Florida Department of Health Orange County chief Dr Raul Pino, the state’s top health official for the Orlando area, has been placed on administrative leave for the thoughtcrime of promoting COVID-19 vaccines, the Orlando Sentinel reports. Pino had been the subject of a complaint over a January 4th email he wrote about low vax rates among health department employees. “I am sorry but in the absence of reasonable and real reasons it is irresponsible not to be vaccinated,” Pino wrote in the email. “We have been at this for two years, we were the first to give vaccines to the masses, we have done more than 300,000 and we are not even at 50% pathetic.”

“As the decision to get vaccinated is a personal medical choice that should be made free from coercion and mandates from employers, the employee in question has been placed on administrative leave, and the Florida Department of Health is conducting an inquiry to determine if any laws were broken,” Florida DOH spokesworm Weesam Khoury told the Sentinel on Tuesday. “The Department is committed to upholding all laws, including the ban on vaccine mandates for government employees and will take appropriate action once additional information is known.”

House Democrats Jim Langevin of Rhode Island and Jerry McNerney of California announced today that they will not seek reelection in 2022, bringing the number of Democrats leaving office to 28, compared to just 13 Republicans, not including members who have retired early, Politico reports.

The first paraplegic in Congress, Langevin is retiring after 22 years in the House.  His announcement was unexpected because he had vowed to run for the House as recently as April 2021, even if Rhode Island would lose a House seat through redistricting.  Rhode Island managed to hold on to both its House seats.

The 70-year-old McNerney is retiring after his district was redrawn as a majority-Hispanic district.  The move is expected to promote the 9th District as a battleground in the Democratic primary, with Democrat Josh Harder, who represents the 10th District, shifting to the 9th.

Three members of a small Pennsylvania borough’s police department have been charged in the shooting death of an 8-year-old girl killed during a melee at a high school football game last August, KYW CBS-3 Philadelphia reports.

Sharon Hill police officers Devon Smith, Sean Dolan and Brian Devaney are each charged with 12 counts of manslaughter and reckless endangerment in connection to the death of 8-year-old Fanta Bility, plus the wounding of three others, Delaware County District Attorney Jack Stollsteimer said Tuesday.

The shooting happened at a local high school football game between Academy Park-Pennsbury football game August 27 when 18-year-old Hasein Strand and 16-year-old Angelo “AJ” Ford got into a confrontation that ultimately led to the two shooting at each other.  The three officers, who were working the gate as security, ran to the fight and started firing, discharging a total of 25 shots.  Strand and Ford were not injured.

Authorities say a gas leak caused an explosion in a group of rowhouse apartments in the Bronx, killing one and injuring eight in the second major disaster to hit that neighborhood’s rental market in two weeks, Reuters reports.

The person killed was a resident of the building, living in the apartment from which the explosion reportedly emanated from.  Five of the injured were NYPD officers who rushed into the building to evacuate survivors.  “We saved lives today,” Mayor Eric Adams, a former police officer himself, said at a news conference.

Nine days ago, a fire at an apartment building in the Bronx caused the death of 17 people from smoke inhalation.

The Capitol riot committee has subpoenaed – and obtained – the phone records of Eric Trump and Kimberley Gulfoyle relevant to the investigation surrounding the riot, CNN reports.

OAN propagandacaster Dan Ball was in full panic mode on Monday, begging viewers to turn up something, anything that would make AT&T Chairman Will Kennard look bad after subsidiary DirecTV announced it would drop OAN from its channel lineup at the expiry of its contract this year.

The Capitol riot committee has subpoenaed Trump 2020 campaign lawyers Rudy Giuliani, Jenna Ellis, and Sidney Powell – the so-called “Elite Strikeforce” team – CNBC reports.

The Florida state Senate Education Committee approved a bill on party lines Tuesday that aims to protect Whites from any sort of “discomfort”over the state’s awful racist past in any business or educational setting, the Associated Press reports. “An individual, by virtue of his or her race or sex, does not bear responsibility for actions committed in the past by other members of the same race or sex. An individual should not be made to feel discomfort, guilt, anguish, or any other form of psychological distress on account of his or her race,” says the bill’s text, a bunch of ambiguous horseshit that Republicans could not name an instance of occurring when pressed by Dems.

“This bill’s not for Blacks, this bill was not for any other race. This was directed to make whites not feel bad about what happened years ago,” said Democratic state Sen. Shevrin Jones, who is Black. “At no point did anyone say white people should be held responsible for what happened, but what I would ask my white counterparts is, are you an enabler of what happened or are you going to say we must talk about history? The governor will continue to go across the country with his racist rhetoric on critical race theory. It’s a problem that doesn’t exist.”

