosted the fan-packed SuperBowl on Sunday night, leads the nation in reported cases of the UK virus. Local news crews captured crowds of largely unmasked partiers all over downtown Tampa Bay and Ybor (EE-BOAR) city before the big game. Protesters have taken to the streets in Myanmar to oppose the country’s recent military coup, when the armed forces took elected leaders into custody and re-established their control of the country. One protester told the New York Times quote: “I don’t care if they shoot because under the military, our lives will be dead anyway. Before we die completely, we have to protest.” In 2021 alone, Republicans across the country in state legislatures have released over 100 voter suppression bills in 28 states, Common Dreams reports. That puts pressure on Democrats at a national level to pass sweeping bills like the John Lewis Voting Rights Act and the For the People Act while they have control of the House and Senate. A former Trump campaign aid told the UK’s Sunday Times that the former President is quote “happier” since leaving the White House, mostly because he’s off social media. He may be glad to not have to do any work anymore, but we know the second part of that is a lie -- I’d bet big money that his Twitter ban still keeps him up at night. FEB 8, 2021 - AM QUICKIE HOSTS - Sam Seder & Lucie Steiner WRITER - Jack Crosbie PRODUCER - Dorsey Shaw EXECUTIVE PRODUCER - Brendan Finn

Welcome to Majority.FM's AM QUICKIE! Brought to you by justcoffee.coop TODAY'S HEADLINES: Joe Biden is ending US involvement with Saudi Arabia’s devastating war in Yemen. It’s bad news for arms merchants but a hopeful sign for humanitarians. Meanwhile, an investigation into the people charged in connection to last month’s Capitol insurrection finds some came trained and ready for battle. Seditious conspiracy charges could still be in the cards. And lastly, another voting machine company is suing Fox News for spreading lies about voting fraud in the presidential election. It’s one of the largest libel complaints in history, with damages of $2.7 billion at stake. THESE ARE THE STORIES YOU NEED TO KNOW: It’s about time. The US has announced an end to its support for Saudi-led offensive operations in Yemen, the Guardian reports. Officials cited the role the bombing campaign has had in creating the world’s worst humanitarian crisis. The announcement was made by Joe Biden’s national security adviser, Jake Sullivan, in a preview of a speech Biden delivered at the State Department yesterday. The distancing of Washington from Riyadh is one of the most conspicuous reversals of Donald Trump’s agenda. But it also marks a break with the policies pursued by Barack Obama, who had backed the Saudi offensive in Yemen, although he later sought to impose constraints on its air war. A bipartisan majority in Congress has previously voted to cut off support to the Saudi campaign, according to the Guardian. But Trump used his veto to block the move. The US will also freeze arms sales to Saudi Arabia, and name a special envoy to Yemen, to put more pressure on the Saudis, Emiratis and the Houthi forces they are fighting, to make a lasting peace agreement. A spokesperson for Campaign Against the Arms Trade described the move to the Guardian as a long overdue step towards ending the catastrophic and brutal war in Yemen. The group said QUOTE With the US ending this support, the onus is now firmly on the UK government to follow suit, or face international isolation. For the UK to continue to sustain a war that its closest ally is trying to end would be an untenable and shameful position ENDQUOTE. For the first time in years it’s possible to foresee an end to this catastrophe. Impeachment: Trump Won't Testify House Democrats yesterday asked Donald Trump to testify under oath for his Senate impeachment trial, the Associated Press reports. The request from House impeachment managers warns that any refusal to testify could be used to support a conviction. A Trump spokesman said Trump will not testify. The Senate impeachment trial starts next Tuesday, February 9th. Trump is charged with inciting an insurrection at the US Capitol on January 6th. And we are learning more about that insurrection all the time. The New York Times investigated the backgrounds of one hundred and seventy five people who have been charged in connection to the assault on the Capitol. At least twenty one of those charged so far had ties to militant groups. At least twenty two were current or former members of the military. More than a dozen were clear supporters of the conspiracy theory QAnon. But a majority expressed few organizing principles, outside a fervent belief in the false assertion that Trump had won re-election. The Times review suggests that many of those in the horde were likely disorganized, but some groups and individuals came to the Capitol trained and prepared for battle. Prosecutors have said some of the people involved in the riot could face charges of seditious conspiracy, according to the Times. No such charges have yet been filed. A majority of charges so far are for violations like trespassing or disorderly conduct, or for obstruction of a congressional proceeding. Many of these are misdemeanors. The stakes are certain to increase, as investigators put pressure on people already in custody, and as they determine who killed a Capitol Police officer, and who placed pipe bombs at nearby buildings. We’ll keep you posted. Voting Firm Sues Fox The bills are coming due. The Associated Press reports that a voting technology company is suing Fox News, three of its hosts and two former lawyers for Donald Trump – Rudy Giuliani and Sidney Powell – for $2.7 billion. The company charges that the defendants conspired to spread false claims that the company helped steal the US presidential election. The 285-page complaint filed yesterday in New York state court by Florida-based Smartmatic USA is one of the largest libel suits ever undertaken. On January 25th, a rival election- technology company – Dominion Voting Systems – sued Guiliani and Powell for $1.3 billion. Unlike Dominion, whose technology was used in twenty four states, Smartmatic’s participation in the 2020 election was restricted to Los Angeles County, the AP reports. Smartmatic’s limited role notwithstanding, Fox aired at least thirteen reports falsely stating or implying the company had stolen the 2020 vote in cahoots with Venezuela’s socialist government. This alleged disinformation campaign continued even after then-Attorney General William Barr said the Department of Justice could find no evidence of widespread voter fraud. For Smartmatic, the effects of the negative publicity were swift and devastating, the complaint alleges. Death threats, including against an executive’s fourteen-year-old son, poured in as Internet searches for the company surged, Smartmatic claims. According to the AP, the complaint also alleges that Fox hosts Lou Dobbs, Maria Bartiromo and Jeanine Pirro also directly benefitted from their involvement in the conspiracy. The lawsuit alleges that Fox went along with the well-orchestrated dance due to pressure from newcomer outlets such as Newsmax and One America News, which were stealing away conservative, pro-Trump viewers. Once again, it all comes down to ratings. AND NOW FOR SOME QUICKER QUICKIES: The House voted along party lines last night to remove the conspiracy theorist Georgia Republican Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene from her two committee posts. Only eleven Republicans joined with Democrats in the vote, which came about in response to Greene’s long record of frankly insane comments and posts, some of which condoned threats of violence against Democrats. As disturbing as Greene’s beliefs are, it’s even worse to see the GOP close ranks to defend her. Ingredients in many baby foods are contaminated with heavy metals like arsenic, lead and cadmium, congressional investigators said yesterday, according to the New York Times. Investigators reserved their harshest criticism for three companies that did not provide requested information to the the House Committee on Oversight and Reform: Walmart, which sells Parents’ Choice and Parent’s Choice Organic products; Sprout Organic Foods; and Campbell Soup Company, maker of Plum Organics baby foods. Consider yourself advised. Prosecutors on Wednesday sought a new arrest warrant and higher bond for Kyle Rittenhouse, who is charged with fatally shooting two people amid protests in Kenosha, Wisconsin, last summer, the Washington Post reports. They allege that the 18-year-old failed to notify authorities of a change in address. They also say Rittenhouse had minimal incentive to comply with his bond conditions because his $2 million bond had been paid by a QUOTE dubious Internet fundraising campaign ENDQUOTE. GoFundMe-a-killer. How creepy is that? The Biden administration is reviewing whether it can provide student debt relief through executive action, the AP reports. Biden previously said he supports erasing up to $10,000 in student debt through legislation. His position changed yesterday with a tweet from White House press secretary Jen Psaki. The tweet came hours after a group of Congressional Democrats, including Senators Chuck Schumer and Elizabeth Warren, urged Biden to use executive action to forgive $50,000 in federal student debt for all borrowers. Just do it, Joe. FEB 5, 2021 - AM QUICKIE HOSTS - Sam Seder & Lucie Steiner WRITER - Corey Pein PRODUCER - Dorsey Shaw EXECUTIVE PRODUCER - Brendan Finn

Welcome to Majority.FM's AM QUICKIE! Brought to you by justcoffee.coop TODAY'S HEADLINES: Joe Biden signals that he’s willing to be flexible with the numbers in his pandemic relief package – but not so flexible as to go along with the paltry Republican plan. Democrats in Congress are preparing to move forward with, or more likely without, the GOP. Meanwhile, Biden’s agenda is meeting resistance inside the Department of Homeland Security. There’s a lot of sad-sack ICE agents out there right now, folks. And lastly, why have some states done better than others when it comes to vaccinating people against the coronavirus? A new report suggests simplicity is key. THESE ARE THE STORIES YOU NEED TO KNOW: Can we count on Joe? We’ll find out soon. President Biden told Democratic lawmakers yesterday he’s not married to an absolute number on his $1.9 trillion Covid rescue plan, according to the Associated Press. But he said Congress needs to act fast on relief for the pandemic and the economic crisis. Biden also said he doesn’t want to budge from his proposed $1,400 in direct payments promised to Americans. But he said he is willing to target the aid, which would mean lowering the income threshold to qualify for the money. Biden said QUOTE I’m not going to start my administration by breaking a promise to the American people ENDQUOTE. We should hope not. He spoke with House Democrats and followed with a meeting at the White House with top Senate Democrats, the AP reports. While Biden is trying to build bipartisan support from Republicans, he is also prepared to rely on the Democratic majority in Congress to push his top agenda item into law. Republicans proposed a $618 billion alternative with slimmer $1,000 direct payments and zero aid for states and cities. But Biden panned this as insufficient. The goal is to have Covid-19 relief approved by March, when extra unemployment assistance and other pandemic aid measures expire, the AP reports. Money for vaccine distributions, direct payments to households, school reopenings and business aid are at stake. Biden told the Democrats QUOTE We have to go big, not small ENDQUOTE. Democrats have launched a lengthy budget process for approving Biden’s bill with or without Republican support. Voting started Tuesday in the Senate and was set for yesterday and today in the House. In the end, people won’t care about bipartisanship – they’ll care about results. ICE Morale In 'Toilet' Donald Trump’s most ardent loyalists are holding strong inside the federal bureaucracy. Trump often complained about what he called a deep state inside the government working to thwart his agenda. But Biden and his secretary of homeland security, Alejandro Mayorkas, are already encountering their own pockets of internal resistance, the New York Times reports. It’s especially bad at the agencies charged with enforcing the nation’s immigration laws. Mayorkas was confirmed on Tuesday after a nearly two-week delay by Republicans, according to the Times. Liberal activists and former Trump officials say he will struggle to get buy-in for Biden’s agenda from the thousands of border and immigration agents in his department. Videos celebrating Trump’s big, beautiful border wall are still featured on the Customs and Border Protection website. A fictionalized video by the agency that shows Trump’s depiction of migrants as feared criminals is still on the Border Patrol’s official social media channels. And the union representing ICE agents – whose leaders were enthusiastic supporters of Trump – has signaled that it does not intend to accept all of the new administration’s reversals of his policies. The day before Biden’s inauguration, union leaders signed a labor agreement that requires ICE’s political leadership to consult with the union on policy decisions. We told you about this on Tuesday. Mayorkas now has less than thirty days to cancel this agreement. If it stands, it could undercut Biden’s directives, including guidance that took effect on Monday requiring ICE officers to focus arrests on violent offenders. Tom Homan, who was ICE director under Trump, told the Times that morale at the agency had been QUOTE flushed down the toilet ENDQUOTE since Biden took over. But should we pity these poor, pouty ICE agents? Suck it up and fall in line, soldiers. State Vaccination Successes Studied SAM: States are racing to deliver potentially lifesaving coronavirus vaccines to millions of arms. But some are having far more success than others, the Washington Post reports. In the states moving fastest, up to one in seven people had received their first injection as of Tuesday. At the other end of the rankings, it was one in eighteen. If there’s one thing the states moving most quickly have in common, the Post says, it is that they brought order and simplicity to a process otherwise marked by chaos and complexity. In South Dakota, distribution has been limited to a small number of health-care providers who meet via phone twice a week and can make decisions on the fly. Connecticut has teamed with a well-established partnership network, while using community ambassadors to advocate for the vaccine among hesitant populations. And West Virginia has tightly coordinated its rollout, using the National Guard to speed supplies to where they are needed while streamlining the rules for who can get immunized. Officials in all three states told the Post they want to minimize confusion. West Virginia Governor Jim Justice said QUOTE If you want to know how many cows are in a field, just count the egg-sucking cows. Don’t count the legs and divide by four ENDQUOTE. Makes sense, I guess. In many states, governors delegated the process to a web of underfunded county health departments, along with hospitals, pharmacies, HMOs and doctor’s offices, the Post reports. West Virginia instead created a uniform statewide process. It is the only state to opt out of a federal program to vaccinate workers and residents at nursing homes, instead relying on local drugstores. It managed to wrap up the work before most states had even started. Kudos. Biden deputies have already been in touch about lessons learned. AND NOW FOR SOME QUICKER QUICKIES: The Canadian government designated the Proud Boys group as a terrorist entity yesterday, the AP reports. The decision was informed by the group’s role in the US Capitol insurrection on January 6th. Proud Boys leader and confirmed police informant Enrique Tarrio estimates the group has one thousand members in Canada. All terrorist hosers, eh. Gun-toting Congresswoman Lauren Boebert paid herself more than $22,000 in mileage reimbursements from her campaign account last year, the Denver Post reports. To justify those reimbursements, Boebert would have had to drive thirty-eight thousand, seven hundred and twelve miles while campaigning, despite having no publicly advertised campaign events in March, April or July, and only one in May. Her schedule is simply incredible. The Manhattan District Attorney’s Office has opened an investigation into Donald Trump adviser Steve Bannon, NBC News reports. The investigation concerns Bannon’s role in a charity that was supposed to use private funds to build the US-Mexico border wall. Trump pardoned Bannon for his role in the fraud before leaving office, but the pardon only extends to federal cases, not to state ones. Gotcha! The Oakland, California City Council voted Tuesday to require large grocery stores to pay their employees an additional $5 per hour. Small independent stores are exempt. The pay raise is meant to compensate grocery store workers for the increased risks they have faced during the pandemic. Local action gets the goods again. That’s all for the AM Quickie. Join us this afternoon on the Majority Report. FEB 4, 2021 - AM QUICKIE HOSTS - Sam Seder & Lucie Steiner WRITER - Corey Pein PRODUCER - Dorsey Shaw EXECUTIVE PRODUCER - Brendan Finn

