According to the Johns Hopkins COVID-19 dashboard, updated at 12:22 p.m. ET Tuesday, the United States has surpassed 600,000 fatalities due to the coronavirus.

It took four months to record the last 100,000 deaths in pandemic, versus one month to go from 400,000 to 500,000 deaths, from January 12th to February 13th.

“Pedro Castillo of the Perú Libre party has already begun to receive congratulations from around the world. It is beyond doubt that he won the June 6 presidential election. The Peruvian Electoral Authority – ONPE – announced the final results: Castillo won 50.137% of the vote (8.83 million votes), while his opponent in the second round Keiko Fujimori of Fuerza Popular won 49.893% (8.78 million votes). This is with 100% of the votes. By all accounts, Fujimori has lost the election.”

“However, Fujimori – the candidate of the right – has refused to concede. In fact, she has hired the very best of Peru’s legal minds to challenge the election results. Within hours of the election tallies being available, Fujimori’s team filed 134 challenges within the window of opportunity, they have another 811 challenges in hand. Anyone who knows the Peruvian legal fraternity will realize that some of the most important names are on the Fujimori roster. In Lima alone the team had over thirty lawyers at work. The Fujimori team had assembled these lawyers before the vote, anticipating the possibility of a Castillo victory and the need to tie him up in the courts. The white collar legal army put in place a racist lawfare strategy, their entire game has been to invalidate the votes that are at the core of Castillo’s support base, namely the indigeous communities of Peru” – CounterPunch.org

Non-Correction: The current version of this article misspelled Keiko Fujimori’s first name as ‘Ivanka’ in the headline. National Zero does not regret the error and will not be correcting it.

“Former President Donald Trump said Tuesday that he’s hired former Republican National Committee official Liz Harrington as his new chief spokeswoman. ‘Liz Harrington is a fighter,’ Mr. Trump said in a statement released by his Save America PAC. ‘She was an important part of our receiving more votes than any incumbent president in U.S. history, far more than we received the first time we won.’ Ms. Harrington served as national spokeswoman for the RNC. She also has worked as editor-in-chief of Warroom.org, and as a senior writer for the Washington Free Beacon.”

“The statement said she has ‘long been a staunch supporter of President Trump.’ She replaces Jason Miller, who is entering the private sector, where he’s expected to become CEO of a tech start-up. His new venture could lead to a new social media outlet for Mr. Trump, who is banned from Twitter and Facebook. Ms. Harrington called it ‘an honor of a lifetime to represent President Trump and to stand for the truth.’ ‘At such a critical time for our country, President Trump’s fighting spirit is needed now more than ever,’ she said. ‘We will not stand idly by and let America fall to the radical Left-Wing Mob'” – Washington Times.

Axios: “The FBI Agents Association, which represents more than 14,000 active and former special agents, lauded the Biden administration’s new national strategy for countering domestic terrorism but said the act should be made a federal crime. No federal criminal offense exists for domestic terrorism, even though it is defined under federal law, and policy makers have for years deliberated whether to create a specific penalty for committing the act. The Jan. 6 Capitol riot reignited debates over whether there should be an enforceable penalty for domestic terrorism. Congress deliberated on creating a new statute for domestic terrorism in response to the riot, but many members disagreed, arguing it would be redundant or could be used to crackdown on constitutional acts of political dissent, according to USA Today.”

“Two veteran book-publishing executives have teamed up to launch a conservative publishing house called All Seasons Press LLC as ideological debates roil a book industry increasingly fueled by demand for political titles. Louise Burke, the former president and publisher of Simon & Schuster’s Gallery Books Group, and Kate Hartson, whom Hachette Book Group dismissed as editorial director of its Center Street imprint earlier this year, said conservative authors are finding it harder to get published in the post-Trump era” the Wall Street Journal reports.

“‘I’m increasingly concerned and somewhat outraged about what’s going on in terms of free speech and free press,’ said Ms. Burke, who retired in August 2017 after a 40-year career. She is now the publisher of All Seasons Press, which has already signed book deals with two former officials of the Republican Trump administration. The company’s launch comes as some conservatives allege that much of the nation’s news media, publishers and mainstream social-media platforms are biased against them. They are looking to set up alternatives that they say better support free speech.”

AP: “Cue the fireworks. President Joe Biden wants to imbue Independence Day with new meaning this year by encouraging nationwide celebrations to mark the country’s effective return to normalcy after 16 months of coronavirus pandemic disruption. Even as the U.S. is set to cross the grim milestone of 600,000 deaths from the virus on Tuesday, the White House is expressing growing certainty that July Fourth will serve as a breakthrough moment in the nation’s recovery. That’s even though the U.S. is not expected to quite reach its goal of having 70% of adults vaccinated by the holiday. As COVID-19 case rates and deaths drop to levels not seen since the first days of the outbreak, travel picks up and schools and businesses reopen, Biden is proclaiming ‘a summer of freedom’ to celebrate Americans resuming their pre-pandemic lives. The holiday will see the largest event yet of Biden’s presidency: He plans to host first responders, essential workers and military servicemembers and their families on the South Lawn for a cookout and to watch the fireworks over the National Mall. Well more than 1,000 guests are expected, officials said, with final arrangements still to be sorted out.”

“The plan shows the dramatic shift in thinking since Biden just three months ago cautiously held out hope that people might be able to hold small cookouts by the Fourth, an idea that seems quaint now given the swift pace of reopening. ‘By July the 4th, there’s a good chance you, your families and friends will be able to get together in your backyard or in your neighborhood and have a cookout and a barbeque and celebrate Independence Day,’ Biden had said as he marked the one-year anniversary of the pandemic on March 11. ‘That doesn’t mean large events with lots of people together, but it does mean small groups will be able to get together.’ For most Americans, that reopening target was hit last month, by Memorial Day weekend, after the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention relaxed mask-wearing guidance for fully vaccinated people and the accompanying relaxation in state and local virus restrictions. Now, officials say July Fourth will serve as an unofficial kickoff to a new phase in the U.S. pandemic response.”

A CBS News/YouGov poll shows Russian President Vladimir Putin with a 17% favorable rating among 2020 Trump voters, compared with 3% among Biden voters. Read more here.

Axios: “The Biden administration on Tuesday released the first-ever ‘National Strategy for Countering Domestic Terrorism,’ following a 100-day comprehensive review ordered by President Biden on his first day in office. It’s the first national plan for countering what the White House is calling ‘the most urgent terrorism threat the United States faces today,’ echoing previous assessments by Attorney General Merrick Garland, FBI Director Chris Wray and the intelligence community. The strategy calls for more information-sharing between the government and tech sector, other nations and among domestic law enforcement agencies. An unclassified threat assessment released by the intelligence community in March identified white supremacists and anti-government extremists as ‘the two most lethal elements of today’s domestic terrorism threat.'”

“An hour before President Donald J. Trump announced in December that William P. Barr would step down as attorney general, the president began pressuring Mr. Barr’s eventual replacement to have the Justice Department take up his false claims of election fraud. Mr. Trump sent an email via his assistant to Jeffrey A. Rosen, the incoming acting attorney general, that contained documents purporting to show evidence of election fraud in northern Michigan – the same claims that a federal judge had thrown out a week earlier in a lawsuit filed by one of Mr. Trump’s personal lawyers. Another email from Mr. Trump to Mr. Rosen followed two weeks later, again via the president’s assistant, that included a draft of a brief that Mr. Trump wanted the Justice Department to file to the Supreme Court. It argued, among other things, that state officials had used the pandemic to weaken election security and pave the way for widespread election fraud. The draft echoed claims in a lawsuit in Texas by the Trump-allied state attorney general that the justices had thrown out, and a lawyer who had helped on that effort later tried with increasing urgency to track down Mr. Rosen at the Justice Department, saying he had been dispatched by Mr. Trump to speak with him.”

“The emails, turned over by the Justice Department to investigators on the House Oversight Committee and obtained by The New York Times, show how Mr. Trump pressured Mr. Rosen to put the power of the DOJ behind lawsuits that had already failed to try to prove his false claims that extensive voter fraud had affected the election results… Much of the correspondence also occurred during a tense week within the Justice Department, when Mr. Rosen and his top deputies realized that one of their peers had plotted with Mr. Trump to oust Mr. Rosen and then try to use federal law enforcement to force Georgia to overturn its election results. Mr. Trump nearly replaced Mr. Rosen with that colleague, Jeffrey Clark, then the acting head of the civil division.” – New York Times.

