The Senate will take up legislation as soon as next month on hate crimes against Asian Americans, as well as background checks for gun buyers and a massive voting rights package, Majority Leader Chuck Schumer said Thursday.
The New York Democrat used a letter to colleagues and a floor speech to outline three broad areas the Senate will focus on when it returns from its forthcoming two-week recess: voting rights, economic growth and climate change, and guns.
Republicans in Georgia sped a sweeping elections bill into law Thursday, making it the first presidential battleground to impose new voting restrictions following President Joe Biden’s victory in the state.
The mounting challenges at the border crashed President Joe Biden’s first formal news conference Thursday afternoon, derailing White House hopes of keeping the event focused on the administration’s response to the coronavirus pandemic.
The White House had made an advance effort to spotlight Biden’s efforts to address the pandemic, with a string of vaccination logistical funding announcements in the hours before it began. The president began the event by detailing a new vaccination target, after his initial goal of 100 million vaccines was reached last week.
President Joe Biden’s first two months in power went remarkably smoothly considering he took office amid a once-in-a-century pandemic, a consequent economic crisis and his predecessor’s refusal to recognize his victory. But in his first formal news conference Thursday, he’ll face scrutiny on gun control and immigration, two sudden tests of leadership for which his administration has lacked immediate answers.
AstraZeneca reiterated on Wednesday that its Covid-19 vaccine was very effective at preventing the disease, based on more recent data than was included when the company announced the interim results of its U.S. clinical trial on Monday.
The company said in a news release that its vaccine was 76 percent effective at preventing Covid-19. That is slightly lower than the number that the company announced earlier this week.
The new results strengthen the scientific case for the embattled vaccine. But they may not repair the damage to AstraZeneca’s credibility after U.S. health officials and independent monitors issued an extraordinary rebuke of the company for not counting some Covid-19 cases when it announced its initial findings this week.
President Joe Biden said Wednesday he was tapping Vice President Kamala Harris to lead his administration’s effort to stem migration from Central America, as the United States deals with a surge of unaccompanied minors crossing its southern border.
The role will represent the first significant item in the vice president’s portfolio, and her involvement has the potential to elevate the issue within the White House and broader administration.
Dr. Rachel Levine’s confirmation to the Department of Health and Human Services by the Senate on Wednesday made her the first openly transgender federal official in the nation’s history.
Levine, who previously served as Pennsylvania’s secretary of health, was confirmed in a 52-48 vote as the assistant secretary to the federal agency. She will serve under Xavier Becerra, who is the first Latino to serve as health and human services secretary.
Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer called Levine’s confirmation part of many “historic firsts” achieved under President Joe Biden’s administration.
The Biden administration is reluctant to refer to the situation on the southwestern border as a “crisis,” preferring to call it a “challenge.” But with nearly 100,000 apprehensions at the border last month alone, that may be a distinction without much difference. Whatever it’s called, this influx of asylum seekers—including a rapidly growing number of unaccompanied, unauthorized minors crossing into the U.S. from Mexico—is a major humanitarian and legal dilemma confronting the new administration, one that previous administrations have also wrestled with.
Over the course of the Trump administration more than 5,000 children were forcibly separated from their parents. And in spite of a court order to reunite all children with their families, on the day that Joe Biden was inaugurated more than 1,000 children remained disconnected from their parents, according to Lee Gerlent of the ACLU, primarily because locating parents who were deported without their kids has been extremely difficult. That is why President Biden has created a task force headed by Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas to track down these parents, whatever it takes, and reunite broken families. Meantime, more than 4,200 unaccompanied children are now being detained at the border on Biden’s watch, with thousands held beyond the legally imposed limit of 72 hours in custody of U.S. Customs and Border Protection.
Read the rest of Dr. Irwin Redlener’s piece at The Daily Beast
Postmaster General Louis DeJoy on Tuesday unveiled a proposal to overhaul the U.S. Postal Service, describing his 10-year plan as necessary to stanch billions of dollars in losses and put the agency on the path to profitability. But critics are voicing concerns about key elements of the plan, including slower delivery standards and planned closures of some postal offices.
DeJoy said the plan will “erase” a projected $160 billion loss over the next decade by boosting revenue through expanded parcel delivery and potential postage hikes. Other savings would require action by Congress to change requirements for pre-funding retiree pension obligations and by integrating the postal service’s retiree health care coverage with Medicare.
The Biden administration is extending a special Obamacare enrollment season it opened for the pandemic, giving Americans three more months to shop for health coverage after Congress recently boosted insurance subsidies in the Covid stimulus package.
President Joe Biden during his first weeks in office opened a new special enrollment period, citing increased need for coverage during the twin economic and health crises. Biden announced the sign-up extension Tuesday evening as he marked the health care law’s 11th anniversary and touted its biggest expansion yet during a speech in Ohio.
Sens. Tammy Duckworth (D-Ill.) and Mazie Hirono (D-Hawaii) backed down from their threats to oppose any “non-diversity” nominees put forward by President Joe Biden, saying late Tuesday that the White House had committed to elevate Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders for high-level positions in his administration.
“Senator Duckworth appreciates the Biden Administration’s assurances that it will do much more to elevate AAPI voices and perspectives at the highest levels of government,” the lawmaker’s spokesperson, Ben Garmisa, said in a statement. Garmisa added those pledges “included appointing an AAPI senior White House official to represent the community, secure the confirmation of AAPI appointments and advance policy proposals that are relevant and important to the community.”
President Joe Biden on Tuesday called for a nationwide ban on assault weapons, background check reforms and broad changes to magazine capacity restrictions in his first remarks since a gunman opened fire at a Boulder, Colorado, supermarket on Monday, killing 10 people.
“While we’re still waiting on more information regarding the shooter, his motive, the weapons he used, the guns, the magazines, the modifications to those weapons that have apparently taken place here, I don’t need to wait another minute, let alone an hour, to take commonsense steps that will save lives in the future,” Biden said from the White House.
“We can ban assault weapons and high-capacity magazines in this country once again,” he added.
Former President Donald Trump’s former campaign lawyer Sidney Powell is apparently backtracking on her claims that voting machines were rigged in favor of now-President Joe Biden in the 2020 election.
After Trump’s loss, Powell repeatedly argued that Dominion Voting Systems machines were manipulated to weigh votes for Biden more heavily than those for Trump, but she never provided any evidence to support the dubious accusation.
Now that Dominion has filed a massive defamation lawsuit against her, Powell is claiming that “no reasonable person” should have taken her prior claims seriously.
President Joe Biden is dispatching top officials to Mexico and Central America as the crisis on the southern U.S. border persists with a surge of asylum-seeking migrants who are fleeing their countries.
The crisis at the border has created a difficult situation for Biden, who is caught between his promises to progressives to establish a more humane immigration system and pressure from conservatives to send a tougher message to deter migrants from traveling to the U.S. to seek asylum. The influx has overwhelmed border facilities and driven the national conversation on immigration.
Results from AstraZeneca’s recent Covid-19 vaccine trial “may have included outdated information” that “provided an incomplete view of the efficacy data,” a federal health institute said early Tuesday.
The National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases issued the unusual statement after AstraZeneca announced Monday that the trial showed no serious side-effects, and that its vaccine was 100 percent effective in stopping severe and fatal cases.
The NIAID said that it had been notified late Monday about the “concern” by the the data and safety monitoring board, a panel of independent experts that reviews safety and efficacy data for vaccines in the United States.
Ten people are dead, including a police officer, after a shooting Monday at a Colorado grocery store that the governor called an “unspeakable tragedy.”
The officer, Eric Talley, 51, an 11-year veteran of the Boulder police force, was the first officer to arrive at the King Soopers grocery store Monday afternoon, Police Chief Maris Herold said. He had been dispatched after gunfire was reported, she said.
Herold provided no details about the other victims. She said a suspect who was injured in the shooting is in custody. She didn’t provide details about a potential motive.
There are some things in our politics that make me more nervous than Louie Gohmert around a thesaurus. One is the nature of political prosecutions, and the other is prosecutors who ply the media with tales of dark doings and veiled cabals. That’s because I remember the bad old days of COINTELPRO, and the various illegitimate prosecutions contained in the backlash against the civil rights movement, and because I know how federal prosecutors can bully and cajole people out of a proper legal defense. It’s also because I grew up in a home where the Catholic conspiracy theories were alive and well. (I spent one rainy weekend when I was in high school reading John Stormer’s None Dare Call It Treason at my father’s recommendation. I came away from it with an unquenchable sweet-tooth for right-wing political paranoia.) So, when Michael Sherwin, until recently the supervisor of the Department of Justice’s investigation into the events of January 6, popped up on 60 Minutes on Sunday night to talk about what his investigation has uncovered so far, I have to admit that certain bells went off in my head.
Scrambling in the wake of Joe Biden’s seven-million vote victory in November, Republicans continue to mount a powerful and unapologetic campaign to suppress voting. With so many state legislatures under GOP control, Republicans are sponsoring more than 250 bills aimed at drastically reducing ballot access in coming years. It’s being done under the phony banner of “election security.” After 2020, Republicans don’t want lots of people voting, especially lots of Black people. So far, the media’s failing to accurately label the crisis that’s unfolding.
Yesterday, I was talking to a few people about COVID vaccines. Two of us were fully vaccinated, and another was scheduled to get his. One of our Zoom group, Sandy, a young woman, declared that she was not going to get the vaccine, even if required by her job. She insisted that “everything I’ve heard” tells her that we don’t know if it’s safe, that “we don’t really know what’s going to happen to people 5 years from now,” and “I never get a flu shot,” and “It’s only been a year.”
About a quarter of California’s population has received one shot of the coronavirus vaccine so far, according to data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. However, most of the shots so far appear to have gone to populations that are less vulnerable than others.
State health officials say they are working to improve those numbers.
The CDC issued a report last week that measured county’s vaccine rollouts with regards to “social vulnerability.” The vulnerability index included several factors including race, education, poverty level and housing, which the agency noted has also been linked to higher coronavirus rates.
Rep. Tom Reed, R-N.Y., on Sunday apologized to the woman who accused him of sexual misconduct last week and said that he will not seek to get elected for any office once his term ends.
Nicolette Davis, who is currently an Army officer but was working as a lobbyist at the time of the alleged incident in 2017, accused Reed of rubbing her back and unhooking her bra without consent during a networking trip that year. The allegations were published by the Washington Post Friday.
Reed initially told the publication, “This account of my actions is not accurate,” but in another statement, published Twitter Sunday, he apologized.
Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas on Sunday defended the Biden administration’s handling of a surge of migrants that have overwhelmed the nation’s immigration system, while also declaring that the U.S.-Mexico border “is closed” and only unaccompanied minors will be allowed in.
“The message is quite clear: Do not come. The border is closed, the border is secure,” Mayorkas said on ABC’s “This Week.” “We are rebuilding the system as we address the needs of vulnerable children who arrive at our borders.”
AstraZeneca’s Covid-19 vaccine is safe and 79 percent effective against the disease, according to trial results released by the company Monday.
AstraZeneca will now release its data for analysis by the scientific community in peer-review literature, and apply to the Food and Drugs Administration for emergency use approval.
The Phase 3 trial, conducted in the U.S., Chile and Peru with 32,000 volunteers, also shows the vaccine is 100 percent effective against preventing severe disease and hospitalization, the company said in a press release.
There is “no evidence” to support a Pennsylvania U.S. Postal Service worker’s claims highlighted by leading Republicans of mail-in ballot fraud, the inspector general has found.
(CNN) — House Democrats pushed ahead to approve two separate bills on immigrationThursday, marking the first time Congress has voted on a pathway for citizenship for undocumented immigrants since Democrats won slim majorities in both chambers of Congress with President Joe Biden in the White House.
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ATLANTA — Robert Aaron Long’s family had finally had it. Long, 21, was so obsessed with sex — watching hour upon hour of pornography online, visiting the kinds of spas where the customers bought “massages with happy endings” — that on Monday night, his parents kicked him out of the house, according to police and a friend who confirmed the account.
It’s unclear if House Republicans are attempting to sabotage the Jan. 6 Commission investigation, but they’ve done it successfully, CNN reported Thursday.
Republicans are clashing with anyone brought before House committees to address the attack on the U.S. Capitol. Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) lashed out at Capitol security officials in closed-door meetings over the past several weeks, the report said. He also shouted down retired Lt. Gen. Russell Honoré in front of his team because they met over Zoom and spoke to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA).
The man accused of killing eight people in three shootings at Atlanta-area spas was charged with eight counts of murder Wednesday.
Four of the counts against the man, Robert Aaron Long, 21, of Woodstock, are related to shootings at two massage parlors in Atlanta. The four others are related to shootings at a massage parlor in Cherokee County. Long also faces an aggravated assault charge in Cherokee County.
(CNN)Washington, DC, police arrested a Texas man outside Vice President Kamala Harris’ official residence, the US Naval Observatory, in the nation’s capital on Wednesday and he’s now facing weapons and ammunition charges.
As progress continues with the Biden-Harris administration’s vaccine effort, there’s much to be hopeful about: cases numbers have been driven down substantially from their January high, vaccination rates are among the fastest in the world and hospitalizations due to COVID-19 have plummeted. These facts alone have been enough to buoy the spirits of countless citizens exhausted by the mental and physical toll the past year has caused.
But although we can now see the light at the end of the tunnel, we aren’t there yet. Reckless and premature rollbacks in states like Texas and Mississippi — and soon to be others — threaten to erode the hard-won progress we’ve made and create pockets of potential new infections. As we face the growing threat of alarming virus variants, the best tools we still have in the race to vaccinate a majority of Americans continue to be mask-wearing and physical distancing.
