“Today, Representative Rosendale will vote against a measure to remove certain statues from the Capitol Complex. ‘The South lost, and our Union is strong today, and the great victory of our constitutional government in the Civil War over slavery and secession should be celebrated. Unfortunately, Democrats, animated by the Critical Race Theory concepts of structural racism, microaggressions, and a United States based solely on white supremacy, have chosen to remove statues that underscore the failures of our pre-1861 Constitution. Make no mistake, those who won the West and George Washington are next'” says a statement from Rep. Matt Rosendale (R-MT).

What the fuck is this? Why not just be honest and say “My voters wouldn’t like it because they’re feeling insecure about White Americans’ socioeconomic dominance over minorities and removing statues honoring slave owners would upset them”? What the hell kind of bullshit is this? If the statues are bad, remove them. If you like them where they are, just fucking say it.

This segment’s such one big fucking banana split sundae of Foxian insanity it was hard to pick one single topline, but the ouroboros of the chyron making it sound like the “calls of media bias” are widespread while it’s just one of their yapping dumbasses in that very segment making said complaints wins out. It’s like Trump’s old “many people are saying” song and dance where he would make a claim and pretend it originated elsewhere.

There’s also Lahren saying “Not like I would expect them to put Melania…on the cover of any of these trash fashion magazines. We don’t expect that and, quite honestly, I don’t think we care,” to which Fox’s rarely seen daytime liberal commentator Marie Harf reminds her that they do care if they’re talking about it right now. The whole arc of grievance overall of Jill Biden being loved by the media while Melania Trump was never not going to be the main thesis of this dumb bullshit.

“Former President Donald Trump said Georgia Bulldog football great Herschel Walker told him he was going to run for U.S. Senate, a decision that would make him the front-runner in the chaotic race against Democratic incumbent Raphael Warnock” – Atlanta Journal-Constitution.

Josh Marshall, Talking Points Memo: “There’s been a lot of fretting over the last couple days about whether a group of Republicans who had not actually committed to support the bipartisan mini-bill were no longer going to support it, thus putting in doubt President Biden’s entire infrastructure agenda. But that’s the wrong way to look at this. This has always been and remains an issue in Democrats’ hands – especially Joe Manchin’s hands. Republicans are just players on a chess board in which Democrats are making the moves. And Joe Manchin made this pretty clear this morning. Republicans have been trying to take control of the debate, suggesting they need to be convinced by Joe Biden that there’s absolutely positively no ‘linkage’ or that he’ll agree not to pass any more infrastructure, hard or soft, with only Democratic votes.”

“But Manchin seems clear. We have our mini-bill deal. Let’s take the win and move on. Of course we’re also going to do soft infrastructure through reconciliation. ‘Take that victory and then let’s go… We know [the Republicans] are not going to go to the human infrastructure because of the adjustments to the tax code. We can still go through the process.”

Let me state a simple fact: All the statues that Democrats are trying to remove from the US Capitol are statues of Democrats.

They were sent by Democrat-run legislatures and welcomed by Democrat Speakers of the House.

Tune in soon for my speech on this: https://t.co/5zXyrK785h

— Kevin McCarthy (@SpeakerMcCarthy) June 29, 2021

“The founders of the social media platforms Gab and Parler have hit out at video platform Rumble after Donald Trump was confirmed to have a verified account on the site. The former president set up his Rumble account on Saturday, with his first video being a live stream of his rally in Wellington, Ohio. Andrew Torba, the CEO of Gab, a ‘free speech’ social media app beloved by white supremacists and neo-Nazis, claimed that the same day Trump set up his account on Rumble, the site updated their terms of service to ban hateful content. ‘On the day President Trump joined Rumble they changed their terms of service to ban ‘hate speech’ with an explicit ban on ‘anti-Semitic’ messages, also known as any and all criticism of Israel and/or Jewish people,’ Torba wrote on Gab. ‘No mention of banning Anti-White hatred, which is still allowed. According to WayBackMachine a few days prior their terms did not include these things. Check it for yourself.'”

“John Matze, who founded the conservative platform Parler before being ousted earlier this year, also criticized Rumble for being bankrolled by ‘big tech’ while sharing a headline from fringe conspiracy theorist website National File, which alleges that Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner would not allow him to join Gab unless the platform banned criticism of Jewish people and Israel.’I wonder how much equity or money Rumble had to give… The same rumble that runs entirely on Google ads. Google analytics, etc… IE big tech,’ Marze posted on Gab. ‘Not that I think Trump’s brand is worth anything anymore'” – Newsweek.

Fox News and 21st Century Fox, the network’s parent corporation, has agreed to pay the largest-ever fine assessed by the New York City’s Commission on Human Rights in its six decade history for a string of sexual harassment and abuse cases filed by principally female employees, the Daily Beast reports.

