Crooked Media - What A Day: Tip of the 'spiracy

 -Rep. Louie Gohmert (R-TX), wondering what the world is coming to

Butter your popcorn, fasten your safety belts, and hold onto your butts (while gulping popcorn directly out of the bag like a dog): The insurrection hearings are about to begin.

• Rep. David Cicilline (D-RI), a member of the House January 6 Committee, promised the public "disturbing" new evidence, when its hearings get underway Thursday evening. Cicilline told CNN to expect "substantial evidence that really demonstrates the coordination and the planning and the effort, despite the fact that they understood that Donald Trump lost the election."
   
• The committee's investigation has been the source of a steady drumbeat of leaks for almost a year already, raising the question of whether the public hearings will be a venue for exposing revelations that haven't already appeared in the news. Cicilline, along with Rep. Liz Cheney (R-WY), say yes. Cheney promised to detail a conspiracy to steal the election that was (and is) "extremely broad... extremely well-organized."
   
• It's unclear whether there will be surprise witnesses over the course of the month, but some good new candidates just emerged. The Justice Department informed the committee last week, providing no specific details, that it would not charge former White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows or Trump lackey Dan Scavino with criminal contempt of Congress, despite their flagrant contempt of Congress. The committee could haul Attorney General Merrick Garland or another department leader up to the Hill to explain itself, though so far has only said, "We hope the Justice Department provides greater clarity on this matter."

Meanwhile, what we already know is bonkers, and the revelations keep getting crazier.

• The committee is reportedly in possession of evidence that Trump's coup supporters contemplating seeking direct authorization from Trump "to enlist armed private contractors to seize and inspect voting machines and election data with the assistance of U.S. marshals," according to the Los Angeles Times. That's yet more evidence that people in Trump's orbit openly contemplated armed insurrection. 
   
• And then there's the ongoing insurrection. Michigan law enforcement officials have opened a criminal investigation of Barry County Sheriff Dar Leaf, who has abused his power to conduct a sham audit of the 2020 election, which seemingly resulted in "unauthorized access" of vote-tabulating machinery. 

Live from Boston, MA! This week's Lovett or Leave It includes special guest Rep. Ayanna Pressley (D-MA) who discusses the impending Supreme Court decision on abortion rights and then takes a turn in the hot seat to answer Lovett's toughest questions in Queen For a Day! Then, Jon is joined by Pat Regan, Eugene Mirman, and Lady Bunny for another spicy round of Hot Takes where they are forced to defend the likes of Times Square and Mel Gibson. Listen to new episodes of Lovett or Leave It every Saturday wherever you get your podcasts.

President Biden has authorized the Department of Energy to use the Defense Production Act to ramp up domestic manufacturing of clean energy and suspended tariffs on solar panels that had indirectly ground the U.S. solar industry to a halt. The tariffs are at the center of a Commerce Department investigation into whether foreign solar manufacturers in Vietnam, Cambodia, Thailand, and Malaysia have skirted U.S. sanctions on Chinese-manufactured solar panels and cells, which are heavily subsidized by the Chinese government. The threat that these tariffs would be applied retroactively killed or delayed many large solar utility projects and led to abrupt layoffs in the solar industry in recent months.

Did you know that the US Postal Service is replacing its mail trucks and instead of opting for clean air and going electric, it’s going with a gas-guzzling mail truck that gets an astounding 8.6 miles per gallon? We may as well deliver the mail with Hummers!

If the Postal Service bought 100% electric mail trucks instead, we could:

• Save 110 million gallons of fuel per year

• Create more clean energy jobs

• Reduce air pollution in every community

• Save money on truck maintenance

The Postal Service has an opportunity to reverse course and upgrade to electric vehicles in order to cut dangerous air pollution across the country and help put us on a path to an all-electric future.

Send a letter to the Postal Service for a change and tell them to buy 100% electric mail trucks.
 

The legal team at Earthjustice is in court to challenge USPS’ failure to consider the environmental justice impacts of buying combustion mail trucks that will deliver pollution to every neighborhood in the country. Take action at Earthjustice.org/crooked and send the message that mail delivery in this country should be electric for our health and for our future.

• The Justice Department has charged Proud Boys leader Enrique Tarrio and several fellow insurrectionists with seditious conspiracy, presenting evidence that the men intended to foment violence to prevent the transfer of power on January 6, 2021. (Reminder, Florida Republicans have happily allowed the Proud Boys to take over the Miami-Dade GOP.)
   
• Gov. Kathy Hochul (D-NY) has signed legislation that raises the age to legally purchase an assault rifle in New York from 18 to 21 and imposes new reporting requirements on social media companies whose platforms play host to credible threats of violence.
   
• After failing to do any due diligence on Twitter's spam and bot account numbers, Elon Musk now alleges that Twitter is in material breach of its agreement to sell the company to him because it hasn't forked over a bunch of information he isn't entitled to and probably wouldn't understand anyhow. 
   
• Dr. New Jersey Mehmet Oz has officially won the Pennsylvania Senate GOP primary and will face Lt. Gov. John Fetterman (D-PA) in the general election.
   
• Two political nonprofit groups close to Michigan Senate Republicans have been referred for criminal investigation to the state attorney general's office, by the Michigan secretary of state.
   
• Massachusetts Republican secretary of state nominee Rayla Campbell told the state party convention that teachers are "telling your 5-year-old that he can go and suck another 5-year-old’s dick." Things are going great everywhere. 
   
• At least some major Texas Republican donors have broken ranks with the majority of the party to support (extremely mild) gun control measures. 
   
• A Chinese strike fighter intercepted and menaced an Australian surveillance plane over international waters last month. 
   
• Failed fascist media personality Milo Yiannopoulos is now a congressional intern for fascist Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA), which means they're probably cooking up some idiotic scheme.
   
• All Republican groveling to disgraced former president Trump pales in comparison to this from Rep. Mo Brooks (R-AL). 

European Council President Charles Michel directly confronted Russia's U.N. Ambassador, Vassily Nebenzia, at a United Nations Security Council meeting Monday, accusing the Kremlin of intentionally harming developing countries by blockading Ukrainian grain exports, and prompting Nebenzia to storm out of the room. Unfortunately for Nebenzia and the world, Michel is correct. Last month, Russian President Vladimir Putin offered to end the blockade—but only if Ukrainian allies were to lift sanctions on Russia. That essentially confirmed suspicions that Russia intended to create food shortages and famine in the world's poorest countries—innocent bystanders to the entire war—and higher food prices in wealthy nations in order to extort the west into withdrawing economic consequences it has imposed on Russia for invading its neighbor. It may not be a coincidence that China wants the world to know it has rebuffed Russia's request for economic assistance over the past several months.

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The Abbott Nutrition baby formula plant that drove the formula shortage earlier this year is back online. 

All 18 rectal-cancer patients in a small clinical trial appear to have been completely cured by a new experimental drug.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky traveled to the front lines of armed resistance to the Russian invasion to visit troops.  

Rep. Don Beyer (D-VA) has proposed a workaround for an assault-weapons ban—a huge excise tax on assault rifles—that Democrats could theoretically pass through the filibuster-proof budget process.