I will be on summer holiday for the next two weeks, see you in August!   

Trolling...

Newsom attacks red state rival again with Texas newspaper ads calling out Abbott

A move certain to stoke further talk of Newsom's larger ambitions.

By JEREMY B. WHITE

California Gov. Gavin Newsom has taken out Texas newspaper ads assailing Republican Gov. Greg Abbott in a move certain to spur more chatter about Newsom’s potential presidential ambitions.

Newsom went after Abbott on his home turf weeks after doing the same with Florida television spots excoriating Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis. The moves intensified Newsom’s longstanding tactic of using red-state foils to extol California’s progressive agenda and amplified talk about Democrats eyeing White House runs as the party frets about President Joe Biden’s sinking poll numbers.

The full-page Texas newspaper advertisements — which ran in the El Paso Times, Houston Chronicle and Austin American-Statesman — edit a quote from Abbott about “the right to life” being lost to “abortions,” inserting the word “gun violence” instead — a direct rebuke to Abbott’s record on two highly charged issues.

Elevating the contrast, Newsom revealed the advertisements on the same morning he planned to sign legislation that allows Californians to sue illegal gun manufacturers. The bill is directly modeled on a Texas bill allowing people to sue abortion providers, and Newsom has framed it as a direct legal challenge to the conservative Supreme Court that allowed the Texas law to stand.

While Newsom has steadfastly denied he has any intention to seek the presidency in 2024, the Florida and Texas spots have allowed him to leap into the national conversation for a negligible cost. Newsom has urged national Democrats to be more assertive as the U.S. Supreme Court has erased abortion rights and issued other sweeping rulings.

The Texas spots cost about $30,000 — a tiny fraction of the more than $20 million Newsom has on hand for a reelection that’s all but assured. As with the Florida spot, Newsom gave an exclusive look at the Texas ads to a national publication in an effort to generate broad coverage.

Biden has been adamant that he will seek another term. But should Biden decide to step aside, Newsom’s path to the White House would likely be obstructed by Vice President Kamala Harris, a fellow Californian who shares a Bay Area base with Newsom.

Newsom spent last week meeting with White House officials and senators in Washington, D.C., where he lambasted Texas and Florida in a speech accepting an education award. He is set to mingle with other governors in Los Angeles on Friday evening for a Democratic Governors Association fundraiser.

Steve Bannon found guilty of contempt of Congress

Jury found that Bannon "must pay the consequences"

Tierney Sneed and Katelyn Polantz 

In a Justice Department press release touting the conviction, the US Attorney for the District of Columbia said that the "subpoena to Stephen Bannon was not an invitation that could be rejected or ignored."

“Mr. Bannon had an obligation to appear before the House Select Committee to give testimony and provide documents. His refusal to do so was deliberate and now a jury has found that he must pay the consequences," Matthew Graves said.

Steven M. D’Antuono, assistant director in charge of the FBI Washington Field Office, said in the statement that “The tenets of our government rely upon citizens adhering to the established rules of law."

"Lawful tools, such as subpoenas and other legal orders, are critical in our system of government,” D’Antuono said.

Knew exactly...........

They knew exactly who Trump was

By Gloria Borger

It's hard, of course, to choose among the striking revelations in the last episode of season one of the January 6 hearings, but how about this: Top staffers knew exactly who Donald Trump was, and decided to remain anyway.

It's an argument we heard over and over again throughout recent years: Yeah, I coulda left this guy, but I thought it was better to stay so I could be part of the guardrails around Trump.

But here's what we learned during these hearings: There were no guardrails around the then-President, and certainly none strong enough to contain his election fraud mania. In fact, Trump busted through them with great regularity. And when he didn't (as in deciding not to fire his deputy attorney general and replace him with an election denier), it was only because he was told it would look bad for him if his entire Justice Department resigned.

So what we saw instead was a group of people dealing with a man they knew to be morally, intellectually and emotionally unfit for the office.

Even those who working for his reelection effort knew their guy. Texts between Tim Murtaugh, the lead spokesman of Trump's 2020 campaign, and Matthew Wolking, his deputy, following the January 6, 2021, insurrection are a case in point:

Murtaugh: Also shitty not to have even acknowledged the death of the Capitol Police officer. [Murtaugh was referring to Brian Sicknick, the US Capitol Police officer who died a day after responding to the insurrection.]

Wolking: That is enraging to me. Everything he said about supporting law enforcement was a lie

Murtaugh: If he acknowledged the dead cop, he'd be implicitly faulting the mob. And he won't do that because they're his people. ...

Bingo. They knew exactly who he was. But he was their man in 2020.

So what if, way back when, some of these folks had actually — publicly — banded together to tell the truth to the American public. Folks like former Secretary of State Rex Tillerson (who privately called Trump a moron), former national security adviser H.R. McMaster and former White House chief of staff John Kelly. What if they had publicly said the emperor has no clothes or principles? I mean, wasn't his reaction to Charlottesville, when he tried to blame "both sides" after a woman died when White nationalists descended on the Virginia city, a big hint of things to come?

Nah. Although they all left eventually, they convinced themselves that staying had been for the greater good. The President turned out to be Teflon anyway, so why risk the wrath of Trump's thumbs on the keyboard and his followers?

As it turns out, what they said was their sacrifice didn't matter. What the January 6 hearings showed is that Trump's narcissism and his need for adulation outweighed everything else. No adviser could match the affection of his diehard supporters. The mob was beautiful because it loved him and listened to him. Most everyone else—especially then-Vice President Mike Pence— was his enemy.

In the end, his only compatriots were the conspiracy theorists and hangers-on looking for Trump's approval. What they ended up getting was a ticket to infamy — and maybe prosecution.

Remember that anonymous op-ed in 2018 (which we now know that former Homeland Security official Miles Taylor penned)? He wrote that he and his colleagues stayed to save Trump from himself. The internal resistance, he said, was "working from within to frustrate parts of his agenda and worst inclinations. ... But we believe our first duty is to this country and the president continues to act in a manner that is detrimental to the health of our republic."

Well, the hearings showed us that no high-minded devotion to the nation's health could stop this leader intent on overturning an election. No one could tell him, "How about checking in on your vice president?" Pence was in danger at the Capitol, but, as we learned, Trump thought that was fine since Pence had the audacity to abide by the constitution instead of Trump. What's more, there were no presidential calls to the Defense Secretary, the Department of Homeland Security or the National Guard. (But he did speak with Rudy Giuliani.)

At least the Secret Service prevented Trump from heading to the Capitol -- but even that did not come without a fight.

So maybe next time a public official decides to protect a president gone wild, think again. If you know who you're dealing with— and it's bad — the public deserves to know, too. That's the greater good.

'Be Best' fucking cunt....

Melania Trump says she was 'unaware' of the January 6 insurrection as it was happening

By Kate Bennett

Former first lady Melania Trump said in a new interview with Fox that she was "unaware" of the ongoing riot on January 6, 2021, because she was too busy photographing a rug in the White House.

"On January 6, 2021, I was fulfilling one of my duties as First Lady of the United States of America, and accordingly, I was unaware of what was simultaneously transpiring at the US Capitol Building," she said.

Trump said it was her "duty" as first lady to archive the contents of the White House, which is not exactly true. The White House curator and the White House Historical Association are predominantly responsible for keeping a record of the contents of the official White House collection.

"As with all first ladies who preceded me, it was my obligation to record the contents of the White House's historic rooms, including taking archival photographs of all the renovations. Several months in advance, I organized a qualified team of photographers, archivists, and designers to work with me in the White House to ensure perfect execution," she continued. "As required, we scheduled January 6, 2021, to complete the work on behalf of our Nation."

Trump's response comes several weeks after Stephanie Grisham, her former chief of staff, revealed a text message exchange in which the former first lady responded to a tweet Grisham had drafted calling for the violence on Capitol Hill to stop as it was happening. The then-first lady responded with the word, "no," declining to send a statement condemning the insurrection.

In the interview with Fox, Trump claimed she was in the dark about what was happening that day, although it was broadcast worldwide on television and all over social media. Trump said Grisham "failed to provide insight and information" that day.

"Had I been fully informed of all the details, naturally, I would have immediately denounced the violence that occurred at the Capitol Building," Trump said. "And while Ms. Grisham's behavior is disappointing, it is not surprising or an isolated incident."

In response to Trump's statements, Grisham told CNN, "Everything she said is bullshit and she knows it."

Trump waited until five days after the riot to tweet a condemnation of the violence.

Damning case....