Welcome to Majority.FM's AM QUICKIE! Brought to you by justcoffee.coop TODAY'S HEADLINES: Scientists have found a troublesome new variant of the coronavirus in the wild in the United States. We’ll share what it means for you and yours. Meanwhile, Congressional Democrats are outraged at the elevation by Republicans of a conspiracy-theory spouting wingnut. Meet Sandy Hook truther Marjorie Taylor Greene, who Donald Trump called a rising star of the GOP. And lastly, Joe Biden’s Housing secretary nominee, Marcia Fudge, takes heat from Republicans for her own past comments about them. But what she’s got to say about keeping people housed during the pandemic is spot-on. THESE ARE THE STORIES YOU NEED TO KNOW: It’s here. A highly transmissible variant of the coronavirus first identified in South Africa has infected two people in South Carolina with no travel history, the Washington Post reports. These are the first cases in the United States involving the B-One-Three-Five-One variant. The patients’ lack of travel or a connection to one another suggests that the variant is spreading in the community following an undetected introduction. The B-One-Three-Five-One variant was first identified in South Africa in December, the Post reports. It is considered by scientists to be even more worrisome than the more widely publicized B-One-One-Seven variant first seen in the United Kingdom. The latter has been detected in more than two dozen US states. Three so-called variants of concern are spreading across the planet, and all three have been identified in the US. A variant known to scientists as P-One has been spreading in Brazil and is linked to a disastrous surge in cases. According to the Post, there is no evidence that the B-One-Three-Five-One variant is deadlier for individuals than more common strains of the virus. But if it is more transmissible, as scientists suspect, the resulting boost to the infection rate would increase hospitalizations and deaths. At least one antibody therapy will not work against the new variants. Scientists are scrambling to create a new antibody that can block the mutation. The vaccines, scientists think, will still work as planned in the short term. The most important step the public can take is to try to stop the spread. Vaccinations are critical, but vaccines remain in short supply. In the meantime, people should practice social distancing and wear masks. In fact, some experts now suggest wearing a fabric mask on top of a surgical mask. So there’s a crafting project for you, folks. Pelosi Slams 'Appalling' Taylor Greene The crank is inside the House. Speaker Nancy Pelosi yesterday unloaded on House GOP leaders for elevating freshman Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene to a key panel, escalating pressure on Republicans to punish her for a long record of extremist comments, Politico reports. Pelosi said Greene should not be seated on the House Education Committee after peddling a false conspiracy theory that the massacre at Sandy Hook Elementary in 2012 was a hoax. Pelosi yesterday called the GOP’s decision to seat Greene on that committee QUOTE absolutely appalling ENDQUOTE. The freshman Republican from Georgia has drawn fury from across the House Democratic Caucus even before she was elected in November, Politico says. But that anger grew far more intense in recent days, after CNN and Media Matters uncovered Facebook posts in which Greene spread lies that deadly school shootings were staged. Another post showed Greene repeatedly endorsed executing top Democrats in 2018 and 2019. According to Politico, Pelosi is putting the onus directly on House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy to act. But so far, there are no signs that the California Republican has any intentions of stripping her of newly-awarded committee seats. Greene’s office said she has no plans to resign, citing strong support from her constituents back home. Some Democrats aren’t waiting around for GOP leaders to act. California Representative Jimmy Gomez is introducing a resolution to expel Greene from Congress. While expulsion is unlikely, Democrats aren't ruling out additional measures against Greene. Representative Ted Deutch, who represents Parkland, Florida, and chairs the Ethics Committee, said Greene QUOTE shouldn’t have a public platform to further spread dangerous lies ENDQUOTE. Greene was also seen on video harassing a survivor of the Parkland shooting. A real charmer, she is. Fudge Advances Through Senate President Joe Biden’s Cabinet nominees continue to face Congressional scrutiny. The Associated Press reports that Housing secretary nominee Marcia Fudge told senators yesterday she would take extraordinary actions to prevent people from losing their homes due to the pandemic. Fudge championed homeownership as a classically American ticket to the middle class and endorsed federal financial assistance to expand the ranks of minority homeowners. But during her appearance before the Senate Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs Committee, the long-serving Ohio congresswoman said her most immediate priority, if confirmed for Biden’s Cabinet, would be protecting the millions of people who have fallen behind on rent or mortgages due to loss of income during the pandemic. Speaking remotely from Cuyahoga Community College in Cleveland, Fudge said QUOTE Whatever it takes, we cannot afford to allow people in the midst of a pandemic to be put in the streets ENDQUOTE. Fudge also endorsed direct federal financial assistance to help prospective minority homeowners with the down payment on a mortgage, the AP reports. She said that simply ending racially biased lending or housing practices wasn’t enough. There needs to be direct assistance to make up the wealth gap created by generations of redlining and other systemic racial inequities, she said. The hearing progressed in a largely collegial tone, according to the AP. Some of the most pointed criticism from Republicans focused not on Fudge’s policies but on the harsh things she has said about Republicans. Louisiana Senator John Kennedy challenged Fudge, a former leader of the Congressional Black Caucus, on statements she made that Republicans don’t care about people of color. When Kennedy asked her directly whether she believed Republicans cared about Black Americans, Fudge tersely answered, QUOTE I do, some, yes ENDQUOTE. Now that’s true bipartisanship! AND NOW FOR SOME QUICKER QUICKIES: Thousands more New York state nursing home residents may have died of Covid-19 than Governor Andrew Cuomo’s administration has publicly acknowledged, ProPublica reports. A report released yesterday by Attorney General Letitia James found an undercount of as much as fifty percent. Cuomo’s office ignored a request for comment. It’s a scandal, is what it is. The US economy shrank by three point five percent last year, making 2020 the worst year for economic growth since 1946, according to the Washington Post. But one bright spot in 2020 was that the personal saving rate hit the highest on record. A Depression will do that. At least six people died and nine others were injured in a liquid nitrogen leak at a poultry plant in Georgia yesterday, the New York Times reports. Firefighters responded to the Foundation Food Group plant in Gainesville, Georgia, and found a large contingent of employees that had evacuated, along with multiple victims in the crowd. I wonder when was the last time this place had a real safety inspection? A German neo-Nazi has been jailed for life for the 2019 murder of Walter Lübcke, a pro-immigration politician with Angela Merkel’s CDU, the Guardian reports. Stephan Ernst admitted to the shooting last year. Yesterday a judge handed Ernst, age forty-seven, a life sentence and acknowledged the special gravity of his crime, meaning he is unlikely to be considered for parole for at least twenty-two years. Auf Wiedersehen! JAN 29, 2021 - AM QUICKIE HOSTS - Sam Seder & Lucie Steiner WRITER - Corey Pein PRODUCER - Dorsey Shaw EXECUTIVE PRODUCER - Brendan Finn

Welcome to Majority.FM's AM QUICKIE! Brought to you by justcoffee.coop TODAY'S HEADLINES: Joe Biden plans to reopen the Obamacare insurance marketplace, Healthcare.gov, to help with the pandemic. But to finally institute a public option, he’ll need support from Congress. Meanwhile, the acting chief of the Capitol Police admits to a massive screw-up that allowed a mob to take control of the halls of Congress earlier this month. The threat hasn’t yet passed. And lastly, state and local officials are pressuring the new administration to make a serious commitment to fighting climate change and mass extinction. Will Biden keep his campaign promise? THESE ARE THE STORIES YOU NEED TO KNOW: On healthcare, the new White House is aiming for the bronze. The Washington Post reports that President Biden will take executive actions as early as Thursday to reopen federal marketplaces selling Affordable Care Act health plans and to lower recent barriers to joining Medicaid. The orders will be Biden’s first steps since taking office to help Americans gain health insurance, a goal that has taken on added significance as the pandemic has deprived millions of Americans coverage as they have lost jobs in the economic fallout. Under one order, the Post reports, the online insurance marketplace HealthCare.gov will swiftly reopen for at least a few months. Ordinarily, signing up for coverage there is tightly restricted outside a six-week period late each year. Another part of Biden’s scheduled actions, the individuals said, is intended to reverse Trump-era changes to Medicaid that damaged Americans’ access to the safety-net insurance. The most ambitious parts of Biden’s campaign health-care platform would require Congress to provide consent and money. Those include creating a government insurance option alongside the ACA health plans sold by private insurers. They also include helping poor residents afford ACA coverage if they live in about a dozen states that have not expanded their Medicaid programs. Federal rules already allow people to qualify for a special enrollment period to buy ACA health plans if their circumstances change in important ways, according to the Post. That includes losing a job. But such exceptions require people to seek permission individually, and many are unaware they can do so. Trump health officials also tightened the rules for qualifying for special enrollment. In contrast, Biden is expected to open enrollment without anyone needing to seek permission. It’s a long way from Medicare for All, but it’s better than nothing. Capitol Police Chief Apologizes The search for answers and accountability continues. The acting chief of the Capitol Police apologized to Congress yesterday for the agency’s massive security failures on January 6th, the New York Times reports. She acknowledged during a closed-door briefing that the department knew there was a strong potential for violence, but failed to take adequate steps to prevent what she described as a terrorist attack. Yogananda Pittman, the acting chief of police, also confirmed that the Capitol Police Board, an obscure panel made up of three voting members, had initially declined a request two days earlier for National Guard troops. The board then delayed for more than an hour as the violence unfolded on January 6th before finally agreeing to a plea from the Capitol Police for National Guard troops. Chief Pittman was not the acting chief at the time of the siege. Her predecessor, Steven Sund, resigned after the riot. Chief Pittman said that her department knew January 6th would be unlike previous protests, according to the Times. She said her department knew that militia groups and white supremacists would descend on Washington. She said they knew some participants were intending to bring firearms and other weapons. She added QUOTE We knew that there was a strong potential for violence and that Congress was the target. The department prepared in order to meet these challenges, but we did not do enough ENDQUOTE. Separately, the deployment for the entire Washington, DC National Guard has been extended until March 31st in anticipation of civil disturbance, according to Politico. The timeframe coincides with Donald Trump’s impeachment trial. And his supporters are still issuing threats to lawmakers. What did you expect? They aren’t the type to send flowers. Officials Demand Climate Action What about climate action? Hundreds of state and local elected officials are calling on President Biden to lead a speedy, aggressive national effort to combat the climate and extinction crises, HuffPost reports. They want him to protect thirty percent of America’s lands and thirty percent of its waters by 2030. An open letter to the administration from four hundred and fifty officials representing forty-three states comes as Biden’s team works to dismantle Donald Trump’s legacy of rolling back environmental regulations and weakening protections for federal lands and wildlife. Biden also made a campaign promise to establish the thirty percent by 2030 target, which is in line with the United Nations’ plan for protecting biodiversity. The president is expected to issue an executive order on it any day now. According to HuffPost, the letter, organized by the left-leaning League of Conservation Voters, includes six specific actions that the signatories say should accompany the Thirty by Thirty goal. They include upholding Native American tribal sovereignty and supporting local and private landowner conservation efforts. New Mexico Congresswoman Deb Haaland, Biden’s pick to lead the Interior Department, last year led a coalition to set Thirty by Thirty as a national goal, HuffPost reports. At the time, she noted how the the loss of nature – accelerated by climate change – is putting up to one million species on the path to extinction. The Thirty by Thirty initiative has gained momentum at the local level. California Governor Gavin Newsom signed an executive order in October making his state the first to pledge to the goal. Lawmakers in other states, including New York and South Carolina, have introduced legislation to establish similar goals. Let’s make it national. AND NOW FOR SOME QUICKER QUICKIES: Antony Blinken was confirmed by the Senate as secretary of state yesterday. He is a longtime foreign policy aide to Joe Biden who got his start as a State Department employee. Also yesterday, Janet Yellen was sworn in by Vice President Kamala Harris as Treasury secretary. She is the first woman to hold the office. Tens of thousands of farmers marched, rode horses and drove tractors into India’s capital yesterday, breaking through police barricades to storm the historic Red Fort, the Associated Press reports. Riot police fired tear gas and water cannons and set up barricades. But protesters, some carrying ceremonial swords, ropes and sticks, overwhelmed police. All this is bad news for the prime minister, Narendra Modi, and his corporate giveaway farm law. President Biden yesterday ordered the Department of Justice to end its reliance on private prisons, the AP reports. It’s basically a reversion to Obama administration policy. However, the American Civil Liberties Union noted that the order does not end the government’s reliance on privately-run immigration detention centers. Come on, Joe – now’s not the time for half measures. All but five Republican senators backed Donald Trump yesterday in a key test vote ahead of his forthcoming impeachment trial, the Washington Post reports. Trump’s trial is not scheduled to begin until February 9th, but senators were sworn in for the proceedings yesterday and immediately voted on an objection raised by Kentucky Republican Rand Paul questioning the constitutional basis for the proceedings. Because Trump’s defenders care so much about constitutional norms, right? Sure. JAN 27, 2021 - AM QUICKIE HOSTS - Sam Seder & Lucie Steiner WRITER - Corey Pein PRODUCER - Dorsey Shaw EXECUTIVE PRODUCER - Brendan Finn