The Georgia sheriff’s official who said the man accused of killing six Asian women and two others in shootings at spas in the Atlanta area had “a bad day” previously shared a photo of racist T-shirts on social media.
In a Facebook post from April 2020, Cherokee County Sheriff’s Capt. Jay Baker shared an image of T-shirts based off the Corona beer label that said “Covid 19 IMPORTED VIRUS FROM CHY-NA.”
WASHINGTON — The fight over the filibuster escalated in the Senate on Tuesday as Senator Mitch McConnell, the Republican leader, threatened harsh reprisals if Democrats moved to weaken it, a prospect that appeared increasingly likely as President Biden’s allies on Capitol Hill began building a public case for its elimination.
Russian President Vladimir Putin and other senior officials in Moscow sought to influence the 2020 election by spreading misleading information about Joe Biden through prominent individuals, some of whom were close to former president Donald Trump, the U.S. intelligence community said in a report Tuesday.
U.S. authorities have arrested and charged two men with assaulting U.S. Capitol Police officer Brian D. Sicknick with bear spray during the Jan. 6 Capitol riot but have not determined whether the exposure caused his death.
Julian Elie Khater, 32, of Pennsylvania, and George Pierre Tanios, 39 of Morgantown, W.Va., were arrested Sunday and are expected to appear in federal court Monday“Give me that bear s—,” Khater allegedly said to Tanios on video recorded at the Lower West Terrace of the Capitol at 2:14 p.m., where Sicknick and other officers were standing guard behind metal bicycle racks, arrest papers say.
WASHINGTON — President Joe Biden, Vice President Kamala Harris and their spouses are traveling around the country this week to speak directly to Americans about the benefits of the $1.9 trillion Covid-19 relief package.
In December and January, a long-planned effort to vaccinate essential federal workers was thrown into turmoil, breeding suspicion, infighting, and “shameless” attempts to crash the list.
(CNN) — More than 4,000 unaccompanied migrant children are in Border Patrol custody, CNN has learned, marking yet another increase in the number of children held up in border facilities until officials can accommodate them in shelters that are suited for them.
In a wildly misguided attempt at Trump rehabilitation, the New York Times this week suggested Trump deserves credit for the extraordinary success the new Biden administration is having getting Americans vaccinated. Leaning hard into the Both Sides narrative, the Times generously headlined its piece, “Biden Got the Vaccine Rollout Humming, With Trump’s Help.”
Anthony S. Fauci, the nation’s top infectious-disease expert, said in interviews Sunday that former president Donald Trump should be enlisted to encourage his supporters to get a coronavirus vaccine, after recent polling showed Republican men and Trump supporters have the highest rates of vaccine hesitancy.
An NPR-PBS NewsHour-Marist poll released last week showed that nearly half of Republican men and 47 percent of those who supported Trump in the 2020 election said they would not choose to be vaccinated, even if the coronavirus vaccines were made available to them. By contrast, only 10 percent of supporters of President Biden said they would not choose to be vaccinated if offered one, the poll found.
(CNN) — Officials in the Georgia Secretary of State’s Office located a recently released recording of former President Donald Trump‘s call to a state investigator in a trash folder on her device, a state official familiar with the situation confirmed to CNN.
The discovery of the call comes after state officials originally told CNN that they did not think audio of the call existed. The call added to the examples of Trump’s extraordinary efforts to push false claims of widespread voter fraud and influence Georgia election officials as they certified the state’s election results.
WASHINGTON — State and national voting-rights advocates are waging the most consequential political struggle over access to the ballot since the civil rights era, a fight increasingly focused on a far-reaching federal overhaul of election rules in a last-ditch bid to offset a wave of voting restrictions sweeping Republican-controlled state legislatures.
Business at the Trump International Hotel in Washington hasn’t exactly been booming, according to reports.
New York State Assembly Speaker Carl Heastie announced Thursday he is authorizing an impeachment investigation into Gov. Andrew Cuomo (D), who’s facing multiple accusations of sexual misconduct.
“The reports of accusations concerning the governor are serious,” Heastie said in a statement. The Assembly Judiciary Committee leading the investigation “will have the authority to interview witnesses, subpoena documents and evaluate evidence, as is allowed by the New York State Constitution.”
The investigation will be separate from the one currently underway by New York Attorney General Letitia James.
Military leaders, veterans and veterans groups are slamming Fox News host Tucker Carlson after he attacked the notion of pregnant women serving in the armed forces.
Carlson called women in “maternity flight suits” a mockery of the U.S. military, while also making a transphobic aside in his speech during a Tuesday night broadcast. His segment was in response to President Joe Biden’s acknowledgment that the military has tailored combat uniforms for women during his International Women’s Day remarks.
The next batch of stimulus checks will be deposited into some bank accounts this weekend, the White House said Thursday.
“People can expect to start seeing direct deposits hit their bank accounts as early as this weekend,” White House press secretary Jen Psaki said at a news briefing after President Joe Biden signed the American Rescue Plan into law on Thursday afternoon.
Psaki said that the checks are “the first wave” and they will continue to flow over “the next several weeks.”
President Joe Biden announced Thursday that he will direct states to make all adults eligible for coronavirus vaccinations no later than May 1, a move that he said could help the United States return to some sense of normalcy by Independence Day.
In his address marking the anniversary of the coronavirus pandemic shutdowns, Biden offered the country a somber reflection on a year tainted by grief and devastation while providing a renewed sense of hope that a post-pandemic future is near if Americans do their part.
“Photos and videos from 2019 feel like they were taken in another era: the last vacation, the last birthday with friends, the last holiday with extended family,” Biden said, speaking from the East Room of the White House in his first prime-time address as president.
In a phone call to the Georgia secretary of state’s office in December, then-President Donald Trump urged a top investigator to find fraud in the 2020 presidential election, telling her that she would be “praised” for overturning results that were in favor of Joe Biden, according to newly reported audio of the call obtained by The Wall Street Journal.
Shortly after Democrats in Congress passed President Joe Biden’s $1.9 trillion COVID-19 relief legislation, a Republican senator was already trying to take some credit for the popular bill ― even though he and every single other Republican voted against it.
Sen. Roger Wicker (R-Miss.) tweeted on Wednesday that independent restaurant operators were going to get billions of dollars coming their rescue, thanks to the COVID-19 relief bill about to become law.
House Democrats on Wednesday passed a massive $1.9 trillion COVID-19 relief bill with the goal of having it on President Joe Biden’s desk by the end of the week, just days before key federal unemployment benefits start to expire for many workers on March 14.
By a 220-211 vote — with no Republicans voting in favor — Democrats handed Biden a crucial first legislative victory. The White House said he would sign the measure into law on Friday.
“For weeks now, an overwhelming percentage of Americans – Democrats, Independents, and Republicans – have made it clear they support the American Rescue Plan. Today, with final passage in the House of Representatives, their voice has been heard,” Biden said in a statement praising House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, who spoke on the House floor just before the vote.
For the third time this year, President Joe Biden will mark a landmark moment in the COVID-19 pandemic, delivering his first primetime address Thursday night to recognize one year since widespread shutdowns began across the United States and to ask Americans to help with “what comes next.”
“I’m gonna launch the next phase of the COVID response and explain what we will do as a government and what we will ask of the American people,” Biden said on Wednesday, previewing his remarks. “There is light at the end of this dark tunnel of the past year. But we cannot let our guard down now or assume the victory is inevitable. Together, we’re gonna get through this pandemic and usher in a healthier and more hopeful future.”
A sixth woman has reportedly accused New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo of sexual misconduct, the latest among mounting claims against the high-profile Democrat over the past few weeks.
The woman, who is a member of the governor’s Executive Chamber staff, said Cuomo inappropriately touched her late last year during an encounter at the governor’s mansion, where she had been summoned to work, The Times Union in Albany reported Tuesday.
A supervisor in the governor’s office learned of the matter Monday, according to the newspaper, which cited “an official close to the matter” as confirming the allegation’s existence. The Times Union did not reveal the woman’s identity nor was it able to reach her for comment.
Rep. Tim Ryan (D-Ohio) erupted Tuesday on the House floor, imploring his Republican colleagues to stop their obsession with stoking culture wars and shift focus to helping Democrats pass legislation to aid Americans struggling through the coronavirus pandemic.
“Stop talking about Dr. Seuss and start working with us on behalf of the American workers!” he shouted, referring to conservative outrage after the Dr. Seuss Foundation pulled six of its books that it deemed outdated and racially insensitive.
Republicans, Fox News and right-wing pundits have dedicated considerable time to beefing about it, blaming Democrats, “cancel culture” and the left for the foundation’s decision to remove its own products. Last week, in an apparent protest, House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) made a five-minute video of himself reading “Green Eggs and Ham,” which was not one of the books removed.
House Democrats on Tuesday approved the most significant expansion of labor rights since the New Deal, advancing legislation that would neutralize right-to-work laws in 27 states and bolster workers’ ability to organize after years of eroding clout.
The bill — the Protecting the Right to Organize, or PRO, Act — would amend decades-old labor law to shield workers seeking to form a union from retribution or firing, strengthen the government’s power to punish employers who violate workers’ rights and outlaw mandatory meetings that employers often use to try to quash an organizing drive.
Congress is poised to approve a landmark $1.9 trillion COVID-19 relief bill, placing President Joe Biden on the cusp of an early triumph that advances Democratic priorities and showcases the unity his party will need to forge future victories.
The House was expected to give final congressional approval Wednesday to the package, which aims to fulfill Democrats’ campaign promises to beat the pandemic and revive the enfeebled economy. House and Senate Republicans have unanimously opposed the package as bloated, crammed with liberal policies and heedless of signs the dual crises are easing.
“It’s a remarkable, historic, transformative piece of legislation which goes a very long way to crushing the virus and solving our economic crisis,” House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., said Tuesday.
“I think it is not a stretch to think Mr. Minuta, if called upon to do so, would participate in an armed rebellion yet again even on pretrial release,” Assistant U.S. Attorney Benjamin Gianforti said in court. His recent statements to law enforcement “represent a lack of remorse and an ongoing allegiance to the ideology” behind the assault on the Capitol.
The Republican National Committee is defending its right to use former President Donald Trump‘s name in fundraising appeals after he demanded they put an end to the practice.
In a Monday letter to Trump attorney Alex Cannon, RNC chief counsel J. Justin Riemer said the committee “has every right to refer to public figures as it engages in core, First Amendment-protected political speech” and said “it will continue to do so in pursuit of these common goals.”
The spear-wielding self-described shaman who stormed the Senate chamber on Jan. 6 will remain behind bars pending trial, a federal judge ruled on Monday.
The decision by Jacob Chansley, an adherent of the QAnon conspiracy theory, to speak to CBS’ “60 Minutes+” and other media outlets appears to have backfired, as U.S. District Court Judge Royce Lamberth said Chansley’s statements underscored his ongoing dangerousness. Lamberth repeatedly cited Chansley’s comments to “60 Minutes+” — as well as his mother’s — as evidence that he shouldn’t be released.
At last, there’s some good news.
I got my first dose of Dolly Parton’s Little Miracle this week. I have to admit that it was strange. I spent more time in the gym of the Thomas Menino YMCA in Hyde Park than I spent anywhere else in a year. I was just out there in the world with other humans. I didn’t know how to move in their company. When the woman checking me in asked for my license, I nearly jumped out of my skin. I walked in a narrow shaft of perception, my space in the world extending only millimeters from my skin. I stepped carefully, as on a ledge above the sea. I made it to the injection station and it felt as though I had merely survived the walk from the check-in table.
Read the rest of Charlie Pierce’s column at Esquire Politics
A number of governors on Sunday defended easing Covid-19 restrictions in their states against top health officials’ warnings that Americans should remain vigilant against highly transmissible variants and that the US could see another spike in cases.
After more than 25 hours of debate and votes, Senate Democrats passed a sweeping $1.9 trillion COVID relief bill Saturday aimed at helping lower-income Americans, small businesses, schools, the hard-hit hospitality and tourism industries, as well as state and local governments — with aid also going to boost front-line pandemic work, vaccines, testing and tracing plans.
The bill passed on a party-line vote and will now head back over to the House, which will have to reconcile several key changes before it heads to President Joe Biden’s desk just days before unemployment benefits expire for millions of Americans.
The pressure of being under the microscope drove Meghan, the Duchess of Sussex, to thoughts of suicide, Prince Harry’s wife said Sunday in an explosive interview with Oprah Winfrey.
She said she had been the victim of “character assassination” and that the pressure drove her to the point of self-harm.
“Look, I was really ashamed to have to say it at the time and ashamed to have to admit it to Harry especially, but I knew that if I didn’t say that, I would do it,” an emotional Meghan said. “I just didn’t want to be alive anymore.”
Arriving for the first jailhouse interview with the Trump insurrectionist known as the “QAnon Shaman,” 60 Minutes+ this week provided a surprisingly gentle and understanding forum for someone who helped terrorize members of Congress on Jan. 6, when a murderous mob ransacked the U.S. Capitol.
Along with interviewing Jacob Chansley (aka the Shaman), CBS’s Laurie Segall interviewed Chansley’s mother who insisted her son is innocent of the six charges he faces after storming the Capitol, bare-chested and wearing a fur helmet with horns.
Read the rest of Eric Boehlert’s piece at and subscribe to Press Run.
