Legal ramifications from the January 6 Hearings are still reverberating throughout MAGA world, but Trump’s term in office and lasting presence has emboldened a new generation of Republican leaders who no longer feel the need to hide their extremism.
 

• We all know disgraced former president Donald Trump should be in prison. I bet even most prison abolitionists among us would make an exception for old Teflon Don. Which is great because members of Trump’s legal team are reportedly preparing for the Justice Department to file charges against him, and pondering various legal strategies like ‘throwing his advisers under the bus’ (knowing Trump, that one seems highly likely). Trump himself also believes that running for president again will protect him. Whether or not Attorney General Merrick Garland will pull the trigger and greenlight an indictment remains to be seen.

• Hilariously, Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-FL) was caught on a hot mic assuring Trump-loyal crook Roger Stone that he would get a presidential pardon, and that Gaetz was already working on it. Gaetz seemed to be aware of the “many recording devices” around so he didn’t say much more, but he still said enough to be caught on the lapel mic Stone forgot he was wearing for a Danish film crew. I guess we can add that to the list of things Stone now has in common with Robert Durst. Gaetz also appeared to have shared undisclosed information from the redacted version of the Mueller report, which he had been able to access under a nondisclosure agreement thanks to his seat on the House Judiciary Committee. Gaetz is, of course, now saying that these recordings were “illegal.” Thank you, Matt Gaetz, for giving your colleagues the most elegant reason to remove you from the Judiciary Committee.
   

• Things aren’t going great for Trump’s former Department of Homeland Security leadership, either. The House January 6 Committee interviewed his  acting DHS Secretary Chad Wolf several months ago, and may want to speak to him again after learning that the department also destroyed Wolf’s text messages from January 5 and 6. (DHS Inspector General Joseph Cuffari knew this back in February, but did not alert Congress nor did he attempt to form a coordinated effort to retrieve the texts.) Wolf (who resigned on January 11, 2021) could also have been privy to conversations about whether the cabinet should depose Trump under the 25th Amendment.

Outside of the Trump inner circle, there’s a growing field of Republicans just like Trump who are running to ensure that he and others like him can bend or fully rewrite the Constitution to their will.
 

• The Republican nominee for Maryland attorney general is a longtime 9/11 conspiracy theorist. The Pennsylvania GOP gubernatorial nominee Doug Mastriano, as we all know, is one of the nation’s leading peddlers of the Big Lie, who famously commissioned the wildly antisemitic, far-right social network Gab to consult on his media strategy, and plans to appoint a fellow Big Lie-spreader as secretary of state if elected. Former news anchor Kari Lake and Arizona state lawmaker Mark Finchem have built their respective campaigns for governor and secretary of state of Arizona on the Big Lie, and both are frontrunners in their primaries. 

• A new analysis published today reveals that far-right dark money groups and donors are pouring millions of dollars into secretary of state races across the U.S. this election cycle, a significant spike compared to previous years. The report from the Brennan Center for Justice shows that in battleground states, Republican state secretary candidates have raised more than double their totals in 2018. Even a few years ago, most people didn’t pay much attention to secretary-of-state races, but with increasing Republican attacks on voting rights and an unhinged effort to, even now, overturn the results of the 2020 election, secretaries of state have moved to center stage. 

Republicans are fighting dirty from all sides, and it’s up to our Democratic leaders to fight back with the same level of vigor and creative thinking, or else risk losing everything.

On the latest episode of Political Experts React, Dan is joined by former Kentucky State Rep Charles Booker to break down hot-button political ads - including his own! 

Watch and subscribe by heading to youtube.com/crookedmedia

In a confidential government review obtained and released today by the Washington Post, the White House U.S. Digital Service recommended 18 months ago that the government “break up the current monopoly” that the United Network for Organ Sharing (UNOS) has held on the organ-transplant system in America for the past 36 years. Over 100,000 Americans are on the waiting list for organs, the vast majority of whom need kidneys, and UNOS has resisted and even rejected updating its technology or reforming its transplant system, because it has basically no incentive to do so as the main organization of its kind contracted by the Health Resources and Services Administration. Not only is the system dated and slow, it’s also vulnerable to hacking. Transplant doctors have complained for years about UNOS’s archaic system, which leads to longer wait times, and patient deaths. According to its own data, 22 Americans die each day waiting for organ transplants, and more than 20 percent of all kidneys procured for transplant in the U.S. go unused (i.e. are discarded), much higher than the rates in European countries. Conversations with Health and Human Services officials are ongoing, and the Senate Finance Committee plans to hold a hearing on the system this Wednesday.

Officials confirmed that the United States has killed one of the world’s most-wanted terrorists, Ayman al-Zawahiri in a CIA drone strike in Kabul over the weekend. Zawahiri was the leader of al-Qaeda who oversaw the September 11th attacks with Osama bin Laden.

Vice President Kamala Harris will announce $1 billion in federal aid for climate-related disasters as the death toll from mass flooding in Kentucky rises and 53 wildfires burn across the country.