Welcome to Majority.FM's AM QUICKIE! Brought to you by justcoffee.coop TODAY'S HEADLINES: Joe Biden has unveiled his national strategy for fighting the coronavirus pandemic. But does it aim high enough? Meanwhile, Donald Trump’s businesses are hurting, big time. And his creditors will soon come knocking for $300 million – or more – that he owes. And lastly, the Biden administration is calling a halt to deportations while they figure out what’s going on at the Homeland Security Department. It’s a big relief for immigrant families. THESE ARE THE STORIES YOU NEED TO KNOW: The new message from the White House is that things may get worse before they get better, but help is on its way. President Joe Biden used his first full day in office yesterday to go on the offensive against the coronavirus, the New York Times reports. He promised to make aggressive use of executive power to tame the worst public health crisis in a century. In a two hundred-page document called the National Strategy for the Covid-19 Response and Pandemic Preparedness, the new administration outlines the kind of centralized federal response that Democrats have long demanded and Donald Trump refused. To carry it out, Biden signed a dozen executive actions in an afternoon White House ceremony. The Biden plan is in some respects overly optimistic and in others a little timid, according to the Times. His promise to inject one hundred million vaccines in his first hundred days is aiming low, since those hundred days should see twice that number of doses available. Because the approved coronavirus vaccines require two doses, Biden is promising only to vaccinate fifty to seventy million Americans. Biden bristled when a reporter asked if the goal should be higher. He said QUOTE Come on, give me a break, man ENDQUOTE. The Biden team has been quick to point fingers at the Trump administration’s failures, the Times reports. Jeff Zients, the new White House Covid-19 response coordinator, said QUOTE What we’re inheriting is so much worse than we could have imagined. The cooperation or lack of cooperation from the Trump administration has been an impediment. We don’t have the visibility that we would hope to have into supply and allocations ENDQUOTE. Fair enough, but the new administration can’t expect a long honeymoon. Biden himself acknowledged that the death toll will probably top five hundred thousand next month. Trump Businesses Bleeding Revenue Soon we’ll be able to take a break from covering Donald Trump, but this story is too juicy to pass up. According to the Associated Press, Trump is returning to a family business ravaged by pandemic restrictions. Revenue is plunging more than forty percent at his Doral golf property, his Washington hotel and both his Scottish resorts. Trump’s financial disclosure released as he left office this week was just the latest bad news for his empire. It came after banks, real estate brokerages and golf organizations announced they were cutting ties with his company following the storming of the Capitol. The disclosure showed sizable debt facing the company of more than $300 million, much of it coming due in the next four years, the AP reports. The disclosure report shows only revenue figures, not profits, but the hit to Trump’s business appeared widespread. The National Doral Golf Club outside of Miami took in $44.2 million in revenue, a drop of $33 million from 2019. The Trump International Hotel in Washington, once buzzing with lobbyists and diplomats, generated just $15.1 million in revenue, down more than sixty percent. Trump’s Turnberry club in Scotland took in less than $10 million, down more than sixty percent. Revenue at the family’s golf club in Aberdeen also dropped by roughly the same proportion. The financial blow from former business partners cutting ties to Trump could be sizable, the AP says. The PGA of America canceled a tournament at Trump’s Bedminster club in New Jersey. Several banks said they would no longer lend to the company. And New York City said it would be canceling contracts with the company, including those running skating rinks and a golf club in the Bronx. Revenue at that course, the Trump Golf Links at Ferry Point, fell twenty percent last year to $6.4 million. Maybe he should downsize. Try mini golf. Homeland Security Pauses Deportations The Biden administration has ordered US immigration agencies to focus their energies on threats to national security and public safety, the Washington Post reports. The policy shift ends a four-year stretch during the Trump administration that exposed anyone in the United States without papers to deportation. Acting Homeland Security Secretary David Pekoske issued a memo hours after Biden’s inaugural setting strict limits for arresting and deporting immigrants while the department reviews its policies. He also imposed an immediate hundred-day pause on many deportations, to take effect no later than today. Pekoske is in charge as the Senate considers the nomination of Alejandro Mayorkas, the former deputy DHS secretary during the Obama administration, according to the Post. The memo is the first step in a broader plan to find a different solution for the eleven million undocumented immigrants in the US, many of whom are essential workers, have lived here for years and have children who are citizens. Congress has not passed a major citizenship bill since 1986. Biden has unveiled legislation that would allow millions to apply for citizenship. The Post says that during the review period, DHS said it will impose sensible priorities for enforcing civil immigration laws. Starting February 1st, immigrants eligible for deportation will fall into three categories: National security threats, such as spies or terrorists; border crossers who arrived on or after November 1st; and aggravated felons currently serving time for crimes such as murder or drug trafficking, after they are released from prison. Immigrants who voluntarily waive their rights to remain in the US, after seeking legal counsel, may be deported. Biden has said it was a QUOTE big mistake ENDQUOTE to deport as many people as the Obama administration did. Biden will announce additional immigration actions on January 29th. This country is desperate for sanity on immigration. Maybe we’ll finally get it. AND NOW FOR SOME QUICKER QUICKIES: Two suicide bombers detonated explosive vests in a crowded market in central Baghdad yesterday morning, killing at least thirty-two people in the biggest such attack in several years, according to the New York Times. ISIS eventually claimed responsibility, although it’s supposedly been defeated. The Washington Post reports that Lieutenant General Charles Flynn, the brother of disgraced former national security adviser Michael Flynn, was involved in a key meeting during the US Army’s response to the US Capitol insurrection. What’s more, the Army falsely denied this fact for days. How strange! Maybe Congress will figure it out. The Biden administration fired the National Labor Relations Board’s general counsel, Peter Robb, on Wednesday night, ending the tenure of a figure seen as a foe by worker advocates and labor unions, according to the Post. Biden will now need to nominate a replacement, who must receive Senate confirmation. May we suggest Scabby the Rat? Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell is proposing to give former Donald Trump two weeks to prepare his legal case for his second impeachment trial, Politico reports. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has not yet transmitted the article of impeachment to the Senate, but said yesterday she would do so QUOTE soon ENDQUOTE. Let’s get it over and done. JAN 22, 2021 - AM QUICKIE HOSTS - Sam Seder & Lucie Steiner WRITER - Corey Pein PRODUCER - Dorsey Shaw EXECUTIVE PRODUCER - Brendan Finn

