Have you seen your member of Congress or your Senator comment about President Trump’s new remarks about freeing the Jan 6th insurrectionists or lynching the Capitol Police officer who shot Ashli Babbitt. We have been trying to get comments from members of Congress. And, perhaps unsurprisingly, they’re not being very responsive. If you’ve seen remarks from your member of Congress or Senator in your local media, let us know. Or if you’ve seen responses we haven’t seen in national media we’re interested in that too.
While the conservative fever swamps’ fear mongering over critical race theory intensifies to new, unhinged heights, the nation’s largest teachers unions are vowing to stand behind educators if they are punished due to new state laws that try to limit or outright ban critical discussions on race, discrimination and the role it plays in American history.
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One thing that was clear to me when I read about Trump’s comments on the January 6th defendants and the death of Ashli Babbitt is that he intends to make these claims and demands centerpieces of the 2022 midterm election. For Trump everything is the Big Lie, everything is the “rigged election”, which is to say everything is payback, retribution and grievance about being driven from power.
International news orgs reporting that the President of Haiti, Jovenel Moïse, was assassinated overnight in an attack on his private residence.
This is a developing story.
With the rising demands on the right to release or drop charges against the Jan. 6th insurrectionists and seek retribution against the unnamed cop who shot Ashli Babbitt, Josh Kovensky has some important context about the mounting movement to valorize and make a martyr of Babbitt. Relatedly, Rep. Paul Gosar, Congress’s most prominent white nationalist and antisemite, calls for the unnamed officer to be charged for what he earlier termed Babbitt’s execution. This of course comes just days after the leader of the GOP, ex-President Donald Trump, suggested the unnamed officer should be lynched.
A few more points on Ashli Babbitt.
Following the July 4th holiday weekend, President Biden has one item on his public agenda today: a speech addressing COVID-19 vaccination progress in the U.S.
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Yesterday I noted ex-President Trump’s vainglorious recital of events at his two recent rallies in Ohio and Florida. But there were a string of comments he made at his Sarasota, Florida rally that I only learned about after the fact. They are highly important going forward and particularly in the context of the 2022 election. The comments aren’t terribly surprising coming from Trump. They’re perhaps implicit in things he’s said before. But they represent something new. In short, he now seems to be demanding the release of the various insurrectionists facing charges for storming the Capitol on January 6th. “How come so many people are still in jail over Jan. 6?” he asked the crowd.
He also went further and began to suggest or demand (the ambiguity is a central feature of all Trump incitement) the lynching of the Capitol Police officer who shot insurrectionist Ashli Babbitt.
There’s a high bar for nonsensical Trump statements that actually grab my attention. But he seems to be now moving into what I guess we might call his Evita phase. Who talks like this? Who has this kind of messiah complex and who has supporters who don’t laugh when they hear this kind of faux biblical melodrama?
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The post below on the Delta variant has gotten a lot of attention. It’s always important to make a simple point: This isn’t “oh noooeesss, the vaccines don’t work anymore!” All the data suggests they remain extremely effective at preventing serious illness – over 90%. By the standards of almost any other vaccine they remain highly effective against any infection at all. Recent peer reviewed measures of the Pfizer vaccine against the Delta variant suggest efficacy in the high 80s percentage range. This new data out of Israel says it’s in the mid-60s. If you’re vaccinated, especially with one of the mRNA vaccines, there’s no reason for you to worry. The issue is more at the society-wide level, trying to make sense of the various data points suggesting a non-trivial level of reduced vaccine efficacy and how that maps onto how society at large will be operating in the coming months and years.
At the risk of stating the obvious, if you don’t want to die of COVID or end up in a hospital struggling to breath and fearing for your life, get vaccinated. You’ll be covered.
There are a lot of caveats to these numbers. They’re not from a peer reviewed study but rather the latest data from the Israeli health ministry. While the Pfizer mRNA vaccines remains highly effective at preventing hospitalization and serious illness (over 90%), the efficacy against infection with the Delta variant has dropped markedly.