Cue Conservative Freakout Over Biden’s New Vaccine Mandates In Three … Two … One

(Screenshot: Fox News/Snapstream)
Start your day with TPM.
Sign up for the Morning Memo newsletter

A lot of things happened. Here are some of the things.

Fire And Fury

Republicans are livid over Biden’s sweeping new vaccine mandates.

  • GOP chair Ronna McDaniel pledged to sue the Biden administration:

  • Wyoming Gov. Mark Gordon (R) declared that he asked his state’s attorney general to fight the mandates:

  • Fox got in on the action:

  • In what’s almost becoming the norm among pro-Trump hardliners, Ohio GOP Senate candidate Josh Mandel, hinted at responding to the mandate with violence:

Biden Gets Fed Up

  • The President established several new broad vaccine mandates on Thursday that require:
    • All federal employees, contractors that work with the federal government and health care workers who work at facilities that receive Medicaid or Medicare to get vaccinated with no option to opt out with testing
    • All employers with 100 or more workers to either make sure the employees are vaccinated or test them weekly (employers must provide paid time off to get the vaccine)
  • The mandate will affect 100 million Americans, which is two-thirds of the country’s entire workforce, Biden estimated.
  • Biden also got blunt with Americans who still refuse to get vaccinated, asking “What more is there to wait for?  What more do you need to see?”
    • “We’ve been patient, but our patience is wearing thin,” he warned. “And your refusal has cost all of us.”

Abundant Warnings Of Jan. 6

Two days before the Jan. 6 insurrection, hundreds of officials from intelligence “fusion” centers for tracking domestic violence threats had a conference call to discuss intel that “a significant number” of individuals were planning or advocating for violence on the day of Trump’s upcoming “Stop the Steal” rally.

  • The FBI planned to use a special hashtag “#CERTUNREST2021” to “track, organize and coordinate incoming threats” related to Congress’ certification of the 2020 election results, according to an email summarizing the call obtained by Politico.
  • The National Capital Region Threat Intelligence Consortium (NTIC) in D.C. “is working diligently to protect public safety, as well as privacy, civil rights and civil liberties,” the president of the National Association of Fusion Centers wrote in the email.

In Case You Missed It

Sidney Powell and her Kraken crew are on the hook for as much as $204,000 in legal fees racked up by the city of Detroit and the Michigan Attorney General’s office in defending their bogus lawsuit attempting to overturn the 2020 election results.

  • The legal bills were submitted after a federal judge sanctioned Powell and her colleagues for the clownish lawsuit.
  • The sanctions also required that the pro-Trump lawyers take legal education classes–and to top it all off, the judge referred the attorneys for suspension or disbarment.

Scared Boys

Proud Boys chair Enrique Tarrio sent a panicked audio message to fellow Proud Boy leaders via Telegram in July about whether the senior members of their group who were criminally charged for breaching the Capitol on Jan. 6 were cooperating with the feds, according to a recording obtained by Reuters.

    • Tarrio fretted that the members would “turn on each other” if one of them cooperated with the feds, “and that’s what we are trying to fucking avoid.”
    • After Tarrio’s message got leaked to Reuters, the outlet received a second leaked recording of Tarrio complaining about the first leak.
      • “You know it’s hard enough to fight a fucking entire government […] to have to worry about dudes in here fucking putting you in felony territory. Not just regular felony, like a serious felony,” the far-right leader ranted.
    • Tarrio had put out calls for the Proud Boys to go to D.C. on Jan. 6 prior to the insurrection, but the leader himself was not in the city that day due to him getting arrested on Jan. 4 for burning a Black Lives Matter flag that had been stolen from a Black church.
  • It is unknown whether Tarrio is being investigated for the attack. He was handed a five-month prison sentence in August for the flag burning incident and illegally carrying firearm magazines.
  • By the way, Tarrio used to be a “prolific” cooperator with the feds before he became the Proud Boy chair in 2018, and he helped in the prosecution of more than a dozen people, according to a prosecutor in his 2012 criminal case.

Must-Read

“How Students in 12 Countries Are Taught About 9/11” – The New York Times

Don’t You Dare Tell Me To Be Decent To People!

“Show some respect” to flight attendants who enforce airline mask requirements? No thanks, says Fox News host Jeanine Pirro.

Do you like Morning Memo? Let us know!

Latest Morning Memo

Notable Replies

    • GOP chair Ronna McDaniel pledged to sue the Biden administration:

    Can’t wait for her to demonstrate her standing on this litigation. Is she planning a class action suit? What about all the other legal mandates for vaccinations (I didn’t see in the script where Biden said ‘no exceptions’, so the religious and medical exemption would still stand, no?)? She complains on behalf of small businesses - she missed the part about the exemption for fewer than 100 employees, but I have small businesses here in town that have already required vaccinations, especially among servers and cooks in the restaurants. And he’s imposing a vaccine mandate because idiots like her and InSantis and Abbott are killing their own people by their recalcitrance. If you think no one is tired of the anti-vax/anti-mask movement, one should go on social media and see the pushback many of those idiots get.

    Tarrio fretted that the members would “turn on each other”

    By the way, son - that’s what cowards generally do. They talk a big game, but when called on it, fold like a cheap suit. Which is worse - continuing one’s basement life or spending a few years in a federally funded basement called prison?

    “Show some respect” to flight attendants who enforce airline mask requirements? No thanks, says Fox News host Jeanine Pirro.

    I hope she gets a personal lifetime ban from all the major airlines in the US and Canada. How dare she endanger 300 people because she’s a moron who makes money being stupid.

    “Maybe some of the flight attendants ought to show some respect to us.”

    They do - they save your sorry a$$ from others just like you and worse. Remember 9/11??? Of course you do, but you remember it in your own narrative, forgetting the heroics of the flight crews who DIED in those airplanes.

  1. OT: A winner of a 2021 IgNobel:

    Obesity of politicians and corruption in post-Soviet countries

    Basically, obesity in politicians is positively correlated with corruption.

    This result suggests that physical characteristics of politicians such as their body-mass index can be used as proxy variables for political corruption when the latter are not available, for instance at a very local level.

    I’d bet it works in non-post-Soviet countries as well.

    Seems to be a sample of men–not sure about the relationship in women.

  2. Gov. Kristi Noem–
    Every day, in every way more and more resembling Michelle Bachmann.

  3. Avatar for 1gg 1gg says:

    GOP chair Ronna McDaniel* pledged to sue the Biden administration:
    Is she going to sue Fox, they have a mask mandate?

Continue the discussion at forums.talkingpointsmemo.com

366 more replies

Participants

Avatar for ajm Avatar for pluckyinky Avatar for mondfledermaus Avatar for mattinpa Avatar for inversion Avatar for callmeeric Avatar for sniffit Avatar for chelsea530 Avatar for ralph_vonholst Avatar for lastroth Avatar for leftcoaster Avatar for darrtown Avatar for thunderclapnewman Avatar for southerndem Avatar for 21zna9 Avatar for tsp Avatar for castor_troy Avatar for brian512 Avatar for coimmigrant Avatar for dannydorko Avatar for kelaine Avatar for txlawyer Avatar for kovie Avatar for Hatmama

Continue Discussion
Masthead Masthead
Founder & Editor-in-Chief:
Executive Editor:
Managing Editor:
Deputy Editor:
Editor at Large:
General Counsel:
Publisher:
Head of Product:
Director of Technology:
Associate Publisher:
Front End Developer:
Senior Designer: