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Welcome to Majority.FM's AM QUICKIE! Brought to you by justcoffee.coop TODAY'S HEADLINES: The Federal Bureau of Investigation busted a plot by right-wing militia members to kidnap a Democratic governor. Who ever could have inspired them? Any guesses? Meanwhile, medical workers around the country are at their wits’ end with coronavirus conspiracy theorists. Again, I ask you, where are people getting such crazy ideas? And lastly, Donald Trump – you remember him – says he won’t participate in any online debates. As a result, Joe Biden is all set to get some free network airtime. THESE ARE THE STORIES YOU NEED TO KNOW: They wanted to ignite a civil war and bring about societal collapse. Instead, they’re headed to federal prison, possibly for the rest of their lives. Federal agents yesterday charged six men in an outrageous plot to kidnap Michigan’s Democratic Governor, Gretchen Whitmer, and put her on trial for treason. Seven more men – members of a right-wing militia called the Wolverine Watchmen – caught state charges in a related conspiracy. Federal agents allege the conspirators twice conducted surveillance at Whitmer's personal vacation home in northern Michigan. The Detroit News reports that through confidential sources, undercover agents and clandestine recordings, federal agents tracked the six men during their planning to kidnap Whitmer as they communicated over encrypted messaging platforms using code words and phrases in an attempt to avoid detection by law enforcement. The group also allegedly participated in field exercises that included detonating an improvised explosive wrapped in shrapnel to test its capabilities. The FBI and state police arrested several of the conspirators when they were meeting on the east side of the state to pool funds for explosives and exchange tactical gear, the News reports. The federal investigation dates to early 2020 when the FBI learned through social media that individuals were discussing the violent overthrow of several state governments. According to the FBI, the group talked about creating a society that followed the US Bill of Rights where they could be self-sufficient. Addressing the foiled plot, Whitmer said QUOTE I knew this job would be hard. But I’ll be honest, I never could have imagined anything like this ENDQUOTE. She also suggested Trump’s rhetoric made him effectively complicit. Joe Biden echoed that idea, asking QUOTE Why can’t the president just say stop, stop, stop, stop? ENDQUOTE. Trump campaign official Jason Miller on Fox News yesterday attacked Whitmer, saying she wakes up everyday with hatred in her heart towards Trump. Back in April, when armed right-wing militia took over the state capitol of Lansing, Trump tweeted liberate Michigan. I guess people were listening. Coronavirus disinformation frustrates doctors Doctors and nurses across the country are frustrated and overwhelmed by members of the public who’ve swallowed various conspiracy theories about the coronavirus. It’s a problem that many worry will get even worse now that Trump is promoting the experimental treatment he received at Walter Reed hospital as another miracle cure, and telling people not to be afraid of the virus. Nurse Amelia Montgomery of Springfield, Missouri, shared her frustrations with the Associated Press. She complained that some people demand the anti-malaria drug hydroxychloroquine and think the only patients who get really sick have underlying health problems. To be clear: that isn’t true. Doctor Jay W. Lee, a family physician in Orange County, California, recalled a patient who demanded QUOTE the largest hydroxychloroquine prescription you can give me ENDQUOTE. The problem is pronounced in red states, the AP reports. In Iowa, home health nurse Lisa Dockery was fired from her job caring for a boy with severe disabilities after arguing with his parents, who said Covid-19 is a hoax. The argument started because the parents refused to wear masks, even though she told them their son’s life was in danger because he has respiratory problems, relies on tube feedings and cannot walk. The case ended with a judge ordering her former employer to pay her unemployment. In Georgia, at Augusta University Medical Center, visitors have tried to get around the mask requirement by wearing face coverings made of fishnet and other material with visible holes. The hospital calls this malicious compliance. People also have shown up with video cameras in an attempt to collect proof the virus is a hoax. Doctor Phillip Coule, chief medical officer at the Augusta health system, contracted the virus in July and has seen two staff members die. He said he fears people may draw the wrong lesson about the seriousness of the disease from what happened to Trump, and may extrapolate that the risk for a seventy four-year-old is low when the opposite is true. As another doctor put it, per the AP, it’s an info-demic as well as a pandemic. And, as with his rhetoric encouraging violent right-wing extremism, it’s a problem Trump could put a stop to, if only he wanted to. Biden gains free airtime The next presidential debate was scheduled for next Thursday, October 15th, in Miami, Florida. Now it’s not clear whether the debate will be happening at all. The Commission on Presidential Debates, which organizes the events, said it would change course and hold the second debate remotely in order to protect the health and safety of all involved. In response, Trump yesterday morning told Fox News QUOTE I'm not going to waste my time on a virtual debate... they cut you off whenever they want ENDQUOTE. Someone is cranky about being asked to follow the rules! In turn, Joe Biden’s campaign said the event should be pushed back to October 22nd, so that the president is not able to evade accountability. The Trump campaign seemed open to that idea, but then wanted to schedule a third debate for October 29th – five days before the election – which the Biden campaign rejected. With all this back-and-forth going on, ABC News scheduled a town hall with Biden, moderated by the anchor George Stephanopoulos, on October 15th, the night the second debate was set to take place. Producers at ABC News reportedly finalized plans for the Biden town hall yesterday after Trump withdrew from the debate. So as of now, Trump’s refusal to play by the rules has resulted in significant free airtime for Biden. The Democratic candidate observed yesterday that Trump QUOTE changes his mind every second ENDQUOTE. Yup, and at this stage of the presidential race, Trump’s indecision clearly works to Biden’s advantage. AND NOW FOR SOME QUICKER QUICKIES: Police in Portland, Oregon, targeted street medics with teargas and projectiles during summer protests, in what a new report by Physicians for Human Rights calls indiscriminate attacks. The Guardian says the human rights group found a pattern of cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment from Portland police and federal agents, violating several international compacts on the use of force, and arguably constituting torture. The police offered no substantive reponse. Actions speak louder, anyway. Hurricane Delta is set to make landfall in Louisiana today not far from where Hurricane Laura hit in late August. Delta is the tenth named storm of the season – that’s a new record for a single year. More than a dozen Louisiana cities and parishes called on residents to evacuate. Take care out there. Prominent Republican fundraiser Elliott Broidy has been charged in an illegal lobbying campaign aimed at getting the Trump administration to drop an investigation into the multibillion-dollar looting of a Malaysian state investment fund, the AP reports. He was working on behalf of a fugitive Malaysian financier, Jho Low, and sought to arrange meetings with both Trump and former Attorney General Jeff Sessions. Broidy faces a single conspiracy charge related to his failure to register as a foreign agent. Oopsie! NBC News reports that House Speaker Nancy Pelosi plans to introduce legislation today that would create a Commission on Presidential Capacity, which would be involved in presidential transfer of power procedures under the 25th Amendment to the Constitution. Pelosi will hold a news conference on the bill with Representative Jamie Raskin of Maryland this morning. Intriguing... That’s all for the AM Quickie. Join us this afternoon on the Majority Report. Oct 9, 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: The vice presidential debate is done and dusted. Kamala Harris made for a clear positive contrast in terms of knowledge and competence to Mike Pence. Meanwhile, two of the largest union organizations in the United States say Donald Trump and the coronavirus have pushed many into forced labor. They’ve filed a complaint with the United Nations to that effect. And lastly, the streets in Athens filled with joyful crowds after a Greek court ruled that the Golden Dawn party is a criminal organization. All you fascists are bound to lose. THESE ARE THE STORIES YOU NEED TO KNOW: Harris slams Trump record Vice President Mike Pence and California Senator Kamala Harris faced each other – maybe a little too closely – last night in the only vice presidential debate of this election cycle. The venue was the University of Utah in Salt Lake City, and the moderator was Susan Page, the Washington, DC bureau chief for USA Today. Ahead of the debate, health experts told the New York Times that the plexiglass barriers installed onstage between the candidates would do nothing to protect Harris if Pence is infected with coronavirus from the White House cluster. Oh well. Donald Trump himself said yesterday that catching Covid-19 was like a blessing from god. Pence, his Number Two, did not go quite that far last night. But he defended the administration’s handling of the pandemic, against all the evidence, even as he disowned responsibility. He said QUOTE The American people deserve credit ENDQUOTE for how they’ve handled the crisis. Pence routinely spoke over his alloted time without interference from the moderator. He also appeared to some viewers to have one swollen eye. Harris was clear from the outset in outlining Trump and Pence’s many failures. She said QUOTE The American people have had to sacrifice far too much because of the incompetence of the administration ENDQUOTE. Asked if she would take a vaccine promoted by the administration, Harris responded that she would take it if public health experts suggested it, but not on the word of Donald Trump. And, on many other issues, she made the case that Joe Biden, in contrast to Trump, at least has a plan. Unions decry forced labor American trade union leaders yesterday filed a formal complaint with the International Labor Organization, a UN agency. The complaint says that under Donald Trump, the US has violated international labor standards. It also says that many essential workers have been pushed into a system of forced labor during the coronavirus pandemic. The complaint was filed by the Service Employees International Union and the AFL-CIO at the Geneva, Switzerland headquarters of the ILO, according to the Washington Post. Richard Trumka, the president of the AFL-CIO, told the Post QUOTE Covid has laid bare what we already knew. It has demonstrated that not only is the U.S. violating workers’ rights, but those violations are resulting in people dying ENDQUOTE. The complaint singled out Trump’s orders declaring industries such as meatpacking essential, compelling them to stay open despite the pandemic even as federal agencies declined to enforce safety regulations. The complaint said QUOTE These executive orders gave a green light for employers to force workers to report for work and risk their lives or lose their jobs. This is tantamount to forced labor ENDQUOTE. The complaint also highlighted the racial implications of these orders, noting that the vast majority of meatpacking workers who contracted coronavirus were Black or Hispanic. The ILO has no enforcement powers, which is a shame, because it sure sounds like we’re backsliding toward slavery. Greeks celebrate antifascist victory In what the Guardian newspaper calls the biggest trial of fascists since the Nuremburg Tribunal following World War Two, a court in Greece has ruled that the Golden Dawn party is a criminal organization in disguise. Following a five-year trial, a three-member tribunal in Athens found the far-right group guilty of operating a gang of hit squads. The court concluded that seven of Golden Dawn’s eighteen former members of parliament – including the party founder, Nikolaos Michaloliakos (MIK- HAIL-OLYAKOS) – led the criminal organization. Like many of his followers, Michaloliakos is a Holocaust denier and admirer of Adolf Hitler. The remaining eleven former parliamentarians were found culpable as members of the gang. None have yet been sentenced. According to the Washington Post, the court also laid down specific guilty findings for attacks on immigrants and the murder of an anti-fascist rapper. Thousands of Greeks outside the courthouse cheered the ruling yesterday. Greece’s president, Katerina Sakellaropoulou (SAH-KAY-LARO-PULO), said the judgment was an important day for democracy, and evidence that Greek institutions were able to fend off any attempt to undermine them. Experts in extremism say Golden Dawn at its peak was an inspiration to neo-Nazi movements around the world. But no more. As Alexis Tsipras (SIP- RASS), the leftist former Greek prime minister, put it – Golden Dawn will now go QUOTE where they deserve go, in the trash can of history ENDQUOTE. So long, chumps! AND NOW FOR SOME QUICKER QUICKIES: Following a surge in Covid-19 cases, Wisconsin health officials plan to open a field hospital next week at the state fairgrounds near Milwaukee. The Associated Press reports that only sixteen percent of the state’s eleven thousand-plus hospital beds were available as of Tuesday afternoon. Experts blame the spike in cases on school reopenings as well as general fatigue over wearing masks and socially distancing. Just mask up, already! The House of Representatives subcommittee on antitrust released a scathing report on Big Tech this week, following a sixteen-month investigation into Silicon Valley’s business practices. Only Democratic lawmakers endorsed the more than four-hundred page report, which found multiple clear examples of anticompetitive behavior by Amazon, Apple, Facebook and Google. And the Democrats who led the investigation, including Jerrold Nadler of New York, are now saying those companies should be broken up, and new laws passed to prevent them from favoring their own products in search results. With luck, maybe next year. BuzzFeed News reports that Immigration and Customs Enforcement has a new policy allowing officers to arrest and rapidly deport undocumented immigrants who have been in the US for less than two years, without granting them a hearing before a judge. ICE’s previous policy only allowed officials to use expedited removal within one hundred miles of the border and for those who have been in the country for up to two weeks. Stay safe, everybody. At least one federal investigation into serial sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein is ongoing. NBC News reports that federal prosecutors in the case of Epstein’s associate Ghislaine Maxwell have asked a judge to let them delay handing over evidence because of that ongoing investigation. Prosecutors believe disclosing the evidence could interfere with the investigation. And what is that evidence? Forty documents and forty photographs of victims who were allegedly abused by Epstein after 1997. Dossiers, perhaps? That’s all for the AM Quickie. Join us this afternoon on the Majority Report. Oct 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 put the kibosh on Congressional efforts to boost the economy during the pandemic. The message to struggling American families and businesses is clear: no help is coming until Trump leaves the White House. Meanwhile, the military’s top brass are in quarantine after being exposed to coronavirus. So is Trump adviser Stephen Miller, the architecht of many of his most cruel domestic policies. And lastly, a huge crowd of protesters swarmed government buildings in Kyrgyzstan and began naming new public officials following a contested election. That’s one way to do it! THESE ARE THE STORIES YOU NEED TO KNOW: Trump scuttles stimulus discussions On the very day that the chairman of the Federal Reserve warned that the economy would suffer without further stimulus measures, Donald Trump announced that he was breaking off negotiations for another bailout bill. Speaking at the annual meeting of the National Association for Business Economics, Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell said a rise in coronavirus cases this inter could further burden the economy. He said that too little government support for the economy would lead to a weak recovery, creating unnecessary hardship for households and businesses. Over time, household insolvencies and business bankruptcies would rise, harming the productive capacity of the economy and holding back wage growth. By contrast, Powell added, the risks of overdoing it with a stimulus package are smaller. He said QUOTE Even if policy actions ultimately prove to be greater than needed, they will not go to waste ENDQUOTE. In short, he was telling Congress and the White House to do something or things will get worse. But Trump wasn’t having it. In a series of Tweets that sent the stock market into a nosedive, he said he’d instructed aides to stop negotiating for a stimulus with Democrats until after the election. He added that he wants Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell to focus on getting his Supreme Court nominee, Amy Coney Barrett, confirmed. Even by Trump standards it’s a truly baffling decision. He could easily approve another round of checks for taxpayers just in time for the election. Instead, he apparently wants voters to see that he’s doing nothing for the economy, despite tens of millions of Americans out of work. Maybe he’s still feeling punchy from the Covid treatments. Steroids can mess with your head! Stephen Miller has COVID The coronavirus cluster around Donald Trump continues to grow. Yesterday the military’s top leadership entered quarantine after the Coast Guard’s second-in-command tested positive for the coronavirus. According to the Washington Post, those quarantined include General Mark Milley, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff; General John Hyten, the vice chairman; Admiral Michael Gilday, the chief of naval operations; General James McConville, the Army chief of staff; General Charles Brown, the Air Force chief of staff; General John Raymond, the Space Force chief of staff; General Daniel Hokanson, the chief of the National Guard Bureau; and General Paul Nakasone, the head of U.S. Cyber Command. Last one out of the Pentagon please turn off the lights. Attorney General Bill Barr was reportedly planning to limit his time at the Justice Department, after testing negative for the fifth time since Friday. Meanwhile, more White House aides tested positive – including Stephen Miller. And elected leaders in the Washington, DC region – including DC mayor Muriel Bowser – called on the White House to follow pandemic safety protocols. Ahead of tonight’s debate with Democratic Vice Presidential nominee Kamala Harris, Mike Pence’s physician released a memo saying he does not need to quarantine and is not a close contact with any individuals who have tested positive for COVID-19. Huh? As late as last night, Pence and Harris continued to tangle over health and safety measures for their debate at the University of Utah tonight. At issue: a plexiglass divider between the candidates and the moderator. Pence’s chief of staff, Marc Short, said Harris is QUOTE more than welcome to surround herself with plexiglass if that makes her feel more comfortable. It’s not needed ENDQUOTE. As though anyone from the Trump administration can be trusted, especially on this issue. They are basically engaged in open biological warfare at this point. The debate starts at 9 p.m. Eastern time. Protesters take over Kyrgyzstan Protesters demanding a change in government stormed the White House yesterday – in the Central Asian Republic of Kyrgyzstan. That’s what they call the building that houses the executive and legislative branches of government in the capital city of Bishkek. The country held an election on Sunday, and the president’s allies won a majority of seats. But yesterday, as protests intensified, the country’s electoral commission nullified the results. According to the New York Times, a small group of protesters tried to gain entry to the White House overnight. After the police tried to disperse them, hundreds more joined in the assault and soon took control. On Tuesday, the Times said, the streets of Bishkek were littered with burned out cars and piles of stones, while photos emerged of the broken down gates to the White House. Inside the building, videos and photos showed broken glass and piles of debris, including government papers, with protesters wandering the offices. The president, Sooronbai Jeenbekov, said yesterday he was willing to meet with the leaders of all sixteen parties that had competed in the election. But, per the Times, it was not clear that he was still in control. Protesters continued to seize government buildings and appoint their own officials. Two big-city mayors announced their resignation, and Jeenbekov’s predecessor as president, as well as two former prime ministers, were freed from prison. The Health Ministry says one person was killed and nearly seven hundred injured during the protests. So it wasn’t a bloodless revolution, but it sure could’ve been worse. AND NOW FOR SOME QUICKER QUICKIES: Facebook said yesterday that it is banning all Q-Anon accounts from its platforms. Per NBC News, a company spokesperson said the enforcement is in keeping with other steps the company has taken with regard to what it called militarized social movements, such as militia and terror groups that repeatedly call for violence. The ban won’t necessarily apply to individual posts and instead focuses on accounts dedicated to spreading the conspiracy theory. Better late than never. A report published yesterday by the AFL-CIO shows that Latino workers, especially whose who are immigrants, continue to be at increased risk of dying on the job. Most of the Latino workers who die on the job work in construction, followed by motor vehicle operators, maintenance workers and agricultural workers. The union is calling on the Occupational Safety and Health Administration to expand protections for temporary and contract workers and to implement national safety standards for Covid-19. ¡Vamos! Australian government scientists took core samples from the ocean floor at six remote sites off the country’s southern coast. What they discovered is evidence that at least fourteen million tons of microplastics are sitting at the bottom of the world’s oceans – more than thirty times what scientists think is floating on top. The microplastic pollution is concerning because the plastics can return to our bodies through the food chain. Gross. Guitar hero Eddie Van Halen, of the eponymous rock band Van Halen, died yesterday following a years-long fight with cancer. He was sixty five. As Pearl Jam guitarist Mike McCready put it, QUOTE Eddie was like Mozart for guitar ENDQUOTE. Shred in peace. That’s all for the AM Quickie. Join us this afternoon on the Majority Report. Oct 7, 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: Welcome back to Donald Trump CovidWatch. The president abruptly left Walter Reed Medical Center on Monday evening, announcing in a tweet that he was quote “feeling really good.” We’ll see how that goes for him! Meanwhile, leaked documents show that Exxon Mobile is quietly planning to increase its carbon dioxide output by as much as the ​_entire output of the country of Greece_​ in the next few years, in flagrant disregard for the lives of, well, pretty much everyone who will be affected by global climate change. And lastly, after the courts side with the Trump administration, Iowa invalidates 100,000 ballots, which could throw a major wrench into absentee voting in the state. THESE ARE THE STORIES YOU NEED TO KNOW: Trump Huffs and Puffs Out of Hospital After just three nights in Walter Reed hospital, Trump is free -- headed back to the White House to most likely continue infecting anyone he comes in contact with. On Monday afternoon, Trump fired off the following tweet announcing he would be leaving the hospital. Quote: “Feeling really good! Don’t be afraid of Covid. Don’t let it dominate your life. We have developed, under the Trump Administration, some really great drugs & knowledge. I feel better than I did 20 years ago!” Sure, that might have something to do with the insane cocktail of steroids and drugs he’s been injected with over the past three days, but it’s enough to get the big man out of the big house, despite the fact that he’s almost certainly still contagious and could very easily relapse. In a press conference outside of Walter Reed, Trump’s medical team claimed that the president was doing fine, saying quote: “Over the past 24 hours, the president has continued to improve. He’s met or exceeded all standard hospital discharge criteria.” endquote. Later, at the White House, Trump appeared to breath heavily after removing his mask while standing on a balcony to wave to cameras. Clearly doing great! The President is still on anti-viral redemsivir [RE DEM SEE VEER] and the steroid he was taking to manage the disease, and three days doesn’t really seem like enough time to completely beat COVID-19, but sure, we’ll just have to take their word for it. Trump also claimed he’d be participating in the October 15 Presidential debate, which is almost laughable, as the Biden campaign would probably want their guy in a hazmat suit to come within 100 feet of Trump at this point. But who knows! October 15th feels like a year away. Meanwhile, the list of infected White House staffers continues to grow -- press secretary Kayeligh McEnany and two other aides tested positive on Monday. And according to the New York Times, the White House is not doing contact tracing. But hey, at least their extremely contagious, completely remorseless boss is back in the office! Exxon Creates New Greece (in CO2) Leaked documents show that Exxon Mobile plans to increase its carbon dioxide output over the next few years by a truly staggering amount. The documents, obtained by Bloomberg News, show that Mobile’s internal projections estimate that it’s CO2 output will jump at least 17 percent by 2025. Given how massive the company is, that increase is as large as the output of the entire nation of Greece. As Bloomberg notes, this isn’t exactly hypocrisy from Exxon, which has never even bothered to pretend it was interested in changing its business model to something that wouldn’t destroy the entire planet. What the documents show is that Exxon’s investment plan for the foreseeable future includes and readily accepts this massive uptick. Essentially, Exxon has decided to double down on its oil and natural gas investments, to the extent that it’s token green energy initiatives will be drowned in a flood of CO2. And Bloomberg reports that the internal numbers don’t tell the full story: they only track the greenhouse gases released by the company’s direct operations. The company’s full impact, when you consider the eventual impact of all of the oil and gas they’re shipping and selling, is expected to be five times that number, for a total that equals the same output of an entire small nation. Iowa Ballot Blooper An absentee ballot blunder in Iowa could screw over as many as 100,000 voters in the state, the Intercept reports. What happened is back in July, election officials in two Iowa counties sent out requested absentee ballots with the Voter ID number already filled in, as most voters don’t know theirs. The GOP promptly threw a fit, arguing that doing so violated a directive from the Iowa Secretary of State. The end result is that the ballots were invalidated, but not before they’d already gone out to tens of thousands of voters across multiple counties. The GOP has been filing similar lawsuits across Iowa and the country as a whole, which creates a massive headache for voters. Many of them will have received an invalidated ballot, but the Intercept reports that their vote won’t count unless they start the process again and request a new ballot. What this means, obviously, is that anyone from Iowa who isn’t up to date on this story or doesn’t pay super close attention to their mail has a good chance of being out of luck when it comes to mail-in voting come election time. If that sounds like you, check your ballot now. Democrats in the state are working to get in touch with affected voters in case their county’s communication’s don’t get through, which is burning a lot of campaign cash and work hours -- and there’s no guarantee they’ll be able to get to everyone. AND NOW FOR SOME QUICKER QUICKIES: Chuck Schumer’s quest to slow down the GOP’s Supreme Court nomination is still going slowly, as GOP senators vow to vote in person to confirm Coney Barrett even if they’re infected with Coronavirus. One thing getting lost in all of the White House coronavirus panic: some of the people most at risk aren’t the ghouls in the Trump administration, but the working staff who comprise the buildings’ valets, butlers, housekeepers, engineers and cooks. After a strange website error last month, the CDC website now acknowledges that people can be infected with COVID-19 through airborne transmission. Glad to know things are working on a quick schedule over there! And finally, one good piece of voting news: in Florida, where a landmark ballot measure restored the right to vote for as many as 1.4 million Felons two years ago, a massive voter registration drive is underway to find those voters and let them know their rights have been restored. That’s all for the Majority Report’s AM Quickie today! Stay tuned for the full show with Sam this afternoon. Oct 6, 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: Donald Trump has coronavirus, and his prognosis is... well... nobody really knows, and the administration isn’t really talking. As of Sunday night, he was taking joy-rides in a motorcade for supporters outside of the hospital he’s supposed to be quarantined at. Meanwhile, Mitch McConnell is pushing for an adjournment in the Senate to postpone the possibility of confirming Amy Coney Barrett to the Supreme Court thanks to the wave of GOP Senators who have fallen ill. Can Democrats whip up the votes to stop him? And lastly, a new investigation by HuffPost found that millions in Federal government loans went to major energy companies that had recently violated environmental rules. THESE ARE THE STORIES YOU NEED TO KNOW: Trump Takes Contagious Joyride After months of denial, false information, and downplaying the seriousness of the crisis, Donald Trump has coronavirus. The president announced his diagnosis late on Thursday night, and has been hospitalized at Walter Reed over the weekend. His medical team and administration, however, have been less than forthcoming about what his actual condition is. Here’s what we know so far, in case you took the weekend to actually log off. Trump was admitted to Walter Reed on Friday. According to his doctors, he had a high fever that day, and on two occasions over the weekend, his oxygen levels dropped enough that he required supplementary oxygen. Trump’s medical team on Sunday tried to play it off like he was fine, but the New York Times reports that the fluctuating oxygen levels and Trump’s treatment with a course of steroids suggest his case may be more severe than he’s letting on. Earlier in the day on Sunday, Trump took a spin around Walter Reed in a motorcade, flaunting quarantine guidelines to have a little joy ride in front of his supporters. Sounds about right. He’s also posted the occasional video updating fans about his condition on Twitter, but we all know just how much his personal testimony is worth. The timeline on when he knew he was sick is also completely unclear. On Sunday night, the Wall Street Journal reported that Trump didn’t disclose a positive test he got back on Thursday morning, before he went on a Fox News appearance and while he was still performing normal duties in the White House. In other words, there’s no telling how many people he could have personally infected, but the cluster that probably got him sick is spreading around the administration and GOP higher ranks like crazy. That’s where we’re at as of late Sunday night -- Monday will surely have more updates and speculation. What a time to be alive. Mitch McConnell Loses Votes to Corona The coronavirus cluster sweeping through the top ranks of the GOP might have some pretty significant legislative consequences. Politico reports that Mitch McConnell is going to attempt to call a vote to adjourn the Senate until October 19, ostensibly to protect more Senators from getting infected. But McConnell also wants the Senate’s various committees to keep doing their jobs during this, meaning the Judiciary Committee’s hearings on Supreme Court Nominee Amy Coney Barrett could continue. This is an obvious ploy to ram forward Coney Barret’s nomination at full speed while denying the rest of the Senate a chance to do much -- and, most importantly, preserving any more GOP Senators from getting too sick to vote her in. Already, two Republican members of the Judiciary Committee have the disease, Thom Tillis and MIke Lee, and another, Ted Cruz, is in quarantine after being exposed to the virus. It’s worth noting that the potential exposure event for basically all of these guys was a relatively mask-less, close quarters ceremony at the White House last weekend when ACB was announced. The question now becomes what the Democrats are going to do to stop this. Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer is pushing to stop the committees while the full Senate adjourns, which could help stall any vote on Barrett’s confirmation until after the election. With at least 3 GOP senators out with COVID and 3 more in quarantine, McConnell is going to have a hard time getting the votes to push anything through right now, which gives the Democrats some power for once. It’s possible that if Schumer thinks he has the votes, that the Democrats could get a vote to adjourn until after the election, not until October 13. That wouldn’t necessarily block Barrett’s confirmation but would kick the can quite a ways down the road. We’ll see how this plays out on Monday morning. Government Loans Went to Dirty Energy Companies Meanwhile, outside of the COVID pit that is Washington DC, a new report from Huffington Post finds further injustice in the application of the Paycheck Protection Program loans doled out during the pandemic. According to HuffPost, at least five companies who have collectively paid more than $52 million in penalties for violating clean air and other environmental regulations received a whole bunch of that money back from the federal PPP program. Between them, they secured $32 million in loans. Chris Saeger, a spokesman for Washington-based watchdog Accountable dot US said quote: “These companies have a clear history of violating public trust and the law by contaminating the environment in pursuit of profits. Our federal government should not be essentially giving back portions of the penalties they’ve paid, but that’s exactly what the Trump administration is doing through the PPP.” The sector overall got enormous amounts of money. Huffpo reports that as many as 7,000 companies received anywhere from 3 to 7 billion dollars in PPP loans. And remember, this is just the latest example of corruption and mismanagement within the PPP, which doled out millions to companies owned by members of congress and Trump donors. This puts the current bailout fight in new focus, as Trump and the GOP are generally trying to shift even more money from direct relief and bailouts to necessary services and into big corporate slush funds that they can funnel to their cronies. AND NOW FOR SOME QUICKER QUICKIES: The previously frozen conflict between Azerbaijan and Armenia escalated dramatically this weekend, as Azerbaijani forces shelled the major city of Stepankert and Armenian forces shelled the city of Ganja. The conflict is also a complicated proxy war between forces in the region, as Turkey openly supports Azerbaijan and Russia is generally aligned with Armenia, though it sells weapons to both sides. New York City, the original hotspot of the U.S. coronavirus infection, is adopting new restrictions as a second wave sweeps through certain neighborhoods in the city, further complicating the city’s slow reopening plan. In the affected neighborhoods, public and private schools would shut down alongside all non-essential businesses. Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton has been accused by his own staffers of offenses involving abuse of office, improper influence, bribery, and other criminal acts. Paxton is already under indictment on felony charges related to Securities fraud. If you were wondering where Biden is during all this, his team said late Sunday night that he had again tested negative for coronavirus, after obviously being in contact with Trump during the debate last week. So that’s encouraging for now! That’s all for the Majority Report’s AM quickie today! Stay tuned for more Presidential Health Watch updates on the Majority Report later today. Oct 5, 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: House Democrats are doing their level best to push a vote on a new 2.2 trillion dollar coronavirus stimulus bill, but are getting lowballed by the GOP and Trump administration, which claimed it had offered Democrats a $1.8 trillion bill that they then turned down. Meanwhile, mail-in and early voting is off to a rocky start, thanks to GOP efforts to continue sabotaging it in Texas and beyond. There are some bright points, but this is going to be a rough ride. And lastly, Amy Coney Barrett’s record on abortion may be even worse than we feared, as a new report shows she participated in a 2006 campaign that stated that Roe V Wade had to be overturned immediately. THESE ARE THE STORIES YOU NEED TO KNOW: Stimulus Bill Still Stalled Once again, we have a partisan battle over aid to the American people still suffering from a world-altering pandemic. You’ve heard this one before, but here’s where we’re at now. Nancy Pelosi and the House Democrats are mobilized to vote on a $2.2 trillion dollar stimulus bill, which is pretty much the least they could be doing. Such a bill stands no chance of making it through the Senate without getting chopped up, of course, but at least it’s something. Republicans, however, don’t want anywhere near that number to go through, and are proposing tiny crumbs as opposed to the Democrats scraps. Remember, the HEROES act in May was $3.4 trillion and even that wasn’t nearly enough. The president, however, ever a wildcard, offered Democrats a $1.8 trillion bill. The Washington Post reports that number was too big for some of the more fiscally insane Republicans in Congress, but what’re they gonna do, cross the president? And of course, it’s still a cool 400 billion lower than what the Democrats want. Trump’s proposed bill, according to the Post, includes $300 billion for a new round of direct stimulus checks and another $300 billion for expanded unemployment at $400 per week. Still less than the $600 keeping people afloat, but better than nothing. That bill also includes allowances for COVID testing, rental protections, and more. But in almost every category, it’s still undercutting what the Democrats want, which is something along the lines of new 1200 checks, 600 a week unemployment, and more than the paltry 250 billion for state-level relief that the GOP is offering. And while they haggle all this out, more and more Americans are getting pushed over their personal financial cliffs. Texas Gov Locks Down Ballot Boxes There’s good news and bad news about the beginning of early mail in voting. Let’s start with the good. According to NBC news, the North Carolina Board of Elections says 300,000 people have voted by mail already, shattering records for the state. Many states are overcoming some early blips to get off to a roaring start with early voting and mail-in ballots. However. There is bad news, and you probably know what’s coming. Republicans are doing everything they can to limit voting access, and the latest example is particularly egregious. In Texas, Governor Greg Abbot issued a proclamation, as of today, closing ballot-drop off stations across the state and limiting them to one per county. That means in Texas, one of the biggest states in the country, each county will have only one ballot drop-off point. For reference, before the proclamation, some counties had as many as a dozen. Abbot claims this is for quote “security” purposes, but the only thing it’s securing is Trump’s fading chances of winning the election. Texas is rapidly becoming a contestable state for Democrats, and Abbot knows it, as does the local Democratic party. Gilberto Hinojosa, the chairman of the Texas Democratic Party, said quote: “Republicans are on the verge of losing, so Governor Abbott is trying to adjust the rules last minute. Governor Abbott and Texas Republicans are scared. We are creating a movement that will beat them at the ballot box on Nov. 3, and there’s nothing these cheaters can do about it.” ACB's Abortion Views Exposed Amy Coney Barrett is clearly virulently anti abortion like several Supreme Court Justices, but until now, most of them have had the acumen to couch those opinions in conservative legalese. Barret, however, may be the first one to just say screw it and go all out. That’s because a new report by NBC news shows that in 2006, Barrett participated in a two-page ad in the South Bend Times calling for Roe v. Wade to be overturned and ending the “barbaric legacy” of the decision. Doesn’t get more clear-cut than that! And this comes in the wake of Trump, at the debate with Biden, claiming quote “you don’t know her view on Roe v. Wade.” endquote. Well, looks like we do now. What’s more, Barrett did not disclose this fact to the Senate Judiciary Committee, which is currently doing its background digging on her before her confirmation hearings. The worst thing is that she’ll probably get away with it entirely -- all of the dirt in the world can’t stop the GOP if they have the votes. Right now, it looks like Barrett’s unsavory optics have put off Mitch McConnell from calling for a vote before the election. But if Trump loses, you better believe the gloves are going to come off and they’ll make a lame duck push to get her on the court. After all, Kavanaugh had multiple women accusing him of violent sexual assault and he’s currently sitting right on that bench. But when or if ACB gets there, it’s good to know what she is right off the bat. AND NOW FOR SOME QUICKER QUICKIES: After the absolute mess of a debate on Tuesday, the Trump campaign is crying foul, accusing the Commission on Presidential Debates of bias and insisting that no rule changes be made to stop the President shouting over his opponent whenever he wants. In other words, more pain and suffering await any brave fools who decide to tune in to the next one. Sound the klaxon: we’ve got an update on the dumbest men alive. The Michigan Attorney General charged right wing scammers Jacob Wohl and Jack Burman with four felony counts, including voter intimidation, stemming from their idiotic scam to set up a robocall to discourage urban voters from casting a ballot in the general election. Several GOP Senators, Including Susan Collins, Lisa Murkowski, Joni Ernst flipped sides and voted with Democrats in a procedural vote on the Trump-backed lawsuit against the affordable Care Act. What this means for the upcoming Supreme Court hearings that could decide the fate of the ACA lawsuit after election day, we’ll see. Donald Trump tried one more mundane little attempt at voter manipulation: including a signed letter in food assistance boxes given out to needy families. Food banks, thankfully, are taking the letters out, as they clearly violate the Hatch Act and are just in incredibly poor taste regardless. That’s it for the Majority Report’s AM Quickie Today! Stay tuned for the full show with Sam this afternoon. Oct 2, 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: A religious group linked to Amy Coney Barrett, the Supreme Court nominee, has been deleting records of her involvement. Is there something they don’t want people to know about her? Meanwhile, the world reacts with horror at the first debate between Donald Trump and Joe Biden. And one of Trump’s beloved Proud Boys catches charges for, among other things, pointing a gun at a crowd of people. And lastly, the United States government takes action against a Malaysian palm oil producer tied to slave labor. Awareness is growing about widespread abuses in the industry. THESE ARE THE STORIES YOU NEED TO KNOW:SCOTUS nominee's records scrubbed People of Praise, a far-right Christian sect tied to Donald Trump’s Supreme Court nominee, Amy Coney Barrett, has been caught deleting information about her from its website. An analysis by the Associated Press shows that People of Praise erased numerous records from its website during the summer of 2017 that referred to Barrett, as well as photos. At the time, Barrett was on Trump’s short list for the high court seat that eventually went to Justice Brett Kavanaugh. Last week, when Barrett again emerged as a front-runner for the court, more articles, blog posts and photos disappeared. And still more