Welcome to Majority.FM's AM QUICKIE! Brought to you by justcoffee.coop TODAY'S HEADLINES: The world is a little bit safer today. Joe Biden is back in the White House after four years of malarkey and madness, and ready with seventeen day one actions. Meanwhile, Donald Trump’s flunkies began to face international sanction almost immediately upon the end of his tenure. And his most loyal followers are distraught – how sad. And lastly, supply shortages are causing states to cancel thousands of appointments for people who hoped to get the coronavirus vaccine. Here’s hoping Biden can turn this situation around, and fast. THESE ARE THE STORIES YOU NEED TO KNOW: The Trump era is over. Joe Biden yesterday was sworn in by Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts as the forty-sixth president of the United States. In his inaugural speech, surrounded by thousands of National Guard troops who were mostly off-camera, Biden addressed the violence at the Capitol on January 6th. He vowed that white supremacy and domestic terrorism will never prevail. He said QUOTE Today we celebrate the triumph not of a candidate but of a cause, the cause of democracy... Democracy has prevailed ENDQUOTE. He also called for unity, calling it the path forward at a historic moment of crisis and challenge. Kamala Harris, the first woman vice president and the first VP of color, was sworn by Justice Sonia Sotomayor. She was escorted to the platform by Eugene Goodman, a Capitol Police officer who faced down members of the mob two weeks ago. Lady Gaga belted out the national anthem, Jennifer Lopez sang “This Land Is Your Land,” and young poet Amanda Gorman recited a poem she completed only after the insurrection. Garth Brooks also performed. Biden wasted no time attempting to undo some of the worst actions of Donald Trump’s tenure in the White House. He signed seventeen executive orders, memorandums and proclamations yesterday, according to the New York Times. He ended Trump’s efforts to leave the World Health Organization and enacted a mask mandate on federal property. He signed orders reversing Trump’s immigration crackdowns, and repealed Trump’s so-called Muslim Ban. He signed a letter indicating that the US will rejoin the Paris climate accords, and an executive order overturning several of Trump’s destructive environmental policies. He also extended federal moratoriums on evictions and on federal student loan payments. Not bad for a first day. China Sanctions Trump Cronies Donald Trump took his last trip on Air Force One yesterday morning, landing in Florida, where with any luck he will endure a form of internal exile. Republican state representative Anthony Sabatini has proposed renaming US Route 27 after Trump, according to the Washington Post. But Democratic members of Congress Joaquin Castro of Texas and Linda Sanchez of California plan to introduce legislation banning federal property from ever being named in Trump’s honor. Sanchez went so far as to tell People magazine that QUOTE not even a bench [should] ever bear the name of this traitor ENDQUOTE. Trump surrendered the White House after a late night of signing last-minute pardons and other clemency orders for one hundred and forty-three people, the New York Times reports. Beneficiaries included Steve Bannon, his former chief strategist; Elliott Broidy, one of his top fund-raisers in 2016; and a series of politicians convicted of corruption. The White House did not announce the pardons until after midnight. As Biden was being sworn in yesterday, China imposed sanctions on former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, trade adviser Peter Navarro, and other Trump administration officials, saying they had damaged the US-China relationship with QUOTE crazy moves ENDQUOTE. Tough break, fellas! State capitols around the country were mostly calm but under heavy guard yesterday for fear of more violence by Trump supporters. Biden’s inauguaration also drove Trump’s most rabid supporters, the followers of the Q-Anon conspiracy theory, to despair. Some, however, are still urging their comrades to QUOTE trust the plan ENDQUOTE, and hold out hope for a miraculous Trump revival. Whatever. Finally, HuffPost reports that federal authorities yesterday arrested Joe Biggs, a prominent member of the Proud Boys who promoted the Capitol insurrection. It’s too late for a Trump pardon now. Harsh, bro. US States Suffer Vaccine Shortages The push to inoculate Americans against the coronavirus is hitting a roadblock, the Associated Press reports. A number of states are reporting they are running out of vaccine, and tens of thousands of people who managed to get appointments for a first dose are seeing them canceled. The full explanation was unclear, but last week the Health and Human Services Department suggested that states had unrealistic expectations for how much vaccine was on the way. About half of the thirty-one million doses distributed to the states by the federal government have been administered so far, according to the AP. However, only about two million people have received the two doses needed for maximum protection against Covid-19. Countries across Europe are also having problems getting enough doses. In the US, some states have suggested they may run out of vaccine by today and are unclear when new doses will arrive. New York Mayor Bill de Blasio said yesterday that the city had to cancel twenty-three thousand appointments for people awaiting their first dose this week, the AP reports. The reason? Inadequate supply. In Florida, local media reported a similar problem in the Miami area, where the Baptist Health care system canceled appointments that had been scheduled for first doses. San Francisco’s health department said it is likely to run out of vaccine today, in part because the state pulled back on administering a batch of Moderna shots after several health workers suffered what may have been a bad reaction. West Virginia, which has run one of the speediest vaccination drives in the country, in part by using small-town pharmacies, said it didn’t receive an expected increase in doses this week. This is where the feds need to step in and use the government’s vast resources to boost production. Capeesh? AND NOW FOR SOME QUICKER QUICKIES: Kroger yesterday pulled the Indiana Oath Keepers from its community rewards initiative, which funneled an unknown amount of donations from customers to the right-wing extremist group. But according to the Washington Post, the Indiana Oath Keepers are still participants in a similar donation program called Amazon Smile – at least for now... The AP reports that Italian police have recovered a five-hundred-year-old copy of a Leonardo da Vinci painting that was stolen from a Naples church during the pandemic. The man whose apartment police found the painting in claimed he’d bought it at a market. Sounds like a real bargain. Police in the United Kingdom found eight hundred and twenty-six cannabis plants in an indoor farm in London’s financial district, Reuters reports. The plants were in a building near the Bank of England. But we thought banker types preferred cocaine? In the final hours of the Trump presidency, immigration officials detained a nine year-old Haitian boy with a valid US visa, separated him from his elder brother and incarcerated him, the Guardian reports. Vladimir Fardin was sent to a refugee resettlement facility in southern California as an unaccompanied minor, and his older brother Christian Laporte was deported to Mexico. Advocates are worried about the boys and appalled at the cruelty of the Trump policy. May America be done with such inhumanity forever. JAN 21, 2021 - AM QUICKIE HOSTS - Sam Seder & Lucie Steiner WRITER - Corey Pein PRODUCER - Dorsey Shaw EXECUTIVE PRODUCER - Brendan Finn

Welcome to Majority.FM's AM QUICKIE! Brought to you by justcoffee.coop TODAY'S HEADLINES: Joe Biden to the rescue? The President-elect last night previewed his first major policy package, targeting the pandemic and the economic crisis that has come with it. Meanwhile, dozens of white supremacist on a federal terrorism watch list were present for the storming of the Capitol last week. Investigators are looking into possible foreign financing behind the insurrection. And lastly, Donald Trump is having a hard time finding lawyers to defend him in his second impeachment trial. I guess Rudy can fail, after all. THESE ARE THE STORIES YOU NEED TO KNOW: They’re calling it the American Rescue Plan. President-elect Joe Biden, who will take over the pandemic response in five days, gave a speech last night on his plans to combat the coronavirus and address its economic consequences, the Washington Post reports. His remarks came as more than four thousand Covid-19 deaths were reported in the United States for the second day in a row. The plan is divided into three major areas, according to the Post: $400 billion for provisions to fight the coronavirus, while reopening schools; more than $1 trillion in direct relief to families, including through stimulus payments and increased unemployment benefits; and $440 billion for aid to communities and businesses. The legislation includes a number of priorities sought by top congressional Democrats, from increasing the federal minimum wage to $15 an hour to adding billions in funding for childcare. Biden said QUOTE We need more action, more bipartisanship, and we need to move fast ENDQUOTE. The measures are narrowly tailored in an effort to garner GOP support, Biden’s team told the Post. The overall price tag is below $2 trillion. It will be followed by a broader recovery plan with more expansive Democratic priorities. But after campaigning as a bipartisan dealmaker, Biden wants to give Republicans the opportunity to get behind his first legislative effort as president. You might say he’s offering them an off-ramp from the road to insurrection. That part sounds like a longshot, frankly, but this is Joe Biden we’re talking about. Foreign Insurrection Financing Investigated Don’t call them patriots. The Washington Post reports that dozens of people on a terrorist watch list were in Washington for pro-Trump events on January 6th, when a violent mob stormed the US Capitol. The majority of the watchlisted individuals in Washington that day are suspected white supremacists. Their past conduct so alarmed investigators that their names had been previously entered into the national Terrorist Screening Database, a massive set of names flagged as potential security risks, the Post’s sources said. The watch list is larger and separate from the no-fly list the government maintains, and those listed are not automatically barred from any public or commercial spaces. While the FBI is hunting hundreds of rioting suspects who have dispersed back to their hometowns, the Post reports, federal agents are increasingly focused on the Proud Boys. Privately, some federal law enforcement officials have described the group as roughly equivalent to a nascent street gang. But other officials have expressed concern that the group may be growing rapidly into something more dangerous and directed. Separately, Yahoo News reports that law enforcement is investigating whether a series of large Bitcoin donations were linked to the assault on the Capitol. On December 8th, someone made a simultaneous transfer of Bitcoins worth more than $500,000 to twenty-two different virtual wallets, most of them belonging to prominent right-wing organizations and personalities. Right-wing figures and websites, including VDARE, the Daily Stormer and Nick Fuentes, received generous donations from a bitcoin account linked to a French cryptocurrency exchange. The suspicious December transaction, along with other intelligence, has prompted law enforcement and intelligence agencies to investigate the sources of funding for individuals who participated in the Capitol insurrection. The government is hoping to prevent future attacks but also to uncover potential foreign involvement in or support of right-wing activities, Yahoo’s source said. The plot thickens! Trump Lacks Impeachment Defense Donald Trump, on the eve of facing a second impeachment trial, is having trouble finding a legal team to defend him, Bloomberg News reports. Allies of the outgoing president have been looking for representation but so far are coming up short. Lawyers who defended him in the previous impeachment trial, including Jay Sekulow, have said no this time. Other lawyers who have defended Trump, including Pam Bondi, aren’t interested. Some of the lawyers have privately said what Trump did was indefensible. Alan Dershowitz also defended Trump the first time around. He isn’t planning to represent the president now, Bloomberg reports. Rudy Giuliani is also unlikely to be on the president’s defense team, an administration official said. His conduct at the rally preceding the Capitol raid could be examined during an impeachment trial. Separately, ABC News reports that the Trump family is pulling up stakes. Donald and Melania Trump have made no secret of their impending move to Florida after January 20, but they won't be alone. The president's eldest son, Donald Trump Junior, and his girlfriend Kimberly Guilfoyle have been house-hunting in the Palm Beach area. Ivanka Trump and her husband, Jared Kushner, also plan to relocate to the Sunshine State in the coming weeks, having recently purchased a plot of land in the Miami area. In related real estate news, the Washington Post reports that the Secret Service detail assigned to Jared and Ivanka spent months searching for a restroom to use on the job. After resorting to a porta-potty, the agents finally found a toilet to call their own. But it came at a cost to US taxpayers. Since September 2017, the federal government has been spending $3,000 a month – more than $100,000 to date – to rent a basement studio, with a bathroom, from a neighbor of the Kushners. All this because agents were banned from using any the six point five bathrooms in Javanka’s mansion. Charming. AND NOW FOR SOME QUICKER QUICKIES: The New York State attorney general sued the New York City Police Department yesterday over widespread abuses in how officers handled Black Lives Matter protests last summer, the New York Times reports. The AG, Letitia James, wants a federal monitor to oversee the department’s policing tactics at future protests. She also wants a court to declare that the practices the department used during the protests were unlawful. Get ’em Letitia! Rick Snyder, the former governor of Michigan, was arraigned on misdemeanor charges yesterday in connection with his role in the Flint water crisis. The Times reports thatnhe was charged with two counts of willful neglect of duty. If he is convicted, he faces imprisonment of up to one year or a maximum fine of $1,000. It ain’t much but it’s something. Joe Biden plans to name Jaime Harrison as his pick to lead the Democratic National Committee, the Washington Post reports. A former chairman of the South Carolina Democratic Party, Harrison last year raised $130 million in his losing race against Senator Lindsey Graham. Harrison is not expected to face a challenger, and his candidacy was promoted by Congressman James Clyburn, a close Biden ally. Puerto Rican police are investigating the death of a transgender man found with multiple gunshot wounds, NBC News reports. Samuel Edmund Damián Valentín, shot January 9, is the seventh known transgender person to die by violence in Puerto Rico since last February. Advocates say the police aren’t doing enough. Hopefully more awareness on the case will cause them to pick up the pace. JAN 15, 2021 - AM QUICKIE HOSTS - Sam Seder & Lucie Steiner WRITER - Corey Pein PRODUCER - Dorsey Shaw EXECUTIVE PRODUCER - Brendan Finn

