As House Speaker, it was an honor to welcome Americans from across the country to view the annual Lighting of the Capitol Christmas Tree. And as a proud Californian, it is especially exciting that this year’s tree hails from Six Rivers National Forest. pic.twitter.com/8cytQJECXp

— Nancy Pelosi (@SpeakerPelosi) December 1, 2021

Billie Jean King in the Washington Post:  “Oral arguments before the Supreme Court this week in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization mark the court’s third major abortion case since 2016 — and just the latest effort to challenge the right of all women to decide whether to continue their pregnancy prior to viability. Most Americans today can’t remember a time when abortion was a felony in most states, even in instances of rape or incest, but I remember all too well. My own experience obtaining a legal abortion, two years before the landmark Roe v. Wade decision, illustrates why we must never roll back our hard-won reproductive rights.

“In early 1971, I became pregnant. It was unexpected. I was 27 years old and the top-ranked women’s tennis player in the world. I was on the road constantly to help launch the world’s first professional all-women’s tour. In fact, I learned I was pregnant after almost throwing up on court during a match.

“Oh dear God, I thought when the test came back positive. Now what do I do?

“Telling the media I had the flu, I withdrew from a tournament, and my husband and I spent days talking. Although Larry and I were still friends and business partners, our marriage had been shaky for years. We agreed that a woman had the right to decide if and when she wanted to be pregnant. He said he would support whatever choice I made.”

As the Supreme Court holds the future of abortion rights and women’s health in their collective hands, Republican Maine Senator Susan Collins has voiced support for Congress to take up a bill to legalize abortion across the country, NBC News reports.

“Senator Collins supports the right to an abortion and believes that the protections in the Roe and Casey decisions should be passed into law. She has had some conversations with her colleagues about this and is open to further discussions,” Collins spokeswoman Annie Clark told NBC News in an email.

Contradictorily, Collins does not support the Women’s Health Protection Act, a bill that would codify abortion rights into law as set forth in Roe and Casey decisions.  The WHPA has passed the House, and Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer has promised the bill will get a vote in the Senate.

Greg Giberson, a parent of a student at Oxford High School in Michigan, where a sophomore opened fire Tuesday and killed four students, spoke to the Stephanie Miller Show Wednesday about the concern, fear and anger he felt as he spoke to his son on the phone as the shooting was going on.

“NEW: 1/6 Chair @BennieGThompson tells us that the attorney for fmr DOJ official Jeffery Clark (who set to be referred for Criminal Contempt tonight) sent the committee a letter telling them that Clark may invoke his 5th Amendment right. Thompson said the committee responded to the letter, but it won’t stop their vote tonight to refer him for Criminal Contempt of Congress.  ‘He walked out on a deposition,’ Thompson said. ‘That kind of puts you in a weak position to make any type of assertion.’ Clark has not formally invoked the 5th Amendment with his dealings with the committee, but Thompson said his actions indicate that is the direction he is headed.  Thompson said the letter will be ‘discussed’ at tonight’s business meeting.” —Ryan Nobles of CNN

Georgia election worker Wandrea “Shaye” Moss encouraged her mother to get a temporary job as a vote counter.  She never knew that it would throw the pair into the path of conspiracy, hatred and violence wrought by Donald Trump and his acolytes.

According to an exclusive report from Reuters, Moss and her mother, Ruby Freeman, became the targets of death threats, harassment and racial slurs by supporters of Trump after Trump mentioned them by name, first in telephone conversations with Georgia election officials, then in various interviews about his election tampering claims, which have all been debunked.

In his call with Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, a Republican who does not support Trump’s claims, Trump referred to Freeman by name no fewer than 18 times.  Trump called called the 62-year-old temp worker a “professional vote scammer,” a “hustler” and a “known political operative” who “stuffed the ballot boxes” even though Freeman was never involved in a campaign or an election before.