records were deleted after an AP reporter emailed the group’s spokesman yesterday. All issues of the organization’s magazine, Vine and Branches, were removed, including a 2006 story about Barrett’s parents that referred to her mother as a handmaid. The AP reports that People of Praise’s belief system is rooted in charismatic Catholicism, a movement that grew out of the influence of Pentecostalism, which can include speaking in tongues. Founded in 1971, the group’s twenty two branches organize and meet outside the purview of the Roman Catholic Church. Former female members told AP that wives were expected to obey their husband’s wishes in all matters, including providing sex on demand. One of the women also said she was forbidden from getting birth control. In her speech accepting Trump’s nomination on Saturday, Amy Barrett said she expected from the start that she and her husband would run their household together. One wonders if he gets a vote in other matters, as well. Proud Boy catches charges Members of the Proud Boys were celebrating yesterday after Trump name-checked them in Tuesday night’s presidential debate with Joe Biden. After refusing to condemn white supremacy, Trump called on the Proud Boys to QUOTE stand back and stand by ENDQUOTE. Yesterday Trump tried to walk back his comments, claiming he has no idea who the Proud Boys are. He said QUOTE Whoever they are, they need to stand down [and] let law enforcement do their work ENDQUOTE. Sorry – who’s doing whose work, now? Biden also had words yesterday for Trump’s favorite violent street gangs. He said QUOTE My message to the Proud Boys and every other white supremacist group is cease and desist... This is not who we are as Americans ENDQUOTE. In Portland, Oregon, the morning after Trump’s comments, police arrested a fifty-year-old Proud Boys associate named Alan James Swinney. He was photographed in late August pointing a handgun at a crowd of protesters. Swinney faces mutliple assault charges, according to Oregon Public Broadcasting, including pointing a firearm at another, unlawful use of a weapon and unlawful use of tear gas, stun gun or mace. Also in Portland, Multnomah County Sheriff Mike Reese sought to correct the record after Trump claimed to have won the support of Portland’s sheriff after months of non-stop protests. Reese said on Twitter QUOTE I have never supported Donald Trump and will never support him ENDQUOTE. Reese has also reportedly donated one thousand dollars to the Biden campaign. Meanwhile, the international reaction to Tuesday’s debate was... well, it was not kind. China’s Global Times said the debate showed the world a divided and chaotic US. The French newspaper Le Monde said it revealed how four years of Trumpism have weakened one of the greatest democracies in the world. Kenyan commentator Patrick Gathara called the debate QUOTE a pitiful and tragic advertisement for US dysfunction ENDQUOTE. It was also quite unbearably long as advertisements go. At this rate we’ll be lucky to find a buyer at any price. Palm oil shipments halted Following a yearlong investigation, and coming a week after an AP investigation into widespread and shocking labor abuses in the industry, the US is blocking shipments of palm oil from a major producer in Malaysia. The so-called withhold release order against FGV Holdings Berhad goes into effect immediately, according to the AP. Brenda Smith, executive assistant commissioner at the US Customs and Border Protection’s Office of Trade, called on importers to conduct their due diligence. Smith also said QUOTE We would also encourage U.S. consumers to ask questions about where their products come from ENDQUOTE. FGV is one of the world’s largest palm oil companies and is closely connected to another company, Felda, which is owned by the Malaysian government. The AP’s investigation, which we covered here last week, found ample evidence of physical and sexual violence and forced child labor on palm oil plantations. Some of the labor abuses occurred on plantations operated by Felda. The tainted palm oil was traced to the supply chains of the planet’s most iconic food and cosmetics companies like Unilever, L’Oreal, Nestle and Procter and Gamble. Palm oil is found in roughly half the products on supermarket shelves, as demand has exploded over the past two decades. Read those labels, folks, and shop accordingly. AND NOW FOR SOME QUICKER QUICKIES: The Vatican said yesterday it had denied a request from US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo for an audience with Pope Francis. According to Reuters, Pompeo accused the Church this month of putting its moral authority at risk by renewing an agreement with China over the appointment of bishops. Note to Pompeo, the master diplomat: you’re supposed to catch flies with honey, not vinegar. Honey. And the same goes for popes. US intelligence services considered poisoning or kidnapping Wikileaks co-founder Julian Assange, according to a report in the Guardian. It seems the plans were never put into practice. The claims were entered into evidence in a London courtroom by a former employee of a Spanish security company, UC Global, who worked in the Ecuadorian embassy, where Assange had taken refuge. The court is considering whether to extradite Assange to the US. The European Commission spent months auditing the rule of law in all twenty-seven member nations. Its report, just released, says democracy is suffering in several European countries, primarily Hungary and Poland. Concerns about corruption and judicial independence were also raised regarding Bulgaria, Croatia, the Czech Republic, Hungary, Malta, Romania and Slovakia. This will go down... on their permanent... records... The Los Angeles Times reports that California has become the first state in the country to adopt a law to develop proposals for reparations to the descendants of slaves. The law was signed by Governor Gavin Newsom yesterday. The task force it creates will examine slavery in California and the US, and the lasting consequences of discrimination against freed slaves and their descendants. Whatever recommendations for reparations the task force comes up with will also need to be approved by the legislature. Hey, it’s a start. That’s all for the AM Quickie. Join us this afternoon on the Majority Report. Oct 1, 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: Joe Biden faced Donald Trump last night in the first of three presidential debates. Trump tried to make it Wrestlemania, but Biden gave as good as he got. Meanwhile, internal company documents show that Amazon has effectively covered up a major safety crisis at its warehouses. It got worse after they brought in robots. And lastly, a group of scientists have presented evidence that they have a new technique to produce a compact nuclear fusion reactor. If it works, that could be great news on the climate change front. THESE ARE THE STORIES YOU NEED TO KNOW: Biden: "Shut up, man" The presidential candidates faced off onstage for the first time last night at the Cleveland Clinic in Ohio. Hours before the debate, Joe Biden released his tax returns and called on Trump to do the same. For what it’s worth, via Reuters: Biden’s taxes showed that he and his wife Jill paid more than $346,000 in federal taxes and other payments for 2019 on an income of nearly $985,000_._ Trump, as is now widely known despite his refusal to share his tax returns, has paid next to nothing for most of the past decade. Prior to the debate, Trump accused Biden of refusing to agree to an inspection for hidden earpieces. Biden countered by revealing Trump had demanded that the debate moderator refrain from mentioning the number of people in the US who have died from Covid-19. And all that was before the debate actually started. Fox News Sunday anchor Chris Wallace was the moderator. He opened the debate with a question about the Supreme Court vacancy, which the candidates used as an opportunity to argue about the Affordable Care Act. Trump, tacking left, pretended to be an enemy of Big Pharma and an apologist for Bernie Sanders. As expected, he played the bully toward both Biden and Wallace. Biden called Trump the wrong guy at the wrong time and, after one extended back-and-forth sniping session, said QUOTE will you shut up, man? ENDQUOTE. Because Wallace declined to offer fact-checking, Trump was allowed to lie with impunity. But Biden spoke at times directly to the audience, appealing to the head and heartstrings over grave matters such as the pandemic. The next debate takes place on October 15. In other campaign news, a new poll by the Washington Post and ABC News showed Biden leading Trump in Pennsylvania by fifty four to forty five percent among likely voters. Amazon worker injuries growing There is a growing safety crisis at Amazon. A new report by the website Reveal news, based on company records obtained by the Center for Investigative Reporting, sheds light on the problem. The documents consist of weekly data from 2016 through 2019 from more than one hundred and fifty Amazon warehouses. They show that the company has profoundly misled lawmakers and the public about its mounting injury crisis. Amazon often points to the tens of millions of dollars it has invested to enhance safety practices. Yet Amazon’s injury rates have gone up each of the past four years. In 2019, Amazon fulfillment centers recorded fourteen thousand serious injuries. The overall rate of injuries was thirty three percent higher than in 2016 and nearly double the most recent industry standard, Reveal reports. The data back up the accounts of Amazon workers who say the company has used the robots to ratchet up production quotas. Now humans can’t keep up without hurting themselves. Injury rates are significantly higher at Amazon’s robotic warehouses than at its traditional sites. The robots bring items so quickly that the productivity expectations for workers have more than doubled. Workers called pickers previously had to grab and scan about one hundred items an hour. At robotic fulfillment centers, they were expected to handle up to four hundred an hour. And for years, injury rates have spiked during the weeks of Prime Day and Cyber Monday, contrary to Amazon’s public claims. Those two weeks had the highest rate of serious injuries for all of 2019. In May, Amazon chairman Jeff Bezos said QUOTE Nothing is more important than the health and well-being of our employees ENDQUOTE. Well, Jeff: prove it. Fusion energy breakthrough reported Scientists at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology say they are on track to develop a compact nuclear fusion reactor – which, if true, could be a major breakthrough in the fight against climate change. The New York Times reports that the MIT scientists, through a spinoff company called Commonwealth Fusion Systems, expect to begin development of the reactor, called Sparc, next spring. They expect to finish construction in three or four years. If successful, they could build a power plant that uses fusion to generate electricity in the next decade. A fusion reactor would work differently than existing nuclear fission reactors, and mimic the process whereby the sun produces energy. The MIT announcement was accompanied by the publication yesterday of seven peer-reviewed papers in The Journal of Plasma Physics, in which researchers laid out the evidence that the Sparc reactor would succeed and produce as much as ten times the energy it consumes. The research QUOTE confirms that the design we’re working on is very likely to work ENDQUOTE, said Martin Greenwald, deputy director of MIT’s Plasma Science and Fusion Center and one of the project’s lead scientists. According to Greenwald, Sparc takes advantage of a newer technology that uses so-called high temperature superconductors that can produce a much higher magnetic field. Commonwealth Fusion said it would announce a location for Sparc in a few months. AND NOW FOR SOME QUICKER QUICKIES: A juror in the Breonna Taylor case claims that Kentucky’s Republican Attorney General Daniel Cameron misrepresented the grand jury’s deliberations and may not have presented all of the evidence they needed to see. The unidentified juror also said, through an attorney, that the panel was never presented with the option to indict two of the three police officers involved in Taylor’s killing. Cameron has said he will release a recording of the grand jury proceedings today on a judge’s order, the Washington Post reports. Let’s hear it! Amnesty International announced yesterday that government reprisals, including a freeze on its bank accounts, had forced the human rights group to abandon its work in India. Citing an incessant witch-hunt based on unfounded allegations, Amnesty India’s executive director, Avinash Kumar, said the government crackdown reeks of fear and repression. More than one hundred staff members will be laid off and the group’s work on such issues as police brutality will cease. Military clashes broke out Sunday in Nagorno-Karabakh, a separatist region within Azerbaijan that has been under the control of ethnic Armenian forces since 1994. Fighting continued yesterday, with each side blaming the other and each contradicting the other’s claims regarding casualties. Armenian officials claim Turkey has deployed fighter jets to aid Azerbaijan. A European Commission spokesman urged everyone to QUOTE do everything they can in order to prevent an all-out war from breaking out, because this is the last thing the region needs ENDQUOTE. Italian scientists reported Monday in the journal Nature Astronomy that they have found a network of salty ponds beneath the south pole of Mars, alongside a large underground lake. The lake is estimated to be twelve to eighteen miles across and buried one mile beneath the surface. The salt content keeps the water from freezing, and has scientists excited about the possibility for finding microbial life there. They say future expeditions should target this area of Mars. Let’s see them aliens! Sept 30, 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: A new report shows that Donald Trump used Facebook for a massive voter deterrence operation in 2016, targeting up to 3.5 million black voters in swing states with negative ads about Hillary Clinton in an attempt to quote “cultivate hopelessness,” and suppress their votes. Meanwhile, the Joe Biden campaign adds Cindy McCain, widow of late Republican John McCain, to its advisory board. Says about all you need to know about who they’re trying to persuade, doesn’t it? And lastly, new evacuations were ordered on Monday in California’s wine country as two new wildfires set the northern part of the state ablaze. THESE ARE THE STORIES YOU NEED TO KNOW: Trump Used Facebook to Quash Black Votes in 2016 A report by Britain’s Channel Four News alleges that Donald Trump’s 2016 campaign used specifically targeted Facebook advertisements to dissuade up to 3.5 million black people in swing states from voting. The report, which is based on a massive data leak of Trump campaign advertising data, shows that the campaign compiled files on 198 million American voters and then used an algorithm to sort them into categories based on their economic and domestic statuses and other data. One of these categories was called “deterrence,” which effectively meant voters who could be persuaded to stay at home if hit with the right ads. 3.5 million of those voters were black, and many of them lived in swing states like Florida. The Trump campaign then aggressively targeted those voters with negative ads about Hillary Clinton, relentlessly pointing to her admittedly terrible record on race and criminal justice in an effort to, in the words of Dr. Cornell West, quote “cultivate hopelessness” among black voters. What’s more, then-campaign manager Brad Parscale testified under oath that the campaign did not target based specifically on race in its persuasion efforts. The story here is not so much that the Trump campaign did something racist and disenfranchising to black people, as that has been part of the GOP playbook for years. It’s that Facebook gave them the very specific and powerful tools to do so, and they took full advantage of it while denying it to the public. We know already that they’re going to try something similar in 2020, this time perhaps by leaning in to myths about voter fraud and conspiracies about vote by mail in order to cultivate that same hopelessness and confusion among people who just want to make a change. Joe Biden Announces New Advisor The Biden campaign added Cindy McCain, the widow of late Senator and presidential candidate John McCain to its advisory board on Monday, sending an extremely clear signal to the centrists and moderate Republicans that they are welcome in Biden’s Democratic party. McCain had previously endorsed Biden, even going so far as to speak at the Democratic convention. Her husband, for the record, voted with Trump 83 percent of the time while in the Senate. Just listen to what the campaign’s saying about it. Transition co-chair and former Sen. Ted Kaufman said that the campaign was drawn to quote “Mrs. McCain’s experience as a business woman, philanthropist, and longtime advocate for issues impacting women and children,” endquote. Great, we got a businesswoman and philanthropist on board. Never had one of those in the Democratic party before. Look, the move isn’t exactly a surprise. Biden has made it clear for months that he thinks his best chance at winning and preserving the power of his wing of the party is to lean hard into the notion that center-independents and some Republicans will switch sides and vote for him. What that means in practice, however, is that the left is going to have a doubly hard job at convincing the Biden administration to make any real progress while in office. Voting for him will stop some of the acute injustices that Trump has pushed for, but it’s not going to do very much to change the systemic issues that gave rise to the Donald. Wildfires Break Out in CA Again Two new wildfires have ignited northern California’s wine country, forcing new evacuations in a state that has already seen a devastating start to the long fire season. The Zogg Fire in Shasta County and the Glass Fire in Napa and Sonoma Counties have already burned more than 26,000 acres according to the New York Times, and forced new evacuation orders for thousands of people who already suffered a devastating fire in the region three years ago. The state overall has barely begun to recover from the fallout earlier this month, when the majority of the state was blanketed by smoke from dozens of massive fires. Thus far, the fire season across the west coast has left more than 25 people dead, 7,000 structures burned and scorched more than five million acres across three states. It’s important to recognize exactly what’s making these disasters so bad: decades of corporate predation and runaway climate change. And often it’s the most vulnerable who suffer: the latest fires consumed a small community of tiny homes built for formerly homeless people and those suffering from substance abuse disorders, while a nearby senior assisted living center was also forced to evacuate. AND NOW FOR SOME QUICKER QUICKIES: The first presidential debate is tonight! At 9 pm Eastern, Trump and Biden will face off for the first time on stage, with the specter of Trump’s new tax scandal possibly giving Biden more ammunition to work with. Who are we kidding, he’s just going to yell that the whole thing is fake and hurl insults. Should be a real good time. CDC Director Robert Redfield got caught blowing off some steam while on a flight from Atlanta to D.C. on Friday, and letting a colleague know what he really thinks of Trump’s taskforce member Dr. Scott Atlas. Redfield said quote "Everything he says is false,” endquote, which would make sense as Atlas is a neuroradiologist with no expertise in infectious diseases or epidemiology, but lots of experience going on Fox News. Global coronavirus deaths passed one million, and so much of it is our government’s fault. Here’s Tom Inglesby, the director of the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security: Quote: “This is a very serious global event, and a lot of people were going to get sick and many of them were going to die, but it did not need to be nearly this bad.” A new study in the journal Nature Climate Change showing that human-caused global heating is making the world's oceans more "stable” -- which largely means that temperatures toward the surface stay warmer, creating fertile grounds for more mega storms that gain power over warm water. That’s all for the majority report’s AM quickie today! Stay tuned for the show with Sam later and all our debate coverage. Sept 29, 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: The New York Times has Donald Trump’s tax returns, and you’ll never guess what they show. Oh, you guess that they show he’s barely paid any taxes through nefarious means? Well. You’re right. You guessed it. Meanwhile, President Trump has officially nominated Seventh Circuit Judge Amy Coney Barrett to the U.S. Supreme Court, and the GOP is full steam ahead to get her on the bench before he has the chance to get voted out of office. And lastly, Portland Oregon weathers another contentious weekend, even as a far-right rally fizzled. Police continued to crack down hard on protesters, catching journalists and some bystanders in the crossfire. THESE ARE THE STORIES YOU NEED TO KNOW: Trump Pays No Taxes Want to know how much Donald Trump paid in taxes in 2016? $750. He paid about that much in 2017 as well, taking full advantage of a broken system set up to help the rich get richer and greasing the wheels with some underhanded deals along the way. The New York Times published a massive report on Sunday evening based on more than two decades of tax return data for President Trump and his companies. For 11 of the 18 years the Times examined, Trump paid nothing in federal income taxes. He did this, in a large part, by reporting massive amounts of losses every year. Basically all of his signature businesses report losing huge amounts of money. By reporting gigantic losses, he’s been able to keep his tax burden extremely low -- which also helped him get a questionable $72.9 million ​_refund_​ from the government. That transaction is under audit by the IRS. But he’s kept up the billionaire charade by writing off basically all his personal expenses, taking tax deductions on everything from $70,000 in TV hairstyling to aircraft and private residences. The full report is absurd -- there are just so many ludicrously crooked details. The full picture it paints is of a man under a massive amount of debt staying afloat, and in luxury, through loopholes that exist just to protect the super rich. It remains to be seen if it will actually affect voters, but one thing is for sure: the system that enabled Trump isn’t anything new. It’s just that one of its worst abusers managed to get elected president. ACB Nominated to Succeed RBG President Donald Trump nominated Amy Coney Barett to the Supreme Court on Sunday, offering up the Seventh Circuit Judge as his pick to replace Ruth Bader Ginsberg. We talked a little bit about Coney Barrett last week, so we’ll spare some of the details. Suffice to say, she’ll be gunning for Roe V Wade, Obamacare, and a whole host of other social and economic landmarks right after that. A recent poll by the New York Times and Siena College showed that 56 percent of likely voters would prefer to have whoever wins the election nominate the next justice, but that probably isn’t what’s going to happen. That’s because as expected, Mitch McConnell and the Senate Republicans have set up a lightning-fast timeline to get Coney Barrett confirmed, and they most likely have the votes to do it. What the Democrats can do to stop them is still up in the air, but activists are turning up the pressure on leadership to pull out all the stops. Protesters gathered outside of Senate minority leader Chuck Schumer’s home on Saturday to urge the leading Democrat to publicly and vocally refuse to hold hearings to confirm a new justice, use every procedural block they can to gum up the works, and fully commit to ending the filibuster and packing the court the next time Democrats take back the Senate. Hopefully, that’ll be this year. If it’s not, we may see a far grimmer country by the time the Democrats can take back the court again. Portland Cops Plaster Protesters Violence on the streets, much of it perpetrated by the police, rocked the city of Portland again this weekend, as rival demonstrations gave way to street protests that were brutally broken up by Portland authorities. Police presence was aggressive over the weekend because of a large rally organized by the far-right Proud Boys group. But fortunately, a last minute location change for the rally kept it isolated from most counterprotests. Still, there were some skirmishes and assaults when Proud Boys attacked people they suspected of being antifa activists. After the right wingers had gone home, though, the cops returned to their regularly scheduled crackdowns on protesters, arresting more than two dozen according to the Oregonian. In one video captured online by journalist Sergio Olmos, police smashed a cyclist off his bike in the street and arrested him while he screamed that he was an UberEats delivery rider just trying to do his job. In another instance, Portland police knocked 73-year-old photographer John Rudoff to the ground while aggressively arresting and striking protesters with their baton. According to Gregory McKelvey, Rudoff’s friend and the vice Chair of the Oregon Democrats Black Caucus, Rudoff said quote: “I shot the Syrian Refugee Crisis, I shot Paris Protests, I shot Bangladesh, I shot Hong Kong, and it was Portland Police who beat the shit out of me.” AND NOW FOR SOME QUICKER QUICKIES: Clashes broke out on Sunday between Azerbaijan and Armenia, who have been in conflict over the breakaway province of Nagorno-Karabakh [NA GOR NO, KAR AH BACH] for years. Wire reports describe the recent fighting as much more severe than typical border skirmishes, with both sides reporting civilians dead or wounded. ABC reports that Donald Trump’s former campaign manager Brad nwas taken into custody on Sunday night by Fort Lauderdale Police after allegedly threatening to harm himself and briefly barricading himself in his home. Meanwhile, the Covid pandemic churns on. The World Health Organization warned on Friday that the global death toll from the virus could top two million if world governments don’t take collective action. And finally, zoomers rejoice! A U.S. judge temporarily blocked Trump’s ban on the TikTok app just hours before it was scheduled to go into effect, ruling that TikTok could have a temporary injunction against the ban on downloading the app that was supposed to go through on Sunday night. Sept 28, 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: Donald Trump couldn’t hide from the jeering crowd at public services for the late Ruth Bader Ginsburg yesterday. Plus, we round up the reactions to his statement refusing to commit to a peaceful transfer of power. Meanwhile, palm oil is in just about everything these days. A major investigation finds it’s not just bad for the environment – it’s produced in conditions tantamount to slavery. And lastly, nearly five hundred former top military officers sign a letter pledging to vote for Joe Biden. It’s another sign that Trump is losing the support of many who are sworn to defend the US Constitution. THESE ARE THE STORIES YOU NEED TO KNOW: RBG mourners boo Trump A crowd of mourners booed Donald Trump outside the Supreme Court yesterday as he and Melania made an appearance during remembrance services for the late Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg. Trump reportedly plans to name her replacement on the court this weekend. People at the court chanted Vote Him Out. But will that be enough? Reactions came in swift after Trump said Wednesday night that he would not commit to a peaceful transfer of power following the November election. Asked directly at a White House press conference if he would peacefully relinquish power, Trump said that we’re going to have to see what happens. He also said QUOTE the ballots are a disaster... Get rid of the ballots and...there won’t be a transfer, frankly. There will be a continuation ENDQUOTE. The remarks put Democrats on edge. Delaware Senator Chris Coons said QUOTE When a leader with authoritarian tendencies tells you they intend to do something outrageous, like not accept a peaceful transition after an election, as President Trump said, you should believe them ENDQUOTE. Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders said too many people have fought and died to defend American democracy for Trump to destroy it. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi told reporters it wasn’t worth the trouble to formally censure Trump. She said QUOTE he’s trying to have the Constitution of the United States swallow Clorox ENDQUOTE. Trump’s Democratic opponent, Joe Biden, asked facetiously, What country are we in? Biden added that Trump says the most irrational things, and concluded, QUOTE I don’t know what to say ENDQUOTE. Even some of Trump’s fellow Republicans seemed a little put off by his threat to ignore the election results. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell wrote on Twitter that there will be an orderly transition just as there has been every four years since 1792. When asked if Republicans would stand up to Trump if he resists leaving the White House, Senator John Thune of South Dakota said he believed they would. Forgive me for feeling skeptical. If Republicans haven’t stood up to Trump yet, why would they start in November? Palm oil slavery expose A new Associated Press investigation offers the most comprehensive look yet at labor abuses in the palm oil industry. The AP interviewed more than one hundred and thirty workers from two dozen palm oil companies who labored on plantations in Malaysia and Indonesia. Those two countries produce most of the world’s palm oil. Workers spoke of child labor, outright slavery and rape. Fishermen who escaped years of slavery on boats described coming ashore in search of help, but instead being trafficked onto plantations -- sometimes with police involvement. Palm oil is virtually impossible to avoid. Often hidden amid a list of scientific names on labels, it can be found in roughly half the products on supermarket shelves. It’s in paints, plywood, pesticides and pills. It’s also present in animal feed, biofuels and even hand sanitizer. It’s used in baby formula and non-dairy creamers, and is listed on the labels of everything from Jif Natural peanut butter to Kit Kat candy bars. It’s equally useful in a host of cleansers and makeup products, as well as toothpaste and lipstick. One Burmese worker told the AP that when Americans see palm oil is listed as an ingredient in their snacks, they should know QUOTE it’s the same as consuming our sweat and blood ENDQUOTE. The AP traced the exploited laborers’ palm oil to the supply chains of top Western companies like the makers of Oreo cookies, Lysol cleaners and Hershey’s chocolate treats. Giant financial institutions like Deutsche Bank, BNY Mellon, Citigroup, HSBC and the Vanguard Group have invested in the crop, which has soared from just five million tons in 1999 to seventy two million today. The US alone has seen a nine hundred percent spike in demand during that same time. Gemma Tillack of the Rainforest Action Network told the AP QUOTE The buck stops with the banks. It is their funding that makes this system of exploitation possible ENDQUOTE. So: It’s time for a new divestment campaign. Military veterans endorse Biden Donald Trump’s support within the military ranks is slipping. The Washington Post reports that nearly five hundred retired senior military officers have signed an open letter in support of Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden. The letter says the former vice president has QUOTE the character, principles, wisdom and leadership necessary to address a world on fire ENDQUOTE. The letter was published yesterday morning by National Security Leaders for Biden. It has been signed by four hundred and eighty-nine people, who also include former Cabinet secretaries, service chiefs and other officials. Most have not previously spoken out. Retired Air Force General Charles G. Boyd recorded a video for the group’s Twitter account. He spent thirty six years in the United States Air Force, almost seven of those as a prisoner of war in Vietnam. Since his return, he’s been a Republican, but quietly. In the video, Boyd said QUOTE I fervently believe that military officers should not be involved in presidential politics, even when retired. But this year is different. Donald Trump’s assault on the rule of law that makes a democracy possible has been so egregious I’ve decided to speak out... We need to vote for Joe Biden this year. I’m going to vote for him. I hope you do, too ENDQUOTE. A poll of active-duty service members conducted last month by Military Times found a drop in military support for Trump. It showed Biden with a forty one percent to thirty seven percent advantage over Trump. The remaining twenty two percent of active-duty service members said they were planning either not to vote, or to support a third-party candidate. A similarly timed survey by the Military Times in 2016 gave Trump a two-to-one advantage over Hillary Clinton. However things shake out over the next few months, it’s good to know more people in uniform have gotten clued in to the real threats to American democracy. AND NOW FOR SOME QUICKER QUICKIES: At least one hundred and twenty seven people were arrested in Louisville on the first night of protests following the announcement of a charging decision in the police killing of Breonna Taylor. Additionally, charges were brought against a twenty-six year old man, Larynzo Johnson, in connection to the shooting of two Louisville police officers, neither of whom suffered life-threatening injuries. Meanwhile, the Washington Post reported that at least one thousand and ten Americans have been shot and killed by police in the past year. Missouri Governor Mike Parson was among those Republicans who resisted calls for a mask mandate to fight the pandemic. Now Parson and his wife Teresa have both tested positive for the coronavirus. He is, by his own account, asymptomatic and in quarantine. According to the Washington Post, Missouri has recorded almost one hundred and seventeen thousand coronavirus cases, and nearly two thousand deaths. China has built nearly four hundred internment camps in the Xinjiang (ZIN-JANG) region, according to a study of satellite imagery by an Australian think tank reported in the Guardian. The Australian Strategic Policy Institute found that fourteen of three hundred and eighty camps in the region are still under construction. They range from low-security reeducation camps to fortified prisons, and survivors say they are primarily designed for Muslim minorities targeted by the central government in Beijing. An asteroid the size of a school bus missed the earth by thirteen thousand miles yesterday, the AP reported. That’s closer than many of the communications satellites in orbit. Scientists say it was not big enough to have destroyed human civilization if it had entered the atmosphere. And its path won’t cross ours again until 2041. Better luck next time, perhaps. That’s all for the AM Quickie. Join us this afternoon on the Majority Report. Sept 25, 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: Protests continue after a Kentucky grand jury reached a decision on whether to charge police in the killing of Breonna Taylor. Critics call it a victory for police impunity. Meanwhile, indigenous protesters in Arizona get roughed up by federal authorities after shutting down construction on Donald Trump’s border wall. They say work crews are damaging a sacred freshwater spring in the area. And lastly, teachers’ union leaders say the science worked in school districts that implemented social distancing and mask requirements. Preliminary data suggests the coronavirus is not spreading like wildfire through schools that took precautions. THESE ARE THE STORIES YOU NEED TO KNOW: Outrage over Taylor decision There is still no justice for Breonna Taylor. A grand jury in Jefferson County, Kentucky yesterday indicted one of three Louisville police officers involved in the fatal shooting of the twenty-six year old on March 13. Former detective Brett Hankison was indicted on three counts of first-degree wanton endangerment, per the Louisville Courier-Journal. Sergeant Jonathan Mattingly was not indicted, nor was detective Myles Cosgrove. The charge against Hankinson does not stem from killing Taylor, but for shooting into other apartments in the neighborhood. Kentucky Attorney General Daniel Cameron said officers Mattingly and Cosgrove were justified in their actions. They also fired their weapons at Taylor’s apartment that night – for a total of thirty-two shots. It remains unclear which officers fired the six shots that killed Taylor. Attorneys for Taylor’s family called the charging decision outrageous and offensive. Others joined that chorus. Democratic vice presidential candidate Kamala Harris said she hadn’t yet read the decision but QUOTE Taylor and her family deserve justice yesterday, today and tomorrow ENDQUOTE. Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders called the result a disgrace and an abdication of justice, adding QUOTE Our criminal justice system is racist. The time for fundamental change is now ENDQUOTE. Minnesota Congresswoman Ilhan Omar called the charges an absolute disgrace. And the American Civil Liberties Union of Kentucky said QUOTE Once again, the state has denied that Black lives matter by failing to hold law enforcement accountable ENDQUOTE. Protests that have been ongoing in Louisville picked up again after yesterday’s announcement, despite a preemptive declaration of emergency by the mayor. Online video showed white men carrying guns and wearing military-style uniforms patroling the streets. The vigilantes moved apparently unimpeded by police. The National Guard was also deployed. Many businesses and government offices were boarded up and a twenty-five block perimeter of the city was closed to traffic. Before night fell, police deployed a chemical agent into a crowd of protesters and made several arrests. Black Lives Matter solidarity marches also took place in a number of other cities last night, including Chicago, which also saw an armored National Guard vehicles take to the streets. Activists impede border wall For five hours on Monday, indigenous protesters halted construction of Trump’s wall on the Arizona-Mexico border. The protest ended with federal authorities inflicting violence on the peaceful protesters. According to the Arizona Republic and Arizona Pubic Media, the protest began in the morning against a stretch of fencing in the Quitobaquito (KEY-TOH BAH- KEY-TOH) region of the Organ Pipe National Forest in southwestern Arizona. It is an area with a spring that the O'odham (OH-UH-DAHM) people consider sacred. After a blessing and a prayer, organizers with the O’odham Anti Border Collective led a group of about twenty-five protesters to the construction site at the border. The concrete for the barrier installation uses nearby groundwater from the sacred spring. As one speaker said, QUOTE that water aquifer that you're draining helped us survive, and helped every traveler that came through survive. That water didn't discriminate ENDQUOTE. The temperature was one hundred and six degrees by the afternoon, when National Park Service officers arrived and warned the group to move. Some began to sing O’odham prayer songs as sage was burnt. At 2 p.m., a caravan of twenty-five Border Patrol agents arrived. Some carried paintball guns; others AR-15s. Within the hour, the Border Patrol agents and two park rangers rushed the protesters, knocking people to the ground. No arrests were made, but protesters were left with scrapes and bruises as they were dragged away. One told the agents QUOTE You don’t control the border, you terrorize everyone here from Texas to California and everywhere in between ENDQUOTE. Coronavirus: Schools faring okay There’s some encouraging news about the coronavirus pandemic, at least as it relates to America’s K-through-twelve schools. The Washington Post reports that although thousands of students and teachers have become sick with the coronavirus since schools began opening last month, public health experts have found little evidence that the virus is spreading inside buildings. Moreover, the rates of infection are far below what is found in the surrounding communities. Experts told the Post this early evidence suggests that opening schools may not be as risky as many have feared_._ Brown University researchers yesterday released their first set of data from a new project tracking coronavirus cases in schools. It found low levels of infection among students and teachers. Tracking infections over a two-week period beginning August 31st, it found that zero point two-three percent of students had a confirmed or suspected case of the coronavirus. Among teachers, it was zero point four-nine percent. Some experts, including teacher’s union officials, say it appears that coronavirus rates are lower in school districts where face coverings are required and polices are enforced to keep distance between students in the building. Randi Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers, said the science worked in districts that took adequate precautions. AND NOW FOR SOME QUICKER QUICKIES: The Senate Republicans’ inquiry into Joe and Hunter Biden’s activities in Ukraine wrapped up yesterday. It found no evidence of wrongdoing by the Democratic presidential nominee or his son. It also found no evidence that Hunter Biden’s business in Ukraine caused any change in policy under the Obama adminisration. Oregon Democratic Senator Ron Wyden, the ranking member of the Finance Committee, called the Republican report a sham investigation that served to push Russian disinformation. Much ado about... not much. Trump administration officials are reportedly frustrated that Russia is mum about whether it will agree to an arms control deal in time for Trump to brag about it on the campaign trail. The 2010 New Start treaty expires next February. Russia wants to extend it and the White House wants to replace it with a new treaty that includes China. But Russia has been mum on a proposal US negotiators released two weeks ago. I guess Trump isn’t as friendly with Vladimir Putin as he seems to imagine. A new paper in the journal Nature says that even if the terms of the Paris climate agreement are met – which is a long shot – the unstoppable melting of Antarctica’s ice will cause sea levels to rise by more than eight feet. Anders Levermann, one of the paper’s co- authors, told the Guardian that the more scientists learn about Antarctica, the more dire their predictions become. He added QUOTE We will be renowned in future as the people who flooded New York City ENDQUOTE. Sounds pretty bad! After at least three boats were damaged by orcas, Spanish authorities have restricted small yachts from a stretch of water off the country’s northwest coast, the Guardian reports. According to Bruno Diaz, a biologist at the local Bottlenose Dolphin Research Institute, the orcas that damaged the boats probably did not mistake them for prey. Rather, he said, they were just immature teenagers out having fun. Hey, sailors: leave those whales alone. That’s all for the AM Quickie. Join us this afternoon on the Majority Report. Sept 24, 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: World leaders came together, sort of, but not really, at this year’s United Nations general assembly. Donald Trump treated the occasion like another campaign rally. Meanwhile, will Democrats pack the Supreme Court if they win power? Joe Biden is keeping his cards close to his chest. And lastly, we know there are loud and obnoxious ones, but are there any shy Trump voters out there? A new survey says not so much. THESE ARE THE STORIES YOU NEED TO KNOW: China pledges "green revolution" The UN general assembly was in session yesterday – virtually, on account of the pandemic. Only one diplomat from each of the one-hundred and ninety three member nations was allowed in the chamber. Each, of course, wore a mask. The socially distanced diplomats heard UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres describe the state of the world as pretty darn grim. Guterres said the epochal crisis of the coronavirus pandemic was but a dress rehearsal for the challenges to come. He called for a global cease fire amid ongoing conflicts in the Middle East and Africa, and, addressing the intensifying rivalry between the United States and China, said a new Cold War must be avoided. Guterres said QUOTE Populism and nationalism have failed. Those approaches to contain the virus have often made things manifestly worse... We are moving in a very dangerous direction. Our world cannot afford a future where the two largest economies split the globe in a great fracture – each with its own trade and financial rules and internet and artificial intelligence capacities ENDQUOTE. Donald Trump spent most of his prerecorded speech railing against China, blaming it for the coronavirus. Nothing new there. China’s representative called Trump’s accusations baseless, and Chinese President Xi Jinping said it would seek to resolve differences through dialogue and negotiation. Xi also called for a green revolution and said his country would go carbon- neutral by 2060, while aiming to see its carbon dioxide emissions peak by 2030. In other speeches: Brazil’s president Jair Bolsonaro