CNN: “The Justice Department formally declined to assert executive privilege for potential testimony of at least some witnesses related to the January 6 Capitol attack, a person briefed on the matter said. The decision paves the way for some former Justice Department officials to testify on what they witnessed in the chaotic days between former President Donald Trump’s November election loss and early January when he tried to use the DOJ and other means to advance false claims that he won. Among the potential witnesses from which a special select committee investigating the January 6 insurrection is expected to seek testimony is Jeffrey Rosen, who was acting attorney general in late December and until the inauguration of President Joe Biden.”

“Rosen and other Justice officials were at the center of a pressure campaign by Trump and other White House officials to back his claims of vote fraud. Frustrated that the Justice Department didn’t find evidence of fraud, Trump contemplated replacing Rosen with Jeffrey Clark, another Justice Department official who signaled support for the fraud claims. Rosen and a group of top Justice officials prepared to resign if Clark were made acting attorney general.”

“This is going to be an all-around tough day for House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy – and to a large degree, it’s a self-inflicted predicament. The House’s Jan. 6 committee makes its debut this morning. For the first time across dozens of high-profile Trump-related oversight hearings, GOP leadership and allies will have no voice on the panel. McCarthy’s rather abrupt decision last week to pull his members from the Jan. 6 committee means that Dems – and their two GOP allies on this issue, Liz Cheney (Wyo.) and Adam Kinzinger (Ill.) – will have free rein to set the narrative. (This is why several folks on McCarthy’s own leadership team thought that pulling out was a bad idea.)”

“Uniformed police officers who put their lives on the line to defend Congress on Jan. 6 will testify about the horrors they endured that day… Their testimony alone is a public relations disaster for Republicans. The GOP likes to boast that they “back the blue” and are the party of “law and order.” But in snuffing out the possibility of a nonpartisan commission to probe the Jan. 6 attacks, McCarthy effectively brushed aside pleas from law enforcement to authorize the investigation. Now, after pulling out from the select committee, Republicans (save for Cheney and Kinzinger) will be absent as the officers speak… McCarthy wants to focus attention on Speaker NANCY PELOSI’s unprecedented power move last week to block two Republican lawmakers from the Jan. 6 committee. House GOP leaders will have a press conference this morning before the hearing, no doubt looking to try and frame the day’s proceedings. But ask yourself this: Do you think McCarthy’s complaints about Pelosi will mollify Donald Trump when he turns on his TV and sees no Republicans on the dais defending him?” – Politico.

The Bulwark: “Surely George P. [Bush] wasn’t foolish enough to think that Trump would go so far as to endorse him. But he probably hoped that, by toadying as shamelessly as possible, he might keep Trump on the sidelines and out of endorsing in the race. At the least, he must have hoped that Trump wouldn’t weigh in until much later in the race, when, if George P. had good poll numbers, maybe Trump would be nervous about endorsing someone else. But you must understand that this election, the Republican primary, isn’t until May 1, 2022. It’s more than nine months away. Trump endorsing this early effectively puts an end to the race. It freezes all of the party establishment and money in place, because now to be for George P. is to be against Trump. Ain’t no Texas Republicans fixin’ to do that there foolishness.”

“It may surprise you, but I would argue that this is the best possible outcome. Maybe not for Texas – Ken Paxton, who has been under a longstanding indictment for securities fraud, could potentially wind up in jail as a sitting AG – but for America. Republicans needed an object lesson in the wages of Trumpism. A great many Republicans still believe that if they just get along, they’ll go along. That if they keep their heads down, or truckle under, they can keep running their game. That so long as they’re not like those icky Never Trumpers, the revolution won’t come for them. To go against Trumpism is to court defeat. To abase yourself before it is to add dishonor to the bargain… Men like George P. Bush refused to believe – even at this late date – that the story could possibly be true. Let his shame be a reminder, a warning, and a lesson.”

“Olympic champion Simone Biles out of team finals with apparent injury” reports AP’s Jon Lemire.

“It’s no secret that Gov. Ron DeSantis opposes mask mandates, especially the idea of requiring masks for school children even though many of them remain ineligible for vaccines. But DeSantis on Monday reinforced that idea during a nearly hourlong roundtable he held behind closed doors at the state Capitol. It featured a clinical psychiatrist, a Stanford professor who has been highlighted several times during the pandemic by the governor, a professor in pediatrics, a parent with children at a Tallahassee charter school, and a student who was forced to wear a mask this past year at an elite Tallahassee private school. DeSantis’ office didn’t let the (corporate, err, traditional, err, mainstream, err, not on the home team) media know about the roundtable until hours after it happened or even allow the state-run Florida Channel to record the event. His office did distribute a transcript late Monday evening when asked about it.”

