Crooked Media - What A Day: Whisper tweet nothings

House Democrats have resolved to impeach Donald Trump for the second time if he refuses to resign, as Republicans begin to register the potential fallout from the fact that their leader attempted to overthrow the U.S. government. Hard to believe we're only halfway through 2021!
 

• More than 110 House Democrats have cosponsored articles of impeachment, and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi sent a letter to Democrats on Friday saying that if Trump didn’t resign immediately, Congress would smash that impeachment button. House members reportedly expect to reconvene for a vote early next week, though many want Pelosi to move faster. Pelosi herself thought the situation urgent enough to have a Constitutionally-dubious conversation with the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Mark Milley about preventing an “unstable president” from launching a nuclear strike; why delay?
   
• House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, who voted to overturn a presidential election after a deadly attack on the Capitol, now says impeaching Trump would “only divide our country more.” (Thank you for weighing in, Kevin.) Other Republicans are ready to consider getting off the train, now that it’s crashed through the last stop and is on fire in the railyard. Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-AK) called on Trump to resign, and said that if the GOP couldn’t cut ties with Trump, she wasn’t sure she had a future in the party. More might want to consider following suit: Hundreds of Republican voters in Florida have switched their party affiliation after Wednesday’s insurrection. 
   
• Whether Trump himself will face consequences beyond impeachment is less certain, but it’s on the table. A day after a top federal prosecutor in DC said that Trump could face a federal investigation for his role in inciting a violent mob, a Justice Department official initially ruled it out (“we don’t expect any charges of that nature”), before backpeddling to leave the possibility open. Fear of legal jeopardy was almost certainly what convinced Trump to finally admit he lost the election on Thursday—or, more precisely, to admit he won’t be president anymore—after White House Counsel Pat Cipollone warned him of his liability.

Questions still abound over law enforcement’s shocking (and at least in some instances, deliberate) failure to protect Congress against a widely advertised threat. 
 

• The FBI and a DHS intelligence unit didn’t conduct a threat assessment—the routine reports they issue before major events—ahead of Wednesday’s mob gathering. (Apropos of nothing, remember when a top DHS official resigned back in April because the Trump administration refused to take the threat of right-wing extremism seriously?) The Defense Department couldn’t have done more to ensure maximum damage, placing strict limits on the DC National Guard ahead of Wednesday that prohibited guardsmen from carrying arms or riot gear, and delaying the deployment of additional troops after all hell broke loose. 
   
• Then there are the law-enforcement officers who simply participated. Some off-duty cops and military members among the rioters flashed their badges as they stormed into the building, and one Capitol Police officer reportedly gave directions to rioters looking for Chuck Schumer’s office. Wednesday’s attack could have ended infinitely worse: Mob members carried zip ties with the apparent intention of taking hostages, attacked members of the press, and chanted about hanging Vice President Mike Pence for treason. None of it should have taken authorities by surprise; on Tuesday, 8kun users were openly discussing whom to kill once inside the Capitol. Regrettably, the FBI will have a chance to redeem itself on January 17, when these dipshits plan to come back for round two. 

It shouldn’t have taken the deaths of five people in the halls of the Capitol to force a reckoning within the Republican Party, or around the deep, historic ties between white supremacy and law enforcement, but here we are. Getting Donald Trump out of the White House is the most urgent order of business; addressing the fundamental evils that made his endgame possible will need to come next. 

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Joe Biden plans to break with the Trump administration’s vaccine rollout plan and release nearly all available doses, instead of holding supply in reserve for the second shot, in an effort to speed up distribution. Governors around the country have also begun relaxing eligibility requirements to prevent backlogs of vaccine doses from expiring. As of Thursday, the Trump administration had shipped more than 21 million doses, but only 5.9 million people have actually been vaccinated. While taking doses out of reserve should speed things along, the Biden administration will still need to fix a distribution system reliant on overwhelmed state and local officials, and actually get Americans on board. Surprising numbers of health-care workers around the country have been refusing the vaccine, and vaccine misinformation is still proliferating on social media.

• Sen. Joe Manchin (D-WV) said he would “absolutely not” support another round of stimulus checks, before later clarifying that he could totally be convinced to support another round of stimulus checks. Behold, a glimpse of the future. 
   
• Education Secretary Betsy DeVos has become the second cabinet member to resign, saying, “impressionable children are watching all of this, and they are learning from us.” An interesting flex to wait until your final day as education secretary to give a shit about children. 
   
• Twitter has permanently shut down Donald Trump’s account: “After close review of recent Tweets from the @realDonaldTrump account and the context around them we have permanently suspended the account due to the risk of further incitement of violence.” An interesting flex to wait until five people get killed (lowballing) to give a shit about your role in getting people killed. Anyway, go check out Twitter, bring a picnic, it is a peaceful summer meadow. 
   
• Trump announced he shan’t attend the inauguration, to which Biden replied, “good.”
   
• The economy lost jobs in December for the first time in eight months. President Jobs still has time to turn this around. 
   
• The editorial boards of Missouri’s two major newspapers have both called on Sen. Josh Hawley (R-MO) to resign, one of his major donors has called for him to be censured, and Hawley’s political mentor said backing him was “the worst mistake I ever made in my life.”
   
• While we’re naming lawmakers who need to resign immediately, Rep. Mary Miller (R-IL) praised Hitler at the pro-Trump rally preceding the insurrection on Wednesday, then waited until Friday to apologize by calling herself “passionately pro-Israel.”
   
• West Virginia GOP lawmaker Derrick Evans, who livestreamed himself storming the Capitol, has been arrested, as has the man who did a photoshoot of himself casually lounging in Nancy Pelosi’s office. 
   
• Biden said he seriously considered naming Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) as his labor secretary, but both agreed they couldn’t risk Democrats’ Senate majority. They’ll still “work closely on our shared agenda of increasing worker power.”
   
• Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) spent the last four years surgically attached to Trump’s asshole, only for it all to end with QAnon adherents screaming “traitor” at him at National Airport in DC. You hate to see it.
   
• Lt. Gov. John Fetterman (D-PA) is exploring a run for Senate, which makes this the perfect moment to make sure everybody knows that Lt. Gov. John Fetterman (D-PA) lives in a car dealership. 

Dominion Voting Systems has sued pro-Trump lawyer Sidney Powell for defamation, seeking more than $1.3 billion in damages. Powell spent weeks spreading wild, false accusations about Dominion, including that the ghost of Hugo Chavez lives in the machines and Trump ballots are his ghost food (we’re still not sure exactly what that theory was and frankly, we refuse to learn). The lawsuit also notes that the company has had to spend half a million dollars on protection for personnel who began receiving death threats after the election. A Dominion lawyer said the company hadn’t ruled out filing additional lawsuits against Trump and/or the media outlets that amplified the same claims, and hopefully it won’t; the conspiracy theories Powell promoted are what fueled Wednesday’s attack on the Capitol, and legal consequences are what will deter the parties who spread them from making it a post-election routine. 

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New research suggests that the Pfizer vaccine can protect against the more contagious new coronavirus variant, which means everyone gets to do one big exhale. 

A clinical study in Argentina found that convalescent plasma can protect older adults from getting seriously sick from coronavirus, if they receive the treatment in the early days of their illness. 

The Biden administration plans to expand and reprioritize the operations of the NSC, with new senior positions on global health, democracy and human rights, and cyber and emerging technology. 

Because you helped Democrats win the Senate, Sen. Dick Durbin (D-IL), incoming chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee, will be able to prioritize investigations into right-wing extremist groups and how law-enforcement agencies have (or have not) addressed the threat.