attacked critics of his environmental policies, which are causing the rapid destruction of the Amazon rainforest; Russia’s Vladimir Putin said he wanted to discuss global cooperation on vaccines; Turkey’s Recep Tayyip Erdogan called for dialogue to resolve his country’s standoff with Greece over energy resources in the Mediterranean Sea; and Cuba’s president Miguel Díaz Canel Bermúdez accused Trump of promoting trade wars, adding that the US has QUOTE an abundance of practically uncontrolled expressions of hatred, racism and police brutality ENDQUOTE. Please, tell us something we don’t know. Biden addresses court packing Utah Senator Mitt Romney was the only Republican to vote to impeach Trump. But when it comes to filling the Supreme Court vacancy left by the recently deceased Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Romney is just another Republican. Yesterday he said he believes that Trump should get to appoint a justice to Ginsburg’s seat whether or not he wins reelection in November. As the Washington Post noted, this means the next conservative judicial appointment to the nation’s highest court becomes a matter of when, not if, as decided by Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell. There are signs of growing unity among Democrats preparing to fight the Republican nomination, even if their options are limited. New York Representative Alexandria Ocasio- Cortez made a joint appearance with New York Senator Chuck Schumer on Sunday in Brooklyn, and they urged supporters to mobilize over this issue. In a prior speech posted to her Instagram account, AOC said QUOTE this moment is not the time for despair, it is not the time for cynicism. It is not the time to give up... The actual balance of our democracy rests in the actions that we choose to make – that I choose to make, that you choose to make, that every single individual – chooses to make between now and election day ENDQUOTE. Meanwhile, Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden faced questions about the court vacancy during a campaign stop in Wisconsin on Monday. Asked if he would support a strategy of packing the court with additional justices should Democrats take control of the White House and Congress next year, Biden punted. He told a local TV news reporter QUOTE It’s a legitimate question. But let me tell you why I'm not going to answer that question: because it will shift all the focus. That’s what [Trump] wants... The discussion should be about why he is moving in a direction that’s totally inconsistent with what [the] Founders wanted ENDQUOTE. Because Biden has previously opposed court-packing, some are interpreting this answer as a signal that he might now be open to the idea. We’ll see, I guess. Few "shy" Trump voters Via the New York Times, there’s an encouraging new poll result for progressives. Many political wonks have put forward the theory that Trump’s support is under-represented in surveys because his fans may be embarrassed to own up to their preferences. But the polling outfit Morning Consult designed an experiment to test this theory, and found it false. Morning Consult selected a group of voters online, then surveyed half of the respondents over the phone and the other half online. The thinking was that so-called shy Trump voters would be more likely to answer the survey truthfully online as opposed to speaking to a stranger over the phone. And when it came to certain embarrassing questions, such as inquiries about personal finances or attitudes about discrimination, the online respondents did answer differently than the phone respondents. But there was no meaningful difference between the two groups on the question of supporting Trump. What this means is that there is not likely a large group of secret Trump voters waiting to cast their ballots come election day. And it supports the Times’ conclusion that the race is fairly stable, with Biden maintaining a significant percentage point lead over Trump both nationally and in many state polls. AND NOW FOR SOME QUICKER QUICKIES: An investigation by BBC News and the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists found that gold from a refinery used by organized criminal networks also made its way into the supply chains for smartphones and cars. Investigators concluded that the Dubai- based trader Kaloti was buying gold from criminal networks. The US Treasury was aware of the problem but never took action. And so tons of illegal gold wound up in components made by Apple, Amazon, and General Motors. More business as usual. The Cares Act, which Congress passed earlier this year, gave the Pentagon one billion dollars to QUOTE prevent, prepare for, and respond to coronavirus ENDQUOTE. But that’s not what happened. According to the Washington Post, the medical equipment fund was instead diverted to defense contractors and used to make things such as jet engine parts, body armor and dress uniforms. So here you have another reason why hospitals didn’t have enough personal protective equipment on hand. Rolls-Royce got the money instead! Louisville, Kentucky mayor Greg Fischer yesterday declared a state of emergency, giving him the power to set curfews and other restrictions. It’s all on account of the potential for unrest following an announcement in the Breonna Taylor case, which is expected soon. To be clear, no announcement had been made at the time of the emergency declaration. But city leaders apparently expect big protests when Kentucky Attorney General Daniel Cameron announces whether police will face charges for Taylor’s killing. I guess city leaders assume no charges will be filed – otherwise, why would they expect unrest? It smells like a fix. Shoutouts to Berlin, Bristol, Cape Town, Durban, London, Los Angeles, Milan, New Orleans, New York, Oslo, Pittsburgh and Vancouver. Those are the twelve cities that yesterday pledged to divest from fossil fuel companies in an effort to fight climate change. They’re hoping other major investors will follow suit. Hey, it’s worth a shot. That’s all for the AM Quickie. Join us this afternoon on the Majority Report. Sept 23, 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: A new report by the nation alleges that Federal authorities used a sophisticated cloning system to tap protesters phones during unrest in Portland, Oregon this summer. Meanwhile, Immigrant detainees are receiving incredibly poor medical and dental care while in government custody -- and a new report by the Democratic House Homeland Security Committee shows that they often face penalties for speaking out. And lastly, the gig economy has truly outdone itself, as a new startup called Civvl (that’s the word Civil, with two V’s for some reason), promises to hire gig workers to carry out evictions, capitalizing on every aspect of the country’s economic recession at once to do basically the most amoral thing possible. Very cool! THESE ARE THE STORIES YOU NEED TO KNOW: Feds Tapped Portland Phones A new report in the Nation cites two former intelligence officials making a pretty stunning allegation: that Federal agents sent to quell protests in Portland Oregon also engaged in a classified cell phone cloning operation that aimed to lift information off of protesters phones. According to the Nation, the DHS has not come clean about this. Details of the operation are still classified, but the Nation reports that it included interceptions of protesters phone calls by either the DHS or other federal agencies involved, like the Department of Justice. While this would be a shocking weaponization of unwarranted surveillance against citizens exercising first amendment rights, it’s not exactly hard to believe. The Washington Post previously reported that the DHS’s intelligence division was building out dossiers on prominent journalists covering the protests in Portland, and then refused to answer congressional inquiries about them. Another key piece of evidence the Nation cites is an anonymous former official saying that when the DHS’s intelligence wing asked for volunteers to go to Portland, very few hands got raised. The former official said quote: “The fact that they asked for volunteers shows that it was outside the scope of their duties...you only do that if you don’t have the ability to order someone to go, probably because it’s illegal.” endquote. It’s unclear when, or if we’ll get an understanding of the full scope of the federal government’s actions in Portland. It’s even more unclear whether there will be any consequences for the people responsible. ICE Detainees Punished for Speaking Out Democrats on the House Homeland Security Committee on Monday issued a devastating report on the conditions for immigrants in ICE detention. The core complaints that detainees are getting insufficient medical and dental care are something we’ve heard for years about ICE. But what the Democrats new findings show is that the fascist agency may have started internally punishing detainees who speak out and ask for better treatment. The report cites eight separate inspections of ICE facilities in multiple states, saying quote. “Conditions at ICE facilities also revealed ongoing problems with cleanliness, use of segregation, and access to legal and language services.” Endquote. What that looks like in practice is distressing. The Washington post notes that the report tells of one detainee in Louisiana who went into anaphylactic shock four times in four months before anyone thought to do a blood test and discover his peanut allergy. And when detainees spoke out, they were threatened. In some cases, the report said guards threatened to lock detainees in solitary confinement if they complained too much or made too many medical requests. ICE claims it’s taking the report seriously, just as it claimed it was taking last week’s allegations of mass hysterectomies being performed on women under its care seriously. We’ll believe it when we see some proof of change. I doubt that’s coming anytime soon. New App is Uber for Evictions Has the gig economy gone too far? Well, yes. Many years ago. But would you believe that it continues, now, to get even worse? A startup called CIVVL launched recently, flying under the radar until a VICE report today explained what it was all about. The company is basically UBER for landlords, but instead of a driver you hire someone to evict your tenants for you. This is brutal, soul-crushing stuff for everyone involved, except the landlords throwing people out on the street of course. The company has been advertising widely on craigslist, according to VICE, with ads that promise steady work due to just how messed up the economy is. Per VICE, one of the ads reads quote: "Unemployment is at a record high and many cannot or simply are not paying rent and mortgages. We are being contracted by frustrated property owners and banks to secure foreclosed residential properties." In other words, CIVVL is taking unemployed people desperate for any paying work and using them to evict other probably unemployed people from their homes, all while taking a cut of what must be some of the dirtiest money imaginable. They’re also spelling the name of their company C I V V L, which somehow makes the whole thing even more depraved because they couldn’t even bother to give their company a name that didn’t sound overtly evil and stupid. VICE reports that CIVVL is actually connected to a larger gig-economy company called OnQuall, that’s CALL spelled with a Q for some reason, which runs a portfolio of similarly misspelled apps like LawnFixr and MoveQwik. To put icing on top, the app charges you a $35 enrollment fee to sign up to be an eviction-deliverer. It’s clear that this company is scraping the bottom of the absolute barrel, but the fact that there are no regulatory protections making something like this illegal is just a testament to how broken this country is. As Chicago’s Autonomous Tenant’s Union put it, the company’s existence is quote: "a frank admission that our housing system is predicated on violence." endquote. AND NOW FOR SOME QUICKER QUICKIES: The Daily Beast exposed an anonymous right-wing troll who’s been going on anti-mask rants on the ultra-conservative RedState site: and it turns out he’s a PR guy for Dr. Fauci’s infectious disease agency. Probably not for much longer though! The Manhattan District Attorney’s office suggested in a filing Monday that it had grounds to investigate President Trump and his businesses for criminal fraud. So, we’ll see where that one goes! Could be promising, but we’ve heard that before. The CDC on Monday mysteriously withdrew advice that it had published just days before on its website about the dangers of COVID-19 spreading through aerosolized droplets. Just wiped it right off the site, despite the fact that independent scientists confirm that method of transmission is a risk, right as we’re all about to head inside for the winter. And finally, Louisville, Kentucky’s Interim Chief of Police declared a state of emergency for the police department Monday, cancelling all days off and vacation requests for officers ahead of a big Attorney General announcement in the Breonna Taylor case. The announcement should come some time this week, and it looks like the cops are gearing up for some major backlash. That’s all for the Majority Report’s AM Quickie today! Stay tuned for the full show this afternoon. Sept 22, 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: Justice Ruth Bader Ginsberg died on Friday at the age of 87, immediately kicking off a nasty political dogfight over her successor on the Supreme Court. Trump and Mitch McConnell want to get a new justice on the bench as soon as possible, but do they have the votes? Meanwhile, a new, expansive BuzzFeed investigation dives deep into the disturbing web of dark money funneled between criminal organizations and big banks. Corruption isn’t really a new trend, but some of the details here are shocking. And lastly, Coronavirus cases near 200,000 in the U.S., as Trump makes outlandish promises about a vaccine that aren’t backed up by health officials. THESE ARE THE STORIES YOU NEED TO KNOW: RBG Replacement Race Justice Ruth Bader Ginsberg died on Friday at the age of 87. Ginsberg was a legend on the Supreme Court, setting a high standard for razor sharp dissents against her conservative peers’ repressive interpretations of the law. But her passing had been written on the wall for years, and Mitch McConnell and Donald Trump have wasted no time in exploiting it. In statement released to NPR after her death, Ginsburg said: “My most fervent wish is that I will not be replaced until a new president is installed.” The Republicans have turned hypocrite as fast as they possibly can, abandoning 2016 promises to let a late-term Supreme Court vacancy be filled by the next president in a heartbeat as they rush to get the most conservative person possible into Bader Ginsberg’s seat. Trump says he’ll announce his nominee this week, and promises it will be a woman. So far, the most likely candidates are federal appeals judge Amy Coney Barrett, a hard-line Catholic who would likely vote against abortion and to rule against the Affordable Care Act, and the very-slightly more moderate Florida Supreme Court Justice Barbara Lagoa. Lagoa is a bit less likely to dismantle Roe v Wade, but Trump could go with her in the hopes that she’d help lock in Florida’s electoral votes in November. The big question is when the Senate confirmation vote gets held, and whether or not McConnell has the votes. Both Senators Lisa Murkowski and Susan Collins have said they won’t vote on a Justice before the election, but after that, especially in the lame duck period, who knows. And thus the exhausting fight over the Senate’s mythical moderates begins all over again. Massive Leak Proves: Corruption? It's real! An explosive leak of documents to BuzzFeed news has kicked off a massive, sprawling financial investigation into deep corners of the criminal underworld and financial elite. The leak and resulting stories are being referred to as the FinCEN Files. The files themselves are a collection of 2,657 documents, most of which are suspicious activity reports, or SARs. As BBC reported, SARs are not evidence of wrongdoing - banks send them to the authorities if they suspect customers could be up to no good. But what they do show is a massive paper trail between the biggest banks in the world and international organized crime. One of the SARs, for instance, shows how HSBC was slow to act and shut down a known scammers accounts as he orchestrated an $80 million ponzi scheme. And that’s a relatively tame one. BuzzFeed’s reporting found SARs tracking billions of dollars flowing through the world’s largest banks that was used to launder money for drug cartels, organized crime rings, and fund terrorism across the globe. When Banks do flag these operations, they’re sent as SARs to the U.S. Treasury department’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network, or FINCEN. But the core of BuzzFeed’s reporting shows that FINCEN often does little more with these documents than pass them on to other law enforcement agencies, and apply fines. It doesn’t shut the banks down, nor does it arrest the people at them laundering the dirty money. This is a huge story and the ramifications of it are going to be echoing around politics and business for years. It might get lost in the news cycle as we go through the election, but for now, it’s a window in to the ways that negligent governments like ours enable the biggest thieves and criminals on the planet -- some of whom work out of corner offices in Manhattan. 200,000 Coronavirus Deaths The Coronavirus pandemic didn’t go away over the summer. And it’s not going away in the fall. The U.S. is rapidly approaching 200,000 total deaths, as the world ticks closer to 1 million. What it is becoming, though, is a political axis that could swing the 2020 election. Trump’s plan, as it has been for months, is to promise a vaccine and an end to the pandemic that he helped enflame before the election. At a news conference on Friday, Trump said quote: “We will have manufactured at least 100 million vaccine doses before the end of the year. And likely much more than that. Hundreds of millions of doses will be available every month, and we expect to have enough vaccines for every American by April.” What he’s doing is basically promising that right around election time, that vaccine is going to hit the streets. U.S. health officials aren’t quite so confident, putting the actual timeline at widespread vaccine availability in the U.S. a few months later, in mid 2021. Meanwhile, we have no idea how bad any resurgence of cases is going to be. Madrid is Spain is about to go under a second lockdown due to a surge in cases, and colleges across the U.S. have emerged as hotspots of the disease after re-opening in the fall. The New York Times reports that there have been at least 88,000 new cases and 60 deaths of coronavirus linked to college campuses thus far, and the nation’s daily count of new cases is starting to climb again after declining for over a month. In short, we have no idea where we’re at on this thing, and the president can’t be trusted. AND NOW FOR SOME QUICKER QUICKIES: Remember the strange hullabaloo over TikTok? President Trump approved the app’s strange sale to Oracle and Walmart after a weird pissing war with China. Along the way, he extracted his take: a promise that the company would give $5 billion in new taxes to the government to create some kind of nebulous education initiative. That sound like a slush fund to anyone else? And in everyday corrupt, dangerous news, the Trump administration’s Environmental Protection Agency reauthorized the use of atrazine, an herbicide common in the United States but banned or being phased out in dozens of countries due to concerns about risks such as birth defects and cancer. The Miami Herald’s Spanish-language sister paper was forced to apologize, and blamed quote “internal failures” after it published a paid insert that was a pages-long anti-semitic and racist tirade. Sounds like someone should have uh... checked that one out before sending it to the printer! Mike Pompeo is once again stoking the flames of war with Iran, saying on Saturday night that UN sanctions on the country had been snapped back on. The U.N., meanwhile, said that they had not been. We’re gonna trust the UN on this one. That’s it for the Majority Report’s AM Quickie today. Stay tuned for the full show with Sam in a bit! Sept 21, 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: Donald Trump faces yet another claim that he sexually assaulted a woman. His accuser says she wants her daughters to know that it’s not okay to treat women the way Trump does. Meanwhile, it turns out the United States Postal Service had a plan to send free masks to every home address in the country. But guess who put the kibosh on that idea. And lastly, is Attorney General Bill Barr climbing down into the bunker with Trump? He’s now openly at odds with Justice Department prosecutors and the head of the FBI THESE ARE THE STORIES YOU NEED TO KNOW: Another Trump assault claim Another woman has come forward with an allegation of sexual assault by Donald Trump. Amy Dorris told the Guardian that Trump assaulted her when she was twenty four years old and he fifty one, and married to his second wife, Marla Maples. The assault allegedly took place outside the bathroom in Trump’s VIP box at the US Open tournament in New York. It was September 5th, 1997. Dorris had been invited there by her boyfriend at the time, who was in real estate and friendly with Trump. When she went to the bathroom to adjust her contact lenses, Trump followed her and waited outside. She told the Guardian that Trump QUOTE shoved his tongue down my throat and I was pushing him off. And then that’s when his grip became tighter and his hands were very gropey and all over my butt, my breasts, my back, everything. I was in his grip, and I couldn’t get out of it ENDQUOTE. She added that she pushed Trump’s tongue out of her mouth with her teeth, and may have hurt his tongue. Dorris provided the Guardian with evidence to support her account, including her ticket to the US Open and six photos showing her with Trump over several days in New York. The newspaper says her account was also corroborated by several people she confided in... They include a friend in New York and Dorris’s mother, both of whom she called immediately after the alleged incident, as well as a therapist and friends she spoke to in the years since. Dorris now lives in Florida. She is 48 and a mother to twin daughters. It was for their benefit she said she decided to come forward now. Trump denied the assault through his lawyers. USPS abandoned mask program A huge trove of US Postal Service documents obtained by the Washington Post shows that the agency was ready to help fight the coronavirus pandemic in a big way – but then didn’t. In April, the documents show, USPS leaders prepared a news release announcing plans to distribute six hundred and fifty million facemasks. That’s five masks for every household in the country. For free. And the plan would have ensured they got sent to the hardest-hit areas first. But Trump’s White House nixed that helpful idea, as it is wont to do. The internal documents came to light thanks to a Freedom of Information Act request by a watchdog group called American Oversight, which shared them with the Post. The info-haul comprised nearly ten thousand pages of emails, legal memos, presentations and other documents. The papers mostly span March and April, before Trump’s flunkie Louis DeJoy took over the Postal Service. The documents also show tense negotiations with Amazon; internal appeals by mail carriers who were fearful of exposure to the coronavirus; and attempts at partisan subterfuge by the Republican Party. But the abortive plan to distribute masks by mail took all the headlines yesterday. One administration official told the Post that there was concern from the White House Domestic Policy Council and vice president Mike Pence’s office that mailing out masks might create a panic. These absolute schmucks! "God-awful" Barr remarks There are some signs lately that Trump’s key allies and enablers, among them Attorney General Bill Barr, are increasingly isolated. For instance, Federal Bureau of Investigation director Chris Wray testified to the House Homeland Security Committee yesterday, and directly contradicted Barr on a matter of fact. Barr has portrayed Antifa as a dangerous extremist group. But when asked about it under oath, Wray said Antifa was QUOTE not a group or an organization — it’s a movement or an ideology ENDQUOTE. He added that racially and ethnically motivated violent extremists were responsible for the most lethal attacks in recent years, with white supremacists making up the largest portion of those killings, NBC News reported. Barr was under fire yesterday for his comments equating pandemic mask mandates to slavery. House Majority Whip James Clyburn yesterday said Barr’s comparison was QUOTE the most ridiculous, tone-deaf, God-awful thing I've ever heard ENDQUOTE. And Barr lashed out at his own staff this week, comparing some to preschoolers and likening his own Justice Department to a trade association for federal prosecutors. He made those comments in a speech at Hillsdale College in Michigan on Wednesday. Another sign of White House allies adopting a bunker mentality: Acting Homeland Security Secretary Chad Wolf was a no-show at yesterday’s House hearings. Committee Chairman Bennie Thompson, a Democrat from Michigan, said Wolf’s decision to ignore a subpoena should appall every member of Congress. AND NOW FOR SOME QUICKER QUICKIES: Graduate students at the University of Michigan voted to end their nine-day strike and returned to classes yesterday. University administrators this week sued the Graduate Employees’ Organization over the strike; the union represents about two thousands students who teach classes or assist faculty. Per the Associated Press, the union says it achieved critical progress on childcare options, coronavirus testing and concerns about campus police. The Pennsylvania Supreme Court yesterday knocked the Green Party presidential ticket off the ballot, on the grounds that the candidates did not submit signed filing papers in person, as required by state rules. The decision means election officials can resume preparing ballots for delivery to voters. In separate rulings favoring Democrats, the court allowed for voters to submit ballots via a drop box in addition to the Postal Service, and partially blocked a Republican plan for partisan poll watchers. During anti-Trump protests in Washington, DC, in early June, the military considered deploying an experimental heat ray against peaceful crowds. The news emerged via the Washington Post yesterday thanks to a whistleblower in the DC National Guard, Major Adam DeMarco, who testified to Congress in July. The weapon, called the Active Denial System, was reportedly not used in Iraq or Afghanistan on account of ethical and safety concerns. The Financial Times reported this week that the king of Thailand has built up a large fleet of thirty-eight helicopters and airplanes, including four fighter jets. The king is a billionaire who spends a lot of time at his estate in Germany. The revelation comes as student protesters and opposition politicians grow bolder about challenging the increasingly unpopular monarchy, which is protected by lese majeste (LESS MAJ-ESS-TAY) laws banning criticism. It’s unclear why the king of Thailand needs his own private air force. Maybe, like Elon Musk, he just really hates traffic. That’s all for the AM Quickie. Join us this afternoon on the Majority Report. Sept 18, 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: More details emerged about forced hysterectomies at a prison for immigrants in Georgia. At least seventeen women may have been subjected to the procedures by one doctor, though the full scope is yet to be revealed. Meanwhile, low-income students are giving up on college as a result of the pandemic. Experts fear a new lost generation in higher education. And lastly, there were some big wins for progressive candidates in Delaware this week. A social worker won an upset victory over a forty-year incumbent in the state senate. THESE ARE THE STORIES YOU NEED TO KNOW: Democrats demand hysterectomies investigation New information emerged yesterday regarding the unsettling account of forced hysterectomies at a for-profit immigration detention center in Ocilla, Georgia. Washington State Congresswoman Pramila Jayapal released a statement after meeting attorneys for the women who were subjected to the sterilization procedure. Jayapal said QUOTE It has become clear that the initial reports are likely part of a horrific pattern of conduct. There may be, at minimum, seventeen women who were subjected to unnecessary procedures from just one doctor, often without appropriate consent or knowledge, and with the clear intention of sterilization ENDQUOTE. Jayapal added that it's possible there are similar cases for individuals who were already deported. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi also demanded an investigation yesterday, calling upon the Department of Homeland Security’s Inspector General to inquire into what she called QUOTE a staggering abuse of human rights ENDQUOTE. More than one hundred and sixty Democrats signed a letter demanding that the I.G. investigation begin immediately. In the meantime, other details about what has been happening at the Immigration and Customs Enforcement facility emerged from Jayapal’s preliminary Congressional investigation, which she pledged to continue. As Jayapal said: One woman, who was nearly deported, consulted the doctor simply about her menstrual cycle. She was put under for what she was told would be a simple procedure, only to wake up and find that the doctor had removed part of her reproductive organs without her knowledge or consent. Another woman, already deported, apparently went in to see the doctor for a simple condition related to diabetes and ended up having gynecological surgery. Two additional women apparently were shackled to the bed, reported to have had surgical procedures including a hysterectomy. The new details add substance to the whistleblower account we told you about yesterday. All information has so far come through attorneys for the women who have been victimized, but the public hasn’t yet heard from those women directly. Nor have we seen any documents or other evidence about the nature and scope of the procedures. It will take time to get all the answers, but we haven’t heard the last on this story, that’s for sure. Poorer students dropping college Across the country, low-income students are dropping out of college. Others are making the decision not to enroll at all. According to the Washington Post, some one hundred thousand fewer high school seniors completed financial aid applications this year. What’s more, an August survey by the US Census found that students from families annual with incomes under seventy five thousand dollars are nearly twice as likely to cancel all their plans to take classes this fall, compared to students from families with incomes over one hundred thousand dollars. And tuition deposits are down down eight point four percent among families making less than sixty thousand dollars a year. Enrollment trends so far show especially steep drops among Black students and rural white students. While some students are adapting to the situation by applying to lower-cost colleges, enrollment at community colleges seems to be hard hit. The drop in enrollment is unique to the pandemic, the Post says. During the 2008 Great Recession, college enrollment grew, as is typical during economic downturns. Bill DeBaun, data director for the National College Attainment Network, said the ultimate fear is this could be a lost generation of low-income students. A number of students told the Post they couldn’t justify the expense of full tuition in order to take online classes, without the benefits of college attendance such as access to a library and other facilities. Progressive upset in Delaware Political primary season is over. And there were some stunning results this week in Delaware’s state primary, which concluded on Tuesday. In the thirteenth district, social worker Marie Pinkney, a political newcomer running on a progressive platform, defeated the powerful and long-serving Senate President Pro Tem David McBride. According to the Associated Press, McBridge joined the Delaware state senate in 1980 and hadn’t faced a primary challenger since 1986. Pinkney advances to face Republican Alexander Homich in the general election. Pinkney was one of four Delaware candidates endorsed by the Working Families Party to win seats this week. The others were Larry Lambert in House District Seven, Eric Morrison in House District Twenty-Seven, Madinah Wilson-Anton in House District Twenty-Six, and Shané (SHAW-NEIGH) Darby for Wilmington City Council district two. All minus Morrison are people of color. There was another result worth mentioning: Lauren Witzke, another Q-Anon kook, won the US Senate Republican primary, and will challenge incumbent Democrat Chris Coons in November. According to the Daily Beast, Witzke has also endorsed the idea of Trump becoming a lifelong king of the United States, and said she believes that the earth is flat. Fortunately, Coons is favored. AND NOW FOR SOME QUICKER QUICKIES: Hurricane Sally, a storm that meterologists said seemed to come out of nowhere, slammed Florida and Alabama yesterday. It was downgraded to a tropical storm after making landfall, but it still brought massive and destructive flooding. Georgia and South Carolina are in line to be hit by the center of the storm today. Batten your hatches, folks. Attorney General Bill Barr last week suggested to federal prosecutors that they might charge some protesters with sedition – that is, the crime of conspiring to overthrow the US government. The Wall Street Journal first reported the news yesterday, as well as the fact that some federal prosecutors were taken aback by Barr’s suggestion. As well they should be! Michael Caputo, the Health and Human Services spokesman who posted an unhinged Facebook Live rant about left-wing insurrectioninsts in his department and called upon Trump supporters to stock up on ammunition, will be taking a leave of absence. According to the New York Times, Centers for Disease Control director Robert Redfield told a Senate panel yesterday that he was deeply saddened by Caputo’s comments and said his remarks about government scientists committing sedition were false and offensive. To say the least. Decolonization news: the country of Barbados announced it would remove England’s Queen Elizabeth the Second as its head of state. The move toward full sovereignty will take effect next November, when Barbados celebrates fifty-five years of independence. Per CBS News, both Buckingham Palace and the British Foreign Office said the matter is up to Barbados, which, historically speaking, is a big step forward for the Brits. That’s all for the AM Quickie. Join us this afternoon on the Majority Report. Sept 1, 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: A shocking whistleblower complaint reveals that an ICE detention facility has been performing a staggering number of hysterectomies on immigrant women, effectively practicing eugenics on a vulnerable population in the government’s care. Meanwhile, the city of Louisville, Kentucky settles with the family of Breonna Taylor, who will receive $12 million. But there’s not dollar price on death, and her killers have yet to face justice. And lastly, Israel signs two landmark agreements to normalize relations with Bahrain and the United Arab Emirates. But the newfound cooperation will do little to change the suffering of the Palestinian people. THESE ARE THE STORIES YOU NEED TO KNOW: Eugenics at ICE Facility A new whistleblower complaint filed Monday reveals one of the most depraved practices normalized by this country’s barbaric immigration system. The complaint specifically names the Irwin County Detention Center in Ocilla, Georgia, which houses ICE detainees but is run by a private prison company. It was filed on behalf of several detained immigrants as well as a nurse, named Dawn Wooten, and has multiple women alleging that hysterectomies were overly frequent among detainees. One woman said she’d met five other women who had hysterectomies while being detained in a two-month period between October and December in 2019. What’s worse, the woman told a Georgia nonprofit that the inmates were often sent to see one particular gynecologist outside of the prison. She said quote: “When I met all these women who had had surgeries, I thought this was like an experimental concentration camp. It was like they’re experimenting with their bodies.” endquote. The complaint phrases these incidents as quote “jarring medical neglect.” But what it easily sounds like to a layperson is straight-up eugenics. A hysterectomie is major, life altering surgery that permanently removes a woman’s ability to have children -- and in some cases, the complaint alleges that women weren’t even sure why they were having the procedure, according to Wooten, the Irwin nurse who helped file the complaint. She said quote: “We’ve questioned among ourselves, like, goodness, he’s taking everybody’s stuff out. That’s his specialty, he’s the uterus collector. Everybody he sees, he’s taking all their uteruses out or he’s taken their tubes out.” Endquote. The shocking reproductive violence in the complaint makes its other abuses seem almost mundane. According to Wooten, the inmates’ protections from coronavirus are woefully lacking as well. In a statement to Vice News, ICE deferred questions to the Office of the Inspector General, but said that quote “anonymous, unproven allegations” endquote should be treated with skepticism. It’s probably best to take that statement with a healthy dose of skepticism as well. Breonna Taylor's Family Wins Settlement The city of Louisville will pay a $12 million settlement to the family of Breonna Taylor, who was murdered in her bed by police officers. Money does not buy justice, but some kind of remuneration for the shocking crimes committed by the Louisville Police Department is the least the city can do. The agreement was reached quickly, at least in relative terms for this sort of wrongful death suit, coming six months after Taylor was killed, and after over three months of sustained protests throughout the city and country. The city was not required to acknowledge wrongdoing in the settlement. That says about all of it. If you needed more evidence that there’s no real justice here, take this: the New York Times reports that legal experts don’t think there will be any legal charges brought against the officers who killed Taylor. That decision comes from the fact that Taylor’s boyfriend fired a weapon at officers first, believing them to be home intruders, as they burst into the apartment in the dead of night. Lexington’s leadership has agreed to a series of police reforms, many of which are procedural fixes as to how warrants are approved and served. It’s pretty apparent that these are all just a bandaid, like the $12 million in blood money paid out to wash away the crime of another black life lost at the hands of police. Bahrain, UAE, Leave Palestinians High and Dry The Arab world is slowly normalizing its relationships with Israel. On Tuesday, representatives from Bahrain and the United Arab Emirates signed agreements with Israel to establish diplomatic relations and other economic ties. These are the first such agreements Arab countries have made with Israel since Jordan in 1984, but what unites the two groups isn’t exactly an altruistic desire for peace. You can tell that immediately by the fact that the Palestinian people have been almost completely left out of the equation. The agreements only mention the long running apartheid system in Israel in brief, saying they wish for a quote “just, comprehensive and enduring resolution of the Israeli- Palestinian conflict.” endquote. In response to the news, Palestinians and their supporters held a hundreds-strong rally outside of the White House. One demonstrator told Al Jazeera that the new accords were a quote “stab in the back” for the Palestinian people. The Trump administration is hailing this as a tremendous victory, of course. Given the relationships in the region, Saudi Arabia could eventually take similar steps, which would be a huge development. But what’s clear is that the wealthy rules of these Gulf states have decided that the economic gains of working with Israel far outweigh their desire to advocate for a just future for Palestinians. AND NOW FOR SOME QUICKER QUICKIES: Donald Trump’s Justice Department is coming for John Bolton, and while it couldn’t have happened to a nicer guy, it still sets a dangerous precedent. The Justice Department is pursuing a criminal investigation as to whether Bolton’s recent book disclosed classified material. As his poll numbers with Latino Voter continue to slip, Joe Biden pulled out his cell phone and played a snippet of Luis Fonsi and Daddy Yankee’s “Despacito” during a campaign event in Florida. That’s sure to get ‘em, Joe! The New York Times reports that the U.S. Military is pressing for new authority to drone strike terrorists in portions of eastern Kenya, which would mark a new expansion of the forever-growing, forever-lasting war zone we’re fighting in across the globe. The Delaware primary was Tuesday night, and though votes are still being counted as of script time, it looks like Sarah McBride will win the Democratic nomination for a State Senate seat in a safely-blue district, making her the country’s highest ranking openly transgender politician. McBride said quote: “My hope is that this result can help reinforce for a young kid trying to find their place in this world, here in Delaware or anywhere else in this country, that this democracy is big enough for them, too.” That’s it for the Majority Report’s AM quickie today. Stay tuned for the full show. Sept 16, 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: An explosive internal memo obtained by Buzzfeed News shows the massive, destructive influence Facebook has had over politics and violent conflict in dozens of countries. Meanwhile, Donald Trump and Joe Biden trade barbs over the climate catastrophe, while the president Tweets that he wants to do a four-hour debate with his challenger on Joe Rogan’s podcast. Yep, it’s going to be a stupid kind of day, folks. And lastly, on that note, the stupidest man alive has struck again. A Daily Beast report shows that mega-moron provocateur Jacob Wohl hired an actor to play an FBI agent and pretend to raid his frequent co-conspirator Jack Burkman’s office. THESE ARE THE STORIES YOU NEED TO KNOW: Buzzfeed Catches Huge Facebook Scoop “I know that I have blood on my hands by now.” That’s what Facebook data scientist Sophie Zhang wrote in her last-ever post on Facebook’s internal messageboard before she was fired. Zhang’s post was leaked to BuzzFeed news. The information it revealed is both horrifying and in the public interest. The main gist of the post deals with what Facebook calls “inauthentic activity” around politics and elections. Zhang wrote that her team detected widespread disinformation campaigns and fake account networks at work for various political causes in Honduras, Azerbaijan, Ukraine, Bolivia, Ecuador, India, Spain, the United States and others. These cases influenced everything from elections to bloody revolutions and governmental responses to the coronavirus pandemic. Some of them Facebook took action on, some of them they did not, because Zhang said her team was often forced to de-prioritize certain cases due to their own workload. Basically, the people in charge of making sure Facebook doesn’t ruin elections are overworked, and things are slipping through the cracks. Zhang wrote that Facebook leadership often didn’t care much about the democratic process in smaller companies, and only acted when she repeatedly raised the issue internally. All of this led to her leaving the company, and allegedly turning down a $64,000 severance package so that she wouldn’t have to sign a non-disparagment agreement, and could criticize the company publicly. Still, she specifically wrote that she didn’t want it to go public in the event that it undermined Facebook’s attempts to keep the 2020 election safe. But it’s pretty clear that the public deserves to know, largely because Facebook hasn’t been transparent at all about the stuff that it does catch. Biden, Trump... and Joe Rogan? The Trump and Biden campaigns continued their spat over the future of America in the dumbest possible way today: with verbal barbs and promises to go on the Joe Rogan podcast. That’s right everyone we’ve got an update from the dumbest timeline today. Here’s the scene. Trump once again has said quote “I don’t think science knows” endquote, in relation to the causes of the massive wildfires sweeping the west coast. This is stupid, because science does know: it’s decades of negligent policy that has enabled corporate interests to create a rapidly warming, drastically flammable ecosystem that bursts into flame at every possible opportunity. In response, Biden called Trump a quote “climate arsonist,” which means. Well. I’m not completely sure what it means. That Trump is responsible for climate change? Yes, true. That Trump is actively trying to enable the forces who have changed the climate? Also true. Ok, we figured out what it means. You’d almost be forgiven after all that for forgetting that Biden himself has been dragging his feet on climate change for years. Since winning the primary, he’s released a slightly more promising climate