Congress Is Gearing up to Give Corporations a Ton of Bailout Cash. Progressives Hope They Learned Lessons from the Last Time.

When I reached Sara Nelson on Wednesday morning, there was an anxious sharpness to her usual no-nonsense delivery. The president of the Association of Flight Attendants—a major figure in organized labor, who is expected by many to someday helm the AFL-CIO—has been living with the gravity of a global pandemic for much longer than most Americans. “We started working on this issue in January,” Nelson tells me, explaining that airlines’ pulldown of Asia-bound flights during that time immediately slowed her industry’s cash flow. “If we don’t get this relief right now, the airlines are going to run out of the ability to provide payroll in two months, if not sooner.”