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

Actually Yes I Did Try To Do An Election Steal

Former Trump legal adviser John Eastman told an undercover progressive activist on camera that he stood by his blueprint on how Mike Pence could subvert the 2020 election for Trump – despite insisting as recently as last week to the National Review that he totally didn’t believe those ideas could work.

• Eastman told the activist that there was “no question” that his legal reasoning was solid.

• Eastman also said that the reason why Pence ultimately didn’t go along with the lawyer’s plot was because the then-vice president was “establishment guy at the end of the day.”

EXCLUSIVE: Author of Jan 6 coup memo John Eastman told us Mike Pence didn't take his solid legal advice & overturn the election bc Pence is "an establishment guy"

(He previously told @NRO the memo was not “viable” and would have been “crazy” to pursue.)

Stay tuned for Part 2. pic.twitter.com/RQeUceH1bn

— Lauren Windsor (@lawindsor) October 26, 2021

• So much for Eastman’s backtracking last week, when he told the National Review that the memo’s main argument that Pence is the ultimate arbiter of certifying the Electoral College votes “doesn’t make a whole lot of sense,” and that the idea that House Republicans, upon theoretically being given the power to do so by Pence, could replace Biden electoral votes with Trump votes was “crazy.”

Jan. 6 Panel Plans To Subpoena Eastman

The House Jan. 6 select committee will subpoena the attorney, committee chair Bennie Thompson (D-MS) said yesterday.

• Eastman told the Washington Post that the committee had previously reached out to him, and that he had “returned” their call and left a voicemail.
• Eastman wouldn’t say on Tuesday whether he planned on cooperating with the panel.

Several Trump Aides Already Talking To Jan. 6 Panel

At least five people who worked at the Trump White House have voluntarily spoken to the committee, according to CNN.

• Former top Homeland Security officials Ken Cuccinelli and Chad Wolf have also been contacted by the committee, CNN reported. They reportedly have not been subpoenaed, however.

Florida AG’s Lawyers Mocked Texas’ Anti-Election Suit

Lawyers working in Florida Attorney General Ashley Moody’s (R) office made fun of Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton’s (R) Supreme Court lawsuit that attempted to throw the 2020 election to Trump, according to internal emails obtained by the Tampa Bay Times – right before Moody signed onto the suit herself.

• One of the attorneys called the lawsuit “batshit insane” and suggested that Paxton, who had been indicted for securities fraud, was only doing it to woo Trump into pardoning him.
• Another attorney said Paxton’s argument for getting the court involved in a political dispute was “weird.”
• Then Moody joined Paxton’s lawsuit literally the next day because “the integrity and resolution of the 2020 election is of paramount importance.”
  • It’s unclear if Moody knew that her team apparently thought the suit was a joke. The attorney general’s spokesperson told the Tampa Bay Times that the emails were just a “water cooler conversation by a few employees.”

Birx: Trump Could’ve Prevented 100K+ COVID Deaths

Dr. Deborah Birx, the former White House COVID-19 response coordinator, told the House’s subcommittee on COVID-19 during a hearing earlier this month that Trump and his team were “distracted” by the 2020 elections and thus failed to take steps that could’ve saved more than a hundred thousand lives.

• The Trump administration “probably could have decreased fatalities into the 30-percent-less to 40-percent-less range” if it had made serious efforts to mitigate the spread, Birx said in newly released excerpts of the transcripts of her testimony.

• Birx also took a shot at Scott Atlas, Trump’s favorite pandemic adviser who kept pushing the “herd immunity” strategy. She told the committee that she would refuse to attend the same meetings as Atlas in order to “create a line in the sand.”

Facebook Actively Tried To Get You Pissed Off

The social media giant secretly created an algorithm that would weigh “angry” emoji reactions to posts five, then later 1.5, times more than “likes” in order to get more users to engage on the website, according to internal documents reported by the Washington Post.

• Facebook finally cut the weight to zero last September after it became obvious the algorithm was amplifying toxic misinformation that was often weaponized by politicians, according to the documents.

GOPer Doesn’t Know What Pre-K Is For

Rep. Glenn Grothman (R-WI) took to the House floor to argue yesterday that kids don’t need pre-K because “many stay-at-home parents” exist, and even if they don’t, “a lot of times kids stay with their grandparents or other relatives.”

Rep. Grothman argues that Pre-K isn’t needed because there are stay at home parents pic.twitter.com/S60XgkXzdV

— Acyn (@Acyn) October 26, 2021

GOPer Blames Society’s ‘Plagues’ On The Gays

Rep. Bob Good (R-VA) went off on an unhinged rant against the House’s bill to reauthorize the Family Violence and Prevention Services program yesterday, during which he accused Democrats of attacking “the very bedrock of our country, the moral principles and the traditional family that hold our families and communities together.”

• Then Good argued that “nearly everything that plagues our society” can be attributed to “a failure to follow God’s laws for morality and his rules and definition of marriage and family.”

• By the way, Good’s district director stood outside the Capitol on Jan. 6 with other Trump supporters as the insurrectionists broke into the building that day.

Do you like Morning Memo? Let us know!

