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The House moved up votes on legislation to Wednesday night amid fears of a potential Capitol Siege 2.0 on Thursday, as Senators heard new testimony confirming that senior Pentagon officials mysteriously slow-walked the response to the attack on January 6.
- On Wednesday, Capitol Police officials announced they had obtained intelligence of a credible threat to breach the Capitol on Thursday, prompting the House to cancel Thursday’s session and accelerate a vote on the sweeping police reform bill named for George Floyd. The House will also vote on (and presumably pass) H.R.1 on Wednesday night, before adjourning to safer ground. The Senate hasn’t announced any changes to its Thursday debate-a-thon schedule.
- Intelligence analysts have been tracking online chatter about March 4 for weeks: Some QAnon luminaries have latched onto it as the date upon which Donald Trump will be inaugurated as the 19th president, based on logic that is too sophisticated for a healthy mind to understand, but the gist is available here. DHS and the FBI released a joint-intelligence bulletin about the threat late on Tuesday, noting that extremists had discussed plans to “remove Democratic lawmakers.”
- While Capitol Police were beefing up security, DC National Guard chief William Walker testified in a Senate hearing about how they were hung out to dry on January 6. Walker told lawmakers that it took the Pentagon three hours and 19 minutes (or, one full Titanic) to approve sending military backup to the Capitol on January 6, while Guard troops sat waiting on buses. The requirement to get approval from Pentagon leaders before sending troops was “unusual,” Walker said: He faced no such restrictions when the DC Guard responded to racial-justice protests over the summer.
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Given the ongoing threats of right-wing extremist attacks on the government, maybe prominent Republicans will take a break from fanning conspiracy theories?
- Hahahaha. Former Vice President Mike Pence, who recently came moments away from being murdered by rabid Trump cultists under the sway of GOP election lies, has published a new op-ed promoting those same election lies. In the very first sentence, Pence wrote that the presidential election was “marked by significant voting irregularities and numerous instances of officials setting aside state election law” (no examples offered, for some reason), and that he shares the “concerns of millions of Americans about the integrity of the 2020 election.”
- Pence is cultivating those baseless concerns for the same reason as the rest of the GOP: To justify attacking democracy on the legislative level. Pence went on to rail against the House’s imminent passage of H.R.1, which would go a long way toward rolling back the flood of new GOP voter suppression efforts. On Wednesday, radical leftist Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-MN) came out in favor of abolishing the filibuster in order to pass H.R.1 in the Senate, in appropriately urgent terms: “We have a raw exercise of political power going on where people are making it harder to vote and you just can’t let that happen in a democracy because of some old rules in the Senate.”
Republicans’ continued election lies have fueled sustained calls for political violence in extremist circles, and a less bloody but equally destructive assault on voting rights in state legislatures. Democrats can’t let themselves be steamrolled in their response to either threat.
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On this week's Keep It, Ira, Louis, and Aida discuss the 1st Hopefully Not Annual Zoom Golden Globes, Taylor Swift taking on Netflix’s Ginny & Georgia, Jonah Hill calling out the Daily Mail, racist Bachelor fans, and bad Twitter memes. Plus, Dominique Fishback joins to discuss her role in Judas and the Black Messiah and her Vampire Diaries fandom. Listen & subscribe wherever you get your podcasts →
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President Biden has agreed to further-limit eligibility for stimulus checks in the coronavirus relief package, in a seemingly self-defeating concession to moderate Senate Democrats. Under the new structure, individuals earning up to $75,000 per year and couples making up to $150,000 per year would still qualify for the full $1400 payment in the plan passed by the House. But there would be a much faster phaseout for higher earners: Individuals earning over $80,000 and couples earning more than $160,000 would get nothing. Before Sen. Joe Manchin (D-WV) & Co. got their way, phaseouts ended at $100,000 per year for individuals and $200,000 for couples. The upshot is that roughly 17 million fewer Americans will receive stimulus checks this round than in the previous aid package, putting Democrats and the Biden administration in the profoundly cringey position of explaining why more people got relief checks under Trump—particularly after promising bigger checks as their closing message in the Georgia Senate runoffs.
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- The Transportation Department’s inspector general found that former Transportation Secretary (and wife of Mitch McConnell) Elaine Chao misused her office to promote her family’s shipping business, and asked the Justice Department to consider a criminal investigation into her misconduct in December. The Trump Justice Department...did not do that.
- Gov. Andrew Cuomo (D-NY) said he will not resign in the face of multiple sexual-harassment allegations, insisted he never touched anyone inappropriately (two of his accusers have said otherwise), noted that he famously kisses everyone he meets, and again apologized to anyone who may have “misinterpreted” him.
- President Biden called for every school employee to receive at least one vaccine shot by the end of March. Teachers will be able to sign up for doses at local pharmacies through a federal program, but access at other sites could still be limited by state-level eligibility requirements.
- Rep. Ronny Jackson (R-TX) bullied his staff and made sexual comments about a subordinate during his tenure as White House physician, according to a newly released Defense Department inspector general report.
- Brazil is facing a spike in coronavirus deaths that seems to be driven by a more contagious variant, if the GOP governors flinging their states open could perhaps consider slowing their roll?
- Consulting firms have been making wild profits off of viral Republican candidates who stand no actual chance of getting elected, as the true beneficiaries of the right-wing online outrage machine.
- A Capitol rioter bragged about posing as Antifa and assaulting some police officers, in a move that will henceforth be known as the Reverse Ron Johnson.
- Buckingham Palace has launched an investigation into allegations that Meghan Markle bullied her staff, which the Times of London just happened to publish a few days before Sunday’s scheduled broadcast of Oprah’s interview with Meghan and Prince Harry. (The Crown theme music intensifies.)
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It turns out that offering resources to people who are trapped in poverty is a pretty good way to help them escape from poverty. Two years ago, the city of Stockton, CA, rolled out a basic income pilot program, using donated funds to send payments of $500 a month to randomly selected people living in neighborhoods with average incomes lower than the city median of $46,000 per year. There were no strings attached: Recipients could spend the money however they saw fit. A new analysis of data from the program found that money....helps! The payments reduced income volatility, doubled households’ capacity to pay unexpected bills, allowed people to help out their family and friends, and not only did it not dissuade participants from working, but in some cases, it provided the stability to find a new job. Michael Tubbs, a former mayor of Stockton who spearheaded the project, has founded a group that plans to extend the initiative to cities across the country, and Democrats’ push to send monthly checks to millions of parents points to growing support for policies that simply put resources where they’re needed.
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New Jersey has passed a bill to end mandatory minimum sentences for non-violent offenses.
Voting rights activist Kayla Parker, 25, has launched Organize Tennessee to try to make Tennessee the next Georgia.
More than 200,000 Americans signed up for ACA health plans during the first two weeks of President Biden’s extended enrollment period.
Citigroup has pledged to achieve net-zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050.
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