NPR: “With voting rights legislation stalled in the Senate due to Republican opposition, Vice President Harris suggested on Tuesday that she is having conversations about exceptions to the legislative filibuster with senators, while saying in an interview with NPR that she would not negotiate something publicly that the White House has been insisting is up to lawmakers. ‘I believe that of all of the issues that the United States Congress can take up, the right to vote is the right that unlocks all the other rights,’ Harris said. ‘And for that reason, it should be one of its highest priorities.’ Pressed on whether she is advocating that senators support a carveout to the filibuster for voting rights proposed by Rep. James Clyburn, D-S.C., Harris said, ‘I don’t mean this in any offense, but I’m not going to negotiate this way. But I’m certainly having conversations with folks.'”

“The For The People Act, an expansive bill which includes voting access and campaign finance provisions, received the votes of all Democrats in the Senate in June but was blocked by a Republican filibuster, a legislative procedure that requires 60 votes to advance legislation in the Senate, which is currently split 50-50 between the parties. Many progressives in Congress and outside activists have been calling for the end of the filibuster over voting rights. Clyburn, a close ally of President Biden, has suggested allowing bills related to the Constitution, including voting legislation, to pass with a simple majority. That could be achieved with the votes of all 50 Democrats and Harris breaking a tie in her role as president of the Senate. Clyburn told Politico he addressed the idea with Harris. The White House has said Biden does not support ending the filibuster altogether, saying the administration leaves any changes up to the Senate while pointing out that there are also not enough votes to end the filibuster outright, with Democrats Joe Manchin of West Virginia and Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona opposed to such a move. ‘Obviously it’s going to require all the Democrats in the Senate to agree with that approach,’ Harris said, referring to the exception proposed by Clyburn.”

“On January 9, 2021, the FBI received information from a tipster that Kristi Munn entered the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021. During a follow-up interview, the tipster reported that Kristi Munn and other members of her family traveled from Texas to Washington, D.C. for the rally that occurred on January 6, 2021. The tipster provided two screenshots of Kristi Munn’s Facebook account and six screenshots of Kristi Munn’s Snapchat account, which the tipster had seen posted to Kristi Munn’s accounts. The display name on the Facebook account is ‘Kristi Marie Munn’ and the display name on the Snapchat account is ‘Kristi Munn.’ The tipster is a relative of Kristi Munn’s fiancé.”

“The tipster has personally met Kristi Munn and spent time with her during the 2020 Christmas holiday season, which was less than a month before January 6, 2021. The tipster also provided Kristi Munn’s telephone number and claimed that she lived with her fiancé, both of which I verified to be true. One of the Facebook screenshots provided by the tipster was a post of a photograph of Kristi Munn and five additional individuals who were ‘tagged’ in the post as Facebook users Tom Munn, Dawn Munn, Kayli Munn, Minor Child 1 (MC1), and Josh Munn. According to Facebook, when you tag someone, you create a link to their profile. Kristi Munn added text to the photograph: ‘Washington D.C. here we come… #StopTheSteal #TrumpIsMyPresident'” says the FBI affidavit in support of the charges and the photo evidence just keeps getting better and better as you read it.

It really is a dark, hyperreal mirror of some PG-rated family vacation movie from the 90s. The only thing that’s missing is a cameo by Jon Lovitz or Christopher Lloyd as a hillbilly who gives them the wrong directions and they end up at the Capitol of West Virginia with only hours to go before President Trump’s big “Stop the Steal” speech in Washington! And they’re out of gas and broke too! Down on their luck and bummed out after dad Tom was stupid enough to believe that (probably secretly liberal) hillbilly, the Munns just happen to come across a ragtag group of “Bikers for Trump” on their way to DC to see the President’s rally… and I’ll just leave it off there.

Massive hole forms in Florida family's backyard overnight https://t.co/VTvXPljjvn

— Fox News (@FoxNews) July 13, 2021

“The ransomware hacker gang REvil’s websites are offline, about a week and a half after the group’s cyberattack on IT software vendor Kaseya allowed the criminals to breach hundreds of companies around the world. As of Tuesday morning, the group’s public website, the dark-web portal that facilitated its ransom negotiations with victims and the site that victims used to pay those ransoms were offline. In addition to REvil’s websites, ‘all of their infrastructure’ used to control their hacking operations is also dark, said Allan Liska, an intelligence analyst who tracks ransomware for the cybersecurity firm Recorded Future” Politico reports.

“REvil’s public spokesperson, who goes by the pseudonym ‘Unknown,’ ‘hasn’t been active on message boards since last Thursday,’ Liska said. It is unclear why REvil’s public presence has disappeared or whether the outage is permanent or temporary. Ransomware gangs sometimes suffer from internal squabbles that disrupt their operations. The Russian cybercrime gang DarkSide announced that it was ceasing operations shortly after it hacked Colonial Pipeline in May, a breach that caused temporary fuel shortages in the U.S. and raised alarms about cyberattacks on critical infrastructure. President Joe Biden recently vowed to take action against REvil and other Russian-based ransomware gangs if Moscow did not do so itself.”

“A Taco Bell employee was arrested on Monday in Nashville, after she and her coworkers allegedly set off fireworks inside the restaurant, causing the building to catch fire as they watched from afar and accidentally locked themselves out. The incident occurred on July 5, at one of the fast-food chain’s locations in Tennessee’s capital city. But the investigation into how the blaze began took a turn on July 8, when the restaurant’s management called local fire investigators to report that surveillance cameras had captured their employees playing with fireworks inside of the establishment, according to a statement released Monday by the Nashville Fire Department.”

“‘According to the surveillance footage, the employees can be seen locking the doors to the dining room to keep customers from entering the business,’ the fire department said in the statement. ‘The video then shows the employees running around the inside of the store with fireworks in their hands.’ At one point in the video, the employees can be seen going into the men’s bathroom, where they are out of sight of the camera for a short period of time, before returning to the lobby and placing an item into a trash can near the door, according to Nashville FD. ‘Employees are seen using their cell phone cameras to record the trash can from the outside of the restaurant,’ the fire department said. ‘Employees then realized they locked themselves out of the restaurant. The employees tried unsuccessfully to get back into the store. When the employees saw the trash can start to smoke, they called 911 for help.’ The footage has not been released” ABC News reports.

This is so much cooler than what that Nebraska Burger King manager and her staff did when they quit. Some day she’ll be able to say she “went down in a blaze of glory – LITERALLY”. You know, whenever she’s out of jail and finds somewhere that’ll hire her with this on her record.

Texas Tribune: “The Texas House voted Tuesday to send law enforcement to track down Democrats who left the state a day earlier in protest of Republicans’ priority elections bill ‘under warrant of arrest if necessary.’ More than 50 House Democrats left Monday for Washington, D.C., to deny the chamber a quorum as it takes up voting restrictions and other GOP priorities in special session. The impact of the House move is unclear since the Texas law enforcement lacks jurisdiction in the nation’s capital. Meeting shortly after 10 a.m., the House quickly established that it lacked the two-thirds quorum required to do business, with only 80 of 150 members participating in a test vote. Then Rep. Will Metcalf, R-Conroe, chair of the House Administration Committee, moved to issue what is known as a ‘call of the House’ to try to regain quorum.”

“That motion passed 76-4. Metcalf offered another motion, asking that ‘the sergeant at arms, or officers appointed by him, send for all absentees … under warrant of arrest if necessary.’ That motion also passed 76-4. Metcalf’s motions were opposed by four Democrats who were present on the House floor Tuesday morning: Reps. Ryan Guillen of Rio Grande City, Tracy King of Batesville, Eddie Morales Jr. of Eagle Pass and John Turner of Dallas. After Metcalf’s motions passed, Rep. Tony Tinderholt, R-Arlington, sought to move to strip absent Democrats of their committee leadership posts if they do not return by noon Wednesday. The motion did not immediately get a vote, and in a subsequent exchange with Rep. Morgan Meyer, R-Dallas, House Speaker Dade Phelan, R-Beaumont, said committee chairs and vice chairs cannot be removed from their positions under the current chamber rules.”