plan, but still has obstinately refused to outright denounce harmful practices like fracking. Anyway, all of this culminated in one of the dumbest toplines of the day. Podcaster extraordianer and or sentient stack of hardboiled eggs Joe Rogan offered to moderate a four-hour debate between Trump and Biden. Even better, Trump said he’d be in on Twitter. That means we could have a situation where the Biden campaign, who went after Bernie Sanders for agreeing to go on Rogan’s sometimes incoherent, occasionally bigoted podcast, agrees to do the exact thing to debate the always incoherent, always racist president. Personally I can think of much better podcasts to host a presidential debate. Worlds Stupidest Man At it Again In slightly lighter, somehow even dumber news, we have a new report on the activities of the stupidest grifters alive. We’re talking about Jacob Wohl, of course. Wohl, the famous boy-wonder behind such schemes as “Elizabeth Warren slept with a buff Marine” and “Robert Mueller did sexual assault while also appearing in court in a different state, defying the laws of space and time” is back with another scheme. This time, he staged a fake FBI raid on his scam-partner Jack Burkman’s apartment. The Daily Beast spoke to an actor who says he responded to a Craigslist ad and was paid $400 to wear an FBI windbreaker or shirt and act out a series of scenes inside Burkman’s apartment. Pictures and videos were then sent by a Twitter account under the name of Bev Donahue to various reporters. Donahue is suspected to be an alias for Wohl, who has used fake accounts on basically every social media service thus far. The most embarrassing part is that the Washington Post fell for it, reporting on the raid as if it was real. According to the Beast, Burkman was insinuating that high-level government officials were retaliating against him for his efforts to root out corruption in Washington. Right. The actions of Wohl and Burkman are usually so stupid that they’re harmless, and this case is no exception. But they’re noteworthy if only for the reason that it’s often incredibly hard to distinguish dangerous conspiracy theories from utterly farcical ones, which means that dreck like this often filters into real life politics through major movements like Qanon. One of Wohl’s frequent associates, Laura Loomer, recently won the GOP primary for a Florida cong AND NOW FOR SOME QUICKER QUICKIES: One more dispatch for WTF-World. Akon, the famous R&B singer, announced today that he is backing a $6 billion smart city in Senegal, called Akon City. Residents inside will use a cryptocurrency called Akoin. You could not make this up, unless you were Akon or his shadowy investor, who may very well be making this up. In slightly darker news, September 14 marked the 19th birthday of the War on Terror. Peace talks between the Taliban and Afghani government are currently underway in Qatar, proving that we’ve accomplished almost nothing but an enormous amount of pain. Astronomers announced something weird on Monday: they’d found potential signs of life on Venus, not Mars. Contrary to the dated cliche about gender binaries, the researchers did not find women hanging out on the inhospitable planet. Instead, they found traces of a gas called phosphine that indicates microbes may be present. Never thought much of that cliche anyway. And finally, a federal judge in Pennsylvania ruled that Governor Tom Wolfe’s coronavirus lockdown orders were unconstitutional, saying that quote “even in an emergency, the authority of government is not unfettered.” endquote It’s not too likely that this will have national implications, as the Supreme Court has upheld California restrictions on religious gatherings and many other courts have upheld similar rulings. That’s all for the Majority Report’s AM Quickie today! Stay tuned for the full show later with Sam. Sept 15, 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: Donald Trump said the police killing of a self-proclaimed Antifa member and suspected murderer was “retribution,” despite reports that the suspect was not threatening and did not fire at police before he was shot. Meanwhile, the west coast wildfires are driving air pollution off the charts, increasing the misery of people safe in their homes as well as the thousands of displaced evacuees. And lastly, the ambush shooting of two L.A. County Sheriff's Deputies has put the city on edge, as police responded by brutally arresting a clearly-identified journalist reporting on the event. THESE ARE THE STORIES YOU NEED TO KNOW: Trump Says Cop Killing Was "Retribution" Donald Trump added one final escalation to the politically fraught story of Michael Forest Reinoehl, a self-proclaimed anti-fascist who was suspected of the murder of a right-wing protester in Portland on August 29. Last week, Reinoehl was shot dead by federal agents who arrived ostensibly to arrest him. We discussed some of the particulars of this case on Friday: Reinoehl had previously admitted to the shooting of Trump supporter and far-right militant Aaron Danielson, claiming that the killing was in self defense. Police said their killing of Reinoehl was also justified, saying that he quote “produced a firearm” when confronted by officers. But a witness to the shooting told the Washington post that Reinoehl was just walking to his car, eating a gummy worm when officers arrived and shot him without announcing themselves first. In an interview with Fox News on Saturday Trump said QUOTE: “"This guy was a violent criminal, and the U.S. Marshals killed him. And I'll tell you something—that's the way it has to be. There has to be retribution." ENDQUOTE This isn’t a surprising thing for the president to say, at this point. But let’s put it in a bit of a broader context. Earlier in the interview Trump noted that he urged federal agents to quote “go get him,” endquote, referring to Reinoehl. Federal agents did his bidding and gunned down Reinoehl in what were at best murky circumstances, at worst in complete cold blood. Compare this to, say, the arrest of Kyle Rittenhouse, the 17-year-old militia member who killed two protesters in Kenosha, Wisconsin. Rittenhouse was arrested peacefully and gently a day after the incident. What Trump is saying here is that the standard of justice applies differently to violent actors on the left and the right. Politically, Reinoehl was an enemy of the president. And Trump’s made it clear that he thinks his enemies deserve death at the hands of the state, no due process included. Smoke Chokes West The wildfires in the west are not letting up, but we’ve moved to a new phase of the disaster. With thousands displaced from their homes and at least 24 dead, even those who are still safe are dealing with the fallout from record-breaking, inescapable smoke pollution. The LA Times reports that ozone pollution levels spiked to their worst point since the mid 1990s this weekend in the city. Meanwhile, in Washington State, air pollution from the wildfire smoke got so bad it temporarily broke the data systems monitoring it, as the computer rejected the values it was taking in as unrealistically high. Visibility in Portland, Oregon, was only 50 feet in some areas. For people living through it, this means respirators or N95 masks are almost essential for going outside. It’s also provoked a massive run on indoor air purifiers, leading some people to try to DIY their own with HVAC filters and box fans. The battle lines are also being drawn in the political fight over the fires as well. Donald Trump and the GOP largely blame the fires on poor forest management and leadership, while Joe Biden and other Democratic leaders have placed the focus squarely on climate change. In reality, it’s a bit of both: fire management has been poor across the West Coast for decades, thanks to an unreasonable focus on fire prevention and suppression in areas that have evolved to burn every few years, but the changing weather and unreasonably high temperatures have also contributed greatly to the fires. And of course, this is all for show, as Biden isn’t exactly the greatest supporter of a Green New Deal, and Trump’s calls for “forest management” are mostly an excuse to deregulate big corporations so they can desecrate more federal lands. LA Sheriffs Rough Up Reporter Two L.A. County Sheriff’s Deputies were shot in an unprovoked ambush on Saturday night, by a gunman who is still at large. The shooting provoked an immediate response from police, who clashed with protesters outside the hospital where the two deputies were being treated, and then went on to rough up and detain a credentialed reporter trying to do her job on the scene. It’s a chaotic situation, so we’ll try to sum it up. There’s three incidents at play here that contribute to the recent tension. On Friday, deputies in riot gear showed up in force and surrounded a peaceful press conference by activists protesting the killing of Dijon Kizzee, a 29-year-old who was killed after officers stopped him while he was riding a bicycle. On Saturday night, an unknown gunman shot two deputies who were sitting in a parked patrol car. After the officers were rushed to the hospital, a small group of demonstrators gathered there to continue pressuring the department on its misconduct. That’s when things got really hairy: as cops pushed the protesters away from the hospital, they also swept up a local reporter, Josie Huang, who works for KPCC and LAist. The Sheriffs roughly detained Huang, who was clearly identified as press and who captured video of herself shouting that she was press to the officers, and then arrested her for obstruction of justice. She was in custody for over five hours. The event has provoked an immediate outcry from press freedom advocates across the country, but it’s not really something out of the ordinary, considering police department’s across the country have been roughing up journalists all summer. The L.A. Sheriffs Department has just made it clear that they don’t particularly care for any part of the first amendment, whether it’s protesters or press. AND NOW FOR SOME QUICKER QUICKIES: After a strange bidding war ignited by tweets from the president criticizing it’s ties to China, the viral video app TikTok will likely sell its American operations to the big tech firm Oracle, if the White House approves. Oracle beat out Microsoft and other U.S. companies to nab the app. Donald Trump held his first indoor rally since June 20 in Nevada on Sunday, showing that while he may have taken a mid-summer break from actively spreading the coronavirus, we are fully back in business this fall. Israel is headed for a second strict lockdown as its coronavirus cases are spiking once again. The country saw over 4,000 new cases in a single day last week, so malls and many other business are shutting down all over again. OSHA, the government agency meant to protect workers, is going easy on big corporations under Trump, slapping a paltry $13,494 fine on Smithfield Foods for its miserable handling of the coronavirus. Smithfield, for reference, ran facilities where more than 1,294 workers caught the virus, and four died. That’s all for the Majority Report’s Am Quickie today! Stay tuned for the full show with Sam this afternoon. Sept 14, 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: A new survey shows most Americans want to vote by mail this year, but even more aren’t confident that their ballot will be counted. And Republican lawyers are working overtime to prevent states from mailing out voting packets in a timely fashion. Meanwhile, a witness to a deadly police shooting in Washington State fears for his safety after speaking out. The victim in this case had already confessed to shooting a right-wing demonstrator last month – but, before his death, told reporters he acted in self-defense. And lastly, labor power scores a victory for Burmese sailors trapped aboard a ship docked at port. Stay tuned for high drama involving the Finnish Seafarers' Union. THESE ARE THE STORIES YOU NEED TO KNOW: Republicans disrupt ballot preparations Both Joe Biden and Donald Trump are expected to visit Shanksville, Pennsylvania today, for an event commemorating the 9/11 anniversary near the scene of the crash of United Airlines Flight 93. A poll commissioned by the Washington Post shows that six in ten registered voters nationwide want to cast their ballots before Election Day. However, only three in ten say they are very confident that their mail-in ballots will be counted accurately. Seven in ten remain very confident in in-person voting. But just under half of those surveyed say they are uncomfortable going to a polling place this fall, and a majority are worried about their family being infected by the coronavirus. Apart from Trump’s fear-mongering, there are signs that voting may be complicated in battleground states. The conservative-controlled Wisconsin Supreme Court yesterday ordered a halt in the mailing of absentee ballots, until further notice. Dane County Clerk Scott McDonell told the Associated Press the decision is QUOTE potentially a huge disaster... [it’s] deeply irresponsible and jeopardizes the integrity of our election ENDQUOTE. The city of Madison alone already has one hundred thousand requests for absentee ballots on file. In Nevada, attorneys for Trump’s campaign are also asking a federal judge to block the distribution of mail-in ballots. The campaign argues argues that the state’s plan to send out ballots to some one point seven million active voters will impede Republicans’ ability to elect candidates QUOTE because the law will ‘confuse’ their voters and ‘create incentive’ to stay away from the polls ENDQUOTE. The state disagrees and says the Trump campaign doesn’t have a leg to stand on. Separately, Microsoft said that hackers from Russia, China, and Iran are still seeking to disrupt hundreds of people and institutions involved in the upcoming election. And Twitter said that it would label or remove any posts – from a certain White House occupant, say – that prematurely sought to claim victory. Specifically, per Politico, Twitter said it will flag posts claiming victory before election results have been certified or seeking to prevent a peaceful transfer of power. It will do the same with disputed claims about the electoral process, including unverified information about election rigging, ballot tampering, vote tallying, or certification of election results. It’s gonna be an unholy mess, isn’t it? Shooting witness fears retaliation A witness to the police killing last week of an anti-fascist suspected of shooting a far- right militant in Portland, Oregon, say the man was carrying a cell phone and eating a gummy worm when police started shooting. The witness, Nate Dinguss, told the Washington Post that police did not announce themselves or try to arrest the suspect, Michael Forest Reinoehl. The series of events has some observers calling the law enforcement action akin to an extrajudicial killing. Attorney General Bill Barr called Reinoehl’s shooting by police a QUOTE significant accomplishment ENDQUOTE. Prior to his death last week, Reinoehl confessed on camera to Vice News that he shot Trump supporter Aaron J. Danielson at a protest on August 29 – but said he did so in self-defense. A multi-agency team of police tracked Reinoehl down at an apartment complex in Lacey, Washington, some ninety minutes’ drive north of Portland. Official details have been scarce on what exactly happened next. Previous accounts by neighbors said only that people heard many shots fired. But it was never clear whether Reinoehl was armed. Dinguss, the witness who shared his account with the Post, says he saw two unmarked police vehicles converge on Reinoehl as he walked to his car. He says officers they immediately began firing, prompting Reinoehl to duck behind his car, which was blocked in by police vehicles. Dinguss says he never saw Reinoehl try to get inside his car or reach for a weapon. Police paused once to shout “Stop!” before resuming their fire, according to the witness. Dinguss is reportedly an ordained minister. Per his attorneys, he fears retaliation by both the far right and law enforcement for speaking out now. Local police and the US Marshals declined comment to the Post on the new witness account. Seafarers' solidarity action victorious You may have heard one of the horror stories involving crews stuck at sea during the coronavirus pandemic. The following comes from the public broadcaster in Finland, YLE. The Finnish Seafarers' Union has imposed a blockade on a merchant ship in the port of Rauma, taking the action in support of seamen on board who are claiming an estimated [eighty three thousand dollars] in unpaid wages. The Panamanian-flagged ES Venus is believed to be Chinese-owned and docked in Rauma to load recycling materials for shipment to Turkey. Half of the crew [of twenty-one] are [from Myanmar] and the other half are Chinese. According to the Finnish Seamen's Union, the [Burmese] workers have been oppressed on board. [Police were called at one point because the ship's captain did not want to let six seamen off the ship to meet with union officials.] The union's aim is to repatriate the men after they have received their wages. [A union official] told YLE that the situation is one of the worst he has encountered in his career. "Seamen were practically held captive on board," he said. The blockade has not so far interfered with other normal operations at the port. And as of yesterday, a lawyer for the shipping company based in Singapore, confirmed to YLE that a settlement has been reached with the union. Ya hear? That’s a win for international labor solidarity. AND NOW FOR SOME QUICKER QUICKIES: Democrats yesterday blocked a paltry and pathetic Republican coronavirus relief bill from passing through the US Senate. The GOP bill would have afforded three hundred dollars per month in additional unemployment benefits, down from six hundred in the bill that passed last spring. Meanwhile, new jobless claims continued to exceed eight hundred thousand. According to the Washington Post, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s message to Democrats before yesterday’s vote was QUOTE we don’t want to go home without a bill, but don’t be a cheap date ENDQUOTE. The US is ending enhanced coronavirus screening for many international passengers. The Centers for Disease control says the procedures have limited effectiveness for catching sick people, because many cases are asymptomatic. A CDC spokesperson told the Washington Post that six hundred and seventy five thousand people underwent the screenings, but fewer than fifteen were identified as having COVID-19. Yeah, I’d say that’s a sign of limited effectiveness. A Brazilian government expert on isolated Amazon peoples was shot and killed by an arrow as he attempted to make contact with members of a previously uncontacted tribe. According to the Guardian, the official, Rieli Franciscato, had spent his career trying to establish reservations for the tribes. A policeman who accompanied the expedition said Franciscato cried out, pulled the arrow from his chest, ran fifty metres and collapsed, lifeless. Expert noted that the tribespeople have no way to tell friend from foe and are under increasing threat from illegal land grabbers. The latest toll in California’s wildfires has twelve people dead and more than three thousand nine hundred strucutures burned. The fire situation remains dangerous not only in California but in other western states. Here, via the Los Angeles Times, is what experts say to keep in your Go Bag in case you’re called on to evacuate: Water and nonperishable food; a flashlight; a first aid kit; batteries and chargers for your devices; several days’ worth of clothing; moist towelettes, garbage bags and plastic ties; a battery- or crank-operated radio; a whistle to signal for help; and local maps in case GPS isn’t working. Stay safe out there! That’s all for the AM Quickie. Join us this afternoon on the Majority Report. Sept 11, 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: As the American West burns, scientific experts warn of rising global temperatures. At least one Democratic governor has had it with climate change deniers. Meanwhile, Why did Donald Trump spend so much time on the phone with Bob Woodward? Someone must have warned him it might not be a good idea – I mean, right? And lastly, police leadership in Rochester, New York, takes early retirement after public outrage over another killing by officers. More and more cops are doing it: resigning, that is. THESE ARE THE STORIES YOU NEED TO KNOW: Thousands flee Western fires Nearly one hundred wildfires are burning millions of acres across the American west, destroying towns and prompting mass evacuations. Eerie images showed red and orange skies filled with ash from the San Francisco Bay to the outskirts of Portland and beyond. In Colorado, the fires still smoldered under a fourteen-inch blanket of snow that fell suddenly in a storm the other night. California and Oregon are suffering some of the worst at this time, but fires also raged across Washington State, Nevada, Utah, and Montana. Compared to the same point in last year’s fire season, state officials said, California has endured a two thousand percent increase in acres burned. And there are still four months left in the fire season. California Governor Gavin Newsom said he had no more patience left for climate change deniers. Oregon Governor Kate Brown said her state was facing what could be the largest loss of life and property due to fire in its history. The entire county of Clackamas (Clack-Uh-Mass) outside of Portland, comprising over four hundred and twenty thousand people, was put on notice to evacuate. The entire city of Medford, population eighty-two thousand, was also under an evacuation order, along with prisons and nursing homes elsewhere in the state. Tens of thousands of people lost power due to downed lines in Oregon; in California, more than one hundred thousand are waiting to have their electricity service restored. Hot, dry, and windy weather accelerated the spread of the fires and slowed containment efforts. In Oregon, six of the largest firefighting helicopters were unavailable to aid in the all-hands effort because they had been sent to Afghanistan to help with the ongoing military occupation, according to the Portland Tribune. In California, at least fourteen firefighters have been injured, and one is reportedly in critical condition. For those directly threatened by the fires, local news radio is proving to be indispensable. Separately, the United Nations World Meterological Organization reported that global temperatures risk exceeding a limit set by the Paris climate change agreement in 2015. And some twelve thousand people in Europe’s largest refugee camp, on the Greek island of Lesbos, were left homeless once again after a fire tore through their tents. Arson was suspected. Trump blabs to Woodward It’s a big week for books about Donald Trump. First Trump’s former lawyer, Michael Cohen, came out with his tell-all. Now excerpts are coming out from veteran Washington Post reporter Bob Woodward’s book on Trump, titled “Rage.” Trump apparently spoke on tape with Woodward for eighteen hours, and even more than usual, seems to have let his guard down. Among Woodward’s revelations are an apparent secret nuclear weapons development program, possibly in violation of international treaties. But what captured headlines yesterday was Trump’s open admission to Woodward that he purposefully played down the threat of the coronavirus even after being briefed on its deadliness in January. At a time when Trump knew the virus would be deadly and dangerous, he was telling the public it was no more serious than a seasonal flu. Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden was quick to respond to the revelations. Speaking at a United Auto Workers training facility in Warren, Michigan, Biden lambasted Trump’s fatal negligence, noting that the news came on a day when America hit one hundred and ninety thousand dead from COVID. Biden said Trump, "knew how deadly it was. He knew and purposely played down. Worse, he lied to the American people. He knowingly and willingly lied about the threat it posed to the country for months. He knew how deadly it was. He had the information. He failed to do his job on purpose. ... If he acted two weeks sooner, fifty-four thousand lives would have been spared in March and April alone. ... It's beyond despicable. It’s a dereliction of duty. It’s a disgrace." Well put, Joe. Rochester police leaders resign Top police in Rochester, New York, have voluntarily resigned amid protests and scrutiny of the department’s treatment of Daniel Prude, a Black man suffering a mental health crisis who died after officers put a hood over his head. Prude was forty-one years old. He died in March but video footage was released by his family’s lawyers last week, sparking outrage. Seven police officers have been suspended from the city’s force, according to the Washington Post. And New York attorney general Letitia James said she would impanel a grand jury as part of an ongoing investigation. Then on Tuesday, Rochester Police Chief La’Ron Singletary and Deputy Chief Joseph Morabito sudden announced their imminent retirement. Per the Post, they are only the latest in a growing list of police resignations: Chiefs in Atlanta, Louisville and Seattle lost their jobs or resigned amid the public outcry, and also on Tuesday, the police chief in Dallas announced her plans to step down later this year. An attorney for Prude’s family, Antonio Romanucci, called Chief Singletary’s retirement an important step and said Prude’s treatment was inhumane, and the subsequent coverup was unacceptable. Joe Prude, Daniel’s brother, has said he called 911 seeking help after his brother disappeared. He told NPR, " I didn’t call them to come help my brother die. I called them to come help me get my brother some help.". AND NOW FOR SOME QUICKER QUICKIES: A new whistleblower complaint alleges top Homeland Security officials doctored intelligence assessments to suit Donald Trump’s agenda. The complaint, reported by CNN, says acting DHS Secretary Chad Wolf told officials to play down Russian interference and instead focus on China and Iran. Agents were also told to downplay the threat posed by white nationalist groups and instead hype the threat from Antifa and anarchist groups. Surprise! US military commanders announced the draw-down of forces in Iraq by approximately one-half, to three thousand soldiers. The withdrawal will begin later this month and has been long in planning. At the height of the war, the US had more than one hundred and fifty thousand troops in Iraq. So while Trump will brag about this on the campaign trail, the biggest military draw-downs took place before his tenure. Vice President Mike Pence will attend a fundraiser in Montana next week hosted by a wealthy couple who have promoted the Q-Anon conspiracy theory. Caryn and Michael Borland have both shared Q memes on social media, according to the Associated Press. Together they have donated more than two hundred and twenty thousand dollars to Trump’s reelection campaign. Cukoo money is still green. Attorney General Bill Barr yesterday defended as "perfectly legitimate" the Justice Department’s shocking decision to intervene in a defamation lawsuit against Donald Trump. The complaint was filed last November by E. Jean Carroll, who says Trump lied about raping her in the 1990s. This week the Justice Department effectively took over Trump’s defense in the case, an unprecedented intervention that Barr told NBC News was perfectly normal. Nothing to see here folks, provided you think there’s nothing wrong with the Attorney General using public resources to clean up after Trump’s many abuses. That’s all for the AM Quickie. Join us this afternoon on the Majority Report. Sept 10, 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 one-time errand boy, Michael Cohen, has a book out. He warns once again that Trump will do anything to stay in the White House. Meanwhile, it’s back to school for millions of American kids this week. But for many, what that means is a glitched-out website and a ton of frustration. And lastly, Brazil’s former leader, Lula de Silva, may be planning a comeback. In a new video, Lula blasts the country’s fascist president, Jair Bolsonaro, for turning the coronavirus into a weapon against the poor and vulnerable. THESE ARE THE STORIES YOU NEED TO KNOW: Cohen decries Trump 'cult' A new Trumpworld tell-all book was released yesterday. This one is by Donald Trump’s former lawyer and fixer, Michael Cohen. It’s titled “Disloyal: The Memoir,” and it’s full of juicy anecdotes and observations. Cohen describes Trump as a racist cult leader and says he hopes his message will resonate to people still inside the cult. He also writes that QUOTE Trump was a mobster, plain and simple ENDQUOTE in addition to being a cheat, a liar, a fraud, a bully, a racist, a predator, [and] a con man. One example of gangsterism: Cohen apparently helped facilitate the evangelical leader Jerry Falwell, Junior’s endorsement of Trump in 2016, in exhange for suppressing sexually explicit photos of Falwell. In an interview with NBC News to promote the book, Cohen expanded on of the dire warnings he delivered to Congress in testimony before he was led to jail. Cohen said QUOTE Donald Trump will do anything and everything within which to win. And I believe that includes manipulating the ballots. I believe that he would even go so far as to start a war in order to prevent himself from being removed from office. My biggest fear is that there will not be a peaceful transition of power in 2020 ENDQUOTE. Cohen is partway through a three-year prison sentence for financial crimes and lying to Congress for Trump’s benefit. Since July, on account of the coronavirus, he has been allowed to serve that sentence from home. Trump’s intense anti-Black racism, as described by Cohen, has already sparked an international incident of sorts. Cohen quotes Trump saying that all countries run by Black people are shitholes, including South Africa under the late liberation leader Nelson Mandela. Mandela’s party, the African National Congress, released a statement saying Trump is not fit to comment on Mandela’s accomplishments, and that QUOTE All freedom-loving people of the world are appalled by these insults, which come from a person who himself is not a model of competent leadership ENDQUOTE. Nevertheless, per the Associated Press, the ANC statement said that if Mandela was alive today, he would reach out to discuss international issues with Trump. For all the good it would do. Back to school bugs Millions of American children went back to school this week after Labor Day. Many if not most are holding classes online. Some southern and midwestern states have been back to school for a month already, and in places that are holding in-person classes, coronavirus outbreaks have been reported. It’s not going great. In addition to growing class-based disparities associated with online learning, schools have been plagued by internet outages, software glitches, and hackers. A ransomware attack forced schools in Hartford, Connecticut, to postpone the start of classes yesterday. In Virginia Beach, Virginia, students and parents were unable to access online classes on the first day of school on account of an internet outage. Seattle’s system crashed last week, and the Miami-Dade school district’s went down the week before. In some cases, students are suspected of orchestrating cyberattacks to shut down classes. But other snafus are more mundane. Parents with kids in elementary school say their children are struggling with logins, passwords, connection problems, and other software functions like chatting or raising their virtual hands. Bad tech design also plays a role in all this. According to the Associated Press, the online learning platform Blackboard, which provides technology for seventy of the nation’s hundred biggest school districts and serves more than twenty million US students from kindergarten through twelfth grade, reported that websites were failing to load or were loading slowly, and users were unable to register on the first day of school. In Texas, the Dallas Morning News reported, more than nineteen thousand students have dropped out of contact with teachers entirely since the transition to remote learning. And more than one hundred thousand children never participated in their online assignments last spring. Here’s hoping for a smoother fall term. Lula takes on Bolsonaro Brazil’s former president, the leftist icon Lula de Silva, may be planning a comeback. Lula released a slickly produced twenty-four minute video this week attacking the country’s current fascist leader, Jair Bolsonaro. Among other things, Lula said Bolsonaro had turned the coronavirus pandemic into a weapon targeting the people, especially those who are poor, Black, vulnerable, and abandoned by the state. At least one hundred and twenty seven thousand Brazilians have perished from COVID-19. According to a partial translation in the Guardian, Lula said QUOTE We are in the hands of a government that attaches no value to life and trivialises death. An insensitive, irresponsible and incompetent government that flouted World Health Organization guidelines and turned the coronavirus into a weapon of mass destruction... I put myself at the disposal of the Brazilian people, especially the workers and the excluded. From the bottom of my heart, I tell you: I’m here. Let’s rebuild Brazil together ENDQUOTE. Lula, who is seventy-four years old, is technically barred from running for office on account of his 2018 corruption conviction. However, the legitimacy of that conviction has been attacked as a part of a scheme by Bolsonaro, his cronies, and foreign powers with a financial interest in the outcome. And, per the Guardian, there is a chance it will be overturned, paving the way for Lula to challenge Bolsonaro at the polls in 2022. Failing that, Lula’s former deputies in the Worker’s Party suggested he might run as vice-president, or throw his support to another candidate who shares his values. AND NOW FOR SOME QUICKER QUICKIES: A new report by the Costs of War project at Brown University says at least thirty-seven million people have been displaced in the wars America has launched since September 11, 2001. That means the US has created more refugees in the global war on terrorism than have been made by any other conflict with the exception of World War Two. The authors of the report say their estimate is conservative, and the real number of refugees created by America’s wars over the past twenty years could be as high as fifty-nine million. There’s a chance that voters in Maine will be able to use ranked-choice voting on their ballots this November, thanks to a court ruling yesterday. The state’s Supreme Judicial Court overruled a lower court’s hold on the voting system, long advocated by smaller political parties. Maine Republicans, who oppose the ranked-choice voting system approved in 2016, are seeking a referendum on the matter. All that said, I’m struggling to imagine someone who would rank Donald Trump as their second choice after voting for Joe Biden. US Senate Republicans yesterday introduced a three hundred billion dollar coronavirus aid bill, which Democrats said is way too small. In a joint statement with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer said QUOTE Senate Republicans appear dead-set on another bill which doesn’t come close to addressing the problems and is headed nowhere. This proposal is laden with poison pills Republicans know Democrats would never support ENDQUOTE. The bill would provide expanded unemployment insurance benefits of three hundred dollars per week, down from six hundred in an earlier relief bill. For the third year in a row, Forbes magazine named Amazon chief executive Jeff Bezos as the world’s richest man. The rich continued to get richer as the collected wealth of the Forbes Four Hundred list rose to three point two trillion dollars – a new record. One exception was Donald Trump, who fell seventy-seven spots in the rankings and saw his estimated net worth decline from three point one billion down to two point five billion dollars. The coronavirus has not been kind to those in the hotel business. That’s all for the AM Quickie. Join us this afternoon on the Majority Report. Sept 9, 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: The general election is off, with Kamala Harris and Mike Pence hosting deuling events in the battleground state of Wisconsin. All the while, of course, the economic picture continues to get worse and worse for American workers. Meanwhile, yet another massive Trump Truck rally outside of Portland and other right-wing rallies around the state results in violence, as videos show right-wing hate group members chasing down anti-fascist activists with bats and mace. And lastly graduate students at the University of Michigan announce a full-on strike to protest the University’s reopening plans, vowing to use their considerable labor power on campus to shut things down until the school agrees to their demands for more coronavirus protections. THESE ARE THE STORIES YOU NEED TO KNOW: General Election Kicks Off in Wisconsin and Pennsylvania Labor day is the unofficial start to the general election, as we’re about two months away from voting, so let’s break down how the race is set up for the next week or so. Kamala Harris and Mike Pence hosted dueling events in Wisconsin, which is likely to be a major battleground state again in 2020. In 2016, Trump took the state by just under 1 percent, so it’s almost certainly in play for both parties this year. Last week both Biden and Trump visited Kenosha, the city that’s been rocked by protests since the police shooting of Jacob Blake. The top of both tickets will be in Pennsylvania this week, which is another major battleground. Biden spoke in Harrisburg on Monday, and will be returning Friday to mark the anniversary of 9/11 in Shanksville, where United Flight 93 crashed. Trump’s planning to head there too that day. Here’s what to look for. Kamala’s appearance in Milwaukee in particular is geared at turning out voters, because the Democrats have zeroed in on low urban turnout in the city in 2016 being part of Clinton’s loss. So while the Biden-Harris campaign may not be offering much more in the way of policy than Hillary, they’re at least attempting to avoid some of her electoral mistakes. The president, meanwhile, spent most of Labor day tweeting about everything from Trump boat parades to his denials of the Atlantic story that alleged he referred to dead U.S. servicemembers as quote “losers.” The backdrop to all of this is a steadily worsening economic picture. Analysis by the Morning Consult showed that while some Americans have gotten back to work, those who are still unemployed face dismal prospects of getting another job. To make matters worse, things in Washington aren’t going well. The New York Times reports that a wave of statewide budget cuts is starting to roll through the country in the absence of a new aid package making it through Congress. Look out for both campaigns to try to harness that pain into electoral support over the next few weeks, because that’s how politics works in this country. Trump Truck Rally Round 2 In Portland, yet another massive Trump Truck Rally convened in a suburb outside of the city. Some more aggressive right wing supporters peeled off for a demonstration in Salem, Oregon, which quickly devolved into on-foot mayhem as right-wing demonstrators affiliated with the Proud Boys and other militias or hate groups charged at left-wing protesters while the police looked on. Video shot by journalists at the scene showed armed militia members and Trump supporters charging a group of anti-fascist counter-protesters, overhwhelming on with strikes from a bat. A woman then maced the fallen activist on the ground. This kind of violence is typical for the running battles between Portland protesters and right-wing militias that have raged this entire summer, but the police response in Salem on Monday evening was particularly telling. According to a New York Times reporter on the scene, cops quote “pleaded” with right wing groups to move their lines back toward the designated area for their demonstration. They did make some arrests of right-wingers who singled out and attacked a counterprotester in the park, but largely refrained from deploying the same aggressive, warlike tactics against the Proud Boys and militias that they’ve used for months now against Black Lives Matter protesters. It’s still early in Oregon as of script time. After the last Trump Truck rally, one right-wing demonstrator was shot, so keep an eye out for more incidents as the dust settles on Tuesday. Michigan Graduate Students Strike The University of Michigan’s Graduate Employees Organization, a powerful on-campus union that represents more than 2000 TAs and researchers, voted on Monday to go on strike until the university changes its COVID-19 policies. The graduate students are asking for the right to work remotely, transparency in opening plans, and more money to be diverted from the university’s security budget to it’s covid planning. 