Demand Clarence Thomas recuse himself from Trump’s disqualification case!

Daily Dose of Democracy:

VIDEO OF THE DAY: Colorado Supreme Court makes surprise move to ensure US Supreme Court upholds Trump ruling
Colorado's Supreme Court knows exactly what they're up against in the fight to keep Donald Trump off the ballot in 2024. The justices made a strategic move to make it hard for at least one Trump-appointed Supreme Court justice — Neil Gorsuch — to rule in the disgraced ex-president's favor by using his own past arguments as legal basis for their decision. Yowza!

Take Action: Tell the Supreme Court: Trump is not above the law!

Speaker Mike Johnson and daughter were profiled attending "purity ball" in 2015 German TV news segment
As if Mike Johnson's family stuff wasn't weird enough already — remember the father-son porn monitoring pact? — it has come to light that the GOP House speaker also once attended a "purity ball" with his then-13-year-old daughter. "Purity balls" are deeply perverse and creepy affairs in which fathers proclaim ownership over their daughter's sexuality until their marriage, all the while objectifying everyone else's daughters in wedding gown-style dresses. While it doesn't come as a surprise, it is a sharp reminder of just how regressive and extreme this man's worldview is, and how quickly we need to get him out of Congress.

Take Action: Don't let Republicans get away with taking credit for the Biden infrastructure plan they opposed!

One last chance to avert catastrophe
Environmental Defense Fund: With the climate crisis accelerating by the year, the results of the 2024 election will prove to be pivotal for the course of human civilization as we know it. It is red-alert, all-hands-on-deck, sound-the-alarm important that we elect climate champions who will lead the way in transitioning to a green economy and putting an end to the fossil fuel pollution that threatens everything that we hold dear. Will you pledge to vote for climate champions in 2024 and help avert disaster?

Biden declares Trump an "insurrectionist"
President Biden addressed the Colorado Supreme Court's decision to disqualify Trump on Wednesday, carefully refusing to weigh in on how the court should rule but declaring unequivocally that the serially indicted ex-president and GOP frontrunner was an insurrectionist. “It’s self-evident. You saw it all. Now whether the 14th Amendment applies, I’ll let the court make that decision,” the president said during a trip to Wisconsin. “But he certainly supported an insurrection. No question about it. None. Zero."

Take Action: Tell the DOJ to investigate state voter purges!

Texas flies 91 immigrants to Chicago by private plane
Gov. Greg Abbott's radical right-wing administration is once again trafficking human beings across the country in a deliberate attempt to overwhelm the resources of "blue" cities, to make the immigrants themselves suffer, and to earn political points with his rabid, xenophobic supporters. Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson accused Abbot of "raggedy behavior” and "creating chaos throughout the entire country,” while Abbott bragged that he specifically targeted Chicago because of Johnson's crackdown on illegal bus disembarkations. A reminder to ALL involved that these people being trafficked by Republicans are HUMAN BEINGS, not pawns to be shuttled like strays from shelter to shelter to score cheap political points.

Republicans widen investigation into Harvard to include 26-year-old "plagiarism" allegations against President Claudine Gay
Dr. Claudine Gay did herself no favors when she used code-of-conduct handbook speak to gobbledygook her way through disingenuous Republican "gotcha!" questions during congressional testimony concerning the troubling rise of antisemitism on university campuses. We won't defend it, and for her part, Gay issued an apology days later attempting to clarify both her and Harvard's position on the matter. That clearly did little to placate House Republicans, who a) apparently believe Gay is personally responsible for their nephew Walford Dingleberry III getting rejected from Harvard simply because he's white and not because he's competing with 50,000 other people for a spot and b) are hellbent on using their congressional powers to push Gay out of her post and put a symbolic trophy on their shelf. At issue now, apparently, is Gay's 1997 dissertation, which according to university officials included "instances of inadequate citation" but did not violate "standards for research misconduct." It's clearly a bad look for Gay, but this definitely seems like the sort of thing an elite, private university with a well-oiled mechanism for dealing with academic misconduct is more than capable of handling internally. But hey, anything to avoid having to do any actual governing, right?

Take Action: Tell Congress to end legacy enrollments at taxpayer-subsidized Ivy League schools!

New York City Council votes to ban most instances of solitary confinement
A welcome and long, long, long overdue change. Solitary confinement is considered torture by the United Nations, so naturally it is widely used by American prisons across the country. Thankfully, the vote passed with a large enough majority to override a mayoral veto. Embattled Mayor Eric Adams' administration complained that "it would make it harder to protect people in custody, and the predominantly Black and brown workers charged with their safety, from violent individuals" — an absurd notion and a disgusting attempt to hijack the language of racial justice in order to continue the torture of predominantly Black and brown Americans condemned to the for-profit meatgrinder of the carceral state.

Republicans finally go too far with STUNNING stunt
No Lie with Brian Tyler Cohen: Unreal.

Vivek Ramaswamy says he will withdraw from the Colorado primary ballot after Trump disqualified
Future former presidential also-ran and devoted Trump bootlicker quickly called on all of the GOP primary field to withdraw from the primary ballot with him as a show of protest for the state Supreme Court's decision to kick the disgraced ex-president and insurrectionist off the ballot. Ramaswamy might be on to something here — please, all Republicans should withdraw from all ballots in protest, because clearly the election is rigged!

Green energy presents huge opportunities to combat climate change, but not without hard choices
The case of the Dixie Valley toad, a tiny little guy who has perfectly adapted to living in a Nevada hot spring oasis, has put into sharp perspective how the climate crisis approaching us is going to force a lot of very difficult decisions. The government is eyeing the hot springs for a geothermal energy plant, which could offset an estimated 6.5 million tons of CO2 and provide electricity for 44,000 homes...but would also create huge shifts in the ecosystem that the sensitive toads almost certainly couldn't survive.

Colorado secretary of state inundated with threats over Trump case
Colorado Secretary of State Jena Griswold has endured an onslaught of violent threats since a lawsuit on behalf of six voters, seeking to disqualify Donald Trump from the state’s ballot due to his incitement of the Jan. 6 insurrection, was filed. Griswold has nothing to do with the case whatsoever, but the MAGA mob isn't letting that pesky detail get in the way of their rage; she’s faced "hundreds if not thousands of threats at this point" from Trump supporters — part of an increasingly violent right-wing fringe empowered and encouraged by the lawless, serially indicted ex-president.