Crooked Media - What A Day: Tru' grit

 -Charlie Kirk, world's oldest 28-year-old

It took over two weeks, but Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau finally reached the end of his rope with the antivax truckers who have occupied Ottawa and inspired copycat convoys around the world. At this rate, we might even see him drop a Canadian f-bomb (“fudge”). 
 

• Trudeau declared a national public-order emergency on Monday in a move to finally end the “Freedom Convoy” protests that have paralyzed the capital city and disrupted international trade. The 1988 Emergencies Act gives the government enormous powers to temporarily suspend civil liberties, override the provinces, and do what’s necessary to restore public order. The act hasn’t been used since Trudeau’s father, former Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau, invoked an earlier version in 1970 to address a wave of terrorism by a militant Quebec separatist group.
   
• Authorities made some limited headway over the weekend: The Ambassador Bridge, a critical U.S. border crossing, reopened late Sunday night after antivax protesters shut it down for nearly a week. Police arrested at least two-dozen protesters who refused to disperse in the two days after an Ontario judge ordered an end to the blockade. Car manufacturing plants on both sides of the border resumed business as usual on Monday, and Gov. Gretchen Whitmer (D-MI) called the bridge reopening a “win for Michigan families.”
   
• Ottawa, on the other hand, remained a big honking mess. Ontario Premier Doug Ford announced Monday that the province will no longer require proof of vaccination to enter indoor spaces as of March 1, while stressing that the decision wasn’t made as a concession to the  protesters. The truckers didn’t budge anyway, almost as if vaccine mandates are more of a pretext for right-wing assholes to challenge the authority of liberal leaders than a policy they happen to disagree with.

Trudeau’s decision to go Emergency Mode came shortly after an ominous wrinkle in the largely peaceful (if illegal and nightmarish) protests.
 

• The Alberta Royal Canadian Mounted Police said earlier on Monday that it had arrested 11 people and seized a cache of weapons—including 13 long guns, handguns, body armor (sorry, “armour”), and a large quantity of ammunition—near the U.S. border crossing in Coutts, Alberta. Police said they had learned of a “small organized group within the larger Coutts protest” which “was said to have a willingness to use force against the police if any attempts were made to disrupt the blockade.” The embedded militant group(s) aren’t the only January 6-ish feature of the protests: Many of the “aggrieved truckers” leading the Ottawa convoy are in fact former police officers and army veterans. 
   
• Meanwhile, while the Super Bowl proceeded without trucker interruption on Sunday, antivax protests have metastasized in New Zealand, France, the Netherlands, Australia, Alaska, and New York, among other places. New Zealand authorities unsuccessfully tried to disperse demonstrators outside the parliament building by blasting Barry Manilow’s greatest hits, as well as the Macarena; Belgian police had better luck averting a planned convoy in Brussels by blocking protesters’ vehicles from entering the city in the first place. (The counter-protesters relentlessly spamming Canadian organizers with a pornographic cowboy song remain the real heroes.)

Between liberal leaders’ fear of riling up right-wing extremists by enforcing laws and cops’ reluctance or inability to police fellow cops, Canada’s blockades have dragged on for weeks and attracted violent elements. With more disruptive U.S. convoys potentially in the works, leaders here may want to take notes. 

In the latest episode of Offline, Hank Green joins Jon Favreau to talk about how he attempts to inspire curiosity online, the communities he’s built, and how the internet has changed since he posted his first video on YouTube in 2007. Watch the interview now on YouTube and don’t miss new episodes of Offline every Sunday in the Pod Save America feed. Listen wherever you get your podcasts.

The Kremlin suggested on Monday that it’s prepared to continue diplomatic talks, amid reports that Russia might launch an invasion of Ukraine as soon as Wednesday. In a televised meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin across the longest table of the standoff so far, Russian foreign minister Sergei Lavrov argued that talks “can’t go on indefinitely, but I would suggest to continue and expand them at this stage.” President Biden spoke with Putin and Ukrainian President  Volodymyr Zelensky in separate phone calls over the weekend, and German Chancellor Olaf Scholz has embarked on a trip to Kyiv and Moscow. Secretary of State Antony Blinken announced Monday that the U.S. will close its embassy in Kyiv and temporarily relocate all remaining personnel to the western city of Lviv, due to “the dramatic acceleration in the buildup of Russian forces” on the border. 

