Crooked Media - What A Day: No honor among Steves

 -Andrew Yang, master designer of third parties and cars

The House January 6 committee will smash the contempt button in response to an ignored subpoena, and the Justice Department might want to hurry up and prosecute before Donald Trump incites another riot and the inbox piles up.
 

• Steve Bannon failed to show up for his witness deposition on Thursday, after announcing last week that he, a podcast host, would refuse to testify because of executive privilege that is not his to invoke and doesn’t belong to Trump anymore. Committee Chair Bennie Thompson responded in a statement that the panel will move forward with criminal-contempt proceedings, and vote on a contempt referral for Bannon on Tuesday evening. “The Select Committee will use every tool at its disposal to get the information it seeks, and witnesses who try to stonewall the Select Committee will not succeed,” Thompson said.
   
• Thompson also expressed his gratitude to “the many individuals who are voluntarily participating and to witnesses who are complying with subpoenas,” a politely vicious message to Donald Trump that his other former aides have continued to cooperate in spite of his lawless directive to clam up. Mark Meadows and Kash Patel were scheduled to appear for depositions this week, but the panel will reportedly grant them (and Dan Scavino) extensions to give them more time to comply.
   
• Once the committee and House have voted to advance a contempt citation, it will be up to Attorney General Merrick Garland whether to actually prosecute the case, and it’s not obvious what he’ll decide. On the one hand, Garland hasn’t had much of an appetite for aggressively holding the Trump administration accountable for misconduct. On the other hand, if he lets Bannon off the hook for defying a congressional subpoena, Garland would essentially be tattooing “Trump and his friends are above the law” across his forehead. 

Not to tell Merrick Garland how to do his job (or how to select face tattoos), but that would be an insanely dangerous message to send. 
 

• Let’s check in with the appearances Steve Bannon did make time for this week. On Wednesday night, Bannon headlined a rally for GOP Virginia gubernatorial Glenn Youngkin, during which Donald Trump called in to spew some additional election lies. As the event kicked off, the crowd pledged allegiance to a flag that organizers said was present at the January 6 attack on the Capitol. Even by Trump-attended rally standards, this was profoundly fucked up.
   
• Youngkin himself wasn’t present at the event, as part of his Normal Guy With Normal Politics campaign strategy, but also wasn’t in any rush to condemn it, as part of his Actually A Radical Lil’ Freak, Shh ;) campaign strategy. Youngkin’s campaign initially refused to answer any questions about the flag; on Thursday afternoon, Youngkin released a statement distancing himself as far as he could without actually denouncing Trump or rejecting his endorsement: “While I had no role in last night’s event, I have heard about it from many people in the media today. It is weird and wrong to pledge allegiance to a flag connected to January 6.”

Lawmakers on the January 6 panel have indicated that they weren’t bluffing about conducting the kind of investigation a coup attempt warrants; the next test will be whether the Justice Department intends to enforce Congress’s authority to do so. If not, we’ll have an anti-democracy GOP frontrunner who rightly sees himself as immune to consequences, in control of a party that’s completely along for the ride.

If you haven't yet, check out Jason Concepcion and Crooked's new fan culture podcast X-Ray Vision. Every week, Jason is joined by panelists and guests for deep dives into your favorite films, TV shows and comics including the Marvel Cinematic Universe, Star Wars, and so much more. Follow X-Ray Vision on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen to podcasts.

President Biden’s commission studying possible Supreme Court reforms has released draft materials ahead of its final report, and they are something of a mess. The 36-member commission was divided about expanding the Court to balance out the illegitimate and harmful far-right tilt, in part because it could “reinforce the notion that the Justices are partisan actors.” In other words, we mustn't take steps to stop the conservative bloc from actively imposing their minority views on the nation because it might give off an unflattering impression. Inspiring stuff in the wake of the Texas abortion ban! The commission was much more open to the idea of term limits for justices, but it wasn’t tasked with making any recommendations, just with appraising the various proposals. Biden won’t comment on the report until the final version is released next month.

• Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer announced that the Senate will vote on Wednesday to open debate on voting rights legislation, giving Sen. Joe Manchin (D-WV) one more week to finish rounding up his 10 chill Republicans.
   
• The FDA’s vaccine advisory committee voted unanimously to recommend Moderna booster shots for emergency use authorization. Moderna said that a half-size booster dose produced a strong immune response, which should free up more doses for the global supply.
   
• President Biden reportedly plans to nominate former FDA Commissioner Robert Califf to return to the role.
   
• A Danish man killed five people with bow-and-arrow in Norway on Wednesday night, in the country’s deadliest attack in a decade. Police had previously had contact with the suspect over concerns that he had been radicalized.
   
• A California judge has sentenced Robert Durst to life in prison for murdering his friend Susan Berman in 2000.
   
• Sen. Kyrsten Sinema (D-AZ) is currently in Europe on a fundraising trip, as Senate Democrats scramble to reach a deal on the reconciliation package ahead of their end-of-the-month deadline. Très cool! Incidentally, Sinema got her derrière handed to her by every potential primary challenger in a new Data For Progress poll.
   
• More than 10,000 John Deere workers have gone on strike across the country over an unsatisfactory contract proposal.
   
• Ron Watkins, the man behind the QAnon curtain, appears to be gearing up to run for Congress in Arizona, as if Arizona hasn’t been through enough.
   
• Federal oversight experts have called on five federal agencies to stop doing business with the Trump Organization, on account of all of its indictments for tax crimes. 
   
• GOP Georgia Senate candidate Herschel Walker canceled a fundraiser with a supporter whose Twitter profile picture was a swastika, after his campaign first argued that the swastika was “clearly an anti-mandatory vaccination graphic.”
   
• Oh good, the robot dogs have guns now.

More than 460 American police officers have died from coronavirus infections linked to their work, but police unions have continued to push back against vaccine mandates across the country. Coronavirus was by far the most common cause of duty-related deaths over the last two years, and more than four times as many officers died from COVID as from gunfire since the start of the pandemic. So it’s particularly bananas that the law enforcement unions tasked with protecting officers’ interests have encouraged them to defy city-wide vaccine mandates or seek bogus religious exemptions en masse, even when you take the risk to the public out of the equation. “If this was cops getting shot on the streets of America today at this number, there would be outrage,” Chuck Wexler, executive director of the Police Executive Research Forum, told the New York Times. “This is an issue that begs for leadership and putting politics aside. And that’s exactly the opposite of what’s happening right now.”

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Interior Secretary Deb Haaland has announced the department’s plan to develop wind farms along almost the entire U.S. coastline.

Weekly initial unemployment claims fell below 300,000 for the first time since the pandemic began. 

Nursing schools have seen a continuing spike in applications this year, which could help ease the nursing shortage.

New research suggests that nuking an incoming asteroid would actually do the trick.