“Fox ‘News’ is part of the cabal… They fraudulently and prematurely called AZ for Traitor Joe”

– The current top comment on The Gateway Pundit article “Better Late than Never: Tucker Carlson Will Report on ‘New’ Evidence of Voter Fraud in Fulton County GA on Wednesday“, posted Tuesday morning. “Fox News is dead to me. It is just controlled opposition” is the second most-upvoted post.

CNN: “Then-President Donald Trump told a number of his advisers in 2020 that whoever leaked information about his stay in the White House bunker in May of that year had committed treason and should be executed for sharing details about the episode with members of the press, according to excerpts of a new book, obtained by CNN, from Wall Street Journal reporter Michael Bender. Trump, along with then-first lady Melania Trump and their son, Barron, were all taken to the underground bunker for a period of time during the protests spurred by the police killing of George Floyd as protesters gathered outside the building. Bender writes in the book, titled ‘Frankly, We Did Win This Election: The Inside Story of How Trump Lost, that Trump, in the days following his time in the bunker, held a tense meeting with top military, law enforcement and West Wing advisers, in which he aired grievances over the leak.”

“‘Trump boiled over about the bunker story as soon as they arrived and shouted at them to smoke out whoever had leaked it. It was the most upset some aides had ever seen the president,’ Bender writes. ‘Whoever did that, they should be charged with treason!’ Trump yelled. ‘They should be executed!” the book reads. Then-White House chief of staff Mark Meadows ‘repeatedly tried to calm the president as startled aides avoided eye contact,’ Bender writes, adding that Trump’s top aide told his boss: ‘I’m on it. We’re going to find out who did it.’ Trump, angry over the leak for days, ‘repeatedly asked Meadows if he’d found the leaker,’ with his top aide becoming ‘obsessed’ with finding the source, according to the book, which noted that ‘those who said they’d heard the president issue that warning had interpreted the outburst as a sign of a president in panic.'”

The Texas Democrats who have pulled this political stunt by flying to Washington, D.C. almost surely had to show ID to get on their jet, yet they’re throwing a fit because they don’t want basic election integrity steps strengthened in Texas.

🤔 pic.twitter.com/cHDQEMwqte

— Ted Cruz (@tedcruz) July 13, 2021

No point in rehashing the most obvious reason Ted Cruz shouldn’t be criticizing any elected legislator for getting on a plane and leaving when they’ve got a job to do, but here’s that bullshit “they used ID to get on the plane” argument again as if the whole fight is about voter ID.

This cannot be overstated enough: Increased voter ID requirements for absentee ballots are just a small part of the Texas suppression bill. I have a very hard time imagining the Dems going through this much trouble to break quorum if that had been the only change in the bill. Republicans use this lame messaging because they cannot be bothered to address the wider truth that this bill is a solution in need of a problem – and that’s being generous. In reality a state whose Attorney General sued to invalidate the electoral college votes of four other states, and lawmakers of a state party whose former chair wanted to secede from the United States when that lawsuit failed has proven itself to have nothing but contempt for American Democracy and as such has not a shred of legitimacy in deciding how its citizens participate. That this fucking clown Ted Cruz is annoyed with how the Texas Democrats are handling it just adds to the farce.

“Joe Biden is going to Pennsylvania today in a rush in order to stop the Forensic Audit that the Pennsylvania Republican Senate is in the process of doing. Philadelphia was a cesspool of corruption, which will soon be revealed by the audit. Why are they so concerned that a President, who never goes anywhere, would hop onto beautiful Air Force One and head to Philadelphia if it were an honest election? Why not let the audit go forward and make everybody, on both sides, happy? The results will be the results. But they know it was not an honest election, Philadelphia was one of the most corrupt cities in the Country – and so is Detroit, and so is Milwaukee, and so is Atlanta, and Pittsburgh, and Oakland, and Baltimore.”