There is absolutely no reason to feel guilty or bad because you found comfort in New York Governor Andrew Cuomo’s daily press briefings during the lockdown early in the coronavirus pandemic. While President Bumblefuck Magoo was prancing around and lying about the severity of the situation while shitting on anyone who would dare ask the federal government to do more, Cuomo was a soothing voice of calm, seemingly honest and straightforward, ready to challenge Donald Trump, and, holy fuck, we just needed that.
You can still appreciate that. I don’t feel ashamed that I enjoyed Bill Cosby’s comedy for decades. But now, I feel awful for his victims, first and foremost, and, way down the list of Cosby fallout, I can’t see him or listen to him without being viscerally repulsed. That’s the only rational reaction. The point here is that you can have thought one way about Cuomo in March 2020 and now think the complete opposite in March 2021 (and as an employee of the state of New York, I’ve thought in many ways about him).
The U.S. Capitol Police have reportedly requested that the National Guard extend its stay in the capital by two months amid renewed concerns about violent threats to the already-fortified Capitol complex.
The Pentagon is currently reviewing the department’s request ― which The Associated Press first reported and other outlets later confirmed ― with the Guard beginning to solicit states for available troops in preparation for Pentagon approval.
The current deployment is scheduled to expire on March 12, with more than 5,000 Guard members still in Washington, D.C.
Leaders and businesses across the US are pushing back against states lifting mask mandates by doubling down on their commitment to enforcing Covid-19 precautions as variants continue to cause concern.
Senior aides to New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo (D) rewrote a troubling report about the number of pandemic-related nursing home deaths last year to include a much lower death toll, multiple media outlets reported Thursday.
The Wall Street Journal first reported that top advisers in Cuomo’s office had intervened to alter drafts of the July report, which chronicled the spread of COVID-19 in the city’s nursing homes. Such residents are among those most vulnerable to severe cases of the coronavirus, and at the time concerns were growing about an uncontrolled spread in those facilities.
A Republican senator severely delayed passage of a $1.9 trillion Covid-19 relief package Thursday by insisting that the entire 628-page bill be read out loud.
In protest of the bill, which had been expected to pass after a marathon round of votes overnight Thursday, Sen. Ron Johnson, R-Wis., objected to waiving the reading of the legislation.
Two Senate clerks — John Merlino and Mary Anne Clarkson — and other members of the secretary of the Senate’s office took shifts reading the bill. The effort, which began at around 3:30 p.m., didn’t wrap up until more than 10 hours later — 10 hours, 43 minutes and 9 seconds to be exact.
The U.S. Capitol Police said Wednesday that they have information regarding a possible plot by a militant group to breach the Capitol on Thursday, a date that some followers of the QAnon extremist ideology falsely claim will mark former president Donald Trump’s return to the White House.
In response, the House canceled a scheduled Thursday session, instead wrapping up planned votes late Wednesday. The Senate, considering President Biden’s $1.9 trillion pandemic relief bill, planned to remain in session Thursday. Members and staff were encouraged to take precautions such as parking in underground garages.
New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo on Wednesday addressed the sexual harassment scandal he’s facing and apologized for his actions.
“I want New Yorkers to hear from me directly on this: First, I fully support a woman’s right to come forward and I think it should be encouraged in every way,” Cuomo said. “I now understand that I acted in a way that made people feel uncomfortable. It was unintentional and I truly and deeply apologize for it. I feel awful about it and frankly I am embarrassed by it.”
He continued, “I never touched anyone inappropriately. I never meant to offend anyone or hurt anyone or cause anyone any pain.”
President Joe Biden criticized the decisions in Texas and Mississippi to roll back statewide mask mandates and other Covid-19 health guidelines as “Neanderthal thinking.”
“I think it’s a big mistake. Look, I hope everybody realizes by now that masks make a big difference. We are on the cusp of being able to fundamentally change the nature of this disease because the way in which we are able to get vaccines,” Biden told reporters.
“The last thing we need is the Neanderthal thinking that, in the meantime, everything is fine, take off our mask, forget it,” he added.
The House on Wednesday passed the For the People Act, a sweeping bill that seeks to change campaign finance, voting and ethics laws.
The bill would expand access to the ballot box by creating automatic voter registration across the country, restoring the voting rights of the formerly incarcerated, expanding early voting and modernizing America’s voting systems.
The House measure passed 220-210, with one Democrat joining all Republican House members in voting against it.
There can be no doubt that President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris are committed to reopening America’s schools as rapidly as possible. As early as the first week in December, then-president-elect Biden announced that he planned to at least partly reopen most of the nation’s schools within the first 100 days of his presidency.
Guidelines released last month by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) underscore this commitment to get most schools open as soon as possible. But the agency’s recommendations are soft, hardly reflecting the urgency justified by the damage to the education of millions of children caused by prolonged disruption of full-time, in-school learning.
Read the rest of Dr. Irwin Redlener’s piece at The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
President Joe Biden said Tuesday the United States will have enough vaccines for every adult by the end of May, two months earlier than the administration had previously estimated.
He said the U.S. was able to speed up the timeline under a deal with Johnson & Johnson to accelerate production of its single-dose vaccine, including an agreement in which Merck will assist Johnson & Johnson with its production, and use of the Defense Production Act to secure necessary equipment and materials.
President Joe Biden has lost his first Cabinet-level pick.
Neera Tanden, the embattled nominee for Biden’s Office of Management and Budget director, has officially withdrawn her nomination for the position after days of uncertainty over whether she had enough votes to be confirmed in the US Senate.
“Unfortunately, it now seems clear that there is no path forward to gain confirmation, and I do not want continued consideration of my nomination to be a distraction from your other priorities,” Tanden, the president of the left-leaning think tank Center for American Progress, said in a statement released Tuesday.
Gov. Greg Abbott announced Tuesday he’s lifting the mask mandate in Texas, even as health officials warn not to ease safety restrictions.
He was very old and in the way, until he got to the hit list. The hit list energized him. It turned on all his lights. It was the pure, uncut evil juju that had been missing from his life for months and, generous demon from the depths of hell that he is, he shared it with all the minions gathered at CPAC in Florida, and it made all their lights shine.
He dropped little jujubes of it amid the torrent of exhausted bigotry that seemed to bore even himself. There was a long stretch of threadbare immigrant-bashing during which he looked like a tired cabaret performer flogging his way through his Cole Porter Medley at a roadside Holiday Inn lounge.
Donald and Melania Trump received the coronavirus vaccine before leaving the White House, according to multiple news reports on Monday.
Citing unnamed advisers, the New York Times, CNN and other outlets reported that while other officials, including Joe Biden, Kamala Harris, and the former vice-president Mike Pence, chose to get their shots publicly to encourage confidence in the vaccines, the Trumps opted to quietly get vaccinated in January. There was no detail on which shot they received or how many doses they had been given.
Both Donald and Melania contracted and recovered from Covid-19 during the 2020 presidential campaign.
The Senate will move forward as soon as Wednesday on President Joe Biden’s $1.9 trillion coronavirus relief package, with Majority Leader Chuck Schumer predicting Monday that the chamber would face “some late nights” ahead this week.
Democrats are racing to pass the Covid aid package into law before March 14, when boosted federal unemployment benefits expire. Given the evenly divided Senate, they are using a complex tool known as budget reconciliation process to pass the bill without the need to win GOP votes.
A third woman has alleged unwanted advances by New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo.
Anna Ruch told the New York Times Monday that Cuomo placed his hands on her face during a wedding reception in New York City in September 2019 and “asked if he could kiss her.” A photo of the alleged incident was taken and shared with the paper.
The revelation came on the same day New York Attorney General Letitia James announced her investigation into previous allegations of sexual harassment.
Senator Joe Manchin of West Virginia is using his crucial vote to push Democrats into lowering the income threshold of the $1,400 stimulus checks in President Joe Biden‘s $1.9 trillion relief package.
Senator Jon Tester of Montana confirmed that a group of moderate Democrats met with Biden at the White House on Monday to discuss amendments to the coronavirus economic relief bill passed by the House of Representatives on Friday evening.
“We talked about the package and we talked about targeting dollars,” he said.
Faced with an escalating backlash following two allegations of sexual harassment in less than a week, New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo on Sunday acknowledged that some of his comments in the workplace “may have been insensitive or too personal” and said he was “truly sorry” to those who might have “misinterpreted (the remarks) as an unwanted flirtation.”
Defending President Joe Biden’s decision not to sanction Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman for the brutal 2018 murder of Washington Post journalist Jamal Khashoggi, White House press secretary Jen Psaki said Sunday that the administration sees “more effective ways” to hold Saudi Arabia accountable for the murder.
On Friday, the Biden administration released a report finding that Crown Prince Mohammed had Khashoggi, a well-known dissident, executed and dismembered. The report’s findings, unlawfully withheld by former President Donald Trump’s administration for years, were announced along with a travel ban on several Saudi officials who are known for targeting critics. The crown prince was not among them.
In a speech here Sunday to close out the Conservative Political Action Conference, former President Donald Trump teased his political future and repeated the lie that he won the 2020 election.
“I stand before you today to declare that the incredible journey we began together four years ago is far from over,” the former president said in his first speech since leaving the White House last month. “We are gathered this afternoon to talk about the future — the future of our movement, the future of our party, and the future of our beloved country.”
The former president began his roughly 90-minute address by asking the crowd: “Do you miss me?” before reviving false claims that he beat President Joe Biden in November — lies that inspired the deadly pro-Trump riot at the Capitol on Jan. 6.
The easiest way for the media to deal with the menacing role gender and race play in American politics, is to simply ignore the topics.
We’re watching that dynamic play out this week as President Joe Biden’s nominee to become the director of the OMB, Neera Tanden, faces roadblocks from key U.S. senators who are using an unprecedented standard to vote against her. Specifically, they’re citing her ‘mean tweets’ from the past.
“I believe her overtly partisan statements will have a toxic and detrimental impact on the important working relationship between members of Congress and the next director of the Office of Management and Budget,” announced Sen. Joe Manchin (D-WV).
Read the rest of Eric Boehlert’s piece at and subscribe to PressRun Media
In Pennsylvania, 62% of voters in 2019 supported raising the minimum wage to $15 an hour. That was consistent with polls from previous years. A poll this month showed that 59% of Pennsylvanians support the COVID relief bill currently being voted on, including the hike in minimum wage. The current minimum wage in Pennsylvania is the same as the federal one: $7.25 an hour.
In Wisconsin, the bill polls at 60% support. A 2019 poll showed 57% support for a higher minimum wage. The minimum wage right now in Wisconsin is $7.25 an hour.
In West Virginia, raising the minimum wage to $15 has the support of 62% of voters. The state’s Republican governor, Jim Justice, supports the COVID relief bill, including the minimum wage hike, which is currently a comparatively generous $8.75 an hour.
Johnson & Johnson’s Covid-19 vaccine was endorsed on Friday by a panel of experts advising the Food and Drug Administration, clearing the last hurdle before a formal authorization expected on Saturday, according to two people familiar with the agency’s plans. The nation’s first shipments will go out in the days after that.
It will be the third shot made available to the United States in the year since the first surge of coronavirus cases began washing over the country, and it will be the first vaccine to require just one dose instead of two.
The House voted early Saturday to pass President Joe Biden’s $1.9 trillion Covid-19 relief package, a step to implementing his vision for bringing the pandemic under control just days after the U.S. crossed the tragic milestone of 500,000 deaths.
The Democratic-controlled House voted 219 to 212 to approve the bill, which includes $1,400 direct payments, a $400-a-week federal unemployment bonus, a per-child allowance of up to $3,600 for one year and billions of dollars to distribute the coronavirus vaccines and to assist schools and local governments.
The vote split largely on partisan lines, with every Republican voting against the measure and just two Democrats joining them — Jared Golden of Maine and Kurt Schrader of Oregon.
President Joe Biden on Thursday directed U.S. military airstrikes in eastern Syria against facilities belonging to what the Pentagon said were Iran-backed militia, in a calibrated response to rocket attacks against U.S. targets in Iraq.
The strikes, which were first reported by Reuters, appeared to be limited in scope, potentially lowering the risk of escalation.
Biden’s decision to strike only in Syria and not in Iraq, at least for now, also gives the Iraqi government some breathing room as it carries out its own investigation of a Feb. 15 attack that wounded Americans.
U.S. Capitol Police plan to maintain their enhanced level of security around the Capitol at least through President Joe Biden’s first official address to Congress because intelligence suggests that extremists could be planning an attack, acting Chief Yogananda Pittman said Thursday.
“We know that members of the militia groups that were present on January 6th have stated their desires that they want to blow up the Capitol and kill as many members as possible with a direct nexus to the State of the Union, which we know that date has not been identified,” she told members of Congress, referring to Biden’s coming first address to a joint session of Congress.
The House will vote on President Joe Biden’s $1.9 trillion Covid-19 relief package Friday, just days after the U.S. crossed 500,000 deaths from the coronavirus.
The Democratic-controlled House is expected to pass the sweeping bill, which includes $1,400 direct payments, a $400-a-week federal unemployment bonus, a per-child allowance of up to $3,600 for one year and billions of dollars to distribute the coronavirus vaccines and to assist schools and local governments.
It would be the sixth round of aid from the federal government; the economy is still reeling from widespread shutdowns, and most Americans continue to wait their turns to be vaccinated.
A ruling in the Senate on Thursday dealt a severe blow to Democrats’ hopes of raising the minimum wage in the Covid-19 relief package, probably dooming the proposal in the legislation that is headed for a vote in Congress.
