Crooked Media - What A Day: Here today, gone Navarro

 -Joe Biden, with the sickest Elon Musk burn of all time

We're fast approaching a climax of legal and public accountability for Donald Trump's plot to overthrow the government, and Republicans are all-in on a coverup, if you can imagine. 

• A federal grand jury has indicted former Trump trade adviser Peter Navarro on two counts of criminal contempt of Congress for refusing to provide documents and testimony to the House January 6 Committee. Navarro was taken into custody Friday morning ahead of his initial court appearance the same afternoon (at which he ultimately, hilariously, represented himself). He's the second insurrection participant to be charged with criminal contempt, though multiple citations of other witnesses who've defied their subpoenas remain pending.
   
• In Georgia, Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger (R-GA), fresh off defeating a Trump-backed Big-Lie primary challenger, testified to a special grand jury in Fulton County for over five hours Thursday about Trump's attempt to blackmail him into manipulating the official vote count in Georgia and declare him the winner. Raffensperger's wife, whom Trump-loyalists terrorized after the election, also testified Thursday, and Attorney General Chris Carr (R-GA) has been subpoenaed for testimony later in June.
   
• Trump and his coup plotters may more on the hook for the violence than they thought, too. New reporting demonstrates that the highest levels of the White House were aware that Trump would publicly turn on Mike Pence on January 6, and warned Secret Service that by doing so, he'd create a security risk to the vice president. That warning, from Pence's chief of staff, Marc Short, is perhaps the most incriminating evidence to date that senior Trump administration officials knew in advance that the coup plotters would stoke violence.

• Short has reportedly been called to testify publicly before the January 6 committee during its June hearing-a-thon. So has Pence's then-chief counsel, Greg Jacob. The committee already deposed both men, and if they appear in public under oath they'll presumably face questions about their level of awareness ahead of January 6 that Trump supporters would become violent. The committee reportedly will hear publicly from the revered conservative former appeals court judge J. Michael Luttig, a one-time mentor to many pro-insurrection Republicans, who advised Pence against participating in the coup and has warned that Republicans are organizing to steal future elections.
   
• These men's former colleagues want the world to think they're puppets of Nancy Pelosi. The entire GOP apparatus has gamed out a plan to counterprogram the public hearings, tar them as partisan (they are not) and call Democrats the "real election deniers" (another lie). National media is so far framing their plans in terms of a tit-for-tat messaging war, but it's more accurate and informative to say the Republican Party will do battle in support of the coup attempt against those who oppose it.

Former Barack Obama Communications Director and Pod Save America host Dan Pfeiffer is joined by Professor of History at Princeton University Kevin Kruse to break down the Most Famous Political Ads of All Time.

Republican determination to abolish reproductive rights overnight has transformed polling on the issue in a way that augurs poorly for the GOP—if Democrats can make the election a referendum on the right to choose. Not only do more than two-thirds of Americans support Roe v. Wade, according to a new Wall Street Journal poll, but after decades of ambivalence, a near-supermajority of Americans (57 percent) now say abortion should be legal if a woman wants one for any reason. The finding is consistent across polls, too. A new Gallup survey, conducted largely after the Supreme Court's draft Roe opinion leaked, finds the number of Americans who identify as pro-choice spiked to 55 percent, after hovering between 45 and 50 since the mid 1990s. Those numbers are lopsided enough that if the midterms become a choice between pro- and anti-abortion leadership, Democrats will be well situated to keep their governing trifecta. It's up to them to make that binary clear in the voting public's mind.  

Fight Classroom Censorship with the ACLU

Since last year, 10 states have passed classroom censorship bills that restrict discussions about race, gender, and sexual orientation in schools. In 2022 so far, state legislatures have introduced over 100 new bills across 22 states, many of which explicitly target K-12 schools.

If schools are found in violation of classroom censorship bills or restrictions, many may risk losing funding. In some cases, teachers could face formal admonishment or lose teaching licenses if they don’t comply with curriculum restrictions.

These restrictions are a coordinated attack on our students’ right to learn. Join the ACLU to fight back today.

Politicians and school boards are making moves to ban books from public schools and libraries. As a result, schools can't make certain books–predominantly those by Black and LGBTQ authors discussing issues of race, gender, and sexual orientation–available to students to learn from and explore, even voluntarily and on their own time.