The seven-figure settlement addresses “a pattern of violating of the NYC Human Rights Law,” according to the commission.  It could open a pantheon of new harassment suits because it requires the news network to remove non-disclosure clauses from any person employed by the company over the last four years.  The NDA removal covers on-air talent, including contract employees and contributors, as well as behind-the-scenes workers who file complaints with the city commission.  The agreement also dismissing mandatory arbitration for employees who seek justice, allowing them to sue in civil courts.

The settlement “also demands immediate changes to policies surrounding reporting sexual harassment, retaliation, training, and compliance with the NYC Human Rights Law,” according to a statement from the commission, which added: “The Commission will monitor the network on a quarterly basis for a period of 2 years to ensure compliance.”

Riverfront Times: “Noted local criminal Mark McCloskey played host to a barbecue/political rally on Sunday afternoon, drawing tens of admirers to the sweltering parking lot of a closed outlet mall in St. Louis County to celebrate the one-year anniversary of the time he pulled a gun on a crowd of people who otherwise would never have noticed or cared he existed. Despite the fact that none of the big names who had been billed to speak at the June 27 event showed up, and despite the fact that ticket sales were so dismal attendance was opened to the public for free at the last minute, St. Louis’ most gun-surrendering lawyer plowed right ahead with the First Annual Pink Shirt Guy BBQ and RINO Roast in the St. Louis Mills parking lot. Grievance and untethered delusion topped the menu at the event, with McCloskey and a roster of speakers largely unknown outside the fever swamps of the far right taking turns condemning everything from critical race theory (their newest and most nonsensical bogeyman) to ‘cultural Marxism’ (George Soros’ fault of course, but how dare you level accusations of antisemitism) to the “radical left” agenda of (hahahahaha) Joe Biden.”

“The whole gun-and-pony show was in service of McCloskey’s deeply stupid run for U.S. Senate, because if there’s one thing that qualifies a man for public office in the Republican party in 2021 it’s a willingness to point a firearm at those with whom you disagree politically. Initially, fellow criminal and proponent of armed coups Michael Flynn was scheduled to speak, but he was subbed out for North Carolina Congressman and notably dumb guy Madison Cawthorn, who also did not show up.”

That’s Arizona Congressman Paul Gosar with Nick Fuentes, the leader of the “Groypers” – an avowed pro-Trump, anti-semitic group that started on 4chan or whatever (Groyper is the name for a fatter, more smug looking version of the Pepe the Frog cartoon that 4chaners came up with to evade the copyright fights with Pepe’s creator). Fuentes is known to National Zero readers for his homophobic harassment of gay Trump minion Dick Grenell, and that one of his hardcore fans is a 26-year-old man who was arrested for the Capitol riot because someone recognized his high school varsity football jacket. Fuentes also doesn’t get what the big deal is over Matt Gaetz, since 17 years old isn’t that young. It’s actually kind of insane how many boxes this fucking guy checks – racism, anti-semitism, homophobia, “trolling for the lulz” – if you were imagining fitting every stereotype of a 20-something male Trumpster into one person, it would be Fuentes.

The guy fitting pretty much every stereotype of a Pro-Trump Congressman, Paul Gosar responded to the backlash with: “Not sure why anyone is freaking out. I’ll say this: there are millions of Gen Z, Y and X conservatives. They believe in America First. They will not agree 100% on every issue. No group does. We will not let the left dictate our strategy, alliances and efforts. Ignore the left.”

House Minority Whip Steve Scalise acted surprised Tuesday. “That’s the first time I’m hearing about it. As you heard me in the past be very vocal against any form of white supremacy, so I’ll have to look into that” he said when asked about Gosar and Fuentes’s event plans by CNN’s Manu Raju.

NEW!!!

President Trump says he lost confidence in "Slow Moving Bill Barr" "long before the 2020 Presidential Election Scam" pic.twitter.com/pzqZ08Vnz3

— Liz Harrington (@realLizUSA) June 29, 2021

That’s Trump’s new Jason Miller by the way (doesn’t have a Blue Check yet), posting the Donald’s ongoing freak out over Bill Barr. Trump’s “correction” here is actually partially supported by reporting by Axios’s Jonathan Swan, who in a January episode of the “How it happened” podcast detailed how Trump lost confidence in Barr in June 2020 during the riots following the murder of George Floyd, but held off on firing him because of the upcoming election. Though Trump is now dialing the timeline back another 7 months back to the November 2019 Horowitz report, it is indeed true that Barr had outlived his usefulness to the Orange God Emperor long before the 2020 election. We rate this only 1 out of 4 Fat-occhios on the National Zero Trump fact-check scale.

California state employees will be barred from traveling on business to five states because of those states’ laws that discriminate against the LGBTQ community, California’s attorney general announced Monday.

