Hunter

The Republican/fascist/militia outrage over the FBI obtaining a search warrant to go hunt for documents at Trump’s for-profit Florida home is still going strong, with Trump’s bottom-rung supporters suggesting it’s time to start shooting people, seditionist Florida Republican lawmakers suggesting mass arrests of FBI agents, and American fascists demanding that Republicans start doing a fascism right now rather than abide it.

Well, that is … something.

It was a very busy day for Republican crimes and humiliations—so busy that we can’t even mention more than a scrap of it. Aside from a federal search warrant executed at a former certain president’s for-profit house: Alex Jones’ troubles continue with a report that the House committee investigating the Jan. 6 coup attempt is now in possession of his text messages for the period in question.

The evenly divided Senate finally, finally passed the reconciliation package known as the Inflation Reduction Act of 2022 today. The vote was 51-50 along party lines, with Vice President Kamala Harris casting the tie breaking vote. The package provides at least a starting point for climate mitigation actions, and represents a much-scaled-back version of the climate bill that Sen. Joe Manchin killed earlier in the Biden administration.

The Senate has voted to approve the reconciliation measure known as the Inflation Reduction Act today, after spending well over 24 hours in continuous session so that senators could offer amendments that had no chance of passing. The final vote was 51-50, with Vice President Kamala Harris casting the tie breaking vote. A last-minute change backed by Sen.

Ukrainian fury over a report from Amnesty International released last week—a report that blames the Ukrainian military for fighting in urban areas, as they fight to keep Russia from capturing those same urban areas—doesn’t look like it will be abating anytime soon. Already a high-profile resignation has taken place, and there may be other fallout.

As the Manchin-Schumer Senate deal inches toward its first vote, all eyes are on the one Democratic senator known for scuttling past party deals: Sen. Kyrsten Sinema. Republican Sen. Ron Johnson, meanwhile, is casually proposing new ways to kill both Social Security and Medicare. The Department of Justice has announced new federal charges in the police killing of Breonna Taylor. And Alex Jones … hoo boy.

Tuesday’s elections resulted in one big surprise, as Kansas voters overwhelmingly crushed an attempt by state Republicans to curtail abortion rights. Even in the hard-right state, voters weren’t having it, and that suggests Republicans aren’t going to be able to dodge their new anti-abortion bans in November’s elections either. But will it make Republican lawmakers back down from their efforts to criminalize abortion nationally? Don’t bet on it.

A week ago, Senate Republicans engaged in some of that famous “debate” the body remains so proud of by blocking a bill funding medical care for American veterans suffering from respiratory illness or cancer as a result of toxins they were exposed to during military operations.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi arrived in Taiwan today—and the Chinese government had an absolute meltdown over the visit, responding with belligerencies that included scrambling jets and announcing new live-fire military exercises to take place partially within Taiwan’s territory. Senate Republicans sheepishly voted for the veterans’ bill they rejected last week, but not before wasting another evening of Senate time. And House investigators probing the Jan.

The first Jan. 6 insurrectionist to stand trial has now received his sentence, as a federal judge hands down 87 months of prison time for militia recruiter Guy Reffitt, who traveled to Washington, D.C., for the insurrection with multiple guns. Fellow aspirational election-nullifier Sen.

You may, in your life, make a lot of poor choices. You may have regrets. But no matter who you are or what your circumstances, remember this advice: If you die and your ex-husband commandeers your corpse as part of a real estate tax-dodging scheme, you’re allowed to haunt them. This was decided back during the 1600s and is considered a “deeply rooted” freedom, one that not even the Supreme Court has been able to find fault with so, by all means, go nuts with that.

The Senate dance of determining what Democratic Sen. Joe Manchin will vote for took another turn yesterday with an announcement that he’d agreed to support … well, something. The idea of the Senate doing any something at all, however, led Senate Republicans to take out their anger on a previously popular bill that would provide expanded medical care for poisoned war veterans. Yes, that’s how Republicanism works now.

There’s been newly visible movement in the Department of Justice’s own investigation of the Jan. 6 coup attempt, with new indications that prosecutors are indeed examining Donald Trump’s own actions on and before that day. And that’s still about all we know, but it’s something.

In the meantime, Trump himself is bellowing new, brazenly fascist threats.

The House select committee investigating the Jan. 6 coup attempt has released yet more evidence of Trump’s intent on that day, this time with Trump’s own edits to the statement he begrudgingly released after the violence. There’s also apparent movement in the Department of Justice’s Jan. 6 probe; Mike Pence’s chief of staff appeared last week to answer questions before a federal grand jury.