The damning case against Trump that the Jan. 6 committee has uncovered -- and what comes next

Analysis by Stephen Collinson

Stay tuned. Season two is coming.

The prime-time finale of the compelling and highly produced television saga otherwise known as the House January 6 hearings on Thursday presented a horror show of presidential dereliction of duty and a cliffhanger promise to return with even more damaging evidence against Donald Trump in September.

At the outset of this summer's hearings, the select committee faced questions critical to its credibility and its prospects of being one of the few investigatory processes to ever hold Trump to account.

• Did it have anything new to add to the already well-known story of January 6, 2021 -- a day of infamy in US history when Americans watched a coup attempt in real time?
• Could it penetrate Trump's West Wing and thwart attempts by the former President and House Republicans to cover up their assault on America's tradition of free elections and peaceful transfers of power?
• Can it prove that the events after the 2020 election and the subsequent riot at the US Capitol were consciously orchestrated by Trump?
• And could it then use that evidence to show criminal intent that might prompt the Justice Department to prosecute the ex-President?
• With Trump itching to launch a new campaign that would test US institutions as never before, could the committee further shift public opinion against a lawless and autocratic ex-President who remains a threat to democracy?

The committee has comprehensively answered at least the first three of those questions and made progress on the other two.

It has also embroidered a broader narrative of an out-of-control President who put his own fantastical belief he won an election above more than two centuries of democratic tradition and the national interest. And, most chillingly, it is advancing a case -- in the words of a key witness, retired conservative Judge J. Michael Luttig -- that Trump remains "a clear and present danger" to US democracy.

As committee Vice Chair Liz Cheney, a Wyoming Republican, put it after Thursday's extraordinary hearing, "Every American must consider this: Can a President who made the choices Donald Trump made during the violence of January 6 ever be trusted with any position of authority in our great nation again?"

The hearings have painted a far more detailed and horrifying picture of the Capitol insurrection than ever before. It got critical testimony from ex-White House counsel Pat Cipollone. Some of Trump's younger aides, like Cassidy Hutchinson, who worked for former chief of staff Mark Meadows, displayed great courage to tell the truth -- shaming years of appeasement of the aberrant ex-President by far more senior Republicans and prompting others to come forward with evidence.

That evidence has exposed a direct and dominant role by Trump in discrediting the 2020 election, making a false case that he won it, and the cascade of events that led to the worst attack on the US Capitol in more than 200 years.

What the committee has established

The hearings might best be compared to a prosecution in a court room, with evidence from multiple documentary sources interspersed with videotaped depositions and live testimony from the most compelling witnesses.

Cheney often opened hearings with a summary to the audience using language like, "You will hear how ex-President Trump ..." as if she were an attorney addressing a jury, in this case the one at home.

This is what the committee has established so far.

• The insurrection was carnage, not the overwrought protest described by Trump allies. Previously unseen film footage from outside and inside the Capitol showed Trump's mob smashing windows, battling with security officers and seeking vengeance against then-Vice President Mike Pence for failing to block President Joe Biden's election win. Capitol Police officer Caroline Edwards testified about a "war scene," adding, "I was slipping in people's blood."
• Trump was told repeatedly he lost the election by campaign aides, officials and lawyers but he persisted in his lies and attempts to steal power.
• Those fraud claims were "idiotic" and devoid of evidence according to multiple witnesses, including Trump's former Attorney General William Barr.
• Trump imposed extreme pressure on Republican officials in key swing states to overturn the election -- like Arizona Republican House Speaker Rusty Bowers, who testified that he chose the Constitution over politics. Georgia election workers, Wandrea "Shaye" Moss and her mother Ruby Freeman, said Trump's intimidation campaign left them afraid to leave their homes.
• Trump was personally involved in schemes to get Pence to overturn the election in Congress -- a power the vice president lacked, and to create slates of fake electors to steal Biden's state victories.
• According to witness testimony, Trump thought Pence, rushed to safety by the Secret Service as the rioters invaded, deserved the calls for him to be hanged. The danger to Pence was real -- the mob got to within 40 feet of him. A committee witness, whose identity was obscured, testified in a recording on Thursday that members of Pence's detail genuinely feared that they would be killed.
• Rioters testified that they came to Washington because Trump asked them to. The ex-President incited the mob at his rally on the Ellipse, and he knew members in the crowd were armed but he exhorted them to march on the Capitol anyway. In fact, he would have gone there with them himself if the Secret Service had let him.
• Trump did not just watch the mayhem unfold on television; he expressly refused to fulfill his duty as president to protect the Capitol and democracy. And he further incited the crowd with a tweet.

How the committee did it

It is fitting that a President who won office partly because of the image he created on a TV program and whose term unfolded like an unhinged daily reality show should find his conduct eviscerated in a new kind of congressional probe that feels more like a streamable drama than a crusty Capitol Hill hearing.

The committee enlisted experienced TV producers to shape its hearings -- two of which unfolded on prime time. Committee members conducting each session worked from a script, as clips of witness depositions were interspersed with other evidence like Capitol Police radio traffic, clips of pitched violence, texts from former White House officials and live testimony.

While key figures like Meadows and other close Trump aides sought to stonewall the committee, it used classic investigatory techniques to piece together the story. People from inside Trump's inner orbit reticent to speak were placed under oath, including his daughter Ivanka, son-in-law Jared Kushner and senior White House officials. Week by week, the shocking video had an effect. More people inside the West Wing on January 6, 2021, came forward.

The courage of Hutchinson set off a surge of personal attacks from Trump world. But that may only have opened a spigot to more testimony and evidence. Cipollone came across as balancing his responsibilities to the office of the President and the doctrine of executive privilege with his duty to history and his own sense of right and wrong. In one compelling example from his deposition played Thursday, he left the damning impression that everyone in the White House that day wanted the rioters to go -- except Trump.

In another effective technique, the committee decried by pro-Trump Republicans as a partisan scam often used Republicans to make the case against the ex-President. Members of the mob told how they thought they were doing Trump's wishes because of what he said. GOP officials like Bowers and Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger testified to his abuses of power. On Thursday, the committee played footage from Fox showing the carnage that Trump watched in real time.

What is next?

At the start of these hearings, it seemed a stretch that the committee could build a case with criminal implications for the ex-President. That could be changing. Some seasoned lawyers believe that the committee has indeed established evidence of intent by Trump to precipitate the horrendous events leading up to and on January 6 -- an important component to any court case.

Yet it is important to remember that as effective as it is, the committee's case is being made solely from the perspective of a prosecution. The panel is able to select snippets of information most advantageous to its case. There has been no cross-examination of witnesses. Weaknesses or contradictions in their recollection or testimony have not been teased out by a defense lawyer.

Then there is the question of whether a potential prosecution of Trump, as a former President, would be in the national interest -- since it could potentially rip even deeper partisan divides in an already internally estranged nation. Establishing a precedent that a former President could be liable to criminal action could be dangerous since it could be misused by future commanders-in-chief to go after their predecessors. These issue could become even more explosive since Trump may soon launch a presidential campaign that would make it easier for him to claim the investigation against him is politically motivated.

Yet the weight of evidence already unearthed by the committee poses an equally grave question. What message will it send to future generations if Trump escapes political and criminal accountability for trying to incite a coup against the US government that he was sworn to protect?

Attorney General Merrick Garland insisted this week that no one is above the law, sparking fresh speculation about the possibility of a Justice Department investigation and potential prosecution of Trump.

Harvard constitutional scholar Laurence Tribe believes the committee's summer hearings have made that outcome more likely.

"The committee, through witnesses like Cassidy Hutchinson and through the testimony that it has recorded under oath, has painted an extremely strong picture of someone who ... was bound to do anything he could in order to hold onto power," he told CNN's Wolf Blitzer Thursday.

"I think the committee has made it much easier for a prosecution to be brought partly because the people of the United States have been more fully informed. You have to get people ready for something as unusual as the prosecution of a former President.

5 takeaways

5 takeaways from the January 6 hearing

The January 6 committee examined what Trump did as staff pleaded for him to intervene during the attack on the Capitol.

By Ben Jacobs

The January 6 committee concluded its first series of public hearings Thursday night with a revelatory look at what then-President Donald Trump was doing, and who was trying to influence him, during the 187 minutes between when he finished his Stop the Steal speech at the rally on January 6, 2021, and when he tweeted a video calling for the rioters at the Capitol to leave.

The committee also heard live testimony from two White House aides — former deputy press secretary Sarah Matthews and former deputy national security adviser Matt Pottinger — both of whom resigned on January 6. And it aired new footage of a still-defiant Trump from the day after the attack.