“And that transcript revealed that participants in the event decried the idea of requiring masks for school children with one participant calling it a form of ‘child abuse.’ Several of those who did take part in the event did stress that vaccines work. But DeSantis – whose campaign boasted recently that its ‘Don’t Fauci my Florida’ T-shirts have turned into big sellers – complained about what he called a strict orthodoxy at work when it came to masks. ‘Our confidence in some of the pediatric leadership and some of the medical leadership has been shattered by how these people have reacted to this pandemic by not following data, ignoring countervailing evidence, sticking to their script, regardless of the outcomes, ignoring harms, particularly for young people and being willing and even delighting and imposing, really unspeakable burdens on the most defenseless and least dangerous segment of our society in terms of this, the kids,’ the governor said” – Politico.

Daily Beast: “Rep. Matt Gaetz’s future sister-in-law appears to have had more than enough of the Florida congressman, posting three TikTok videos in the last two days slamming him as ‘weird and creepy’ and ‘a literal pedophile.’ Roxanne Luckey – the sister of Gaetz’s fiancée, Ginger Luckey – was sharply critical of the congressman and his treatment of young women, saying she ‘unfortunately was not surprised’ to have learned Gaetz was under federal investigation for sex crimes. In one video Monday night, Roxanne Luckey told a story about Gaetz pressuring an older man to court her when she was 19. Roxanne called the move ‘weird and creepy’ – and claims Gaetz yelled at her and her mother and went ‘full lawyer’ when she confronted him.”

“‘I saw the character and type of person he is, and when everything came out about him, I honestly, unfortunately, was not surprised,’ Luckey said in one video. ‘As someone who has personally experienced a ton of creepy old politician men hitting on me when I was underage, and experiencing sexual assault at that age by people of power, it’s very disheartening and I have zero tolerance of people like [Gaetz],’ said Roxanne, who in 2020 worked briefly as a White House intern. She added that she is ‘tired of them getting away with this type of stuff.’ After the videos were posted, Ginger Luckey hit back at her sister, telling The Daily Beast she had a history of ‘destructive behavior.’ Roxanne, who is 20 now, said she was sharing her experiences in part because of her interactions with powerful men and her belief that it is important to ‘hold people accountable to whatever extent we can.’ ‘There is so much more to the story and about what I know about Matt Gaetz,’ she added. ‘It is definitely a serious situation.'”

We’re announcing a federal lawsuit against @SpeakerPelosi, the Queen of the #HouseOfHypocrites.

Proud to have @RepThomasMassie and @RepRalphNorman standing by my side.

See you at 10:15 am.

— Marjorie Taylor Greene 🇺🇸 (@mtgreenee) July 27, 2021

https://youtu.be/9_ec3S8brD8

A woman flying a Trump flag out the window of her SUV, which also brandished an NRA sticker, drove her vehicle across the lawn of the Minnesota state capitol building in St. Paul because she apparently thought roads were just a Deep State tyrannical plot to control you.

The joke’s on her:  she was taken into custody.

“Attorney General Ken Paxton has been bravely on the front line in the fight for Texas, and America, against the vicious and very dangerous Radical Left Democrats, and the foolish and unsuspecting RINOs that are destroying our Country. Ken is strong on Crime, Border Security, the Second Amendment, Election Integrity and, above all, our Constitution. He loves our Military and our Vets.”

“It is going to take a PATRIOT like Ken Paxton to advance America First policies in order to Make America Great Again. Ken has my Complete and Total Endorsement for another term as Attorney General of Texas. He is a true Texan who will keep Texas safe – and will never let you down!” says the Orange God Emperor in a surprising, but not shocking, statement.

And Holy. Freaking. Shit. This is hilarious considering how badly George P Bush debased himself and his own goddamned father, Jeb! by pledging complete obedience to the Orange Pharaoh in his quest to win the Donald’s favor, even printing koozies that made it look like Georgie already had his endorsement. After all that, the lazy-eyed reprobate Ken Paxton prevails.

“Billy Graham’s grandson, the famed evangelical Pastor Jonathan Lotz, has been hospitalized with COVID-19. Anne Graham Lotz posted on Facebook that her son is in the ICU. ‘Fifty years ago I could hold my son in my arms. Now I have placed him in the arms of Jesus. He has been hospitalized with COVID and is in critical condition,’ she wrote. Pastor Lotz’s uncle, the Rev. Franklin Graham, came under fire from many Christian evangelicals when he told ABC’s Terry Moran that ‘I think if there were vaccines available in the time of Christ, Jesus would have made reference to them and used them.’ Franklin Graham has since held his ground and continued to push for evangelical communities to get vaccinated” ABC 11 reports. Missing from the details on mom Lotz’s Facebook post of course is whether or not Pastor Jon has been vaxxed himself.

The growing number of Americans who are still unvaccinated, and who are becoming deathly ill from the Covid19 Delta variant has many Americans wondering if anti-vax conspiracy theorists could face criminal or civil liability for spreading false claims and propaganda.