Welcome to Majority.FM's AM QUICKIE! Brought to you by justcoffee.coop TODAY'S HEADLINES: Donald Trump yesterday became the first United States president to be impeached twice. Congratulations, sir! Meanwhile, new details continue to surface about cooperation between last week’s Capitol mob and elected Republican officials. Not to mention the corporate money that backs them. And lastly, the United States government has announced a trade ban on certain products from China made with forced labor. A fifth of the global cotton supply is at stake, and major clothing brands are implicated. THESE ARE THE STORIES YOU NEED TO KNOW: It’s done. History has been made. Again. And hopefully not for a third time, because one insurrection was exciting enough. The House voted yesterday to impeach Donald Trump on a charge of inciting violence against the US government. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell left open the possibility of voting to convict at a trial, which would occur after Trump leaves office next week, the Washington Post reports. The Senate could vote on barring Trump from future elective office if he is convicted. The final vote in the House yesterday was two hundred and thirty-two to one hundred and ninety-seven, with ten Republicans voting with Democrats for impeachment. It was reportedly the most bipartisan impeachment ever. During debate on the House floor, House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy said Trump bears responsibility for last week’s violent takeover of the Capitol but proposed he be censured rather than impeached. Holding Trump accountable, McCarthy said, would only fan the flames of partisan division. Congressman Jaime Raskin of Maryland, the lead impeachment manager, had a concise response to that argument. He said QUOTE It’s a bit much to be hearing that these people would not be trying to destroy our government and kill us if we just weren’t so mean to them ENDQUOTE. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said Trump must go, calling him a clear and present danger. Representative Hakeem Jeffires of New York went farther, calling Trump QUOTE a living, breathing impeachable offense ENDQUOTE. Trump released a video statement disavowing political violence. He reportedly spent the day furious, watching television. Republicans Ignore Capitol Security The number of National Guard troops deployed to Washington, DC ahead of Joe Biden’s inauguration has reportedly swelled to twenty thousand, double what was initially pledged. News photos showed service members resting on the floors of the Capitol. Not everyone is happy about the increased security. A dozen or more Republicans in the House, including gun-toting Colorado Representative Lauren Boebert, have refused to comply with newly installed metal detectors outside the chamber. Some are concerned that these Republicans may be showing future armed insurrectionists how to circumvent security. And there is new information about how GOP elected officials may have coordinated with the mob that took the Capitol last week. The Washington Post reports that weeks before the siege, right-wing activist Ali Alexander told his followers he was planning something big for January 6th. Alexander, who organized the Stop the Steal movement, said he hatched the plan alongside three GOP lawmakers: Representatives Andy Biggs and Paul Gosar of Arizona, and Mo Brooks of Alabama. All are hard-line Trump supporters. And Politico reports that Democratic Representative Mikie Sherrill of New Jersey witnessed colleagues escorting people through the Capitol on January 5th for what she described as reconnaissance ahead of the next day’s violent insurrection. Sherrill did not identify the lawmakers, but has referred her information to authorities. Democrats are also investigating. Finally, two Capitol Police officers told BuzzFeed News they wouldn’t be surprised if lawmakers helped plan the attack. Beyond Washington, Politico reports that the Capitol riot was fueled by a deep network of GOP statehouse support. Lawmakers from more than a dozen states attended the January 6th rally, while scores more cheered on the mob from afar. Meanwhile, corporations and industry groups have donated at least $170 million in recent years to Congressional Republicans who rejected Joe Biden’s victory over Trump, according to Public Citizen, an advocacy group. So the insurrectionists have money, they have numbers, and they have outrage. But pretty soon, at least, they won’t have Congress – or the White House. US Bans Chinese Cotton This news of global trade and diplomacy comes via the Associated Press. The US government announced yesterday that it will halt imports of cotton and tomatoes from the Uighur region of China. The AP is calling it the most sweeping action yet to pressure the Communist Party over its campaign against ethnic minorities. Officials said Customs and Border Protection will use its authority to block products suspected of being produced with forced labor to keep out cotton, tomatoes and related products from the Xinjiang region of northwest China. The region is a major global supplier of cotton, so the order could have significant effects on international commerce. According to the AP, the order will put economic pressure not just on China but major global retailers who import goods produced by people under conditions that are akin to modern-day slavery. Scott Nova, executive director of the Worker Rights Consortium, said QUOTE Any global apparel brand that is not either out of Xinjiang already, or plotting a very swift exit, is courting legal and reputational disaster. The days when any major apparel brand can safely profit from Xinjiang cotton are over ENDQUOTE. The consortium estimates the US ban affects about twenty percent of the global cotton supply. China has imprisoned more than one million people, including Uighurs and other mostly Muslim ethnic groups, in a vast network of concentration camps, the AP reports. People have been subjected to torture, sterilization and political indoctrination in addition to forced labor as part of an assimilation campaign. China denies allegations of rights abuses and forced labor, saying it aims only to promote economic and social development in the region and stamp out radicalism. It also rejects criticism of what it considers its internal affairs. Well, we’ll stop criticizing when they stop abusing people. AND NOW FOR SOME QUICKER QUICKIES: The US recorded an all-time, one-day high of four thousand, three hundred and twenty-seven Covid-19 deaths on Tuesday, according to the Associated Press. The nation’s overall death toll from the pandemic has topped three hundred and eighty thousand, closing in fast on the number of Americans killed in World War II. I think we’ve set enough records here, please, that’s enough. Wildfire smoke now accounts for up to half of all fine-particle pollution in the Western US, according to the Los Angeles Times. A new study by researchers at Stanford University and UC San Diego blames climate change for worsening air quality and health risks in both urban and rural communities in recent years. Excuse me, I’m choking up a bit at this news. Italy opened a huge trial yesterday of three hundred and twenty-five defendants linked to a powerful mafia syndicate in the southern region of Calabria. According to the New York Times, the charges include murder, extortion, usury, money laundering, drug trafficking, corruption, and more. Prosecutors hope to prove collusion among mobsters and public officials, politicians, businessmen and members of secret lodges, and we can’t wait for the movie. Joe Biden yesterday named Samantha Power, the former US Ambassador to the United Nations, as his choice to lead the US Agency for International Development. It’s another Biden appointment that will thrill the center and annoy the left, as he is wont to do. JAN 14, 2021 - AM QUICKIE HOSTS - Sam Seder & Lucie Steiner WRITER - Corey Pein PRODUCER - Dorsey Shaw EXECUTIVE PRODUCER - Brendan Finn

Welcome to Majority.FM's AM QUICKIE! Brought to you by justcoffee.coop TODAY'S HEADLINES: For the second time, and with one week until Joe Biden’s inauguration as president, Congress is impeaching Donald Trump. Security is ramping up and members of Congress are concerned about further assaults on the government. Meanwhile, it turns out the Federal Bureau of Investigation did produce a report that a violent mob was bound for the Capitol last week. But it remains unclear why law enforcement acted like it was no big deal. And lastly, the federal government issued new guidelines in hopes of dispensing the coronavirus vaccine faster. Now everyone over sixty five should be eligible for a shot. THESE ARE THE STORIES YOU NEED TO KNOW: The US House of Representatives is set to vote this morning on articles of impeachment against Donald Trump. Several top House Republicans have said they will vote to impeach. Last night, House Democrats passed a resolution calling on Vice President Mike Pence to remove Trump using the Twenty-Fifth Amendment to the Constitution. However, in a letter Pence confirmed he would not cooperate in the effort. The White House does not expect to mount a forceful impeachment defense, Politico reports, knowing that Trump is unlikely to be convicted in the Senate. But just how unlikely remains a moving target. According to the New York Times, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell is pleased that Democrats are impeaching Trump, believing that it will make it easier to purge him from the Republican party. Trump spoke yesterday in Alamo, Texas, where he visited the border wall. Earlier in the day he disclaimed all responsibility for last week’s mob and said efforts to remove him from office were QUOTE causing tremendous anger ENDQUOTE. In other words: you made us do it. The Huffington Post reports that Capitol Police briefed Democrats on Monday night about three more potentially gruesome demonstrations planned in the coming days. The first is being billed as the largest armed protest ever to take place on American soil. Another is a protest in honor of Ashli Babbitt, the woman killed while trying to climb into the Speaker’s Lobby during last Wednesday’s siege of the Capitol. And another demonstration, by far the most concerning to members of Congress, would involve insurrectionists forming a perimeter around the Capitol, the White House and the Supreme Court. The mob would then block Democrats from entering the Capitol – perhaps even killing them – so that Republicans could take control of the government. These threats may not materialize. But according to the Associated Press, fifteen thousand National Guard members are deploying to Washington, DC, to help provide security. Military officials are working with the Secret Service to determine which Guard members may need additional background screening. The Joint Chiefs of Staff issued a memo to the entire US military yesterday condemning the Capitol riot and confirming Joe Biden will become commander in chief of the armed forces on January 20th. Meanwhile, the FBI is warning about armed protests at all fifty state capitols leading up to Biden’s inauguration. It’s tense, folks. Tense! FBI Warned Of Violence We’re learning more about intelligence failures at the Capitol. A day before rioters stormed Congress, an FBI office in Virginia issued an explicit internal warning that extremists were preparing to travel to Washington to commit violence and QUOTE war ENDQUOTE. This news comes from an internal document reviewed by The Washington Post. It contradicts a senior official’s declaration the bureau had no intelligence indicating anyone at last week’s pro-Trump protest planned to do harm. The document says FBI Norfolk received information about calls for violence to begin on January 6 in Washington, DC. It cites an online thread that discussed specific calls for violence, including this one: QUOTE Be ready to fight. Congress needs to hear glass breaking, doors being kicked in, and blood from their BLM and Pantifa slave soldiers being spilled. Get violent. Stop calling this a march, or rally, or a protest. Go there ready for war. We get our President or we die. Nothing else will achieve this goal ENDQUOTE. An FBI official familiar with the document told the Post that within forty-five minutes of learning about the alarming online conversation, the Norfolk FBI office wrote the report and shared it with others within the bureau. It was not immediately clear how many law enforcement agencies outside the FBI were told. Multiple law enforcement officials have said privately in recent days that the level of violence exhibited at the Capitol has led to difficult discussions within the FBI and other agencies about race and terrorism. There is concern that investigators failed to register the degree of danger because the overwhelming majority of the participants at the rally were white conservatives fiercely loyal to Donald Trump. Go figure. Government Expands Vaccine Eligibility Health authorities are changing tack on the coronavirus. Barely a month into a mass vaccination campaign, the Associated Press reports, the Trump administration unexpectedly shifted gears yesterday to speed the delivery of shots. Health and Human Services Alex Azar has announced two major changes. First, the government will no longer hold back required second doses of the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines, practically doubling supply. Second, states should immediately start vaccinating other groups lower down the priority scale, including people age sixty-five and older, and younger people with certain health problems. Meanwhile, the New York Times reports that scientists are envisioning what a post-vaccine world might look like – and what they see is comforting. The coronavirus is here to stay, but once most adults are immune – following natural infection or vaccination – the virus will be no more of a threat than the common cold. That’s according to a study published in the journal Science yesterday. The virus is a menace now because it is an unfamiliar pathogen that can overwhelm the adult immune system, which has not been trained to fight it, the Times says. That will no longer be the case once everyone has been exposed to either the virus or vaccine. Children, on the other hand, are constantly challenged by pathogens that are new to their bodies, and that is one reason they are more adept than adults at fending off the coronavirus. Eventually, the study suggests, the virus will be of concern only in children younger than five, subjecting even them to mere sniffles – or no symptoms at all. In other words, the coronavirus will become endemic, a pathogen that circulates at low levels and only rarely causes serious illness. AND NOW FOR SOME QUICKER QUICKIES: Sheldon Adelson, a billionaire casino tycoon, newspaper owner, and Republican megadonor, died on Monday in Malibu, California. The cause was complications related to treatment for non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma, according to the Washington Post. He was eighty- seven. At least five members of Congress have now tested positive for Covid-19 after sheltering in place with lawmakers who refused to wear masks during the assault on the US Capitol last week. They include Democrat Pramila Jayapal of Washington State, who assailed Republicans for QUOTE creating a superspreader event on top of a domestic terrorist attack ENDQUOTE. Gosh, it’s almost like they’re trying to do harm. Deutsche Bank, which has been Donald Trump’s primary lender for two decades, has decided not to do business with Trump or his company in the future, according to the New York Times. Trump currently owes Deutsche Bank more than $300 million, which is due in the next few years. Surely he’s good for it. India’s supreme court has suspended a series of controversial new agriculture laws that had prompted hundreds of thousands of farmers to stage a months-long protest in Delhi, the Guardian reports. Farmers argued that the new laws put them at greater risk of poverty and losing their land to large corporations. Protest gets results! JAN 13, 2021 - AM QUICKIE HOSTS - Sam Seder & Lucie Steiner WRITER - Corey Pein PRODUCER - Dorsey Shaw EXECUTIVE PRODUCER - Brendan Finn

