Crooked Media - What A Day: DiLutting the message

 -Christian Walker, son of Herschel, absentee father of three

In the latest edition of We-All-Saw-This-Coming, the House January 6 Committee has called on Ginni Thomas to testify before Congress about her involvement in the plot to overturn the 2020 election results. And that's just what happened off screen.

• On screen, the committee rolled out a mountain of evidence at its Thursday hearing that Donald Trump knew his scheme to overturn the election was illegal, but pressured Vice President Mike Pence to do it anyhow. Then—after Pence refused and followed the law—Trump directed his violent mob at him and made him flee for his life. As a halting Judge J. Michael Luttig said, “Donald Trump and his allies and supporters are a clear and present danger to American democracy."
   
• The committee presented live and videotaped testimony from witnesses who said the legal architect of Trump's coup, John Eastman, knew full well his scheme to have Pence throw out Joe Biden's electoral votes was lawless, and that he even admitted it'd lose 9-0 before the Supreme Court. Witnesses also testified that he dismissed warnings that the Trump-Eastman scheme could lead to violence, saying “There’s been violence in the history of our country to protect the democracy.” After the prophecy came to pass in the form of an insurrection and bloodshed, Eastman emailed Rudy Giuliani to request a presidential pardon. 
   
• We also saw interviews with Trump's former staffers and his staffer/daughter Ivanka Trump detailing Trump’s January 6 phone call with Pence, during which he called Pence a “wimp” and a “pussy.” Under normal circumstances, like just describing his general character, calling Mike Pence a pussy is warranted (and awesome), but choosing not to overturn the election results is the exception to the rule. Wrong again, Trump!

Speaking of Eastman: Did you know he used to clerk for Clarence Thomas? And that he also exchanged emails about overthrowing the government with Ginni Thomas? Is that normal?

• Ginni (finally) became of interest to the committee after it obtained email correspondence between her and Eastman, about overturning the election. We already knew Ginni was in regular contact with then-White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows and dozens of state legislators encouraging them to overturn the election. We also knew that her husband was the lone vote on the Supreme Court to conceal evidence from the January 6 committee. She told the right-wing Daily Caller that she looks forward to "clearing up" the committee's "misconceptions." A minor misunderstanding no doubt!
   
• On the other hand, it kinda seems like maybe she was leaking him secret information about the Supreme Court? In another email from Eastman (this guy goes nuts with email!), he told his fellow coup lawyers that the internal debate over whether or not to hear arguments about Trump’s efforts to overturn the election had become a “heated fight” among the justices. Another one of Trump’s accomplices, Kenneth Chesebro, replied: “[the] odds of action before Jan. 6 will become more favorable if the justices start to fear that there will be ‘wild’ chaos on Jan. 6 unless they rule by then, either way.” 

There isn't much left to say about Trump's guilt. What matters now is keeping the Republican assault on democracy front-and-center in the news, until people understand it is the central issue in the coming elections. Continuing to pursue Trump, Eastman, Thomas, and other coup plotters after these hearings are over is a big part of that.

Hysteria is celebrating it’s 200th episode this week! Four years ago, hosts Erin and Alyssa started the pod discussing the Brett Kavanaugh allegations. One million cry-scream-laughs later, they're still going strong! Listen and subscribe to Hysteria wherever you get your podcasts.

The Environmental Protection Agency has released a series of new health advisories yesterday for a class of manmade compounds called PFAS found in drinking water, cosmetics, and food packaging used by millions of Americans. These compounds, dubbed “forever chemicals” (honestly, good work EPA: that does sound scary, you got us there) have been linked to infertility, thyroid issues, and several cancers, and can persist in the environment for years without erosion. There has been some low-level alarm around these compounds for years, but new studies have shown that PFAS are much more injurious to human health than regulators previously assumed. The EPA’s new advisories prompt officials to install water filters or at the very least notify their residents of contamination. Currently, the federal government does not regulate these chemicals, but public health advocates have called on the Biden administration to act and thankfully, the EPA is preparing to propose mandatory PFAS standards in the fall, after which water utilities will be penalized for failing to adhere to them.

