Crooked Media - What A Day: Flush to judgment

 -Mayor Craig Shubert of Hudson, OH, on the slippery slope of ice fishing

Donald Trump’s weird crusade against low-flow toilets may have had more to do with his federal crimes than his upsetting dietary habits, a wild revelation that also functions as a complete presidential biography. 
 

• Trump’s White House staff periodically came across toilets clogged with wads of paper, clogs that they believed were caused by—see if you can follow this logical leap here— Trump trying to flush documents, according to Maggie Haberman’s forthcoming book Confidence Man. (Should Haberman have perhaps reported this information as soon as she uncovered it, instead of sitting on it for months or years to help sell a book? Maybe, haha!) Trump has denied the toilet thing, if you trust the word of a guy who flushes documents down the toilet. If not, it seems Bloomberg reporter Jennifer Jacobs has been sitting on the same scoop. (Haha????) 
   
• Trump not only improperly hoarded documents he didn’t flush, he evidently skipped town with government secrets. The National Archives reportedly found materials that were clearly marked classified in the 15 boxes of presidential records that Trump smuggled back to Mar-a-Lago. The Archives consulted the Justice Department, which told it to have its inspector general look into the matter. It’s unclear whether the inspector general has referred it back to DOJ, which would require the department to decide whether to open the kind of politically charged investigation that Attorney General Merrick Garland seems determined to avoid, or place Trump (again) above the law.
   
• In the meantime, Congress is on it. House Oversight Committee Chair Carolyn Maloney has hauled ass on her pledge to investigate Boxgate, writing to the National Archives on Wednesday to request information about Trump’s violations of the Presidential Records Act, including his destruction of documents. Maloney also asked whether “the Archivist has notified the Attorney General that former President Trump removed presidential records from the White House,” and set February 18 as the committee’s deadline for answers.

It’s almost as if all of Trump’s Quirky Presidential Habits were deliberate strategies to thwart future investigations.
 

• Even the unshredded records are incomplete: House investigators have found suspicious gaps in official White House call logs from January 6. The committee knows about a number of phone calls Trump made that day—to then-Vice President Mike Pence, to Sen. Mike Lee (R-UT), by accident, as rioters breached the Capitol—but many of them aren’t reflected in the official record.
   
• Investigators haven’t found any evidence that the official records were tampered with; Trump likely tried to hide his January 6 communications by using a personal cell phone, or those of his aides, something he did throughout his presidency in spite of repeated warnings that it left him vulnerable to foreign surveillance. The committee’s subpoenas to telecommunications companies for the cell-phone records of Trump’s inner circle should help fill in the gaps, but the gaps themselves are evidence of a cover-up.

Trump’s methods of concealing his wrongdoing may have been shitty (in, uh, multiple senses), but either presidents are investigated and held accountable for breaking the law, or the law means nothing. The story of Trump’s mishandling of documents gets worse by the day, and should already be impossible for the Justice Department to disregard.

Catch up on the latest episode of Hysteria! This week, Erin and Alyssa discuss Joe Rogan, American manhood and the disaffected white man, and break down the insidiousness of the Beijing Olympics and the human rights violations the world is seemingly glossing over. Plus, Megan Gailey and Julissa Arce join for a very special Valentine’s inspired Solicited Advice segment. New episodes of Hysteria drop every Thursday. Listen wherever you get your podcasts.

Three GOP senators have urged the Archivist of the United States David Ferriero not to certify the Equal Rights Amendment before he retires in April. Sens. Rob Portman (R-OH), Ron Johnson (R-WI) and Mitt Romney (R-UT) wrote to Ferriero on Wednesday asking him to commit to not certifying the ERA until “until it has been properly ratified and legal questions regarding such ratification have been resolved.” (RIP, Woke Mitt.) Virginia became the 38th state to approve the amendment in 2020—the magic number needed for ratification—though five states rescinded their approval in the meantime. Advocates argue that the 1982 deadline to ratify the amendment is nonsense, since it wasn’t included in the ERA’s text, and that states can’t “take back” amendment ratifications. House Democrats passed a bill to retroactively remove the ERA deadline last year, and two other Republicans, Sens. Lisa Murkowski (R-AK) and Susan Collins (R-ME), have cosponsored a version of the bill in the Senate.

• Inflation rose 7.5 percent last month compared with a year earlier, the Labor Department reported on Thursday. Sen. Joe Manchin (D-WV) took the opportunity to renew his skepticism about passing the Build Back Better Act Untitled Climate and Manchin Statue Package: “Congress and the Administration must proceed with caution before adding more fuel to an economy already on fire.”
   
• “Freedom Convoy” truckers have shut down a third border crossing between Canada and the U.S. The antivax protests have forced car companies to close plants or scale back production on both sides of the border.
   
• Monique Miles, a top deputy to Virginia’s new GOP attorney general, resigned on Thursday after reporters found her Facebook posts praising January 6 insurrectionists and falsely claiming that Donald Trump won the 2020 election. Miles’s job included overseeing a range of election issues.
   
• The 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals said it wouldn’t reinstate President Biden’s vaccine mandate for federal employees while it reviews a Trumpy judge’s order putting it on hold.
   
• The California Department of Fair Employment and Housing (DFEH) has sued Tesla for operating a “racially segregated workplace” where Black workers are discriminated against and subjected to racial slurs. 
   
• Donald Trump has endorsed GOP candidate Katie Arrington in her bid to unseat Rep. Nancy Mace (R-SC). In response, Mace all but prostrated herself in front of Trump Tower.
   
• Fifteen-year-old Russian figure skater Kamila Valieva tested positive for a banned heart medication at the Olympics, which could cost her team the gold medal they’ve already won.
   
• A security guard at the Yeltsin Center in Russia got bored on his first day of work and drew some eyes on a painting, in an unusual but exquisite addition to the Botched Art Restoration files.

A tiny group of Facebook superusers drives what everyone else sees on the platform, and (surprise!) they happen to be the worst people alive. This has been intuitively apparent for a while, but internal documents released by whistleblower Frances Haugen provide hard evidence. Researchers found that among the 52 million Facebook users active on U.S. pages and public groups, the top one percent of accounts were responsible for 35 percent of all observed interactions; the top three percent were responsible for 52 percent. Facebook amplifies an even smaller set of those users by boosting posts with a ton of “Meaningful Social Interaction,” or MSI, the algorithm described in Haugen’s documents. The top users skew white, older, and male, and they are overwhelmingly a toxic, hateful bunch. Facebook could drastically reduce abuse on the platform by removing the worst offenders; unfortunately, they’re the ones driving all the engagement.

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The Senate has passed the Ending Forced Arbitration Act, which guarantees that victims of workplace sexual harassment or assault have the choice to go to court. The bill now heads to President Biden’s desk.

Democratic suburban moms have begun mobilizing against book-banning efforts and other right-wing school nonsense, through a network unfortunately called “Red Wine and Blue.”

A federal judge restored protections for gray wolves across much of the U.S., after a Trump administration rule removed them.

Wordle may have saved a woman’s life!