Crooked Media - What A Day: Dang, Mike Pence

 -MTG, blowing the whistle on farted-upon insurrectionists

• The most revelatory part of the hearing was a lengthy recitation by Rep. Liz Cheney (R-WY) of the crimes against democracy the committee has uncovered, along with promises to supply evidence of them beyond dispute. The single most dramatic claim the committee will prove is that when disgraced former president Donald Trump learned on January 6 that the riotous mob at the Capitol was chanting "hang Mike Pence," he said “maybe our supporters have the right idea,” and that Mike Pence “deserves” it.
   
• Her statement also included some dramatic foreshadowing. For instance she said the committee will show that Rep. Scott Perry (R-PA) along with "multiple other Republican congressmen...sought Presidential Pardons for their roles in attempting to overturn the 2020 election." [Eyeballs emoji.] She also asserted that "the Department of Justice is currently working with cooperating witnesses" in its January 6 investigation. [Multiple sets of eyeballs emojis.]
   
• About those nards: The committee aired footage of Ivanka Trump's deposition in which she admits she trusted former Attorney General Bill Bar over her own daddy that the election was not stolen. [POW, right to Trump's nards.] Cheney also teased evidence that House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy was "scared" and frantically calling Trump family members to save his own hide. [BIFF, right to McCarthy's nards.] And she exposed Jared Kushner as a complicit, unpatriotic bimbo. [WHAM, right to Kushner's nards.]  

• Republicans may as well have arranged themselves on the National Mall to spell out NOTHING TO SEE HERE. We knew Fox News wouldn't broadcast the hearings, but we didn't know it'd air Tucker Carlson's show commercial free, to discourage viewers from channel surfing over to a real news network and catching a few minutes of damning truth during the breaks. The House Judiciary Committee tweeted stuff like "All. Old. News." which didn't seem suspicious at all. 
   
• Then Trump ruined all their hard work on his scammy social media site TRUTH SOCIAL, where he accused Ivanka of being too "checked out" to know what was what about the election, denied the (obviously true) revelation about his pro-hanging-Mike-Pence views, and melted down about Bill Barr. More like STREISAND EFFECT SOCIAL, amirite? 

On the latest Tommy Gets Redpilled, former Obama spokesperson turned podcast host Tommy Vietor (Pod Save America, Pod Save the World) debunks INSANE January 6 conspiracy theories promoted by Republicans and disgraced President Donald Trump on right-wing media.

Russian President Vladimir Putin wants people to think that his war in Ukraine is prologue for a new, lasting era of Russian expansionism—but he may just be biding time for Republicans to reclaim power in the United States. At an event to honor Peter the Great, the 17th century czar credited with modernizing Russia, Putin compared his Ukraine invasion with Peter's decades long imperial adventures and promised similar success, raising the specter of semi-permanent western proxy war with Russia. But if you listen to Russian state media, it seems the Kremlin is holding out for something much closer at hand. On Sunday Evening with Vladimir Solovyov, the ultra-Putin-loyalist host mused that if Republicans win the midterms, they'll say "why the hell do we need a corrupt, Nazi Ukraine? They will ask: whom are we supporting? Yes, Russia is bad and the sanctions will stay, but why do we need to keep throwing so much money over there... [w]e’ve given that money to corrupt Ukraine and no one knows where it went.” In case you were wondering, they know what the score is just as well as we do.

Abortion Access Is at a Crisis Point

Protecting abortion access has never been more urgent.

Across the nation, our right to abortion care is under attack. The Supreme Court has turned its back on Texans by failing to block the state’s extreme abortion ban and now SCOTUS seems poised to overturn Roe v. Wade with a major ruling coming soon – which could jeopardize essential abortion care for much of the country. State politicians are also doubling down on efforts to ban abortion in half the country as they’ve done in Texas. We’ve already seen Florida’s Governor sign an extreme 15-week abortion ban that criminalizes doctor’s for providing abortion care; Oklahoma’s Governor has signed a total abortion ban into law; and, in Kentucky, the legislature has vetoed the Governor’s veto on a series of abortion restrictions, including a 15-week ban, which has been temporarily blocked by the courts.  

The ability to control our own bodies is facing the greatest threat in generations. We need your help more than ever. Sign up today to defend abortion access.

The ACLU has been fighting for abortion access since before Roe v. Wade was decided, and we’ll continue working tireless to ensure everyone has access to the care they need.

Defend abortion access with the ACLU. Sign up today to stay up to date on all the fights ahead.

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• Ginni Thomas implored 29 Arizona Republicans to overturn the results of the 2020 election in their state. Earlier reporting had only confirmed that she lobbied two of them. 
   
• New evidence has emerged to suggest Uvalde, TX, police failed to storm the Robb Elementary classroom and take out the gunman because they feared for their own safety, and that they were lying when they claimed they simply assumed everyone else in the room with the gunman was already dead. 
   
• Pinched politically by higher gas prices, President Biden plans to "reset" the U.S.-Saudi relationship, notwithstanding the murder of Jamal Khashoggi and, well, everything else. 
   
• Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) wants to know if federal land in anti-abortion states will be able to house facilities that provide abortion services.  
   
• Justice Amy Coney Barrett received a $425,000 advance on her $2 million deal to write her forthcoming memoir, Your Uterus, Your Problem.  
   
• New York GOP House candidate Carl Paladino is having a normal week of claiming someone else wrote and published and emailed his remarks calling Hitler "inspirational," then calling it a big mistake but insisting his words were taken out of context. He has the unapologetic support of House GOP Conference Chair Elise Stefanik. 
   
• NASA has assembled a team to study UFOs but they're too snooty to call them that and say "unidentified aerial phenomena" instead.
   
• A Missouri appeals court ordered Geico to pay $5.2 million to a woman who contracted HPV from her boyfriend while having unprotected sex with him in the (back of? unclear...) his insured automobile. 
   
• A shitty Mexican pepper crop is driving a Sriracha shortage, thanks no doubt to Joe Biden. 

Mass shootings have a galvanizing effect on voters, but in a cruel twist, everything seemingly turns on when mass shootings happen, not the fact that we have a gun-massacre epidemic in the U.S. Almost three-quarters of voting-age Americans say they the recent slaughters in Uvalde, TX, and Buffalo, NY, will make them more likely to vote, according to a new Marist poll. That's a promising indicator if it holds up. But, but but: longer-term data, broken out nationally or by state, shows that support for gun regulation spikes dramatically in the wake of mass shootings, then reverts most or all of the way back to a pre-massacre baseline after a few weeks. Even in Texas. This dynamic also explains why Republicans and the gun lobby are so desperate to buy time in the wake of every mass shooting before reverting to their 'no new rules, period' stance, and why Democrats should never, ever give it to them again. 

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A Texas judge has temporarily blocked the state from investigating the parents of transgender children who've received gender-affirming health care for abuse, per one of the most depraved orders Gov. Greg Abbott (R-TX) has ever written.

The group that cost the white-nationalist website Breitbart its sponsors will now take aim at Fox News. 

The National Labor Relations Board swatted away Amazon's request to hear its case for overturning the union victory at its Staten Island warehouse in secret.

Pennsylvania's Democratic gubernatorial nominee Joshua Shapiro isn't shying from the insurrection fight against his pro-insurrection GOP opponent. "He took part in an attempted coup and marched to the Capitol. He wants to be our Governor. We will stop him. Doug Mastriano is an insurrectionist."