The parliamentarian, the in-house referee, ruled that the provision was not compliant with rules governing the budget process that Congress is using to pass the bill with simple majorities.
“We are deeply disappointed in this decision,” said Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y. “We are not going to give up the fight to raise the minimum wage to $15 to help millions of struggling American workers and their families. The American people deserve it, and we are committed to making it a reality.”
A Pentagon report on extremism obtained by CNN gives disturbing insight into how White supremacists are active in the military and offers recommendations to better identify domestic extremists and prevent them from serving.
The acting chief of the U.S. Capitol Police told members of Congress on Thursday that while they knew armed extremists could commit violence at the Capitol on Jan. 6, intelligence collected in advance of the assault showed “no credible threat” of the size and scale of the riot that occurred.
Acting Capitol Police Chief Yogananda Pittman said in her opening statement that her department prepared for that day’s events based on the information gathered by law enforcement, including the FBI and the intelligence community.
Former President Donald Trump’s tax returns and underlying tax documents are now in the hands of Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus Vance.
The subpoena for Trump’s tax documents from Mazars USA was enforced on Monday and Vance’s office now has them, a spokesperson for Vance’s office, Danny Frost, told NBC News on Thursday.
The subpoena was enforced after the Supreme Court declined on Monday to stop their production following an emergency application from Trump’s attorneys.
President Joe Biden, while seeming to acknowledge it would take some effort, said Tuesday that he still sees a path forward for Neera Tanden to head up the Office of Management and Budget despite bipartisan pushback that has thrown her hopes for confirmation into question.
“We’re going to push. I still think there’s a shot — a good shot,” Biden told reporters Tuesday afternoon, echoing press secretary Jen Psaki, who said that it was the White House’s expectation that Tanden would be confirmed.
Tiger Woods was “awake, responsive and recovering in his hospital room,” after having a rod put into his leg during surgery following a rollover car crash in the Los Angeles area, his team said in a statement Tuesday night.
Woods, 45, “suffered significant orthopaedic injuries to his right lower extremity” that were treated in emergency surgery, Anish Mahajan, chief medical officer and interim CEO at Harbor-UCLA Medical Center, said in the statement, which was tweeted on Woods’ account.
The rod was inserted into his tibia to stabilize fractures, and screws and pins were used to stabilize injuries to the foot and ankle, according to the statement.
According to the WHO, nearly 66,000 global deaths from coronavirus-related complications were reported last week, marking the third straight week that the figure has fallen. The number of new cases also dropped for the sixth consecutive week, falling by 11 percent last week, the agency said. The total number of coronavirus cases now stands at nearly 111 million since the start of the pandemic, and more than 2.4 million deaths have been reported worldwide, the WHO said.
Three officials who have resigned — Capitol Police chief Steven A. Sund, House sergeant-at-arms Paul D. Irving and Senate sergeant-at-arms Michael C. Stenger — each sought to minimize their responsibility for the events on that violent and chaotic day, which resulted in the deaths of a Capitol Police officer and four others and temporarily delayed the congressional certification of President Biden’s victory.
Johnson & Johnson can deliver 20 million doses of its single-shot coronavirus vaccine to the U.S. government by the end of March, an executive will testify tomorrow.
“Assuming necessary regulatory approvals relating to our manufacturing processes, our plan is to begin shipping immediately upon emergency use authorization, and deliver enough single-doses by the end of March to enable the vaccination of more than 20 million Americans,” Johnson & Johnson’s Richard Nettles, vice president of medical affairs for the company’s pharmaceutical unit Janssen, will tell a House Energy & Commerce subcommittee Tuesday.
The U.S. Supreme Court has rejected former President Donald Trump’s request to shield his taxes from the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office.
The ruling clears the way for DA Cyrus Vance to enforce a grand jury subpoena for the records.
At issue is whether the Trump Corporation artificially inflated the value of Trump’s properties to get the best possible loans. Investigators also want to know whether the company presented different values to tax authorities.
Judge Merrick Garland, President Joe Biden’s nominee for attorney general, pledged Monday to make the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol his top priority if confirmed by the Senate.
Testifying before the Senate Judiciary Committee at his confirmation hearing, Garland said in his opening statement that if confirmed, he would “supervise the prosecution of white supremacists and others who stormed the Capitol on January 6 — a heinous attack that sought to disrupt a cornerstone of our democracy: the peaceful transfer of power to a newly elected government.”
President Joe Biden marked the grim milestone of 500,000 lives lost to the Covid-19 pandemic in a brief but poignant address to the nation Monday evening, drawing on his own personal tragedies as a rhetorical salve for a country still combating the deadly disease.
“That’s more Americans who’ve died in one year in this pandemic than in World War I, World War II, and the Vietnam War combined. That’s more lives lost to this virus than any other nation on Earth,” Biden said. “But as we acknowledge the scale of this mass death in America, we remember each person and the life they lived.”
The president said he keeps a card in his pocket every day with the tally of those who have died from Covid-19.
On the matter of the former president*’s taxes, the Supreme Court of the United States on Monday decided that it pretty much doesn’t want any part of the former president* of the United States, and it delivered the former president* up to the tender mercies of a New York District Attorney. From the Washington Post:
After a four-month delay, the court denied Trump’s motion in a one-sentence order with no recorded dissents.
It is plain that the Court waited until after the election and its prolonged aftermath were over before washing its hands of the former president*, which is an ominous sign for him, and his family, and his various flunkies and enablers.
Read the rest of Charlie Pierce’s piece at Esquire Politics.
At long last, we see glimmers of hope. The COVID-19 epidemic in the United States has fallen below the numbers of daily new cases tallied on the eve of the presidential election, the point at which this viral nightmare soared. Using the New York Times’ coronavirus data tracker, on Nov. 1, 2020, there were 74,195 new cases counted in the country; by Feb. 16, new case reports came in at 64,376.
But in between those dates, a national horror unfolded, peaking on Jan. 8 with 300,619 new cases reported in just 24 hours. This staggering wave, one full year into the pandemic, was completely unnecessary for the world’s richest country. Achieving any sense of closure will require holding Donald Trump accountable for the failure.
Dominion Voting Systems are suing MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell for $1.3 billion in damages by the electronic voting company alleging defamatory accusations related to the 2020 presidential election.
Dominion had threatened legal action against Lindell as he continued to spread the baseless conspiracies that former President Donald Trump won the 2020 general election, a lie that Trump himself also promoted and appears to believe, and was largely the reason for the deadly capitol insurrection that occurred on January 6th by Trump supporters.
Eyewitnesses in the air and on the ground said they watched in horror and shock as parts of a jet engine exploded and broke apart shortly after takeoff from Denver, raining debris over homes.
Although there were no reported injuries or deaths during Saturday’s incident over Broomfield, Colorado, residents and passengers told ABC News they are still shaken up.
“It was more along the lines of, ‘Hey, is everything going to be OK?’ That’s not normal,” Brett Guy, who was a passenger aboard United Flight 328, told ABC News. “I didn’t know what to think.”
Judge Merrick Garland, President Joe Biden’s nominee for attorney general, is expected to face questions Monday about how he would navigate some daunting challenges, including investigations of Biden’s son and the actions of former President Donald Trump and his close advisers.
During a confirmation hearing before the Senate Judiciary Committee, Garland is likely to stress protecting the independence of the Justice Department from White House political interference in investigations after Trump’s attorney general, William Barr, was frequently accused by federal judges and others of putting Trump’s interests ahead of the department’s.
Read the rest of the story at NBC News
President Joe Biden plans to honor the half a million American lives lost to Covid-19 with a candle lighting ceremony at the White House, according to a report by CNN. The exact date and time has not yet been announced, but could come as soon as Monday, depending on when the country passes that somber threshold.
White House officials told CNN that the ceremony will be held around sundown on the appropriate day, and First Lady Jill Biden, Vice President Kamala Harris, and Second Gentleman Doug Emhoff will join the president, who will also deliver remarks.
Biden, Harris, the First Lady, and the Second Gentleman held a similarly somber ceremony marking 400,000 Covid-19 deaths at the Lincoln Memorial the evening before the Jan. 20th inauguration.
Ted Cruz slinked home from Mexico yesterday, starring in a controversy of his own making. While millions of Texans were without power, heat, and water and facing life-threatening condition as the Lone Star state struggled with a winter storm of epic proportions — for which the state’s Republican leaders seem completely incapable of managing — the Texas Republican jetted off for the radiant skies of Cancun with his family.
It was an extraordinary display of callousness for a seasoned public official, signaling that Cruz prizes his privilege over public service, and that he didn’t think twice about grabbing a few days in the sun while his home state faced a historic, deadly natural disaster.
Cruz only compounded his woes by spinning furiously, claiming he had only intended to fly to Mexico for one night with his family because his young daughters wished to go, and wanting “to be a good dad” he then quickly purchased tickets, arrived at the airport with a full bag of luggage, and took off for his overnight. Cruz’s staff also contacted the Houston Police Department against the backdrop of an unfolding catastrophe across the region, and requested officers “assist the Senator in his arrival and movements through the Houston International Airport.”
Read the rest of Eric Boehlert’s piece at and subscribe to PressRun Media
In his State of the State address at the beginning of February, Republican Texas Governor Greg Abbott laid out five “emergency items” that the legislature can vote on within 60 days of the start of the session. These included passing a weak bail reform measure, punishing cities that “defund the police,” protecting companies from lawsuits related to COVID-19, and doing something something “election integrity.” The one infrastructure measure that was given emergency status was a genuinely good one: expanding broadband access for rural communities. Of course, it’s hard to use broadband when your power is out.
The rest of Abbott’s agenda was the usual conservative culture war bullshit. “In this session, we need a law that insures that the life of every child will be spared from the ravages of abortion,” Abbott said. And “we need to erect a complete barrier against any government official anywhere from treading on gun rights in Texas. Texas must be a Second Amendment sanctuary state.” Oh, and don’t worry. Your right to get coronavirus at church will be protected: “I want a law this session that prevents any government entity from shutting down religious activities in Texas.” In other words, mostly cruel and dumb garbage that benefits no one except the politicians who have lied so much that the truth looks like a liberal conspiracy to their idiot hordes.
Read the rest of The Rude Pundit’s piece at his blog.
The recent winter weather slamming the U.S. has delayed COVID-19 vaccine deliveries and forced vaccination sites to close.
The unforeseen setbacks have impacted all 50 states and left a backlog of about 6 million doses of vaccine and 2,000 vaccination sites left without power, according to White House senior adviser Andy Slavitt.
“We anticipate that all the backlog doses will be delivered within the next week, with most being delivered within the next several days,” Slavitt said during a press briefing on Friday.
Dr. Anthony Fauci continues to open up about his experiences working under the Trump administration, revealing the moment he began to lose influence with former President Donald Trump.
In a wide-ranging interview with The Telegraph, the infectious disease specialist recalled a marked shift in his professional relationship with Trump in April or May of last year, once the president began to publicly side with anti-lockdown protesters and back states’ efforts to lift stay-at-home orders.
“My influence with [Trump] diminished when he decided to essentially act like there was no outbreak and focus on re-election and opening the economy,” Fauci, who is now serving as chief medical adviser to President Joe Biden, recalled Friday. “That’s when he said, “It’s going to go away, it’s magical, don’t worry about it.”’
President Joe Biden declared a major disaster for much of Texas as the state reels from a severe winter storm that left millions of people without power amid freezing temperatures.
Biden’s action makes federal funding available to communities across 77 counties, including hard-hit Harris County, where Houston is located. Additional disaster designations may be made after further damage assessments, the White House said Saturday morning in a statement.
“I thank President Biden for his assistance as we respond to impacts of winter weather across our state,” Texas Gov. Greg Abbott said in a statement. “While this partial approval is an important first step, Texas will continue to work with our federal partners to ensure all eligible Texans have access to the relief they need.”
As the Texas power grid collapsed under a historic winter storm, Jose Del Rio of Haltom City, in the Dallas-Fort Worth area, saw the electricity bill on a vacant two-bedroom home he is trying to sell slowly creep up over the past two weeks. Typically, the bill is around $125 to $150 a month, he said. But his account has already been charged about $630 this month — and he still owes another $2,600.
“If worse comes to worst, I have the ability to put it on a credit card or figure something out,” Del Rio said. ”There is no one living in that house. All the lights are off. But I have the air at 60 because I don’t want the pipes to freeze.”
After a nerve-wracking seven-minute descent, NASA’s Perseverance rover successfully touched down on Mars on Thursday afternoon, as part of one of the agency’s most ambitious deep-space missions to search for signs of ancient life on the red planet.
“What an amazing day,” a joyful Steve Jurczyk, NASA’s acting administrator, said shortly after the landing was confirmed.
When Joe Biden met with a group of mayors and governors last week he bluntly told them to get ready for a legislative defeat: his proposed minimum wage hike was unlikely to happen, he said, at least in the near term.
“I really want this in there but it just doesn’t look like we can do it because of reconciliation,” Biden told the group, according to a person in the room. “I’m not going to give up. But right now, we have to prepare for this not making it.”
Six Capitol Police officers have been suspended with pay and 29 others are under investigation for their alleged roles in the riot last month, CNN and Fox News reported Thursday.
“Acting Chief Yogananda Pittman has directed that any member of her department whose behavior is not in keeping with the Department’s Rules of Conduct will face appropriate discipline,” a department spokesperson stated.
Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, told reporters Thursday his decision to go on a family vacation to Cancún, Mexico, as Texans suffer without heat, water and power because of a historic winter storm was “a mistake” that he now regrets.