We also learned that, despite billing this as a finale of sorts, there will be a new round of televised hearings in September. The committee left us with several revelations, though, including:

1) During the siege, Trump watched Fox News and “poured gasoline” on what he saw unfolding

For nearly three hours, according to the committee, Trump watched Fox News as it broadcast live images of the Capitol being breached and the mob attacking law enforcement officers. That matched previous press reports about Trump’s activities at the time.

The committee shared testimony from numerous White House officials reinforcing the fact that Trump did nothing to reach out to law enforcement or military officials during this time. They also provided evidence that, during this period, Trump called Rudy Giuliani, and he called senators to lobby them to support his efforts to overturn the 2020 election.

White House staff, including Matthews and White House counsel Pat Cipollone, were beseeching Trump to communicate something to quell the violence as it began to unfold near the Capitol. Trump, also aware of the violence, instead tweeted disparagingly about Vice President Mike Pence.

“The tweet looked to me like the opposite of what we needed at that moment, which was a de-escalation,” Pottinger said. “It looked like fuel being poured on the fire. That is the moment I decided I would resign.”

“I see the impact that his words have on his supporters,” said Matthews, who had previously worked on Trump’s 2020 election campaign. “They latch onto every tweet and word that he says. For him to tweet out that message about Mike Pence, it was him pouring gasoline on the fire and making it much worse.”

2) Pence’s Secret Service agents feared for their lives

The committee also broadcast testimony from an anonymous White House official who testified that the Secret Service detail of Vice President Mike Pence feared for their lives during the attack on the Capitol.

As the mob breached the second floor outside the Senate, agents were telling goodbye to their families and loved ones on the radio in case they were killed as others worried that they would not be able to successfully evacuate Pence from the building.

“If we lose any more time, we may lose the ability to leave so if we are going to leave, we need to go now,” one said over the radio at that time, according to footage played by the committee.

As this was happening, Trump sent the tweet that egged on the mob against Pence. “Mike “Pence didn’t have the courage to do what should have been done to protect our Country and our Constitution, giving States a chance to certify a corrected set of facts, not the fraudulent or inaccurate ones which they were asked to previously certify. USA demands the truth!” said Trump on his since-deleted account.

3) On January 7, Trump refused to say the election was over

In a series of outtakes from taped remarks he delivered the day after the attack on the Capitol, Trump could not bear to admit defeat. “I don’t want to say the election is over, I just want to say Congress has certified the results,” he said in footage obtained by the committee.

It was a remarkable refusal to acknowledge his defeat, even after people had died in the January 6 riot.

Trump also was pictured stumbling over words and making minor complaints about his script, including quibbling with describing those who went to the Capitol as law-breakers.

4) The humiliation of Josh Hawley

The select committee members have not been averse to calling out their congressional colleagues who supported Trump’s efforts in previous hearings, as it has done with Rep. Scott Perry (R-PA)’s efforts to help install Jeffrey Clark as acting attorney general in early January 2020. On Thursday, they reminded viewers of how critical minority leader Kevin McCarthy was of Trump immediately after the attack, before quickly resuming his status as a Trump loyalist.

But it went out of its way to dunk on Sen. Josh Hawley, the Missouri Republican who was the first member of the upper chamber to publicly say he would object to election results on January 6. It showed the now-infamous picture of Hawley walking into the Senate that day with his fist raised to a crowd of Trump supporters outside the Capitol.

As the picture was shown, Rep Elaine Luria (D-VA) narrated how one female Capitol Police officer was upset that Hawley was riling up the crowd from safely behind police lines while she had to deal with the consequences.

Shortly afterward, footage was shown of Hawley running down the corridors of the Capitol. The hearing room snickered — along with Twitter — as the footage was played and repeated.

5) More is coming from the committee

At the beginning of the hearing, chairman Bennie Thompson (D-MS) said in videotaped remarks from his Covid-19 quarantine that this was not going to be the last hearing. There will be more in September, after the August recess.

While the committee had never ruled out further hearings, the roadmap presented at the first hearing in June had been followed with the exception of the hastily called hearing for the explosive testimony of former White House aide Cassidy Hutchinson. But on Thursday, Sen. Liz Cheney (R-WY) hinted at a variety of new developments as the committee’s investigation progressed through the summer, including recent ones about Secret Service text messages that were erased.

“Doors have opened, new subpoenas have been issued, and the dam has begun to break,” Cheney said.

Voted Against Protecting the Right to Contraception

Almost Every House Republican Just Voted Against Protecting the Right to Contraception

Just look at this margin.

INAE OH

Following the leak of the Supreme Court’s draft opinion to overturn Roe v. Wade, most Republicans stayed quiet. Others were quick to dismiss the “catastrophizing” that after Roe’s fall, other privacy rights long popular with the American public—including gay marriage and access to contraception—would soon be at risk. Well, lo and behold, it turns out those fears were justified; a bill seeking to codify the right to contraception, one of the most “morally acceptable issues” in the country, was almost unanimously rejected by Republicans in the House today. 

Take a look at the 228-195 vote. Only eight Republicans joined Democrats in favor of the Right to Contraception Act, which seeks to enshrine the right to birth control without government restriction. The bill now goes to the Senate where it’s unlikely to get the support of the 10 Republicans needed in order to overcome the filibuster. Together, the measure and its all-but-certain demise stand as further confirmation that Roe’s end is just the beginning of the GOP’s extremist agenda.

Such efforts to create an unequal society and destroy cherished rights shouldn’t come as any surprise. Justice Samuel Alito, who wrote the majority opinion striking down Roe, has authored numerous opinions going after these rights. And recently, as my colleague Pema Levy explained, Justice Clarence Thomas outlined two strategies for ending marriage equality:

Thomas has laid out two paths to achieve his social agenda. One, as the public quickly took note of, is to boldly overturn the cases that recognized the constitutional right to same-sex marriage and struck down bans on sodomy and contraception. This would allow state legislatures to prohibit these things outright. Thomas’ other strategy is more subtle, but it, too, would erode some of the rights we take for granted today, particularly marriage equality. Importantly, Thomas is not making an either/or proposition here; it’s clear that he wants to pursue both paths.

The GOP’s goals to radically change American life have been in motion for some time now. Votes like today just make it official.

Powerful Anti-Abortion Campaign, they will lie to you while looking professional...

Inside the Powerful Anti-Abortion Campaign to Convince You That Everything Is Just Fine

Be careful of what you read about miscarriages and ectopic pregnancies right now.

KIERA BUTLER AND MADDIE OATMAN

Late last month, shortly after the US Supreme Court stripped away federal protection for abortion rights, Dr. Christina Francis, an OB/GYN based in Fort Wayne, Indiana, took to Instagram with an urgent message: She wanted her followers to know that even in states where abortion will soon be illegal, doctors still would be able to terminate pregnancies to save the life of the mother. “Treating ectopic pregnancies or miscarriages or other life-threatening conditions in pregnancy is not the same thing as an abortion,” she said in a video she took of herself from inside a car. “This is very important to clear up because I know that many women are feeling fearful that they might not be able to receive life-saving care if they need it.” Commenters thanked Dr. Francis for her clarification. “The amount of people that don’t know the difference is disturbing,” said one. “So many people spreading false information. Thank you for sharing and educating!”

It’s not hard to see why the post took off: It came across as authoritative and reassuring during a period of great uncertainty. After the repeal of Roe v. Wade, many women and OBYGNs are very worried that they soon won’t be allowed to treat serious complications of pregnancy—like ectopic pregnancy, where a fertilized egg grows outside the womb. If left unattended because of concerns that removing it would be against laws prohibiting abortions, an ectopic pregnancy can potentially kill the mother if the pregnancy’s growth splits the fallopian tube in which it is most commonly housed. The calm clarity from Dr. Francis gave the impression of offering a clear path forward. In the days after she posted her video, it went viral on Instagram and TikTok.

But Dr. Francis left out a few key pieces of information about herself: She is a member of the anti-choice organization American Association of Pro-Life Obstetricians and Gynecologists (AAPLOG), as well as the anti-choice think tank Charlotte Lozier Institute. Her video was part of an all-out disinformation campaign by the anti-abortion movement to minimize the impact of the ruling on Roe—with an assist from powerful social media influencers who built their brand by spreading disinformation about Covid.

