President Biden will deliver his first address to a joint session of Congress on Wednesday evening, which is technically not a State of the Union address because it doesn’t come from the SOTU region of France it’s his first year in office. Here’s what to know:
 

• The Capitol will be much emptier than usual, for both pandemic and domestic-extremism reasons. There will be only 200 people in the House chamber, nobody’s bringing guests, Chief Justice John Roberts will represent the whole Supreme Court, and most cabinet officials will be watching remotely, eliminating the need for a “designated survivor.” We can expect Biden to use his first appearance in the locked-down Capitol to call on Congress to establish a January 6 commission, days after House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy tried to further rewrite the history of the insurrection. 
   
• But Biden’s focus will be on his victories around the pandemic—both the American Rescue Plan plan and the country’s successful vaccine rollout—and selling his jobs and family proposals. The White House unveiled the details of the $1.8 trillion American Families Plan earlier on Wednesday, which include certified bangers like 12 weeks of guaranteed paid family and medical leave for all American workers, and a $200 billion investment in universal preschool for all three- and four-year-olds.
   
• He’ll also urge Congress to pass key agenda items that have wound up on the back burner, like his immigration proposal, which would provide a pathway to citizenship for 11 million undocumented immigrants, and the George Floyd Justice in Policing Act. Will he then rip open his button-down shirt to reveal an Abolish the Filibuster tee beneath? Only time will tell. 

Sen. Tim Scott (R-SC), the Senate’s lone Black Republican, will deliver the GOP response.
 

• Based on excerpts, he’ll mostly lie about Trump-era accomplishments, which is no big surprise: Republican criticisms of Biden’s agenda have relied on making up shit to get mad at. On Wednesday morning, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell sought to pre-empt Biden’s message of unity and recovery by declaring that the Biden administration “seems to have given up on selling actual unity in favor of catnip for their liberal base.” 
   
• That line of attack might be resonating with the Fox News audience, but it’s falling flat for most of the country. As Biden rolls up to the 100-day mark, his average approval rating is at about 54 percent, substantially higher than Donald Trump’s at this point in his presidency, and his relief bill was overwhelmingly popular. A new CBS News/YouGov poll found that majorities of voters recognize that Biden has indeed been trying to work with congressional Republicans, while they’ve been looking to oppose him as much as possible.

Above all, Biden will use tonight’s speech to try to unite lawmakers and Americans around his vision of big government: “We have to prove democracy still works. That our government still works—and can deliver for the people.” Come watch with us starting at 9 p.m. ET/6 p.m. PT → youtube.com/crookedmedia

Watch President Biden's first ~non-SOTU~ address to Congress with your Crooked Media friends! We'll be  providing live commentary, jokes, gifs, occasional stray pieces of useful information, the works. Join us over on the Crooked Youtube channel at 9 p.m. ET  →  Joint Address Group Thread

The day has come for Rudy Giuliani to sweat out another quart of weird brown gloop. Federal investigators executed search warrants at Giuliani’s apartment and office at the crack of dawn, escalating a criminal investigation into whether he conducted illegal lobbying for Ukrainian officials while he was asking them to help smear Hunter Biden. FBI agents seized Giuliani’s electronic devices (we can only assume he’s incriminating himself to reporters over fax), and also raided the home of Victoria Toensing, a lawyer who worked closely with him on the Ukraine ratfuck scheme, as part of the same investigation. Rudy hasn’t made a public statement yet, but here’s a great point from his son Andrew: “Any American, whether you are red or blue, should be extremely disturbed by what happened here today, by the continued politititation [sic] of the Justice Department.”

• A federal grand jury in Georgia has indicted three men on hate crime and attempted kidnapping charges in the death of Ahmaud Arbery. 
   
• DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas has launched an internal probe to address the threat of violent domestic extremism within the department.
   
• A North Carolina judge ruled that body-camera footage of police fatally shooting Andrew Brown Jr. will not be released to the public (at least not right away), but will be shown to his family.
   
• A newly-released video shows Loveland, CO, police officers laughing and fist-bumping as they watched body-cam footage of themselves violently arresting a 73-year-old woman with dementia, and breaking her arm: “We crushed it.”
   
• In a Tuesday night CNN interview, DC police officer Michael Fantone described being attacked by the insurrectionist mob and his frustration at seeing conservative media figures and Republicans lie about what happened: “It’s been very difficult seeing elected officials and other individuals kind of whitewash the events of that day or downplay what happened.”
   
• White House officials have rebuked Joe Rogan for advising young people not to get vaccinated, pointing out that he is (paraphrasing) a useless dumbass who is going to get people killed. 
   
• Georgia’s state election board reconvened for the first time since the legislature removed Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger as chair, and neither the legislature nor Gov. Brian Kemp (R-GA) has bothered to appoint his replacement. New voter-suppression law’s going great!
   
• Whatever level of respect you have for the people who make coronavirus vaccines, go ahead and double it by looking at this breakdown of each step in the Pfizer vaccine production process.
   
• Apollo 11 astronaut Michael Collins, who kept the command module flying while Lance Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin soaked up all the moon glory, has died at 90.
   
• A haunted dog has found a home. 

The Biden administration is expected to announce a plan to ban menthol cigarettes, a priority for anti-tobacco groups and civil-rights groups. Black Americans have been disproportionately harmed by menthol cigarettes, the result of an aggressive, decades-long campaign by the tobacco industry. More than 85 percent of Black smokers today use menthol cigarettes, which are more addictive and harder to quit than non-menthols, compared to about 10 percent in the 1950s. It could be years before the Biden administration’s ban actually takes effect, but the FDA will likely get the rule-making process started this week—it has a Thursday court deadline to respond to a 2013 citizen-petition seeking a menthol-cigarette ban.

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The Senate has voted to reinstate Obama-era regulations on methane emissions.

A Senate committee has advanced all three of Biden’s nominees for the Postal Service Board of Governors. One step closer to ousting Postmaster General Louis DeJoy.

Gov. Tony Evers (D-WI) has signed a law that will require public and private schools in Wisconsin to teach students about the Holocaust and other genocides. 

Ohio will soon join nearly every other state in allowing transgender people to change the gender markers on their birth certificates. (Time to get it together, Tennessee.)