-House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, on his coup caucus

Days after the January 6 insurrection House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy told his leadership team he thought then President Trump should resign, during a conversation that was secretly recorded, which has made his blatant lying about it extra fun. 

• In that phone meeting, McCarthy said he planned to tell Trump, “It would be my recommendation you should resign.” He added, “What he did is unacceptable. Nobody can defend that and nobody should defend it,” before chasing Rep. Liz Cheney (R-WY) out of the GOP leadership for saying the same thing publicly. File this one away under the heading “news we coulda used before the book release” and also “information it would have been nice to subpoena even if it ruined Chris Coons's Valentine's Day plans.”
   
• McCarthy seems to have been unaware that someone had taped the call, let alone that the tape had been leaked to reporters, because on Thursday he issued a statement calling the reporting “totally false and wrong” only for the reporters to drop the audio on his head like a grand piano. (For a good time, listen here.)
   
• Things get even more awkward for McCarthy, because he didn’t just express his disgust with Trump. He wondered aloud why Twitter couldn’t boot his insurrectionist members like Reps. Lauren Boebert (R-CO) and Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA); mused about Trump resigning and accepting a pardon from would-be President Mike Pence (suggesting he knew Trump had violated the law) and even said Trump had personally copped to being partially responsible for the Capitol riot. (Once again, heckuva job Senator Coons.)

The very existence of secret recordings might scramble Republican efforts to lie and dodge their way around having attempted a coup.
 

• Donald Trump, Jr., will reportedly testify to the House January 6 committee in the coming days, under the cloud of the McCarthy revelation. (Tough break for his sister Ivanka and brother-in-law Jared Kushner who were interviewed under oath before they knew there were tapes.)
   
• Meanwhile, Alex Jones has already held discussions with the Justice Department about cooperating with its expanding January 6 investigation in exchange for immunity. And the aforementioned Marjorie Taylor Greene, testifying under oath in a civil trial that will determine whether her role in the insurrection renders her ineligible for federal office, had an enormous memory lapse about who she spoke to about the coup attempt and the potential for violence ahead of January 6. 

Check out Hot Take—the newest Crooked podcast that provides an honest look at the climate crisis and all the ways media and society are talking—and not talking—about it. On the latest episode, hosts Mary Annaïse Heglar and Amy Westervelt break down the origins of Earth Day and name the biggest enemies in the fossil fuel industry. New episodes of Hot Take drop every Friday wherever you get your podcasts.

Vladimir Putin had to scale the ambitions of his criminal war against Ukraine way down when his campaign to seize Kyiv failed spectacularly, but now he seems to be scaling it back up. The resized goal, according to one senior Russian military commander, is to commandeer basically all of southern and eastern Ukraine. Where Russian forces have met the most resistance in that effort, they’ve reduced cities to rubble. Kharkiv, in the northeast, has been “obliterated” and the sole survivors of the Mariupol massacre, huddled in a Soviet-era industrial plant as a fortress, have been cut off from supplies, compounding what is already a humanitarian catastrophe. Which is not to say things have gone swimmingly for the invading military. A pro-Kremlin media outlet accidentally published (then deleted) details of a closed briefing with the Russian defense ministry, where officials acknowledged that a staggering 13,414 of their soldiers had died, and 7,000 others had gone missing.

• White House Chief of Staff/fraud committer/coup plotter Mark Meadows was simultaneously registered to vote in Virginia, North Carolina, and South Carolina. 
   
• Now-defunct startup CNN+ was plagued by bloated talent salaries, including $9 million for Fox News veteran Chris Wallace.
   
• The CIA’s “queen of torture,” depicted by Jessica Chastain in the movie Zero Dark Thirty, is now a life coach, offering to help women “look good, feel good, and do good.” 
   
• State-Sen. (and apparent scumbag) Tom Barrett (R-MI) raised money by texting voters fake scheduling confirmations for their children’s supposed gender-confirmation surgery appointments.
   
• Sandy Hook families and the Justice Department think Alex Jones put his right-wing agitprop outlet Infowars into bankruptcy as a ruse to avoid paying them millions of dollars he owes them in damages.
   
• Former Hounduran President Juan Orlando Hernandez, once vouched for by Donald Trump, has been extradited to the U.S. to face drug-smuggling and weapons charges.
   
• The “Libs of TikTok” Twitter account people are rending their garments about was the number one source of anti-LGBT bigotry and pedophilia smears on the platform in March.
   
• Since you asked, here's some pictures of Rep. Madison Cawthorn (R-NC) in lingirie.

Florida Republicans led by Gov. Ron DeSantis (R-FL) have exacted official, thug-like retribution against Disney for opposing their “Don’t Say Gay” bill. But in typical GOP fashion, the form of the retribution is such that Disney will probably reap a substantial tax cut, even as it threatens to bankrupt neighboring counties. As detailed by Orlando-based reporter Nick Papantonis, the vengeful legislation operates by removing Disney World’s status as a “special district,” which allowed it to operate essentially as its own municipality. That is, Disney World bore responsibility for its own maintenance, but also enjoyed streamlined development rights, and discharged those obligations by taxing itself. Now all those special privileges (and the self-taxation) will be stripped away, reducing Disney’s tax burden, and shifting the governing costs on to the neighboring counties, and their residents, who had no say in the matter.

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A Fulton County, GA, elections worker threatened and harassed by Trump goons has won a John F. Kennedy Profile in Courage award.

A coalition of civil-rights groups has filed suit against the Florida GOP's racial gerrymander, signed into law by Gov. Ron DeSantis (R-FL).

A federal judge has blocked enforcement of Kentucky's new abortion ban.

The CERN particle accelerator is back up and running again, after getting a long facelift.