“Corruption has gone on for years, but in the 2020 Presidential Election Scam, with the mail-in ballots and the use of Covid to cheat, corruption reached new levels. Remember the poll watchers being thrown out, the windows being sealed so nobody could look in, the ballot drops, and all of the other events that took place that changed so rapidly the Big Trump Win on election night. Joe should say go forward with this, with all of these audits. His visit is a joke. He doesn’t need to visit, all he needs to do is let them do an audit and find out what happened. Who knows, maybe they’ll say the election was on the up and up, but many people would be shocked. Let the audit go forward like it is in Arizona, despite 107 Democrat lawyers trying to stop it and failing. Let the Forensic Audit go, Joe. Don’t fight it. Show them how honest it was” says Former Guy’s statement.

Biden is going to Philadelphia on Tuesday to make a speech about voting rights, so of course Trump would take it personally, but the fat bastard is going to be disappointed if he thinks it’ll be about the planned Maricopa-county style “audit” that probably isn’t happening in Pennsylvania.

On Tuesday the Washington Post published an excerpt of “I Alone Can Fix It: Donald J. Trump’s Catastrophic Final Year” by their own Carol D. Leonnig and Philip Rucker. The clip recounts election day 2020 pretty much from beginning to end and it’s uh, not really all that different from any other insider reporting we’ve read in the months since. Axios covered pretty well what happened inside the White House on the night of November 3rd, 2020 in the first episodes of their really solid dual podcast/article series “How it happened” and “Off The Rails” (though the first installment of each is almost verbatim the same material, they diverge in subsequent episodes about the post-election period). The New York Times also reported pretty early on about the MAGA Reich’s reaction to Fox News calling Arizona. This isn’t to say Rucker and Leoning’s is going to be a bad book, but this wasn’t a good pick for an excerpt given the ground already treaded elsewhere.

This excerpt comes on the street date of two other major releases – Wall Street Journal White House Correspondent Michael C. Bender’s “Frankly, We Did Win This Election: The Inside Story of How Trump Lost” and not particularly reliable narrator Michael Wolff’s “Landslide: The Final Days of the Trump Presidency“. Bender’s has had some excellent clips we’ve linked here on National Zero, we’ve purchased copies and will be sharing anything good we come across that hasn’t made it out of the previews. Wolff is another story. We’ve had some mixed opinions on his work, and while his first Trump book “Fire and Fury” caused a hell of a shitshow in early 2018, Wolff’s work has come under questions for accuracy in the years since. Key details from recent excerpt of the new book about election night ran contra to what was reported elsewhere, and arguably even what Fox News viewers themselves would’ve seen when the network confirmed the Arizona call. But if you’re looking for entertaining and accurate in spirit if not in actual verifiable facts then go with Wolff. On cue, Axios has a new clip from Landslide of Trump going apeshit on Brett Kavanaugh.

And if you don’t want to buy either, there’s also “Nightmare Scenario: Inside the Trump Administration’s Response to the Pandemic That Changed History” by the Washington Post’s Damian Paletta and Yasmeen Abutaleb, published last month, another Bob Woodward book – probably in September, Jonathan Karl’s Betrayal, coming in in November, three more completely separate books by New York Times reporters coming in 2022. Probably more than that in reality.

Politico: “From the earliest days of his presidency Donald Trump and his political team worked to re-engineer the infrastructure of the Republican Party, installing allies in top leadership posts in key states. The effect has been dramatic – and continues to reverberate nearly six months after he left office. In Oklahoma, the newly installed party chair is endorsing a primary challenge to GOP Senator James Lankford, the home state incumbent who crossed Trump by voting to uphold results of the November election. In Michigan, the state party chair joked about assassinating two Republican House members who voted to impeach Trump. Arizona’s state chair accused Republican Governor Doug Ducey of nothing less than killing people by restricting the use of hydroxychloroquine, a Trump obsession, in response to the coronavirus pandemic.”

