Senate Dems Tie Trump’s Election Lies To Extremist Violence

Senate Democrats on Wednesday sought answers from the Biden administration on whether former President Donald Trump posed a national security threat to the country by continuing to spew lies about the 2020 election. 

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The Real Story on Cheney’s Ouster

The big story is that Liz Cheney was ousted from her leadership position for not supporting the Big Lie of the stolen election and for not endorsing the insurrection. But we knew that was coming. The big story today had to do with how the vote was held. These are usually recorded votes and secret ballots. That was the case last month when Cheney retained her position by a decisive margin. Today it was a voice vote. After the vote, as Tierney Sneed notes here, a request for a recorded vote was denied.

This tells you the real story of what happened here.

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Republicans At Jan. 6 Hearing Try To Paint Trump And His Followers As The True Victims

Not only are House Oversight Republicans refusing to blame former President Donald Trump for his actions that led to the January 6 attack, but they are actually trying to paint Trump and his mob as the real victims. 

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Ex-SecDef Miller Spoke With Pence Before Issuing Order To Deploy National Guard

Acting Secretary of Defense Chris Miller spoke with Mike Pence as the Capitol was under attack on Jan. 6, and not Trump, before issuing an order to deploy federal troops.

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Axing Liz Cheney From Leadership Was A Quick Affair For the House GOP

Weeks of drama over the GOP backlash that Rep. Liz Cheney (R) was receiving for refusing to endorse former President Trump’s lies about the election came to a head in a brief, private House Republican conference meeting Wednesday during which she was removed from GOP  leadership.

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Let The Record Clearly Show …

Four months after the worst insurrection since the Civil War, the House GOP ousted one of its leaders for not condoning the vast Trump-led conspiracy to overturn the election that culminated with the insurrection. That Liz Cheney is a firebrand conservative and the scion of one of conservatism’s leading families for the last half century only sharpens the point. American democracy may be past the event horizon and we still not know it.

Big Day On the Hill

We have a beehive of activity on the Hill today, a combination of the Liz Cheney ousting and several committee hearings, all of which one way or the other flows directly from the Jan. 6 insurrection.

We, as in the nation, are still grappling (poorly) with the aftermath of what happened then. We, as in TPM, decided it was worth covering today as one big Jan. 6 story with distinct but highly related moving parts. And we’re doing it right here. I hope this gives you more context and grounding in where we are four months after the attack on the Capitol than a bunch of disparate stories about separate hearings would. Feedback welcome, as always. Check it out.

Perverse Incentives

As you’ve likely seen, what began as civil disturbances in East Jerusalem has cycled into a full scale military engagement between Israel and the Hamas quasi-state in Gaza. Every level of these issues trace back more than a century, or decades, depending on which dimension of the interlocking stalemates you look at. But we shouldn’t ignore the way this particular conflagration has been spurred and accelerated by the protracted crisis of government within Israel itself. Having helped drive the crisis, Benjamin Netanyahu, now acting as the caretaker Prime Minister, has little incentive to deescalate it.

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Four Women Tell Daily Beast That Gaetz Buddy Pressured Them To Have Sex And Do Drugs

The Daily Beast has a doozy of a new story on Rep. Matt Gaetz’s (R-FL) running buddy.

The explosive new details focus not on Gaetz but on Joel Greenberg, the indicted Gaetz friend and associate who used to be a county tax collector in Florida.

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Cheney Warns Of Trump’s Enduring Threat: ‘Ignoring The Lie, Emboldens The Liar’

Rep. Liz Cheney (R-WY) who has been vilified for challenging the Republican Party’s unbending loyalty to former President Donald Trump’s lie of a stolen election delivered a powerful speech on the House floor on the eve of her her widely anticipated ouster as conference chair.

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