“It was obviously a mistake, and in hindsight I wouldn’t have done it,” Cruz said outside his home after having returned to Houston, where he was greeted by protesters chanting, “Resign.”
“I understand why people are upset,” Cruz said. He said that he was trying to make his daughters happy by going with them on the trip but that “leaving when so many Texans were hurting didn’t feel right, and so I changed my return flight and flew back on the first available flight.”
Rush Limbaugh has died at the age of 70 after being diagnosed with lung cancer in January 2020, his wife, Kathryn, announced on his eponymous radio show on Wednesday morning. The right-wing talk radio host will perhaps be most remembered for his long history of controversial provocations, insults, and hate speech (and/or his inexplicable beef with Game Of Thrones recappers).
Limbaugh’s radio career was spent spreading the opposite of positivity, and he found a lot of success doing that. But we here at The A.V. Club choose to focus on things that hopefully make the world a better place—or at least make us feel good. With this goal in mind, here are three talk radio offerings that we make time to enjoy that aren’t All Things Considered (which is also quite enjoyable).
Stephanie Miller is the daughter of the 1964 Republican VP candidate, William E. Miller of New York, but she’s a die-hard liberal. Her daily three-hour progressive radio series offers fresh, funny commentary on the often-head-spinning politics of the day, with guests including the likes of Esquire’s Charlie Pierce, The Rude Pundit, and Congressman Adam Schiff. Available in syndication and Miller’s website.
Extreme energy demand and overloaded frozen utility plants amid an unprecedented deep freeze in Texas are among the factors that led to nearly 4.5 millions customer without power in the Lone Star State on Tuesday, experts say.
Outages spread across Texas left millions in the dark and bitter cold amid single-degree temperatures and a winter storm that buried the state in snow and ice in recent days.
“No matter which way you cut it, this is a massive failure for a grid and a state that holds up energy and electricity as a shining example,” said Varun Rai, the director of the Energy Institute at the University of Texas at Austin.
Former President Trump, his attorney Rudy Giuliani, the Proud Boys and Oath Keepers conspired to violate the 1871 Ku Klux Klan Act, which prohibits any actions designed to prevent Congress from carrying out its duties, when they incited the Jan. 6 riot at the Capitol, a new lawsuit from the chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee alleged.
The insurrection was the result of a carefully orchestrated plan by Trump, Giuliani and extremist groups like the Oath Keepers and Proud Boys, all of whom shared a common goal of employing intimidation, harassment and threats to stop the certification of the Electoral College, said Rep. Bennie Thompson, a Democrat from Mississippi.
President Biden arrived in Milwaukee on Tuesday for his first major trip since taking office, kicking off a new phase of his presidency that attempts to move past the impeachment of his predecessor and toward a more aggressive selling of his coronavirus relief plan.
Speaking at a CNN town hall, Biden pledged that any American who wants a vaccine will have access to one by the end of July. He said he wanted many elementary and middle schools to be open five days a week by the end of April. And he said that “by next Christmas, I think we’ll be in a very different circumstance.”
Former President Donald Trump went after Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), calling the Senate minority leader “a dour, sullen, and unsmiling political hack.”
In a lengthy statement on Tuesday, Trump said that McConnell was “destroying the Republican side of the Senate” and that the senator was ”one of the most unpopular politicians in the United States.”
“The Republican Party can never again be respected or strong with political ‘leaders’ like Sen. Mitch McConnell at its helm,” Trump said.
Now that former President Donald Trump’s second impeachment trial is over, President Joe Biden is working this week to shift attention back to his ambitious agenda, with COVID-19 and his $2 trillion relief package taking center stage.
As Biden continues to work to get at least some Senate Republicans on board, he’ll also take his message outside of Washington and directly to the American people while making his first official trips as president.
On Tuesday, Biden will take part in a televised CNN town hall in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, before heading to Kalamazoo, Michigan Thursday, where he is expected to tour a Pfizer manufacturing facility currently producing the COVID-19 vaccine and meet with workers.
Read the rest of the story at ABC News
Nearly 60 percent of Americans believe former President Donald Trump should have been convicted in his second impeachment trial, according to an ABC News/Ipsos poll released on Monday.
While 58 percent of Americans overall believe the former president should have been convicted, the poll split largely along party lines. Eighty-eight percent of Democrats believe Trump should have been convicted, while 64 percent of independents and just 14 percent of Republicans agree.
For the first time in a long time, the US is reporting encouraging Covid-19 trends.
Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) announced on Monday that the House would be forming an “independent 9/11 type commission” to investigate the Jan. 6 violent insurrection at the Capitol, and requesting additional funding for security at the Capitol and for members of Congress.
In a statement released by her office, Pelosi stated that it was “clear” from the evidence presented during former President Donald Trump’s second impeachment trial and the findings by Gen. Russel Honoré “that we must get to the truth of how this happened.”
She emphasized the necessity of the commission by saying the reason was “[t]o protect our security, our security, our security.” The focus of the investigation will be “the facts and causes” related to the “domestic terrorist attack” upon the Capitol, including those “related to the interference with the peaceful transfer of power,” and “the preparedness and response” of the Capitol Police and other federal, staten and local law enforcement agencies in the area.
To Lindsey Graham, who said Donald Trump could “count me out” after the Capitol attack on January 6 but has spent the last month scurrying back to him, is apparently offended by the impeachment case presented by the House managers. “I think most Republicans found the presentation by the House Managers offensive and absurd,” he tweeted. And he’s probably right: Reporters in the Senate chamber are saying that some Republicans are engaging in performative disinterest, reading books or refusing to look at the videos of the violence, like they’re a bunch of Judd Nelsons who are too cool for school. Some are even refusing to sit in the chamber, as they are required to do.
Let me dispense right at the beginning that the verdict of history doesn’t interest me in the least. First of all, Americans have the attention span of fruit flies and, to far too many of them, history is whatever came in over their iPhones 10 minutes ago. Second, I am now of a sufficient age that it’s even odds that I won’t be around when the ultimate verdict of history is handed down. So, on Saturday, when I saw El Caudillo del Mar-a-Lago skate one more time on his unfitness for office and his rank deficiencies as a human being, all the flowery talk about the verdict of history was no consolation. I want a perp walk, not the march of time. Leg irons, not talk of legacies. There is nobody for whom I am rooting louder than I am for Fani Willis, the district attorney of Fulton County who gives every indication that she plans to haul the vulgar talking yam into a local courthouse and, if baby Jeebus is still my amigo, stick him in prison blues and dump him into a holding cell that has a leaky ceiling.
Read the rest of Charlie Pierce’s column at Esquire Politics
Coronavirus cases and hospitalizations have been on a major decline since their peak numbers from the middle of January, according to the COVID Tracking Project.
There were 71,844 new cases reported on Sunday, a nearly 19,000 drop from the number of cases reported on Saturday, according to the tracking project. In January, the number of new daily cases reached higher than 225,000, the health data showed.
Since Jan. 12, the seven-day average of new cases has decreased by nearly 64%, according to the tracking project.
On the third anniversary of the Parkland school shooting, President Joe Biden called on Congress to pass stricter gun laws, including banning assault weapons. In a statement from the White House, Mr. Biden on Sunday asked Congress to pass laws requiring background checks on all gun sales, banning assault weapons and high-capacity magazines, and eliminating immunity for gun manufacturers.
“Today, as we mourn with the Parkland community, we mourn for all who have lost loved ones to gun violence,” Mr. Biden said.
President Biden’s allies say that with the distraction of the impeachment trial of his predecessor now over, he will quickly press for passage of his $1.9 trillion coronavirus relief plan before moving on to an even bigger agenda in Congress that includes infrastructure, immigration, criminal justice reform, climate change and health care.
Mr. Biden has so far succeeded in pushing his agenda forward even amid the swirl of the impeachment, trial and acquittal of former President Donald J. Trump. House committees are already debating parts of the coronavirus relief legislation he calls the American Rescue Plan. Several of the president’s cabinet members have been confirmed despite the Trump drama. And Mr. Biden’s team is pressing lawmakers for quick action when senators return from a weeklong recess.
Senators may disagree on the validity of former President Donald Trump’s impeachment, but they seem on the same page about one thing: This chapter hasn’t closed quite yet.
Speaking on a host of Sunday shows, senators from both parties agreed that there should be a 9/11-style investigation into the Jan. 6 Capitol riots and that Trump had spewed falsehoods relating to the 2020 election. From the lack of law enforcement on the Capitol grounds that day to the seemingly coordinated maneuvers of the rioters, senators pushed to probe into the events that culminated in the attack, which left seven people dead.
Following a day of gut-wrenching surveillance videos depicting a violent, deadly mob teeming into the U.S. Capitol on January 6, some journalists covering Trump’s impeachment trial expressed bewilderment at how Republican senators serving as jurors would be able to vote to dismiss the charges.
“How will they justify acquitting the man who sent a mob for them to stop the counting of electoral votes?” asked CNN, wondering if, “Republican senators will find their conscience changed, or vote the way Trump wants them to”?
On NBC, Chuck Todd stressed that Republicans faced a difficult choice because, “History is not going to look kindly on this acquittal vote.” Specifically, he mentioned how Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) was an traditionalist who cares “about these institutions,” and that he’s “keeping an open mind” about impeachment.
Read the rest of Eric Boehlert’s piece at and subscribe to PressRun Media.
In their presentation of the ironclad case against Donald Trump, Democrats are offering Republicans that rarest of things in this time of wanton condemnation and belligerent tribalism: a chance at redemption. By cataloging Trump’s sins against democracy and the stability of the nation, enabled and cheered on by most Republican senators and nearly all of the hooting maniacs in the Republican caucus in the House, yes, Democratic House managers have demonstrated that the Republican Party has become a wholly-owned subsidiary of the Trump Corporation.
But they are not doing it merely to attack the craven lackeys of the disgraced former president. They are doing it to say, “This is what you’ve become. This is the man you have given the last shards of your wrecked integrity to.” And then Democrats are giving Republicans this chance to untether themselves from Trump and his shrinking hordes of idiots. They are trying to save the debased souls of Republicans. It’s a kindness, a mitzvah, as House manager Jamie Raskin eloquently placed the decision in terms of larger morality.
Donald Trump’s defense lawyers face a daunting mission Friday in refuting a devastating impeachment case that the former President is a dangerous tyrant who turned his mob on his fellow Americans.
President Biden announced Thursday his administration has finalized an order for 200 million more doses of COVID-19 vaccine to be delivered by July 2021, adding to the 400 million doses that the Trump administration had already ordered from Pfizer and Moderna by that date. The two drug companies both produce a two-shot regimen, so the total 600 million doses will vaccinate 300 million people — most of the U.S. population.
“Within three weeks, round-the-clock work of so many people, people standing behind me and in front of me, we’ve now purchased enough vaccine supply to vaccinate all Americans and now we’re working to get those vaccines in the arms of millions of people,” Mr. Biden said in remarks at the National Institutes of Health (NIH).
Former President Donald Trump’s condition after testing positive for Covid-19 became so concerning last October that there was talk of putting him on a ventilator, according to what Trump told one person at the time.
When rioters stormed the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, the attack was well-documented. Many of the insurrectionists livestreamed it or posted photos on social media. The Capitol itself was full of journalists, who reported what happened. And numerous charging documents in the weeks since the insurrection have exposed even more.
Still, there were several key revelations during the initial days of former President Donald Trump’s second impeachment trial. The House impeachment managers, led by Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Md.), introduced evidence previously unseen by the public, but the most damning detail may have been inadvertently revealed by one of Trump’s closest allies in the Senate.
The Biden administration is withdrawing the federal government’s support for a challenge to Obamacare, telling the Supreme Court that the law should remain on the books.
The move by the Justice Department follows speculation on whether Biden would try to withdraw from the high-profile red state lawsuit — fully supported by the Trump administration — to strike down the entirety of the Affordable Care Act.
Despite Democratic impeachment managers laying out a methodical case on Wednesday, Senate Republicans seem intent as ever on acquitting Donald Trump over his role in the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol.
House Democrats spent hours Wednesday showing how Trump, in their words, summoned, assembled and incited the mob to storm the Capitol. The former president was “no innocent bystander,” lead impeachment manager Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Md.) said, adding that he “surrendered his role as commander in chief and became the inciter in chief of a dangerous insurrection.”
Wearing a mask — any mask — reduces the risk of infection with the coronavirus, but wearing a more tightly fitted surgical mask, or layering a cloth mask atop a surgical mask, can vastly increase protections to the wearer and others, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported on Wednesday.
New research by the agency shows that transmission of the virus can be reduced by up to 96.5 percent if both an infected individual and an uninfected individual wear tightly fitted surgical masks or a cloth-and-surgical-mask combination.
The House impeachment managers opened their prosecution of Donald J. Trump on Wednesday with a meticulous account of his campaign to overturn the election and goad supporters to join him, bringing its most violent spasms to life with never-before-seen security footage from the Jan. 6 Capitol riot.
Filling the Senate chamber with the profane screams of the attackers, images of police officers being brutalized, and near-miss moments in which Vice President Mike Pence and lawmakers came steps away from confronting a mob hunting them down, the prosecutors made an emotional case that Mr. Trump’s election lies had directly endangered the heart of American democracy.
His daughter asked him not to go.
“It was the day after we buried her brother, our son Tommy, the saddest day of our lives,” said Rep. Jamie B. Raskin (D-Md.), the lead House impeachment manager.