“There and elsewhere, state party chairs have been at the center of a raft of resolutions to censure or rebuke GOP lawmakers deemed insufficiently loyal to Trump. In red states, blue states and swing states, these leaders – nearly all of whom were elected during Trump’s presidency or right after – are redefining the traditional role of the state party chair. They are emerging not just as guardians of the former president’s political legacy, but as chief enforcers of Trumpism within the GOP. It figures to be a boon for him if he runs for another term in 2024, but also carries the risk of tying the party’s fortunes too closely to an ex-president whose political brand is toxic to many voters. ‘It’s purity tests, 100 percent,’ said Landon Brown, a Republican state lawmaker from Wyoming whose state party chair, Frank Eathorne, earned Trump’s public endorsement for reelection this year after the state party censured Rep. Liz Cheney for her vote to impeach Trump. ‘When it comes to the party, what I have started seeing, especially in the past four to five years… it’s much more a hard-line, defined, ‘If you don’t vote this way, you’re not a Republican.'”

“Protesters clashed with police in several areas of South Africa and looters ransacked shopping malls on Tuesday as frustrations over poverty and inequality boiled over into the country’s worst unrest in years. Security officials said the government was working to ensure the violence and looting did not spread further, but they stopped short of declaring a state of emergency. ‘No amount of unhappiness or personal circumstances from our people gives the right to anyone to loot, vandalise and do as they please and break the law,’ Police Minister Bheki Cele told a news conference. The violence was triggered by the jailing of former president Jacob Zuma as his supporters took to the streets last week, but the situation has evolved into an outpouring of anger over persistent poverty and inequality in South Africa 27 years after the end of apartheid.”

“The economic impact of COVID-19 restrictions has exacerbated the problems. Troops were moving in to flashpoints on Tuesday as outnumbered police seemed helpless to prevent attacks and looting on businesses in Zuma’s home province KwaZulu-Natal and in Gauteng province, where the country’s biggest city, Johannesburg, is located. Columns of armoured personnel carriers rolled down highways. Up to 30 people have been killed duringthe unrest, four in Gauteng and 26 in KwaZulu-Natal, according to state and provincial authorities. Police Minister Cele put the official death toll at 10. Shops, petrol stations and government buildings have been forced to close. Looters carried off items ranging from beer and foodstuffs to household appliances, footage showed, and at least one shopping mall was completely trashed. On the streets, protesters hurled stones and police who responded with rubber bullets, witnesses said” – Reuters.

“In his latest round of will-he-or-won’t-he, Donald Trump on Sunday got closer than ever to indicating he will run for president again, telling Fox Business he’s already made up his mind but can’t reveal his answer because of campaign finance issues. The thing is, experts told The Daily Beast, in his quest to avoid violating election laws, Trump may have done just that. Asked on Sunday about a possible 2024 bid, the former president told Fox Business host Maria Bartiromo, ‘I do know my answer, but I can’t reveal it yet because that has to do with campaign financing.’ He added, ‘We’re going to do very well,’ and said CNN and MSNBC ‘are gonna come out and endorse me’ because, he claimed, his candidacy will increase viewership” the Daily Beast reports.

“While Trump is notorious for playing games about the true intentions of his remarks, he’s previously said he’s already made up his mind. But his statements to Bartiromo – including a reference to endorsements – suggest he may have crossed into new territory, at least in the eyes of the Federal Election Commission. For Trump, the question carries consequences for his overall fundraising potential, as well as his work with the dark-money nonprofit backing his social media class-action lawsuit. According to the FEC, a candidate must file official reports with the government after he or she decides to run and raises or spends more than $5,000. However, the agency also provides a ‘testing the waters’ exemption. That allows potential candidates to raise and spend money while they weigh their decision, without having to file reports. That exemption, however, comes with an important caveat: that money used in this period is subject to federal campaign finance limits.”

AP: “President Joe Biden will lay out the ‘moral case’ for voting rights as he faces growing pressure from civil rights activists and other Democrats to combat efforts by Republican-led state legislatures to restrict access to the ballot. Biden has declared that protecting voting rights was the central cause of his presidency, but the White House has taken sharp criticism from allies for not doing more while contending with political headwinds and stubborn Senate math that have greatly restricted its ability to act. Biden’s speech Tuesday in Philadelphia, to be delivered at the National Constitution Center, is intended as the opening salvo of a public pressure campaign, White House aides said, even as legislative options to block voting restrictions face significant obstacles.”