Legal jeopardy for these groups comes from two key areas: libel claims originating from the drug companies that manufactured the vaccines, and proceedings based on 18 USC § 1038: False information and hoaxes.

“House Republicans will offer a privileged resolution this evening on the floor to demand Pelosi seat all of McCarthy’s selections to the Jan. 6 committee” reports Punchbowl’s Jake Sherman.

As Sherman’s co-founder John Bresnahan said chiming in, there’s no chance of this passing, but it’s still funny to see McCarthy try it for a committee investigation he supposedly wants nothing to do with. Then again, aren’t all submissive bottoms in it because they like the abuse?

UPDATE 7/26/2021 7:24 PM EDT: The Hill reports House Dems already spiked it.

Not for nothing, but this is pretty freaking pathetic on Gateway Pundit’s part. We got to this at 11:31 am on Monday. It’s like if New England Patriots Quarterback Cam Newton suddenly got traded to the Philadelphia Eagles and some mid-tier college sports news site reported it five hours before ESPN.com did. The 2020 election and all the ways that the FRAUD WILL BE REVEALED is supposed to be the Gateway Pundit’s bread and butter, and for them to get scooped like this says way more about them than it does National Zero – and, to be clear, this is something separate and apart from our deeply obsessive, borderline-unhealthy dick-measuring contest with The Hill.

In fact, leave us out of this altogether and pretend it was, say, Axios who reported on Sabatini’s little crusade and you still have Gateway Pundit getting punked by the lamestream media. For all the ways they string their readers along with all the bullshit fan fiction on that site they can’t at least be bothered to do it in a timely manner? Or, failing that, do they really need to add BREAKING to the headline, as if it’s some new development that happened minutes before they ran the story?

These guys are such fucking wankers. Yeah, we all already knew that, but sometimes it’s fun to discover new reasons why that go beyond their nonsense right wing content itself.

🚨 REMINDER: Democrats were the ones spreading anti-vax and anti-science conspiracies to play politics and attack Trump before the election.

Now Democrats and the media are desperate to change that narrative and try to blame Republicans.

But it's all on tape.

WATCH ↓ pic.twitter.com/H5vCpZYqW0

— Steve Scalise (@SteveScalise) July 26, 2021

Vice: “Bill’s final semester at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, was already difficult enough.He was part of the final graduating class of survivors of the 2018 shooting, and they all had just marked the third anniversary of the day 17 people were killed, nine of whom were Bill’s classmates. But Bill also had to deal with his father’s daily accusations that the shooting was a hoax and that the shooter, Bill, and all his classmates were paid pawns in a grand conspiracy orchestrated by some shadowy force. Bill had worked hard to get over his survivor’s guilt after the shooting, but for the past five months, his own father has been triggering it all over again. Bill first posted his story on QAnon Casualties, a Reddit thread dedicated to helping family members and friends of QAnon believers. Vice News spoke to the poster and confirmed the author’s claims about being a survivor of the school shooting. Bill is not the student’s real name as they only spoke to Vice News on the condition of anonymity, citing concerns about attacks from members of QAnon forums if his identity was revealed. As is true for many who fell down the QAnon rabbit hole in recent years, Bill’s dad’s descent coincided with the pandemic.”

“‘It started a couple months into the pandemic with the whole anti-lockdown protests,’ Bill said. ‘His feelings were so strong it turned into facts for him. So if he didn’t like having to wear masks it wouldn’t matter what doctors or scientists said. Anything that contradicted his feelings was wrong. So he turned to the internet to find like-minded people which led him to QAnon.’ But until January, that was as far as it went. Then Bill’s father saw a video of Georgia Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene harassing Parkland survivor David Hogg in 2018, while he was visiting Washington to advocate for stricter gun control. Ever since then, Bill’s father has become convinced the shooting his son survived was a so-called ‘false flag’ event and that the shooter was ‘​​a radical commie actor.'”

“On Tuesday, July 27th, at 1:00 p.m. ET, U.S. Representatives Louie Gohmert (TX-01), Matt Gaetz (FL-01), Paul Gosar (AZ-04), and Marjorie Taylor Greene (GA-14) will hold a press conference outside the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) in Washington, D.C., demanding answers from Attorney General Merrick Garland on the status of January 6th prisoners and related investigations. Last week, Reps. Gohmert, Gaetz, Greene, and Gosar sent a letter to AG Garland requesting a meeting to discuss unanswered questions relating to the treatment of January 6th prisoners.”