According to NPR, Democratic Attorney General Rob Bonta said that there will be limited circumstances that will allow state employees to travel to Florida, Arkansas, Montana, North Dakota and West Virginia, raising to seventeen the number of states impacted by the California ban.

The five states have each passed laws discriminating against transgender people, including barring transgender girls from participating in school sports and barring some medical care for transgender individuals. 

Michelle Goldberg, NYT: “Christopher Rufo, a clever propagandist who has done more than anyone else to whip up the national uproar over critical race theory, tweeted out in March an explanation of how he was redefining it. ‘The goal is to have the public read something crazy in the newspaper and immediately think ‘critical race theory.’ We have decodified the term and will recodify it to annex the entire range of cultural constructions that are unpopular with Americans,’ he wrote.”

“Credit where due: Rufo has pretty much succeeded. The debate about critical race theory has become circular and maddening because the phrase itself has been unmoored from any fixed meaning. Progressives argue, correctly, that teachers aren’t instructing young kids in law school scholarship about structural racism. But even some people who oppose bans on critical race theory insist that this misses the point… It’s nearly impossible to have a straightforward discussion of the educational content that’s being labeled critical race theory precisely because people like Rufo have succeeded in turning critical race theory into a catchall term for discussions of race that conservatives don’t like… I’m highly skeptical that many public schools are teaching that ‘every white child and family today is invariably complicit’ in white supremacy. Rather, the campaign against critical race theory is doing exactly what Rufo wanted it to: taking inchoate anger about what’s often derided as wokeness and directing it onto public education. In some ways, it’s like the campaign against sex education, where conservative activists would either cherry-pick or invent lurid anecdotes to try to discredit the whole project.”

“President Joe Biden and First Lady Jill Biden will travel to Surfside, Florida, on Thursday to visit the site of a deadly condominium tower collapse. Biden told reporters of the upcoming trip as he boarded Marine One on Tuesday morning, en route to Wisconsin. Search and rescue operations continue at the site, north of Miami Beach, five days after the 12-story Champlain Towers South condominium tower collapsed suddenly early Thursday morning. As of Tuesday, eleven people were confirmed dead and 150 were unaccounted for, according to local officials. The White House previously said Biden would wait to visit Surfside until he was certain that the security and logistics that accompany a presidential visit would not interrupt the search, rescue and recovery efforts underway at the Champlain Towers” – CNBC.

Think you should be able to pay $0.50 or $1 at any newspaper site to read a single article without subscribing.

— Jason Fagone (@jfagone) June 28, 2021

Jonathan Bernstein, Bloomberg: “On Monday, White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki argued during her briefing that Democrats have supported police departments and that Republicans are the ones who have actually defunded them… as Psaki pointed out, Democrats in Congress have recently secured massive amounts of funding for state and local governments, over Republican objections, with a fair amount of that money specifically intended for local police departments that pandemic-strapped cities couldn’t afford.”

“Republicans reacted to Psaki with… I don’t quite know how to describe it. Outrage? Disbelief? They’re just incredulous that Democrats could consider their support for directing federal funds to local police departments – and Republican opposition to those efforts – relevant to the question of defunding the police. They aren’t claiming that the money didn’t actually go to the police; they just seem to consider ‘defunding the police’ a sort of metaphysical position that has nothing to do with actual police-department budgets. Sure, symbolic politics can be important, but here symbolism is blocking out everything else. All of this is, to be sure, related to the Republican Party’s difficulty in fashioning public policy. It’s also related to the Republican war on budgeting; having classified aid to state and local governments during the pandemic-induced recession as some sort of boondoggle intended to support Democratic politicians”

“Pelosi makes clear she could reject McCarthy’s picks to serve on Jan. 6 select committee. Asked if she could veto GOP picks, Pelosi said: ‘Yes,’ she told me. She would NOT say if she would allow Rs who voted to overturn Biden’s win to serve. ‘We’ll see who they nominate'” – Manu Raju, CNN.

“NBC 15 News has learned an event featuring former President Donald Trump as the keynote speaker that was being planned for this Saturday at the USS Alabama Battleship Memorial Park was nixed after park commissioners became wary. ‘After the request was made, then there was contact with the Republican Party, they contacted us and then it became apparent that it was going to be a partisan political event, rather than just a patriotic event planned for that evening,’ commission chairman Bill Tunnell. Tunnell says commissioners sought an opinion from the attorney general’s office in late May. NBC 15 News obtained Attorney General Steve Marshall’s response which stated there was little time for a formal opinion but did note the park may be used for political events provided access is ‘available for all political parties and candidates on an equal basis.'”