“‘He’ll lay out the moral case for why denying the right to vote is a form of suppression and a form of silencing,’ White House press secretary Jen Psaki said Monday as she previewed the speech. ‘He will redouble his commitment to using every tool at his disposal to continue to fight to protect the fundamental right of Americans to vote against the onslaught of voter suppression laws.’ Several states have enacted voting restrictions, and others are debating them, as Republicans have seized on former President Donald Trump’s false claim of massive voter fraud in the 2020 election as a pretense for curtailing ballot access. Psaki said Monday that Biden will vow to ‘overcome the worst challenge to our democracy since the Civil War.’ But aides have suggested that his address will not contain much in the way of new proposals. Democrats on Capitol Hill have already tried to respond with a sweeping voting and elections bill that Senate Republicans united to block. Most Republicans have similarly dismissed a separate bill, the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act, which would restore sections of the Voting Rights Act that the Supreme Court previously weakened.”

Poor Eduardo Morales.  All he wanted was a beer.  Or eight.

Bar staff kicked him out of the 278 South Bar & Grill in Hiram, Georgia after saying he was too intoxicated to serve.  Rather than simply leaving the bar, Morales went to his Dodge Ram 2500 pickup truck and grabbed a handgun, according to the Atlanta Journal Constitution.

The 34-year-old Morales drove his pickup toward the front door of the bar, firing his gun firing at staff and patrons through the front windows.  He then drove through the front door of the tavern.  He tried backing his truck out of the bar–which didn’t have a drive-thru before Morales created one–but he couldn’t get the truck unstuck.

Patrons and staff overpowered Morales as he tried to re-load the gun, pinning him to the ground until police arrived.  No other shots were fired.  And no one was seriously injured, although one was grazed by a bullet and another was hit twice by the vehicle.

Fox News host (and guy whose bragging about his MMA abilities means he cries if he gets a papercut) Sean Hannity created out of thin air a conspiracy that the US Olympic and Paralympic Committee was going to–gasp!–redesign the American flag that we all pledge allegiance to!

Politico: “Trump and his aides have made efforts to keep QAnon from becoming a prominent feature of Trump events for years. There had been a longstanding (though not always successfully executed) policy at Trump rallies to remove any signs or slogans relating to non-Trump causes, and QAnon merchandising fell into that blanket policy. But as the web of QAnon falsehoods and supporters continues to grow, Trump allies have increasingly viewed the movement as toxic. ‘If we let in one Q shirt out of hundreds of shirts,’ the negative press would be astounding, said one person close to Trump. ‘A picture that’s on the cover of New York Times, with a hundred [QAnon] t-shirts behind him, would be worse’ than him talking about QAnon.”

“Trump associates also told Politico that they had attempted to weed out any QAnon influences – both adherents and postings – getting close to him. As a larger matter, they have downplayed the impact that QAnon has on the MAGA movement overall. ‘Look, there have always been crazy people in politics, there always has been, there’s always going to be, and who gives a shit?’ said one Trump adviser. The attempts at creating distance from QAnon have been complicated, however, by the former president, who has refused to disavow the movement even when described to him as a conspiracy. During the campaign, Trump told NBC’s Savannah Guthrie that he knew ‘very little’ of the group except for their dislike of pedophiles. His non-answer was seen by QAnon adherents as a confirmation of his support… A community that once revolved around Satanic ritual-based conspiracies now seems driven by the belief that the 2020 election was stolen from Trump by a vast conspiracy of shadowy elites, assisted by voting machine companies, a slavish mainstream media, secretive government agencies, and, perhaps, the Chinese government. Unlike other QAnon obsessions, their view that the 2020 election was stolen – while not supported by any evidence – can not be described as fringe. A June poll found one third of Americans believe Joe Biden won the election due to voter fraud, and over one in ten Americans will never accept Biden as president.”