“No matter whom you are in this country, you have the right to a fair trial and the right to see the evidence against you, including all potentially exculpatory or exonerating evidence. A plea agreement should not even be offered until these requirements are met. These are basic, fundamental requirements of our law that are ingrained in the justice system of these United States. Disregarding these procedures is a violation of any American citizen’s civil rights. Sadly, there exists two systems of justice in our country today: one for former President Trump along with those who support or don’t hate him, and the other for everyone else. What we are seeing now is harassment and persecution of Trump supporters, many of whom were not even in Washington, DC that day. Even the guilty who committed repugnant acts should not have their rights trampled just to feed the irrational hatred of former President Trump” – Statement on Gohmert’s House.gov site.

Paul Waldman, Washington Post: “When the House select committee exploring the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol begins its investigation Tuesday, it will have to do more than just gather and synthesize information about the insurrection. It will also have to fight every day to defend the investigation itself, against a party determined to discredit it, to spread disinformation and to prevent any real accounting. It will be reminiscent of both of Donald Trump’s impeachments: an effort to investigate and understand an assault on the American system of government conducted while Republicans wave their arms and shout that we shouldn’t be talking about this at all. But the fact that it will make Trump look bad is only the surface reason Republicans oppose this investigation. At a deeper level, they don’t want to draw attention to what it will highlight about them and their supporters.”

“I’m not talking about whether there will be new revelations, alarming pieces of information that had been hidden before now. We might or might not get anything like that. What Republicans really don’t want to see illuminated is not just what happened that awful day, but the forces that produced it – the same forces that still threaten the stability of our democracy. That’s because they see those forces – the anger and hatred, the rejection of the American system of resolving differences, the celebration of violence as a means of achieving political ends, the way social media has become such a potent instrument to spread and organize extremism – not as problems to be solved but as resources for achieving their own political goals.”

“It’s been a while since we’ve heard from Eric Trump. Could it be that it has finally dawned on him he could be in serious legal peril  Trump’s second son, who serves as the Executive Vice President of the Trump Organization, has gone radio silent recently.  He hasn’t made any media appearances in weeks, and his last tweet was 10 days ago and was just a photo of him and his wife, Lara, on a yacht submitted without any comment.  Now, it could just be that Eric is just taking a break from the spotlight. It would be the first time he’s done so in roughly five years, but we suppose it’s possible.  The timing of his little sabbatical, however, is certainly convenient.  It comes at literally the exact same time two of his dad’s closest allies–Tom Barrack, chairman of Trump’s 2017 inauguration committee, and Allen Weisselberg, former CFO of the Trump Organization–were indicted for unrelated crimes. …

“Immediately after Weisselberg was charged, Eric and his older brother Don Jr. hit the media circuit. They defended him on Newsmax and Fox News and called the whole thing a “political vendetta” against their father.  Ivanka Trump, however, didn’t weigh in on the matter has been keeping a very low profile. She’s reportedly been ‘distancing’ herself from her father and the family business. Many legal pundits believe she’s doing so because she knows investigators are coming for her next.  Perhaps Eric has finally gotten the memo too and figured out that, when literally everyone around you is being arrested and charged with felonies and pressured to cooperate with prosecutors on investigations into your family, it’s usually best to zip your lips and wait for things to blow over.” —Graham Gremore of Queerty

https://youtu.be/q_ydih1VCwg

President Joe Biden announced that US military in Iraq will cease combat missions by the start of 2022, marking the end of the American mission in the nation invaded at the order of George W. Bush in 2003, CNN reports.

In an Oval Office meeting with Iraqi Prime Minister Mustafa al-Kadhimi, Biden said that the US mission in Iraq will shift to a training effort for Iraqi military.

Atlanta Journal-Constitution: “With a rising drumbeat of criticism, several Republican Georgia legislators are building a case for the state government to take over Fulton County elections. The newfound power to fire local elections management, created by Georgia’s voting law, worries voting rights advocates, who say it could be abused for partisan purposes to tamper with the heavily Democratic county. They see a threat predicated on relentless attacks – from former President Donald Trump to state lawmakers – that point to problems both real and imagined in the county. Though a state monitor reported sloppy management, three counts of Fulton’s ballots arrived at similar results and state election investigators haven’t found fraud.”

“Democrat Joe Biden beat Trump in the 2020 election, but the Republican and his followers said he was robbed and they targeted Fulton County for much of their ire. Judges have thrown out several lawsuits claiming the presidential election was stolen. Under the new voting law that the Republican-controlled General Assembly passed this year, the State Election Board could replace a county’s election board after a performance review, audit or investigation, giving a temporary superintendent full authority over vote counting, polling places and staffing. ‘What happens if this one single election superintendent refuses to certify any of Fulton’s votes in future elections?’ Maggie Goldman, a Johns Creek real estate agent running for the County Commission, asked during public comment at a recent commission meeting. ‘That would truly be disenfranchising voters. And don’t think it can’t happen.’ Lawmakers are demanding answers from Fulton, with the possibility that unsatisfactory responses could start the takeover process.”