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The first hearing of the House’s Jan. 6 select committee starts bright and early tomorrow morning, focused on testimony from key law enforcement witnesses who were defending the Capitol during the mob attack. And we’re expecting varying degrees of hay-making and counter-programming from the GOP.
Some are staying silent. Others think it’s none of your business. A handful are shamelessly promoting anti-vax rhetoric.
Half of House Republicans will not share their vaccination status, or openly refuse to get the shot.
The Justice Department and the White House have been seeking to put some distance between each other since President Biden first took office. But Attorney General Merrick Garland made it official on Wednesday.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s decision this morning to boot the two Jims from her January 6 select committee was quite the power play.
It started with “Fox and Friends” host Steve Doocy on Monday morning, urging viewers to get the COVID-19 vaccine because it will “save your life” — all while his co-host Brian Kilmeade hedged that “we’re not doctors” and said the network anchors aren’t going to “go there and give you other medical advice.” (FWIW, Doocy has been a encouraging viewers to get the shot for some time now, unlike some of his co-hosts.)
Texas House Democrats venture to D.C. is not only keeping the state from passing restrictive voting laws during the state’s special session. It’s also at least temporarily blocking the state legislature from passing a new law that would further discourage teachers from discussing race and systemic racism in Texas classrooms.
I’ve written repeatedly over recent months about the politics of opacity in the Biden era. The debates that are in public are largely performative. The consequential conversations are among Senate Democrats and between Senate Democrats and the Biden White House. They are necessarily confidential and private. People who follow politics closely and feel deeply invested in the outcomes find themselves asked to take things on faith. Why didn’t they get to Wednesday’s milestone in April rather than the middle of summer? Why are Democrats still trying to find bipartisan ‘deals’ Republicans will always renege on.
I wanted to have a conversation with someone up there who can walk us through, at least in general terms, just how all this stuff is working and why it works that way. So yesterday we hosted an Inside Briefing with Sen. Brian Schatz (D) of Hawaii. We talked about all these questions and it provided a lot of helpful context to understand why these work as they do even if you don’t think it’s a good way for them to work. I learned a lot from it and I think you will too.
If you’re a member, you can watch our discussion after the jump.
House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) met with the former president in New Jersey yesterday to discuss the midterms — the second such meeting the two have held since McCarthy announced from the House floor that Trump deserved at least some blame for the insurrection.
Then-Vice President Mike Pence refused to get in a car to leave the Capitol building after being evacuated from his ceremonial office on Jan. 6, primarily because he knew it would prevent him from doing his job — certifying President Biden’s electoral college victory.
Despite what Texas Gov. Greg Abbott claimed on Monday, the Texas Democrats walkout trip to Washington, D.C. is not a “taxpayer-paid junket.”
“Just say we won.”
While former President Trump was pushing lies about voter fraud for months leading up to the 2020 election, new reporting on what occurred on election night at the White House is a reminder of the extent to which Trump’s democracy dismantling was rooted in absolutely nothing. That night, Rudy Giuliani was leading the lie-flinging charge.
The Conservative Political Action Conference over the weekend provided lots of concerning examples of just how dystopian Republican fearmongering around the COVID-19 vaccine has become.
Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) warned his colleagues on Friday that their beloved August recess may be in flux if they are unable to tackle his ambitious agenda in time.
They just don’t want to admit it.
It’s not as if you couldn’t speculate — we now know House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) blamed Trump for the insurrection the night it happened, only to crawl back to Trump’s side for the midterms. Several other prominent Republican leaders have taken similar about-face paths since January.
While the conservative fever swamps’ fear mongering over critical race theory intensifies to new, unhinged heights, the nation’s largest teachers unions are vowing to stand behind educators if they are punished due to new state laws that try to limit or outright ban critical discussions on race, discrimination and the role it plays in American history.
Following the July 4th holiday weekend, President Biden has one item on his public agenda today: a speech addressing COVID-19 vaccination progress in the U.S.
Dominion Voting Systems is already suing Rudy Giuliani personally for defamation. It’s now pulling the former mayor and currently suspended lawyer into its suit against Fox News.
Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-AK) has not publicly disclosed whether she intends to run for reelection after a decade-plus in the Senate.
As anti-trans rights laws pop up in GOP-led state legislatures across the country, fueling one of Republicans’ top culture wars in the Biden era, the majority conservative Supreme Court decided to not take up a key transgender rights case today, a surprising victory for LGBTQ rights.
The former president hid in his bunker when country-wide protests flared up in Washington, D.C. over the police killing of George Floyd last summer.
He was mocked with a variety of entertaining “bunker boy” related nicknames (not hard to get creative with that alliteration) and ultimately decided to show his strength by violently clearing out Lafayette Square and taking a picture in front of a historic church flinging around a Bible.
We’ve had a front row seat to Rudy Giuliani’s descent into Trumpy madness over the last several years, falling from his pedestal as America’s Mayor to the dripping, desperate “legal” face of Trump’s big lie.
Once the mayor of New York City, now temporarily banned from practicing law in New York state, Giuliani has had a rough one, brought on entirely by himself.
The majority of Americans can see right through the intentions of the ongoing and impending “audits” of the 2020 election springing up around the U.S.
But a decent chunk — 37 percent — also think that voter fraud is a major problem in the United States.
The former president has vowed to make reelection a living hell for any Republican who voted to impeach him.
But his recent handwritten note to a local county conservative group promising to do just that to take down Rep. John Katko (R-NY) was the encapsulation of Trumpism — just the right blend of outsized ego and transparent desperation.
