Crooked Media - What A Day: Quiet Coke

Major Atlanta-based corporations have finally come out against Georgia’s new voter-suppression law, after executives did some soul-searching and remembered their top concern as participants in the great American experiment: avoiding high-profile boycotts.
 

• On Wednesday morning, Delta CEO Ed Bastian issued a memo calling the Georgia law “unacceptable,” and called out the Big Lie at its core: “The entire rationale for this bill was based on a lie: that there was widespread voter fraud in Georgia in the 2020 elections. This is simply not true.” Later in the day, Coca-Cola CEO James Quincey followed suit: “Let me be crystal clear and unequivocal, this legislation is unacceptable.”
   
• Careful scholars of Last Week will recall that the bill was no less unacceptable before it passed, when the same companies couldn’t be compelled to make a public statement stronger than “voting rights good <3.” But the public has refused to let them off the hook. This week, dozens of prominent Black executives called on corporate America to directly and publicly oppose voter-suppression laws, and community leaders began calling for boycotts of companies with Georgia headquarters that had stayed silent.
   
• The Delta and Coca-Cola statements marked a (belated) step in the right direction, but activists and Georgia Democrats would still like to see companies publicly back H.R.1 and cut off donations to GOP lawmakers stripping democracy for parts. And Republicans are spooked! Gov. Brian Kemp (R-GA) released a statement whining about Delta’s betrayal of its earlier complicity, while Republicans in the Georgia legislature started plotting how they might punish Delta with taxes. 

Even if corporations fall into line behind the For The People Act, Democrats will have some internal divisions to resolve when the Senate gets back from recess. 
 

• Sen. Joe Manchin (D-WV) is still the most visible obstacle, with his insistence on drawing bipartisan support for pro-democracy reform from the party that recently tried to mount a coup, and is currently setting the stage for the next one. But there’s reportedly a broader sense of anxiety among Democrats about whether the bill should be broken up in order to pass narrower voting-rights protections with less pushback, while some members are worried that certain measures could cost the party seats, or incentivize more progressive primary challengers (heaven forbid).
   
• Beyond whatever changes Lord Manchin demands, the bill may need some practical edits to make sure election officials can actually implement it. For example, voting machines that would meet the legislation’s security requirements have yet to be manufactured, and a tiny federal commission would be responsible for certifying and issuing a waiver for...every machine currently in use. A provision requiring states to shift redistricting to nonpartisan commissions was written to apply to electoral maps drawn this year, which officials say they can’t reasonably accomplish. Probably wise to get those issues ironed out!

It would be neat if American business leaders and elected officials didn’t require weeks of sustained activism to place themselves firmly on the side of democracy, but we’re starting to see that work make a difference, and the stakes are too high to back off now. Help keep the pressure on for as long as it takes: votesaveamerica.com/forthepeople.

Suspected Russian hackers stole thousands of State Department emails last year, a fairly huge revelation that was immediately eclipsed by Matt Gaetz sweatily tweeting about his dad wearing a wire. The hackers accessed the emails of two bureaus that work on issues related to U.S. allies, including NATO. One official said it doesn’t seem like the classified network had been breached. It’s not clear whether that theft was part of the SolarWinds debacle, but the State Department did use SolarWinds software and was exposed in that breach. Neither the State Department nor the White House have commented on the specific incident, but it suggests that Russian hackers may have had more access to U.S. government materials than we (the public) were previously aware of, and raises some questions about the department’s cybersecurity practices: This marks the second time Russia has breached the State Department’s email servers in under 10 years.

• The White House has unveiled the American Jobs Plan, which would set up charging stations for electric cars all across the country, replace every lead pipe in the land, and provide funding to build or retrofit two-million homes.
   
• Two Capitol Police officers have sued Donald Trump for inciting the January 6 mob, seeking damages of at least $75,000 for the physical and emotional injuries they sustained in the attack. 
   
• Millions of Johnson & Johnson vaccine doses have been delayed because workers at a Baltimore plant mixed up the ingredients for two different formulas, like an I Love Lucy episode from the depths of hell.
   
• The man who assaulted a 65 year-old Filipino woman in Manhattan on Monday has been arrested on hate crime charges. He was on lifetime parole after serving time for killing his mother. 
   
• After Trump ignored Peter Navarro’s advice to acquire medical supplies in the early days of the pandemic, Navarro set off on his own unsupervised shopping spree, according to documents released by House investigators. Navarro pressured agency officials to award huge contracts to politically connected, untested companies.
   
• Hey remember when Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-FL) was the lone vote against an anti-human-trafficking bill? No reason, totally unrelated to any particular story that's somehow STILL GETTING WEIRDER. 
   
• The Supreme Court seemed poised to reject the NCAA’s argument for not paying college athletes, with even Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito making oddly human points about the enormous salaries college coaches pull in, and the exploitation of athletes, most of whom have no future in professional sports. 
   
• The EPA will purge more than 40 Trump-appointed outside experts as part of the agency’s effort to bring back, what’s it called, science.
   
• Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny has started a hunger strike in prison to protest inadequate medical treatment.
   
• You may hear some stories about how Major Biden bit someone else, and how either he or Champ shat on the White House floor, but the thing you need to realize is that Major is being extorted by a former DOJ official and his dad is actually wearing a wire. Tucker Carlson remembers. 

It gives us no pleasure to introduce the latest dumbass culture war, vaccine passports. Here’s what’s actually happening: The Biden administration has been coordinating with private companies to develop a standard way for people to show they’ve received the coronavirus vaccine. If anything, reasonable critics say, the federal government should be taking a more central role: A growing number of companies and state governments have been racing to launch their own efforts, a recipe for confusion and potential privacy issues. Fox News and Republican lawmakers have seized on the opposite, imaginary concern, calling vaccine passports a “nightmare Orwellian infrastructure of control” (Fox News host Steve Hilton) and “Biden’s mark of the beast” (Georgia Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene). It’s no big surprise that the faction that framed mask-wearing as an infringement on personal rights would fire up the same fake outrage over proof of vaccination, but it sure is deeply embarrassing. 

The Trump administration carried out an unprecedented number of federal executions last year. In its rush to kill people during a pandemic, the government sidestepped due process, public health recommendations, and legal precedent. But the death penalty is always cruel and inhumane — it’s time we end it once and for all. 

Just like the death penalty in the states, the federal death penalty is racist, arbitrary, and error-prone in its application. The ACLU is demanding that the Biden-Harris administration honor its pledge to end the federal death penalty. Add your name to join us. 

We’re demanding that the new administration commute all federal death sentences while it works to end the federal death penalty once and for all. If you agree, click here to add your name and make your voice heard with the ACLU. 

A clinical trial showed the Pfizer vaccine to be 100 percent effective in kids ages 12 to 15.

New York has officially legalized recreational marijuana, and will invest millions of dollars in cannabis tax revenue in minority communities ravaged by the war on drugs. 

The Pentagon has scrapped the Trump administration’s restrictions on transgender troops, and will offer access to transition-related medical care. 

Gov. Ralph Northam (D-VA) has signed a law banning the gay/trans panic defense in Virginia.