Despite failing to launch its promised social media platform, Donald Trump is seeking to raise $1 billion for his new Trump Media & Technology Group, which earlier this year announced plans to merge the brand new company with blank-check firm Digital World Acquisition Corp., Reuters reports.

The corporate valuation for the venture cited by Trump representatives attempting to lure investors is $3 billion, many times the valuation of $875 million calculated when word of the deal first broke in October.  The Trump-cited valuation is apparently derived from the peak DWAC hit on the day the deal was announced, when it closed at its all-time high of $94.21 after hitting an intraday high of $175.  Since then, the stock has fallen to $44.34, as of Tuesday’s close.  It hovered around $10 per share before the deal was announced.

Neither the Trump camp nor DWAC have presented any significant outlines, plans or products since the proposed merger was announced.  Trump seems to be pitching investors based on the buying frenzy that occurred after the announcement rather than on any products or services that would bring actual value the company.

Newly-minted GOP candidate for a US Senate seat from Pennsylvania, New Jerseyan and political dilettante Mehmet Oz spent part of his first day on the campaign trail recording a podcast with Jordan Peterson, a Canadian academic, who lived in Belgrade, who only eats beef, who says the “masculinity is under assault,” and who spent eight days in medically-induced coma in January 2020 after contracting double pneumonia and fatigue–which sounds strangely like something else.

A woman testified in Ghislaine Maxwell’s trial Thursday and told the court that she was 14 years old when Jeffrey Epstein drove her to meet Donald Trump at Mar-a-Lago, Law and Crime’s Adam Klasfeld reports. The fact that a grown man is showing up with a 14 year old girl who isn’t related to him apparently did not throw any red flags for the Donald at the time is disturbing in and of itself, never mind the fact that he was found dead of suicide in a federal lockup while Trump was president of the United States a decade or two later. Oh and the former federal prosecutor who let Epstein off easy was by then the Secretary of Labor, and the son of the man who hired Epstein to teach math to high school girls in the 70s was the Attorney General.

https://twitter.com/staceyabrams/status/1466140248887418885

Ethan Crumbley, a 15-year-old sophomore at Oxford High School in Michigan, has been charged as an adult with murder, terrorism and other counts for the mass shooting at the school Tuesday, the Associated Press reports.

A fourth student, 17-year-old Justin Shilling, died Wednesday morning as a result of the shooting, hours before the charges were announced by prosecutor Karen McDonald.  McDonald expressed confidence that prosecutors will be able to show the attack was premeditated. “There is a mountain of digital evidence. Videotape, social media, all digital evidence possible,” she said.

The murdered were identified as 16-year-old Tate Myre, 14-year-old Hana St. Juliana and 17-year-old Madisyn Baldwin. Myre died in the back of a deputy’s vehicle as he was racing to the hospital for treatment. At least six people were seriously injured in the attack, which took place in the morning as students were in classes.

Located 30 miles north of Detroit, Oxford is a overwhelmingly white bedroom community of 22,000 people. The high school has 1,600 students and 82 full time teachers.

The Trump social media network “Truth Social” which was a total piece of shit and a complete scam ripoff of an open source library in its earliest pre-alpha stages, missed its self-imposed deadline of by the end of November to launch in an invitation-only beta, CNBC reports.

Officials with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention have confirmed the first case of the coronavirus omicron variant in the United States:  an individual in California who had just returned from South Africa.

“The California and San Francisco Departments of Public Health have confirmed that a recent case of COVID-19 among an individual in California was caused by the Omicron variant (B.1.1.529),” the CDC said in a statement.  “The individual was a traveler who returned from South Africa on November 22, 2021. The individual, who was fully vaccinated and had mild symptoms that are improving, is self-quarantining and has been since testing positive. All close contacts have been contacted and have tested negative.”

For all those freaking the fuck out over the Supreme Court overturning Roe v Wade – rightfully so as it appears to be in serious danger of being gutted in June 2022 or thereabouts – the silver lining is that it’ll light quite the fire under the asses of theretofore “unmotivated” Dem-leaning voters who would’ve sat out the Midterms. Not a sure thing and it’s a battle that you would rather not have to fight, et cetera et cetera, but taking away something that was supposed to be mostly settled law for nearly half a century is definitely going to dial up turnout.

