- Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) in a newly-released video shot on January 6th. Choice grandmother-of-nine phrasing.

The January 6 Committee convened a hearing once again today, and somewhat surprisingly after all this time, it revealed even more new, harrowing details. 
 

• Rep. Liz Cheney (R-WY), whose participation in the inquiry cost her her job, said that the committee now has “sufficient information to consider criminal referrals,” for multiple individuals and can issue legislative proposals to “guard against another January 6.” Cheney also noted in her opening statement that the Justice Department is pursuing “many of the issues identified in our prior hearings.” The ongoing Special Grand Jury investigation happening in Fulton County, GA, has also used materials obtained by the January 6 panel, as its findings are cited repeatedly in requests for testimony from District Attorney Fani Willis. 
   

• Newly released behind-the-scenes video shows congressional leaders including House Speaker Nancy Pelosi in a secure location frantically calling then-Vice President Mike Pence and then-Governor of Virginia Ralph Northam (D-VA), and other government officials with authority over security services, as the insurrection unfolded. You know, what the fucking president should have been doing instead of live-tweeting his support for the event. The five highest ranking senators and five highest ranking members of the House were whisked away to a secure military office, a setup that has been in place since the September 11 terrorist attacks in 2001. 
   

• The committee closed its hearing with a unanimous vote to subpoena ole’ Donny himself for documents and testimony, but the subpoena will be moot when the new Congress convenes in January, and if the House majority in November’s midterm elections, the committee will be disbanded next year and the subpoena will not be reissued. Still, the committee was sure to keep Trump at the center of the hearing, playing clips of former staffers who testified that they knew at the time of the election that Trump lost to Biden, and former Trump advisors/Batman villains Roger Stone and Steve Bannon, who predicted before the election how Trump might challenge the results.

And there’s much, much more where that came from!
 

• Today’s installment of the January 6 investigation happened to coincide with another day of the ongoing seditious conspiracy trial for members of the far-right Oath Keepers, including its leader Stewart Rhodes. In an FBI agent’s testimony, jurors were shown a series of online posts that Oath Keepers members in Florida exchanged after Trump tweeted on December 19, 2020 about a “big protest” at the upcoming joint session of Congress to be held on January 6, 2021, with the now-infamous line “Be there, will be wild!” Messages between group members show that this was seen as an open invitation, a directive even, to Trump supporters, and the Oath Keepers were energized by it. Terry Cummings, a member of the Oath Keepers, testified yesterday about a massive cache of weapons the group had stashed in a Virginia hotel room, saying, “I had not seen that many weapons in one location since I was in the military.”
   

• A key aspect of Rhodes’s defense is that he believed that Trump was going to invoke the Insurrection Ac. This was something Trump had tacitly threatened at various points in his presidency. Seditious conspiracy, a Civil War-era charge in part meant to ensure that members of the Confederacy would be barred from ever holding office again, carries a maximum sentence of 20 years in prison. Speaking of traitors holding office, a Washington state school board member named Richard Slaughter (yikes) and his stepson have been charged with assaulting and interfering with police during the insurrection. Slaughter admitted to being present at the riot but denied seeing any crimes committed, saying, “conservatives don’t protest, they have jobs.” Okay, buddy. Enjoy prison!

Some Democratic Party officials were once vocal in expressing a desire to move on from the January 6 insurrection, thinking of it as a distraction from more substantive issues. But with the majority of incoming Republican candidates espousing the Big Lie and hellbent on revenge if they take back control of Congress, it’s imperative that the people responsible are held accountable to the fullest extent of the law, as soon as possible, or we will risk a future of permanent Republican minority rule.

Stop Classroom Censorship

In classrooms and educational spaces across our country, a coordinated attack on our students’ right to learn is underway right now. We need your help to stop unconstitutional classroom censorship bills – sign up today to fight back.  

Instead of encouraging learning, classroom censorship bills effectively gag educators and students from learning and talking about issues related to race and gender that impact their everyday lives. 

We’ll be clear: Every young person has a First Amendment right to read and learn about the history and viewpoints of all communities – including their own identity – in and outside of the classroom. This wave of censorship legislation is attempting to erase the legacy of discrimination and lived experiences of Black and Brown people, women and girls, and LGBTQ+ individuals. And it’s refusing to let students think for themselves.

That’s why the ACLU is already hard at work to fight back against these damaging censorship bills and book bans through lawsuits and fierce advocacy. But while our teams push exhaustively in the courts and the statehouses – public support is also going to make a huge difference in the fight. Add your name today to join us in the fight against classroom censorship.