Georgia Governor Brian Kemp, facing a primary challenge from Trump poodle David Perdue, has filed an ethics complaint alleging that Señor Chickenshit isn’t playing fair, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution reports. Stupid story short, a Perdue-aligned PAC called the “Georgia Values Fund” is feeding phone numbers from donors to Perdue’s campaign, a big no-no in those “ethics laws” only libtards care about, since PACs aren’t supposed to directly coordinate with candidates, so Kemp filed the complaint like a pants-wetting soy boy RINO bitch. Fuck his feelings.

Former Oath Keeper Ray Epps, the man suspected of being an FBI agent by MAGA conspiracy freaks who think he somehow started the Capitol riot, will sit for a transcribed interview Friday with the House January 6th Select Committee, his attorney told Politico on Tuesday.

Do you want to IMPLODE the filibuster so the Dems can RAM their voting rights legislation through Congress?

— Ron Johnson (@RonJohnsonWI) January 18, 2022

Click the link above to vote.  As of 3:20 p.m. ET Tuesday, the results were:

Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel said at a press briefing Tuesday there’s “absolutely” enough evidence to bring charges against the fake Trump 2020 electors who tried to scam their way into the electoral college back in December 2020, but is deferring to federal prosecutors for the time being, the Detroit News reports. “I can’t comment on the investigation at this point,” said Nessel when asked if any of the MAGA scumbags were cooperating with her probe. “I will say that, again, I feel confident that we have enough evidence to charge should we decide to pursue that… Not bringing charges immediately does not mean that charges will never be brought if we’re talking about the state. But for all of the reasons I have stated, I think it’s so important to get some better understanding of how all of this came about.”

The new free COVID test site operated by the US Postal service was supposed to launch Wednesday, but we just put in an order and it works, no crashes or errors – for now. Good luck.

White House Press Secretary told reporters at the Tuesday briefing that “We’re now at a stage where Russia at any time could launch an attack on Ukraine.” Also on Tuesday, NATO Secretary General Jens Stotlenberg said he can confirm US intel indicating a “significant Russian presence of intelligence officers or operatives inside Ukraine,” and it’s “absolutely possible” they’re working on “incidents, accidents, false flag operations,” at the command of their oh so brave and strong leader.

Doctor Mary Talley Bowden, a tireless crusader against science and evidence-based medicine, has sued her former employer Houston Methodist Hospital for their internal care and financial data, aiming to expose the global conspiracy behind COVID-19 vaccines, Fox 26 Houston reports. Bowden’s adventures as a wild west medicine woman last made the news when she rode in with the healing horse paste for an ailing lawman in Fort Worth, only to be denied by the courts.

The Texas Secretary of State’s office is blaming “supply chain issues” for the lack of paper used to print voter registration forms, NPR Austin reports. “We are limited in what we can supply this year, because of the paper shortage and the cost constraints due to the price of paper and the supply of paper,” said some lying asshole to the station. Grace Chimene, the president of the League of Women Voters of Texas, said this isn’t unusual ahead of elections, but is particularly bad as she needs the forms to be able to register new voters at naturalization ceremonies. “The League in Houston registers about 30,000 new citizens every year through these ceremonies in the past,” said Chimene of a problem that could be solved if Texas would allow people to register to vote online, or, barring that, at least allow them to print out their own registration forms.

If Hawaii wants to block travel of free Americans because of their medical status than Hawaii should lose its congressional delegation in congress and it’s electoral votes in the electoral college.

— Wendy Rogers (@WendyRogersAZ) January 18, 2022

Democratic members of the House January 6th Select Committee are concerned that subpoenaing Kevin McCarthy, Jim Jordan, and Jim Banks may create a “moral hazard” for Republicans should they retake the majority in 2023, and virtually guarantee a subpoena for Biden and other Dems on pretty much any made up pretext they want, the Guardian reports. This attitude is pretty goddamned stupid, because they’re going to be launching bullshit investigations anyway and they’ve already made it clear they’re fine with the executive branch not complying with oversight.

An anonymous Trump minion tells CNN that the Donald began putting out feelers to his 2020 campaign pollster Tony Fabrizio a few months ago as Biden started sagging. “He started bugging Tony once Biden got under 50% approval. Trump sees him as an honest broker… But if Biden is back up to 46% approval or above, everyone is universally in agreement that Trump is out.”

I am not going to be running for Governor of New York State, but I am going to devote every fiber of my being to fighting inequality in the state of New York. pic.twitter.com/cBZ03BpO0s

— Bill de Blasio (@BilldeBlasio) January 18, 2022