In the news this weekend: Far-right extremist Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene jumps farther right, yet again, while fellow stain on the Republican and unindicted sex trafficker Rep. Matt Gaetz vamps for a fascist convention. But Republican extremism is having very real effects, especially in under-attack school systems. Dallas Republicans again respond to a mass murder in their state with new rules not on guns, but on schoolchildren.

The House select committee investigating the Jan. 6 coup attempt focused its evening hearing on the coup itself: the actions of Donald Trump on and before that day to assemble an extremist mob, direct them to the Capitol, and rebuff security pleas as the mob stormed the building, ransacking offices and hunting for Mike Pence and others who refused to overturn the election’s results on Trump’s behalf.

There was other news today as well.

President Joe Biden announced executive actions to battle climate change today, even as record heat blasted much of the United States and Europe. Biden highlighted new offshore wind energy plans in particular, but without broader congressional action it’s difficult to see anything but worldwide catastrophe ahead.

Vice President Kamala Harris addressed the NAACP on Monday, and if you’ve heard about it at all it’s probably because of a portion of her speech that focused on “fundamental freedoms,” including abortion rights, and the Supreme Court’s recent actions to curtail those rights.

“We know, NAACP, that our country has a history of claiming ownership over human bodies.

The Secret Service today told the House select committee investigating the Jan. 6 coup attempt that they double-checked and sure enough, all of the texts between their agents that day were lost when the agency upgraded to new phones. Why did the agency believe that there was no reason to preserve their own records during a violent attempted coup that endangered the lives of multiple people they were protecting? Good question, and one that the National Archives is asking, as well.

Donald Trump adviser and coup supporter Steve Bannon’s trial for criminal contempt of Congress began with jury selection today; given the glibness with which Bannon ignored House subpoenas, it may be a short trial, indeed. The House select committee investigating the Jan. 6 coup is now expecting Secret Service texts from that date to be delivered by tomorrow, after originally being told by Department of Homeland Security’s inspector general that the messages had been deleted.

It didn’t take long for the Supreme Court decision erasing federal abortion protections to become a Republican demand that the federal government criminalize abortion nationwide, but that’s only the beginning of the party’s fascist reimagining of what the country would be: Sen. Ted Cruz is among those who claim same-sex marriage rights should be next to go.

In September 2020, a Minneapolis Trump supporter’s home was savagely attacked by antifa. Or possibly by BLM supporters. Or by Biden-supporting anarchists? In any event, somebody painted “Biden 2020 BLM (A)” on Denis Molla’s garage doors and set fire to his camper. That fire spread significantly, damaging other vehicles and his home.

Federal investigators have found the culprit and, surprise, they say it was Molla himself.

In the news today: The Secret Service had perhaps the best view of anyone into what transpired during the Jan. 6 coup attempt by Donald Trump, but the House select committee investigating the coup has now learned that the agency wiped all Secret Service text messages from that day. Coincidentally. And only after the House committee asked that they be turned over.

Dangerous far-right groups continue to gain power in America, and Republicans continue to back that rise.

The Wall Street Journal and other conservative media outlets claimed that President Joe Biden’s anger over a 10-year-old Ohio girl having to leave the state to get an abortion after being raped was “fanciful” or made up.

A new public hearing from the House select committee investigating the Jan. 6 coup attempt focused on Trump’s specific actions to assemble a “wild” crowd on that date, a crowd spurred to action by Trump’s knowingly false claims of a “stolen” election. New evidence indicated that violent extremists were expecting Trump to order them to march to the Capitol during the counting of electoral votes, which Trump then did. Trump also altered his planned Jan.

As the midterm elections edge ever nearer, America waits for the answer to what may be an existential question: Is there any Republican candidate too embarrassing for the party’s voters to support? And as the Texas power grid struggles under the load of yet another record-busting heat wave, the state’s Republican governor is getting an earful over his constant immigrant-bashing stunts.

Politico has a piece that consists solely of various Republicans pretending to wonder whether the Republican National Committee (RNC), an organization that Donald Trump allies purged of his detractors so relentlessly that you’d have a better shot getting an anti-Trump quote out of Jared Kushner than from all remaining RNC leaders put together, will truly stay “neutral” if Trump runs for president again and some other Republican dares to also enter the race.

President Joe Biden delivered his most forceful condemnation yet of the ‘extremist’ assault on abortion rights on Friday.

In the news today: Herschel Walker’s campaign for the Senate continues to flounder, and that his own campaign staff doesn’t believe he’s up to the job won’t help. It turns out that two of Donald Trump’s most prominent supposed “enemies” both were targeted with super-rare, supposedly random IRS audits, and the chances that Trump allies did not intentionally target them both appear to be low.