In addition to claiming that the law won’t affect pregnant women whose life is in danger, some influencers promote other false narratives downplaying the potential ramifications of the decision, assuring their followers that their access to contraceptives will be untouched, and their own lives won’t change. But that’s misleading, says Dr. Marta Perez, a board-certified OBGYN based in Austin, Texas. Now that Roe has been repealed, she explains, “even normal reproductive health care is going to have an extra layer of complexity and barriers.” People dealing with unexpectedly thorny pregnancies will have a harder time finding the care and treatment they need, no matter what their views on abortion might be. And there is some indication that not everyone would support abortions for conditions that endanger mothers: On July 16, three weeks after the Dobbs decision, Idaho Republicans at their annual convention voted to reject an amendment to their platform that would have made an exception to allow abortions that would save the life of the mother. The margins weren’t even close: 412 delegates voted no to the amendment, while just 164 voted yes.

But even in places that do favor such exemptions, the difference between an abortion and a lifesaving pregnancy termination is not as stark as anti-abortion crusaders claim, Dr. Perez says. “Anyone who has worked in reproductive healthcare,” she says, “has had a patient who has told the doctor, ‘I’m anti-abortion,’ and has [later] needed or wanted an abortion.”

Dr. Francis isn’t the only anti-abortion activist claiming that treating life-threatening emergencies of pregnancy won’t count as abortion. In the weeks since Roe was overturned, a whole host of anti-abortion groups—some with large audiences—have deployed their social media accounts to push this idea, and memes and posts have taken off on Instagram. Live Action, an anti-abortion group with 510,000 followers, has been a powerful engine of disinformation about ectopic pregnancies and dangerous miscarriages, issuing misleading assurances that treatment of these conditions will continue. Similar groups with smaller followings have picked up the messages, as well. In a recent reel, an account called Prolife Millennial, with 28,000 followers, dismissed the notion that anyone would describe the termination of an ectopic pregnancy as an abortion as “100% just some crazy idea someone came up with to fear-monger.”

Contrary to these claims, the majority of obstetricians and gynecologists argue that it is time to be clear about the terminology. “Any end of any pregnancy—whether that happens spontaneously, which is commonly called a miscarriage; whether that is induced, which is commonly called an abortion; or whether that is in a place like the fallopian tube or elsewhere on the ovary or abdomen, which is called an ectopic pregnancy, and shouldn’t go on,” Dr. Perez says. “The ending of all pregnancies can be called an abortion because an abortion is a medical term for the end of pregnancies.”

Of course, the lawmakers enacting abortion bans are generally worried about induced abortions, Dr. Perez explains. But “because actual medical care is nuanced, there are times when these laws, especially when they carry heavy penalties for health care providers, are going to confuse care and it’s going to negatively affect all kinds of reproductive health care.” In 2019, for instance, Ohio lawmakers weighed a bill that would have required doctors to “reimplant an ectopic pregnancy” into a person’s uterus—or face murder charges. (Just to be clear, ectopic pregnancies can be life-threatening if untreated and are never viable). After doctors denounced the idea—one labeled it “pure science fiction”—the bill never made it out of committee.

Still, confusion about ectopic pregnancies remains, leading to real-life consequences. A recent AAPLOG Instagram post argued that “restrictions on abortion do not limit a physician’s ability to treat ectopic pregnancies.” Yet late last year, an Austin, Texas, a pharmacy sent a letter to local OBYGNs saying it would no longer fill prescriptions for methotrexate because of recently passed Texas laws. The drug, which is also used to treat other conditions, including rheumatoid arthritis and cancer, prevents rapidly dividing cells from continuing to divide and is prescribed to some patients with ectopic pregnancies so that the pregnancy doesn’t continue growing in the abnormal and dangerous location. The longer it takes for a patient to find the drug, the more risk of surgery, hemorrhage, or death. According to a letter the Texas Medical Association sent the Texas Medical Board, a state agency, on July 13, one Central Texas hospital told a physician to delay treating a patient with an ectopic pregnancy until it ruptured because the hospital feared litigation, the Dallas Morning News reported. “There aren’t meant to be laws governing these things,” Dr. Perez argues. “They’re supposed to be part of your normal medical care.”

Though lawmakers carved out exceptions for life-threatening situations in many of their abortion bans, these exceptions are often more ambiguous than they first appear. Suppose a patient checks into Massachusetts General Hospital because her water has broken early—a condition called premature rupture of membranes. She will likely be counseled to abort the pregnancy because of the high risk of infection and sepsis, and the dismal prognosis for the fetus, says Dr. Erin Bradley, an OBGYN at Mass General and an associate professor at Harvard Medical School. But in states like Texas, which now criminalizes abortion after six weeks, doctors “have already had to change how they practice medicine because of fears of litigation,” Dr. Bradley explains. After the passage of Senate Bills 4 and 8, at least some Texas hospitals now tell doctors that if the fetus still has a heartbeat they should not intervene with a patient with rupture of membranes unless the patient becomes septic and her life is imminently in danger. At that point, it might be too late.

Dr. Bradley points to early findings from a recent study at two Texas hospitals published in the American Journal of Obstetrics and Gynecology showing that “state mandated expectant management” (the sit-and-wait approach) for pregnancy complications like rupture of membranes was associated with “significant maternal morbidity.” Fifty-seven percent of patients treated with expectant management ended up critically ill (i.e. hemorrhaging or requiring a hysterectomy), compared with 33 percent of patients who chose to have abortions under similar circumstances in states without the legislation. The legislation is “already hurting people in real time, and it’s only gonna get worse,” Dr. Bradley says.

On July 11, the Biden administration attempted to cut through the confusion, telling hospitals in all states that under existing federal law, they must provide abortions if a mother’s life is believed to be at risk, as defined by the Emergency Medical Treatment and Labor Act. As the Department of Health and Human Services reminded hospitals in a letter, if they fail to abide by EMTALA, which preempts state law, they could face government penalties or lose Medicare funding. Days after HHS released its letter, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton filed a lawsuit calling Biden’s guidance illegal and saying that it forces Texas doctors to choose between violating state law or risking losing federal funding. “The Biden Administration seeks to transform every emergency room in the country into a walk-in abortion clinic,” Paxton said when he announced the suit.

A post on Live Action’s website published in response to HHS’s directive had a similar tenor. “Doctors do not have to kill babies in order to save women,” the post stated, claiming that if a pregnant person’s life is at risk, “doctors can instead deliver a baby further along in gestation via an emergency C-section which takes under an hour.” But the belief that a patient in the midst of a medical emergency can always just wait a little longer until they can deliver a fetus—the idea that someone should prioritize the health of the fetus over their own health, future fertility, and potentially their own life—is not only a twisted fantasy, it’s becoming a dark reality.

While doctors struggle to navigate this new landscape, social media stars who built their following promoting conspiracy theories about Covid and vaccines are busy trying to convince their fans that the repeal of Roe is just a legal move and not really that big of a deal. One of those influencers is Christiane Northrup, a vehemently anti-vaccine naturopathic doctor who also embraces parts of the QAnon conspiracy theory. Last week, she claimed to her 77,000 Telegram followers that the striking down of Roe “has nothing to do with banning abortion.” Rather, she insists, it was a decision about states’ rights. “If you need an abortion, go to a state where you can get one if you live somewhere where it’s truly banned (although I doubt that would ever be the case).” On the contrary, there are now 8 states that completely ban abortion, and more are expected to do so soon. 

Was the repeal of Roe really just about states’ rights? “Overturning Roe was about abortion—you cannot separate the two,” counters Elizabeth Nash, the principal policy associate on state issues at the Guttmacher Institute. “We know that this has been a coordinated campaign by anti-abortion organizations and politicians for a very long time.” Why else, when Brett Kavanaugh was elected to the Supreme Court, did states start enacting 6-week and total abortion bans? They wanted to spark a lawsuit that would go to the Supreme Court, Nash explains, “because they were anticipating overturning Roe.” Arguing that it’s about federal overreach is “a calculated move to try to distract people from the fact that we are expecting about half of the states to ban abortion within the next several months.”

Feminist-icon-turned-antivax-superstar Naomi Wolf also made the states’-rights argument in a rambling recent Substack post. Then she took it a step further, adding that the defeat of Roe was a “necessary evolution in the law, in response to women’s ascendancy in America over the last fifty years.” To bolster this argument, Wolf argues that birth control has made abortion all but unnecessary. “An American woman does have choices and powers she did not have in 1973,” she writes. “She can buy contraceptives.”

