Crooked Media - What A Day: Proud before the fall

 -Sen. John Thune (R-SD), regular guy, defending weapons of war

The rollout of the House January 6 Committee's findings will seemingly intersect with the Justice Department's growing investigation of a seditious GOP conspiracy against the United States. Turns out you don't always hate to see it—but the GOP does.

• On Thursday, federal prosecutors indicted Proud Boys leader Enrique Tarrio and several leading members of his brownshirt gang for seditious conspiracy, a charge DOJ had historically been reluctant to seek, because it had been difficult to prove in court. Until January 6. Unlike several of their fellow insurrectionists in the Oath Keepers, these boys (whose mamas must be so proud) haven't pled guilty, at least not yet, though the charging documents presented evidence that the men intended to foment violence to prevent the transfer of power.
   
• Disgraced former president Donald Trump was already one degree of separation from these seditionists, via his co-conspirator/confidante Roger Stone, whose Oath Keeper body guards have pled guilty to seditious conspiracy and other charges. Stone is also close with Tarrio, and Trump, you may recall, famously asked the Proud Boys to "stand back and stand by" during a debate with Joe Biden in 2020. (And while we're at it, Florida Republicans have happily allowed Proud Boys to take over the Miami-Dade GOP.)
   
• That's where the committee comes in. One of its first witnesses this week is reportedly documentarian Nick Quested, who was filming the Proud Boys (with the group's permission) in the run-up to and during the Capitol riot. Much of that footage—including, apparently, a shadowy January 5 meeting between Tarrio and Oath Keeper's leader Stewart Rhodes—has never aired publicly. 

• DOJ has reportedly homed in on an incriminating email from a senior Trump campaign official in Georgia, asking fake Republican electors in the state to meet in secret and cover their tracks. "I must ask for your complete discretion in this process," Robert Sinners wrote. "Your duties are imperative to ensure the end result—a win in Georgia for President Trump—but will be hampered unless we have complete secrecy and discretion." That proves the Trump campaign's direct involvement in a nationwide conspiracy to falsify documents in order to overturn the election, and a consciousness of guilt. Both the January 6 committee and prosecutors in Fulton County, GA, have also obtained this email. 
   
• And if it were up to the entire GOP apparatus, nobody would learn about any of it. Consistent with the party's announced plans to undermine and divert attention from the committee hearings, Fox News announced that it will not preempt its prime time hosts (Tucker Carlson, Sean Hannity, Laura Ingraham) to carry Thursday's initial hearing live, and that these propagandists will only "cover the hearings as news warrants." 

June is Pride Month! It's also national outdoors month. Coincidence? Yes. This month, Lovett or Leave It is featured in Amazon Music’s Pride collection. Check out to the latest episodes with some of the funniest queers in the biz, and some straight ones too because they got past the guards. Listen to Lovett or Leave It on Amazon Music and wherever you get your podcasts.

Primary elections across the country tonight will help clarify the stakes of the November midterms, and not just in the usual "which Republicans will face which Democrats" way. In California, Los Angeles voters will determine which two primary candidates will run for mayor in the general election, but all indications suggest they'll pit Actual Democrat Rep. Karen Bass (D-CA), against Billionaire Republican Playing Democrat, Rick Caruso, teeing up a November campaign that will have California Dems more worried than at any time since the GOP's failed Newsom recall effort which ended [checks watch] nine months ago. In the Bay Area, San Francisco voters will decide whether to recall district attorney Chesa Boudin (thus, feeding the right-wing myth that progressive prosecutors are responsible for a national violent crime wave that has bedeviled prosecutors of all persuasions). And in Montana, Republican voters are poised to nominate former congressman and Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke to return to the U.S. House of Representatives after he earned the distinction (by the numbers anyhow) of being Donald Trump's most corrupt cabinet official. That's just for starters! Check in tomorrow for more on What It All Means. 

• Donald Trump was reportedly desperate to march down to the Capitol with the rioters on January 6, and almost got his way (in the form of a motorcade) after he dishonestly told the crowd assembled near the White House that he'd join them
   
• White supremacists and other right-wing domestic violent extremists have been encouraging young men to copycat the Uvalde massacre, according to the Department of Homeland Security.  
   
• Fortunately, then, the Supreme Court appears poised to strike down a New York law that imposes limits on the carrying of handguns, which would badly hamper all local efforts to regulate firearms. 
   
• Even more fortunately then, Sen. John Cornyn (R-TX) seems cool with passing new gun legislation* in the wake of the Uvalde massacre (*so long as the legislation doesn't create any new restrictions on guns or gun ownership). 
   
• U.K. Prime Minister Boris Johnson survived a no-confidence vote, prompted by revelations that he and his aides threw numerous parties that violated the British government's COVID-19 lockdown rules, but more than 40 percent of Conservative lawmakers voted against him, in what might easily be mistaken for a huge dig at Republicans in Congress. 
   
• Sens. Jon Ossoff (D-GA) and Mitt Romney (R-UT) have teamed up press Secretary of State Antony Blinken to "ensure a full and transparent investigation" into the killing of American journalist Shireen Abu Akleh who was shot to death while reporting in the West Bank. 
   
• New U.S. sanctions prohibit investors from purchasing Russian government debt on the secondary market. 
   
• Indicted felon (and Texas's GOP Attorney General) Ken Paxton has decided to give a shit about school shootings abuse his power to help Elon Musk worm out of his agreement to buy Twitter, by using his law enforcement power to compel Twitter to hand over information about bots and fake accounts that Musk has been unable to browbeat the company into producing voluntarily. 
   
• In other shameful Texans, state-Rep. Bryan Slaton (R-TX) intends to file legislation "protecting kids from drag shows" in order to portray gay people celebrating pride month as sexual predators. 
   
• Only 29 percent of New Yorkers approve of Mayor Eric Adams, the much-ballyhooed-by-centrists future of the Democratic Party, perhaps because he can't stop talking about what a crime-ridden hellhole New York is, when it actually isn't?
   
• A newly discovered pulsar that theoretically spins too slowly to emit radio waves nevertheless...does. [X-Files music]

If it ever seems to you like Republicans create the illusion of mass support by being loud and shameless—well, you're not wrong! New polling from the Wall Street Journal reveals the public widely rejects the bigoted lies Republicans tell to keep their base voters in a frothing rage and convey a sense of being on the offensive. For instance: 65 percent of respondents think being transgender should be "accepted by society" while only 32 percent said it should be "discouraged." Likewise, only 27 percent of respondents think their local public school systems focus "too much" on racism in the U.S., compared to 40 percent who say "too little" and 32 percent who say just about the right amount. Nevertheless Republican completely commandeered national discourse to fan false panics about "critical race theory" and "grooming" in schools, driving nearly all Democrats into the fetal position. The more you know... 

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The New York legislature has passed a bill to regulate warehouse productivity quotas, the negative incentive system Amazon uses to ding workers for taking breaks. 

The FDA's vaccine advisory panel has recommended emergency use authorization for the Novovax COVID-19 vaccine, which uses a different, more traditional mechanism to replicate the coronavirus spike protein than either the mRNA vaccines or the Johnson & Johnson vaccine. 

A federal judge has declared the Louisiana GOP's racial gerrymander unconstitutional and ordered the state legislature to draw a new congressional map by June 20. 

A new, FDA-approved, weekly diabetes medication, which regulates hormones that control blood sugar and the body's perception of fullness, helped obese patients lose a quarter of their starting weight.