Right-wing activists and deep-pocketed donors hope to trigger a constitutional convention, and rewrite the Constitution in Trump’s image. 

In an effort to ditch Putin-controlled Russian natural gas, long-closed coal plants are being reopened in Germany to the chagrin of environmentalists.

In a disturbing new report from the American Medical Association, one in five Americans thought it was acceptable to threaten or harass public-health officials over pandemic business closures. 

Amid rising tensions and overt threats of military action from China, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi left Taiwan off of her official itinerary for her forthcoming Asia trip, though that does not necessarily preclude her from traveling there.

Russia turned one of its nuclear power plants (the largest in all of Europe) into a stronghold from which its armed forces are firing rockets at Ukranians, knowing Ukraine cannot return fire. 

Sen. Kyrsten Sinema (D-AZ) is using her leverage (for the love of God someone please primary this woman) over the climate-spending bill by being extremely withholding, giving no indication one way or another whether she will vote with her party.

The Michigan Court of Appeals ruled today that the state’s 1931 law banning all abortions except those to protect the life of the pregnant person can be enforced effective immediately. Gov. Gretchen Whitmer (D-MI) quickly filed an emergency legal request to block its enforcement.

Boston Celtics legend, Civil Rights activist, and 2011 Presidential Medal of Freedom recipient Bill Russell died on Sunday at 88.

New York City Mayor Eric Adams issued an executive order today declaring a state of emergency over the outbreak of Monkeypox.

Cleveland Browns quarterback Deshaun Watson was suspended for six games today after about two-dozen female massage therapists in Texas accused him of sexual misconduct. A whole six games! Wow! Don’t over-exert yourself, NFL!

​​The forthcoming Music Midtown festival in Atlanta has been canceled because the festival can’t ban firearms and weapons in a public park according to Georgia’s so-called “guns everywhere” law. Who could have possibly foreseen a downside to a legal justification for GUNS EVERYWHERE?

When the Dobbs decision overturned Roe vs. Wade, the Supreme Court’s liberal minority warned that “the majority puts the court at the center of the coming ‘interjurisdictional abortion wars.’” That is precisely what’s happening across America. Abortion is now fully or mostly banned in 13 states, with more expected to follow soon. Gov. J.B. Pritzker (D-IL) said in an interview that he has directly urged president Biden to make clear that abortion providers in states controlled by Democrats should be able to ship pills to patients anywhere in the country, whether or not the patient’s state has enacted a ban. President Biden has federal authority over the U.S. mail and Pritzker says that he should use it to specify that no one will be prosecuted for prescribing or receiving abortion pills in that way. But according to the Guttmacher Institute, at least 19 states ban the use of telehealth for medication abortion, and Republicans in many states have introduced or passed legislation to ban or severely restrict abortion medication, showing how complicated this tug-of-war between federal statutes and state laws is shaping up to be. And although Justice Brett Kavanaugh wrote that the court’s decision does not mean a state may block a resident from traveling to another jurisdiction to obtain an abortion, Republican state lawmakers and national anti-abortion groups have indeed put forth plans to restrict out-of-state abortion. The constitutional right to free interstate travel cited by Kavanaugh is only as ironclad as Republican judges say it is. The rights of millions of Americans hang in the balance between the lines of these laws, and we’ve yet to feel the full force of their devastation.

Trees are pretty great, aren’t they? They provide shade, make oxygen, prevent erosion, suck up all that carbon, provide homes for animals - is there anything they can’t do?
 

To turn something as awesome as a tree, and more accurately, a forest of trees, into toilet paper just feels wrong. These trees spent decades growing only to get cut down and flushed down the toilet.

At Reel Paper, we feel the same way. Reel makes a sustainable toilet paper that uses 100% bamboo. Bamboo is a fast-growing grass, and some can grow up to three feet per day! And like grass on a lawn, you can harvest the same stalk over and over without disrupting the plant or soil.

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Let's stop flushing our forests. Reel is tree-free paper for the planet.

A newly elected Aboriginal Australian senator added the word “colonizing” before reciting Queen Elizabeth II’s name in her oath of office.

The Biden administration is trying to block the sale of Simon & Schuster to Penguin Random House, a potential merger between two of the country’s largest publishing houses which would have deleterious effects on readers and authors alike. 

A federal judge sentenced Guy Reffitt, the Texas man who brought a handgun to the Capitol on January 6 and member of the far-right militia group the Texas Three Percenters, to over seven years in prison, the longest sentence handed down so far for an insurrectionist. 

In a recent report from Run Review, Washington, DC was named the most in-shape part of the country, with Massachusetts and Colorado coming in second and third. We could have told you that after watching Senator Josh Hawley (R-MO) flee from the Capitol mob he incited with perfect running form.

In an email about the Missouri Republican primary Trump said he is, “proud to announce that ERIC has my Complete and Total Endorsement!” Both top contenders in the race are named Eric.