As David Frum puts it: “If you think liberal Twitter is sweating through today’s Supreme Court proceedings, only imagine how the national Republican campaign committees are feeling.”

A 17-year-old boy has succumbed to being shot and injured by the unnamed 15-year-old student who opened fire on fellow students at Oxford High School in Michigan Sunday, the AP reports.

Judge Amy Berman Jackson of the District of Columbia US District Court cited the organizers and speakers at the various rallies held prior to the January 6th domestic terrorist attack at the Capitol for creating the anger and incentive to foment the attack, Politico reports.

The rallies’ organizers “deliberately stoked the flames of fear and discontent and explicitly encouraged [attendees] to go to the Capitol and fight for one reason and one reason only: to make sure the certification of the election didn’t happen,” Jackson said, without mentioning Trump by name, in the sentencing hearing for Russell Peterson, who pleaded guilty to entering the Capitol but did not cause any destruction or injury.

Dani Jahn, Peterson’s attorney, argued that Trump, Giuliani and other bore some responsibility for the violence that occurred January 6th.  Jackson supported the claim to a point: she concurred that the disinformation put forth by Trump supporters was a factor in the defendant’s actions, but noted that those who attacked the Capitol did so by their own volition and therefore bore responsibility for their actions.  Jackson sentenced Peterson to 30 days in jail — twice as much as prosecutors requested — and $500 in restitution.

“The story of me having COVID prior to, or during, the first debate is Fake News. In fact, a test revealed that I did not have COVID prior to the debate” claims the Orange One, denying his former Chief of Staff’s account, which specifically said Trump got a false negative after testing positive.

In an interview with racist Brexiteer Nigel Farage, renowned energy expert Donald Trump cast doubt on UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s proposals to expand wind-based power generation in the country, saying “I think wind is, I think it’s ridiculous” and “Remember, every ten years, you have to replace those monsters. And a lot of times they don’t bother. You know what they do? They just let them rot. They kill all the birds, they are so bad”, The Scotsman reported Wednesday.

“But I’ll tell you with energy, I’m surprised that he would allow that to happen because you have one of the most beautiful countries in the world. And you’re destroying it with all these wind turbines all over the place” said the electricity whiz. Absent from the Scotsman’s report on the interview, which has not been aired yet on British television, was any mention of the potential carcinogenic hazards posed by wind power turbines, something he has advocated for increased awareness of in past.

Wayne County Board of Canvassers member William Hartmann, who made national news last November as he and the other Republican member of the board initially refused to vote to certify the result of the 2020 election in Michigan’s most populous county before caving and trying to rescind the vote, has died of COVID-19 at the age of 63, the Detroit Free Press reports.

It is not known if Hartmann was vaccinated, but he probably wasn’t given “his Facebook page includes posts and memes downplaying the severity of the coronavirus, comparing vaccine passports to Nazi Germany” per the Free Press. Back on November 19th 2020, National Zero reported that Hartmann and Republican colleague Monica Palmer had initially voted to disenfranchise hundreds of thousands of primarily-minority voters in Detroit by not certifying the vote from the city, while both had voted to accept the results from primarily-white suburbs of Wayne County, where error rates were reportedly higher than Detroit.

At the end of the board meeting, after public comments made it clear the denial of certification would be viewed as a partisan, racist act, the pair voted with the two Democrats on the board to certify the elections. By the next day, however, both Republicans flip-flopped again, signing affidavits that they wished to rescind their votes, a moot point given that the certified votes had been sent to the state board of canvassers. The two Republicans have said they wanted to rescind their votes to certify because they were promised that the Michigan Secretary of State promised to audit the vote tallies. Later, Jocelyn Benson said she did not view the agreement among the board members as binding to the state office, a statement Palmer claimed violated the agreement.