Top White House COVID-19 expert Dr. Anthony Fauci put Fox News on blast Thursday night for staying quiet after Fox Nation host Lara Logan compared him to sadistic Nazi doctor Josef Mengele earlier this week.
Continue reading “Fauci ‘Astounded’ By Fox’s Silence After Host Compared Him To Nazi Doctor”Missouri GOP Governor Hid Data Showing Mask Mandates Work
A lot of things happened. Here are some of the things.
La La La I Can’t Hear You, Science
Missouri’s Department of Health and Senior Services conducted a study in November that showed that areas of the state with mask mandates had lower rates of COVID-19 infection and death than those without–but Gov. Mike Parson (R) never released the department’s findings to the public.
- It was Parson’s office that commissioned the study in the first place.
- Like many other Republican governors, Parson has attacked local mask mandates despite their (proven) effectiveness against the coronavirus.
- Additionally, Missouri Attorney General Eric Schmitt (R), who’s suing counties that have mask mandates, is still pushing through with his war on the mandates even in the face of the study. His spokesperson told Missouri Independent that “[w]e dispute this premise” of the analysis.
Congress Narrowly Dodges Government Shutdown
The Senate on Thursday evening passed the stopgap spending bill to keep the government funded through mid-February despite several GOP senators’ threat to hold up the resolution to force Democrats to dismantle Biden’s vaccine and testing mandate.
- The government was set to run out of money at midnight today. The newly passed bill covers funding through Feb. 18.
- Now it awaits Biden’s signature.
Missouri Officials Planned To Thank Newspaper Before Attacking It Instead
In more Missouri news, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch found email records revealing that before the state’s Office of Administration bizarrely accused one of its reporters of being a “hacker” in October for discovering a serious glitch on the education department’s website, the education department was actually planning on thanking the news outlet.
- The site’s glitch risked exposing thousands of teachers’ Social Security numbers, and the Post-Dispatch flagged it to the Missouri government for a fix before publicly reporting on it.
- The Post-Dispatch noted in its latest report that a political action committee boosting Missouri Gov. Mike Parson (R) had put out a video bragging that the governor was “standing up to the fake news media” less than a week after he announced a criminal investigation into the newspaper over the so-called “hacking.”
Angry GOP Sen. Decides Judicial Nominee Is Too Mad To Be Judge
Sen. John Kennedy (R-LA) told Dale Ho, one of Biden’s judicial picks, that he doesn’t have the right temperament for a judge, that he’s “an angry man” and “We don’t need federal judges who are angry.”
- And that’s exactly why Kennedy voted to confirm now-Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh, who was very chill during his confirmation hearing in the face of being accused of sexual assault.
(Michael Reynolds-Pool/Getty Images) 
(Win McNamee/Getty Images) 
(Saul Loeb-Pool/Getty Images)
- Kennedy himself is a self-composed man who definitely doesn’t do things like tell people who disagree with him to “kiss my ass” or call them whack jobs or tell them to buy spines on Amazon or shout “It must suck to be that dumb!”
Appeals Court Takes Up Carroll Defamation Case Against Trump
Writer E. Jean Carroll, who’s accused Trump of raping her and is now suing him for defamation, is facing off against the Justice Department at a federal appeals court today.
- Yes, the Biden administration is still defending the ex-president in the case, even though the DOJ’s involvement is a direct result of Trump weaponizing the DOJ as his personal law firm in cases exactly like this one.
- Trump also plans to counter-sue Carroll to shut down the case. He did the same thing in October to another one of his accusers who was suing him for defamation, and she agreed to drop her suit without an explanation.
Must Read
“The Abortion I Didn’t Have” – The New York Times Magazine
“A Slow-Motion Climate Disaster: The Spread of Barren Land” – The New York Times
GOP Rep. Tells Trump To Put A Cork In It
Rep. Don Young (R-AK), who’s become one of Trump’s targets for having the audacity for vote for the bipartisan infrastructure bill, seems pretty unbothered by the ex-president’s wrath. In fact, Young has some advice for Trump, whose “policy” is “just so good,” according to the GOP lawmaker: “Just shut up — that’s all he has to do.”