79 percent of the union voted to authorize the strike. GEO Secretary Amir Fleischmann told the Michigan Daily that negotiations with the university had ground to a deadlock. Quote: “It’s the feeling of our bargaining team that there was not much more progress to be made at the bargaining table. And that’s why we feel it’s necessary to resort to these tactics. Because the University has shown that it’s not really been willing to compromise on a lot of these issues.” Graduate students are a powerful force on campus, as their labor is relied upon heavily to keep the everyday workings of university classes running. The union plans to picket in person and remotely. The strike is technically a wildcat strike, as the union’s contract and state law prevents public employees from striking. But remember: there are no illegal strikes, just unsuccessful ones. AND NOW FOR SOME QUICKER QUICKIES: A legal observer for Amnesty International was denied remote access to the beginnings of the Julian Assange trial this weekend, raising concerns from some press freedom advocates already worried about the ramifications of Assange’s indictment and incarceration. Assange is accused of violating the U.S. espionage act, and is currently in the trial phase of a hearing which will determine if he is extradited to the U.S. to face punishment there. Jacob Blake has spoken publicly for the first time since being shot seven times by the Kenosha Police department. In a video uploaded by an activist, who spoke to Blake in the hospital, Blake spoke about the nature of his injuries, saying quote: “Every 24 hours, it’s pain — it’s nothing but pain. “It hurts to breathe; it hurts to sleep. It hurts to move from side to side. It hurts to eat.” One of California’s most recent destructive wildfires, the El Dorado fire in San Bernardino County, was caused by an explosive device at a gender reveal party. This would be monumentally stupid even if it was the first time it’s happened -- which it’s not. Philippines President Rodrigo Duterte added another instance of callous despotism to his record on Monday by issuing a full pardon to Scott Pemberton, a U.S. Marine convicted of murdering Jennifer Laude, a transgender woman, in 2014. Local human rights groups called Duterte’s pardon a quote “despicable and shameless mockery of justice and servility to the imperialist interests of the United States.” That’s all for the Majority Report’s AM QUickie today! Stay tuned for the full show this afternoon. Sept 8, 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: California is once again burning, as new fires rip up national forest in the Sierra Nevadas and the rest of the state suffers a brutal heat wave. Meanwhile, a new report alleges that Trump toady Postmaster General Louis DeJoy pressured employees at his last job to donate to GOP candidates and causes. And lastly, the Trump campaign is increasingly leaning in to white nationalism to claw their way back into the general election race. THESE ARE THE STORIES YOU NEED TO KNOW: California Burns Again California is once again being hit with a double blow of climate change woes, this time in the form of devastating wildfires and a brutal heatwave throughout the rest of the state. Of course, California isn’t the only state suffering this summer: most of the U.S. west is plagued by fires, including major cities like Denver. But California got hit hard this weekend. In the Sierra Nevadas, the explosive Creek Fire went from a few hundred acres to 45,000 in the span of a weekend. It’s zero percent contained as of Sunday afternoon. The Creek Fire rose up so fast that dozens of hikers had to be airlifted to safety by the National Guard. So far there’s no reports of deaths or casualties, as the residential areas its devastated were evacuated on time. Elsewhere in the state, waves of smoke from previous fires have given way to heat, heat, and more heat. In parts of the LA Basin, temperatures climbed above 115 degrees Fahrenheit. Meteorologists told the LA Times those digits could break all time records in some cities. What the heat wave means is that fire season is nowhere near over. These conditions are only going to get worse in the early fall and come back year after year. DeJoy Gets Caught Doing Corruption Again At this point, open corruption should sort of be the norm for the Trump administration, but it’s always fun when some of the worst characters in it get caught red handed. Up this weekend is Louis DeJoy, Trump’s toady Postmaster General last seen gutting his own agency to appease Republican goals of voter suppression. According to a new report by the New York Times, DeJoy has been corrupt since way before Trump. Multiple former employees at New Breed Logistics told the paper that DeJoy pressured them to make political contributions to GOP candidates and causes, and rewarded them with bonuses if they did so. This is following a report last week that showed that the Postal Service had paid one of DeJoy’s other former companies $286 million since 2013. So clearly he’s been in this game for a while. The latest charge might stick, however, as the kind of corruption taking place at New Breed Logistics might actually be a crime. The difference rests on whether or not investigators can prove that DeJoy’s “bonuses” were reimbursing employee’s donations, instead of just incentivizing them. Democratic leaders have immediately called for an investigation, but who knows if that due diligence will actually happen under Trump and Attorney General Bill Barr. Trump Leans In to White Nationalism Over the weekend, it’s become a lot more clear what Donald Trump thinks his pathway to victory in November in. You probably won’t be surprised to know the answer: it’s white nationalism. The first new red flag came on Friday, when Trump ordered the federal government to cancel contracts that it had paid out for its branches to undergo racial sensitivity training. Trump called such programs, which attempt to change systemic racism by generally teaching people how to not be racist in the workplace, were quote “divisive, anti-american propaganda.” Endquote. He then followed that quote up with another storm of tweets on the subject, saying basically the same thing. So racism is American, being anti-racist is anti-American. Got it. All of this is getting folded into his electoral strategy. As the New York Times points out, the RNC made its token appeal to minority voters with some black and hispanic speakers who claimed Trump wasn’t racist. But the candidate himself has doubled down on racist rhetoric, decrying everything from the banning of the Confederate flag at Nascar races to the Black Lives Matter movement, while simultaneously pushing racist talking points about crime coming for Suburban households. This isn’t a new strategy for Republicans, of course, but Trump has taken it to its most extreme. We’ll find out if it pays off -- to everyone’s detriment -- in November. AND NOW FOR SOME QUICKER QUICKIES: There’s an old labor movement saying: a rising tide lifts all boats. And now for a completely unrelated story: at a pro-Trump boat parade on a lake near Austin, Texas this weekend, five boats sank when their wakes collided to make a turbulent pit of water. No one was injured, so we can all laugh at this guilt free. A newly declassified court ruling found that the F.B.I. had committed “widespread violations” of Americans’ privacy, without warrants in a surveillance program that’s existed since the Bush years. The court then signed off on another year of the program, which let investigators search through email repositories without a warrant. Sounds about right. Northeastern University dismissed 11 students who threw a party in a hotel room despite coronavirus restrictions, and will not refund the tuition they had already paid. Let’s be real: the party was incredibly stupid, but expelling students and keeping their money after charging them over 35,000 for a study abroad program seems wildly harsh. The mayor of Rochester, New York is promising police reform after widespread protests following the release of video depicting the death of Daniel Prude, who died in police custody in March. The promise of change may not do much to sway the protesters on Rochester’s streets, however, as police continue to deploy the standard tear gas, pepper balls, and rubber bullets. That’s all for the Majority Report’s AM Quickie today. Happy Labor day! Organize your workplace. Sept 7, 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: It appears the Republican Party is preparing a bounty of October Surprises. There are plans for an accelerated antitrust case against Google, as well as for a coronavirus vaccine that could come well ahead of schedule. Meanwhile, Donald Trump clarifies that when he told people in North Carolina to vote twice, he meant that they should vote twice. If he was soliciting voter fraud, that’s actually illegal in and of itself. And lastly, the polls remain encouraging for Joe Biden. Both national and battleground state surveys show him holding a strong lead over Trump, with both parties’ nominating conventions now in the rear-view. THESE ARE THE STORIES YOU NEED TO KNOW: Google facing antitrust investigation The US Department of Justice plans to bring an antitrust case against one of the world’s largest technology companies, Google, as early as this month. That’s according to the New York Times, which broke the story yesterday. And there’s a twist: the lawyers who were investigating Google on behalf of the Department aren’t happy about the case moving forward. They reportedly felt rushed after higher ups at the DOJ told them to wrap up their inquiry by the end of September. Several lawyers on the forty-odd person team left over the summer. Others said they’d refuse to sign the antitrust complaint against Google’s parent company, Alphabet. There is, apparently, some concern that the end-of-month deadline is arbitrary and politically motivated. Donald Trump has accused Google of being biased against him, and Attorney General Bill Barr may wish to bring the case to a conclusion in order to give Trump something to brag about on the campaign trail. Separately, Health and Human Services secretary Alex Azar yesterday told CBS News that a recently announced November 1 timeline for a coronavirus vaccine has QUOTE nothing to do with the election ENDQUOTE. The Centers for Disease Control told state governors in a letter last week to be ready to distribute a vaccine by that date. Three potential vaccines are in the third and final stage of clinical trials in the US, well ahead of what experts originally said was a reasonable timeline. Azar attributed the success of the so-called Warp Speed vaccine research effort to President Trump’s leadership. No politics at play in that department, no sir. Trump says vote twice As the Washington Post and the New York Times so delicately put it, Trump yesterday sought to clarify remarks he made late the previous day, in which he told supporters in North Carolina to vote twice. Which is very much against the law. By clarify, they must have meant repeat. Because what he told supporters yesterday on Twitter was to vote twice, first by mail and then in person. Just to make sure their postal vote got counted, you see. Twitter put a warning label on Trump’s posts, saying they violated the company’s policies around election integrity. But they left the post up because they said doing so was QUOTE in the public interest ENDQUOTE. Facebook said it would delete a video of Trump’s original comments telling people to vote twice, unless it was shared in order to correct the record. Forgive me if I’m repeating myself here, but it sure seems like when Trump complains about the upcoming election being rigged, it’s because he’s doing his damndest to make it so. The executive director of North Carolina’s board of elections said in a statement yesterday that checks would be in place to prevent double voting, which is illegal. It’s also illegal to solicit someone to vote twice, but who will dare bring charges against Trump for this? Finally, the board urged people not to follow Trump’s instructions and line up on election day to check that their mail-in ballots had been counted, for two reasons. One, it’s not necessary. And two, it could spread coronavirus. What a mess, cripes. Biden maintains polling lead Joe Biden maintains a strong lead in the polls over Donald Trump, NBC News reported yesterday. The party conventions held over the past couple of weeks did not seem to sway many people one way or the other. National polls show Biden with a lead of anywhere between seven and eleven percentage points over Trump. And Biden continues to perform better than Hillary Clinton did at the same point in 2016. That year, Trump held a fifteen-point lead over Clinton on the question of which candidate was more honest and trustworthy in a CNN poll. Now, Biden leads Trump on the same question by seventeen percentage points. Signs are good for Biden in state polls, as well. Fox News polls show Biden beating Trump by eight percentage points in Wisconsin, by nine points in Arizona and by four points in North Carolina. The race appears closer in Pennsylvania, however, especially with models that predict lower turnout. If his polling lead holds true, NBC reported, Biden could defeat Trump with similar margins as Barack Obama’s victory over the late Arizona Senator John McCain. Democratic voters can’t rest on their laurels, but despair would be premature at this stage. AND NOW FOR SOME QUICKER QUICKIES: Americans can expect more extreme weather this Labor Day weekend. Over twenty million people in the mid-Atlantic states face a severe storm warning. Four million people in the South and Midwest are under flash flood watches. And forty-four million people in the West and Southwest will be warned to watch out for record-setting heat and dry conditions that could exacerbate the threat of wildfires. So it might be a nice weekend to stay inside, unless of course you are being told to evacuate. At least five mayors in Democratic cities around the US have temporarily moved out of their homes on account of ongoing protests on their doorsteps. Those cities are, according to the Washington Post: Portland, Oregon; Chicago; Seattle; Pittsburgh and St. Louis. The protests, generally speaking, decry police violence and call for justice for Black lives. Do the right thing, folks. Leave no mayor behind! House Speaker Nancy Pelosi claimed yesterday that her private, maskless visit to a San Francisco hair salon, in violation of city pandemic restrictions, was QUOTE clearly a setup ENDQUOTE. At a press conference, the White House played security camera footage of Pelosi’s salon visit on a loop. The stylist Pelosi visited also released a statement supporting Pelosi’s account and accusing the salon owner of forcing stylists to work in violation of public health orders. Now you’re up to speed. Best wishes to the family and friends of David Graeber, an anthropologist and writer best known for his books Bullshit Jobs and Debt_: The First Five Thousand Years_. As an activist with Occupy Wall Street, Graeber coined the slogan We Are The Ninety-Nine Percent. Denied tenure at Yale for supporting a graduate student union, Graeber went on to join the London School of Economics as a professor. According to his widow, Nika Dubrovsky, he died in a hospital in Venice. May he rest in peace. That’s all for the AM Quickie. Join us this afternoon on the Majority Report. SEPT 4, 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: The Donald Trump administration announces new sanctions on The Hague. It all seems a little bit backwards. Meanwhile, Joe and Jill Biden visit Kenosha, Wisconsin today. The campaign set a one- month presidential fundraising record in August. And lastly, doctors say new guidelines for coronavirus treatment represent a sign of hope in the fight against the virus. The World Health Organization now says chronically and severely ill COVID patients should be treated with steroids. THESE ARE THE STORIES YOU NEED TO KNOW: In a shocking and damning move, the United States has imposed sanctions on senior officials of the International Criminal Court at the Hague. The ICC prosecutes war criminals around the world. The US sanctions include the ICC’s chief prosecutor Fatou Bensouda. Bensouda was once justice minister of her home country, The Gambia. Her experience in international justice includes advising a United Nations tribunal that prosecuted key figures in the 1994 genocide in Rwanda. The new sanctions allow the US to block assets of those targeted, as well as bar them from entry to the US. So why is the US sanctioning The Hague prosecutors now? Well, it’s simple: The ICC has been investigating American war crimes in Afghanistan. Announcing the sanctions, US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo called those ICC investigations QUOTE illegitimate attempts to subject Americans to its jurisdiction ENDQUOTE. The US is one of a dozen countries including China, India, and Russia that have refused to recognize the ICC’s authority, according to BBC News. The court was created by a UN treaty in 2002. Balkees Jarrah, a senior counsel on international justice with Human Rights Watch, said the sanctions mark a shameful new low for US commitments to justice for victims of the worst crimes. They are, Jarrah added, a stunning perversion of US sanctions that were devised to penalize rights abusers and kleptocrats. Instead, they will be used to harrass those seeking justice for victims of war crimes. Folks, just ask yourselves: Is this how a country operates when it has nothing to answer for, nothing to hide? The Bidens visit Kenosha today Joe Biden and his wife Jill are visiting Kenosha, Wisconsin today. Biden said that there were overwhelming requests for him to visit in the wake of the shooting of Jacob Blake and the subsequent killing of two protesters by a seventeen-year-old armed with an assault rifle. In advance of the visit, Biden said he hopes to be a positive influence toward healing. He certainly couldn’t do worse than Donald Trump’s loathsome, inflammatory performance there on Tuesday. There was no indication that Biden’s vice presidential pick Kamala Harris would join him and his wife in Kenosha. However, the Washington Post reported that Biden has deployed Harris elsewhere as an ambassador to Black activists. For instance, Harris joined a conference call with one hundred Black male leaders, including the civil rights lawyer Benjamin Crump, who is representing the Blake family. The Post said Crump and Harris addressed the Blake shooting and police violence against Black men in general, but offered no details. Also on the campaign trail, the Commission on Presidential Debates announced the lineup for three debates between Biden and Trump. The first debate will take place on September 29 and be moderated by Fox News Sunday anchor Chris Wallace. The second debate will be moderated by C-SPAN political editor Steve Scully, and take place on October 15. The third and final debate will take place on October 22nd and be moderated by Kristen Welker, a White House correspondent for NBC News and co-anchor of the weekend “Today” show. There will also be a single vice-presidential debate to be moderated by Susan Page, the Washington bureau chief of USA Today. That’s on October 7. Finally, Biden reportedly broke a campaign fundraising record, raising three-hundred and sixty-four and a half million dollars in August. More than two-hundred and five million came through online donations. The previously monthly record in a presidential race was set by Barack Obama in September 2008, when he raised more than two hundred and two million. New coronavirus treatment guidelines The World Health Organization released new treatment guidance yesterday for the coronavirus. The updated guidance is based on new research, also published yesterday, in the Journal of the American Medical Association. The research consisted of five separate articles including three studies, an editorial, and an analysis of seven randomized clinical trials. From all that, the evidence was clear: Doctors should use steroids to treat patients who are severely or critically ill with COVID-19. The only other drug shown to be effective in seriously ill patients is remdesivir, according to the New York Times, summarizing the research. Per the Times, steroids can have harmful side effects, especially in elderly patients, who make up the majority of very ill coronavirus patients. The drugs may leave patients vulnerable to other infections, may raise blood glucose levels, and may cause confusion and delirium. The new research doesn’t answer every question. Only the sickest patients were treated with steroids in the clinical trials that were studied. The optimal dosages and duration of treatment remain uncertain. But the good news is that these drugs are cheap and widely available. And they reduced deaths in critically ill patients by twenty percent. What this means: If your loved ones are diagnosed as severely or critically ill with coronavirus, they should be getting treated with cortico-steroids – and if they aren’t, the doctors should have a good reason why not, based on the individual circumstances of the patient. If they are sick enough for these drugs, they may already be on mechanical ventilation. But if they are in a gray area, receiving perhaps only a few liters of oxygen, doctors may conclude steroids are too risky. All ins and outs aside, this is a rare bit of good news for the fight against the dreaded ’rona. AND NOW FOR SOME QUICKER QUICKIES: Indigenous people in the remote Andaman and Nicobar Islands are reportedly now threatened by the coronavirus. Most cases are asymptomatic, but experts quoted by NBC News fear that uncontacted people on nearby islands could be next. The population of the Great Andamanese tribe for instance, is just over fifty people. Ten of them are now hospitalized with coronavirus, according to NBC News. Luckily, for now, all are asymptomatic, but there are concerns for tribal elders on the most remote islands. A Homeland Security Department official who resigned in April told NPR News that the Trump administration is fanning the flames of violence and right-wing extremism. This won’t be news to most listeners of this program, but it’s something else to hear it from a person like Elizabeth Neumann, former assistant secretary of counterterrorism and threat prevention at DHS. Neumann also said, unequivocally, QUOTE The threat of domestic terrorism is not from antifa. ENDQUOTE. To paraphrase Trump, put that in your soup and throw it! Survivors of the Tulsa Race Massacre of 1921 filed a lawsuit on Tuesday demanding reparations from the city government. The lead plaintiff is Lessie Benningfield “Mother” Randle, who is one hundred and five years old. The lawsuit says the local law enforcement deputized white Tuslans to murder, loot, and burn a Black district of the city. It also names the local chamber of commerce, which backed a form of indentured servitude for some Black internees after the massacre. Per the Washington Post, no one was ever arrested for the violence. Staff at the Voice of America are in open revolt over the conduct of their boss, Michael Pack. Pack was appointed to head up the US Agency for Global Media and confirmed by the Senate in June. He commenced to purge employees on a political basis, adding unfounded and xenophobic claims of espionage. Solidarity to all journalists fighting for their independence, and for the free speech of all! That’s all for the AM Quickie. Join us this afternoon on the Majority Report. Sept 3, 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: The Trump administration, desperate for political goodwill, is using the Center for Disease Control’s authority to hand down a temporary eviction moratorium for anyone making less than $99,000 per year, but it comes with some other pretty strict qualifications. Meanwhile, Amazon is cracking down on labor organizing and spying on its own employees in unprecedented ways, Motherboard reports, while delivery drivers are leaving smartphones hanging from trees to try to eke out a living from the company’s algorithm. And lastly, Incumbent Senator Ed Markey appears to have fended off Rep. Joe Kennedy III in the Democratic primary. We’ll chat about that and break down some of the other races to watch in the State’s primary. THESE ARE THE STORIES YOU NEED TO KNOW: The Trump administration passed down a temporary federal eviction moratorium on Tuesday night, using the CDC’s quarantine authority to bar evictions for individuals making less than $99,000 a year. There’s a pretty easy way to read this: the looming eviction crisis is so bad that even Trump’s advisors have recognized that if it hits before the election, he’s screwed. Sure enough, the CDC’s moratorium only lasts until December 31. It also requires people to self-identify, basically making an official claim that they can’t pay rent but they’re trying to, and that they meet the required income bracket. And, crucially, it doesn’t convert that rent debt into consumer debt, meaning that you could get evicted right after the moratorium expires in January 2021. In other words, it’s a stopgap measure aimed at preserving some of Trump’s flagging support. Don’t get me wrong, it will still be a major lifeline to families living on the edge, giving them a few more crucial months to figure out a better situation, and it’s a far stronger provision than the original moratorium in the CARES act. But that doesn’t mean it’s the end of the crisis -- similar to the payroll tax deferrals we talked about earlier in the week, it basically postpones some of the pain of this recession, rather than alleviating it entirely. Amazon Doing Evil Again Amazon had a huge day yesterday, and by huge day I mean got exposed for doing a whole bunch of evil stuff. So basically a normal Tuesday for them. Let’s take a look at the evil in particular though. Item one: the company is hiring two quote “intelligence analysts” for its security division to track a whole host of threats including protests, crises, and geopolitical conflicts that could affect the company’s operations. So a corporate spy, essentially. But one bit of the job description stands out: according to Motherboard, the job listing mentions “labor organizing” three times. Essentially, the company is hiring private spooks to spy on labor organizers. Which brings us to item two, another scoop by Motherboard: an internal report shows that Amazon is quietly surveilling its Flex drivers and other employees in dozens of private facebook groups. Like many gig-work behemoths, Flex drivers have private facebook groups where they chat about the job and blow off steam, but now it’s on the record that Amazon has plants in pretty much all of those groups making sure none of the pesky working people get any ideas about organizing, protesting, or calling a strike. Bear in mind what these people’s jobs are like. Item three: Bloomberg reports that savvy drivers are literally hanging smartphones from trees near Amazon warehouses in an attempt to get the jump on their competitors. Amazon feeds off of this lowest-possible-fee, dog-eat-dog competitive atmosphere for workers who have been mistreated and underpaid for years, so this shouldn’t come as a surprise. We’ll have to wait and see how Obama’s old press secretary Jay Carney, who’s now an Amazon spokesman, wriggles out of this jam! A Kennedy Falls in Massachusetts It finally happened: a candidate with the last name Kennedy lost an election in Massachusetts. Senator Ed Markey appears to have struck down the youngest rising star of the dark Kennedy Dynasty, Joe Kennedy III, in the Massachusetts senate primary. Most networks called the race for Markey on Tuesday night, and as we were scripting this, it wasn’t even close. Markey was up by double digits, giving the much younger and much more nakedly ambitious Kennedy the thrashing his power-hungry family deserves. Unfortunately, the other big progressive race in the state appears to have gone the opposite way. House Ways and Means chairman Richard Neal appears to have beaten progressive challenger Alex Morse, after a contentious, borderline corrupt primary that saw a devastating smear campaign against Morse. Morse bounced back when the Intercept’s reporting exposed the smears against him as fake, but he wasn’t able to oust the incumbent Neal. Other races to watch: Jesse Mermell, a progressive, is in the lead in the open primary to fill Kennedy’s House seat that he left to challenge Markey. Mermell ran a pretty left-focused campaign, but one of her challengers, Ihssane Leckey, looked very promising as well. Keep an eye on that race, as it hasn’t been called as of script time, and the closest rival candidate to Mermell is a big money-funded centrist. AND NOW FOR SOME QUICKER QUICKIES: Joe Biden’s campaign is launching new yard signs... in a video game. In the popular Animal Crossing: New Horizons, you can now proclaim yourself team Joe. And now all I can think about is how Hillary Clinton said Pokemon Go to the Polls. According to a new book, Melania Trump used multiple private email addresses, iMessage, and the encrypted messaging app Signal while in the White House. Remember when this was a huge national security story when Hillary Clinton did it? Neither do I, because I had a voluntary lobotomy after the 2016 election. In slightly brighter Republican primary news, the Massachusetts congressional candidate who was openly linked to Qanon did NOT win his primary election. So that’s one thing the GOP’s got going for it, I guess. Trump’s personal physician denied that the President experienced a stroke last year during a sudden medical emergency, and denied that Pence had been put on standby if the President had gone into surgery. The allegations were made in, would you guess, a new book about the Trump administration by a New York Times reporter. So that clears all that up, it’s clear the big man is in perfect health! That’s all for the Majority Report’s AM quickie today. Sam’s got you in the afternoon. Sept 2, 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: President Trump defended militia member Kyle Rittenhouse, refusing to condemn the two killings the 17-year-old Trump supporter committed in Kenosha, Wisconsin last week. Meanwhile, New York City’s teacher are preparing to strike if Mayor Bill de Blasio doesn’t meet their demands for mandatory testing, which would be one of the largest actions in the ongoing nationwide battle over reopening schools. And lastly, a whistleblower report alleges that the L.A. Sheriff’s Deputy who shot 18-year-old Andres Guardado was quote “chasing ink,” or attempting to join one of the violent gangs that exist inside the Sheriff's department. THESE ARE THE STORIES YOU NEED TO KNOW: At this point, nobody should be expecting Donald Trump to condemn the things his supporters do, but after last week’s shooting in Kenosha, Wisconsin, the president appears to have thrown his lot entirely behind the right-wing defense of Kyle Rittenhouse. Rittenhouse shot three protesters, killing two, during a chaotic incident in the middle of protests in Kenosha, Wisconsin after the police shooting of Jacob Blake. When asked about the shooting at a press conference on Saturday, Trump leaned into the right-wing narrative that Rittenhouse’s shootings were committed in self-defense, saying quote: “I guess he was in very big trouble. He probably would have been killed,” endquote. Trump also refused to condem the widespread violence perpetrated by his supporters in Portland over the weekend, where a truck convoy of Trump supporters sprayed protesters with mace and shot them with paintballs. Trump referred to his supporters as quote “Peaceful,” and added quote “paint is not bullets.” Those confrontations also ended in violence, when one right-wing militia member was shot and killed in the city on Saturday. The Trump campaign and other conservative voices have sought to blame the increasing violence at protests around the country on Joe Biden, alleging that Biden is somehow supportive of incidents of violence, looting or rioting. But in a speech on Monday, Biden wasted no time in decrying all such behavior. He said quote: “I urge the President to join me in saying that while peaceful protest is a right — a necessity — violence is wrong, period. No matter who does it, no matter what political affiliation they have. Period. “If Donald Trump can’t say that, then he is unfit to be president, and his preference for more violence — not less — is clear.” Trump plans to visit Kenosha on today, so look out for even more dangerous rhetoric from him then. NYC Teachers Prepare to Strike The battle over returning to school is coming to a head in New York City, as the city’s powerful Teachers Union says a strike is still on the table if mayor Bill de Blasio doesn’t meet their demands. The sticking point right now is a mandatory testing program for students and staff returning to school. United Federation of Teachers president Michael Mulgrew said quote: “I cannot and I will not back off the fact that I said we would not go back unless independent medical experts gave us a stamp of approval. So it’s not like the mayor is going to convince me not to have a mandated testing program. It’s not happening.” If that wrinkle isn’t ironed out, Mulgrew left the door open for a major labor action, including a strike. The UFT is also pushing for a delayed start to the year, which is supposed to begin on September 10. While many teachers across the country have already been pushed back into classrooms, this battle in one of the largest school systems in the country could set a precedent for other unions fighting for mandatory testing as well. Earlier in the year, Chicago’s powerful teachers’ union, which has gone on strike just last year over contract negotiations, threatened another strike in July if the city did not meet their demands to hold remote classes -- and hours later, got what they wanted. Now, New York is laying the same threat on the table. We’ll see how de Blasio responds. Killer LA Sheriff Was Chasing Gang Ink A new whistleblower complaint claims that the L.A. Country Sheriff’s Deputy who shot 18-year-old Andres Guardado was in fact “chasing ink,” or trying to join an organized police gang that rewards its members for brutality. The fact that there are active, violent gangs inside the LA Sheriffs Department is nothing short of absurd. But Guardado’s killing came after knowledge of the gangs was widespread, which means that the forces inside the department weren’t cowed by external pressure or an FBI investigation. According to the new complaint, Deputy Miguel Vega was trying to get into an exclusive clique inside the Sheriffs Office known as the Executioners. Another deputy, Art Gonzalez, alleged in a sworn whistleblower statement that the Executioners have more than a dozen members with matching tattoos, who often host parties after an officer has shot someone in which they may be inked. In other words, Guardado’s death may have come at the hands of a cop looking to kill someone to buy his way into a gang. Gonzalez, the whistleblower, testified for nearly six hours under oath, according to Spectrum News 1 in LA. AND NOW FOR SOME QUICKER QUICKIES: Trump’s environmental protection agency is quietly relaxing another key anti-pollution measure, this time weakening Obama-era regulations on coal waste. The new rules drastically increase the daily thresholds for amounts of toxic elements that plants can release into the water supply. Spain is officially going through a true “second wave” of coronavirus infections, as its rate of infections has been higher than the U.S., France, Germany and most of the rest of Europe in the past week. Spain had a brutal first wave of infections which were only broken by a strict lockdown -- but after a rapid reopening program, the virus is creeping back in. Airlines are making one major change in the attempt to coax customers into flying again: they’re permanently dropping change fees for most domestic flights. Delta, United and American are all following this plan, which will certainly give travelers who have to fly a bit more peace of mind, as it’s clear the actual process isn’t and won’t be safe for a while. In slightly terrifying news, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsberg officiated a wedding and was pictured not wearing a mask just weeks after being hospitalized for liver cancer. The bride claimed that quote “we tested negative,” but still. Probably not a great risk to take. Sept 1, 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: Protesters in Portland clashed with a pro-Trump truck caravan in a night of violence that left one right-wing militia member dead. Meanwhile, The U.S. passes 6 million coronavirus cases, and California becomes the first U.S. State to hit 700,000. California’s infection rates are falling, though, but other states with smaller populations continue to spike. And lastly, President Trump has made a big deal about his payroll tax deferrals, but new data shows that when the tax man does come knocking in 2021, workers are going to get slammed. THESE ARE THE STORIES YOU NEED TO KNOW: One person was shot dead during a chaotic night of protests in Portland, Oregon on Saturday. The circumstances around the shooting are still unclear -- it happened near a parking garage away from the main protests. The victim was wearing a hat with the logo of Patriot Prayer, a far-right militia that has squared off with Black Lives Matter protesters and other anti-fascists in Portland. Portland Police say they’re trying to find out who was responsible for the shooting but released no information yet. Earlier in the night, a huge convoy of Trump supporters drove into the city, largely in pickup trucks, streaming Trump 2020 and thin blue line flags. They then proceeded to antagonize Black Lives Matter protesters in the city, spraying mace and shooting them with paintballs. Far-right counter-protesters have attacked protesters in Portland repeatedly in the past weeks, brandishing or firing guns on multiple occasions. Any of that nuance is sure to be stripped from the conversation, particularly after the politically-charged shooting in Kenosha, Wisconsin last week. President Trump has used the incident to double down on his fascist rhetoric and enable more far-right escalation, saying that quote “the people of Portland won’t put up with no safety any longer.” endquote, and criticizing Portland’s embattled mayor Ted Wheeler. Some far-right groups have already jumped to conclusions over the shooting, saying the loss of one of their own means civil war with the left. It’s hard to say what the next week has in store, but more violence could well be on the way. US Hits 6 Mil COVID Cases The United States passed 6 million confirmed coronavirus cases on Sunday, according to the New York Times. California now rules the bleak coronavirus charts with 700,000 confirmed cases in the state. However, that number belies a slightly more positive story for the state: the infection rate is falling, and of course California’s massive population always means it’s going to have more cases than most. Other states are still struggling, however. Louisiana has the highest number of cases per 100,000 people in the country, with over 3,100, according to the Times. Outbreaks continue to spread, especially in schools and universities that have resumed in-person classes. But recent data shows that the rate of infections might be slowing slightly -- new daily cases have been going down since the end of July. The next worry is how quickly -- and how safely -- we’ll be able to get a vaccine. The FDA commissioner recently said his agency might be willing to approve a vaccine before phase 3 human trials had been completed, which is obviously a risk. It’s one that could save lives if the vaccine works, but is also being pushed for heavily by the Trump administration, which is desperate to get some kind of solution on the table before the election. And as we know from Trump’s handling of the pandemic, human life matters far less than political capital. Payroll Tax Payback Looks Grim President Trump made a big deal about suspending payroll taxes during the height of the pandemic, meaning that workers got to skip at least one regular subtraction from their take-home wage. But instead of abolishing the tax, Trump just deferred it, and new data confirms that when we have to pay that tax back retroactively, things are going to be bleak. The Treasury department on friday indicated that employers would be on the hook to pay back the postponed payroll taxes in 2021, meaning that they’d be taking even more out of workers’ paychecks then than they would have normally. What Trump’s cuts are doing then is giving a short-term boost to paychecks, which will certainly be appreciated by some, at least until it’s all owed in a year. After the election, of course. To make matters worse, guess what payroll taxes usually fund: Social Security and Medicare. So in one move, Trump is putting stress on the budgets of essential services for just a temporary relief to workers. If Trump eventually decides to cut the tax whatsoever, it will give most workers a bit of a bump in take-home pay -- but at the cost of those same essential services. Since Republicans have been looking to gut those programs for years, this seems like the perfect plan to add a whole lot more uncertainty to the mix. AND NOW FOR SOME QUICKER QUICKIES: Rep. Steve Scalise sank to a new low on Sunday, publishing a doctored video that manipulated the words said by ALS-afflicted healthcare advocate Ady Barkhan. In the footage, Barkhan appears to ask Biden to redirect funding for police to healthcare. In reality, Barkhan, who uses a digital voicebox, didn’t say the words “for police” -- Scalise just added them in to fit his twisted narrative. Arizona State University’s College Republicans have become one of the first formal political groups to throw their lot all-in behind Kenosha murderer Kyle Rittenhouse, holding a fundraiser for him and telling a newspaper journalist who called that they quote “do not speak to journalists with pronouns on their Twitter page,” endquote. Classy group of people, clearly. A small number of U.S. troops doing... something??... in Syria this week were injured in a skirmish with Russian forces, allegedly after the two groups crashed their vehicles into one another. U.S. officials said there wasn’t any actual shooting, but still. Yikes. And finally, the Director of National Intelligence’s office informed the Senate and House that it would no longer be doing in-person briefings relating to election security, limiting Congress’s ability to ask hard questions of the people running security for the November election and striking yet another blow to transparency overall. Not a great sign! That’s all for the Majority Report’s AM Quickie today, stay tuned for the full show this afternoon. Aug 31, 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: Protests and vigils continue in Kenosha, Wisconsin, and beyond, calling for justice for Jacob Blake, shot seven times in the back by police. And new details have emerged about a teenage vigilante shooter who killed two and injured a third at one of those protests this week. Meanwhile, Donald Trump speaks on the final night of the Republican National Convention. And a new report details how much money his companies have skimmed from the US government during his time in office. And lastly, the Christchurch mosque killer receives New Zealand’s maximum criminal penalty. Hear how a victim’s son delivered a righteous speech before the sentencing. THESE ARE THE STORIES YOU NEED TO KNOW: Our apologies: Yesterday we said Jacob Blake, the man shot seven times in the back by police in Kenosha, Wisconsin, had been killed. He is in fact still alive, though paralyzed from the waist down. Yesterday the Chicago Sun-Times reported that Blake was handcuffed to his hospital bed when his father came to visit. It’s unclear what charges he faces, because police haven’t said. Blake’s father, also named Jacob, is scheduled to speak at the March on Washington today. Meanwhile, more details have emerged about Kyle Rittenhouse, the seventeen-year-old shooter who attacked a crowd of protesters in Kenosha before fleeing to his home across the state line in Antioch, Illinois. Students at a high school Rittenhouse attended told Vice News he was shy but also aggressive, and some had him pegged for a future school shooter. He was active in a police cadet training program and reportedly idolized the police. And in addition to making common cause with a local right-wing militia, he was a big fan of Donald Trump. Buzzfeed News found a photo of Rittenhouse in the front row at a Trump rally in Des Moines, Iowa, in late January. Since his shooting, which killed two and wounded another, much of the Republican right has rallied around Rittenhouse, casting him as a hero who fought to protect property from rioters. The survivors of his victims have disputed that characterization in the strongest terms. Those shot dead were victims Anthony Huber, age twenty-six, of Silver Lake; and Joseph “Jojo” Rosenbaum, thirty-six, of Kenosha. Gaige Grosskreutz, twenty-six, of West Allis, was shot in the arm and is expected to recover, according to the Sun-Times. Per the Chicago Tribune, Huber had confronted Rittenhouse, who was carrying an assault rifle, using only his skateboard. A GoFundMe created by his family said QUOTE He was fighting for a cause, and he wasn’t a rioter – he was a protester and a defender ENDQUOTE. Law enforcement and National Guard were out in an attempt to enforce curfews again last night, not only in Kenosha but also in Minneapolis, where protests are ongoing. Finally, police in Kenosha named the officer who shot Jacob Blake seven times in the back while holding his shirt as Rusten Sheskey, a seven-year veteran of the department. The local district attorney will decide whether to file charges against the officer next month after the state Justice Department releases its report. Trump calls Biden... extreme? Yesterday the New York Times reported that for the second time in thirty days, the Trump campaign pulled all its broadcast ads from circulation. The campaign has no new ads scheduled until September 8. That’s two weeks with no ads on television and fewer than seventy days until the election. Something isn’t quite clicking for the Republicans. On night three of the Republican National Convention, headliner Mike Pence brought the lowest ratings yet. And last night, Donald Trump himself delivered the convention keynote from the White House. According to prepared remarks obtained by the Associated Press, Trump cast his super-centrist opponent, Joe Biden, as some kind of flaming radical. And he blamed the violence in Kenosha and elsewhere on the local Democratic leadership. Separately, the Washington Post reported that the Trump Organization has bilked taxpayers for at least nine hundred thousand dollars since he took office, much of it through booking feels at Trump hotels and resorts. The Secret Service is obliged to follow Trump wherever he goes, which means that when he stays at a Trump hotel, agents must book rooms there. Trump has now visited his own hotels two hundred and seventy-one times as president. Sometimes the charges to the Secret Service seemed not only exorbitant but straight-up bogus, such as a bill for furniture removal from a room totaling thirteen hundred dollars plus tax. In response to the Post’s reporting, a White House spokesman warned that they were building up a very large dossier on the reporter, David Farenthold. We’re sure he’s quaking in his shoes. Christchurch mosque shooter sentenced A judge in New Zealand yesterday sentenced Brenton Harrison Tarrant, who killed fifty-one people at two mosques in a terrorist attack last year, to life in prison without the possibility of parole. It was the maximum sentence allowed by law and the first time it has been imposed in the country’s history. According to the Associated Press, Judge Cameron Mander said Tarrant's crimes were so wicked that a lifetime in jail could not begin to atone for them. Tarrant, twenty-nine, is an Austrailian citizen. Ahad Nabi, the son of a shooting victim, also had words for the killer. In an appeal to the judge shared widely on social media, Nabi endorsed the sentence of life without parole. He called the killer a maggot who had inadvertently made his father a martyr. Nabi said, in part, QUOTE You shot at defenseless people that were not aware of what was going on until they knew it was too late. Your actions were gutless... You deserve to be buried in a landfill. This world was created with color. A peasant like you will never change the human race. Your wish is to make this world a racist cult of one color. But you will never succeed... I would like to say that my seventy-one year old dad would have broke you in half if you challenged him to a fight. But you are weak. A sheep with a wolf’s jacket on, for only ten minutes of your whole life. I am strong, and you made me even stronger ENDQUOTE. And with that, Nabi flipped the killer off with both hands. And now for some Quicker Quickies. AND NOW FOR SOME QUICKER QUICKIES: Hurricane Laura flattened buildings and trees along the Gulf Coast and kicked off a large chemical fire over Lake Charles, Louisiana, when it made landfall. Laura continues to move north toward Arkansas and has been downgraded to a tropical storm. Four deaths were reported in Louisiana and none in Texas. The verdict from Louisiana Governor John Bel Edwards: it could have been a lot worse. Indeed, the storm also knocked over a Confederate statue in Lake Charles, only days after parish officials voted to leave it standing. A new analysis in the British Medical Journal found that six feet of social distancing may be insufficient protection against the coronavirus, especially in poorly ventilated indoor settings. Public health experts quoted by the Washington Post say six feet of social distance should be regarded as a starting point, not a strict guidance. The only thing close to a silver bullet, researchers say, is a distanced gathering outdoors where everyone is wearing well- fitted masks. Got that? Mask up and be mindful of how the air is flowing. Russia’s Vladimir Putin has said he is willing to provide military or police assistance to help the ruler of Belarus, Alexander