But can she? Mother Jones has covered how anti-abortion activists are waging a war on hormonal birth control and Plan B by claiming that it’s equivalent to abortion. For example, Allie Beth Stuckey, a conservative pundit and podcaster with 414,000 Instagram followers, pivoted from posting screeds about vaccine mandates, critical race theory, and immigrants to making claims about the implications of the Dobbs decision. In a recent Instagram reel, she took on the issue of birth control. When a follower asked what she thought of the idea that IUDs could become illegal, she answered, “Not true, but it’s very revealing that they’re bringing this up. They are basically conceding what we already know: hormonal birth control, including IUDs, can be abortifacient because they can kill a fertilized egg rather than preventing ovulation.” In some places, this argument seems to be working: A hospital system in Missouri temporarily stopped prescribing the Plan B pill in the days after Roe was overturned.

That decision wasn’t in line with what most experts believe, which is that until a fertilized egg implants in the uterus, it isn’t a pregnancy at all, and therefore no abortion has occurred. For this reason, the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists considers hormonal contraceptives, including the Plan B morning-after pill, preventative rather than abortifacient. “It is a medical fact that no contraceptive method is an abortifacient—period,” says Dr. Perez. “An IUD, Plan B, or any other emergency contraception is not an abortifacient—period.”

And what about the tragic decision that some pregnant people are confronted with, when tests reveal a fetus suffers from serious genetic anomalies? Enter another strain of misleading posts, such as one promoted by Live Action, which seeks to convince readers that abortions aren’t necessary in cases where a fetus has severe birth defects—because, according to the group, the fetus will automatically die “on its own.”

Some fetal anomalies or genetic abnormalities do result in stillbirth, but “not all of them do,” Dr. Perez explains. Some lead to a child who dies soon after birth, or in early childhood. As part of her job, Dr. Perez meets with patients to relay this type of finding and help them process the news. And the patients often end up feeling like “the very best, most compassionate thing for their families is ending the pregnancy,” she says.

Perhaps the most outlandish claim we found came from Peggy Hall, a former professor of education at the University of California, Irvine who built her social media brand over the last few years by railing against vaccine and mask mandates. (Her tagline: “Breathing life back into liberty!”) Last month, a video that she shared with her 51,000 Instagram followers posited that the Supreme Court overturned Roe just to cover up the declining birthrate caused by widespread infertility resulting from the Covid vaccines, which will cause a steep drop in the national abortion rate, since fewer babies will be born. “Now there’s a justification for the drop in abortions!” she said. (There is a great deal to unpack here but suffice to say there is zero evidence that vaccines cause infertility.)

Disinformation about abortion has been ongoing for decades, Nash, the Guttmacher state policy expert notes, so it’s not surprising there’s been so much of it since the Dobbs decision dropped. And with the burgeoning power of social media, it is getting even more difficult to combat. She thinks it would be helpful if there were some kind of disclaimer on the online platforms hosting disinfo-minded influencers. Twitter and Facebook both issued new rules cracking down on users spreading Covid misinformation, for instance. Without any referees, bad information spreads easily online, and “people buy into it because they’re not looking at it critically,” Nash says. “So it makes it difficult to make sure people have real factual information at their fingertips.”

As a result, bad information continues to circulate, warping people’s perceptions of a common and safe medical procedure that has saved countless lives, in more ways than one. And the chasm between the theoretical idea of abortion and the lived reality of millions of people widens. People count on abortions to make “countless life decisions,” wrote three Supreme Court Justices in their Dobbs dissent, from where to live to how to allocate finances to how to approach relationships to how to deal with unanticipated diagnoses during pregnancy. The majority’s opinion to remove that protected right, the justices continued, “exists far from the reality American women actually live.”

Their fears are already coming to pass, as anti-choice groups’ misleading messages about the new laws percolate on social media. In one birth-related Facebook group, a member recently said she was worried about becoming pregnant under the new laws. “I’ve been told they’d criminalize you for miscarriages,” she wrote. “I haven’t heard back from the doctor to confirm if this is true or not.” Her fellow members lined up to reassure her in the comment. “No way, this ruling is all about less government intervention,” responded one. Another added that “there wouldn’t be enough room in the jails” if miscarriages were criminalized. “Everything is getting better,” she wrote. “Blessings to you and your growing family!”  

Need to see the orange turd do the perp walk....

The Jan. 6 Committee Confirmed the Worst Truth About Trump. Now What Will We Do With It?

Ultimately, its investigation is not a battle over facts but over reality.

DAVID CORN

When it comes to one of the most—or perhaps the most—important elements of the January 6 tragedy, the House select committee investigating the matter was largely not needed. The whole world already knows what Donald Trump did while the armed mob that he summoned and directed to the Capitol was savagely assaulting law enforcement officers, ransacking Congress, and trying to defeat the constitutional order: nothing.

Usually an investigation needs to determine who did what and when, but in this instance the basic story is already established. For a long stretch of the insurrectionist attack, Trump took no steps to halt it or to protect the police battling the fight-for-Trump terrorists or the elected officials inside the building, including his own vice president. Perhaps Trump’s worst action throughout his whole effort to overturn the election, this profound dereliction of duty is undeniable. We all saw what didn’t happen. In full public view, Trump did not abide by his oath of office and failed to defend the Constitution and the US government. No subpoena nor any testimony is necessary to prove this fundamental truth. 

Yet, the January 6 committee on Thursday night disclosed new details that rendered the picture of Trump’s worst day as president even worse. It revealed that from the time he returned to the White House after spreading his Big Lie at a rally—and being prevented by the Secret Service from joining the armed mob heading to the Capitol—he ensconced himself in his West Wing dining room for hours. There he watched the riot on Fox News and made not a single call to the military, law enforcement, or Washington, DC, government officials. He rejected numerous pleas from aides, advisers, Republican members of Congress, and family members (Ivanka and Donald Jr.) to intervene and call off the insurrectionists rampaging in the Capitol. Instead, he phoned Republican senators, as part of his scheme to forestall certification of the electoral count. And he spoke at least twice with Rudy Giuliani, his consigliere.

About what? That’s not known. But it’s a good guess that it was about how the riot could be exploited to halt or delay the certification. The committee also noted that there are no official records of what Trump did during these hours and no call records document who else he spoke to. (The committee learned about the Giuliani calls from the lawyer’s own phone records.) 

Through assorted testimony and evidence, the committee made it plain: Trump purposefully did nothing to end the raid. He wanted the violence at the Capitol to continue. As Rep. Adam Kinzinger (R-Ill.) put it, “President Trump did not fail to act [on January 6]… He chose not to act.” Kinzinger and other committee members noted there can be no greater indictment of a president than that he refused to defend America’s own government.

In one of its reveals, the committee showed outtakes of an address Trump filmed on January 7. In a chilling moment, Trump refused to acknowledge the fundamental reality, even after all of the horror at the Capitol. “I don’t want to say the election is over,” he asserted, as he struggled to get through statements scripted for him and intended to be conciliatory. Some lies are too big to give up.

Trump scandals tend to be like blood splatters at the scene of a violent crime. They’re messy because they are comprised of not one distinct act of wrongdoing but multiple and overlapping improbities—some committed in full public view, some conducted in secrecy—that blur together. The final report of special counsel Robert Mueller contained almost too many instances of alleged obstructions of justice committed by Trump. The excesses of his malfeasance make it difficult to keep track of all his misdeeds. And he benefits from the diffusion of attention caused by the dizzying scandal-within-a-scandal chaos he causes. This is why House Democrats were delighted during the first Trump impeachment to have a single and straightforward episode to focus on: Trump’s mobster-like phone call with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy. (“I would like you to do us a favor.”) It was an easy-to-follow extortion attempt, they thought.

Trump’s performance—his inaction—on January 6 stands out within his war on democracy as an act of historic ignominy. “No ambiguity, no nuance,” Rep. Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.) declared of this moment.

Those few hours alone were grounds for impeachment and complete political disqualification. But they occurred within a parade of misconduct: Trump’s relentless lies about the election; his promotion of conspiracy theories; his attempt to muscle the Justice Department into declaring the election results corrupt; his efforts to press state election officials and legislators (“I just want to find 11,780 votes”); his involvement in the fake-elector scheme; his attempt to name a nutty conspiracy theorist (Sidney Powell) special counsel; his pressuring Mike Pence to improperly block the certification of the electoral votes; his incitement of an armed crowd; and more. Refusing to intervene during an act of civil warfare was another item on the list of Trump’s deplorable deeds. But the committee showed how singular this episode was.