But Raskin knew he couldn’t stay home on Jan. 6, he explained on the Senate floor Tuesday afternoon. And so he invited his daughter Tabitha and his son-in-law, Hank Kronick, to accompany him to the Capitol to “witness this historic event, the peaceful transfer of power in America” — the counting of electoral votes in the presidential election.
Lead impeachment manager Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-MD) plays a video montage of the riots at the US Capitol on January 6 and argues that former President Trump’s words inspired the attack.
Former President Donald Trump was unhappy with his impeachment lawyer Bruce Castor’s opening argument on the Senate floor Tuesday, two people familiar with his reaction told CNN.
The Senate voted on Tuesday to uphold the Senate’s authority to put Donald Trump on trial for the House’s charge that he incited the Jan. 6 insurrection, sidelining the former president’s primary defense against the House’s impeachment article.
The vote came after a dramatic first day of the trial, which featured a montage of harrowing scenes of violence wrought by Trump’s supporters while Congress was certifying President Joe Biden’s Electoral College victory. But the final tally reaffirmed the likelihood of Trump’s acquittal, with few Republican senators moved by the House’s arguments and just six voting to declare the proceedings constitutional.
Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger’s office has opened an investigation into former President Donald Trump’s Jan. 2 phone callurging Raffensperger to overturn the state’s election results.
“All I want to do is this: I just want to find 11,780 votes, which is one more than we have. Because we won the state,” Trump told Raffensperger in the phone call, which is expected to play a prominent role in Trump’s impeachment trial this week.
Raffensperger’s office confirmed that it had opened the inquiry after it received a complaint about Trump’s conduct.
Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg said that officials are considering a requirement that passengers provide a negative COVID-19 test ahead of domestic flights, according to an interview published on Sunday.
One of President Biden‘s first confirmed Cabinet members told “Axios on HBO” that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) is engaged in “an active conversation” on whether to implement the requirement.
“What I can tell you is it’s going to be guided by data, by science, by medicine and by the input of the people who are actually gonna have to carry this out,” he said. “But here’s the thing: The safer we can make air travel in terms of perception as well as reality, the more people are gonna be ready to get back in the air.”
The second impeachment trial of former President Donald Trump begins in the Senate on Tuesday, where senators will be confronted with the violent events of the January 6 riots and whether Trump is culpable for inciting the insurrectionists that attacked the Capitol and placed their lives in danger.
The Biden administration will begin removing all Senate-confirmed U.S. attorneys appointed during the Trump administration, with two exceptions, a senior Justice Department official said.
The process, which is not uncommon, could start as early as Tuesday. They will be asked to resign.
John Durham will remain in place to investigate the origins of the Russia probe, but not as U.S. attorney for the district of Connecticut, the official said. He was appointed as a special counsel and given extra protections for the inquiry by Attorney General William Barr last fall.
We got a look at the strategy with which the lawyers hired on by the former president* will be engaging his second trial before the Senate. All things being relative, the constitutional question of whether or not a former president* can be convicted of an impeachable offense after he leaves office is the most serious of the issues at trial. Because, bless their slave-holding souls, the Founders were so deeply fond of ambiguity, and because not enough of us were paying attention in history class when William Belknap was discussed, this is a question that at least is worthy of debate. I come down on the side of the Constitution’s being silent on the matter, so full speed ahead. And I would argue that it is of compelling national importance that El Caudillo del Mar-a-Lago be disqualified from ever holding an office of political trust again, and this is the only absolute legal guarantee against that particular calamity. And that is as important a reason for impeaching someone as punishing the person is.
Read the rest of Charlie Pierce’s piece at Esquire Politics.
The demand for Covid-19 vaccine doses may outpace supply at the moment, but availability is already looking better for the months ahead, Anthony Fauci said Sunday morning.
“The demand clearly outstrips the supply right now,” Fauci told NBC’s Chuck Todd. “If you look at the escalation of availability of doses purely on the ability and the capability of manufacturing, it’s going to escalate and will continue to escalate as we go from February to March to April and beyond.”
The Tampa Bay Buccaneers capped the strangest season in pro football history Sunday night by staging a familiar scene: Tom Brady hoisting the Vince Lombardi Trophy.
Brady threw three touchdown passes, two to longtime teammate Rob Gronkowski, as Tampa Bay defeated the reigning champion Kansas City Chiefs, 31-9, in Super Bowl LV at Raymond James Stadium in Tampa, the first modern title game ever played on the home field of one of the two finalists.
A woman arrested in connection with the attack on the U.S. Capitol will be able to go on a prepaid trip to Mexico this month, after a judge granted her request Friday.
Jenny Cudd, a flower shop owner in Midland, Texas, initially faced two misdemeanor charges — entering a restricted building and violent or disorderly conduct — after allegedly posting a social media video in which she boasted about participating in last month’s Capitol riot, according to the FBI affidavit.
With his impeachment trial set to begin this week, a narrow majority of Americans say they support the Senate convicting former President Donald Trump and barring him from holding federal office again, according to a new ABC News/Ipsos poll released Sunday.
Compared to public attitudes in the early days of his first impeachment trial, support for the Senate convicting Trump is higher now. In an ABC News/Washington Post poll published in late January 2020, when the first trial was ongoing but before senators had voted, 47% of Americans said the Senate should vote to remove Trump from office and 49% said he should not be removed.
Desperate to stave off its 2021 ratings slide, as disaffected Fox News viewers turn elsewhere for their right-wing misinformation following Trump’s election defeat, Rupert Murdoch’s channel made a key programming switch last month. Its 7 p.m. anchor, Martha MacCallum, who hosted what Fox identified as one of its serious “news side” programs, was demoted and the key time slot was handed over to a new opinion show, “Primetime.”
For now, a roster of possible hosts are auditioning for the full-time time job, include “Fox & Friends” host Brian Kilmeade, Fox Business anchor Maria Bartiromo, and South Carolina Republican former congressman Trey Gowdy. None of them could ever be mistaken for a journalist, as “Primetime” busies itself pumping out a treadmill of lies and misinformation.
I’ve told this story before, but I’ll tell it again. I’ve had guns pointed at me multiple times. I’ve been in fights. I’ve done some weird shit that was dumb and dangerous. None of that made much of an impression on my psyche because I was fairly certain each time that I wasn’t going to die. The one thing that sticks with me is one sound: the jiggling of a locked doorknob as someone tried to open the door to the bedroom I was in. No one else was supposed to be in the apartment of my then-partner. But at around 3 in the morning, from the bed, I heard the screen door open and then some prying at the front door and then footsteps and then a pause and then the metal knob being turned. This was before cell phones, and the only landline in the joint was in the living room, so calling the cops was out of the question. I yelled, “Whoever you are, I’ve got a gun” as, yes, I held in my hand the pistol that my partner kept under her bed, ready to shoot anyone who came through the door. It didn’t come to that. They ran away and we discovered the only thing missing was the large knife that we had left on the counter in the mess we intended to clean in the morning. Whoever was there didn’t intend to rob. They could have grabbed the TV and a couple of items and had a decent haul. They were there to kill or rape. Ever since that day, I have never felt entirely safe wherever I’m staying. It really is more a feeling. I don’t really do that much differently, but I always double-check locks now since the fact that I happened to lock the door that night was potentially the difference between life and death. Or life and me shooting someone.
House Democrats asked Donald Trump to testify under oath for his Senate impeachment trial, challenging him to respond to their charge that he incited a violent mob to storm the Capitol. A Trump adviser said the former president won’t testify.
Although Democrats might not have the power to force Trump’s testimony, the request from House impeachment managers is part of their overall effort to put the violent events of Jan. 6 on the record for history and hold him accountable for his words. Democrats will look to use his refusal to testify against him as they argue that the ex-president has avoided responsibility for his actions.
Smartmatic, one of the voting systems companies subjected to a torrent of conspiracy theories regarding the 2020 election, has filed a massive $2.7 billion defamation lawsuit against Fox News, top Fox stars Lou Dobbs, Maria Bartiromo and Jeanine Pirro, as well as pro-Trump lawyers Rudy Giuliani and Sidney Powell.
The suit accuses Fox News, its hosts, and guests of running a “disinformation campaign” against the company.
That disinformation campaign, which included false statements about Smartmatic and another voting systems company, Dominion, was waged in service of the conspiracy theory that Donald Trump did not lose the 2020 election.
Johnson & Johnson applied to the Food and Drug Administration on Thursday for emergency use authorization for its experimental Covid-19 vaccine. The FDA could grant the authorization within weeks.
If it is authorized, Johnson & Johnson’s vaccine would be the third approved in the U.S., joining the vaccines from Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna.
“Today’s submission for emergency use authorization of our investigational single-shot Covid-19 vaccine is a pivotal step toward reducing the burden of disease for people globally and putting an end to the pandemic,” Dr. Paul Stoffels, Johnson & Johnson’s chief scientific officer, said in a news release.
The House voted Thursday to remove Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga., from the Budget Committee and the Education and Labor Committee after her social media posts revealed her spreading dangerous and racist conspiracy theories.
The House voted 230-199, with 11 Republicans joining every Democrat who voted.
Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., had rebuked Republican leaders for refusing to take away Greene’s assignments.
In an appearance on NBC’s “Today” show Wednesday, top infectious-disease expert Anthony S. Fauci warned people to stay away from large Super Bowl parties and “just lay low and cool it” — pointing out that partying with people you don’t know could expose you to the coronavirus.
President Biden told House Democrats in a phone call Wednesday that he’s still committed to pursuing a large COVID relief package even as Senate Republicans are pushing him for a much smaller, more targeted relief bill, but he also expressed a willingness to negotiate.
“You have my back, I’ll have yours,” the president said, according to sources on the call.
Mr. Biden met with Republican senators on Monday to hear their proposal for a $600 COVID relief package, roughly a third of the size of the $1.9 trillion package the White House crafted. While the two plans have similar dollar figures allocated for a national vaccination program, testing, and disaster relief, the administration wants to spend more on unemployment insurance, stimulus checks, and aid to state and local governments, among other things.
Liz Cheney, the third-highest-ranking Republican in the House, held on to her title as House GOP conference chair during a secret ballot Wednesday.
Three sources said the vote among Republican House members was 145-61.
Cheney refused to apologize for voting to impeach former President Donald Trump during the closed-door meeting with her GOP conference Wednesday evening, according to a source in the room. Cheney was among the 10 House Republicans who voted for the article of impeachment accusing Trump of inciting the Jan. 6 riot at the Capitol, which led to the deaths of five people.
House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer said Wednesday that the House would vote Thursday on whether to strip embattled Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga., of her committee assignments after Republican leader Kevin McCarthy failed to take action against her.
“I spoke to Leader McCarthy this morning, and it is clear there is no alternative to holding a Floor vote on the resolution to remove Rep. Greene from her committee assignments,” Hoyer, D-Md., said in a tweet. “The Rules Committee will meet this afternoon, and the House will vote on the resolution tomorrow.”
Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer said President Joe Biden told Senate Democrats at lunch Tuesday that he wants a “big, bold package” on Covid-19 relief and that he told Senate Republicans that their $600 billion proposal is “way too small.”
The fate of Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene‘s future is now in the hands of a group of House Republicans who are deliberating whether to punish the Georgia congresswoman for extreme comments she made before winning her seat, as a growing number of Senate Republicans say she shouldn’t be welcome in the party.
The House impeachment managers charged Tuesday that former President Donald Trump is “singularly responsible” for inciting the insurrection at the US Capitol last month, while Trump’s legal team argued his speech was protected by the First Amendment and a Senate conviction would be unconstitutional.
President Joe Biden and first lady Jill Biden paid respects Tuesday night to Capitol Police officer Brian Sicknick, who died from injuries suffered during last month’s violent siege on the U.S. Capitol, as he lies in honor at the Capitol Rotunda.
The first couple walked up to the memorial to Sicknick, and the president placed a hand on Sicknick’s urn. The two paused and placed their hands on their heart to pay their respects, before moving to flowers placed in the room in his honor.
Top House Democrats are moving to force Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene off multiple committees this week — with or without Kevin McCarthy’s help.
House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer delivered an ultimatum to McCarthy on Monday: Either Republicans move on their own to strip Greene (R-Ga.) of her committee assignments within 72 hours, or Democrats will bring the issue to the House floor.
The Democrats’ move, while highly unusual, comes amid intense fury within the Democratic Caucus over Greene’s long record of incendiary rhetoric, including peddling conspiracy theories that the nation’s deadliest mass shootings were staged. Greene also endorsed violence against Speaker Nancy Pelosi and other top Democrats before she was elected to Congress.
The White House reiterated its commitment to delivering $1,400 relief checks to the vast majority of American households, following a report detailing disagreement over the dollar amount and eligibility requirements among senior aides to President Joe Biden.
“The president’s proposal is to finish the job on $2,000 checks by delivering 1,400 additional dollars in direct relief to American families,” a White House spokesperson told HuffPost. The payments would be part of a $1.9 trillion COVID-19 relief package.
Congress in late December approved $600 checks, thwarting the push by progressives for $2,000 payments to help Americans alleviate the economic impact of the coronavirus pandemic.
Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) called GOP Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene’s support for dangerous conspiracy theories a “cancer” on the Republican Party, a blunt castigation of the freshman lawmaker by one of her own party’s leaders.
“Somebody who’s suggested that perhaps no airplane hit the Pentagon on 9/11, that horrifying school shootings were pre-staged and that the Clintons crashed JFK Jr.’s airplane is not living in reality,” McConnell said in a statement first obtained by The Hill. “This has nothing to do with the challenges facing American families or the robust debates on substance that can strengthen our party.”
