Today’s news features another pandemic-ignoring spring break in Florida. It also featured a heavy helping of the newest media obsession, another “crisis” on the southern border of the sort that conservatives discover with clockwork regularity and media outlets desperate for both sides rhetoric promote with an eagerness that comes very close to outright groveling.
Good news: You’ve made it through another day. Here’s some of what you might have missed.
• Declassified report shows that Republican claims about election interference by China were lies
• Texas man arrested on weapons charge near vice president’s mansion in Washington, D.C.
Today’s top stories:
• Killing spree at Atlanta massage parlors follows a year of heightened anti-Asian racism
• Sen.
The Great National Post-Trump Cleanup continues. In today’s news, Sen. Mitch McConnell made headlines for vowing to make the Senate an even less productive place, Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse is asking that the new attorney general report back on several incidents of apparent corruption that Trump’s Justice Department blocked proper investigations of, and a Trump-era whistleblower finally gets the military promotion that Trump’s ever-crooked team tried to sabotage.
The Senate today confirmed, finally, Biden nominee Deb Haaland as the new Secretary of the Interior. Haaland becomes the first Native American to hold any Cabinet-level post in any administration. Sen. Ron Johnson continued to buffoonipate himself with further thoughts on why the racist things he says are not racist. And the Senate continues to plod towards a showdown that pits civil rights and urgent national needs against filibuster-based sabotage.
For today’s sleepy little news day, we have a little of everything. Ted Cruz is upset that the new president is “boring.” Dr. Fauci took to Fox News for a thinly veiled plea to the previous guy to step out of the buffet line for a stitch and maybe convince his admirers to get vaccinated against a deadly pandemic, maybe? But the family grift keeps going, and going, and going.
Today was the official one-year anniversary of the worldwide COVID-19 pandemic, according to World Health Organization officials. It is also the day President Joe Biden signed the American Rescue Plan, the Democratic-sponsored and Republican-condemned plan to deal with the economic damage done to American families, businesses, and state governments. New relief funds to Americans will begin distribution as early as this weekend.
Today was the official one-year anniversary of the worldwide COVID-19 pandemic, according to World Health Organization officials. It is also the day President Joe Biden signed the American Rescue Plan, the Democratic-sponsored and Republican-condemned plan to deal with the economic damage done to American families, businesses, and state governments. New relief funds to Americans will begin distribution as early as this weekend.
Today’s most significant news was the House passage of the American Rescue Plan, which now goes to President Joe Biden’s desk to be signed into law. That wasn’t the only news of the day, however.
As the American Rescue Plan inches towards becoming law (a final vote in the House is expected tomorrow), the Biden administration continues to undo Trump damage and federal investigators continue to warn of the dangers posed by the insurrectionist far-right. Meanwhile, the interminable world focus on Britain’s royalty has finally achieved at least something worthwhile: booting the still-insufferable Piers Morgan into self-exile.
Today’s big news was small news: The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) finally released initial guidelines freeing vaccinated Americans from some COVID-19 restrictions. The catch? For this first round, the only loosened restrictions are that vaccinated Americans should feel free to—with appropriate caution—meet with other vaccinated Americans indoors, without masks, and without social distancing.
Today’s big news was small news: The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) finally released initial guidelines freeing vaccinated Americans from some COVID-19 restrictions. The catch? For this first round, the only loosened restrictions are that vaccinated Americans should feel free to—with appropriate caution—meet with other vaccinated Americans indoors, without masks, and without social distancing.
Democratic Sen. Joe Manchin made the rounds of the Sunday shows (four of them, in fact) for reasons we will not speculate on, but a bit of news did come out of it. On “Meet the Press,” while speaking to the unpainted plaster wall that is Chuck Todd, Manchin added as aside that while he still supports the Senate filibuster, he might be willing to look at rule changes to make filibustering a more “painful” process for would-be saboteurs. Perhaps.
The full malevolence of this new Republican Party nullification of consequences for political corruption—this time, in the form of a president sending a mob to block the certification of the U.S.
A counterproposal by ten supposedly “moderate” Republican senators that would reduce COVID-19 pandemic emergency funding to a fraction of what’s being proposed by Democrats is landing with a wet thud today, despite the ten Republicans framing their effort around alleged “bipartisan” cooperation. That’s not a surprise; it’s difficult to believe the proposal, led by the perpetually concerned Sen. Susan Collins and including Sens.