Thank you for taking action,

The ACLU Team

The Justice Department has released a scathing report finding that prosecutors and sheriffs in Orange County, CA, improperly used a jailhouse-informant program to routinely violate the constitutional rights of criminal defendants. The 63-page report concludes a nearly six-year civil-rights investigation into the Orange County District Attorney’s Office and Sheriff’s Department by DOJ’s Civil Rights Division. The probe was ordered to determine whether the jailhouse-informant program was used improperly to elicit incriminating statements from other criminal defendants, and surprise, it was. The report states that from 2007 through 2016, Orange County violated criminal defendants’ constitutional rights to be represented by counsel, as well as their 14th Amendment rights to due process. Prosecutors are required to disclose to criminal defendants any evidence that is exculpatory and could assist with their defense, and time and again they did not. The Department went on to say that the district attorney’s office “has still not taken adequate steps to ensure that prosecutors understand and carry out their constitutional disclosure obligations.”

The consumer price index increased more than expected as rents climbed faster than at any time since 1990 and the cost of food rose as well. The Federal Reserve will thus likely hike interest rates further next month, despite persistent evidence that rent prices don’t respond to rate hikes.
 

Parkland school shooter Nikolas Cruz was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole, averting the death penalty, after murdering 17 people at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Florida in 2018.

Content warning: child sexual assault. At least two children who were victims of incest have been denied abortions in Florida since the state instituted its 15-week abortion ban, with no exceptions for rape or incest, according to Planned Parenthood's Florida public-policy officials. 

Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau will testify in an inquiry into his invocation of the never-before-used Federal Emergencies Act back in February to end protests against vaccine mandates in Ottawa, where a convoy of trucks and cars gridlocked the nation’s capital for weeks. Ottawans are reportedly still reeling from the “extremely rude ruckus,” that “interrupted our reasonable bedtimes on multiple occasions.”

Former German Chancellor Angela Merkel today defended her decision to buy large quantities of natural gas from Russia, which was Germany’s primary supplier when she left office last December. 

A new court filing shows that just days before Attorney General Letitia James (D-NY) filed a lawsuit against disgraced former president Donald Trump and the Trump Organization for fraud, Trump’s lawyers created a new entity in Delaware under the same name, in an apparent attempt to avoid AG James with the shell company. 

Speaking of Russia, the Russian-installed leader of southern Ukraine’s Kherson region has called on civilians to evacuate because of advancing Ukrainian forces, telling them to go to Russia for “leisure and study.” Yeah, leisure and study: normal reasons. 

Tropical storm Karl moved south today, toward Mexico’s Gulf coast, but is luckily unlikely to reach hurricane force. 

Georgia GOP Senate candidate Herschel Walker has repeatedly claimed to have significant Cherokee ancestry on the campaign trail, a claim contradicted by his, uh, mom. Cherokee Nation responded by essentially saying, “Sorry but…who are you?”

Two men have been indicted in Ohio on criminal charges after being accused of cheating last month in a fishing tournament. First cheating in chess, now cheating in fishing? What will white guys who love being alone think of next?

According to a new Associated Press investigation, Russia has undertaken a concerted effort to “adopt” Ukrainian children and bring them up as Russian (and ostensibly loyal to the Kremlin) since its invasion began. Thousands of children have been found in the basements of shelled cities like Mariupol and at orphanages in the Russian-controlled separatist territories of the Donbas region. Among them are children whose parents were killed by Russian forces or who are housed in institutions or foster programs, and are known as “children of the state.” The official state narrative given by Russia is that these children don’t have parents or guardians to look after them, or that they can’t be reached, but the AP found that officials have deported Ukrainian children to Russia or Russian-held territories without their consent, told them they weren’t wanted by their parents, used them for propaganda purposes, and forced them into Russian households where they were given Russian citizenship. It’s the most extensive investigation to date on the trafficking of Ukrainian orphans, and the first to follow the trail of these children all the way to their new captivity in Russia. Raising the children of war in another country or culture can be a marker of genocide, an attempt to erase the identity of an enemy nation. It’s also, unsurprisingly, explicitly supported by Russian President Vladimir Putin. Russian law actually prohibits the adoption of children from other countries, but back in May, Putin signed a decree making it easier for the Russian state to adopt and give citizenship to Ukrainian children without parental care, and harder for Ukraine and surviving relatives to get them back. Russia then holds summer camps and classes for Ukrainian orphans in order to indoctrinate them in the kind of blind patriotism the Kremlin desires.

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Retirees will get the biggest cost-of-living adjustment in 40 years, with Social Security getting an 8.7 percent increase beginning in January. It’s a long-awaited increase, now if only we could do something about that pesky (and shameful) federal minimum wage!

A federal appeals court has agreed to let New York’s concealed carry gun control law remain in effect until a three-judge panel weighs in on the court ruling that blocked parts of the law. 

A Texas sheriff has certified that the nearly 50 migrants flown to Martha’s Vineyard as part of an abhorrent political stunt by Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R-FL) were victims of a crime, as they were transported from Bexar County, TX under false pretenses. They now qualify for special visas which would have been otherwise unavailable to them. 

The Supreme Court has refused to hear disgraced former president Donald Trump’s appeal over documents the FBI seized from his Mar-a-Lago residence, siding unanimously with the Justice Department and refusing to reinstate a special master’s authority to review a set of key classified documents that he stole.