Crooked Media - What A Day: Out-of-Joint Chiefs

The nation’s highest-ranking military officer was so worried about then-President Trump or his allies potentially attempting a coup that he started making contingency plans. Just a light, wacky anecdote about the 2024 GOP presidential frontrunner!
 

• Chairman of the Joint Chiefs Gen. Mark Milley and other top generals discussed a plan to resign one by one rather than carry out seditious orders from Trump, according to a new book by Washington Post reporters Carol Leonnig and Philip Rucker. Milley was reportedly spooked by the ascension of MAGA loyalists to powerful roles at the Pentagon after the election, and by Trump stoking unrest in the leadup to January 6. Milley also noticed certain parallels between the Big Lie, and uh, the other Big Lie: “This is a Reichstag moment...The gospel of the Führer,” he told aides.
   
• Following in the great literary footsteps of O.J. Simpson, Trump issued a denial in which he both dismissed the suggestion that a coup was ever on the table, and remarked that Milley wouldn’t have made the draft for it: “Sorry to inform you, but an Election is my form of ‘coup,’ and if I was going to do a coup, one of the last people I would want to do it with is General Mark Milley.” Again, we’re talking about the overwhelming favorite to win the Republican nomination, who has essentially confirmed he’s planning to run. 
   
• When Trump says elections are his coups, he’s not being facetious. On Wednesday night, Trump sent out a press release announcing that he would not support Georgia’s GOP Senate President Pro Tem Butch Miller in his bid to become the state’s next lieutenant governor, because Miller had refused “to work with other Republican Senators on voter fraud and irregularities in the state.” There’s no room in the GOP for officials who aren’t prepared to overturn the next election, as far as Trump is concerned, and he’s actively working to enforce that doctrine.

Given Trump’s current stranglehold on the Republican Party, his direct intervention (or even his candidacy) may no longer be strictly necessary for a constitutional crisis in 2024.
 

• The GOP base is already enforcing Big Lie adherence all on its own. Jason Roe, the executive director of the Michigan GOP,  has resigned from his position after coming under fire from party activists for having the gall to say that “the election wasn’t stolen,” and that Trump was to blame for his own defeat. Roe made those comments back in November; in late May, Michigan GOP precinct delegates delivered a resolution calling on party leadership to fire his ass.
   
• Meanwhile, as Democrats prepare to launch a January 6 committee that could get to the bottom of whether Trump did or did not consider a military coup to stay in power, House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy met with Trump in Bedminster, NJ, on Thursday—presumably for his marching orders on how best to undermine the panel. McCarthy said he hasn’t yet decided whether he’ll appoint Republican members, but he’s running up against a deadline: The committee announced Wednesday that it will hold its first hearing on July 27. 

The new account of Pentagon leaders’ preparations for a potential coup attempt should make Democrats sit up and take notice, as should the evidence of a slow, bloodless administrative coup that’s already in motion. We’ll know they have if the January 6 committee aggressively pursues a full accounting of the last democratic crisis; if it doesn’t, we’ll be sleepwalking into another one.

In this week's episode of Edith!, Edith orchestrates America's very first Presidential puff piece after weeks of bad press surrounding the departure of Secretary Lansing. As Edith would say, "people will applaud anything as long as you end it with the words, ‘America,’ and ‘Thank you.’” Episode 5 of Edith! is out today! Follow on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Surgeon General Vivek Murthy has declared coronavirus vaccine misinformation “an urgent threat to public health,” and urged tech companies, journalists, and health-care workers (but mostly tech companies) to do more to stop the spread of false claims that have been slowing down vaccinations and costing lives. In at least 46 states, the rates of new coronavirus cases this past week were at least 10 percent higher than the previous week, as the Delta variant sweeps through conservative sections of the country and Fox News hosts continue to sow vaccine skepticism. Health officials have warned that young, unvaccinated people are being hospitalized in alarming numbers. And while nearly all new coronavirus hospitalizations and deaths nationwide are among people who weren’t vaccinated, a steep rise in cases has prompted Los Angeles County health officials to reinstate an indoor mask mandate, regardless of vaccination status. 

• Justice Stephen Breyer said he hasn’t decided when he’ll retire from the Supreme Court, but he is having a wonderful time as Big Man on Bench now that he’s the senior liberal, so everybody stop harshing his buzz.
   
• Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer announced he’ll force a test vote on the bipartisan infrastructure deal as early as Wednesday, to the grumbling of Senate Republicans who would rather stay on the fence and drag things out. To keep them on board, it’s looking like Democrats might drop stronger IRS enforcement from the bill’s financing provisions.
   
• At least 54 people have died due to severe flooding in Western Europe, the result of the heaviest rainfall in the region in a century.
   
• The Justice Department’s inspector general released a report saying that the FBI bungled its investigation of Larry Nassar, giving him more time to continue abusing female patients.
   
• The Amazon rainforest is now emitting more carbon dioxide than it can absorb, accelerating the climate crisis rather than mitigating it. It’s a devastating finding, so let’s take a moment to appreciate that one of the main culprits enabling the Amazon’s burning has come to a small measure of poetic justice.
   
• Full-time workers earning minimum wage can’t afford rent anywhere in the country, according to a new report from the National Low Income Housing Coalition.
   
• Johnson & Johnson has recalled five aerosol sunscreens that may contain trace amounts of a carcinogen, inspiring a whole new Alanis Morissette verse. Anyway, check your sunscreen.
   
• Renowned Dutch crime reporter Peter De Vries has died after he was shot in the head last week while leaving a TV studio.
   
• A federal appeals court ruled that Joe Exotic should get a shorter prison sentence for trying to arrange the murder of Carole Baskin and violating federal wildlife laws. Can't keep a good man down! Or even an extremely bad one, it turns out.

Remember when we all worked very hard to elect Democrats in 2020, allowing them to pass a huge coronavirus-relief package on a party-line vote? It really was worth it. The first monthly installment of the expanded child tax credit went out to roughly 39 million families on Thursday, covering 88 percent of American children. Families will receive up to $300 a month for each kid under age six and up to $250 a month for each one between ages six and 17, making an immediate difference in millions of lives. Under the American Rescue Plan, the low-income families of nearly 26 million children who weren’t previously eligible for the full tax credit will now receive it. It’s a move that policy experts say will slash child poverty in the U.S. nearly in half, and Democrats are planning to significantly extend the increased monthly payments as part of their reconciliation infrastructure package—if not make it permanent. 

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The Biden administration will move to restore protections for Alaska’s Tongass National Forest, after Donald Trump tried to open it up for logging and mining.

Attorney General Merrick Garland has overturned a Trump-era order that barred immigration judges from closing low-priority cases, which will cut down on a huge backlog in immigration courts.

Gov. Tim Walz (D-MN) has signed an order banning conversion therapy for minors in Minnesota, bypassing the state’s GOP-controlled Senate.

California lawmakers have approved the country’s first state-funded guaranteed income plan, with $35 million for monthly cash payments to qualifying pregnant people and young people just out of foster care.