Welcome to Majority.FM's AM QUICKIE! Brought to you by justcoffee.coop TODAY'S HEADLINES: Donald Trump pledges a peaceful transfer of power when Joe Biden is inaugurated on January 20th. It’s a little late now, doncha think? Meanwhile, Democrats in Congress call for Trump’s immediate removal from office, through impeachment if necessary. But they’d need to cut short their current vacation. And lastly, California looks to extend eviction protections for renters – and to send $600 state stimulus checks to many residents. Now there’s an idea worth stealing. THESE ARE THE STORIES YOU NEED TO KNOW: Here’s the state of play following Wednesday’s insurrectionist raid on the Capitol. After resuming its joint session Wednesday night, Congress voted to certify Joe Biden’s presidential election victory in the wee hours of yesterday morning. When all was said and done, one hundred and forty seven Republican members of Congress – including eight Senators – voted to overrule the Electoral College results. There are now calls that they should face consequences for supporting an anti-democratic putsch, but more on that later. After certifying Biden’s win, the House and Senate adjourned for most of the next two weeks. In a statements released yesterday, Trump offered the closest thing to a concession we will likely hear from him. In a morning statement, one day after vowing to never concede, he said QUOTE there will be an orderly transition on January 20th ENDQUOTE. In a later video, he called for calm and reconciliation in an apparent effort to appease Democrats calling for his removal. This could be how we hear from Trump going forward, in canned statements and videos from the bunker. Facebook chief executive Mark Zuckerberg yesterday announced that Trump would be suspended from the platform indefinitely, or at least until Biden’s inauguration. There were reports that Trump has made plans to pardon family members as well as himself. No shock there. More surprising: the Trump campaign yesterday dropped all of its election challenges in Georgia. More details emerged about the mob that took the Capitol. It reportedly included a former officer of the Oakland, California Police Department, and a current sheriff’s lieutenant from Bexar County, Texas, who is now under investigation. According to Politico, more off-duty police officers and members of the military may have also participated in the mob. A West Virginia state delegate joined in and livestreamed himself pushing past police officers. A Pennsylvania Republican state senator, Doug Mastriano, also organized buses for the mob. A man who was photographed inside House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s office, and stealing her mail, was identified as Richard Barnett, an avowed white supremacist. Finally, the woman who was shot and killed by Capitol Police was identified. Her name was Ashli Babbitt and she was an Air Force veteran from California, as well as a Q-Anon believer. Law enforcement sources said a Capitol Police officer was either dead or on life support last night, potentially becoming the fifth fatality related to the mob takeover. A rioter reportedly hit him in the head with a fire extinguisher. It’s all pretty grim, isn’t it? Democrats Demand Immediate Impeachment Many news organizations took the day to survey the fallout of Wednesday’s events. Reactions were many and varied. Speaking by telephone to the winter meeting of the Republican National Committee yesterday morning, Donald Trump was greeted with cheers. According to the Washington Post, some shouted we love you when Trump was put on speakerphone. Democrats were in no such lovey-dovey mood. Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer said Trump should be immediately removed from office by way of the 25th Amendment, which is a long shot because it would require action by members of Trump’s own cabinet as well as his Vice President, Mike Pence. (Pence advisers told Business Insider he won’t support such plans.) Failing the 25th Amendment remedy, Schumer said, Trump should be impeached for his role in instigating the assault on Congress. The call for removal was taken up by a wide range of Democrats including Nancy Pelosi and Minnesota Congresswoman Ilhan Omar, who stressed the need to move quickly. According to the Daily Beast, members of the House Judiciary Committee began drawing up articles of impeachment Wednesday evening. Omar sponsored them yesterday. House Judiciary Chairman Jerrold Nadler said he supported the articles being brought directly to the House floor. Separately, Missouri Congresswoman Cori Bush circulated a petition calling for the expulsion of those Republican members who QUOTE incited the attempted coup and white supremacist attack ENDQUOTE. Some Republicans did pipe up, for what it’s worth. Acting Homeland Security Secretary Chad Wolf released a statement imploring Trump to condemn the mob violence. Transportation Secretary Elaine Chao, who is married to Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, announced her resignation. Acting Attorney General Jeffrey Rosen said the Justice Department is committed to ensuring that those responsible for the attack face the full legal consequences. Former AG Bill Barr clearly blamed Trump for the violence, saying QUOTE orchestrating a mob to pressure Congress is inexcusable ENDQUOTE. The top federal prosecutor in Washington DC, Michael Sherwin, said Trump was not off limits in his investigation. The conduct of the police was heavily scrutinized. The chief of the Capitol Police resigned, and Schumer said he plans to fire the Senate sergeant-at-arms when he takes over as Majority Leader. The Wall Street Journal reported that managers of a DHS unit called Intelligence and Analysis knew of the looming mob but didn’t view it as posing a significant threat. Washington, DC, Mayor Muriel Bowser called for an investigation, noting federal cops came down harder on peaceful civil rights protesters over the summer than on violent insurrectionists this week. I wonder why. California Plans Stimulus Checks A state law protecting California tenants from pandemic-related evictions expires at the end of this month. So it’s good news, as the Los Angeles Times reports, that Governor Gavin Newsom is proposing to extend protections for renters and expedite distribution of $2.6 billion in federal rental assistance. Newsom said the budget he will release today would include the rental assistance money and a $600 state stimulus check to low-income residents. Under the proposals, Newsom said that Californians who have been impacted by this pandemic will get help to provide for their families and keep a roof over their heads. Millions of Californians lost income when the COVID-19 pandemic began in March, per the Times. Last summer, Newsom and the Legislature approved a bill that protected many tenants from evictions through January 31. Speaking Wednesday, Newsom did not say how long an extension he would support. A representative said that the plan is subject to negotiations with legislators. The governor also proposed to provide a Golden State Stimulus that would refund $600 to taxpayers who received a California earned income tax credit, the Times reports. Residents may be eligible for the tax credit if they have annual incomes of $30,000 or less. Last year, nearly four million eligible tax returns were filed. The stimulus payments would be sent out in February and March. Why don’t more states do this? AND NOW FOR SOME QUICKER QUICKIES: NBC News reports that Amazon founder Jeff Bezos is no longer the richest man in the world, after Tesla CEO Elon Musk's fortune rose to $188.5 billion. That’s $1.5 billion more than Bezos. Congratulations to the insufferable plutocrat. Joe Biden has picked Boston Mayor Marty Walsh, a former union leader, to serve as his Labor secretary, according to Politico. It’s a blow to Asian American activists who’d lobbied for California Labor Secretary Julie Su to take that position. But Walsh apparently had the support of both the American Federation of Teachers and the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees – or at least their leadership. People with no symptoms transmit more than half of all cases of the novel coronavirus, the Washington Post reports. The new statistic comes from a model developed by researchers at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. I’ll say it again: stay home or stay distant, wear a mask, and wash your hands. The Guardian reports that an Iraqi court has issued a warrant for the arrest of Donald Trump. The warrant is part of the court’s investigation into the killing of a paramilitary commander who died in the same US drone strike that killed Iranian general Qassem Suleimani at Baghdad Airport last year. I know where Trump might be – is there a tip line? That’s all for the AM Quickie. Join us this afternoon on the Majority Report. JAN 8, 2020 - AM QUICKIE HOSTS - Sam Seder & Lucie Steiner WRITER - Corey Pein PRODUCER - Dorsey Shaw EXECUTIVE PRODUCER - Brendan Finn

Welcome to Majority.FM's AM QUICKIE! Brought to you by justcoffee.coop TODAY'S HEADLINES: Donald Trump’s minions stormed the United States Capitol in a violent attack on democracy yesterday – many are calling it an attempted coup. The Trumpistas delayed Congressional certification of Joe Biden’s election victory – and directly undermined the peaceful transfer of power. Meanwhile, Biden will name Merrick Garland to serve as his Attorney General. It’s not a Supreme Court seat, but hey, it’s something. And lastly, state and local politicians across the country are taking steps to speed up the rollout of the coronavirus vaccine. As the latest numbers show, they’ve got a long way to go. THESE ARE THE STORIES YOU NEED TO KNOW: Well this is something. Congress went into sudden recess, the US Capitol went into lockdown, and several buildings nearby were evacuated after a large pro-Trump mob swarmed and breached the Capitol yesterday afternoon. News videos showed people banging on the Capitol doors, roaming the halls, waving Trump 2020 and Confederate flags, and fighting with Capitol Police as officers fired pepper spray. The mob erected a gallows and a cross outside. Some wore T-shirts saying MAGA civil war, and a few were identified by experts as known neo-Nazis. Some attacked journalists and trashed TV cameras. Police advised members to wear gas masks and used tear gas inside the Capitol rotunda. Police also drew guns inside the House chamber. Capitol Police shot a woman in the chest; she later died, but further details were not forthcoming. The law enforcement response, reportedly led by the Justice Department and Acting Attorney General Jeffrey Rosen, was criticized as exceedingly generous to the mob. Virginia, Maryland and DC National Guard eventually deployed to the Capitol. The DC Mayor imposed a 6pm citywide curfew. Shortly before that time, after four tense and murky hours, Capitol Police declared the building secure. Congress resumed its business in the evening and many Republicans resumed their objections to Biden’s certification. But it was unclear through much of the day who was in charge of the situation not to mention the government. So far, the MAGA mob succeeded only in delaying Congressional certification of the Electoral College votes making Joe Biden the next president. But make no mistake: These were anti- democracy thugs attempting to undo the will of the people by force. A man stood on the dais in the House chamber and shouted that Trump won the election. Another man wearing a horned helm and called the Q-Anon Shaman took over the Senate chamber. There were thefts from Congressional offices. All this marked the latest and hopefully final phase of Trump’s subversion of democracy. The NATO Secretary-General, Jens Stoltenberg, yesterday said QUOTE the outcome of this democratic election must be respected ENDQUOTE. Foreign governments expressed concern and sypmathy. The Venezuelan government said it hoped for stability for the American people. Speaking to supporters early in the day, Donald Trump vowed QUOTE we will never concede ENDQUOTE. At the same time, his vice president, Mike Pence, was preparing a statement, well, conceding. Pence, along with Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, declined to join the Republican faction seeking to reject the election. McConnell warned of democracy entering QUOTE a death spiral ENDQUOTE. Of course, that right before Pence and members of Congress evacuated. Joe Biden called on Trump to go on television and QUOTE demand an end to this siege ENDQUOTE. Biden said the mob’s actions bordered on sedition. Indeed. Isolated with his loyalists, Trump last night was suspended by Twitter for twelve hours. PBS reported that he had QUOTE lost it ENDQUOTE. He faced new calls for impeachment and the invocation of the 25th Amendment to remove him from office. And for his prosecution. Earlier, Trump released a prerecorded message saying the election was stolen but calling for calm. Again, he lies. Biden Names Garland AG : In other political news, President-elect Joe Biden has selected Judge Merrick Garland to serve as his attorney general. Garland is the chief judge of the United States Court of Appeals in DC. Biden was expected to officially announce Garland’s appointment today, the AP reports. Biden will also name other senior leaders of the department, including former homeland security adviser Lisa Monaco as deputy attorney general and former Justice Department civil rights chief Vanita Gupta as associate attorney general. He will also name Kristen Clarke, the president of Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, as assistant attorney general for civil rights. Some defense lawyers and criminal justice reform advocates have said they worry Garland’s record on the bench shows he is too deferential to the government and law enforcement, the Washington Post reports. But, according to the AP, the selection of Gupta and Clarke, two women with significant experience in civil rights, appeared designed to blunt those concerns and offered as a signal that progressive causes will be prioritized in the new administration. Which frankly can’t come soon enough. Politicians Push Faster Vaccinations Have you got the shot yet? Of course you haven’t. With frustration rising over the slow rollout of the coronavirus vaccine, politicians around the US are turning up the pressure to get shots in arms more quickly, the AP reports. New York’s governor is threatening to fine hospitals that don’t use their allotment of Covid-19 vaccine fast enough. His South Carolina counterpart says health care workers have until January 15 to get a shot or move to the back of the line. California’s governor wants to use dentists to vaccinate people. More than three weeks into the vaccination campaign, just four point eight million people in the US had gotten their first shot, the AP reports. That’s out of seventeen million doses distributed as of yesterday morning. The US has an estimated twenty-one million health care workers and three million nursing home residents. The Centers for Disease Control reported just four hundred and twenty-nine thousand people in nursing homes have been vaccinated. The slow rollout has been blamed on a multitude of problems, the AP reports. Politicians are getting aggressive in trying to accelerate the campaign. The governors of California, Maryland and North Carolina said they will use the National Guard to speed things up. State and local officials are also moving to expand availability of the vaccine to other groups. Anything’s better than letting doses expire after going unused. AND NOW FOR SOME QUICKER QUICKIES: When he campaigned in Georgia, Joe Biden promised $2,000 survival checks if the Democratic Senate candidates won there. And yesterday, before all the craziness, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer said delivering the checks is one of the first things he wants to do after Raphael Warnock and Jon Ossoff are seated in the Senate. Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders said the checks must be followed by QUOTE an aggressive agenda that recognizes the economic desperation facing so many Americans ENDQUOTE. Hear, hear. The Louisville Metro Police Department has formally fired two of the officers involved in the March police raid that killed emergency medical worker Breonna Taylor, CBS News reports. The department last week sent pre-termination letters to Detective Myles Cosgrove, who an FBI analysis determined fired the shot that killed Taylor, and Detective Josh Jaynes, who applied for the search warrant at Taylor's Louisville home. Enjoy the job market, fellas. A British judge yesterday refused to grant bail and release WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, the Washington Post reports. He will remain in a prison cell on the outskirts of London while the US government pursues its case against him. Meanwhile, the change of administrations in Washington might alter the course of the case, as the lead prosecutor, G. Zachary Terwilliger, announced his resignation on Tuesday. He’s a Trump appointee. More than fifty people, including pro-democracy politicians and campaigners, were arrested in raids across Hong Kong yesterday, the Guardian reports. Some of the targets livestreamed their own arrests. Antony Blinken, Joe Biden’s pick for secretary of state, labelled the arrests QUOTE an assault on those bravely advocating for universal rights ENDQUOTE. He also said the incoming administration would stand with Hong Kong people against Beijing’s crackdown on democracy. Or what’s left of it. That’s all for the AM Quickie. Join us this afternoon on the Majority Report. JAN 7, 2021 - AM QUICKIE HOSTS - Sam Seder & Lucie Steiner WRITER - Corey Pein PRODUCER - Dorsey Shaw EXECUTIVE PRODUCER - Brendan Finn