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

Mom I’m Scared

Virginia GOP gubernatorial nominee Glenn Youngkin put out a 60-second ad yesterday of a Very Concerned Mother who somberly recounts how her son showed her his school reading material, and how her “heart sunk” because the reading was “some of the most explicit material you can imagine.”

• Lawmakers’ “faces turned bright red” upon reading the material when the mother, Laura Murphy, brought it to them, she claims.
• Curiously enough, the ad never mentions which book it was or how old Murphy’s son was at the time.

What's it like to have Terry McAuliffe block you from having a say in your child's education?

This mom knows – she lived through it. Watch her powerful story. #VAgov pic.twitter.com/u8EjmMQX0n

— Glenn Youngkin (@GlennYoungkin) October 25, 2021

• It turns out the book was Toni Morrison’s Pulitzer Prize winning novel “Beloved,” according to the Washington Post’s 2013 report on Murphy’s plight. It was assigned to her son in his AP English class when he was a high school senior, and Murphy attempted to get the book banned.
  • The student told the Post at the time that the book had given him nightmares because it was “disgusting and gross” and “hard for me to handle.” He is now an associate general counsel for the National Republican Congressional Committee.

Greatest Country In The World

As Democrats whittle paid leave from 12 weeks down to a mere four in their negotiations over their reconciliation package, a new analysis by the New York Times shows how badly the U.S. is falling behind on leave compared to the rest of the world.

• The U.S. is one of the only six countries in the world that doesn’t have any paid leave – and the only wealthy country that doesn’t offer it:

The U.S. is one of six nations in the world without any form of national paid leave. The Democrats are proposing four weeks, but even that is low. Of the 185 countries that offer paid leave for new mothers, only one, Eswatini, offers fewer than four weeks. https://t.co/kkzG92E9qA

— The New York Times (@nytimes) October 25, 2021

• Four weeks of leave would still leave the U.S. way behind most other countries. Only 26 countries offer four weeks or less out of the 174 countries that have paid leave. The average is 29 weeks.

Infrastructure Scramble Continues

Democratic leaders will be rushing today to hammer out a framework for the reconciliation package containing Biden’s sweeping Build Back Better agenda and pass the bipartisan infrastructure bill (BIF) this week before the President leaves for a climate summit in Glasgow.

• The House Democratic Caucus will hold a meeting this morning. Senate Democrats will hold a party lunch and are expected to speak to the press afterward.
• Senate Finance Committee Chair Ron Wyden (D-OR) is working on the billionaire tax proposal.
• Some Democrats aren’t giving up on trying to include immigration reform in the package, despite the Senate parliamentarian’s previous rejections.

Mo Brooks Chucks Staff Right Under Honking Bus

Rep. Mo Brooks (R-AL), one of the Trump lackeys whom two unnamed Jan. 6 rally organizers told Rolling Stone magazine was intimately involved in planning the rallies that preceded the Capitol attack, claimed on Monday evening that he had “no involvement” in those events.

• The GOP lawmaker hot-potatoed it to his staff. “I don’t know if my staff did. .. but if they did I’d be proud of them for helping to put together a rally lawful under the First Amendment at the ellipse to protest voter fraud and election theft,” he told CNN (the 2020 election was not tainted by voter fraud).
• Rep. Lauren Boebert (R-CO), one of the other Republicans identified in the Rolling Stone article, similarly denied the allegations, insisting yesterday that she had “no role in the planning or execution of any event that took place at the Capitol or anywhere in Washington, DC” on Jan. 6. But “with the help of my staff, I accepted an invitation to speak at one event” that day, she said, but “ultimately I did not speak at any events on January 6th.”

DeSantis Pretends He Didn’t Offer Reward To Unvaxed Cops

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) backtracked wildly yesterday after dangling a $5,000 signing bonus to out-of-state cops who refuse to get the COVID-19 vaccine and entice them to move to the Sunshine State.

• DeSantis insisted his plan actually has “​​nothing to do with” vaccines and that it’s “for officers, period.” The offer goes out to any poor, beleaguered cops “if the morale is low” and they “can’t take that environment,” the governor said, adding that “the corporate media lies.”
• The thing about that, though, is that DeSantis was definitely talking about vaccine mandates when he was telling Fox News about his proposal on Sunday. He and Maria Bartiromo were wringing their hands over workers, including police officers, who were quitting over workplace vaccine mandates when he brought up the $5,000 bonus:

DeSantis offers police a bonus to relocate to FL & slams Biden amid vaccine mandates: "These people we've been hailing as heroes, the nurses we've said have been heroes… What Biden's doing is unconstitutional. He does not have the authority to do this."pic.twitter.com/esayWMplOA

— Catt (@CattHarmony) October 24, 2021

Tennessee GOPer Indicted On Campaign Finance Charges

A federal grand jury indicted Tennessee state Sen. Brian Kelsey (R) on Friday for alleged campaign finance law violations in connection with his failed campaign for U.S. Congress in 2016, the Justice Department announced yesterday.

Biden Stumps For McAuliffe

The President will be campaigning this evening for Terry McAuliffe, who’s currently neck-and-neck with Glenn Youngkin.  

Another House Dem Out

Rep. Anthony Brown (D-MD) announced yesterday that he would not be running for reelection in 2022 because he’ll be making a bid for Maryland attorney general instead.

Do you like Morning Memo? Let us know!