Lukashenko (LUKE-UH-SHEN-KOH), remain in power. Lukashenko, recently seen carrying an assault rifle after deboarding a helicopter, has ordered amid mass arrests of protesters after elections the European Union refuses to recognize as legitimate. Poland’s prime minister, Mateusz Morawiecki (MAT-EH-USH MORA-VESHKY), urged Russia to cease any plans for military intervention in Belarus, calling it a hostile act in violation of international law. The British artist Banksy has used some of his wealth to finance a boat that is patrolling the Mediterranean to rescue refugees lost at sea. The Guardian reports that the boat, named Louise Michel after a French feminist anarchist, rescued eighty-nine people in distress yesterday, including fourteen women and four children. At last report the Louise Michel was looking for a safe port to let the refugees disembark. Aug 28, 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: A teenage wannabe cop and militia member was arrested for shooting and killing two people at a protest against police violence in Kenosha, Wisconsin. The Milwaukee Bucks then launched a solidarity strike with protesters, leading to the postponement of the basketball playoffs, which will definitely get the attention of people who might not have noticed or cared. Meanwhile, Texas and Lousiana braced for a massive Category Four hurricane that was set to make landfall last night. And thousands more homes are at risk of burning in California. And lastly, there was a courtroom a victory for transgender equity in Virginia yesterday. A federal appeals court upheld the right of a transgender male student to use the boy’s bathroom at school, regardless of how many bigoted adults may feel about it. THESE ARE THE STORIES YOU NEED TO KNOW: Police in Lake County, Illinois arrested a seventeen-year-old boy for shooting three people and killing two at ongoing protests in nearby Kenosha, Wisconsin. According to Vice News, the young man, Kyle Rittenhouse is an aspiring police officer, and online videos showed him milling about with local police, as well as with right-wing militia members, and carrying an assault rifle. The militia claimed to be on the scene to protect businesses and property from rioters and QUOTE evil thugs ENDQUOTE. An event page set up by the militia was removed from Facebook, but not before the event was promoted by Alex Jones’ Infowars. Prosecutors in Illinois called Rittenhouse a fugitive who fled Wisconsin to avoid accountability for the shooting. He is being charged with first-degree murder. Videos show Wisconsin police allowed Rittenhouse to leave the scene with his rifle. Photographer Brent Ford witnessed the entire scene and told Vice News QUOTE He had his hands up and they told him to get out of there, even though everyone was yelling that he was the shooter. The police didn’t seem to hear or care what the crowd was saying ENDQUOTE. Yesterday the Kenosha police chief told reporters that if everyone involved had respected the curfew that was in place, QUOTE perhaps the situation that unfolded would not have happened ENDQUOTE. The shooting took place just before midnight on Tuesday, which was the third night of protests in Kenosha following the police shooting of an unarmed black man, Jacob Blake. Yesterday, Wisconsin Governor Tony Evers said he was calling up five hundred members of the National Guard to support police in Kenosha County. A curfew was set for seven P.M. Donald Trump was also tweeting about the situation yesterday, which is sure to help. More importantly, players with the Milaukee Bucks decided to go on strike in solidarity with the protests over Jacob Blake’s shooting, prompting the National Basketball Association to postpone all of yesterday’s playoffs games. *Editor's Note: A previous version of this report said that police killed Jacob Blake. Blake was not killed but he was shot by police seven times and as a result has been paralyzed from the waist down Hurricane hits Gulf states National Guard were also deployed in Texas and Louisiana, which are in the way of Hurricane Laura. The storm yesterday was upgraded to a Category Four, with peak winds reaching one-hundred and forty-five miles per hour. It could be the strongest storm to hit Louisiana in one-hundred and sixty years, according to Bloomberg News. The National Hurricane Center said an unsurvivable storm surge with large and destructive waves could penetrate thirty miles inland, causing catastrophic damage from Sea Rim State Park, Texas, to Intracoastal City, Louisiana, including Calcasieu and Sabine Lakes. The American Red Cross is putting emergency evacuation protocols in place for both states. In all more than a half a million people have been ordered to evacuate the coastal areas. Meanwhile, firefighters in California, aided by cooler weather, have made some progress containing the wildfires that are ravaging the state. Nearly two thousand buildings have already burned, according to the Los Angeles Times. Officials say that number could double before the fires are finally extinguished. Since August 15, when the state was first hit with a so-called lightning siege that sparked the flames, more than seven hundred wildfires have burned one point three million acres around the north and central parts of the state. While progress is being made, crews are still busy responding to new fires. Another four hundred and twenty three lightning strikes hit the state in the twenty-four hour period ending yesterday afternoon, causing fifty new fires. More than one hundred and thirty-six thousand Californians have been evacuated, and Governor Gavin Newsom has warned everyone in the state that they may need to flee their homes at some point on account of the fires. At least seven people have died so far in the fires. Transgender bathroom rights upheld A federal appeals court in Virginia yesterday sided with a transgender student in a bathroom-access case. The Fourth US Circuit Court of Appeals ruled against the Gloucester County School Board and said the transgender student was protected both by a federal law preventing sex discrimination in education, as well as by the US Constitution’s equal protection clause. The lawsuit dates to 2015, according to NBC News. It was filed by Gavin Grimm, who is now a college student. Grimm was assigned female at birth but identifies as male. School officials had forbidden him from using the boy’s restroom. Writing for the court, which sided with Grimm in a two-to-one vote, Judge Henry Floyd wrote that school officials were guilty of a special kind of discrimination against a child, based in the fantastical fears and unfounded prejudices of adults. Floyd wrote QUOTE the proudest moments of the federal judiciary have been when we affirm the burgeoning values of our bright youth, rather than preserve the prejudices of the past ENDQUOTE. Grimm’s case was originally going to be heard by the US Supreme Court in 2017, but it was removed from the calendar after Donald Trump rescinded a federal rule on transgender bathroom access put into place by Barack Obama. It’s possible, even likely, that the question of transgender rights will come before the high court again. Grimm was represented by the American Civil Liberties Union. In a statement following the verdict, he said QUOTE all transgender students should have what I was denied: the opportunity to be seen for who we are by our schools and our government ENDQUOTE. AND NOW FOR SOME QUICKER QUICKIES: Mike Pence was the marquee name last night at the Republican National Convention. Separately, a Politico story blamed Pence for doing his part to slow down the nation’s coronavirus response. Donald Trump spent part of the day at his namesake hotel in Washington, DC, meeting with donors. According to the Washington Post, among the sundry events scheduled for the Trump International Hotel yesterday was a panel on Defeating the Deep State, featuring, among other panelists, Sebastian Gorka. There was also a bourbon tasting with Kentucky Senator Rand Paul. Boy howdy. Four US service members suffered concussion-like symptoms after an altercation with Russian forces in Syria this week. Video of the incident emerged yesterday, and it showed a Russian helicopter flying low over US armored vehicles, which were then rammed by a Russian vehicle on the ground. A draft statement written by US Central Command and cited by Politico blamed the Russians for unsafely pursuing then intentionally ramming the American forces. The Pentagon offered no comment. The ACLU of Oregon filed a lawsuit yesterday in federal court on behalf of Portland protesters who say they were beaten by federal agents or snatched into unmarked rental vans, Portland’s Willamette (WILL-AM-ET) Week newspaper reported. Donald Trump, the Department of Homeland Security and the US Marshals Service are named as defendants. One of the plaintiffs, Mark Mark Pettibone, was snatched up by federal agents and tossed into an unmarked van. He said QUOTE I still haven't fully come to terms with what it means that I was kidnapped by my government ENDQUOTE. Same here buddy. The US Centers for Disease Control revised its guidance for COVID-19 testing this week, saying people who were exposed to the virus but are not showing symptoms should not be tested. Public health experts expressed concern over the revision, saying all who were exposed should be tested. After word got out about the changes, the New York Times reported that CDC officials were pressured to make the change by higher-ups in the Trump administration. Apparently Trump officials took advantage of the absence of Doctor Anthony Fauci, who was undergoing surgery for polyp on his vocal cords, to ram through the change. I don’t know about you, folks, but this is all the nonsense I can take today. That’s all for the AM Quickie. Join us this afternoon on the Majority Report. Aug 27, 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: A man shot into a group of civil rights marchers in rural Pennsylvania. Which is pretty emblematic of how this year has been going. Meanwhile, night two of the Republican National Convention featured Melania Trump and Mike Pompeo. Can you guess which one was criticized for breaking federal rules, and which was being secretly recorded by a former friend? And lastly, more states are fighting back as the Trump administration monkeywrenches the United States Postal Service. Now New York, New Jersey, and Hawaii have filed a lawsuit in federal court. THESE ARE THE STORIES YOU NEED TO KNOW: An old white man shot into a mixed-race crowd of some fifty civil rights marchers in rural Pennsylvania late on Monday night, though the incident wasn’t reported by local media until yesterday. Police did not release the shooter’s name but said in a press release that two men were being questioned at a state police barracks in small-town Bedford. The marchers are on a pilgrimage from Milwaukee, Wisconsin to Washington, DC – a journey of nearly eight hundred miles, on foot. Before the shooting the marchers had taken a break and were preparing to climb a hill. Witness Tory Lowe said marchers caught sight of the man looking out a door, but had no time to react before he began shooting at them from behind. Lowe said in a Facebook Live stream that the man fired at least seven shots from a long gun. “He just came out shooting. There was nothing we could do,” Lowe said. One marcher was hit in the face. He was reportedly in stable condition yesterday at a nearby hospital. Police said an argument preceded the shooting, but witnesses disputed that account. According to Lowe, QUOTE it was no argument. The video is proof ENDQUOTE. The marchers set out from Milwaukee on August 4. At least two were arrested on charges of blocking traffic earlier along the route, in Indiana. They hope to arrive at the Lincoln Monument in DC by Friday, which marks the fifty-seventh anniversary of Martin Luther King Junior’s “I Have a Dream” speech. How little has changed. Pompeo speech called illegal Breaking form, Donald Trump yesterday praised CNN for running the opening night of the Republican National Convention more or less uninterrupted. But what he didn’t mention was that ratings were down twenty-eight percent for the RNC as compared to 2016. That’s according to the Los Angeles Times reported. And about three million fewer people watched it than watched the Democratic National Convention last week. Last night was the second of four nights of planned programming by the Republicans. There was no coverage of how Trump has moved more than two million dollars in contributions to his campaign from those accounts to his private companies, as Forbes reported yesterday. There were, in contrast to the Democratic convention, no past presidents speaking on Trump’s behalf. But there was scandal aplenty. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo spoke to the convention from the US Embassy in Jerusalem. Career diplomats were appalled by the decision, according to CBS News. The Foreign Service has strict guidelines about political activity, which Pompeo ignored. We couldn’t put it better than Democratic Congressman Ilhan Omar, who said QUOTE if there's one thing this administration has shown us, it's a willingness to break the law in broad daylight. Mike Pompeo's participation at the RNC as Secretary of State – from foreign soil, no less – isn't just inappropriate. It's illegal. ENDQUOTE. Trump’s wife Melania also spoke, from the recently renovated White House Rose Garden. But what’s more interesting is that Melania is reportedly on tape dissing various Trumpworld figures. The tapes were surreptitiously recorded by her former friend and adviser, Stephanie Winston Wolkoff, who has a book coming out soon. Titled Melania and Me, it’s billed as a tell- all. We’ll let you know the dirt as soon as it’s available. More states sue USPS New York state Attorney General Letitia James, joined by the states of New Jersey and Hawaii, and the cities of New York and San Francisco, are suing Donald Trump and his crony, Postmaster General Louis DeJoy, over their sabotage of Postal Service operations leading up to the November election. It’s the third lawsuit over DeJoy’s disruptions to postal operations. Pennsylvania and Washington State led two multistate lawsuits that were filed last week. All three lawsuits allege DeJoy made the changes without getting them cleared by the postal regulator or seeking public comment as required by Congress, Bloomberg News reported. In addition to Trump and DeJoy, the new lawsuit led by New York Attorney General James also names the Postal Service itself as a defendant. In a statement yesterday, James said QUOTE this USPS slowdown is nothing more than a voter suppression tactic. Yet, this time, these authoritarian actions are not only jeopardizing our democracy and fundamental right to vote, but the immediate health and financial well-being of Americans across the nation ENDQUOTE. The lawsuits seek court orders to prevent further changes, in addition to undoing the changes DeJoy already made. Meanwhile, more videos emerged from around the country showing discarded mail sorting machines and postal drop boxes being removed. They’re not even really trying to hide this election interference. It’s all so damned brazen. AND NOW FOR SOME QUICKER QUICKIES: More than half a million people were told to evacuate the Gulf Coast of Texas and Louisiana ahead of Hurricane Laura, a category three storm that is expected to make landfall late tonight or early tomorrow. Winds are forecast to be in excess of one hundred miles per hour and there is a risk of flash flooding, as well. Stay safe, stay dry, and if you’re planning on using one of the official shelters, the authorities ask that you bring two masks for each person, plus hand sanitizer, along with the rest of your emergency kit. The Kremlin yesterday rejected claims by German doctors that Russian opposition figure Alexei Navalny was poisoned with a nerve agent. Navalny fell ill last Thursday while on a flight from Siberia to Moscow. His allies are calling for a criminal inquiry and say they don’t trust results from a Russian hospital that found no basis for the poisoning claim. The New York Times reports that American colleges and universities are cracking down hard on students who hold parties in violation of coronavirus restrictions. Suspensions of individual students, as well as entire fraternities and sororities, are already in the hundreds. Outbreaks stemming from parties are a real problem. The Times has counted twenty-three thousand COVID cases on seven-hundred and fifty campuses since the pandemic kicked off last winter. Jerry Falwell Junior formally resigned the presidency of Liberty University yesterday, amid a sex scandal. Falwell accidentally copied university leadership on an email with pictures of his wife having sex with a pool boy, reportedly an activity the right-wing Christian leader enjoyed observing several times per year. After the pool boy confirmed the relationship, Falwell said he was resigning, then changed his mind, then changed his mind again, and here we are. Aug 26, 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: The RNC kicked off tonight with, who would have guessed, a controversy, as Trump narrowly decided against holding an illegal gathering in DC and went forward with plans to accept his party’s nomination from the White House, rather than a politically neutral site. Meanwhile, in Wisconsin, protests erupt after police shot Jacob Blake, a black man, seven times in the back while he was attempting to get back in his car. Blake survived, but the outrage over his clearly unjust treatment caught on video has rocked the city of Kenosha. And lastly, California is once again burning, as exhausted firefighters battle 625 active blazes across the state. THESE ARE THE STORIES YOU NEED TO KNOW: Here we go everyone, it’s the RNC. After last week’s Republican-lite convention put on by Joe Biden and the Democrats, it’s time to watch the full-fascist party put on their show. Night one did not disappoint: Mark and Patricia McCloskey, the St. Louis couple who pointed guns at Black Lives Matter protesters outside of their mansion, leaned hard into false rhetoric that the Democrats would hand over citizens to criminals. RNC Chairwoman Ronna McDaniel praised Trump’s support of housewives and moms, and diaper-boy Charlie Kirk leaned in to his alt-right roots by making a pitch for Trump that included the words “Western Civilization.” You can see where that one’s going. But all of this gabbling is mostly just window dressing. The more interesting story of the convention, like we mentioned yesterday, is the GOP’s full-throated endorsement of Trump without any concrete policy goals. Late Sunday night, the Trump administration released a list of “goals” for a second term, which include everything from moon bases to intensely repressive immigration lists. The Republican party is on board with this till the bitter end. The other theme is that the normal rules will not apply to this party or this President. On Monday, the White House constructed a stage in the Rose Garden, preparing for a big event on Thursday when the president will formally accept the nomination. It’s technically against ethics rules for the president to do partisan activities like campaigning on federal property, but Trump has decided that, like so many other laws and norms, doesn’t apply to him. It’s all just part of him testing his limits to see just how far he can go. We’ll see on November 5th whether or not that’ll extend to free and fair elections, and we’ll see what other buttons Trump tries to press at the RNC the rest of this week. Jacob Blake Shooting Fractures Kenosha In Wisconsin, a new shocking incident of police violence has thrown a small city into turmoil, as massive protests and civil unrest erupted after police in Kenosha shot an unarmed black man seven times in the back. The victim, Jacob Blake, was shot as he was attempting to get back into his car, which his three children were inside. He’s in stable condition in the hospital, miraculously. But his shooting was captured on video, and within hours the city was on fire, as angry residents torched garbage trucks, parked cars, and looted businesses downtown. On Monday, the state deployed 100 national guard members and set an 8 p.m. curfew for the city to crack down on protests. Blake was allegedly trying to break up a fight between two women when police arrived on scene, and appears to attempt to leave the situation as police yelled and pointed their weapons at him. As he attempted to get back into his car, an officer grabbed his shirt and shots rang out. The city is still on edge, and while the police immediately opened an investigation, it doesn’t look like there will be an easy resolution anytime soon. California Fights Over 600 Fires California is on fire, as it is every year around this time. But due to the drastic effects of global climate change, every year seems worse than the last. Right now, firefighters in the state are battling upwards of 625 active fires, including two of the biggest fires the state has ever seen. Together, over 1.4 million acres of land in the state have burned. Many of the fires are sparked by lightning strikes, as dry fuel loads go up like matches during dry summer thunderstorms. And of course, vulture capitalists have found a way to use the catastrophe to get richer: Common Dreams dot com reports that one hedge fund has added $3 billion to their coffers by buying up insurance claims. Thanks to the megafires nearby, Oakland and much of the Bay Area is choked by smoke, closing state parks and schools already plagued by the pandemic. Another thing weakened by the pandemic: the prison labor California and other states often use to fight wildfires. Thanks to early release programs aimed at releasing prisoners from the COVID-traps of the prison system, much of the state’s captive wildfire labor force is home, and not behind bars. The prison labor system is an abusive form of modern slavery, which the most recent fires have exposed as an integral part of California’s response to wildfires. Clearly, the state needs a better system, because this is only going to get worse. AND NOW FOR SOME QUICKER QUICKIES: Kellyanne Conway announced she would leave the White House at the end of August, citing the need to focus on her family. It’s probably no coincidence that her daughter, who has promoted leftist causes on social media, has been publicly seeking emancipation from her parents, claiming that she’s disgusted with her mother’s job. Researchers in Hong Kong confirmed the first case of coronavirus re-infection, raising concerns that having the virus will only make you resistant to it for a limited period of time, not indefinitely. The patient is asymptomatic and doing fine, but definitely appears to have caught two different strains of the virus months apart. Hamas leadership in the Gaza strip reported the first cases of community spread of coronavirus, raising fears that the disease could rip through the blockaded, mostly captive populations there, who are underserved by healthcare networks. Trump’s National Labor Relations Board announced last Friday that criticizing an employer’s handling of the coronavirus pandemic was not protected speech in the workplace, meaning companies could fire workers for speaking out. That means that under Trump, brave organizers like Amazon warehouse worker Chris Smalls can be axed with no government backup, just for trying to keep their coworkers safe. That’s all for the Majority Report’s AM Quickie today! We’ll have more pre-recorded content for you this afternoon, as Sam and the Team are still on a well-deserved break. Aug 25, 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: It’s night one of the Republican National Convention, featuring an even more deranged lineup of GOP stooges than the DNC had last week! Trump will be speaking every night. Here’s what to look out for. Meanwhile, the Trump administration pushed the FDA to authorize blood plasma treatments from recovered COVID patients to treat active cases of the disease, despite warnings from some scientists that the process needed more study. And lastly, as federal aid expires, millions of Americans are sinking deeper into debt, hunger, and evictions, according to a new report in the Washington Post. THESE ARE THE STORIES YOU NEED TO KNOW: The RNC starts today, and here’s what you’re in for: Trump, Trump, and more Trump. The speakers lineup includes almost every Trump you can think of: Don Jr., Eric Trump, Lara Trump, Ivanka Trump, Tiffany Trump, Melania Trump, and of course Donald himself, not once but every single night. Other hits include, we’re not kidding: the Covington Catholic kid who went viral during an altercation with a Native American protester, the St. Louis lawyer couple who pointed guns at Black Lives Matter Protesters, Turning Point USA founder Charlie Kirk, one of the few pro-gun parents of a child who died in the Parkland massacre, and the Republicans’ only black Senator, Tim Scott. The interesting thing about the convention this year as well is that the RNC is just not adopting an official platform in any way, basically signaling that whatever Trump wants to do is fine with them. This isn’t exactly unexpected, but it’s telling that the GOP as a whole has decided against any sort of concrete policy goals, trusting that Trump will basically just do his thing and accomplish most of what they want anyway. So much for the myth of the reasonable Republican. The convention starts Monday night and will run through Thursday. COVID Plasma Treatment Pushed Through FDA For weeks, the Trump administration has been hammering the FDA to get some kind of coronavirus treatment approved, seeking to get the good PR by floating one miracle cure or another right before the election. Now, it appears they’ve found their in: blood plasma from recovering patients used to cure those still suffering from the disease. The treatment, known as convalescent plasma, got emergency FDA approval on Sunday, after days of pressure from the administration. Previously, top federal scientists had delayed FDA approval because they thought it needed further study, according to the New York Times. They’re probably not wrong: the Times reports that randomized clinical trials have not proven that convalescent plasma works. That didn’t stop Trump from touting the treatment as quote “very effective”endquote at a press conference on Sunday, and saying quote: “This is a powerful therapy that transfuses very, very strong antibodies from the blood of recovered patients to help treat patients battling a current infection.” endquote. And unlike other treatments that focus on medications, convalescent plasma treatments obviously depend on blood donations, which can’t exactly be mass produced. The next step in this is the Trump administration pushing forward a vaccine before the election, which it has openly said it wants to do, perhaps as early as September. Of course, the earlier we can get a vaccine the better, but do we really trust the Trump administration not to rush something potentially unsafe or ineffective through the process for political gain? Sure sounds like the kind of thing he’d want to do. Report Shows Economic Ruin Ahead For a few months, the federal government kept most Americans’ heads above water -- but the life rafts are gone, and now we’re starting to sink. According to the Washington Post, 29 million adults reported not having enough to eat in late July, as expanded unemployment benefits started to end. During the same period, 15 million renters reported being behind on rent payments. Trump’s new $300 per week unemployment expansion will only last a few weeks, and when it’s gone, the Post reports that poverty levels could rise to above Great Recession levels if the government doesn’t do more to help. Another thing the Post story shows is that the additional $600 a week that Bernie Sanders and other Democratic leaders fought for had a huge effect on keeping people afloat. Zach Parolin, a researcher at Columbia University, told the Post that 17 million people would have dropped below the poverty line without direct intervention from the Government. Progressives wanted an even bigger investment, of course, but it goes to show that even what we were able to get from the Trump administration and Republican Senate had a huge impact. As all that phases out, we’re looking at dark times for a lot of Americans, unless Congress can get its act together and find a way to push forward more aid. AND NOW FOR SOME QUICKER QUICKIES: Tennessee’s right-wing Governor Bill Lee quietly signed off on a bill that makes camping on state property a Class E felony, directly targeting the Black Lives Matter protesters who have been camping outside of the Tennessee Capitol Building. And with a felony charge, those protesters could lose their right to vote. Protests in Belarus against dictator Alexander Lukashenko are only growing, as massive crowds gathered in Minsk on Sunday in defiance of the leader’s violent crackdowns. Lukashenko, meanwhile, was pictured while arriving in the capital by helicopter wearing a bulletproof vest and carrying a rifle, so it’s pretty clear what kind of signal he’s sending to his people. Remember the whole mess over TikTok a few weeks back? A new report by the Wall Street Journal alleges that Facebook ManBoy Mark Zuckerberg led a lobbying campaign highlighting the dangers of Chinese-backed tech companies like TikTok, which may have helped prompt the Trump administration’s weird crusade against the app. And guess what? Facebook-owned Instagram is now trying to make waves with a TikTok competitor. California’s massive wildfires could worsen this week as the state prepares for lightning and wind storms over the next week, which could spark new blazes. 1.3 million acres have burned across the state in the last month. That’s all for the AM Quickie today. Sam and the Majority Report crew are out this week, but we’ll have plenty of pre-recorded content to keep you going. Aug 24, 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: Bad news for the global ecosystem that keeps us all alive: the Greenland ice sheet is melting faster than ever. Record tons of fresh meltwater are diluting the seas. Meanwhile, Joe Biden accepted the Democratic Party nomination to the presidency last night. His campaign tried to set expectations that he would reassure more than inspire. And lastly, Steve Bannon, the strategist behind Donald Trump’s 2016 campaign, was arrested yesterday on fraud charges. Could Don Junior be next? THESE ARE THE STORIES YOU NEED TO KNOW: Record melting in Greenland A study published yesterday says the Greenland ice sheet lost a record amount of mass last year, all due to climate change. The ice melted at an astonishing rate of a million tons per minute, for a total of five-hundred and thirty-two billion tons. Greenland’s fast-melting ice sheet is reportedly the largest single contributor to sea level rise. The study was published in the journal Nature Communications: Earth and Environment. Researchers based their estimates on data from advanced satellites belonging to NASA. Because the meltwater is freshwater, it dilutes the surrounding seawater, which has an additional effect on global weather patterns. For example, there are two simultaneous tropical cyclones forecast to hit the Gulf of Mexico next week. The record ice loss amounts to more than one-hundred and forty trillion gallons of water. It’s more than double the average annual ice loss recorded by the NASA satellites since 2003. And it added more than half an inch to global sea levels – a shocking amount for the seas to rise in a single year. Before global warming began to spiral out of control, there were some years in the last century when the Greenland sheet actually gained ice. No more. The preceding two years before the study period were unusually cold in Greenland, but even then, the sheet still lost ice. Researchers told the Guardian that cold years no longer compensate for hot ones in terms of ice loss, as was the pattern in the past. Among other things, the research means the ice sheet has grown unstable. And without a major drop in carbon emissions, coastal cities will be in greater danger than ever. Biden accepts Democratic nomination The fourth and final night of the virtual Democratic National Convention concluded with the nomination of Joe Biden to the party’s presidential ticket. Prior to the night’s speeches, Vermont Senator and former candidate Bernie Sanders told PBS Newshour that he believed Biden understood what needed to be done in regards to climate change, public health, the economic crisis and mass evictions. Sanders said QUOTE He’s going to face an American people who are hurting today. He’s going to face young people [who] want action ENDQUOTE. Later, in a taped endorsement, Sanders said Biden would keep his word and listen to others’ views. Former candidates Pete Buttigieg and Mike Bloomberg also spoke last night. As it has for much of the week, the prepared programming focused on Biden’s family story. Videos filled with testimonials cast him as a familiar and reassuring figure – as well as a hard worker, in contrast to Donald Trump. Biden’s daughter Ashley and embattled son Hunter vouched for their dad in a prerecorded video, before Biden the elder took his turn on stage at Chase Center in Delaware. Biden said Trump has QUOTE cloaked America in darkness for too long ENDQUOTE. He said his first step as president would be to get the coronavirus under control, in part, with a national mandate to wear a mask. Biden called attention to the recent third anniversary of the Charlottesville, Virginia neo-Nazi rally, and said QUOTE at that moment I knew I had to run... Silence was complicity... In this dark moment, I believe we’re poised to make great progress again, that we can find the light once more ENDQUOTE. Bannon arrested over fraud Donald Trump’s former adviser Steve Bannon was arrested yesterday by US Postal Inspectors aboard a one-hundred and fifty million-dollar yacht off the coast of Connecticut. The charges? Mail fraud. The US Coast Guard assisted USPS officers with Bannon’s arrest at sea, where he has been for several weeks. During his arraignment in New York, Bannon pleaded not guilty. His bail was reportedly set at one point seven-five million dollars in cash or property, and his bond conditions ban him from travel on private airplanes or boats. Per the New York Times The yacht Bannon had been living on belonged to an exiled Chinese businessman. According to a federal indictment, Bannon conspired with three other men, also charged, to defraud donors of a GoFundMe campaign called We Build The Wall. The money was supposed to be used to build a section of Trump’s promised wall on the Mexico border. Instead, Bannon used the money for at least one million dollars worth of personal expenses. Those included, in addition to a Range Rover, a small pleasure boat named Warfighter. Bannon, who formerly ran Breitbart News, is the third person who led Trump’s 2016 campaign to face criminal charges. Trump’s son Don Junior promoted Bannon’s fraudulent GoFundMe campaign, calling it, as the Times reported, QUOTE private enterprise at its finest ENDQUOTE. Hear hear! The Trump Organization attempted to distance Don Junior from Bannon’s scheme in a statement yesterday. Trump himself, asked about Bannon’s arrest, at first said he knew nothing of Bannon’s fundraising effort. Then he said he didn’t like the project, calling it inappropriate. Apparently Trump didn’t know about Bannon’s arrest ahead of time. Sad. AND NOW FOR SOME QUICKER QUICKIES: A study published yesterday in the Journal of Pediatrics suggests children play a larger role in spreading the coronavirus than was previously understood. Researchers found that some children have high levels of the virus in their airways during the early days of infection, though they may show no symptoms. One of the authors, Alessio Fasano, told the Washington Post that children may be as susceptible as adults to the coronavirus, but not as visibly so. Another reason not to rush back to in-person classes this fall! Another one point one million workers filed for unemployement last week, according to the latest numbers from the US Labor Department. On top of that, more than half a million freelancers and part-time workers filed for Pandemic Unemployment Assistance. Last week’s new unemployment numbers were slightly better, but this week shows that ain’t so. How arepeople supposed to survive during a pandemic with a few hundred dollars in state benefits and little hope for finding work? As Steve Bannon proved, GoFundMe is no solution. A federal judge yesterday threw out a lawsuit from Donald Trump that sought to deny a subpoena for his tax records. The decision by US District Judge Victor Marrero follows a Supreme Court ruling last month that found Trump is not immune from criminal investigation during his tenure as president. It’s now more likely than ever that Trump will actually be forced to deliver some eight years of tax records to Manhattan District Attorney Cy Vance Junior, who is investigating Trump’s hush money payments as well as possible bank fraud. At least two people have died so far in California’s all-out firefighting effort. Fires in the northern and central parts of the state continued to spread, merge, and grow yesterday, consuming three-hundred and fifty thousand acres at last count. Homes on the edge of San Jose were evacuated. People in areas where the air is full of smoke and ash are advised to stay indoors – and definitely don’t go outside to exercise. Firefighters say they are having better luck when the winds die down at night. Hang tight out there, folks. That’s all for the AM Quickie. Join us this afternoon on the Majority Report. Nomiki Konst is guest hosting and her first guest is Noam Chomsky! Check it out. Aug 21, 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: Many thousands of Californians are fleeing their homes to avoid massive wildfires that are tearing through it and other western states. Governor Gavin Newsom has declared an emergency and warned that more could face urgent evacuation. Meanwhile, Kamala Harris officially accepted the Democratic Party’s nomination for the office of vice-president. She joined former President Barack Obama last night in calling out the dire threat of a second term for Donald Trump. And lastly, do you have too much toxic positivity in your life? Because apparently that’s a real thing! THESE ARE THE STORIES YOU NEED TO KNOW: More than three hundred and sixty-seven wildfires are raging across Northern California, forcing tens of thousands of people to evacuate their homes during a pandemic. Lighting is to blame for most of the blazes. Nearly eleven thousand lighting strikes were recorded over the previous three days. Most were not accompanied by rain. Scientists say increased lightning activity in various places around the world can be attributed to climate change resulting from the burning of fossil fuels by humans. A group of fires outside Vacaville, near Sacramento, covers more land area than Washington, DC, and has destroyed more than fifty homes. Thousands more homes are threatened around the state. Other large groups of wildfires threaten the outskirts of the San Francisco Bay Area and Santa Cruz County, southwest of Silicon Valley. Smoke from the fires has caused terrible air quality across the state. California’s firefighting resources are already stretched to their limit. Officials have called in three-hundred and seventy-five additional fire engines and crews from neighboring states. But neighboring states including Nevada and Oregon are dealing with their own fires. Colorado’s ongoing Pine Gulch Fire has grown into the second-largest fire in state history. Most of the California wildfires remain uncontained at the time of this recording. In the hardest-hit areas, firefighters are focused on helping people evacuate rather than containment. The weather isn’t helping. An intense heat wave beginning last week brought rolling blackouts to the Bay Area. Some two million homes and businesses were warned they could lose power. And on Sunday, a world record high temperature of one hundred and twenty-nine point nine degrees Farenheit was recorded in Death Valley. This is the new normal, folks. Some evacuees in California say they got no warning to evacuate until neighbors began pounding on their doors. If you are being evacuated, call the Red Cross hotline at one, eight six six, two seven two, twenty-two thirty seven. That’s one, eight six six, two seven two, two two three seven. They will help you figure out where to go to get a temporary roof over your head. Harris accepts VP nomination Night three of the Democratic National Convention brought out a bevy of woman leaders to welcome Kamala Harris as the party’s the vice presidential nominee. Seven women governors spoke on the theme of women’s leadership, which is simply not something that could be replicated by the Republicans. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and former presidential candidate Hillary Clinton also enjoyed speaking slots. Harris, the former prosecutor and Senator from California, last night formally became the first woman of color to be nominated for the White House by a major party. She attacked Donald Trump, saying he turned tragedies into political weapons. Harris said we must elect QUOTE a president who will bring all of us together — Black, White, Latino, Asian, Indigenous — to achieve the future we collectively want. We must elect Joe Biden ENDQUOTE. Former President Barack Obama delivered a powerful speech comparing Black Lives Matter to the civil rights movement. Haddressed Republican attempts to undermine ballot access and election integrity. Obama also, at long last, spoke of the threat to democracy posed by Trump. Obama said QUOTE I did hope, for the sake of our country, that Donald Trump might show some interest in taking the job seriously; that he might come to feel the weight of the office and discover some reverence for the democracy that had been placed in his care. But he never did ENDQUOTE. Still a master of understatement! Psychologists: beware "toxic positivity" The Washington Post interviewed a number of psychologists and mental health experts to draw attention to an American scourge. It’s called toxic positivity. Recently we reported that record numbers of Americans are experiencing anxiety and depression, due in no small part to the pandemic and... everything else. Toxic positivity is a habit some people have developed that can actually make it harder for themselves and others to process negative emotions. The problem isn’t to do with people who are genuinely effusive or upbeat. Rather, it’s about the way some people are always saying it’s fine, or it will be fine, no matter what the facts of the situation actually are. That kind of thing can prevent people from working through serious issues in a healthy way, according to the Post. Natalie Dattilo, a clinical psychologist in Boston, compares toxic positivity to shoving ice cream into somebody’s face when they don’t feel like having ice cream. Unhelpful! Dattilo says QUOTE ‘Looking on the bright side’ in the face of tragedy of dire situations like illness, homelessness, food insecurity, unemployment or racial injustice is a privilege that not all of us have. So promulgating messages of positivity denies a very real sense of despair and hopelessness, and they only serve to alienate and isolate those who are already struggling ENDQUOTE. Another psychologist, Stephanie Preston, says people who engage in toxic positivity may seem more well-adjusted, but they’re really holding themselves and people around them back. Experts quoted by the Post say people should feel how they feel, rather than get caught up in how they think they should feel. One thing is sure, you won’t get any of that toxic positivity from us. That’s the AM Quickie promise! AND NOW FOR SOME QUICKER QUICKIES: At least ten Mexican states plus Mexico City are considering bills that would ban children from buying junk food. Under the proposals, sugar-sweetened drinks and highly processed foods would be restricted much like alcohol and tobacco, and prohibited for purchase by anyone under age eighteen. Several United Nations agencies including the World Health Organization have expressed support for the new laws. Soft drink lobbyists say their products are being unfairly demonized. They would, though. After an emergency session, the European Union has decided not to certify the results of the election in Belarus, and will refuse to recognize Alexander Lukashenko (LUKE-UH-SHENK-OH) as president. Meanwhile, the Guardian reported, riot police have returned the streets of the capitol, Minsk. And the Belarusian defence ministry has ordered an increased military presence along the borders with Poland and Lithuania. EU sanctions against Lukashenko and his aides at this point seem likely. The leaders of a military coup in Mali say they plan to hold new elections, one day after arresting the president and the prime minister. Five colonels appeared in a video message broadcast yesterday morning. But according to the New York Times a general in the military also led the coup. That general, Cheick Fanta Mady Dembele, is reportedly staying in the shadows because he was trained in France, and the coup leaders do not want to be associated with the former colonial power. On the same day his White House press secretary repeated his threat to reject the result of the election, Donald Trump endorsed the Q-Anon movement. Asked twice in a press conference about conspiracy theorists who believe he is saving the world from satanic pedophiles and cannibals, Trump asked, rhetorically, is that supposed to be a bad thing or a good thing? Then he said QUOTE if I can help save the world from problems, I will do it. And we are, actually. We are saving the world from a radical left philosophy ENDQUOTE. Trump cast Q-Anon believers as patriots. He also repeated his threat to deploy federal troops to Democratic Party strongholds such as Portland, New York, and Chicago. That’s all for the AM Quickie. Join us this afternoon on the Majority Report. Aug 20, 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: Postmaster General Louis DeJoy is backpedaling as fast as possible after finally facing some Congressional pushback, and now claims that his aggressive cost cutting measures will be rolled back before the election. Meanwhile, it’s night two of the DNC, which is now basically just the RNC from 2004 -- we’ve got Colin Powell up tonight and a tribute to Cindy McCain, while the party quietly eliminates language that calls for an end to fossil fuel subsidies. And lastly, the GOP led Senate Panel, after much hemming and hawing, reveals some pretty conclusive evidence in the Russiagate scandal. Maybe now we can move on? THESE ARE THE STORIES YOU NEED TO KNOW There is a small light at the end of the fascist tunnel for the Post Office, as public pressure appears to have cowed Trump lackey Louis DeJoy. DeJoy, the postmaster general who previously ordered aggressive cost-cutting measures that crippled the already-struggling agency’s ability to do its jobs, now claims he will roll back some of those cuts until after the election, to quote “avoid even the appearance of any impact on election mail.” endquote. Unfortunately, it’s a bit too late for that: we all know the score. But the blatant nature of DeJoy’s corruption appears to have provoked enough backlash that things might slightly change. Like many of Trump’s corrupt schemes, this one appears to be partly undone because the administration didn’t quite dot the “i”s and cross the t’s legally. Two states, Washington and Pennsylvania, have filed lawsuits against the government to challenge DeJoy’s policies. Per CNN, Washington State Attorney General Bob Ferguson claims Dejoy quote “acted outside of his authority to implement changes to the postal system, and did not follow the proper procedures under federal law.” DeJoy’s cost cutting measures like slashed overtime, reduced office hours, and processing facility closures would be postponed, but we know that’s not going to be enough -- we’re going to have to pump way more funding into the agency rather than just stop the bleeding**:** DNC Night 2: Party Like It's the RNC '04 Night two of the RNC, sorry, I mean DNC, but honestly, it’s getting hard to tell at this point. On Tuesday, Biden’s GOP buddies included Colin Powell, who has endorsed Democrats in the past. Powell has also, of course, lied to the American public in order to sell us on the Iraq war, but we can’t hold that against him. If supporting the Iraq war were a disqualifying factor in Democratic politics, of course, Joe Biden wouldn’t be the nominee. But he is, and plenty of Democrats are pleased about that. Biden formally got the nomination tonight, beating Bernie Sanders in the official delegate count. Progressive Rep. AOC was one of two speakers who nominated Sanders, not Biden, which immediately caused something of a centrist panic online. What they don’t realize is that AOC’s speech is a traditional formality when there’s a runner-up candidate like Bernie whose name is still on the convention’s ballots. AOC used her time well, giving a forceful, short speech shouting out several progressive causes and problems with the country, like the looming eviction crisis, that have until now gone unnoticed by the Democrats and Republicans at the convention. Meanwhile, in a blink-and-you’ll miss it moment, the Huffington Post reported on Tuesday that the DNC had quietly dropped language from its party platform that demanded an end to fossil fuel subsidies. Says a lot about whose votes they’re gunning for. And on that note -- we also heard from Cindy McCain, who spoke about her husband’s long friendship with Biden. That sounds lovely for them. McCain presence fit the issue of national security that other speakers, like former Secretary of State John Kerry, also spoke on -- hyping up Biden’s steady hand over the military, which in context basically means he won’t tweet at Iran as much but might bomb them anyway. To close out the night, Jill Biden spoke as a character witness for her husband, who joined her briefly at the end of her speech. We’ll surely be seeing a whole lot more of them as the week goes on. Senate Finds Russiagate Dirt A massive Senate report on Tuesday confirmed what most sane people already knew: Trump campaign officials in 2016 had contact with Russian intelligence officers, Kremlin officials and other Russian nationals. Russiagate isn’t the only reason Trump won the 2016 election, of course, but Tuesday’s report shows that even the GOP-led Senate has been forced to admit that members of the Trump campaign actively sought Russian help, and the Russians, in some cases, provided it. The Senate report, like Robert Mueller’s exhaustive, exhausting investigation, stopped short of calling the contacts “collusion,” but that’s basically just semantics. What the new report shows is that Paul Manafort buddy Konstantin V. Kilimnik was in fact a Russian intelligence officer, and that Kilimnik had ties to the Russian government’s election interference operations. Russiagate can be a fraught topic on the left, as it’s been used as a cudgel and a crutch by liberals trying to find a scapegoat to blame for botching the 2016 election and dooming the country to at least four years of Trump. But you don’t have to go full Red Scare to acknowledge the facts that the Mueller investigation and the new Senate report show. Maybe once we’re all on the same page, we can move on and make sure neither the foreign interference or the embarrassing loss to a fascist candidate ever happen again. AND NOW FOR SOME QUICKER QUICKIES Notre Dame University has become the latest college to rapidly shut down after opening for the school year, canceling in-person classes after an outbreak. Michigan State and UNC-Chapel Hill both took similar steps almost immediately after starting classes. Seems like... maybe opening schools isn’t the right idea right now. Well folks, it actually happened. Notorious weird islamophobic troll Laura Loomer won her primary in Florida’s 21st congressional district. The 21st is heavily Democratic, so it’s highly unlikely Loomer will actually win, but it’s sure setting up one hell of a surreal general election. Elsewhere in Florida’s primary, the Bernie Sanders-backed candidate for Ninth Circuit State Attorney, Monique Worrell, won election and will replace departing Democrat Aramis Ayala. Worrell is a staunch criminal justice reform advocate, and is now in a position to really change lives in the state. And finally, cops in Portsmouth, Virginia are doing their level best to sideline a progressive prosecutor from handling cases relating to the vandalism of Confederate monuments. The same cops, of course, are pushing for felony charges for civil rights leaders and public defenders who participated in protests that damaged the statues. That’s all for the Majority Report’s AM Quickie today. Stay tuned for more DNC madness with the full show this afternoon. Aug 19, 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: We just wrapped up night one of the Democratic National Convention, featuring Republican John Kasich, Republican Meg Whitman, and surprise, a few actual Democrats. Bernie Sanders was there too. Here’s what went down. Meanwhile, new details in the strange story of Alex Morse’s Congressional Campaign show that the Massachusetts Democratic Party conspired with and urged College Democrats to delete communications records that allegedly outlined their campaign to smear Morse with sexual impropriety. And lastly, Donald Trump finalizes a plan to open up an Arctic nature sanctuary to oil and gas drilling. THESE ARE THE STORIES YOU NEED TO KNOW: The DNC kicked off Monday night and oh boy. Well. We’re one night down at least. For some reason, the Democrats front-loaded their convention with a line of Republican speakers, including abortion and unions opponent John Kasich, Quibi CEO and former Republican Rep Meg Whitman, and more. Eventually, some actual Democrats did speak, but there wasn’t much in the way of political platform. Instead, Images of black people hugging cops followed by testimonials from the families of George Floyd and Eric Garner. Andrew Cuomo went on and pretended his mistakes didn’t kill thousands of Americans in New York City. The DNC did give runner-up Bernie Sanders a chance to speak, and he wasted no time, giving the first substantive discussion of Biden’s platform. It was pretty depressing to hear him champion Biden’s health plan, which is very much not Medicare for All, but you can tell the guy is just trying to do his part in beating Trump. He sucked it up for Hillary and he’ll do it again. Michelle Obama, the night’s headliner, closed out the evening with an impassioned speech about Biden’s merits and the value of empathy, which was pretty effective in striking a contrast between what the Trump campaign and RNC will offer. But will the vague emotional tone get the Democrats across the finish line? We’ve probably got two more days of it at least, so I guess we’ll find out! Mass Dems Plotted Against Morse A new report by the Intercept shows some shocking new details in the strange smear campaign against Alex Morse, a progressive candidate for Congress in Massachusettes’s Democratic Primary. The Intercept reports that the executive director of the Massachusetts Democratic Party, Veronica Martinez, told student leaders that UMass Amherst to delete communications records between them and the state party. The offending messages could implicate that the party organized the strange purity scandal around Morse. The initial scandal was always strange. Morse, who is in his early 30s and openly gay, was accused of sleeping with students at UMass, where he was an adjunct professor. But none of the students made accusations that the sex was anything but consensual. Several days later, the Intercept reported that members of the Massachusetts college democrats association had a long-running scheme to smear Morse with rumors of sexual impropriety. Now, the new reporting shows that the Massachusettes state party may have been in on it too. The context here is that Morse is an open progressive who’s running to take down Rep. Richard Neal, the chair of the powerful Ways and Means committee. The state’s primary is on September 1, but even throughout the strange scandal the Morse campaign’s internal polls show them within 5 points of Neal. After the victories of Jamal Bowman and Cori Rice against longtime Democratic incumbents, it’s pretty clear that some party insiders are willing to stoop to some pretty low lows to make sure some centrists keep their seats. Trump Lets Big Oil into Arctic The Trump administration finalized a plan to turn over the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to oil and gas developers, overturning decades of protection for the country’s largest remaining stretch of wilderness. Advocates quickly denounced the move, obviously, because it’s a gift to environmentally destructive companies that can’t wait to savage the land. Steve Blackledge, senior conservation program director for Environment America, said quote: "The door is being flung wide open for oil and gas drilling to impose irreversible harm to one of America's iconic spaces. Claims that this thoroughly invasive industrial work can be done in an environmentally responsible way are either naive or, even worse, cynically deceptive." That pretty much sums it up. According to Common Dreams, Blackledge said Trump’s interior department’s plans for the region were quote “wrongheaded and tragic.” Opponents are sure to challenge the move in court, but if Trump gets a second term, we can imagine far more of the same. AND NOW FOR SOME QUICKER QUICKIES: Common Dreams reports that according to new research, just 12 billionaires have now amassed a combined wealth of 1 trillion dollars. Some of the top of that list, like Jeff Bezos, have seen their net worth skyrocket by dozens of billions of dollars even in the midst of the pandemic. California’s Death Valley hit 130 degrees Fahrenheit on Sunday, which, if confirmed, would be the region’s hottest temperature since 1913. Climate activists warned that unless we make some changes soon, that record will get broken a whole lot sooner this time. According to the Mississippi Free Press, 71 of the state’s 82 counties are now reporting coronavirus outbreaks in schools, with more than 2500 students and teachers in quarantine. For many schools, it’s only the second day of classes. And finally, Postmaster General LaJoy has agreed to testify before the House on August 24, as Democrats pressure the Senate to come back and get a deal to save the post office on the table. Will it work? Let’s not go there just yet. That’s all for the Majority Report’s AM Quickie today. Stay tuned for the full show with Sam this afternoon. Aug 18, 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: Donald Trump’s war on the postal service continues, and the House agrees to reconvene to try to fight back as distressing reports filter in of the agency removing post office boxes from streets. Meanwhile, a new report shows that the Trump administration has been using a private security company to detain migrant children and their families at major hotel chains before ejecting them from the country. And lastly, protests intensify in Chicago, Stone Mountain Georgia, and Portland Oregon, as Black Lives Matter protesters clash with right wing nationalists and fascist cops alike. THESE ARE THE STORIES YOU NEED TO KNOW: Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi called her part of Congress back late on Sunday night, saying that the Democrat-led House of Representatives would meet in order to pass emergency legislation that would help save the U.S. Postal Service before the November election. Trump has been systematically destroying the Post Office for months, using his pet Postmaster General Louis DeJoy to gut the organization in order to cast more doubts on nationwide voting by mail. So far, according to the Washington Post, DeJoy has used absurd cost cutting measures to slash post carriers’ overtime and other strategies to get the mail on time, as well as removing physical inventory like mail-sorting machines and making it so mail-in ballots are no longer automatically sorted as priority mail. Reporters and social media users in multiple cities reported the Postal Service physically removing its own letter boxes from the streets as part of a scaling-back process. According to CNN, the agency says it will stop this practice for at least the next 90 days, which is good news for the election, but it’s completely clear the DeJoy is trying to demolish any chance of a workable mail-voting system before Trump goes up against Biden. The House is back in session this week to pass a bill putting a band-aid on this, but you can imagine how far that’s going to get with the Republican Senate. At least they’re trying. Trump Keeping Migrant Kids in Hotels A new report by the New York Times shows that despite the catastrophic pandemic, the Trump administration is still finding new and depraved ways to treat immigrant families on the border. According to the Times, government data and private court documents show that the Trump administration has massively increased detentions of migrants in private hotel chains before deporting them, often placing children as young as a year old under the supervision of transportation workers not licensed to provide child care. At first glance, this doesn’t sound so bad: a hotel room is likely far more comfortable that the dystopian concentration camps that the Trump administration is also using to detain kids and adults on the border. But as the Times notes, this is all being done by a private security company called MVM Inc, which is completely outside of the scope or oversight of normal government operations: there’s no accountability or transparency here. The new wave of expulsions are justified under Trump’s new pandemic border rules, which is basically just kicking people out of the country en masse, including unaccompanied children, without any thought to the consequences or the condition of the people under their care. The Times reports that under the new policy, most children just put on planes and sent back to their home countries, though some get turned over to child services in Mexico, which often forces parents into confusing, desperate searches to track them down. Protests Continue in Portland, Chicago, Stone Mountain Widespread protests continued to rage across the country this weekend, with major actions in Portland, Oregon, Stone Mountain, Georgia and Chicago, Illinois. We’ll run down some of the major events. In Portland, far-right members of the Patriot Prayer and Proud Boys clashed with protesters and allegedly fired a gun, while other members dueled with paintball guns and mace. Some reports on social media suggested that a small plastic pipe bomb was tossed as well. In Stone Mountain, Georgia Black Lives Matter counterprotesters faced down a smaller contingent of white nationalist three-percenter militia members who had applied for a permit to hold a rally in the park, ostensibly to defend the massive Confederate monument there. In both of these places it looks like the far right is getting more and more bold in pushing for conflict with protesters. And in Chicago, the police cracked down hard on protests and again blamed outside agitators for escalating demonstrations, despite evidence that the cops used aggressive tactics like kettling and baton charges. Chicago Police claim that 17 officers were injured during a protest on Saturday. There’s no clear accounting on how many protesters have been hurt so far, of course. AND NOW FOR SOME QUICKER QUICKIES: The big story this week we didn’t get to up top is that the Democratic National Convention starts this week. Because pretty much everything in Milwaulkee is canceled, DNC officials are going to try to juggle hundreds of different live streams to keep the atmosphere festive and lively for... well, whoever’s actually watching. Tune in! What could go wrong. In case you were wondering how the rich and famous are faring through all this: a new report by the New York Times shows that the wealthy elites are throwing parties in the Hamptons and other wealthy enclaves where private, lightning-fast coronavirus testing happens at the door, provided you can pay. Gee, I wonder who’s going to get the vaccine first when it comes out? In a surreal turn of events, a Government Accountability Audit shows that Acting DHS secretary Chad Wolf, as well as deputy secretary Ken Cuccinelli may have been illegally appointed to their positions by the Trump administration. These are the guys ordering many of the federal goons breaking up protests, who may not even legally deserve the authority they’re abusing. And finally, the Trump administration is planning to jack up the costs involved with becoming a U.S. citizen in the fall, as part of a systemic push to keep poorer immigrants out of the country. That’s all for the Majority Report’s AM quickie today. Stay tuned for the full show with Sam this afternoon. Aug 17, 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: We no longer have to wonder whether Donald Trump will try to sabotage the election by making it really hard to vote by mail. He just came out and said it. Meanwhile, the stress of the coronavirus pandemic is really getting to people. A new survey shows Americans are more anxious, depressed, and traumatized than ever. And lastly, hundreds of people swarmed an Immigration and Customs Enforcement vehicle to prevent two men from getting taken away from their families. We’ll take a look at this flash mob for justice came together. THESE ARE THE STORIES YOU NEED TO KNOW: Donald Trump now admits he wants to deny twenty five billion dollars in emergency funding to the US Postal Service in order to prevent mail-in voting from functioning smoothly during the coronavirus pandemic. He’s basically bragging about trying to rig the election, while complaining that the election will be rigged. Typical. Yesterday, in an interview with Fox News, Trump laid out his thinking in denying funding for the Postal Service. He said QUOTE they need that money in order to make the Post Office work, so it can take all of these millions and millions of ballots... Now, if we don’t make a deal, that means they don’t get the money. That means they can’t have universal mail-in voting -- they just can’t have it. Sort of a crazy thing, ENDQUOTE. Yeah, sort of a crazy thing, you might say. A spokesman for Joe Biden said Trump is QUOTE sabotaging a basic service that hundreds of millions of people rely upon, [and] cutting a critical lifeline for rural economies and for delivery of medicines, because he wants to deprive Americans of their fundamental right to vote safely ENDQUOTE. Separetely, Vice News reported that the Postal Service’s management is removing mail sorting machines from facilities around the country without any explanation. These machines are the same ones that will be used to sort ballots for the November presidential election. A postal worker who spoke to Vice compared it to a grocery store removing one-third of the checkout machines and expecting the same level of customer service. While the consequences of removing the machines has yet to be felt, Vice reports that the decision fits with a pattern of sudden, opaque, and drastic changes made by the new Postmaster General, Louis DeJoy, in his first two months on the job. DeJoy is a longtime Republican fundraiser and Trump donor. Go figure! His real job seems to be bureaucratic sabotage. Survey shows Americans depressed Americans are losing it, according to a new study by the Centers for Disease Control. And the pandemic is to blame. The study surveyed more than fifty-four hundred Americans, according to Yahoo News. Nearly forty-one percent of people reported at least one mental or behavioral health problem. Approximately one in three suffered from anxiety or depression. One in four showed symptoms of a traumatic disorder. One in five said they were using drugs or alcohol more heavily – or, for the first time – in order to cope. One in ten said they had seriously considered suicide. That’s really bad! Please call someone if you are feeling that way. They’re pretty sure the pandemic is to blame because it’s not the first time the CDC has carried out this mental health survey. Compared to the same period last year, frequency of anxiety symptoms tripled. Depression quadrupled. And serious suicidal ideation doubled. More than ninety percent said they were not being treated for anxiety, depression or posttraumatic stress before the pandemic struck. Compared to other demographics, younger adults, non-whites, essential workers and unpaid adult caregivers are faring QUOTE disproportionately worse ENDQUOTE. As if the coronavirus itself wasn’t bad enough. Can we get some Medicare for All please? Activists surround ICE vehicle Early on Wednesday morning, Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents arrested two men in Bend, Oregon, then loaded the men onto buses. One of the men, named Marcos, was allowed to call his wife at around one in the afternoon. That call set off a chain reaction on social media, and soon people began driving from all over central Oregon to surround the ICE buses. Hundreds of people swarmed the area and spotted the buses in a parking lot behind a hotel. Some people, including a member of the city council, parked their cars in front of the buses to prevent them from leaving. Others simply stood in front of the ICE vehicles. According to Oregon Public Broadcasting, family members of the detained men wept against the sides of the bus, pleading with the ICE contractors operating the bus to allow them to give the men food and water. A small boy cried: “Papa, Papa, I love you.” This went on for ten hours. Local police came, first in SWAT attire, then in regular uniforms. Then the local police chief made a personal appearance and warned the crowd that more federal agents were on their way. Around eleven o’clock at night, more Border Patrol officers showed up and pepper sprayed some people in the crowd. The agents succeeded in removing their colleagues as well as the detained men. But civil liberties groups used the time they gained thanks to the impromptu action to file an emergency motion in federal court on behalf of the men. The motion seeks to prevent the men from being removed from central Oregon and taken away from their families. The local district attorney, John Hummel, later wrote QUOTE I’ve never been so disgusted by my government, and so proud of my community ENDQUOTE. AND NOW FOR SOME QUICKER QUICKIES: Israel and the United Arab Emirates have struck a deal to normalize their diplomatic relations. As part of the deal, Israel will reportedly forego its attempts to annex more land in the West Bank. In a White House statement, Trump took credit for brokering the agreement, but his actual involvement remains unclear. From Gaza, Hamas denounced the deal and called it QUOTE tantamount to a free reward for the Israeli occupation ENDQUOTE. The Trump administration is getting rid of environmental rule limiting how much methane oil and gas companies can allow to leak into the atmosphere from wells, pipelines, and storage tanks. This is a terrible idea, because methane warms the atmosphere even faster than carbon dioxide. Environmental Protection Agency administrator Andrew Wheeler announced the new rule in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, making no attempt to hide the fact that it’s an election-year political gambit. Sad! The city council in Austin, Texas, approved a new budget yesterday that cuts one hundred and fifty million dollars from the city’s police force. Some twenty million in cuts will take effect immediately. According to the Austin-American Statesman, much of the police funding will be redirected to a wide variety of programs and departments, including emergency medical services, mental health response, a family violence shelter, parks and trails, abortion access, and substance abuse care. The new budget was approved unanimously, after months of public outcry over police brutality. South Dakota Governor Kristi Noem plans to build a wall around her official residence. The project, budgeted at four hundred thousand dollars, consists of eight-foot-tall fencing made of powder-coated steel. The governor’s office cannot cite any specific threats to justify the expense, according to CBS News. An earlier design for the wall included a guardhouse but that feature has apparently been dropped. What, no machine gun turrets? Why is Governor Noem caving to the libs? That’s all for the AM Quickie. Join us this afternoon on the Majority Report. Aug 14 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: It’s a victory for teachers unions in New Jersey as the state reconsiders its requirement for in-person classes. Can their campaign be replicated elsewhere students, teachers, and families remain at risk due to COVID-19? Meanwhile, Joe Biden and Kamala Harris make their first appearance together in Delaware. Reviews are encouraging, but mixed. And lastly, a big win for the birds! A federal judge overturned a Trump administration rule change that let oil companies off the hook for killing wildlife en masse. THESE ARE THE STORIES YOU NEED TO KNOW: Teachers unions at a single district in New Jersey forced a statewide policy reversal from the governor over safety concerns in schools. Some four hundred out of a total two thousand teachers at the Elizabeth school district opted out of teaching in-person classes, citing health fears on account of the coronavirus pandemic. Governor Phil Murphy had originally mandated that all New Jersey schools offer in-person learning. But after the strong showing by teachers in Elizabeth, Murphy changed his tune. On Monday, the district voted to begin the school year with all-online learning for twenty-eight thousand students, blaming COVID-19 and the subsequent teacher shortage. Then, late on Tuesday, in a joint statement with principals and administrators, the teachers union called for online learning statewide. The statement called for swift and decisive action from the governor. The union said that while remote education cannot replace in-person instruction, QUOTE we believe that a carefully planned, well-resourced remote education plan is better than the dangerous, uncertain in- person alternative currently available to us ENDQUOTE. Yesterday, Murphy, an ally of the teachers union, finally dropped the in-person learning requiorement. The union wasn’t alone in its campaign. The mayor of Newark, a former high school principal, had advised parents to keep their kids home from school on account of the risk. And while opinions remain divided among parents, students, and teachers, one parent told CBS News why she thought holding classes online for now was the right choice. She said, QUOTE do we really want to risk our children going back to school, getting sick and getting all the other kids sick, and then we are all back lock down all over again? ENDQUOTE. Well, when you put it like that, no, I guess we don’t really want that. Biden, Harris appear together Joe Biden and Kamala Harris made their first joint appearance as a presidential ticket yesterday in Wilmington, Delaware. Calling Harris an honorary Biden, the former vice president said QUOTE we both believe we can define America in one word: possibilities. Possibilities. Let me say it again: possibilities ENDQUOTE. Harris attacked Donald Trump’s leadership failures and said it’s all on the line for America in this election. She said, QUOTE the case against Donald Trump and Mike Pence is open and shut... Electing Joe Biden is just the start of the work that’s ahead of us ENDQUOTE. After their speeches, CNN reported, the two Democratic candidates held an online fundraiser for small-dollar donors. According to the Wall Street Journal, Wall Street breathed a sigh of relief when Biden chose Harris to be his number two. In Harris’s home state of California, reaction was a mixture of excitement and doubts, given the familiarity voters have there with Harris’s record as a US Senator as well as a prosecutor. Melina Abdullah, co-founder of Black Lives Matter Los Angeles, told the LA Times that she would’ve preferred a more progressive candidate as Biden’s vice presidential pick. However, she said, BLM leaders did have several positive interactions with Harris shortly after the group was founded. Separately, the New York Times reported that Donald Trump’s son-in-law and key adviser Jared Kushner met with the rapper Kanye West last weekend. West is running his own Quixotic campaign for president and will appear on the ballot in at least a few states. According to the Times, West did not deny that he was running as a spoiler. Judge restores conservation rule A federal judge in New York overturned rule changes by the Trump administration that allowed corporations and individuals to kill vast numbers of birds. Trump changed the environmental rule in order to benefit oil companies, which had paid most of the fines under the Migratory Bird Treaty Act of 1918. The law covered a wide range of birds including eagles, red knots, Canada geese and vultures, according to the Washington Post. Trump changed the way it was interpreted two years ago, and required US Fish and Wildlife Service police to enforce the act only if they could prove violators intended to harm birds. In other words, if companies killed birds accidentally as part of their operations, they got a pass. That suited companies like BP just fine. The 2010 Deepwater Horizon spill killed an estimated one million birds. Under Trump’s interpretation of the law, they wouldn’t have been liable for that particular crime against nature. But US District Judge Valerie Caproni restored the plain meaning of the law in her ruling yesterday. Eight state attorneys general had joined the National Audubon Society and other conservation groups in challenging the Trump rule. Judge Caproni wrote QUOTE it is not only a sin to kill a mockingbird, it is also a crime. That has been the letter of the law for the past century. But if the Department of the Interior ha[d] its way, many mockingbirds and other migratory birds that delight people and support ecosystems throughout the country w[ould] be killed without legal consequence ENDQUOTE. In a joint statement, more than a thousand species of birds tweeted their thanks. AND NOW FOR SOME QUICKER QUICKIES: Bloomberg News reported that Trump has said privately he plans to replace Defense Secretary Mark Esper, a former Raytheon lobbyist, after the November election. For his part, Esper claims he plans to leave the administration regardless of the election’s outcome. Trump was reportedly mad that Esper didn’t get on board with deploying active-duty military to put down Black Lives Matter protests around the country. So there’s at least one functioning brain cell between them. More than six thousand people have reportedly been arrested in Belarus after three nights of protests against alleged vote-rigging in Sunday’s presidential election. The main opposition candidate fled to Lithuania following threats to her children. The election commission declared a landslide victory for incumbent President Alexander Lukashenko. In Minsk yesterday, hundreds of women formed a human chain to protest against police brutality and mass arrests, the Guardian reported. The women wore white and held flowers. The Colorado attorney general has opened a so-called pattern and practice investigation into the Aurora Police Department. The investigation centers on the death of Elijah McClain, a young Black man who died in Aurora police custody last year. The AG’s announcement came the same day that McClain’s family filed a federal lawsuit against the department. Police Chief Vanessa Wilson pledged QUOTE full cooperation ENDQUOTE, but the Aurora Police Association has declined comment. The chief executive of Uber says the company will shut down service in California if a judge does not overturn an unfavorable ruling. On Monday, a judge granted an injunction against the company that forbids it from classifying its drivers as independent contractors when they are in fact employees. But yesterday Uber CEO Dara Khosrowshahi told MSNBC that the company would rather shut down temporarily than comply with the law. Sounds like a personal problem! Aug 13 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: A conspiracy theory popular with fans of Donald Trump has found millions of followers through Facebook. Why is Mark Zuckerberg letting Q-Anon run amok on his platforms? Meanwhile, five states held elections yesterday, and Minnesota Congresswoman Ilhan Omar is among those facing a primary challenger. Politics keeps happening outside the Democratic Party veepstakes, but don’t worry, we’ve got the news there, too. And lastly, Russia claims to have developed a coronavirus vaccine. But critics are warning that it hasn’t gone through full clinical trials. THESE ARE THE STORIES YOU NEED TO KNOW: A new investigation by the Guardian points to the crucial role of Facebook in spreading insane Q-Anon propaganda around the world. The investigation documented more than one hundred and seventy Q-Anon groups, pages and accounts on Facebook and Instagram. Altogether, they have more than four and a half million followers in at least fifteen countries. That’s a whole lot of crazy. The Q-Anon cult promotes the idea that Donald Trump is a holy force guided by an intricate plan to root out a deep-state cabal of child-abusing politicians and celebrities. It almost goes without saying that there’s no evidence for any of this – but apparently, it does need saying. If anyone should be answering questions about his ties to shadowy sex traffickers, it’s Donald Trump. You may remember, Trump recently sent well-wishes to the late sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein’s accomplice, Ghislaine Maxwell, who is now in custody awaiting trial. While Twitter recently cracked down on Q-Anon promoters on its platform, Facebook is reportedly allowing these conspiracy theorists to flourish. The largest groups have more than two hundred thousand members. Facebook says it bans groups that violate its rules, but the company seems to be habitually behind the ball. A Harvard researcher quoted by the Guardian said Facebook needs to proceed carefully. Banning Q-Anon pages without an explanation may only reinforce the paranoid beliefs of adherents. What might help, the expert concluded, would be QUOTE factual interventions ENDQUOTE from conservative media outlets. Good luck putting that together. Let us know how it goes. Ilhan Omar faces off against primary challenger Elections wrapped up yesterday in Connecticut, Georgia, Minnesota, Vermont, and Wisconsin. In Georgia’s Fourteenth Congressional District, there was Republican primary runoff. One of the candidates, Marjorie Taylor Greene, is a Q-Anon conspiracy theorist. Her more conventional Republican opponent, John Cowan, trailed far behind Greene in the June primary. Per CNN, Greene won some forty percent of the vote in that prior contest, while Cowan received only twenty-one percent. If that pattern holds, the up-and-coming Congressional Q-Anon Caucus will be adding another member. The highest-profile Democratic primary contest yesterday pit incumbent Squad member Ilhan Omar of Minnesota against Antone Melton-Meaux, a lawyer and professional mediator. Despite her popularity across the state and the country, Melton-Meaux has tried to portray Omar as out of touch with the people in her district, and thus turn her celebrity into a disadvantage. The challenger has put together a sizable war chest with the help of donors who don’t like Omar’s critical position on Israel. Omar had raised some four point three million dollars at last report, while Melton-Meaux raised four point one million. Addressing her opponent’s criticisms, Omar told ABC News that QUOTE even in the face of death threats, I have made it my top priority to be in the community with Minnesotans and listen to them ENDQUOTE. Watch for results in the days ahead – or possibly weeks, in the event of a close race. Russia rushes coronavirus vaccine There is some well-justified international skepticism about this news, but it’s still worth reporting: Russia yesterday announced that it was the first country to develop a vaccine for the coronavirus. Scientists at Moscow’s Gamaleya Institute developed and tested the vaccine without large-scale clinical trials, leading global health experts to emphasize caution. But president Vladimir Putin vouched for it and said that one of his two daughters had been given a dose. The vaccine is named Sputnik Five, in a reference to Russia’s Cold War satellite that kicked off the space race. The United States, China, and other countries are engaged in a race of sorts to develop a coronavirus vaccine, and Russia was clearly keen to declare victory. Last month the US, Britain, and Canada accused Russian hackers of stealing vaccine research. However thorough the testing was or wasn’t, millions of Russians, beginning with front-line workers such as teachers, will receive the vaccine this fall. Doctors could begin receiving the vaccine as early as this month. If the vaccine is faulty it could cause a number of problems, experts said. Among other things, it could render those inoculated more vulnerable to severe forms of COVID-19, the New York Times reported. Putin said the vaccine will be voluntary. However, coercion is possible if employers in Russia and beyond demand their workers take a drug that hasn’t been fully tested. Whether it works or not, vaccine politics is about to get even more weird and hostile. AND NOW FOR SOME QUICKER QUICKIES: Joe Biden picked California Senator Kamala Harris as his running mate yesterday, in a much-anticipated decision. In a tweet, Biden called Harris QUOTE a fearless fighter for the little guy, and one of the country’s finest public servants ENDQUOTE. Harris will become the first Black woman and first Asian-American to be nominated for the vice presidency by a major party. (Harris’s parents are from India and Jamaica.) Expect to hear more about this all week. It’s not like Biden has much else to talk about. More than eight hundred students and forty teachers in Cherokee County, Georgia, were told to quarantine after possible coronavirus exposure. The school district there has been open for less than a week, according to the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. Most students have opted to attend in person rather than take online classes, as the quarantined students will now be doing. I’m no expert but this all seems preventable. A fifteen-year-old student in Michigan who was placed in juvenile detention for failing to do her homework has been removed from probation. The victory for the student, known as Grace, and her family came after the investigative news website ProPublica took up her case. Grace, who is Black and has ADHD, had reportedly struggled with the abrupt shift to online coursework. Hours after the Seattle City Council voted to cut the local police budget by three million dollars, the city’s police chief, Carmen Best, announced her retirement. In addition to shrinking the force by up to one hundred officers, the cuts would have reduced the chief’s pay. Socialist City Council member Kshama Sawant voted against the defunding measure, saying it didn’t go nearly far enough, according to the Washington Post. Former Chief Best said QUOTE when it’s time, it’s time ENDQUOTE. Time to retire on that sweet public pension. That’s all for the AM Quickie. Join us this afternoon on the Majority Report. Aug 12, 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: Biden will announce his VP pick tomorrow, or maybe he won’t!. Also, AOC at the DNC, Trump wants to break the law at Gettysburg, and more: we’re doing a politics funbag at the top of the night. Meanwhile, Donald Trump’s administration is circulating a proposal that would crack down on immigration on the Mexican border to absurd levels, even preventing some legal citizens from entering the country if they’re suspected of carrying the coronavirus. And lastly, Chicago police say they’ve arrested over 100 after a night of chaotic protests and looting broke out on Sunday following a fortunately non-fatal shooting by the police. THESE ARE THE STORIES YOU NEED TO KNOW: Joe Biden has selected a vice presidential running mate. Or maybe he hasn’t! Either way, he’s not telling, but that’s not stopping literally anyone from speculating wildly. Take the New York Times, for instance, published a full story on Monday basically saying welp, he’s talked to everyone! Now the decision will come... some time. It might be today, but other people think it might be wednesday. And no one knows who it’ll be, though Kamala Harris, Susan Rice, and Elizabeth Warren are all in the running, along with a handful of others. Anyway, let’s move on to more concrete news: the DNC. Against all odds, New York Rep. Alexandria Ocasio Cortez is getting a speaking slot, playing opener to Bernie Sanders. Kinda wild the DNC took this long to announce that, considering they had literal Republican John Kasich all lined up weeks ago. Over on the Republican side, Trump is planning some more breaches of decorum and possibly the law: he wants to accept his party’s nomination at Gettysburg. But that’s a major breach of ethics, as doing partisan business on federal property is generally seen as a no-no. He’ll probably end up doing whatever he wants! In the final miscellaneous event of note today, Trump was rushed out of a press briefing by the Secret Service after a shooting outside of the White House. Secret Service agents allegedly shot someone after a disturbance near the fence. Trump walked back into the briefing after a few minutes, perhaps in an attempt to save face from the time he got caught hiding in the presidential bunker during protests. Trump May Try to Stop Citizens at Border LUCIE: The Trump administration is reportedly considering its harshest immigration restriction yet, in this case circulating a proposal that would preventing some legal citizens from entering the country from Mexico if they’re suspected of carrying the coronavirus. That Trump is singling out the Mexican border isn’t surprising, but it is open evidence that there’s nothing behind this order other than blatant racism. It would have literally no effect on cases in the U.S., as the disease is spreading unfettered in our own communities here, but would largely make the lives of latino Americans and their families incredibly difficult on the border. What Trump is doing with this order is again trying to use Mexico as a scapegoat for all his problems. He figures if he can blame rising coronavirus on Mexico, it’ll distract some of his core base from realizing how utterly he failed them this year. And he’s clearly willing to do whatever it takes to do that, including barring U.S. citizens from their own country. Keep in mind, he might not have the legal authority to do it, of course, and none of this is law yet. But if it does come down, we all know what it’s for. Chicago Protests Flare Up In Chicago, a day and night of confusion on Sunday ripped up parts of the city, as protesters took to the streets after reports of a police shooting. On Monday, Chicago police said they’d arrested over 100 people, and that 13 cops had been injured during the demonstrations, which also spilled over into widespread looting. Part of the community’s fury on Sunday night was driven by mistaken rumors, that said the police had shot dead a 15-year-old boy. However, authorities claim that the police were fired upon by a 20 year old suspect, who they shot but did not kill. The suspect is reportedly in stable condition at the hospital. The suspect’s brother, however, denied that his sibling fired at the police in an interview with the Chicago Sun-Times. Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot said the looting was quote “straight up felony criminal conduct,”and quote “an assault on our city” endquote, but it’s pretty clear that the public’s relationship with the police is so strained it could boil over at any second, which is always going to cause collateral damage. Chicago police closed down roads and streets in the business district that saw much of the looting and in downtown Chicago on Monday night as well. AND NOW FOR SOME QUICKER QUICKIES: Belarus also erupted in protests after its strongman leader Aleksandr Lukashenko won a ludicrous 80 percent of the vote in a highly sketchy election and then cracked down on dissent. Lukashenko’s police have brutally attacked protesters and arrested at least 14 journalists for covering the demonstrations. NCAA football players are undergoing a remarkable organizing push under two joined campaigns, hashtag #WeAreUnited and #WeWantToPlay, which unite two groups of players pushing for a college football season to go ahead, but only if the schools involved commit to stringent coronavirus prevention protocol and support for the athletes involved. It’s not quite a college football players union yet, but it’s getting there. The newspaper guild members of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette voted overwhelmingly, 88-31, in favor of authorizing a strike at the paper. If the News Guild leadership signs off on it, it’ll add a huge weapon to the arsenal of a group of journalists who have been fighting their owners’ anti-union lawyers over a new contract for three and a half years. A freak storm packing 100 mile per hour winds, known as a “derecho” swept across the Midwest on Monday, snapping trees and flipping vehicles across Iowa, Indiana, Michigan and other regions, leaving several injured and thousands without power. Just a sneak peak of what climate change has in store! Aug 11, 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: President Trump used executive orders to push extensions to unemployment benefits and other economic measures while Congress was deadlocked this weekend. But his big showy orders aren’t likely to trickle down to working people anytime soon -- and his planned cuts to social security and medicare are even worse. Meanwhile, schools are reopening across the country, and the coronavirus is already starting to spread among them. In one school in Georgia captured in a viral photograph last week, local reports say nine cases have already cropped up. And lastly, protests are building in Lebanon against the corrupt government many hold responsible for the devastating explosion last week. And sure enough, that same government is cracking down, hard. THESE ARE THE STORIES YOU NEED TO KNOW: President Donald Trump took executive action on Saturday, signing four executive orders supposedly aimed at stimulating the economy. It shouldn’t come as a surprise to note that most of them are just back doors to gutting social programs and preventing working Americans from getting what they deserve. The four orders look like they address needs of a desperately hurting public. The first delayed payroll tax collection for people making under $104,000. Note that it just delayed the tax, not waived it, so while it’ll mean a little more money in people’s pockets, it’s not going to do much in the long run. To make matters worse, payroll tax cuts are what feed medicare and social security, and progressive activists are worried that Trump’s cuts to them are just a back door to slashing those programs further down the line. And sure enough: Trump said in a press conference Saturday that if re-elected he’d shoot to eliminate the payroll taxes entirely. The second order extended unemployment benefits at $400 a week, $200 less than the $600 per week figure that most out of work people were collecting before. But Trump is trying to take the Federal government’s share of this out of the DHS’s disaster relief fund, sidestepping Congress and draining vital funds all at once. There’ll probably be a legal challenge. The third order says that top officials, like the head of health and human services and the CDC director, can quote “consider” whether or not to enact a ban on evictions. But it doesn’t actually ban evictions, doesn’t allocate any more money to help renters, and basically does nothing. Great. The last order defers student loan payments until December 31, at which point the money is due again. Seeing as this crisis doesn’t appear to be going anywhere, it’s unclear how much that’ll help. As Democrats pointed out, all of this could have been avoided if the Senate had actually considered the HEROES act passed by the House almost two months ago. But because the GOP’s in charge, we get some half-assed executive orders serving as bandaids at best, and further wounds at worst. Back To School COVID Surge The new school year is starting, and some students are, shockingly, back in the classroom. This is having and almost immediate tragic result. Let’s look at the numbers. The New York Times reports that at least 97,000 children tested positive for the coronavirus in the last two weeks of July alone. Imagine what’s going to happen to that number as thousands of them go back to in-person school in Florida. You may have seen a photo floating around the news and social media last week, which showed a jam-packed hallway at a Georgia high school. The school had claimed that masks were encouraged but not mandatory, because there was no way to enforce it, despite the fact that schools enforce dress codes all the time. And guess what: Six students and three staff members have now tested positive, all of whom were present at school in the past week. This is just one very easy example of what’s going to happen all over the country if in-person school continues this year. It’s going to feed kids and their teachers into a meat-grinder of diseases. Sure, the kids do tend to fare slightly better with the disease than older adults, but there will be deaths, especially among the teachers who will be exposed again and again. Reopening a school is almost certainly condemning at least some of your students and staff to death, but officials across the country are going ahead with it anyway. Lebanon Protests Corrupt Government Lebanon is fed up. After government neglect and corruption effectively caused the massive explosion that devastated the city of Beirut last week, its citizens have taken to the streets in massive protests against the government. Protests began on Saturday and continued through Sunday, as angry demonstrators pelted the outside of the country’s parliament building with rocks. The government responded by cracking down with tactics that would seem familiar to any American after this summer: tear gas, batons, riot gear. Waves of protesters stormed the foreign ministry, the environment ministry and the economy ministry, and occupied the Banking Association building. The latter group is held responsible for part of the country’s worsening economic crisis. So far a handful of politicians have resigned, but nowhere close to the 43 needed for the government to official change. 21 people are still missing after the blast, and 153 are confirmed dead, according to the Guardian. Search and Rescue teams have given up on finding any more survivors. AND NOW FOR SOME QUICKER QUICKIES: The post office is still in dire straits: Common Dreams reports on a Friday Night Massacre at the end of last week, in which the Trump crony postmaster general ousted several top executives. As funding for the beleaguered agency and vote-by-mail battles go on, keep an eye on this story this week. Alex Morse, a progressive mayor of Holyoke, Massachusetts who’s running to unseat longterm Democrat Richie Neal in the state’s primary next month, is currently weathering a strange morality scandal, as critics bring up his consensual relationships with college-age men, some of them students, while he was mayor and a lecturer at UMass Amherst. Morse isn’t accused of anything, per se, which makes the whole situation shaky. Joe Biden still does not have a VP pick! But he might have one soon. He’s got a virtual fundraiser event set for Monday, which is including a press pool, and could be when he’s making the announcement. Or not! We’ll see. Protesters in Portland aren’t letting up, once again setting a small fire at the police union headquarters on Sunday, which cops quickly declared a riot, sparking another night of running arrests and street clashes. That’s all for the Majority Report’s AM Quickie today. Stay tuned for the full show later today! Aug 10 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: Donald Trump flies to Ohio for a rally, right as the state’s governor tests positive for coronavirus. Meanwhile, New York Attorney General Tish James files a lawsuit to dissolve the National Rifle Association on grounds of rampant corruption and financial crimes. And lastly, a wild story out of LA: Sheriff’s deputies organized in “secret societies” that functioned like street gangs cost the county $55 million in settlements for their corrupt and brutal behavior. THESE ARE THE STORIES YOU NEED TO KNOW: Donald Trump flew into Ohio today just in time to not meet with Ohio Governor Mike DeWine, because DeWine had just tested positive for COVID-19. DeWine, to his credit, has been far more aggressive against the coronavirus than many of his fellow Republican governors. After testing positive, he headed home to self-isolate and did not meet Trump at the airport. Trump then gave a planned speech on reopening the economy in Cleveland, but used most of his time to rail against Joe Biden, saying the former vice president was in favor of quote: “No Religion, no anything -- hurt the bible, hurt god. He’s against god, hes against guns, he’s against energy, our kind of energy, I don’t think he’s going to do too well in Ohio.” endquote. Trump said Biden wants all those things because he’s following quote “the radical left agenda,” endquote. Buddy, we wish Biden was following the radical left agenda! Unfortunately, he very much is not. This is pretty much the attack line that the Biden campaign must be expecting, and if that’s the best Trump can bring, it’s clear he’s just grasping at straws and trying to play the hits. Guns and God? Sure, that stuff is catnip for conservatives, but at a certain point people have gotta realize they’ve heard it all before. NY Sues NRA New York Attorney General Leticia James filed a lawsuit aiming to dissolve the National Rifle Association, a huge target that has been under fire for months with allegations of financial impropriety and open corruption. What can I say, if you’ve got the shot, take it. Gun puns aside, the lawsuit is a huge step that represents a culmination of years of diligent reporting by Propublica and nonprofit newsroom The Trace, which broke story after story detailing the NRA’s internal chaos and corruption. James’s suit, according to the New York Times, accuses the N.R.A. and executives like Wayne LaPierre and John Fazer of “violating numerous state and federal laws” by kicking back some $64 million of organizational funding to enrich themselves and their friends and family over the past 3 years. The NRA is a nonprofit chartered in New York City, so this is basically James’s wheelhouse. Karl Racine, the attorney general of Washington, D.C., filed suit against the N.R.A. and it’s charity wing, which is based in DC instead of New York. It’s not going to be a quick fight, however: the legal battle is expected to take years, so the NRA will surely play a role in the 2020 election, as they have every other year. But it is a strong opening volley against one of the most noxious political forces in America. LA Sheriffs Also in Gangs Our last story today isn’t so much breaking news as it is a shocking reminder of how dirty police forces in American routinely get. According to the LA Times, a group of Los Angeles County Sheriff’s deputies cost the county and their department $55 million in court settlements over a decades-long period, as they formed organized, aggressive secret societies that glorified brutal policing and operated like street gangs. IN the last 10 years alone, the county has paid out at least 21 million to these groups’ victims. They gave themselves names too: different groups were called things like “the Vikings,” “Regulators,” “3000 Boys” and “the Banditos.” They operated out of jails and sheriff’s department stations for years, acting with impunity throughout the tenures of multiple top LA County Sheriffs. The Times reports some of the gangs even had tattoos and “earned their ink” by breaking inmates bones. Take the biggest case the department was forced to settle: Francisco Carrillo Jr. was jailed for over 20 years before his murder conviction was overturned in 2011. He was arrested when he was 16 by members of the Department’s white supremacist Lynwood Vikings gang, who he later alleged in a lawsuit had manipulated witnesses to pick him out of a lineup. John Sweeney, an attorney who has represented families of people killed by deputies said quote: “I think it’s a willful failure. For some reason, they pride themselves, the Sheriff’s Department, on having these violent cliques I guess to show the public who’s the boss. But, you know, what it does is just fosters a horrible relationship between the community that these sheriffs serve.” AND NOW FOR SOME QUICKER QUICKIES: Mark Zuckerberg is facing some serious pushback from his employees, who asked him at a public forum on Thursday whether he would stop Donald Trump using the service to contest the 2020 election, according to Buzzfeed News. Facebook took down a Trump campaign post yesterday for misinformation, but has a track record of wimping out on bigger issues. The Tennessee Supreme Court ruled on Thursday that fear of COVID-19 is not a good enough reason to vote absentee, striking a nasty blow against vote-by-mail in that state. If a deadly pandemic isn’t good enough, what is? Congress has abandoned us, as Politico reports that Senators went home at 1:30 p.m. on Thursday and the House is out of session next week. They could get called back, but if they’re heading to home states it means a coronavirus relief bill is still a long way off. The State Department’s special envoy to Iran, Brian Hook is quitting, and being replaced by basically the worst possible person for the job: Eliott Abrams, one of the most bloodthirsty warhawks to ever grace the halls of power in Washington. Catch the Majority Report LIVE early today at 10:30AM ET! August 7, 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: New details shed more light on the dangerous negligence that caused the catastrophic Beirut explosion yesterday. Meanwhile, stimulus plan talks stall between Democrats and Republicans, and Biden decides to skip an in-person appearance at the Democratic Convention in Milwaulkee. And lastly, Iowa finally overturns its ban on voting for people with felony convictions. THESE ARE THE STORIES YOU NEED TO KNOW: The explosion in Beirut yesterday was catastrophic beyond what most of us can imagine. At least 135 people are dead and thousands are injured, to say nothing of the hundreds of thousands of people whose homes were destroyed by the blast. The details coming in paint a pretty damning picture of neglect by Lebanon’s government, which has repeatedly struggled to provide for and guide its citizens through refugee crises, pandemic, economic strife and everyday city management in its largest metropolis. Here’s what we know: the main explosion was caused by a massive store of ammonium nitrate, that had been left lying in a warehouse in Beirut’s port for more than six years. According to the New York Times, port officials made several requests to Lebanese courts to get the stockpile moved, but got nothing back from the government, even when they warned of the danger. The blast has devastated several of the capital city’s most prosperous and lively neighborhoods, causing as much as $3 billion in damage in a country that is already deep in a financial crisis. And the human toll may be far worse than just the casualty numbers. Brian Castner, lead weapons investigator for Amnesty International’s Crisis Response Team said the blast was quote “the biggest explosion in an urban area in decades. The human impact of it is the important thing, and it affected people a dozen kilometers away.” All told, the Times reports that some 300,000 people may be displaced from their homes. That’s a staggering number, considering that roughly 1.5 million, or over 30 percent of Lebanon’s total population are already refugees from the Syrian war and other conflicts. Congress' Stalled on Corona Relief Let’s check in briefly with the government’s response to the coronavirus. We’ll keep it brief, because it doesn’t look pretty. Republicans and Democrats are nowhere near an agreement, as of Wednesday evening. The holdup now appears to be a dispute over funding the Post Office. How the fight is playing out is pretty simple: pandemic cutbacks to the Post Office have resulted in mail delays, for obvious reasons. The GOP is then using those delays to say that the Post Office doesn’t deserve more funding, and simultaneously to cast doubt on mail-in voting. Basically, they’ve crushed the Post Office and are using it to mess with the election. Democrats want $3.6 billion in the new aid package to make sure mail-in voting goes smoothly, but of course the GOP is against it. Congress is also still haggling over an extension to the increased unemployment benefits, which is basically like juggling with people’s entire lives as the jobless rate continues to climb. To top it off, the GOP is also fighting against aid measures that would help state and local governments stop laying off public sector workers. As far as the election itself goes, it’s looking like nothing we’ve seen before. Joe Biden announced on Wednesday that he wouldn’t be traveling to Milwaulkee for the Democratic National Convention, and will instead deliver his acceptance speech from his home state of Delaware. Three months to go, people. Buckle up. Iowa Gives Felons Voting Rights There is some good news on the horizon, however! On Wednesday, Iowa Governor Kim Reynolds, a Republican, ended the state’s draconian ban on voting rights for felons. Most importantly, it stipulates that people with felony convictions can vote regardless of outstanding fines and fees, one wrinkle that less scrupulous Republicans have used to try to deny voting rights in Florida. Unfortunately, they still don’t get the right back until they’ve completed their sentence and parole, so there’s still work to be done. And the order doesn’t apply to people with felony homicide convictions. Still, it’s a pretty significant step toward justice in a state that’s been without it for too long. The next step, activists say, is pushing to make the order an official part of the Iowa state constitution, so it can’t be undone by another executive order from a more punitive governor. AND NOW FOR SOME QUICKER QUICKIES: Remember the whole scandal at the State Department including investigations into Secretary Mike Pompeo? Well it just got a bit more suspicious: acting Inspector General Stephen Akard is leaving the organization just three months after the Trump administration forced out the last Inspector General. Seems like someone doesn’t want any inspecting going on. Common Dreams reports that watchdogs are up in arms after pharmaceutical giant Moderna announced plans to charge between $32 and $37 per dose for a COVID-19 vaccine it’s developing, after receiving massive amounts of funding from the U.S. federal government. Twitter banned the Trump campaign from tweeting and forced it to delete a post on the campaign’s account that included a link to a Fox News clip claiming that children were quote “almost immune” from COVID-19. Facebook took similar steps, outright deleting the video from its service. Secretary Ken Cuccinelli said that the DHS was quote “moving rapidly to replace” endquote the intimidating camouflage uniforms worn by federal officers during protests in Portland, after widespread backlash against federal cops dressing up like invading soldiers. We’ll see just how rapidly they move to make that change. That’s it for the Majority Report’s AM Quickie today. Stay tuned for the full show this afternoon. August 6, 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: A massive explosion in Beirut, Lebanon’s port area has killed over 70 people and injured hundreds more in the city, which was buffeted by the blast’s enormous shockwave. The cause of the explosion is still unclear. Meanwhile, some key primary races are heating up, as mail-in ballots continue to be counted in elections in Michigan, Kansas and several other states. But so far, it looks like Rep. Rashida Tlaib has fended off her primary opponent from 2018, back for round two. And lastly, 13 college football players in one of the most competitive leagues in the country are threatening to sit out the upcoming season unless their schools change inadequate coronavirus policies, taking a bold stand against the powers pushing for unpaid athletes to put on a fall season without the right support. THESE ARE THE STORIES YOU NEED TO KNOW: An enormous explosion rocked the city of Beirut, Lebanon on Tuesday evening, killing at least 78 people and injuring hundreds more. The explosion followed a raging fire and smaller blast in the city’s port area, where Lebanese officials said explosive materials had been stored. It’s unclear what the disaster’s initial cause was. The blast was enormous and its shockwave shattered windows and cracked walls miles away from the epicenter. The area around the port was ravaged, including several hospitals which were so damaged they had to send their existing patients to other centers already overwhelmed by victims of the blast. The Lebanese government said that a large cache of ammonium nitrate, a chemical compound used to make both fertilizer and explosives, had been stored in the area for years after it was captured. The New York Times reported that an accidental detonation of a large quantity of ammonium nitrate was behind a similar explosion in Texas City, Texas in 1947 that killed 581 people. President Trump told reporters that his military leaders quote “seemed to think it was an attack” endquote, despite the fact that Lebanese officials had not confirmed or speculated that the blast was deliberate. Primaries for Tlaib, Kansas, and More Amidst all this, the U.S. still held primary elections on Tuesday, although with mail-in voting we may not know the results for a few days. Some races are pivotal on a national scale. In Michigan, Rep. Rashida Tlaib faced another primary against her 2018 opponent, Detroit City Council President Brenda Jones. Tlaib beat Jones by around 900 votes that year, but this year had the weight of the Democratic establishment on her side, despite her outspoken stances as part of the House’s young progressive caucus, and has a pretty commanding lead as votes continue to be counted. In Missouri, meanwhile, Justice Democrats-backed activist Cori Bush appears to have pulled off a massive upset against 20-year incumbent Rep. William Lacy Clay. Clay had the party establishment’s full backing, however, but has been sitting making little waves on a safe House seat that he effectively inherited when his father retired. Bush lost in 2018 by 20 points, but fought to a huge victory, winning by just over 4,600 votes late on Tuesday night. Some of the Republican primaries are interesting as well. In Kansas, for instance, former Secretary of State Kris Kobach tried to out-Trump his rivals in a contentious Senate primary. Mainstream Republicans were terrified of him winning, because he was a reviled figure that he might put what’s usually a pretty safe seat in danger of going blue in the general. It looks like he’ll fall short of that bid though, as fellow Trump-supporter Peter Meijer is way ahead. Again, mail in voting means there may not be quick or easy calls to elections like we’re used to. Trump has been railing against the practice for weeks, but abruptly changed his tune when he saw that he was in danger of losing Florida, telling voters to request mail-in ballots and insisting that it was safe in that state. If his lies about election security are fooling anyone, it’s pretty much their own fault at this point. College Football Players Stage Protest Across the country, resistance to Republican leaders and greedy college executives alike is coming from an unlikely group: Division 1 football players. 13 players from the PAC-12 conference, one of the largest football leagues in the NCAA, announced on Tuesday that they would opt out of the coming season and refuse to play until their schools had addressed systemic failings in their coronavirus response. The PAC-12 protest is the latest in a series of developments where organized athletes are punching above their weight to put pressure on their schools and local governments. In Mississippi, governor Tate Reeves announced that he would enact a statewide mask mandate, saying quote: “I want to see college football. The best way for that to occur is for us all to realize is that wearing a mask, as irritating as that can be & I promise I hate it more than anyone watching, is critical.” endquote. College football! The one power that can actually make Conservatives hellbent on sabotaging themselves see sense. And remember it’s not just state governments that these players are up against. The Pac-12 protest is more about forcing schools to actually take care of their athletes’ safety, especially considering, you know, they aren’t paid at all for their incredibly valuable labor. The season itself is completely up in the air, as schools face losing out on one of their biggest revenue drivers if the epidemic doesn’t get under control in their states. Jaydon Grant, a senior defensive back at Oregon State, did not mince words. Quote: “The people who are deciding whether we are going to play football are going to prioritize money over health and safety 10 times out of 10.” Endquote. Here’s hoping that more players start to speak up and actual hold their schools -- and governments -- accountable. In an ideal world, they wouldn’t have to, but that’s where we’re at. AND NOW FOR SOME QUICKER QUICKIES: New York City’s health commissioner resigned on Tuesday after a very public clash with hapless mayor Bill de Blasio, citing her quote “deep disappointment” with the mayor’s handling of the virus. Dr. Oxiris Barbot [ox-sear-riss bar-bow] said that De Blasio had not used the city’s quote “incomparable disease control expertise” endquote well enough during the pandemic, which killed more than 20,000 residents. In a wild, bizarre, and shocking sideshow of an interview with Axios’s Jonathan Swan, President Trump floundered hopelessly when confronted by facts on coronavirus, beefed with the late John Lewis who quote “didn’t attend my inauguration.” His best moment came when he sputtered quote “you can’t do that” when Swan directly refuted his bogus coronavirus claims. As schools reopen across the country, teachers have had enough. Small but widespread protests took place across the country as teachers used the hashtag #DemandSafeSchools to protest against in-person teaching. The coming school year spells almost certain suffering for students and teachers alike as the disease continues to ravage most of the country’s states. And finally, the Republicans appear to be weakening in negotiations on the next coronavirus relief package, as Mitch McConnell said he might be willing to accept an extension of the vital $600 per week unemployment insurance benefits if Democrats would compromise in other areas. It remains to be seen what the final bill will look like, but Congress is running out of time. That’s all for the AM Quickie today. Stay tuned for the full show this afternoon. August 5, 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: A look inside the unemployment department of the most populous state in the union reveals chaos, as millions await payment of their benefits. California’s broken system forces state workers to rely on the same lousy website as the general public for finding information. Meanwhile, New York prosecutors are investigating Donald Trump for bank and insurance fraud. It’s an expansion of the hush-money case involving Stormy Daniels. And lastly: Trump’s never-ending rants against Vote By Mail may backfire on Republicans. At least, that’s the fear of some down-ballot officials and campaign staff. THESE ARE THE STORIES YOU NEED TO KNOW: Tens of millions of Americans who’ve lost their jobs in recent months have no doubt been wondering what could possibly be going wrong inside their state unemployment offices. Thanks to an in-depth report by the Los Angeles Times, we have some answers. California’s Employment Development Department is so overwhelmed that Governor Gavin Newsom has admitted that the backlog of claims won’t be cleared until the end of September. More than nine million claims have been made since March. Of that, nearly one million unpaid claims are in limbo because the state requires more information to process them. Which means all those people who paid into the system and are entitled for benefits won’t get them when they are most in need. Current and former EDD officials spoke not only with the Times about internal problems but with state lawmakers during a hearing last week. One veteran state worker who transfered to EDD to help out with the claims backlog said her training was carried completely online. She was given an eight-hundred page manual and then left to fend for herself with an outdated computer system. Supervisors change every week, and many are reportedly unwilling to help subordinates resolve problems. The worker quit the agency after nine weeks. She said QUOTE I know I’m part of the problem because I don’t know what I am doing. I really feel bad for anyone trying to deal with EDD — particularly if they obviously do qualify for unemployment funds. ENDQUOTE. Another worker, hired through a temp agency for sixteen bucks an hour, said his training was inadequate. Not only that, the computer system was designed in such a way that he could not resolve people’s claims. When issues were sent to other departments within EDD, he could not attach notes to let colleagues know what problems needed to be solved. When people reach a benefits worker on the phone, they are often so frustrated that they are in tears, or so angry that they yell down the phone. Wait times for callbacks from EDD are four to six weeks. Some officials say the reliance on low-paid temporary workers is a leading cause of problem. But even experienced staff who know how to resolve claims say they aren’t empowered to act. Some frustrated EDD workers have advised callers to contact their elected officials if they want claims resolved in a more timely manner. Newsom has assembled a so-called strike team to develop a plan to improve the system, but a fix can’t come soon enough. California isn’t the only state with an overwhelmed unemployment system. In Nevada, the Times reported, three top state officials in the employment department have quit in recent months. The Nevada agency’s interim director left her job in June QUOTE due to threats to her personal safety ENDQUOTE. It’s pitchforks and torches out there, folks. Trump investigated for fraud New court filings show that Manhattan District Attorney Cy Vance is investigating Donald Trump and his company for bank and insurance fraud. The new federal court filing argues that Trump’s accountants should be made to comply with a subpoena seeking eight years of his personal and corporate tax returns. According to the New York Times, the filings suggest a broader inquiry by New York prosecutors than they have previously acknowledged. Until now, the Times says, Vance’s inquiry appeared focused on hush-money payments by Trump to two women who said they slept with him: Stormy Daniels and Karen McDougal. Those allegations involved less serious criminal charges than the allegations of financial fraud contained in the filings, made yesterday. Prosecutors cited newspaper investigations about Trump illegally inflating his net worth and the value of his companies in order to secure loans and insurance. They also cited comments made to Congress by Trump’s former lawyer, Michael Cohen, alleging Trump committed insurance fraud. Cohen made that admission in response to questions from New York Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. Trump’s new lawyers argue that the subpoena for financial records is illegal because, as a sitting president, Trump is immune from investigation. I guess we’ll see about that. "Rigged election" rhetoric backfires State and local Republican officials fear Trump’s constant attacks on mail-in voting may backfire for the party come fall. According to the Washington Post, leading Republicans in battleground states including Pennsylvania, Ohio, and Iowa are increasingly worried about the effect of Trump’s personal campaign to discredit the integrity of the election before it even takes place. Some, the Post says, are trying to create a false distinciton between mail-in balots and absentee ballots. Whereas mail-in ballots are bad, according to Trump, absentee ballots are supposedly more safe and secure. In reality, they are the same thing. Both go through the mail. Both get counted in the same way. Alabama Secretary of State John Merrill told the Post that voters in his state have been deeply confused by such rhetoric. He said feels felt compelled to explain to voters that there is only one kind of mail-in voting in Alabama, and that it is safe and secure. As downballot Republicans promote absentee balloting, the Trump campaign and the Republican National Committee are fighting the expansion of mail-in balloting during the coronavirus pandemic. But some Trump advisers have warned him he is going to far in attacking mail-in ballots as rigged. RNC Chair Ronna McDaniel and deputy campaign manager Justin Clark have all reportedly encouraged Trump to promote the use of absentee ballots. Nevertheless, Trump has shown no signs of backing off his rhetoric about the election being rigged. Both Vice President Mike Pence and Attorney General Bill Barr have also warned about what they claim is an increased risk of fraud with mail-in ballots, though they’ve offered no evidence. At least seventy-seven percent of American voters will be able to vote through the mail in the fall, according to the Post. A Monmouth University poll of Georgia voters taken late last month found that sixty percent of Democrats are at least somewhat likely to vote by mail in the fall, compared to only twenty-eight percent of Republicans. Glen Bolger, a Republican pollster, told the Post that in one swing state he studied, only fifteen percent of voters planning to cast ballots by mail were Trump supporters. Maybe Republicans will actually listen to their leader, and sit this election out. And now for some Quicker Quickies. According to Vice News, Amazon warehouse workers shut down a distribution center in the San Francisco Bay Area for several hours on Saturday. Demands by workers in the apparent wildcat strike included extra pay to cope with the cost of living and additional safety measures during the pandemic. A group called Bay Area Amazonians parked a caravan of cars in the warehouse lot, blocking delivery vans from leaving. Bravo, bellissimo! Spain’s former king Juan Carlos will soon enter a self-imposed exile, he said in a letter. The decision comes after revelations about his entanglements with secret offshore funds linked to Saudi Arabia. The letter didn’t say where the scandal-prone former king will go, but his decision is expected to take some heat off of his son, the reigning King Felipe. The Nation magazine reported yesterday that the Department of Homeland Security are targeting antifascist activists and attempting to link them to foreign powers. An intelligence report obtained by the magazine showed the Department built dossiers on several American citizens, including their social security numbers, home addresses, and social media accounts. Targeted individuals included Brace Belden, a journalist and labor organizer who fought against ISIS in Syria alongside a left-wing Kurdish militia. Belden responded QUOTE, the US government has been spying on and smearing communists for a hundred years, but they usually have the decency not to call a Red an anarchist! ENDQUOTE. At least four people planted mystery seeds that were mailed to addresses in more than a dozen US states from China. The US Department of Agriculture warned people last month not to plant the seeds, fearing invasive species. But not everybody heard the warnings, which went viral on social media. In some cases the seeds failed to grow. But one man in Arkansas said the seeds grew into a plant with orange flowers that produced large white fruit. The USDA is reportedly uncertain what the thing is, though it resembles a squash plant. No magic beanstalk, sorry. That’s all for the AM Quickie. Join us this afternoon on the Majority Report. August 4, 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: School is already back in session in some states. You know what that means: coronavirus is already spreading through the schools. Meanwhile, Border Patrol tactical teams raided a humanitarian camp in the southern Arizona desert where migrants were receiving water and medical care. Worse yet, it looks like the agents used the occassion as an excuse to film some action shots for propaganda purposes. And lastly, Donald Trump’s reelection campaign is in shambles. It seems like some of those much-sought after suburban voters simply may not hate Joe Biden all that much. THESE ARE THE STORIES YOU NEED TO KNOW: Within hours of opening on the first day of classes last Thursday, officials at Greenfield Central Junior High School in Indiana got word from the county health department that one of their students had coronavirus. The student was put into isolation. Then everyone who came into close contact with the student was ordered to quarantine for fourteen days. Families with students the school were given the option of attending classes online. But only fifteen percent opted for online learning. Against the best advice of public health experts, some school districts are beginning to reopen with classes in person, as though there wasn’t a pandemic to worry about. According to the Washington Post, at least four schools across the country have had a student test positive for coronavirus during the first week back in session. Three of the schools are in Indiana and one is in Mississippi. There are no consistent policies across districts, cities, counties, and states for how to deal with this situation. There is not even consistent data collection. According to the Mississippi Free Press, school-age children are now the primary drivers of the state’s increasing COVID-19 caseload. Experts there fear a pediatric COVID crisis will overwhelm schools and hospitals this fall if schools hold classes in person. In Oregon, over ten percent of COVID cases were children younger than eighteen. The New York Times cited some sobering research from the University of Texas at Austin. They estimate that more than eighty percent of Americans live in a county where at least one infected person would be expected to show up to school in the first week. The highest-risk areas include Miami and Fort Lauderdale, Florida; Nashville, Tennessee; and Las Vegas, Nevada. In Tennessee, officials have decided not to collect data on coronavirus cases and deaths in schools. In Arizona, one school superintendant told the Post that a quarter of his students live with grandparents, who are at high risk for COVID complications. The super said QUOTE It’s not safe. There’s no way it can be safe. If you think anything else, I’m sorry, but it’s a fantasy. Kids will get sick, or worse. Family members will die. Teachers will die. ... So why are we getting bullied into opening? ... Why are they threatening our funding? I keep waiting for someone higher up to take this decision out of my hands and come to their senses. I’m waiting for real leadership, but maybe it’s not going to happen ENDQUOTE. Arizona migrant camp raided Customs and Border Patrol’s goon squads are at it again. This time, instead of engaging in open-ended urban warfare on Black Lives Matter protesters, tactical Border Patrol units have returned to an old favorite: Depriving desperate border-crossers of water and medical care. On Friday night, Border Patrol raided a humanitarian aid camp in southern Arizona. The camp was set up and operated by No More Deaths, a religious aid group that based in Tucson, Arizona. According to the Intercept, camouflaged, rifle-toting agents in armored vehicles were backed up by at least two helicopters during the raid. Agents zip-tied volunteers’ hands behind their backs and reportedly confiscated their cellphones, as well as the organization’s medical records. More than thirty undocumented immigrants were receiving treatment at the camp after a long trek through the desert in the middle of heat wave. All were arrested. It wasn’t the first time Border Patrol targeted No More Deaths. The same camp was targeted in a raid three years ago. This latest raid came only two days after No More Deaths published a set of documents related to the first raid. So it’s possible the raid was retaliatory. After seizing volunteers’ phones, agents proceeded to film the raid themselves, at times seeking out dramatic angles for filming as their colleagues made arrests. Nobody thinks you’re cool, Border Patrol guys. Nobody is ever going to think you are cool. Trump's reelection prospects dimming As if his idea to delay the election wasn’t a big enough clue, the Washington Post reports that Donald Trump’s reelection campaign is in crisis. There is talk of an August reset. On account of the coronavirus, Trump isn’t able to hold the large hate rallies he loves so much. Following a major staff shakeup at the top, the campaign is pulling ads from the airwaves. New ads targeting the presumptive Democratic nominee, Joe Biden, are set to begin running today, after six days of broadcast silence. Biden still leads by double-digits in national polls. And in Pennsylvania, a battleground state that’s important for Trump’s victory strategy, Biden has led Trump in all twelve public polls released since the beginning of June, per Politico. Trump won Pennsylvania in 2016. But Biden’s lead in that state now stands at six percentage points. And remember, these are the older white voters Trump covets most. More than half the electorate lives in the suburbs. As one Democratic Congressman put it, hating Joe Biden doesn’t juice up their base in quite the same way as going after Nancy Pelosi or Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. One more clear sign of Trump’s weakness: news broke over the weekend that journalists would be banned from attending the Republican National Convention. The convention, first scheduled for Florida, was relocated to Charlotte, North Carolina. It’s supposed to happen on August 24. It’s unclear even if C-SPAN will be allowed to have a camera running during the Republican’s nominating party. Party officials initially blamed coronavirus restrictions for the decision – then said no final decision had been made on whether to allow journalists. Either way, the Democrats are still making room for media coverage at their convention, set for Milwaukee, Wisconsin on August 17 through the 20th. AND NOW FOR SOME QUICKER QUICKIES: Tropical Storm Isaias skirt the Eastern Seabord of the US yesterday, after being downgraded from a hurricane. The strong storm with winds of sixty-five miles per hour has already caused damage in the Caribbean. It is expected to make landfall in the Carolinas on early Tuesday and exit by way of Maine late on Wednesday. The National Hurricane Center has warned of possible flooding along the entire East Coast. A US citizen was murdered while facing trial for blasphemy in Pakistan late last week. Tahir Naseem of Illinois had claimed to be a prophet. It is unclear how the killer smuggled a weapon into the heavily guarded courthouse in Peshawar, but he surrendered to police immediately following the murder. Online video showed thousands rallying in support of the killer. Naseem belonged to a minority group regarded as heretical by the Muslim majority. Thousands of people marched outside Benjamin Netanyahu’s house over the weekend, calling for the Israeli prime minister to resign. I should say houses, because there were protests both at his official residence in Jerusalem and at his beach house in Tel Aviv. With an estimated ten thousands participants, it was reportedly the largest protest to date calling for Netanyahu’s removal, and it has been a long summer of protests in Israel. According to NBC News, citing government statistics, in the third week of July, thirty percent of adults reported symptoms of depressive disorder, as compared to six point six percent last year. Further, thirty-six percent had symptoms of an anxiety disorder, compared to eight point two percent last year. Gosh. Wonder why. That’s all for the AM Quickie. Join us this afternoon on the Majority Report. August 3, 2020 - AM Quickie HOSTS - Sam Seder & Lucie Steiner WRITER - Corey Pein PRODUCER - Dorsey Shaw EXECUTIVE PRODUCER - Brendan Finn