Welcome to Majority.FM's AM QUICKIE! Brought to you by justcoffee.coop TODAY'S HEADLINES: The Democrats just might have pulled off two massive wins and taken the Senate, as Rafael Warnock appears to have won his race in the Georgia Runoffs and Jon Ossoff is also a heavy favorite to win as we’re recording this. Meanwhile, Nebraska governor Pete Ricketts declares that undocumented workers at the state’s meat processing plants will not receive the coronavirus vaccine, despite their already-despicable working conditions on the front line of the pandemic. And lastly, Kenosha’s District Attorney announced on Tuesday that no charges would be filed against Rusten Sheskey, the Kenosha police officer who shot Jacob Blake seven times in the back, delivering another disappointing, disgusting, and unfortunately predictable ruling. THESE ARE THE STORIES YOU NEED TO KNOW: The Democrats appear to have done it, taking the Senate back for the first time since losing it in 2014. Reverend Rafael Warnock successfully unseated Senator Kelly Loeffler, one of the most openly-corrupt appointed officials we’ve seen in the past few years. Jon Ossoff’s race against David Perdue came down to the wire, but as of midnight or so Tuesday night he was heavily favored to win. Warnock and Ossoff rode a wave of massive voter turnout, out-performing even Joe Biden’s performance in the state. Warnock won a bit more comfortably, with the race called by some pollsters around 10 p.m. last night, while Ossoff’s race was quite a bit closer. David Wasserman, a pollster who has been extremely consistent this election cycle, called the race for Ossoff a few minutes before midnight, although he noted that it’s possible Ossoff’s victory could be less than the .05% margin necessar for an automatic recount. So there’s still a bit of uncertainty there, but things look good. Warnock’s win would make him the first Black Democratic Senator from the Deep South. And indeed, it looks like it was massive black voter turnout and proactive early voting that tipped the scales on election day. This means the Democrats now have the Senate, thanks to VP Kamala Harris’s tiebreaker vote. That’s a far slimmer margin than any ruling party wants for a new administration, but it’s one that can actually produce results, provided that so-called Democrats like Joe Manchin get on board with what the party is doing. But that’s a battle for further down the line. Today, everything looks pretty good for the Democratic party. Nebraska Dooms Undocumented Workers Nebraska’s governor Pete Ricketts has taken one of the most explicitly brutal and inhumane positions of the pandemic, announcing on Tuesday that undocumented workers in the state’s meat processing plants will not be eligible to receive the coronavirus vaccine alongside their documented colleagues. Ricketts, who is the son of billionaire Joe Ricketts, claimed that meat packing plants weren’t legally allowed to hire undocumented workers, so they naturally wouldn’t get the vaccine. Quote: “Again you’re supposed to be a legal resident of the country to be able to be working at those plants, so I do not expect that illegal immigrants will be part of the vaccine with that program.” Endquote. But in reality, undocumented workers make up roughly 14% of the industry’s workforce, according to the Migration Policy institutue. Meat processing workers are some of the front-line employees hit hardest by the disease, as many facilities have weathered severe outbreaks among staff, even prompting a lawsuit by the ACLU. If 14 percent of that workforce isn’t eligible for the vaccine, it might as well be crippling the industry as well as prolonging the disease. But that’s exactly the kind of smart policy you’d expect from a soulless politician working for an overtly fascist party! No Charges In Jacob Blake Shooting Kenosha, Wisconsin’s District Attorney Michael Graveley has finally made his decision in the shooting of Jacob Blake. There will be no charges filed. That means that Rusten Shesky, the Kenosha Police Officer who shot Blake seven times in the back, will face no criminal penalties for his actions. Businesses around Kenosha had boarded up their windows again in anticipation of protests, which started soon after the DA’s decision came down. Livestreams on Tuesday night showed protesters marching on the frigid, snow-lined streets, while large numbers of National Guard troops surrounded the courthouse and other federal buildings. DA Graveley’s decision was based on a review of over forty hours of video and hundreds of pages of police reports. Wild how in all those police reports he didn’t find enough evidence to bring charges. The New York Times reported that prosecutors thought the case against Shesky would be too hard to win, as the ironclad argument that the cop was just protecting himself would somehow apply. Again, Blake was shot seven times in the back. Graveley, who is a white guy, admitted his own inadequacy in dealing with the case, saying quote: “I feel in many ways completely inadequate for this moment. I have never in my life had a moment where I had to contend with explicit or implicit bias based on my race.” Endquote. And that, taken together, is all it took to let a cop off the hook for seven bullets that nearly ended a man’s life. AND NOW FOR SOME QUICKER QUICKIES: The GOP mounted a dangerous power-grab in Pennsylvania, forcing Lieutenant Governor John Fetterman from presiding over the State Senate when he opposed a Republican motion to block an incoming State Senator from taking his seat. The actual situation is a bit complicated procedure-wise, but sets a scarily chaotic tone for how the post-Trump GOP is going to conduct themselves in state governments across the country. As a short follow-up to yesterday’s story about the Proud Boys -- a judge banned their leader, Enrique Tarrio, from the District of Columbia, in an order released Tuesday shortly after his release from jail. He’s allowed to re-enter the city to meet with his lawyer or appear in court, but definitely not to attend any more of his little rallies. Californian workers are already feeling the effects of the state’s devastating passage of Prop 22. Earlier this week, Vons and Albertsons’ grocery stores fired all of their on-staff delivery drivers except the unionized ones in the Bay Area, shifting their jobs instead to third-party gig workers at Instacart and other companies. In more positive news: Google has a union! A group of more than 200 employees at the tech behemoth’s parent company, Alphabet, announced that they had formed a union under the Communication Workers of America, providing a wide umbrella for more of the company’s thousands of employees to join going forward. JAN 6, 2021 - AM QUICKIE HOSTS - Sam Seder & Lucie Steiner WRITER - Jack Crosbie PRODUCER - Dorsey Shaw EXECUTIVE PRODUCER - Brendan Finn

Welcome to Majority.FM's AM QUICKIE! Brought to you by justcoffee.coop TODAY'S HEADLINES: The Georgia Runoff elections for Senate are today, giving the Democrats a big chance to tie up the Senate at 50-50 with VP Kamala Harris as the deciding vote. Here’s where things stand as polls open. Meanwhile, the UK re-enters widespread lockdown as a more contagious version of the virus spreads -- and New York City detects its first case of the same strain. And lastly, the Proud Boys are introduced to the consequences of their actions, as the historic black church they vandalized in DC files a lawsuit and their founder is arrested on the same night. THESE ARE THE STORIES YOU NEED TO KNOW: Today is the day: Democrats Rafael Warnock and Jon Ossoff will face incumbent Senators Kelly Loeffler and David Perdue in the Georgia runoff elections. This is basically winner-take-all for both parties, although all the Republicans have to do to preserve their majority in the Senate is win one seat. Still! There is hope. Going into election day, both Warnock and Ossoff have a slight lead over their respective opponents, according to the latest polls on 538. So for whatever that’s worth, we’re looking pretty good! Keep in mind, of course, that neither candidate is expected to be a progressive trailblazer. But if the Biden administration wants to be able to accomplish basically anything in the next four years the Democrats are going to need the Senate to swing their way. The other good news is that the GOP is in absolute disarray after Trump’s idiotic, chaotic call with Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger. Half of the party, including Georgia’s own Qanon Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene, is doubling down on Trump’s wildly dumb conspiracy theories about the election, while the marginally smarter half is frantically trying to move on and face the reality of the runoff election. Trump flew down to Georgia on Monday night for one of his typical rallies to try to juice up his crowd. But early voting numbers are promising for Democrats too -- turnout in the solid-blue Atlanta area has been particularly high, which is an encouraging sign for both candidates trying to flip the seats. We’ll be tracking this one all day, to be sure -- Sam and the gang will have more updates for you in the full show later. UK Goes Back to Lockdown Meanwhile, as the U.S. botches its vaccine rollout, a more infectious strain of the coronavirus is spreading in the United Kingdom. Prime Minister Boris Johnson has put both England and Scotland on similar national lockdowns in the past few days as cases continue to spike, closing schools and instructing residents to stay home for all but essential trips and errands. Remember: this is the same strain we discussed before the holidays, which has a higher transmission rate but fortunately isn’t resistant to the vaccine. Britain is essentially in a race right now to get their population vaccinated and break the spread of this new strain before their healthcare systems get too overloaded. The bad news is the U.S. may be in for a similar situation. Our health networks are already stretched thin, and on Monday, New York Governor Andrew Cuomo confirmed that his state had detected its first case of the more infections strain. Other cases have already cropped up in California and Florida, whose hospital systems are under particular stress. The CDC guidelines for this strain are the same as the normal coronavirus, of course: keep wearing your masks and washing your hands. Proud Boys Reap What They Sowed The racist, fascist militia called the Proud Boys may finally be facing some real consequences for its actions. Back in December, the Proud Boys gathered in DC for a rally in support of Donald Trump’s ludicrous election conspiracies. During the inevitable chaos that followed, members of the group tore down and burned a Black Lives Matter banner hanging on a historically black church in the area. The Church, Metropolitan AME, is now suing the organization. To top things off, the Proud Boys current leader Enrique Tarrio was arrested on criminal charges on Monday evening, largely because he was dumb enough to claim responsibility for burning the banner on a podcast days after the event. He said on the podcast quote: “In the burning of the BLM sign, I was the one that lit it on fire. I was the person that went ahead and put the lighter to it and engulfed it in flames, and I am damn proud that I did.” Endquote. Tarrio can now be damn proud about his actions from inside a jail cell, as the Washington Post reported that he was arrested and charged by DC police on Monday night for destruction of property as well as two felony firearms charges for high capacity gun magazines the cops found in his car when they pulled him over. Tarrio lives in Florida, but was in DC for a similar rally in support of the President. Looks like he might not make this one! What a drag. AND NOW FOR SOME QUICKER QUICKIES: A British judge rejected the United States’ request to extradite WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange on espionage charges, openly citing the fact that harsh prison conditions in the U.S. could cause Assange to commit suicide. The judge did not, however, agree with Assange’s defense that he was being politically persecuted by the U.S. government, meaning the ruling is a bit of a mixed bag for Assange’s supporters. Haven, the dystopian venture started by Amazon, JP Morgan Chase, and Berkshire Hathaway in order to disrupt the healthcare industry, announced that it would be shutting down after just three years of doing.. Well... not a whole lot. It’s almost as if putting billionaires in charge of the nation’s healthcare isn’t the best system! In incredibly stupid incoming Congressperson news, DC police are in contact with newly minted GOP Rep. Lauren Boebert, who has vowed to carry her Glock handgun in DC and into Congress. In fact, bringing a gun to Capitol Hill was one of her core campaign promises. And finally, Arizona teachers are resigning at an alarming rate. One thousand and seventy two have quit their jobs since the beginning of this school year, which is a sharp spike from the 758 that had resigned by this point in the 2019-2020 school year. That’s it for the majority report’s Am Quickie today! Stay tuned for the full show with Sam this afternoon. JAN 5, 2021 - AM QUICKIE HOSTS - Sam Seder & Lucie Steiner WRITER - Jack Crosbie PRODUCER - Dorsey Shaw EXECUTIVE PRODUCER - Brendan Finn

