Crooked Media - What A Day: All Clark, no bite

 -Rudy Giuliani, unconvincingly, on his election-night drunkenness

• The committee announced Tuesday morning that its scheduled Wednesday hearing would be postponed, initially without citing a reason. Rep. Zoe Lofgren (D-CA) explained that the delay (until next week) is necessary to allow the committee's small digital team enough time to compile the footage it will need to support the hearing, which will presumably be video-heavy like the first two. Thursday's hearing (initially intended to be the fourth hearing) will proceed as planned.
   
• When the committee returns rain checks the postponed hearing next week, it will home in on disgraced former president Donald Trump's aborted to fire his acting attorney general and replace him with a functionary named Jeffrey Clark. After the election, Clark was prepared to use Justice Department letterhead to warn six states against awarding their electors to President Biden based on fabricated "concerns that may have impacted the outcome of the election.”
   
• The corruption surrounding the Trump-Clark relationship is even crazier than we already knew. The Washington Post detailed a weeks-long flirtation between the two stemming from Clark's willingness to spread lies about the election and usurp power from DOJ leadership. He was also seemingly read in on the so-called "January 6 strategy" when offered to accept the role of acting attorney general for the purpose of threatening states that Biden had won. (Clark has asserted his Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination to avoid testifying.)

• Committee members are now publicly at odds over whether the committee will or should refer Trump to DOJ for criminal investigation. Reporters got wind of this division several weeks ago, but on Tuesday, Chairman Bennie Thompson told the press that the committee will not refer anyone (including Trump) to DOJ. That prompted quick, aggressive pushback from committee Reps. Liz Cheney (R-WY) and Elaine Luria (D-VA), who said " If criminal activity occurred, it is our responsibility to report that activity to the DOJ."
   
• The committee may be under pressure from House Dem leadership not to be ToO pOLiTiCaL, but fortunately the pushback seems to be working, if this walkback of Thompson's comments from a committee spokesperson is to be believed. 

In 2022, an unprecedented onslaught of anti-trans bills have been introduced across the U.S—the lion’s share of these policies specifically target trans youth and their families. The fight against these bills is ongoing but the impact on trans communities has been immediate, and that’s not a coincidence. Anti-trans lawmakers want trans kids to feel isolated; they want to overwhelm our community with upsetting news items, and they want to make this as psychologically difficult as possible.

At Trans Lifeline, we want to break through this noise. In uncertain times like these, it’s important to affirm our value. For Pride, we are asking folks to share a message of support and solidarity for trans youth. We want young trans people to know that they are not fighting this alone—we will survive & thrive together. Want to voice your support? Call (877) 433-2066 or visit our website to leave a voicemail of affirmation for trans youth today.

Trans Lifeline is a nonprofit dedicated to ensuring trans people have the resources we need to survive and thrive. Our hotline is there to provide peer support to trans people who need it, including in moments of crisis and suicidality. Our microgrants program provides low-barrier grants to trans people for legal name and gender marker changes, hormone replacement therapy, and specialized support for incarcerated and undocumented trans people. We are supported by donors like you and by companies like Visible, who sponsors our trans youth affirmation voicemail campaign.

A third-party spoiler, with the backing of a bitter, failed, centrist House member, could hand Republicans the governorship of blue Oregon and a blue-leaning House district as well. Rep. Kurt Schrader (D-OR), who lost his primary for being an obstacle to President Biden's agenda (and despite getting Biden's endorsement) seems all but intent on sabotaging the party in the state. He's betting on, if not rooting for, the Republican nominee in his district to beat Jamie McLeod-Skinner, who beat him in the Democratic primary. “The red wave begins in Oregon—Oregon’s fifth district,” he told local news last week. “That’s unfortunate.” He's also flirted with endorsing an independent candidate, Betsy Johnson, in the governor's race over the Democratic nominee, Tina Kotek, who's a former Oregon House speaker. Biden won Oregon 56-40, and the newly drawn fifth district remains Dem +3, which gives a united party a good chance to win both, but leaves a Schrader'd party at risk of losing both.

• Neo-Nazis are systematically doxxing police officers in Coeur d'Alene, ID, in retaliation for arresting 31 neo-Nazis who had planned to riot their way through a pride celebration.  
   
• Donald Trump is so not angry, and laughing, actually, about the January 6 committee's revelations that he issued a 12 page rambling statement full of incendiary lies about it.
   
• Google has suspended an engineer who publicly claimed he'd encountered "sentient" artificial intelligence on the company's servers for violating his confidentiality agreement. Background here.
   
• Lt. Gove Geoff Duncan (R-GA) admits, "before any Republicans can offer ourselves as credible alternatives to the status quo, we must get our own house in order," in a scathing anti-Trump op-ed. 
   
• The City of Kent, WA, will pay its assistant police chief, Derek Kammerzell, $1.5 million to resign as a "penalty" for hanging Nazi insignia on his office door and doing various other Nazi-sympathist things around other officers.
   
• Investigators working for Fulton County, GA, District Attorney Fani Willis want to hear from Kanye Wests former publicist Trevian Kutti to hear more about why Kutti pressured and threatened a Georgia election worker to falsely confess to rigging the election against Donald Trump.
   
• Joker 2 is gonna be a musical (?) and it may co-star Lady Gagy as Harley Quinn (???)
   
• A single beaver caused a widespread internet outage in British Columbia last week by chewing on a tree until it collapsed onto a fiber-optic cable line, providing western Canadians an early, inspiring look at (so sorry for this) WebTree.

The sprawling network of foundation-funded non-profit organizations that effectively comprise the progressive movement has experienced the national racial-justice reckoning as a series of internal staff revolts that have made these groups unable to execute the specific missions they were formed (in many cases decades ago) to advance. The dysfunction stems mainly from the importation of key, society-wide goals of the racial-justice movement into the operations of advocacy organizations with different missions, creating toxic workplace environments riven by accusations of racial bias (some valid, some not) and "mission drift," where activists pull organizations with specific core competencies out of their areas of expertise and into the realm of social justice, where they aren't capable of accomplishing much and (to the extent they're membership driven) can no longer advance the goals their members expect them to. This clash of visions and breakdown of authority happened to coincide with a razor-thin Democratic trifecta, during which the most progressive piece of the Biden administration's agenda went up in smoke, and the right finally consolidated enough power to abolish the right to abortion. 

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