#BanAnime
Jettisoned Trump White House Lackey Has Serious Thoughts
Reince Priebus, Trump’s first chief of staff who lasted a whole six months, tsk-tsked yesterday at the news that Simone Sanders, top adviser to Vice President Kamala Harris, is leaving the White House:
Man, it’s a good thing Reince never experienced any unexpected White House departures or got nicknames like “Rancid Penis” by Trump’s head communications director.
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Jan. 6 Committee: Meadows’ Book May Undermine His Executive Privilege Claims
Jan. 6 committee members on Thursday told Politico that former White House chief of staff Mark Meadows may have poked holes in his argument for withholding his contacts with former President Trump on the day of the deadly Capitol insurrection by revealing selected details in his book set to be released next week.
Continue reading “Jan. 6 Committee: Meadows’ Book May Undermine His Executive Privilege Claims”Emerging Data on Omicron
For the last few days the world has been waiting for scientists to make sense of Omicron. Today we appear to have some new information and it’s not encouraging. I’m no scientist. So I’m going to do as little characterizing as I can. I am recommending this Twitter thread and this one, both from trustworthy people, one a journalist following COVID and another a computational biologist at the KU Leuven in Belgium.
Continue reading “Emerging Data on Omicron”Powell, Wood, Other Big Lie Attorneys Ordered To Pay $175,000 In Gov’t Legal Fees
A federal judge in Michigan ordered several Trumpy attorneys including Sidney Powell and Lin Wood to pay $175,000 in attorneys fees to the state of Michigan and city of Detroit on Thursday — part of court-ordered sanctions for a frivolous lawsuit to overturn the 2020 election.
Continue reading “Powell, Wood, Other Big Lie Attorneys Ordered To Pay $175,000 In Gov’t Legal Fees”Where Things Stand: We’re Living In A ‘Slow Motion’ Jan 6
Colorado Secretary of State Jena Griswold (D) sounded the already scream-worthy alarm this week.
It was a stark warning about something TPM has been covering with our hair-on-fire for some time: that the Jan. 6 attempt to steal an election was the culmination of months of President Trump’s stoking of the Big Lie, and not an isolated incident. What’s more, the attempted heist never ended.
Griswold outlined the various threats to our current democracy — like a slew of new state level restrictive voting laws and ongoing threats of violence against election workers — and observed that the election-stealing crusade is continuing as we speak. Just, perhaps, in slow motion.
Continue reading “Where Things Stand: We’re Living In A ‘Slow Motion’ Jan 6”Cuomo Now Reportedly Target Of Federal Civil Rights Investigation Following Sexual Assault Allegations
The Justice Department launched a civil rights investigation into former New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s (D) executive chamber, following New York attorney general Letitia James’ report in August that the disgraced governor sexually harassed multiple women, the Wall Street Journal reported Thursday.
Continue reading “Cuomo Now Reportedly Target Of Federal Civil Rights Investigation Following Sexual Assault Allegations”Election Workers Falsely Accused As Part Of Big Lie Sue Gateway Pundit
In the year since the Trump campaign and the conspiracy theory website The Gateway Pundit cast Wandrea Moss and her mother Ruby Freeman as key players in a false narrative of election fraud, Moss hasn’t been able to sleep much.
Continue reading “Election Workers Falsely Accused As Part Of Big Lie Sue Gateway Pundit”Most School Shooters Get Guns From Home. And During COVID, The Number Of Guns In Households With Teens Spiked
This article is part of TPM Cafe, TPM’s home for opinion and news analysis. It first appeared at The Conversation.
Four days before a 15-year-old sophomore killed four students and wounded others at a high school shooting in Michigan, his father purchased the firearm used in the attack.
That the teenager used a weapon from home during the Nov. 30 attack is not unusual. Most school shooters obtain the firearm from home. And the number of guns within reach of high school-age teenagers has increased during the pandemic – highlighting the importance of locking firearms and keeping them unloaded in the home.
Continue reading “Most School Shooters Get Guns From Home. And During COVID, The Number Of Guns In Households With Teens Spiked”Listen To This: Roe Is In Danger
A new episode of The Josh Marshall Podcast is live! This week, Josh and Kate discuss the Supreme Court’s oral arguments in a potentially historic abortion case as well as the new omicron variant.
You can listen to the new episode of The Josh Marshall Podcast here.