“The state park has been used for political events previously. In 2012, presidential hopeful Rick Santorum used the park for a rally. ‘Rick Santorum was the, was the straw that broke the camel’s back. And that’s when the commission went to the no partisan politics open to the public,’ said Tunnell. ‘I’ll be honest, I feel some people just didn’t want it, not just it but President Trump,’ said local Tea Party activist Pete Riehm. Riehm, who was familiar with the behind the scenes discussions of the event, says what happened raises free speech concerns. ‘If people can’t assemble in public places. Where can we assemble?’ said Riehm” – NBC 15.

“Rudy Giuliani is the subject of a Justice Department inquiry into possible foreign lobbying for Turkish interests separate from a criminal probe of his activities in Ukraine, according to people familiar with the matter. For almost a year, the former New York mayor and personal lawyer to Donald Trump has been fielding questions about whether he was acting for Turkey when he pushed the Trump administration in 2017 to drop money-laundering charges against gold trader Reza Zarrab and deport exiled Muslim cleric Fethullah Gulen. Zarrab later pleaded guilty and implicated Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan in a sanctions-evasion scheme, while Erdogan claims Gulen was behind a failed 2016 coup against his government” Bloomberg reports.

“The Turkey inquiry, which has not been previously reported, is not criminal, in contrast to the Ukraine investigation, which resulted in the Federal Bureau of Investigation seizing Giuliani’s electronic devices in April 28 raids on his Manhattan home and office. Though both matters focus on whether Giuliani lobbied the Trump administration on behalf of foreign interests, the Justice Department usually takes a softer approach when it thinks failure to register wasn’t intentional. Giuliani has denied lobbying for either Turkish or Ukrainian interests, and the government has not accused him of wrongdoing in either matter. In the Turkey inquiry, if the government decides that Giuliani acted for a foreign interest, it could issue a determination letter requiring him to register as a lobbyist and also disclose all details of contacts he had with U.S. and Turkish officials concerning Zarrab and Gulen. The Justice Department declined to comment on the matter. A lawyer for Giuliani also declined to comment.”

WCCO: “Multiple sources tell WCCO that federal prosecutors are in talks with former Minneapolis Police officer Derek Chauvin about a possible plea deal. They say Chauvin is close to reaching a deal, and that is what he was likely referring to when he made a cryptic comment to the family of George Floyd during his sentencing last week. ‘Due to legal matters, I’m not able to give a full formal statement… I give my condolences to the Floyd family, there’s gonna be some other information in the future that will be of interest and I hope these will give you some peace of mind,’ Chauvin said.”

“Sources suggest Chauvin was likely referring to a plea deal in the federal case against him. As part of a possible plea deal Chauvin would have to publicly explain what he did to Floyd and why. That was, of course, the question that Floyd’s brother poignantly asked of Chauvin at the sentencing. ‘We don’t want to see no more slaps on the wrist. We’ve been through that already,’ Terrence Floyd said before addressing Chauvin. ‘What was going through your head when you had your knee on my brother’s neck?’ Sources tell WCCO that, as part of the plea, Chauvin could get a 20- to 25-year sentence, which he would serve at the same time as the state sentence, and that he would serve his time in federal not state prison. If convicted in federal court, Chauvin could face life in prison.”

CNBC: “Walmart said Tuesday it will offer a less expensive version of insulin that could better fit into the budgets of millions of Americans who don’t have health insurance or struggle to pay for the lifesaving diabetes drug. Starting this week, the retailer will sell an exclusive private-label version of analog insulin, ReliOn NovoLog, to adults and children who have a prescription. The drug will be available at its membership-based Sam’s Club in mid-July. The insulin will cost about $73 for a vial or about $86 for a package of prefilled insulin pens. The insulin is the latest addition to Walmart’s private brand of diabetes products, ReliOn. It already sells a low-price version of insulin for about $25 as part of the line, but that is an older formulation that some doctors and advocates say is not as effective at managing blood sugar swings as newer versions of insulin, called analogs.”

“With the move, Walmart will bring its longtime focus on ‘everyday low price’ to a drug that is a medical necessity for a growing number of Americans. More than 34 million people in the U.S. – or nearly 11% of the population – have diabetes, and about 1.5 million Americans are diagnosed every year, according to the American Diabetes Association. That percentage is about 14% among Walmart shoppers, said Warren Moore, Walmart’s vice president of health and wellness, on a call. As the number of people with diabetes climbs, the cost of the 100-year-old drug has soared rather than fallen and drawn scrutiny from lawmakers. The annual cost of insulin for people with Type 1 diabetes in the U.S. nearly doubled from $2,900 in 2012 to $5,700 in 2016, according to the most recent data available from the Health Care Cost Institute. Some of the top manufacturers of insulin, including Sanofi and Eli Lilly, have been grilled by politicians during congressional hearings for hiking prices of the critical drug. In some cases, the companies have responded to criticism by rolling out limited, reduced price programs.”