Crooked Media - What A Day: The woke's on you

We’re almost two months into the new House GOP majority and what do they have to show for it? A lot of sham investigations, vengeful symbolic votes, and pretending to work. 
 

• Showcasing their extremely intelligent plan of calling anything they don’t like “woke,” the House GOP has recently taken aim at a Department of Labor regulation that allows retirement plans to consider environmental, social, and corporate governance (ESG) factors when investing on behalf of the plan’s participants. To be clear: it doesn’t tell fiduciaries that they must prioritize ESG investments, just that they can. Even that is offensive to the baby-brained Republicans of 2023, because it overturns a Trump rule that explicitly tried to prohibit those kinds of investments.
   

• They’re bringing that foolproof strategy to their ongoing debt-limit extortion scheme.For instance: House GOP appropriators are planning to potentially bar local projects entirely from the fiscal year 2024 omnibus spending bill to fund government operations if they are deemed “woke.” I wish I were kidding, but I am not. The government-funding and debt-limit bills are distinct from one another, but Republicans intend to use the threat of forcing the United States into artificial bankruptcy to try to extort Democrats into voting for an annual budget that they’d never otherwise vote for.
   

• The Labor-Health and Human Services-Education appropriations bill as well as a smaller Financial Services measure are on the chopping block, and sources attributed that move at least in part over “concern” regarding earmarks including several LGBTQ and transgender service-related projects targeted by Republicans and conservative groups like the Heritage Foundation, though House Appropriations Chair Rep. Kay Granger (R-TX) did not respond for comment.

But has the House GOP done any, you know, legislating? Hahahaha. 
 

• House Republicans still haven’t passed two of their “first week” priorities regarding abortion and immigration, because they can’t get the votes. Can I get a “Republicans in Disarray” anyone? Because the Republican Party is inherently antagonistic to the very idea of government, it’s no surprise that they have used their new razor-thin majority to put federal-government employees in their crosshairs. Congressional Republicans have begun a push to increase scrutiny of civil servants who keep the government running. Since House Speaker Kevin McCarthy took the gavel, House Republicans have been on a mission to slash and burn various federal agencies and even made a rule granting themselves the power to reduce the salaries of individual employees with a single vote. But since they only control one half of Congress, and only barely, this kind of aggrieved pseudo legislation has gone nowhere.

• Now, with all of their histrionic whining, has the GOP House majority managed to pass any substantive legislation? A single law at all? No! Of course not. Despite their laughable protests to the contrary, Republicans haven’t “delivered” anything. But the newly-formed House Judiciary Committee chaired by über clown Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH) has started issuing subpoenas to agency heads and mid-level career employees of the federal government. Republican leaders have told nearly all of their committees to draft plans by March to slash spending and increase oversight of federal agencies within their jurisdiction. 

If there were any doubts that the Republican Party is deeply committed only to an agenda of grievance-based investigations and defunding essential public services, the House GOP has eliminated them.

Parts of the Southern Plains continued to see damage from tornadoes moving through the region while California still faces uncharacteristically severe winter storms. 

Environmental activist Greta Thunberg and hundreds of others blocked entrances to Norway’s energy ministry protesting plans to build wind turbines on indigenous land. 

Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen made an unannounced visit to Kyiv today in another move to reaffirm U.S. support for Ukraine. 

Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg sent a letter to all of the major railway companies giving them an end-of-the-week deadline to join a hazard-reporting system following the East Palestine, OH, disaster. 

Gov. Ron DeSantis (R-FL) signed a bill Monday that takes control of a special tax district surrounding Walt Disney World, which has allowed the company to operate with a high degree of autonomy for over 50 years. A fascist governor vs. a mega-corporation damn we really have no one to root for here. 


The White House gave government agencies a 30-day deadline to ensure the Chinese-owned app TikTok is not on any government devices or systems.

Fox News media analyst Howard Kurtz said that the network will not let him cover the Dominion defamation lawsuit. 

To that end, Fox also reportedly rejected an ad from running on its network by MoveOn quoting text messages from Fox News daddy himself Rupert Murdoch and his stars Tucker Carlson, Sean Hannity, and Laura Ingraham revealing that they were lying about the 2020 election for profit. Can’t imagine why they would say no to that.

Rep. Mike Gallagher (R-WI), chair of the new House Select Committee on China, railed against his GOP colleague Rep. Lance Gooden (R-TX) for questioning the “loyalty” of Rep. Judy Chu (D-CA) based on her Chinese heritage. Chu is the first Chinese American woman to serve in the United States Congress. 

The Biden administration announced a crackdown on the labor exploitation of migrant children around the United States, including more aggressive investigations of companies that benefit from their labor.

Rep. Elissa Slotkin (D-MI) announced she will run for the open Senate seat in Michigan. 

A passenger sitting in business class on Japan Airlines asked for a vegan breakfast and was given a single banana and a pair of chopsticks. A scenario longtime vegans know all too well!

Let’s move across the pond to the country whose government has been so dysfunctional lately it almost (almost) makes us feel better about how things are going in the U.S. British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak struck a deal with the European Union today regarding post-Brexit trade rules for Northern Ireland, saying it will pave the way for a new chapter in the U.K.’s relationship with the bloc. The Republic of Ireland remains a member of the European Union. Sunak said the two sides have agreed to remove “any sense of a border” between Britain and its province, which is making a lot of people mad on all sides. The deal seeks to resolve the tensions caused by the Northern Ireland protocol, a complex agreement that set the trading rules for the British-ruled region that Britain agreed to before it left the European Union. Sunak rushed to iron out the terms of the new deal ahead of the 25th anniversary of the landmark Good Friday Agreement. There is speculation that former British Prime Minister Boris Johnson could oppose the deal within Parliament. But if the deal succeeds, it will strengthen Sunak and the Conservative Party’s control over the government.

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A new online tool called Take It Down could allow people to remove explicit images and videos of themselves from the internet. 

The United States Department of Agriculture has announced plans to modernize and streamline WIC, the nutrition program aimed at low-income pregnant women, new mothers, infants, and children. 

The Biden administration plans to leverage the government’s major investment in the semiconductor industry to make progress on affordable childcare.