-Mark Meadows, on Donald Trump's trail of document destruction

As antivax Canadian truckers enter the third weekend of their uncharacteristically impolite quest to spread chaos and misery across the land, the American far-right has naturally begun plotting to subject U.S. cities to the same fate.
 

• Ontario Premier Doug Ford declared a state of emergency on Friday and an Ontario judge ruled that truckers blocking the Ambassador Bridge must clear out by Friday night, as the “Freedom Convoy” continued to paralyze the country’s capital and obstruct multiple crossings along the U.S.-Canada border. “We’re now two weeks into the siege of the city of Ottawa,” Ford said. “I call it a siege because that’s what it is. It’s an illegal occupation. This is no longer a protest.” 
   
• Ford’s comments came a day after the Biden administration urged Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s government to use its federal powers to get the situation under control. The blockade has wreaked havoc on both sides of the border, with U.S. business leaders warning on Thursday that it was exacerbating supply chain problems. Gov. Gretchen Whitmer (D-MI) called on Canadian authorities to stop letting the truckers fuck with Michigan’s economy: “My message is simple: reopen traffic on the bridge.”
   
• Even some of Trudeau’s political opponents have had enough. Conservative Party interim Leader Candice Bergen, who initially called these creeps a “passionate, patriotic, and peaceful” group of Canadians and posed for pictures with them, said Thursday that it was time for them to “stop the disruptive action” and go home. Ottawa residents, who’ve had enough since day one, have very reasonably begun trolling convoy supporters with a pornographic metal song about gay cowboys. 

Ninety percent of Canadian truckers are fully vaccinated and have no truck (sorry) with the Freedom Convoy, but the unpopular minority has found active support among Republicans.
 

• Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) said in a Thursday interview that he’d love an illegal trucker occupation of America’s very own: “I hope the truckers do come to America, and I hope they clog up cities.” They’re way ahead of him: The Department of Homeland Security said in an internal memo that it had received reports that antivax truckers will try to block roads in major cities in the coming weeks, potentially affecting the Super Bowl in Los Angeles on Sunday and Biden’s State of the Union Address on March 1. 
   
• Among the organizers of the U.S. convoy is Leigh Dundas, a Scientologist lawyer who gave a speech on the eve of January 6 encouraging Trump supporters to shoot or hang “any alleged American who acted in a turncoat fashion.” Dundas’s involvement in post-election conspiracy theories and antivax movements over the past two years illustrates how different strands of the right-wing fringe have tangled together into a rat king of extremism. That volatile blend has extremism experts worried that copycat convoys in the U.S. might not remain peaceful.

If caravans of trucks start materializing in American cities and cross the line of legal, peaceful protest, it will be at the express invitation of GOP lawmakers and the conservative media, and it will require a decisive response. For more on why, don’t miss this week’s edition of Big Tent.

SCOTUS has repeatedly turned its back on the suffering of Texans:

The Court denied our request to allow our challenge against Texas' ban, S.B. 8, to proceed in federal district court. Instead, the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals unnecessarily sent part of the case to the Texas Supreme Court, preventing us from pursuing relief against the ban for now.

We wanted to make sure you knew that there's action you can take to defend abortion care across the country. Urge your Senator to pass the Women’s Health Protection Act now – a bill to safeguard abortion access nationwide.

As a reminder, countless Texans have been forced to carry pregnancies against their will because of this cruel ban for five months now – disproportionately impacting people living on low incomes, Black and Brown people, undocumented people, and other marginalized communities.

But it won't stop there. Politicians are feeling emboldened to pass similar policies in their state, and they will ultimately push for a nationwide abortion ban if they get the chance.

It’s clear we must take the fight beyond SCOTUS. It's time Congress did its part. Tell your Senator to pass WHPA now. 

In solidarity,
The ACLU Team

The Biden administration on Friday warned Americans in Ukraine to “leave immediately,” as the U.S. military won’t be able to help them evacuate in the event of a Russian invasion, which could happen any day. White House national security adviser Jake Sullivan said that while the U.S. didn’t have confirmation that Russian President Vladimir Putin had made a final decision to attack (contrary to some reports), “we believe he very well may give the final go order. That is a very distinct possibility.” Secretary of State Antony Blinken said Friday that an invasion could begin before the end of the Winter Olympics, based on new intelligence. Ukraine itself has taken on a less nonchalant tone, warning that Russian-backed separatists were conducting military drills in the country’s east, making it almost fully surrounded by hostile forces.

• Pfizer has pulled its request for the FDA to authorize its COVID vaccine for kids under age five, saying that it believes three doses may be necessary for that age group and will wait for more data.
   
• The CIA has a secret bulk-surveillance program that includes some Americans’ data, according to a partially declassified letter by Sens. Ron Wyden (D-OR) and Martin Heinrich (D-NM), who urged the CIA in April 2021 to inform the public about the program.
   
• President Biden signed an order to split $7 billion in frozen Afghan assets between humanitarian relief in Afghanistan and a fund for 9/11 victims.
   
• The Wisconsin Supreme Court narrowly ruled to allow a ban on drop boxes to go into effect for the state’s spring local elections. Drop boxes will be allowed in the primaries and the court could still allow them in future elections in its final decision, but it’s not looking great.
   
• Hundreds of ballots in the Texas primary have been initially rejected under the state’s new ID requirements, with elections officials waiting to see how many voters will take the extra step of correcting their ballots.
   
• Far-right conspiracy theorists are now trying to get states to withdraw from the Electronic Registration Information Center (ERIC), one of the best tools for actually detecting and preventing voter fraud.
   
• Hate speech against Muslims in India has reached a dangerous new pitch, according to human-rights organizations, without any response from Prime Minister Narendra Modi and top leaders.
   
• Russian figure skater Kamila Valieva tested positive for trimetazidine, a performance-enhancing heart drug, before the Olympics, and somehow went on to compete anyway.
   
• New York City Mayor Eric Adams’s administration erased a popular stretch of Open Streets in Brooklyn, allegedly because a friend of Adams complained about it, then said it was all a big misunderstanding when residents pushed back. 
   
• Koalas are now officially an endangered species in parts of Australia, due in large part to devastating bushfires and droughts in recent years.
   
• The James Webb Space Telescope has sent back its first photos from its position one-million miles from Earth, including a gorgeous selfie.

Fox News hosts have been screaming about crack pipes for a week based on a debunked story in another right-wing outlet. On Monday, the Washington Free Beacon ran a story on a $30 million federal grant package for local programs that provide harm-reduction tools and services to protect people with drug addictions from infections and overdoses—a historic, life-saving shift in federal drug policy. The article falsely claimed that safe-smoking kits funded by the program “will provide pipes,” which the White House and fact-checkers have corrected. Undeterred by facts, Fox News and Republican lawmakers have continued to whip up an oddly retro, racist panic about President Biden going door-to-door with a big sack of crack pipes, and on Friday, the impressionable Sen. Joe Manchin (D-WV) joined Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL) in introducing the Preventing Illicit Paraphernalia for Exchange Systems (PIPES) Act.

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Duke Energy, the second-largest electric company in the U.S., plans to shut down the rest of its coal plants by 2035 and more than double its renewables by 2030. 

The Department of Energy announced that it will invest $5 billion in an initiative to build up to half-a-million electric-vehicle charging stations nationwide.

Irish engineers have built the world’s second “blade bridge” made from recycled wind-turbine blades, a repurposing that both keeps old blades out of landfills and avoids emissions from making new construction materials. 

University of Alabama trustees voted Friday to remove a KKK-leader’s name from a campus building and rename it after Autherine Lucy Foster, the first Black student to attend the school.