Welcome to Majority.FM's AM QUICKIE! Brought to you by justcoffee.coop TODAY'S HEADLINES: Donald Trump made his most blatant attempt to prevent Joe Biden from taking office in the coming days, directly asking Georgia officials to find him over 11,000 votes to overturn the 2020 election. Meanwhile, a new Congress takes over, and Nancy Pelosi is predictably re-elected Speaker of the House. Some things may never change! And lastly, the U.S.’s rollout of the coronavirus vaccine is already devolving into a mess, as the predictable holiday surge of cases starts to mount. THESE ARE THE STORIES YOU NEED TO KNOW: There are only 16 days left in Trump’s term as president, but the big guy won’t let that stop him, because we’ve got at least one more big scandal on his way out. On Sunday, the Washington Post both reported on a taped call between Trump and Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger in which the President demanded that Republican officials find him over 11,000 votes and overturn their decision that Joe Biden won the state. Here’s the quote: “I just want to find 11,780 votes, which is one more than we have. Because we won the state.” ENDQUOTE Trump went through every humiliating stage of grovelling and begging on the hour-long call. The Post released the full audio, if you really want to get into that, but the highlights are mostly Trump repeatedly insisting that there’s no way that he lost Georgia while Raffensperger repeatedly has to say things like this: QUOTE “Well, Mr. President, the challenge that you have is, the data you have is wrong.” ENDQUOTE Meanwhile, in Congress, an alarming number of GOP elected officials have signed on to the President’s conspiracy-laden attempt at preventing a peaceful transition of power. In the Senate alone, 11 Republican Senators or Senators-elect have said they will vote against certifying the election. They obviously don’t have the numbers to actually prevent Biden from becoming President, but what this all shows is that with a more capable president who has control of both houses of Congress and the executive branch, this kind of coup could be a lot more successful. This is the political reality that we face from here on out, unless we figure out a better system for transitioning between administrations. New Congress on Capitol Hill Speaking of Congress, let’s talk about the new one. The 117th Congress was sworn in on Sunday, putting all eyes on the razor-thin race for Speaker of the House. Democrats still have a majority, of course, meaning that Speaker Nancy Pelosi was almost certain to keep her slot, but Pelosi’s deep unpopularity with various factions of the Party and the Democrats’s slim lead in the House overall meant that the final vote tally was far closer than last year. Still, Pelosi carried the vote over Republican Kevin McCarthy 216-208, effectively ending the argument in recent weeks that progressives like Alexandria Ocasio Cortez should use the slim margin to hold the Speaker vote hostage in order to force progress on bills like Medicare for All. AOC, who eventually voted for Pelosi, has explained that she and her Squad of like-minded legislators have used that bargaining power to seek less-visible advances than a big showy floor vote for Medicare For All. With Jamaal Bowman and Cori Bush adding two more votes to the AOC-led block in the House, we’ll see how much they can get done in what Pelosi says will be her last turn in the big chair. Meanwhile, over in the Senate, the GOP is eating itself alive as the Mitch McConnell faction wars with the Trump die-hards. Mitch and most of the GOP have clearly decided to cut Trump loose, whereas the new Trump hardliners like openly corrupt Kelly Loeffler and Senator-elect Tommy Tuberville want to start their time on the hill by screaming about election conspiracies, as we mentioned in the last story block. This strategy and infighting is going to get tested tomorrow, when the Georgia Runoff elections decide the final makeup of the Senate. If Ossoff and Warnock both win, they could hand the Democrats their first control of House, Senate and the Presidency since 2015. COVID Vaccine Rollout Is a Mess The U.S. is once again far behind Government targets in controlling the coronavirus, as vaccine distribution continues to lag behind across the country. According to the CDC, more than 4.2 million people received the initial vaccination dose as of Saturday, but the government’s goal was 20 million by the end of December. That means we’re way, way behind. Coupled with a new case surge brought on by holiday travel, that means we’re looking at some more dark months to come. According to a report by NPR, part of the breakdown is that the Federal government doesn’t have a comprehensive plan on how to allocate the vaccine, and has largely left it up to state and local governments to figure out who gets what and when. All kinds of stuff is causing delays: shortages in virals, bureaucratic red tape, and long lines for the places actually administering the vaccine. In New York, for instance, Governor Andrew Cuomo has placed a hefty $1 million penalty on any administrator who gives the vaccine to someone who’s not authorized to get it yet. While this is clearly intended to stop the rich and corrupt jumping the line, what it also does is adds a further layer of bureaucracy in between getting the most people the vaccine as fast as possible. This kind of blunder is leaving millions of doses in freezers at hospitals where they could expire before they manage to actually get into peoples’ arms. NPR reports that local officials are blaming some of the holdups on the meager federal aid they’re receiving as well, which is unsurprising given how stingy the recent relief bill was. There were almost 300,000 new cases of the disease nationwide on Saturday. We’ve got to figure this one out, quickly. AND NOW FOR SOME QUICKER QUICKIES: In news that should surprise no one, Biden’s cabinet has a long track record of raking in cash for big corporate speaking appearances. Treasury Secretary nominee Janet Yellen has collected more than $7 million in the past few years, and prospective Secretary of State Anthony Blinken has also collected more than a million. So glad things are back to normal over there! According to the Bloomberg Billionaire’s Report, the world’s 500 richest people added a combined $1.8 Trillion to their collective worth in the past year, as the entire rest of the world struggled with a deadly pandemic and widespread economic collapse. Israel is being touted by some as a success story in vaccine rollout, with one obvious caveat: Palestinians in the blockaded West Bank and Gaza Strip have little to no access to the treatment, while Israel’s government prioritizes illegal settlers instead. The New Year gave us one last look at Trump’s court of fools, as the President’s Mar a Lago resort hosted its annual party complete with a performance from Vanilla Ice and hundreds of unmasked participants. With any luck, this is exactly the kind of supid, hedonistic future Trump himself will be relegated to in just over two weeks. JAN 4, 2020 - AM QUICKIE HOSTS - Sam Seder & Lucie Steiner WRITER - Jack Crosbie PRODUCER - Dorsey Shaw EXECUTIVE PRODUCER - Brendan Finn

Welcome to Majority.FM's AM QUICKIE! Brought to you by justcoffee.coop TODAY'S HEADLINES: Kentucky Republican Mitch McConnell really doesn’t want you to get a $2,000 check from the government. But the fight over survival checks is shaping up to test his control over the legislative process in the closing days of the one hundred and sixteenth Congress. Meanwhile, a new investigation reveals the use of forced labor in Apple’s supply chain. Many Muslims in China are reportedly given the choice between grueling work making iPhones or getting sent to a detention center. And lastly, a judge in Georgia has overturned a Republican-led purge of thousands of voters. Every vote counts as the state prepares to vote in a crucial runoff elections next week. THESE ARE THE STORIES YOU NEED TO KNOW: The fate of what Democrats are calling survival checks remains in limbo as the Congressional session comes to a close at the end of the week. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell yesterday thwarted Democrats’ bid to immediately increase the survival checks from $600 to $2,000, Politico reports. McConnell acknowledged Donald Trump’s conditions for signing a coronavirus and economic relief bill, which include increased payments. But he did not make an explicit commitment to tackling those issues in the coming days. Senate Democrats, meanwhile, insisted McConnell would have to offer a path forward on larger checks. That’s their demand in return for securing a quick vote to overturn Trump’s veto of the defense spending bill, which is McConnell’s priority. All of which means it’s not yet clear how much money the government will be sending you in the weeks ahead. There’s been movement toward embracing the larger direct payments among Republicans, Politico reports. Trump and many House Republicans want it. The handful of Senate Republicans who’ve endorsed larger checks includes Georgia Senators Kelly Loeffler and David Perdue, both of whom are in run-off races that will determine Senate control next year. But getting those checks to the floor before then looks like a steep task after yesterday’s brouhaha, according to Politico. First Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer tried to pass the House-approved bill increasing the checks to $2,000, which McConnell rejected. Then Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders asked McConnell to at least set up a roll call vote to follow the veto override. McConnell spurned that request too. Sanders responded by blocking quick passage of the veto override, leaving the possibility of keeping the Senate in session into New Year’s Day to finish consideration of the defense bill. A lot of people had to work over the holidays – the Senate can, too. Doncha think? Forced Labor In iPhones How much do you know about the technology you use every day? Where does it come from? Whose hands touched it before yours? One of the oldest and most well-known iPhone suppliers has been accused of using forced Muslim labor in its factories, according to documents uncovered by a human rights group and shared with the Washington Post. The documents, discovered by the Tech Transparency Project, detail how thousands of Uighur workers from the predominantly Muslim region of Xinjiang were sent to work for Lens Technology. The company also supplies Amazon and Tesla. Lens Technology is one of at least five companies connected to Apple’s supply chain that have now been linked to alleged forced labor from the Xinjiang region, the Post reports. Apple has faced criticism for its labor practices in the past, particularly in China. Some Uighur workers have told human rights groups that they were given a choice between taking a job in a far-flung factory or being sent to a detention center. In some cases, workers have said that when they accept the job, they live in heavily guarded campuses and are rarely allowed to leave. Whether the Uighurs are paid, and exactly how much, is unclear. Apple has dispatched lobbyists to Capitol Hill regarding legislation that would hold US companies accountable for using forced labor from the region, the Post reports. The lobbyists are trying to water down the bill, according to congressional staffers. Katie Paul, director of the Tech Transparency Project, told the Post that the alleged use of forced labor in Apple’s supply chain may explain why the company is lobbying against a bill now before Congress that would sanction companies for their involvement in human rights abuses in China. Well, it’s probably no coincidence, that’s for sure. Georgia Voter Purge Overruled There’s some encouraging news for Democrats from Georgia. Two Georgia counties must reverse their decision to purge thousands from voter rolls in advance of the state’s January 5 runoff elections, the Guardian reports. As we mentioned before, the results will determine whether Democrats or Republicans control the US Senate. Federal judge Leslie Abrams Gardner said in an order filed late on Monday that the two counties appeared to have improperly relied on unverified change-of-address information to invalidate voter registrations. Per the ruling, those registrations must now be honored. Judge Abrams Gardner is the sister of Stacey Abrams, the Democratic activist who lost a race for Georgia governor in 2018, and led a voter registration drive that was crucial to Joe Biden’s victory in the state. National Democratic Party attorney Marc Elias, who litigated the case, hailed the decision as a blow to GOP voter suppression. He said the party continues to monitor how other Georgia counties respond to the suppression scheme and QUOTE where necessary, we will sue and we will win ENDQUOTE. Of the more than four thousand registrations that officials tried to rescind, the vast majority were in Muscogee County, the Guardian reports. President-elect Joe Biden won this county during the November election. Another one hundred and fifty were in Ben Hill county, which Donald Trump won with a sizable margin. Almost two point one million people – more than twenty-five percent of Georgia’s registered voters – have voted in the Senate runoff election that started on December 14. Democrats Raphael Warnock and Jon Ossoff are facing off against GOP incumbents Kelly Loeffler and David Perdue, respectively. The deeply significant runoff has prompted record-breaking fundraising, the Guardian reports. Ossoff and Warnock each raised more than $100 million in a mere two months – surpassing their conservative opponents. These races are shaping up to be very close, folks. And very hard-fought. AND NOW FOR SOME QUICKER QUICKIES: NBC News reports that at the current rate of vaccinations, it will take almost ten years to inoculate enough Americans to get the coronavirus pandemic under control. Twenty million doses were promised in short order by the Trump administration – but so far, only about two million people have received a shot. Joe Biden administration hopes to pick up the pace in the new year. The President-elect yesterday named Bechara Choucair, a Kaiser Permanente executive, to be the nation's Covid-19 vaccine coordinator. A park ranger was seen on video tasering a Native American man who was walking his dog with his sister at a national monument in New Mexico on Sunday, NBC News reports. Darrell House, who is Oneida and Navajo, often prays at the Petroglyph National Monument in Albuquerque. The ranger tased him for refusing to show ID. Since when does one need ID to pray? Another indigenous environmentalist has been killed in Honduras, the Guardian reports. Félix Vásquez, a veteran leader of the indigenous Lenca people, was shot dead at home on the night of December 26 – just weeks after reporting death threats linked to his work. Hopes for justice are reportedly low. But the world is watching. Small drones will be allowed to fly over people and at night in the United States, the Federal Aviation Administration said on Monday, according to Reuters. FAA Administrator Steve Dickson said the new rules get us closer to the day when we will more routinely see drone operations, such as the delivery of packages. Tip your delivery drivers, folks – it’s a hard job, and now they’ve got competition coming. That’s all for the AM Quickie. The Majority Report returns on Monday, as do we. Happy New Year! DEC 30, 2020 - AM QUICKIE HOSTS - Sam Seder & Lucie Steiner WRITER - Corey Pein PRODUCER - Dorsey Shaw EXECUTIVE PRODUCER - Brendan Finn