Morning Memo: House GOP Leaders Urge ‘No’ Vote On Jan. 6 Select Committee Because Of Course They Are

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

Vote Expected This Afternoon

GOP leadership is urging its members to vote against House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s (D-CA) resolution creating a select committee to investigate the Jan. 6 insurrection.

  • House Minority Whip Steve Scalise (R-LA) sent a letter to rank-and-file Republicans on Tuesday evening. “This select committee is likely to pursue a partisan agenda to politicize the January 6th attack instead of conducting a good faith investigative effort into the actions leading up to and the security failures of the 6th,” he wrote.

An Utter Mess In NYC’s Mayoral Elections

The New York City Board of Elections announced on Tuesday night that it had accidentally added about 135,000 “test” ballots in the hotly contested mayoral race. Oopsy daisy!

The responses to that announcement were … not kind:

In Case You Missed It:

Rudy Giuliani, freshly stripped of his law license, is sinking even deeper in legal woes; he’s now under federal investigation for potential foreign lobbying to the Trump administration on behalf of Turkish interests, according to Bloomberg and ABC News.

  • To be clear, this reportedly isn’t a criminal investigation. It’s unrelated to the Justice Department’s criminal inquiry into the ex-Trump lawyer’s dealings in Ukraine.
  • Giuliani’s work with Turkey involved urging Trump and then-Secretary of State Rex Tillerson to stop the prosecution of one of his clients, a Turkish gold trader, and to deport a Turkish cleric whom Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan accused of trying to overthrow him.

Goodbye, Confederates

The House approved the expulsion of Confederate statues from the Capitol last night.

  • The vote was 285-120. All the “nays” were from Republicans, including House Republican Conference Chair Elise Stefanik (R-NY).
  • The bill’s fate in the Senate remains uncertain. A similar bill stalled in the Senate last year when it was controlled by Republicans.

The RNC Spent Way More On Security Than The DNC Early This Year

The Republican National Committee’s spending on security in the first quarter of this year skyrocketed from less than $500,000 in last year’s first quarter to more than $1 million, according to Federal Election Commission records analyzed by Mother Jones.

  • In contrast, the Democratic National Committee spent about $262,000 in that same period, a relatively modest bump from the approximately $250,000 it spent in the first quarter of 2020.
  • Another eyebrow-raising figure: Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX), who enthusiastically fueled the lies that led to the Capitol insurrection, apparently poured more campaign funds into security than any other Republican in the first three months of this year to the tune of about $74,400.

Fox News Admits To Violating Human Rights

Fox News shelled out $1 million last week in a jaw-dropping settlement with New York City’s Commission on Human Rights, which slammed the network’s “pattern of violating the NYC Human Rights Law.”

  • The “willful and wanton violations” of the law, in the commission’s words, included sexual harassment, retaliation, and discrimination.
  • That $1 million payout is the largest settlement the agency has ever obtained in its history, according to the Daily Beast.

Canada Sets Its All-Time High Temp … For A Third Day In A Row

Lytton, BC Sunday: 46.6 C (116F)

Monday: 47.5 C (118F)

Tuesday: 49.6 C (121F)

Old record: 45 C (113F)

Tuesday’s temperature was the highest ever recorded north of 45N anywhere on the planet.

Happening Tomorrow

Biden is scheduled to visit the site of the Miami Beach condo collapse.

WTF Did I Just Watch?

Cool Story, Bro

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) says he’d choose Biden if he had to pick any living Democratic president to be stuck on a desert island with because “I consider him a personal friend” and “a first-rate person.” Maybe the Republican leader would put only 99% of his “focus” on “stopping” Biden’s agenda instead of the full 100 if POTUS tried to build them a shelter.

What White Nonsense Is This?

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Notable Replies

  1. Isn’t “no” pretty much all they do nowadays?

  2. House GOP Leaders Urge ‘No’ Vote On Jan. 6 Select Committee Because Of Course They Are

    “They urge…therefore they are” ???

    Ummmm…WTF??

    Another morning starting with something that makes my teeth hurt so badly I don’t want to read further…

    If I contribute to Josh’s journalism fund, will they use some of the money for remedial grammar classes??

  3. It’s weird how getting shot in the brain hasn’t slowed Scalise down at all.

  4. Avatar for darcy darcy says:

    He never got the message, missed it completely. It’s what makes crazy people crazy.

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