Overall, the committee has done an exceptional job of conveying the full tale of Trump’s attempted coup. It reaffirmed important elements already in the public record: Trump was repeatedly informed by his own advisers and state officials that the election results were legitimate. Trump appointees resisted his underhanded effort to overturn the election results. Various House Republicans colluded with Trump to subvert the election so he could retain power. Trump brought nutty conspiracy theorists and far-right extremists into the White House to plot unconstitutional schemes to remain in the White House.

Throughout its hearings, the committee has also presented many new facts about January 6: Giuliani acknowledging to Rusty Bowers, speaker of the Arizona House, that he had no evidence of significant election fraud; Trump being informed that the crowd at his rally included supporters who were armed and still directing that crowd to Capitol Hill; Mark Meadows, then the White House chief of staff, not pushing Trump to take decisive action during the riot.

The committee also excavated other possible instances of serious wrongdoing: Trump allegedly attacking a Secret Service agent when he was prevented from joining the mob heading toward Congress; the Secret Service deleting text messages for a time period that included January 6; and perhaps witness tampering. 

Under the leadership of Rep. Bennie Thompson (D-Miss.) and Cheney, the committee has laid out clearly Trump’s autocratic connivances to sabotage the American political system. It has broken down this affair into discrete components—each one a scandal of its own. None of this is likely to convince most Trump diehards to follow the example of Stephen Ayres, the Trump devotee who was arrested on January 6 and who last week testified that he has since taken off his blinders and realized that the former president had misled him and tens of millions of others with his false claims of a stolen election. But the hearings have reminded other Americans of the danger Trump posed—and still poses. 

Ultimately, the January 6 investigation is not a battle over facts but over reality. The committee, however, has advanced the story, as we journalists say. More importantly, it has confirmed what most Americans saw with their own eyes: Trump and his minions conspired to destroy democracy. He and his crew won’t acknowledge this. But a boost for reality-based Americans is a public service. 

The committee has more work to do. There will be additional hearings in September and, presumably, more disclosures—and a final report at some point. There may be criminal referrals. But the panel has completed much of its main task: documenting and safeguarding the truth. As Cheney noted, “We cannot abandon the truth and remain a free nation.”

All this work now leads to a big question: What do we do as a nation with the truth? Can we handle it? At the start of Thursday night’s hearing, Thompson declared “there needs to be accountability…for every part of this scheme.” But how? That part of the story has yet to be determined.

Incited the Terrorism

Trump Incited the Terrorism of January 6, Investigations Further Show

The House select committee and DOJ continue to uncover the ex-president’s role in the insurrection.

MARK FOLLMAN

The ongoing series of hearings by the House committee investigating January 6 has produced numerous revelations about Donald Trump’s attack on the peaceful transfer of presidential power. The most explosive evidence to date has come from Cassidy Hutchinson, a former top aide in the Trump White House, who described how Trump knowingly urged armed supporters to march on the Capitol and reportedly raged against Secret Service agents who prevented him from joining the mob bent on stopping the certification of Joe Biden’s election victory.

Even after all the chaos and drama of Trump’s presidency, the mounting evidence of how he sought to menace Congress on Jan. 6, 2021, has been shocking—he reportedly even endorsed the potential murder of his own vice president that day. The evidence both underscores and adds context to Trump’s most sinister legacy: his role as the leader of a domestic terrorism movement. The American public has continued to learn about his direct influence on extremists from the House hearings and from the ongoing prosecutions of hundreds of Jan. 6 participants by the Justice Department.

In the aftermath of the insurrection, the DOJ quickly uncovered broad evidence of how Trump had motivated the assault on the Capitol. The picture has since only grown more stark. The case of Guy Reffitt is illustrative: a Three Percenter militia member who had traveled from Texas, Reffitt was convicted by a jury in March on five counts, including weapons charges and obstruction of Congress. In a July 15 sentencing memo, prosecutors asked the court for 15 years in prison for Reffitt, who led a group of rioters against police in breaching the Capitol. The sentencing request is based on a terrorism enhancement, which prosecutors said was appropriate for a crime that “was calculated to influence or affect the conduct of government by intimidation or coercion, or to retaliate against government conduct.”

Case evidence showed that Reffitt came to Washington armed with multiple guns, wore heavy tactical gear, and recorded the siege with a helmet camera, whose footage included him declaring repeatedly to those around him how they would “take” the Capitol. “We’re all going to drag them motherfuckers out kicking and screaming…I just want to see Pelosi’s head hit every fucking stair on the way out.”

His statements included his belief that the rioters had “the numbers to make it happen” and indicated how the goal of purging Congress had been emboldened by Trump: “We’ve got a fucking president, we don’t need much more.”

In a separate court filing from early July, the Justice Department further described a seditious conspiracy case involving groups of Oath Keepers from Florida, North Carolina, and elsewhere who had allegedly trained for “unconventional warfare.” The filing made public new details of anticipated trial evidence: In addition to an arsenal of firearms stashed in a hotel just outside of downtown DC on Jan. 6, various Oath Keepers involved in the conspiracy possessed bomb-making instructions and a “death list” targeting a Georgia election official, according to court records. An unindicted co-conspirator facing other charges allegedly transported explosives to Washington as part of plans to fight for Trump.

During a July 12 hearing, the House committee laid out how Trump moved to light a fuse with far-right extremists beginning about three weeks before the siege. In a prolonged Oval Office confrontation the night of Dec. 18, 2020, Trump was thwarted by White House Counsel Pat Cipollone and other legal aides from using baseless conspiracy theories about voter fraud to make extreme moves to take over the US election system. Trump then began to focus on other means to achieve his goal of staying in power, sending out a now infamous tweet at 1:42 a.m. on Dec. 19: “Big protest in D.C. on January 6th,” he said, kicking off a series of efforts by him to draw a massive crowd of supporters to the nation’s capital. “Be there, will be wild!”

“One of the most historic events in American history has just taken place,” announced high-profile media agitator Alex Jones in a video posted later that day. President Trump, he said, “is now calling on we the people to take action and to show our numbers.”

Other commentators took the theme further. “Red wave, bitch. This is going to be a red wedding going down January 6,” declared one pro-Trump YouTuber, referring to the well-known scene of mass slaughter from Game of Thrones. “January 6, kick that fucking door open. There are gonna be a million-plus geeked up, armed Americans.”

The House committee gave further examples of the subsequent deluge of online extremist activity—long since detailed in court documents and in news and government reports—showing how Trump supporters throughout the country armed and mobilized for violence.

None of that response should have come as a surprise. As I first reported in late 2020, leading national security experts began warning after Trump’s election defeat that he was escalating his use of stochastic terrorism, a method of propagandizing that stirs extremist supporters to violent action. As president, Trump had honed the technique of couching the incitement in plausible deniability. He used ambiguous rhetoric and routinely hid behind claims to have been just “joking”—whether he was targeting the media as the “enemy of the people,” talking of “some very fine people” alongside neo-Nazis in Charlottesville, urging armed mobs to “liberate” state capitols over pandemic restrictions, or encouraging the Proud Boys to “stand back and stand by” in the run-up to the presidential election.

“He is promoting terrorism,” Juliette Kayyem, a former assistant secretary at the Department of Homeland Security in the Obama administration, told me in December 2020. “There is a reluctance to identify the kind of violence that Trump is propagating,” she added, “maybe because it seems too close to calling him a terrorist. You can call him whatever you want, but the tactics he’s using are clearly a form of terrorism.”

Elizabeth Neumann, a counterterrorism expert who served as an assistant secretary at DHS under Trump until early 2020, called out his “coded support” for violent extremists in a Washington Post op-ed that October. “Language from campaign materials and Trump’s extemporaneous speeches at rallies have been used as justification for acts of violence,” she wrote. Kori Schake, a former national security leader in the George W. Bush administration, described Trump that December as “an arsonist of radicalization.”

By the evening of January 5, 2021, Trump’s elation about the next day was clear, according to testimony from former White House deputy press secretary Sarah Matthews. Tens of thousands of his supporters had converged on Washington, legions of them motivated by Trump’s election lies. Many were armed. Many had gathered for a rally at Freedom Plaza close to the White House, taking in firebrand speeches from Trump backers including Roger Stone and Ali Alexander, who led the crowd in a chant of “Victory or death!”

That night, Trump had the door of the Oval Office opened to the Rose Garden, Matthews told the House committee. “It was so loud that you could feel it shaking in the Oval. He was in a very good mood…he had not been in a good mood for weeks leading up to that. And then it seemed like he was in a fantastic mood that evening.”