Naturally Republicans, including the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee's ranking member Shelley Moore Capito oppose discouraging corporations from poisoning the water because it “will only increase confusion for water systems’ compliance efforts and further complicate risk communication to the public.” With all due respect to Senator Capito (very little), allowing millions of people to continue ingesting toxic chemicals that cause permanent health problems sounds like a slightly worse potential outcome than whatever you said.

• Michigan GOP Gubernatorial candidate and Capitol insurrectionist Ryan Kelley has received a bump in primary polls since his arrest one week ago, because of course that’s what happened.
   
• The Justice Department has filed federal hate crimes charges against Payton Gendron, the white shooter who killed 10 black customers in a Buffalo supermarket on May 14.
   
• Dr. Deborah Birx, the Trump Administration’s coronavirus coordinator, will be the first former Trump official to testify before Congress about the administration’s delayed and politically-motivated early pandemic response, which Birx claims needlessly cost more than 130,000 American lives now that she has a book to sell.
   
• Elon Musk and his companies are being sued for $258 billion in damages for allegedly engineering a pyramid scheme to artificially inflate the sale of the cryptocurrency Dogecoin. Sounds about right.
   
• The Texas Tribune and ProPublica have filed more than 70 public-information requests to state and local agencies regarding emergency-response documentation that could shed light on the deferred local law enforcement response to the horrific school shooting in Uvalde on May 24th.
   
• A South Florida Jewish congregation filed a lawsuit challenging the 15-week abortion ban signed by Gov. Ron DeSantis (R-FL) set to take effect on July 1, on the grounds that it violates rights to religious freedom.
   
• In a way-too-on-the-nose metaphor, an Ethics Adviser to scandal-ridden U.K. Prime Minister Boris Johnson has quit.

The American Medical Association held its annual meeting this week where members discussed initiatives to address new and looming restrictions to reproductive-health services. The AMA announced it would work to expand legal protection for patients and physicians against government systems of control that criminalize reproductive health services, taking direct aim at several states including Texas, Oklahoma, Idaho, and Mississippi, which have enacted the strictest abortion bans in the country. The association described government intrusion in medicine as “a violation of human rights,” and AMA President Dr. Jack Resneck pledged to seek legal protections for patients crossing state lines to receive reproductive health care and for physicians alike. On a goddamn roll of going to bat for reproductive health services, the AMA also urged the Food and Drug Administration to approve over-the-counter birth control pills, citing access difficulty as one of the main reasons patients do not like (or inconsistently use) birth control pills, which are currently prescription-only. 

Sometimes, in order to go green, you have to get blue. Blueland, that is. Blueland was founded on the belief that a cleaner planet starts by eliminating plastic waste while creating powerful, effective cleaners for your entire home.

• Blueland’s idea is simple, and beautiful: Buy the bottle once, refill it forever. No more plastic waste. The only thing you need to discard is your outdated idea that “eco-friendly” products are more expensive and less effective.
   
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Pursuant to a landmark settlement, a nursing home in Maine must now adopt nondiscrimination practices after a 79-year-old transgender woman was denied a room once the facility learned that she was trans. 

Heads of state from France, Germany, Italy, and Romania visited Kyiv today to discuss a plan to fast-track the process by which Ukraine would be eligible to join the European Union.

After bogus claims of rigged voting machines, the State Supreme Court of New Mexico ordered the all-MAGA Otero County Commission to certify the 2020 election results by no later than Friday, which, hey! happens to be the same date that one of the three commissioners will face federal sentencing for his role in the January 6 insurrection (obviously).

Scientists believe they are closer than ever to uncovering a cancer vaccine.

Pediatricians at Stanford Medicine have devised a new method of conducting kidney transplants in children without the typical lifelong dependence on immunosuppressants.

A new Data for Progress poll shows that the majority of Republicans under age 50 want President Biden to cancel all student loan debt. Welcome to hell, folks.