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The second impeachment trial of disgraced former-President Donald Trump ended the way it was always destined to end (with Trump’s last-resort lawyers pilfering Senate coasters), and Democrats have begun laying out the next steps in their quest (?) for insurrection accountability.
- The world’s greatest deliberative body acquitted the world’s most convictable man for the second time on Saturday, with just seven Republicans joining Democrats in voting to convict Trump for inciting the January 6 Capitol insurrection. (In historical terms, an unusually bipartisan impeachment vote! In insurrectional terms, yikes!) Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell brought some extra pizzazz to his official blessing of presidential incitements of political violence by making an impassioned case for Trump’s culpability, moments after voting to acquit based on the (made-up, already rejected) constitutionality reasons that he created by refusing to start the trial while Trump was still in office. (Guess who’s big mad.)
- For a few exciting hours ahead of the final vote, it seemed like the trial would include fresh, damning testimony from witnesses after all. The Senate moved to authorize witnesses on Saturday, after Rep. Jaime Herrera Beutler (R-WA) released a statement late on Friday detailing a phone call between Trump and House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy on January 6, as rioters were smashing their way into McCarthy’s office. When McCarthy begged Trump to call them off, Trump made his support for the insurrectionists plain: “Well, Kevin, I guess these people are more upset about the election than you are.”
- After initially calling for Herrera Beutler to be deposed, Democrats quickly backed off, reading her public statement into the record and leaving it at that. In House impeachment managers’ telling, the decision to forego witnesses was based on the potential difficulty of getting other people to testify, the risk of delays, and the fact that witnesses wouldn’t have changed the trial’s outcome anyway. Also, uh, Sen. Chris Coons (D-DE) wanted to get home in time for Valentine’s Day. Anyway, the Trump team was shitting its collective pants when it looked like the trial would continue past Saturday, suggesting it might have been a good idea to put some apology roses in the mail and press forward.
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The good news is, Democrats might not move on from fact-finding entirely.
- On Monday, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi announced legislation to establish a 9/11-style independent commission to investigate the attack on the Capitol, and the White House has confirmed that President Biden is all for it. On Tuesday, Rep. Bennie Thompson (D-MS) and the NAACP filed a civil lawsuit against Trump and Rudy Giuliani in federal court, contending that they violated the 1871 Ku Klux Klan Act when they tried to prevent the certification of the election on January 6.
- Meanwhile, the great GOP memory-holing project continues. Here’s Sen. Ron Johnson (R-WI), questioning whether 140 injured cops even really count: “This didn’t seem like an armed insurrection. How many firearms were confiscated? How many shots were fired?” (Fact check: Police recovered dozens of guns, thousands of rounds of ammunition, and there was something else...ah yes, bombs.) The Republican senators who voted to convict Trump are already facing backlash in their home states, though only one, Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-AK), will be running to keep her seat in 2022.
Nobody underestimated Senate Republicans’ craven willingness to protect Donald Trump no matter what, but Democrats passed up an opportunity to make them do so in the face of as much evidence as possible. Now that Republicans have left the door for Trump’s political comeback wide open, and begun pretending January 6 never happened, exposing the full facts by other means is more important than ever.
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COVID variants. You’ve heard about them, now Abdul El-Sayed has done a full episode on what you need to know in this week’s America Dissected. He’s joined by the show’s resident virologist Dr. Angela Rasmussen to break down the new variants, talk about the latest in vaccine news, and discuss where we go from here. Listen and subscribe to to America Dissected wherever you get your podcasts →
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A deadly winter storm has left more than four million homes in Texas without power or heat, in an early glimpse of how climate change can push electric grids past the limit. Record-breaking cold weather in Texas prompted residents to crank up their electric heaters, pushing the electricity demand past any scenario the grid operators had planned for. At the same time, the cold messed with the state’s power sources: Gas pipelines were blocked with ice, power plants were knocked offline, wind turbines froze. Texas’s main grid was designed to handle summer heat waves, but nothing like this week’s unprecedented storms. There are ways to bolster the infrastructure to handle the extreme weather that climate change is ushering in, but they require a) knowing what kind of crises you’re preparing for, and b) money. The country will need to not only prevent climate change from getting worse, but make sure that things like electric heating can stay functional in the face of the climate emergency that’s already here. In the meantime, here's one way to help Texans who are stuck in the cold.
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- The average number of new daily coronavirus cases in the U.S. dipped below 100,000 for the first time since early November, a trend that will only continue if everybody stays on their mitigation game.
- The Biden administration has directed immigration officials to stop using words like “illegal alien,” both in public communications and internally, in a concerted shift away from dehumanizing language.
- At least six people associated with the Oath Keepers, all of whom had provided security for Roger Stone on January 5 or 6, later went on to storm the Capitol. Good thing Roger Stone doesn’t have any kind of history of carrying out Donald Trump’s criminal wishes, or this could look pretty bad.
- Well, here’s an insane letter handwritten by Rep. Adam Kinziger’s (R-IL) family, castigating him for his vote in favor of impeachment. “Should we call him? Send him an email?” “No. Fetch me my scolding stationary, I wish to underline ‘disappointment’ thrice.”
- The Manhattan District Attorney's office has dropped the misdemeanor charge against Central Park Nightmare Amy Cooper, after she completed five therapy sessions focused on racial bias. Birdwatcher Christian Cooper would rather we all focus on getting statehood for Washington, DC, than on this incident, anyway. You heard the man: (202) 224-3121.
- Former Sen. David Perdue (R-GA) has filed paperwork to
relaunch his insider trading career run against Sen. Raphael Warnock (D-GA) in 2022, though he hasn’t yet made a final decision. We would humbly suggest that Mr. Perdue consider the exciting career opportunity of going away forever.
- Nevada Democrats have introduced a bill to ditch the presidential caucuses, as part of an effort to make Nevada’s primary elections the earliest on the calendar. New Hampshire is shaking.
- GOP donor Fred Eshelman, who forked over $2.5 million for a voter fraud investigation, would like his money back now please.
- Don’t miss this very good piece by Crooked’s political director Shaniqua McClendon.
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Black Councilwoman Virettia Whiteside broke the unspoken “rule of one” in Fayette, AL, and found herself facing a racist effort to unseat her, without vocal defenders. Since 1988, when a federal lawsuit forced towns across Alabama to create districts that would enable Black representation, all Black council members in rural Fayette over the years have been elected from the same traditionally Black ward. Whiteside broke that informal rule in the last election when she won a traditionally white seat, putting two Black women on the city council at the same time. On Election Day, someone called the police on Whiteside and other Black candidates greeting voters outside a polling place. Immediately after she won, Scottie Porter, a white Trump supporter who had lost his own city council bid, filed a lawsuit aimed at overturning Whiteside’s election because she had bought a house that she wasn’t living in in another ward. Porter admitted that his opposition was also rooted in (wait for it) vile conspiracy theories. The whole piece is a fascinating look at how difficult it is to overcome racial barriers in small town politics, and it’s well-worth a read.
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The WHO has authorized the use of the AstraZeneca vaccine, clearing the way for its distribution in poorer parts of the world.
An Israeli study found a 94 percent drop in symptomatic coronavirus cases among 600,000 people who had received both doses of the Pfizer vaccine, confirming that the vaccine is just as effective in the real world as in clinical trials.
Tulsa residents have raised $1.5 million since Friday to help shelter people experiencing homelessness during the cold snap.
The English National Opera has developed a rehabilitation program for coronavirus long-haulers struggling with respiratory symptoms or anxiety, in collaboration with a London hospital.
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