Trump also put out a telling tweet that night. I included it in my reporting published on the morning of January 6, just hours before the assault on the Capitol, in a story headlined, “Trump Is Inciting Violence Over His Election Defeat.” Trump’s message in the tweet corroborates Matthews’ testimony:

Washington is being inundated with people who don’t want to see an election victory stolen by emboldened Radical Left Democrats. Our Country has had enough, they won’t take it anymore! We hear you (and love you) from the Oval Office. MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN!

In prime time on Thursday night, the House committee plans to hear live testimony from Matthews and former deputy national security adviser Matthew Pottinger, as the committee focuses on Trump’s actions and communications while Congress was under siege. Little is yet known publicly about what Trump did inside the White House for more than three hours during the violence and mayhem. Trump’s activity during a specific period of 187 minutes has essentially remained a black hole.

According to Republican Rep. Adam Kinzinger, who spoke on CBS News’ Face the Nation on Sunday, the committee will show that Trump did very little other than “gleefully watch television during this timeframe.” The president should have been “going ballistic to try to save the Capitol,” Kinzinger said. “He did quite the opposite.”

The committee also plans to show outtakes from a speech Trump recorded and eventually put out on Jan. 7, after advisors had implored him to declare the election over, condemn the violence and call for accountability for those who stormed the Capitol. Trump resisted, according to the Washington Post, instead trying to call the rioters “patriots.”

That followed a short statement recorded on the White House lawn and posted late in the day on Jan. 6, in which Trump reiterated his election fraud lies and told the rioters to go home in the name of law and order. “We love you. You’re very special,” he said, adding, “I know how you feel.”

“It’s very clear that watching this violence was part of the plan,” said Democratic Rep. Elaine Luria, another committee member, according to the Post. “He wanted to see it unfold. And it wasn’t until he realized that it was not going to be successful that he finally stood up and said something.”

Running through a corridor to escape the mob....

The Story of January 6 in Two Josh Hawley Images

From an iconic fist pump to running away from the mob.

TIM MURPHY

About one hour into Thursday’s primetime hearing on the January 6 insurrection, Rep. Elaine Luria (D-Va.) drew viewers’ attention to one of the most infamous images from January 6—a photo of Missouri Republican Sen. Josh Hawley, pumping his fist at a crowd of soon-to-be rioters before he entered the Capitol that morning. 

Watch the pussy run!!!

Hawley was a significant player in the events of that day. As I reported in a profile of Hawley for the magazine, the ultra-ambitious Hawley had deceived conservative audiences about the outcome of the election over the preceding weeks (refusing, for instance, to say whether Biden actually would be the next president), and egged on Trump’s efforts to overturn the election by signaling his intention to object to the certification of the Electoral College results. The fist pump became a symbol for how Republicans brought the nation to that point.

But then Luria showed a previously unseen image of Hawley that day—a clip of the young senator running through a corridor to escape the mob he’d cheered on hours earlier.

That broken form is the gait of a man finally reaping what he sowed. Was all of this a little gratuitous? I mean, sure. The committee has shown a knack for getting in a few extra punches on occasion. But it’s also sort of perfect—a postscript to the earlier image that completes the little parable: The Republican Party, or most of it anyway championed a dangerous movement it never truly controlled. Even those who are delusional enough to

Unmake the Entire Federal Government

If Trump Wins in 2024, His Allies Want to Unmake the Entire Federal Government

The next time they might go beyond the era of small government.

DAN SPINELLI

When Donald Trump won in 2016, after fully not expecting to upon announcing his run, the transition period was a chaotic mess, leaving hundreds of government positions unfilled. This time around, Trump’s allies won’t be asleep at the wheel, according to a new Axios report. But the result might be the same.

Trump’s team is planning on “purging potentially thousands of civil servants and filling career posts with loyalists to him and his ‘America First’ ideology,” Axios‘ Jonathan Swan reported in a lengthy piece Friday morning. 

Using an executive order that would make it easier for Trump to fire federal employees, his White House would proceed to remake the Executive Branch in his image, ultimately turning over “thousands of mid-level staff jobs.”

The impact could go well beyond typical conservative targets such as the Environmental Protection Agency and the Internal Revenue Service. Trump allies are working on plans that would potentially strip layers at the Justice Department—including the FBI, and reaching into national security, intelligence, the State Department and the Pentagon, sources close to the former president say.

The result would be a fully-politicized civil service that, in effect, proves Trump’s own conspiracy theory correct. Once a MAGA Corps is installed, there would be a “Deep State,” just one loyal to Trump. Then his successor has the choice, as the report lays out, of “whether to replace them with her or his own loyalists, or revert to a traditional bureaucracy.”

We got a taste of Trump’s plans in October 2020 when he signed the executive order re-categorizing thousands of federal workers as “Schedule F,” making them lose the employment protections that are afforded to non-political government workers. Biden rescinded the order, but with a full term to implement it, Trump could have the government of his dreams. The Republican fantasy of small government—slashing entire agencies—could be taken even further under this regime.

This plan does not bode well for anyone working in the national security agencies. Axios reported that “as a matter of top priority,” Trump plans to “clean house” at the State Department and intelligence community, get rid of the “woke generals” at the Pentagon, and “remove the top layers of the Justice Department and FBI.”

If you were curious about the Dream Team putting this together, Swan has plenty of details, including the rising importance of Kash Patel, a former aide to Rep. Devin Nunes (R-Calif.), who Trump tried unsuccessfully to put near the top of the CIA before leaving office. Patel, naturally, “recently authored an illustrated children’s book about the Russia investigation in which ‘King Donald’ is a character persecuted by ‘Hillary Queenton and her shifty knight.'” 

Patel, of course, is Trump’s odds-on favorite to run the CIA or FBI, if he can make it through Senate confirmation. Richard Grenell, the shit-posting multitasker who somehow ran the US intelligence community while serving as ambassador to Germany, is Trump’s favorite for Secretary of State. 

There is much more in this piece about the outside groups, including the Heritage Foundation and the Koch network, helping to crowdsource MAGA personnel for Trump. You really should read the full report—and I mean read (somehow Swan got a dispensation from having to use the Axios-brand bullet points). 

Only thing he knows is how to suck dick...

Tucker Carlson Says He Knows Why Sri Lanka Fell. Don’t Believe Him.

Hint: It had nothing to do with a green new deal.

TOM PHILPOTT

In mid-July, Sri Lanka’s government fell, with former president Gotabaya Rajapaksa bolting the country on a pre-dawn flight while protesters frolicked in the pool of his lavish mansion. The island nation of 22 million people, once one of the most prosperous in South Asia, had plunged into a severe economic crisis, characterized by empty grocery shelves, days’ long lines for gasoline, planned electricity outages lasting up to seven hours, and mass protests against the government. What happened? According to one prominent theory, it was all the result of a fateful decree Rajapaksa made in April 2021 to ban synthetic fertilizers and force the nation’s farmers—prodigious producers of rice and tea, among other crops—to embrace organic agriculture. 

Writing in The Wall Street Journal opinion page on July 14, Tunku Varadarajan, a fellow at the conservative American Enterprise Institute and at Columbia University’s Center on Capitalism and Society, summarized the case like this: “In an uprising that has its roots in Mr. Rajapaksa’s imperious decision to impose organic farming on the entire country—which led to widespread hunger after the agricultural economy collapsed—Sri Lanka’s people have wrought the first contra-organic national uprising in history.” 

Similar takes have emerged from Fox News personality Tucker Carlson, who characterized Rajapaksa’s push for organic agriculture as a disaster-inducing “green new deal,” equating it to the stalled, never-implemented proposal by Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D.-N.Y.) and Sen. Ed Markey (D.-Mass.) (even though their GND never included a fertilizer ban or an organic mandate); and from members of the “ecomodernist” movement—a crew, centered around the Breakthrough Institute think-tank, that favors technology-centered, nuclear-powered responses to environmental crises. In a July 9 post on his Substack blog, Michael Shellenberger, the Breakthrough Institute’s co-founder and former president, opined that the “underlying reason for the fall of Sri Lanka is that its leaders fell under the spell of Western green elites peddling organic agriculture.” 

Back in March, months before Rajapaksa’s inglorious exit, the prestigious magazine Foreign Policy ran a similar take on Sri Lanka’s then-already-mounting crisis. Co-authored by BTI executive director Ted Nordhaus, the article suggested that the “ill-conceived national experiment in organic agriculture” had triggered a range of ills—everything from a tumbling currency to rising inflation and poverty rates. 