This wave of censorship efforts is attempting to erase the legacy of discrimination and lived experiences of Black and Brown people, women and girls, and LGBTQ+ individuals. And it’s refusing to let students think for themselves.

That’s why the ACLU is already hard at work to fight back against these damaging censorship bills and book bans through lawsuits and fierce advocacy. Are you with us? Add your name today to stay up to date on how you can defend everyone’s fundamental right to learn.

Thanks for taking action,

The ACLU Team

• Former Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson says the public and lawmakers should have to see gruesome crime-scene photos or other images of school assault-rifle killings like the one in Uvalde, TX, and hopes families will release them, in the spirit of Mamie Till, who held an open-casket funeral for her son Emmett after white supremacists murdered him.  
   
• The House Oversight and Reform Committee is (finally) investigating Jared Kushner's corrupt multibillion dollar bribery arrangement with Saudi Arabia. 
   
• The same committee will also hear testimony from Uvalde and Buffalo survivors and families next week. Its chairman, Carolyn Maloney, has been thrust into a competitive primary thanks to a new court-drawn New York House district map.
   
• The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration has fielded over 750 complaints from Tesla drivers who say their automated driving systems have forced their cars to stop in the middle of the road for no reason. 
   
• By sheer coincidence, Tesla CEO Elon Musk wants to lay off 10 percent of his salaried workforce and freeze hiring not because he's ruining his company but because he has bad feels about the economy, to which President Biden replied [see above GIF].
   
• Rep. Chris Jacobs (R-NY) has abandoned his re-election campaign, seven days after announcing his support for banning assault rifles and regulating high-capacity magazines in the wake of the Uvalde, TX, school massacre and the New York grocery store slaughter near his Buffalo district.
   
• A biker gang, seemingly deputized by police, blocked reporters from covering the funeral of a child killed in the Uvalde school massacre.
   
• The Republican-controlled Florida Supreme Court has decided to let a blatantly illegal gerrymander drawn by Gov. Ron DeSantis (R-FL) stand for now, instead of hearing the case promptly, so that Republicans can win more seats with fewer votes in November. 
   
• In other DeSantis coups, the state of Florida threatened to fine the Special Olympics (!) $27.5 million (!!!) for imposing a vaccine requirement on the event, before the (again) Special Olympics backed down. More like Viktor Florban, amirite? 
   
• Ohio Republicans have passed a bill that would allow parents to demand genital checks of student athletes they believe to be trans. 
   
• A Democratic-run media company has bought up a bunch of Univision radio stations in major media markets, including the far-right Radio Mambi, in Miami, FL.
   
• A manhunt for a convicted Texas murderer who escaped from a prison bus ended Thursday in a dramatic high-speed chase, car crash, and shootout, or as Dr. Richard Kimball put it, "child's play." 

The Los Angeles County Sheriffs Department is governed unofficially by a criminal gang—complete with initiation rites and membership tattoos—composed of deputies who call themselves the Banditos, according to astonishing whistleblower reports. According to these reports, Banditos can attain membership by exchanging gunfire with civilians, then run a protection racket, under which their professional needs get attention from the department, but non-members' do not. The Banditos have reportedly abused many female trainees and deputies; they retaliate against snitches, but the department has nevertheless had to pay out millions of dollars in settlements to deputies who've complained about the mistreatment they've faced. When current L.A. County Sheriff Alex Villanueva took over, he came in as a Banditos outsider, and non-members hoped he'd clean up shop, but instead they say he's been co-opted by them. On a completely unrelated note, the L.A. County Sheriff's primary is Tuesday June 7. 

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The economy added 390,000 in May, at a steady unemployment rate of 3.6 percent, as the Biden Boom continues.

Senate Republicans seem to think Sen. Joe Manchin (D-WV) is on the cusp of a deal with Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer to pass a reconciliation bill formerly known as Build Back Better.

President Biden will get to appoint a fourth new judge to the DC Circuit Court of Appeals.

At their ninth annual Pride Night, the Dodgers will honor their former centerfielder Glenn Burke, the first openly gay player in Major League Baseball, in part to atone for driving him out of town in the late 1970s over his sexuality.