The annual Conservative Political Action Conference, known as CPAC, has always been a dumpster fire—a place devoted to hoaxes, paranoias, and the mainstreaming of radical far-right extremism into suit-and-tie “conservatism.” But this year’s affair looks like it will be a dumpster fire inside another dumpster fire.
After Senate Republicans suggested they would delay consideration of even Joe Biden’s most essential Cabinet-level nominations, a move that only fell apart after a deadly assault on the U.S.
Politico brings us the sad tale of Donald Trump’s White House staffers and hangers-on now trying to find new jobs after supporting an effort to overthrow the nation’s democracy to reinstall their favorite crook. Apparently it isn’t going well.
Hey, want to get upset over something other than, you know, 400,000 dead Americans due to staggering administration incompetence, or the whole “a significant percentage of the United States population supports a violent fascist coup” thing? Sure you do.
The Republican attempt to overthrow this nation’s government is ongoing. Propaganda attempts continue in an attempt to delegitimize the outcome of the last election; even after an assassination attempt targeting top national leaders, over 100 Republican officials continued to promote the same hoax claims that stoked the violence.
Only days after a violent coup by supporters of Donald Trump came unspeakably close to murdering top U.S. leaders, including Trump’s own vice president, Republicans are expressing outrage not over the coup attempt, the attempted murders, or the unforgivable lack of federal response, but over private companies deciding that they cannot continue to support the online tools used to help coordinate the violent attack.
A brief roundup of news from today’s unprecedented and grimly historic day in this nation’s capital city.
• Trump began the day by threatening Vice President Mike Pence and Congress with demands that the election be overturned based on false claims of supposed “fraud.” Pence released a statement confirming that he had no unilateral ability to do so.
The Washington Post has just released the full one-hour audio recording of Donald Trump’s call to Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensberger. Also on the call on Trump’s behalf were chief of staff Mark Meadows and prominent conservative lawyer Cleta Mitchell.
Over the course of the rambling call, Trump appears to threaten or extort Raffensberger and state legal counsel Ryan Germany.
In The Washington Post, all ten of this nation’s living former secretaries of defense have written an opinion column uniformly opposing any military involvement in Republicans’ ongoing attempts to overthrow the results of November’s presidential elections. Among the signers are Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, Leon Panetta, Robert Gates, Mark Esper, and James Mattis.
“Efforts to involve the U.S.
Republican Rep. Chip Roy objected this evening to the seating of the House delegations from Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin, the six states Trump allies falsely contend Donald Trump “won” despite certified results showing the exact opposite.
In an hour-long phone call on Saturday, Donald Trump demanded that Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensberger commit multiple crimes in order to overturn the results of the state’s presidential election. It is the latest and most shocking yet of Trump’s efforts to retain power regardless of which laws must be broken, and it is all on tape.
Welcome back, happy holidays, and so forth. Still bored and stuck at home? Good, keep doing that. Until there’s enough vaccine for everybody, everybody needs to plant themselves at home as much as possible. Read a book. Play some games. Watch television.
If you’ve gone through everything your television has to offer and come up empty, you’re welcome to join us for our quick tour of the best of anime. (See: Part 1, Part 2.
The Washington Post is reporting that there are going to be some changes to the Secret Service’s presidential security detail in the Joe Biden administration. This is not unusual in itself, but the Post says the changes come “amid concerns from Biden allies that some current members were politically aligned with President Trump.”
This is an unpleasant story in every direction. It may be unfairly maligning professionals in a deadly dangerous job.
Welcome back to our pandemic guide to anime, a short series aimed at giving some new opportunities to those who may have already binged every decent thing American television has to offer, are still stuck at home even after all that, and who are now bored to tears. The advice given in our first installment was go watch Studio Ghibli’s films, which could have probably gone unsaid, right? Now we’ll get to actual recommendations.
The United States is facing still-rising pandemic deaths and both a federal government shutdown and the end of supplemental unemployment checks to those newly out of work, but Donald Trump is, of course, currently on vacation. You may be wondering where the ostensible head of the White House coronavirus “task force” has gotten to, since we haven’t heard much from him either.
Alleged vice president Mike Pence is in Vail, Colorado.