Did that piece foretell the sequence of events that brought down Rajapaksa? And does the situation prove that any push to slash reliance in agrichemicals anywhere will produce “only misery,” as Nordhaus insisted? Unlike the Fox News and Wall Street Journal commentators, Nordhaus and Shellenberger both acknowledged that factors apart from organic agriculture played roles in Sri Lanka’s meltdown. But the two deans of ecomodernism also took pains to place the blame squarely on the removal of agrichemicals. Spoiler: Things on the ground in Sri Lanka were quite a bit more complicated than what these tirades suggest. 

The fundamental problem with blaming Sri Lanka’s current struggles on the 2021 fertilizer ban is that the economic crisis predates Rajapaksa’s rash move—and may have inspired it.

Former president Gotabay Rajapaksa and his brother, former prime minister, Mahinda Rajapaksa, are members of a political dynasty that ruled the nation between 2005 and 2015, and that regained power in 2019, when Gotabay Rajapaksa was elected president. During their first stint in power, in addition to waging a brutal war to crush a long-running independence movement by the nation’s Tamil minority, the Rajapaksa brothers also pursued questionable economic policies. As The New York Times‘ Emily Schmall reports, during that time, “Sri Lanka took on huge amounts of expensive debt, meant to help turn the country into another Singapore by building ambitious infrastructure projects, including ports. But, so far, many of those projects have stalled, failing to attract the private investment that the government had hoped for.”

Their free spending went beyond big bucks devoted to white elephants like a now-little-used airport and cricket stadium in their home state.  The brothers also dramatically ramped up government subsidies for imported fertilizers, expanding a program designed to boost farm productivity that had been implemented during the US-directed Green Revolution push to industrialize farming in South Asia during the 1960s. Between 2004 and 2007, Sri Lanka’s fertilizer subsidies soared by a factor of nearly seven, settling at a level that took up more than 2 percent of total government spending. 

When they regained power in 2019, the Rajapaksas pushed through tax cuts, further undermining the nation’s shaky ability to keep up with debt repayments. They also changed course on synthetic fertilizers, vowing to phase them out over 10 years and guide the nation’s farmers toward organic agriculture. To explain their about-face, they cited well-documented concerns about a cluster of chronic kidney disease in the nation’s rice-producing areas, which is potentially linked to agrichemicals in drinking water. 

Then came the Covid-19 crisis, which shook the economy in two ways: It flattened Sri Lanka’s booming tourism industry; and reduced the flow of money from thousands of citizens who had been working overseas, many of whom lost their jobs due to pandemic shutdowns. Their remittances—the economic term for money sent home by workers living abroad—are a key source of income for thousands of Sri Lankan families, and bring foreign currency reserves into the country, helping prop up the rupee, the nation’s currency. 

With debt levels high and two of the country’s economic pillars on ice, Sri Lanka hit hard times. In September 2020, the credit-rating agency Moody’s slashed its rating on the country’s debt, a warning to international investors that the nation would have trouble keeping up with loan payments. In short, Moody’s concluded, the country was basically broke—caught between plunging tourism and remittances revenue and the burden of paying off those loans. And as its currency lost value, the cost of imported goods—everything from fertilizers and gasoline to cars—rose, giving rise to inflation that further squeezed household budgets. 

That financial tangle is the backdrop for the government’s infamous decision to ban fertilizer, abruptly ending decades of subididies and halting imports. Nitrogen fertilizer is an energy-intensive product, and its price fluctuates in tune with that of natural gas, its main feedstock. Starting in early 2021, fertilizer prices began an upward ascent, driven by the same pandemic related forces that caused overall fossil fuel prices to rise after crashing during the pandemic’s first phase. In April 2021, with the economy still reeling and fertilizer up nearly a third since the start of the year, President Gotabaya Rajapaksa made his move. No longer would his government ramp down fertilizer use over a decade. Instead, he decreed, the change would happen overnight. He vowed to use the money the government would save from not subsidizing fertilizer to compensate farmers for any yield losses they experienced from the change; and to ramp up production of organic compost as a substitute.  

No credible expert on sustainable farming would ever recommend such an abrupt shift. While it’s possible to dramatically reduce agrichemical use while maintaining robust crop yields, doing so requires farmer buy-in, training, and the time necessary for learning a whole new production system. The Sri Lankan government provided none of those; instead, it simply shut off access to synthetic fertilizer. “Any agricultural system that relies on public subsidies and other forms of support that suddenly stopped would see a decline,” Sophia Murphy, executive director of the Minnesota-based think-tank Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy, told me. She pointed to the example of the United States, where farmers of commodities like corn and soybeans receive billions of dollars of subsidies annually. “I can’t help thinking what would happen to US agricultural output if the US were to abruptly cut all subsidies.” 

Nethmi Bathige, a recent graduate of Minnesota‘s Macalester College who grew up in Sri Lanka, was in the country when the ban came down, doing research on the nation’s tea farmers for her senior thesis under William Moseley, a geography professor who directs the college’s Food, Agriculture & Society Program. In her project, she spent time in the country’s wet zone, where Sri Lanka’s main cash crop, tea, is produced, comparing smallholder farm families practicing organic agriculture with their conventional peers. 

She told me that initially, even though the conventional farmers she worked with had no training or experience in organic methods, many were optimistic about going organic, figuring they’d enrich their fields with government-provided compost and go on more or less as usual. Not surprisingly, give the sudden nature of the ban, “the Sri Lankan government “didn’t have the capacity to produce enough high-quality organic compost,” she said.  As a result, many conventional farmers had to go without soil amendments. Predictably, their yields fell, meaning less income even as prices for things like fuel continued rising. Organic tea farmers, by contrast, had access to plenty of compost through long-established networks, and were able to maintain their normal crop yields and incomes, she found. 

Meanwhile, rice farmers faced similar struggles. Sri Lanka, which had been self-sufficient in the staple crop for decades, now had to tap export markets to satisfy domestic demand, raising its domestic price and putting further strain on its flagging foreign currency reserves. 

In November 2021, the government reversed course, easing the ban and scrambling to import fertilizer. Then came Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, which led to a fresh surge in prices of natural gas and fertilizer. Now permitted to buy fertilizer, Sri Lankan farmers essentially can’t afford it—its price in the beleaguered local currency had risen by a factor of 10 as of April. Other crucial imported goods like fuel and medicine also leapt in price, adding to social unrest. In May, the country defaulted on its foreign debt.

It’s fair enough to say that the Rajapaksa government’s sudden ban on agrichemicals exacerbated the misery being felt by Sri Lankans, whose economic fate has been ripped out of democratic control and placed into the hands of the International Monetary Fund, the institution now tasked with setting terms for restructuring the country’s debt. But it’s ridiculous to single it out as the “underlying” cause, as Shellenberger did. There’s another analysis that makes more sense: the Rajapaksas’ financial mismanagement—exacerbated by the twin black-swan crises of the 2020s, Covid-19 and the Russian invasion of Ukraine—essentially made agrichemicals too expensive for Sri Lankan farmers. 

And they’re not alone. Sri Lanka’s situation is extreme by the standards of other low- and mid-income countries in the southern hemisphere, but debt woes are mounting even as interest rates rise. As the war lurches on, global food, fossil fuel, and fertilizer prices remain at heightened levels. Meanwhile, concurrent heat waves across multiple continents are pinching yields of widely consumed crops like corn, wheat, and rice. In Ghana, The Washington Post recently reported, pricy fertilizer is already forcing hasty organic transitions as “some corn and yam farmers… abandon chemicals in favor of cow dung and chicken droppings, even though that means lower crop yields and the risk of hunger.” 

Back in April 2021, Former President Rajapaksa pitched his sudden fertilizer ban as a public-health measure, citing chemical pollution of water. But he might have had another, more immediate motive. “The country was not [suddenly] hit with chronic kidney disease, but with a chronic shortage of dollars,” former Sri Lanka government advisor Aruna Kulatunga told The New York Times in December, analyzing the ban. That’s a shortage many struggling nations are all too familiar with.

NGC 628

Beautiful spiral galaxy Messier 74 (also known as NGC 628) lies some 32 million light-years away toward the constellation Pisces. An island universe of about 100 billion stars with two prominent spiral arms, M74 has long been admired by astronomers as a perfect example of a grand-design spiral galaxy. M74's central region is brought into a stunning, sharp focus in this recently processed image using publicly available data from the James Webb Space Telescope. The colorized combination of image data sets is from two of Webb's instruments NIRcam and MIRI, operating at near- and mid-infrared wavelengths. It reveals cooler stars and dusty structures in the grand-design spiral galaxy only hinted at in previous space-based views.

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