• The accounting firm Mazars has fired the Trump Organization as a client and said that a decade’s-worth of Trump’s financial statements “should no longer be relied upon.”
   
• A gunman on Monday walked into the office of Craig Greenberg, a Democratic mayoral candidate in Louisville, KY, and started shooting. No one was hurt. Police said they haven’t yet determined the shooter’s motive, but noted that Greenberg is Jewish.
   
• Rudy Giuliani is in talks to cooperate with the January 6 committee. Coup Memo author John Eastman has turned over more than 8,409 pages of emails to the panel, but is trying to hide another 11,000 on the basis of attorney-client privilege.
   
• Washington, DC, will drop its proof-of-vaccination requirement to enter indoor businesses this week, and lift its mask mandate next month. Walmart, the country’s largest employer, has dropped its mask mandate for most vaccinated workers.
   
• U.S. District Court Judge Jed Rakoff has tossed out Sarah Palin’s defamation lawsuit against the New York Times, ruling that she failed to provide enough evidence. 
   
• Sen. Ben Ray Luján (D-NM) said he plans to be back on the Senate floor in “just a few short weeks” as he recovers from a recent stroke.
   
• Peter Thiel has given more than $20.4 million to elect federal MAGA candidates this year, in service of his long-term goal of dismantling democracy. 
   
• Sen. Joe Manchin (D-WV) suggested that Sen. Kyrsten Sinema (D-AZ) should rethink her opposition to tax increases for corporations and the disgustingly wealthy, which forced Democrats to leave them out of the Build Back Better Act.
   
• West Virginia’s Grant Town power plant has failed to pay rent for the last 10 years, while somehow continuing to pay Manchin’s family business millions of dollars for waste coal. 
   
• Russian figure skater Kamila Valieva has been cleared to keep competing in the Olympics in spite of testing positive for a performance-enhancing drug, since she’s under 16, but won’t receive any medals until her doping case is resolved. Sha'Carri Richardson has called bullshit.
   
• Dr. Deborah Birx’s memoir, Whoopsy-Daisy: May I Have My Reputation Back Now, will hit the shelves in April.
   
• Ghostbusters director Ivan Reitman died Saturday at age 75.

Texas abortion clinics have struggled to keep up with the surge of patients trying to get care earlier in their pregnancies, even as overall abortion numbers in the state have plummeted. Abortions in Texas dropped by 60 percent in the first month after the unconstitutional, vigilante-enforced anti-abortion law took effect. But as providers prepared for a fall in patient traffic by not hiring replacements for doctors and staff who left when S.B. 8 passed, more Texans learned about the law and started calling for appointments much earlier on, maxing out clinic capacities. Patients started waiting up to two weeks for an appointment, a long enough delay to push many women past the six-week deadline to get an abortion. As Republicans introduce copycat abortion bills around the country and continue to claim that six weeks is plenty of time for people to access the care they need, they’re doing so in the face of real-world evidence to the contrary.

In 2022 mental health is finally a thing, especially as people are not feeling like their normal selves. Let’s support one another and talk openly. Whether or not therapy is your thing, knowing it’s available and affordable is important, for you or perhaps a loved one.  

Millions of people are trying and loving online therapy. It doesn’t have to be sitting around just talking about your feelings.

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You can privately talk to someone if your stress is too much to manage, you’re battling a temper, having relationship issues, anxiety, depression, etc… Whatever you need, there’s no more shame in these normal human struggles. We take care of our bodies, why not our minds, too? Without a healthy mind, being truly happy and at peace is HARD.

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It’s always a good time to invest in yourself, because you are your greatest asset. See if online therapy is for you by heading to BetterHelp.com/crooked for 10% off your first month.

The FDA has authorized a new Eli Lilly monoclonal antibody treatment that was found to be effective against Omicron.

Detroit will be the site of the country’s first stretch of road that can wirelessly charge electric vehicles as they cruise along.

Erin Jackson has become the first Black woman to win an Olympic medal in speed skating. (A gold one, no less.)

University of Pennsylvania swimmer Lia Thomas, who is trans, will likely be eligible to compete in the NCAA championships next month.