President Joe Biden will sign three executive orders Tuesday that take aim at his predecessor’s hardline immigration policies and try to rectify the consequences of those policies, including by establishing a task force designed to reunite families separated at the US-Mexico border, according to senior administration officials.
So it seems that 10 Republicans are visiting the White House today so that the president can tell them that they’re all miserable skinflints who want their fellow citizens to die gasping and broke. That’s how it seems to me, anyway. From the AP:
The Republican group’s proposal focuses on the pandemic’s health effects rather than its economic toll, tapping into bipartisan urgency to shore up the nation’s vaccine distribution and vastly expanding virus testing with $160 billion in aid. Their slimmed down $1,000 direct payments would go to fewer households than the $1,400 Biden has proposed, and they would avoid costly assistance to states and cities that Democrats argue are just as important.
Look up in the sky. What do you see? A former Wisconsin pharmacist allegedly believed the sky was a shield to stop people from seeing God. The recently released FBI search warrant application on defendant Steven R. Brandenburg, 46, reveals more context around the alleged motivations and mindset that fueled him sabotaging 570 doses of the Moderna COVID-19 vaccine.
His pharmacy technician at Advocate Aurora Health Systems told investigators the defendant was big on conspiracy theories, according to documents (h/t The Daily Beast). For example, he would tell her the earth was flat, and the sky was not real. Instead, what we see up there is “a shield put up by the Government to prevent individuals from seeing God.” Also, “Judgment Day” was coming.
His attorney of record did not immediately respond to a Law&Crime request for comment.
Sen. Rob Portman (R-Ohio) said Sunday that Republican leadership should take a stand against “totally unacceptable” behavior from Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.), and suggested it could be appropriate to strip her of her committee assignments.
Portman, who recently announced he will not seek reelection in 2022, was asked in an interview with CNN’s Dana Bash on “State of the Union” if he supports punishing Greene. The House Republican and QAnon conspiracy theorist has been under fire over past social media activity, in which she appeared to endorse violence against prominent Democrats. She also expressed support for conspiracy theories purporting that several mass shootings had been staged, and was seen on video harassing a school shooting survivor.
Former President Donald Trump on Sunday announced the legal team that will handle his second impeachment trial in the Senate.
The announcement that lawyers David Schoen and Bruce Castor will lead Trump’s defense team came after a “mutual decision” to part ways with two South Carolina lawyers, Butch Bowers and Deborah Barbier, who had been expected to represent him.
A third lawyer, Joshua Howard, also left the defense team.
Castor is the former Pennsylvania district attorney who declined to prosecute Bill Cosby in 2005 over an encounter with Andrea Constand the year before. Cosby was convicted of sexually assaulting Constand in 2018 after a different prosecutor pursued the case.
President Joe Biden has agreed to meet a group of 10 Republican senators who have proposed a slimmed-down coronavirus relief plan that they say can win bipartisan support.
The Republicans’ proposed package is much smaller than Biden’s $1.9 trillion proposal, and includes $160 billion for vaccines, $4 billion for health and substance abuse services, the continuation of current unemployment aid and unspecified “targeted” economic assistance and help for schools.
The invitation came late Sunday after the senators requested the meeting.
In a move that should have surprised nobody, yet seemed to catch the D.C. press off guard, the Republican Party rallied to Trump’s defense this week, voting overwhelmingly in favor of shutting down an impeachment trial before it even begins in the U.S. Senate.
Casting aside the fact that he incited a murderous mob that ransacked the U.S. Capitol, 45 Republican senators, including Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY), voted to give a remorseless Trump a pass. The vote came in the wake of news that, during the final days of his presidency, Trump secretly plotted to fire the U.S. Attorney General in order to force Georgia officials to overturn the state’s election results, which would have ignited the country’s gravest Constitutional crisis in a century.
Read the rest of Eric Boehlert’s piece at and subscribe to PressRun Media
Let’s do this together, shall we? Let’s take hands and peer over into the abyss and hope that it doesn’t peer back. Okay, into the mouth of madness we go…
Here’s what we know that Republican Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene believes just from things she has said, written, or responded to positively, more or less in order from completely barking mad to dangerously batshit (although the line is mighty, mighty thin):
1. She has expressed support for the existence of the so-insane-it-may-as-well-be-scrawled-in-shit-on-a-padded-room-wall QAnon idea know as “frazzledrip.” According to the shit scrawlers, the name comes from a file on Anthony Weiner’s laptop that contains a video that shows Hillary Clinton and Weiner’s wife, Huma Abedin, torturing a child, including wearing her face skin as a mask, in order to scare her so her blood…and it’s all fucking awful and dumb and anyone who believes it should not fucking be allowed in Walmart, let alone Congress. Greene commented on a mention of it on Facebook, “I post things sometimes to see who knows things. Most the time people don’t,” which is what you say when you don’t know what’s real and you’re a goddamn lunatic.
Two men identified as members of the Proud Boys have been indicted on federal conspiracy and other charges in the Capitol riot as prosecutors raise the stakes in some of the slew of cases stemming from the Jan. 6 insurrection.
Dominic Pezzola, a former Marine who authorities say was seen on video smashing a Capitol window with a stolen Capitol Police riot shield, and William Pepe, who authorities said was photographed inside the building, were arrested earlier in the month on federal charges that included illegally entering a restricted building. The two, both from New York state, have now been indicted in Washington on charges that newly include conspiracy.
Former President Donald Trump has parted ways with his lead impeachment lawyers just over a week before his Senate trial is set to begin, two people familiar with the situation said Saturday.
Butch Bowers and Deborah Barbier, both South Carolina lawyers, are no longer with Trump’s defense team. One of the people described the parting as a “mutual decision” that reflected a difference of opinion on the direction of the case. Both insisted on anonymity to discuss private conversations.
One said new additions to the legal team were expected to be announced in a day or two.
Today’s guests were Glenn Kirschner, John Fugelsang, and Frangela
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Dominion Voting Systems spokesperson Michael Steel offered a thorough rebuttal to former president’s “big lie” about its machines engaging in election fraud and confirmed his company had drafted a demand letter to Trump in case it pursues a lawsuit against him.
Steel, who was previously the chief press secretary for GOP House Speaker John Boehner, told Deadline: White House host Nicolle Wallace that those pushing conspiracy theories about Dominion “have attacked a great American company” and “undermined the American people’s confidence in the democratic system.”
Steel then walked viewers through a few examples from a Washington Post debunking of the false claims made by Trump and his legal advocates Rudy Giuliani and Sidney Powell, both of whom have now been named as defendants in separate $1.3 billion defamation lawsuits.
President Biden on Thursday ordered the Affordable Care Act’s health insurance marketplaces reopened to give people throttled by the pandemic economy a new chance to obtain coverage, and he took steps to restore coverage mandates that had been undermined by his predecessor, including protecting those with pre-existing medical conditions.
Thursday’s orders also took aim at Trump-era restrictions on Medicaid, especially on work requirements imposed by some states on poor people trying to obtain coverage. Separately, Mr. Biden moved toward overturning his predecessor’s restrictions on the use of taxpayer dollars for clinics that counsel patients on abortion, both in the United States and overseas.
The first two U.S. cases of the emerging Covid-19 variant first identified in South Africa were detected in South Carolina, state public health officials said Thursday.
Although no evidence suggests it causes more severe disease, the variant first identified in South Africa is known to be more resistant to current vaccines and may spread more easily and quickly than other variants.
There is no known travel history of the infected, and no connection between the two cases, the South Carolina Department of Health and Environmental Control said in a release.
Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., on Thursday accused Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, of “trying to get me killed” by challenging the election results in the lead up to the Capitol riot and demanded that he resign.
The progressive lawmaker criticized Cruz after he said he agreed with her call for an investigation into why personal trading app Robinhood stopped allowing users to buy stocks including GameStop.
“I am happy to work with Republicans on this issue where there’s common ground, but you almost had me murdered 3 weeks ago so you can sit this one out. Happy to work w/ almost any other GOP that aren’t trying to get me killed. In the meantime if you want to help, you can resign,” she told Cruz in a tweet.
Andy Slavitt, senior adviser to the White House Covid-19 Response Team, said it will “be months” before all Americans who want a Covid-19 vaccine can get one.
“I want to level with the public that we’re facing two constraining factors. The first is getting enough supply quickly enough, and the second is the ability to administer the vaccines quickly once they’re produced and sent out to the sites,” Slavitt said.
Video of Republican Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene confronting Parkland shooting survivor David Hogg before she was elected to Congress went viral Wednesday amid an uproar over newly reported comments she made in 2018 and 2019.
Department of Homeland Security Secretary David Pekoske has issued a National Terrorism Advisory System (NTAS) bulletin warning the public of a “heightened threat environment” across the United States following last week’s presidential inauguration. The advisory, which comes after the violent assault on the Capitol on January 6, runs through the end of April.
“Information suggests that some ideologically-motivated violent extremists with objections to the exercise of governmental authority and the presidential transition, as well as other perceived grievances fueled by false narratives, could continue to mobilize to incite or commit violence,” DHS said in issuing the bulletin.
President Joe Biden on Wednesday signed a series of executive actions aimed at combating climate change, building on unilateral action the president took his first day in office and heightening the federal government’s focus on the issue, which took a back seat under former President Donald Trump’s administration.
Joined by Vice President Kamala Harris, special presidential envoy for climate John Kerry and national climate adviser Gina McCarthy, Mr. Biden said his actions will “supercharge our administration’s ambitious plan to confront the existential threat of climate change.”
Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) repeatedly supported disturbing conspiracy theories and liked social media posts that suggested executing House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) and FBI agents, among others, according to several media reports published Tuesday.
Media Matters for America, a progressive watchdog group, first reported that Greene, a far-right firebrand who was recently elected to Congress, had endorsed fringe conspiracy theories on Facebook in 2018 that suggested former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton murdered a child during a satanic ritual.
In a letter to all U.S. attorneys Tuesday, President Joe Biden‘s acting attorney general, Monty Wilkinson, officially rescinded the Trump administration’s “zero tolerance” program, which led to the separation of over 3,000 migrant families, according to a copy of the letter obtained by NBC News.
Although it is largely symbolic, the move officially removes the policy from the Justice Department’s guidance to federal prosecutors and instructs prosecutors to use discretion when prosecuting misdemeanor border offenses.
Former President Donald Trump ended the practice of separating migrant children when their parents were prosecuted in an executive order in June 2018, but the policy of zero tolerance, which directs U.S. attorneys to prosecute anyone who crosses the border illegally, even for misdemeanors, was never officially rescinded.
Trump’s trial is not scheduled to begin until Feb. 9, but senators were sworn in for the proceedings Tuesday, and they immediately voted on an objection raised by Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) questioning the constitutional basis for the impeachment and removal of a former president.
The Biden administration is planning to purchase an additional 200 million doses of Covid-19 vaccine, marking a stepped-up effort to vaccinate the vast majority of Americans this year.
Federal officials negotiating for the new supply expect to receive 100 million doses each from Moderna and Pfizer, in deals set to boost the nation’s total vaccine capacity to 600 million.
That would give the U.S. the ability to eventually vaccinate up to 300 million Americans, President Joe Biden said on Tuesday.
Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) agreed to move forward with a power-sharing agreement on Monday that will allow Democrats to take full control of the Senate after two Democratic senators reiterated their support for the filibuster.
The Kentucky Republican had previously demanded that Democrats pledge to preserve the filibuster, the chamber’s supermajority requirement for legislation, in an organizing resolution laying out procedures for how a Senate divided 50-50 will operate. But Democrats refused, citing a previous agreement from 2001, the last time the Senate was split 50-50, that included no such language.
President Joe Biden said he expects anyone who wants a coronavirus vaccination to be able to get one by the spring, and he upped his vaccination goal for his first 100 days in office.
Biden said Monday that he now believes the country can administer 1.5 million shots a day in the coming weeks and give 150 million vaccinations over the next 100 days, “with the grace of God.”
In December, Biden set a goal of 100 million vaccinations in his first 100 days, and at the time, no vaccine had been cleared for use. But with states ramping up their vaccination efforts in recent weeks, the country is already averaging Biden’s goal of around 1 million shots a day.
Former Federal Reserve Chair Janet Yellen was confirmed as treasury secretary Monday, with the Senate voting 84-15 to make her the first woman to lead the department.
Yellen steps into the role with some advantages: She is well known and well respected among lawmakers of both parties, and she has experience with enormous economic challenges. Yellen had been expected to be confirmed easily after her nomination passed the Senate Banking Committee on a 26-0 vote Friday.
The House delivered its article of impeachment against former President Donald Trump to the Senate on Monday, kicking off preparations for the coming trial.
House impeachment managers held a ceremonial procession through National Statuary Hall and the Capitol Rotunda to the Senate on Monday evening to present the article of impeachment to the secretary of the Senate.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., named nine Democratic impeachment managers for the trial this month, with Rep. Jamie Raskin, D-Md., leading the group. The eight other Democrats are Reps. Diana DeGette of Colorado, Joe Neguse of Colorado, David Cicilline of Rhode Island, Joaquin Castro of Texas, Eric Swalwell of California, Ted Lieu of California and Madeleine Dean of Pennsylvania, along with Stacey Plaskett, the U.S. Virgin Islands’ nonvoting delegate to Congress.
One recent addition to democracy’s glittering array of regular attractions is going to be with us for a little longer. It seems Fascism Fridays has become very popular at all of our locations. Up until last week, it usually was marked by the previous administration*’s release of authoritarian information that the administration* hoped would elude people’s notice. Now, though, it seems the new house special every Fascism Friday is the revelation of some authoritarian activity in which the previous administration* actually engaged. And this past Fascism Friday was a whopper.
