-Former White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows hunting a Taylor Swift fan

With just days left until the January 6 committee obtains key evidence from the National Archives, Trumpworld is torn between competing messages: The insurrection is a secret vs. The insurrection was awesome!
 

• Overnight, the disgraced former president filed a strange but desperate-seeming request with the district court overseeing his effort to prevent the January 6 committee from obtaining evidence of his involvement in the insurrection. His lawyers asked Judge Tanya Chutkan to pre-emptively block the committee from receiving the evidence so that if and when Trump loses the case in district court, he can continue running down the clock with appeals. Chutkan shut them down quickly, noting judges staying rulings they haven’t made yet isn’t a thing.
   
• Unless she rules before Friday, and grants Trump a reprieve, the archivist will fulfill the committee’s document request. That pending decision may also be the tripwire the Justice Department is waiting on before charging Steve Bannon with criminal contempt of Congress. Bannon justified his decision to ignore his subpoena from the January 6 committee on similar, frivolous grounds that the definitely-not-president of the United States can claim executive privilege over evidence of his involvement in a plot to overthrow the government. The Justice Department has yet to act on that referral. 
   
• Bannon isn’t the only one who should be watching this case closely. On Tuesday, the committee subpoenaed 10 members of Trump’s inner circle. including Stephen Miller and Kayleigh McEnany. Those subpoenas follow the six subpoenas the committee issued on Monday to Trump confidantes who helped plan the insurrection, including John Eastman, Michael Flynn, and Jason Miller. In announcing those subpoenas, the committee revealed that other cooperating witnesses have provided evidence laying out Trumpworld’s knowing culpability for inciting the insurrection. Whether these witnesses decide to stonewall the committee or not may turn on whether Bannon faces consequences for being in contempt of Congress. Is Merrick Garland aware about how incentives work? This is less clear.

When judges and prosecutors aren’t involved, though, Republicans have a different take on the insurrection. 
 

• At the House GOP election committee retreat on Monday, Trump repeated his revisionist lie that the “real insurrection” happened on election day (when he lost the election), which, if it were true (repeat: it is not) would make the fanatics who attacked the Capitol on January 6 martyrs and heroes. Many House Republicans in attendance reportedly cheered. 
   
• The “cheering for the Big Lie” episode happened on the same day that Rep. Paul Gosar (R-AZ) tweeted (and retweeted) a fascist anime fantasy cartoon depicting him murdering Rep. Alexandria Ocasio Cortez (D-NY), and one day before Arizona GOP Senate candidate Blake Masters released this ad that begins “I think Trump won in 2020.” In response, GOP leaders have taken the unflinching step of contemplating punishments for Republicans who voted for Joe Biden’s infrastructure bill. 

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Reuters tracked down several of the MAGA fanatics who threatened the lives of, and otherwise harassed, election workers across the country, and the results are a terrifying microcosm of broader institutional failures to take the subversion of American democracy seriously. Using classic reporting techniques, Reuters was able to identify 24 people who harassed election officials. Of these, reporters were able to interview nine of them; eight on the record. Seven of those callers veered into criminal territory, according to experts, and six of those were actually reported to the police, who contacted a grand total of zero of suspects. Meanwhile, the actual harassers share some things in common: Many work regular jobs. Most consume information from far-right websites. None of them thinks they did anything wrong; and seven are entirely unrepentant. The best lack all conviction, while the worst are full of passionate intensity, and that rule appears to hold at both the local and federal levels.

• The director of the Congressional Budget Office—Republican economist Phil Swagel—says his office will release section-by-section analyses of the Build Back Better Act in the coming days, but that a comprehensive cost-estimate won’t be complete by the end of the week. 
   
• Several Starbucks locations in the Buffalo, NY, area want to unionize, and the CEO Howard Schultz is taking extraordinary steps to block it that include at least one weird digression to employees about the Holocaust. 
   
• Gov. John Sununu (R-NH) won’t run for Senate, because the return of standard time brings early Sununusets.
   
• No one knows why Gov. Gavin Newsom (D-CA) abruptly canceled his trip to Glasgow for the international climate conference (Newsom blames his kids!) or why he laid unusually low for several days thereafter, but he did manage to attend a Getty heiress’s wedding?
   
• Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) offered effusive praise of Louis Farrakhan and the Nation of Islam over their shared rejection of COVID-19 vaccines.
   
• Former VA Administrator and Georgia Senator Max Cleland has died at 79.
   
• Republican Jack Ciatrelli, who lost the New Jersey governor's race to incumbent Phil Murphy, still hasn’t conceded defeat (because he’s a Republican) though he claims he’s simply waiting to see if the final margin will be small enough to allow him to request a recount.
   
• Mark Demi Lovato down as “not sorry” for spreading a bunch of truly insane conspiracy theories. 

The Office of Special Counsel—the arm of the executive branch that’s supposed to police federal employees who electioneer in their official capacities—has released a scathing report excoriating 13 Trump administration officials who, with Trump’s blessing, showed “willful disregard for the law,” and thus created “a taxpayer-funded campaign apparatus within the upper echelons of the executive branch.” At the same time, the report notes that Trump’s direct involvement, combined with the limits of OSC’s own authorities, and shortcomings of federal law, made it impossible for OSC to take any action. For instance, the Hatch Act—which is the main anticorruption law the office enforces—does not contemplate White House officials organizing and attending a partisan political convention on the White House grounds, and only the president at the time of the violation can sanction or fire offending employees, but Trump simply refused to engage in “the good faith cooperation necessary to ensure full compliance.”

DEMAND SAFE ACCESS TO ABORTION IN TEXAS

Across the country, our right to abortion is under attack. A growing number of states are attempting to ban abortion and there are also more subtle and nefarious restrictions quickly being considered – bills that will push abortion out of reach, even while not banning it outright. Sign the ACLU’s petition and demand safe access to abortion now.

Recently, we sued Texas over its blatantly unconstitutional abortion ban, Senate Bill (SB) 8. Over the past few months, politicians in Texas introduced a slew of extreme anti-abortion restrictions. Several of those bills passed, including SB 8, which bans abortions at about six weeks – before most people know they are pregnant.

Join the ACLU in this fight today. Sign our petition.

SB 8 authorizes any person in the country to sue a person who performed or helped a patient access an abortion in violation of the ban. That means that anyone can try to block abortion access and dismantle abortion support networks by suing abortion providers and anyone who helps a patient access abortion like a family member who drives someone to an appointment or a trusted clergy member who advises a patient. 

The ACLU, along with partner organizations, are fighting back in courts and legislatures every day and we will not be stopping any time soon. Are you with us? Add your name today.

Thank you for taking action,

The ACLU Team

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