Sen. Bernie Sanders on Sunday said Senate Democrats would pass a Covid-19 relief bill as soon as possible through budget reconciliation, which would allow the package to pass with a simple majority vote rather than with the support of 60 senators.
“We are going to use reconciliation, that is 50 votes in the Senate plus the vice president, to pass legislation desperately needed by working families in this country right now,” the Vermont senator told CNN’s Dana Bash on “State of the Union” on Sunday. The new Senate stands on 50-50, with Vice President Kamala Harris as the tiebreaking vote when needed.
The brother of an alleged US Capitol rioter is a US Secret Service agent who once led former first lady Michelle Obama’s detail, CNN has learned.
Democratic members of Congress are pressing ahead with preparations for the second impeachment trial of former president Donald Trump, saying there is a “compelling” case for Trump to be convicted of inciting an insurrection and arguing that moving forward with a trial is imperative for the country’s healing.
Meanwhile, the fractures within the Republican Party were evident Sunday as GOP senators appeared split over whether it was constitutional to hold an impeachment trial for a president who had already left office. Sen. Mitt Romney (R-Utah), one of Trump’s most outspoken GOP critics, stopped short of saying he would vote to convict Trump, while Republican allies of the former president continued to argue that an impeachment trial should be abandoned for the sake of “unity.”
President Joe Biden is set to sign a “Made in America” executive order Monday, fulfilling a long-time campaign promise to increase the amount of federal spending that goes to American companies.
The announcement comes at a time when the government is set to spend expansively on efforts to defeat COVID-19, and after a period during which vulnerabilities in the U.S. supply chain were exposed as state and local governments resorted to foreign manufacturers to obtain desperately-needed personal protective equipment.
Garrett Miller, a Texas man who participated in the insurrection at the Capitol, is facing serious federal charges for allegedly threatening to assassinate Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) and a Capitol Police officer.
CNN’s Jessica Schneider told anchor Ana Cabrera that Miller was facing five charges related to his actions during the riot and for the online threats be posted on social media, including “assassinate AOC,” and, regarding a Capitol Police officer who shot a Trump supporter, “she deserves to die” and “won’t survive long” because it was “hunting season.”
According to prosecutors, Miller also wrote posts talking about a potential civil war and “next time we bring guns.”
Then-President Donald Trump considered replacing acting attorney general Jeffrey Rosen in January with Justice Department lawyer Jeffrey Clark, who was willing to help Trump push his claims of widespread voter fraud in order to overturn the election results, according to a Justice Department official.
Trump ultimately decided against firing Rosen out of fear that it would lead to mass resignations from Justice Department staff, which he worried could undermine his goal of staying in power.
Trump’s unsuccessful efforts to use the Justice Department to stay in office were first reported by The New York Times and confirmed by NBC News.
The United States has surpassed 25 million confirmed cases of COVID-19 since the pandemic began. The new milestone, reported Sunday by Johns Hopkins University, is a grim reminder of the coronavirus’ wide reach in the U.S., which has seen far more confirmed cases and deaths than any other country in the world.
The U.S. accounts for roughly one of every four cases reported worldwide and one of every five deaths. India has recorded the second most cases, with about 10.7 million.
We now have evidence that the biggest threat to American democracy was not the violent rioters who stormed the Capitol on January 6, but the bad-faith Republicans who work at the Capitol and spent two months fueling the Big Lie that the election was stolen in the first place. We also have evidence that ex-president Donald Trump could never have threatened democratic self-government without the help of social media companies. And we now have a case study on what happens to insurrectionists when private companies refuse to let them use those platforms to recruit, organize, and incite violence.
The cowards melt away. Deplatforming works. Delegitimizing people like Ted Cruz and Josh Hawley and Trump works. Inauguration Day proved that.
Moving to eliminate any remaining vestiges of a news operation, Rupert Murdoch’s Fox network summarily fired two political newsroom veterans this week. The heavy-handed move was seen as punishment for when the channel angered Trump loyalists on Election Night by correctly calling Arizona for Joe Biden.
Out are senior vice president and D.C. managing editor Bill Sammon, and politics editor Chris Stirewalt. The “purge,” as network staffers have called it and included nearly 20 digital staffers, represents yet another confirmation that Fox News no longer pretends to be a journalistic outpost. Instead, facing new competition from the extreme far-right, the network eagerly sinks deeper into partisan, conspiratorial propaganda. And that’s why the network doesn’t deserve to have White House credentials for the new Democratic administration.
Read the rest of Eric Boehlert’s piece at and subscribe to PressRun
Republicans are returning to dickish form with the speed of a rabid chipmunk that got into the meth stash. It was to be expected. They should feel chastened, humbled even, by the events of the last few weeks. They should be offering a hand to Democrats, you know, the party that’s not responsible for attempting to overturn the election, the party that isn’t filled with assholes who took a shit in the Capitol, the party that didn’t enable a twice-impeached president commit every depravity he could conceive of. They should have gone to the leaders in each house of Congress (who are both Democrats) and President Joe Biden (also a Democrat) and admitted that they fucked up before begging for forgiveness and saying that they are willing to get behind some shit.
But they didn’t because they’re Republicans, and Republicans are always and forever motherfuckers. And fucking mothers is just what motherfuckers do. It’s right there in the word.
President Joe Biden plans to sign a pair of executive orders Friday aimed at expanding food assistance for tens of millions of Americans and launching a process that will require federal contractors to pay their workers a $15 minimum wage and provide emergency paid leave.
The moves come on Biden’s second full day in office, and continue a string of executive actions he’s taken to jumpstart his agenda and set the tone for his administration amid a COVID-19 pandemic that has left families struggling economically.
Dr. Anthony Fauci, one of the government’s top public health experts, signaled that he feels free to speak honestly about Covid-19 now that former President Donald Trump is out of office.
In his first news briefing since President Joe Biden was sworn in, Fauci said that the new administration was committed to being “completely transparent, open and honest,” a sharp break from the Trump White House, when Fauci said he often felt there would be repercussions for speaking honestly about the pandemic.
“It was very clear that there were things said, be it regarding things like hydroxychloroquine and other things like that, that really was uncomfortable because they were not based in scientific fact,” Fauci told reporters, speaking about the Trump administration.
Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell has proposed to Majority Leader Chuck Schumer that former President Donald Trump’s impeachment trial should start in mid-February, timing he laid out during a conference call with Republican colleagues Thursday, multiple sources on the call said.
Included in McConnell’s proposal is a deal to begin the Senate proceedings in February so both sides can properly prepare for Trump’s second impeachment trial, multiple people on the call said. Schumer could be open to the proposal, giving him more time to confirm President Joe Biden’s Cabinet nominees.
President Joe Biden laid out his to plan to combat the coronavirus pandemic on his first full day in office, warning Americans that the worst is still to come.
“Let me be clear,” Mr. Biden said during the event at the White House. “Things are going to continue to get worse before they get better.”
The president signed 10 executive orders to vastly expand testing and vaccine availability, with the goal of administering 100 million vaccine doses by the end of April. He invoked the Defense Production Act to compel federal agencies and manufacturers to increase key supplies needed to fight the virus, and implemented new travel restrictions meant to curb its spread.
Newly sworn in President Joe Biden and his advisers are inheriting no coronavirus vaccine distribution plan to speak of from the Trump administration, sources tell CNN, posing a significant challenge for the new White House.
Every four years, thousands throng to Washington for a whirl of Inauguration Day balls and concerts. But as the coronavirus pandemic continues to force most big-ticket national events to scale down, President Joe Biden’s inaugural committee decided to take the festivities to TV screens.
“Celebrating America,” a 90-minute special that aired across several networks Wednesday night, brought together a mix of A-list talent — Justin Timberlake, John Legend, Demi Lovato — and average Americans from all walks of life, including teachers and nurses on the front lines of the Covid-19 crisis.
The special, which moved swiftly (more or less) between genre-spanning live performances and recorded video segments, was as much a celebration of President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris’ ascent to the White House as it was a reflection of the new president’s political persona.
The Senate confirmed President Joe Biden’s first Cabinet nominee Wednesday evening, voting to approve his pick for director of national intelligence, Avril Haines, on his first day in office
On his second day in office, President Joe Biden will sign 10 executive orders to ramp up Covid-19 vaccinations, expand testing and reopen schools as he outlines a detailed plan to tackle the pandemic.
The new administration will increase the number of vaccination sites by creating federal community vaccination centers in stadiums, gymnasiums and conference centers staffed with thousands of additional workers, some of them from federal agencies and the military, as well as first responders.
Joseph Robinette Biden Jr. was sworn in as the 46th president of the United States on Wednesday, taking office at a moment of profound economic, health and political crises with a promise to seek unity after a tumultuous four years that tore at the fabric of American society.
With his hand on a five-inch-thick Bible that has been in his family for 128 years, Mr. Biden recited the 35-word oath of office swearing to “preserve, protect and defend the Constitution” in a ceremony administered by Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr., completing the process at 11:49 a.m., 11 minutes before the authority of the presidency formally changes hands.
Twelve National Guard members were removed from inauguration duty, including two for “inappropriate” comments or texts, a Pentagon spokesman told reporters in a phone briefing Tuesday.
“We have two individuals that were identified as making inappropriate comments or texts,” said spokesperson Jonathan Hoffman.
One was removed after fellow troops brought the member’s comments to the attention of guard officers. Another was pulled out after an anonymous tip, he said.
Mayorkas, 61, is expected to win confirmation since the Democrats picked up two additional Senate seats this month in Georgia. But legislative aides from both parties said it is unclear how quickly that will occur.
Trump also pardoned two former Republican members of Congress, Rick Renzi of Arizona and Randall “Duke” Cunningham of California. Both had completed prison terms that stemmed from corruption convictions. A third, Robert “Robin” Hayes of North Carolina, was also pardoned after finishing a probation sentence for making a false statement during a federal investigation
At noon ET today, Joe Biden will take his oath of office to become the 46th president of the United States, a culminating moment for his nearly 50-year career in politics and lifetime of tragedy and triumph.
But the pomp and circumstance surrounding Biden’s inauguration will look much different than years past, a result of the series of unparalleled challenges the 78-year-old will face upon taking office: the COVID-19 pandemic that has claimed the lives of more than 400,000 Americans and has left families across the country struggling economically in its wake, and a divided nation reeling from the attacks on the U.S. Capitol earlier this month following the contentious election.
The document, a summary of threats that the FBI identified in a Monday intelligence briefing, warned that both “lone wolves” and adherents of the QAnon extremist ideology, some of whom joined in the violent siege on the Capitol on Jan. 6, have indicated they plan to come to Washington for President-elect Joe Biden’s swearing-in ceremony.
President-elect Joe Biden’s nominee to lead the Department of Homeland Security will pledge on Tuesday to do everything in his power to prevent attacks like the one that targeted the Capitol earlier this month, according to prepared remarks obtained by POLITICO.
Alejandro Mayorkas, who will appear before the Senate Homeland Security Committee for his confirmation hearing later Tuesday, plans to address the recent insurrection head-on, less than two weeks after a pro-Donald Trump mob stormed the Capitol in a series of violent riots that left five people dead and resulted in the president’s second impeachment.
President-elect Joe Biden plans to unveil a sweeping immigration bill on Day One of his administration, hoping to provide an eight-year path to citizenship for an estimated 11 million people living in the U.S. without legal status, a massive reversal from the Trump administration’s harsh immigration policies.
The legislation puts Biden on track to deliver on a major campaign promise important to Latino voters and other immigrant communities after four years of President Donald Trump’s restrictive policies and mass deportations. It provides one of the fastest pathways to citizenship for those living without legal status of any measure in recent years, but it fails to include the traditional trade-off of enhanced border security favored by many Republicans, making passage in a narrowly divided Congress in doubt.
U.S. President-elect Joe Biden is planning to lay out a “positive, optimistic” vision for the country in his inaugural address on Wednesday and “try to turn the page on the divisiveness, and the hatred of the last four years” under outgoing President Donald Trump, a key Biden aide said Sunday.
Kate Bedingfield, Biden’s incoming communications director, told ABC’s “This Week” show that the new U.S. leader will “lay out a path forward that really calls on all of us to work together.”
She added, “I think that’s what Americans all across the country want. They want a government that once again is focused on doing the right thing by them and helping them in their day-to-day lives.”
President Trump on Monday ordered an end to the ban on travelers from Europe and Brazil that had been aimed at stopping the spread of the coronavirus to the United States, a move quickly rejected by aides to President-elect Joseph R. Biden Jr., who said Mr. Biden will maintain the ban when he takes office on Wednesday.
In a proclamation issued late Monday, Mr. Trump said that the travel restrictions, which apply to noncitizens trying to come to the United States after spending time in those areas, would no longer be needed on Jan. 26, the date on which the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention will start requiring all passengers from abroad to present proof of a negative coronavirus test before boarding a flight.
For most of Friday, I was exploring the supporting documentation developed by the FBI in its ongoing investigation into the thugs and hooligans who ransacked the Capitol on January 6. This was courtesy of a spectacular database being developed by the Program on Extremism at George Washington University. Some of the details are dizzyingly surreal; there’s one guy named Kevin Lyons who apparently told the FBI that he didn’t know whether he had broken into the Capitol, but that he did have a “dream” in which he saw “a mob of people” shouting and throwing papers up in the air. A dream. It’s the Bobby Ewing defense. I suspect it will not succeed at trial.
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