Axios: “Two House Republicans – including Conference Chair Elise Stefanik (R-N.Y.) – are introducing a bill Tuesday to sanction top Chinese health officials until they allow an investigation into whether the coronavirus originated in a Wuhan lab, according to a copy of the bill text obtained by Axios. The lab-leak theory has regained prominence in both the scientific and political worlds, after the Wall Street Journal reported that three scientists who worked at the Wuhan Institute of Virology experienced COVID-19 symptoms in November 2019.”

“There’s still no conclusive evidence on where the virus originated. In March, a joint team of investigators from China and the World Health Organization called the lab-leak theory ‘extremely unlikely.’ But the report that team produced has come under fire over the lack of transparency from the Chinese government, and there have been bipartisan calls for further investigation. Stefanik and Rep. Rob Wittman (R-Va.) will introduce the ‘World Deserves to Know Act’ on Tuesday afternoon. While it’s hard to see its path to becoming law, having a member of congressional leadership behind the bill signifies how aggressively the party plans to lean into the issue.”

“This is Merrick Garland’s Tylenol moment, and by which I mean he has more than a headache but a poisoning on his hands. Both his legacy and our trust that no one is above the law in America are in peril. To meet the moment, Garland would do well to follow the model of James Burke, the former CEO of Johnson & Johnson. In the 1980s, Burke handled two separate public relations crises stemming from Extra-Strength Tylenol capsules laced with cyanide. In September 1982, seven people who purchased the poisoned pain relief pills from Chicago stores died. Burke went on television to apologize and immediately pulled an estimated 31 million bottles of Tylenol capsules off the shelves nationwide, at a cost of $100 million. Within just a month of this tragedy, the FDA mandated tamper-resistant packaging for over-the-counter drugs. In 1986, when a customer in New York died after ingesting a cyanide-laced Tylenol capsule, Burke issued another recall, and J&J began only selling the pills in tablet form.”

“Many believed the company would never regain public trust after the poisonings, but Burke’s at-the-time unorthodox candor and concessions worked wonders. At 68, Garland is in a similar situation, but with some distinctions. With the Tylenol scare, we still don’t know who the culprit was. With the poisoning of the Justice Department, we do know—it was an inside job. Still, the only way to restore trust is to address the public, discuss the tampering honestly, and throw out the poison, not ask us all to drink more of the Kool-Aid” – Washington Monthly.

Daily Beast: “The Arizona state senate’s haphazard, controversial audit of 2020 ballots has become a popular destination for Republican lawmakers looking to undermine the results in battleground states that Joe Biden won. And now, audit-mania has spread even to the states that Biden lost. In the wake of the Arizona audit’s success at grabbing publicity across right-wing media, Republican lawmakers in states that Trump won are demanding Arizona-style audits or other election inspections of their own. The Republican hunt for voter-fraud evidence even in states that voted for Trump reveals how far inside the party the idea has spread that the election was stolen.”

“Focusing on fraud claims allows Republican officials to raise money and attention from devoted Trump supporters, according to former Republican National Committee communications director Doug Heye. It also helps lawmakers align themselves with Trump’s claims of widespread fraud, ingratiating themselves with the energized Trump grassroots as they try to claim more power in the party. ‘This is about two things, and these are symbiotic,’ Heye said. ‘The continued fealty for all things Trump, and placating the base or the portion of the base that still can’t accept a clear loss.’ Donald Trump won conservative Utah by more than 20 percent. But Utah state Rep. Steve Christiansen (R) traveled to Phoenix to see the Arizona audit in person anyway, telling The Daily Beast he’d like to see a similar audit of 2020 ballots implemented in his own state. Christiansen has asked a legislative committee in Utah to consider conducting its own audit of the state’s ballots. ‘I wanted to make sure I got to Arizona while the audit was being conducted,’ Christiansen said.”

I’m so glad Fox News is on top of this.  Remember their meltdowns when they said incandescent lightbulbs were on the extinction list?

States that are leading the nation in vaccination rates have generally seen a significant drop in coronavirus infection rates, and states that are trailing in inoculations are largely experiencing increases in cases, a not shocking finding in an analysis by the Washington Post.

Also not a surprising finding:  the states with the lowest percentage of the population vaccinated also overlap those state that went for Donald Trump in the 2020 election.

The data has shown a sharp division in the last ten days after running somewhat parallel over the previous two months, according to the Post.  Two possible reasons exist for the divergence:  states that did not push vaccinations are also the ones that pushed for early easing of coronavirus public health restrictions and the emergence of the more contagious delta variant of the coronavirus, which is more likely to infect younger adults who are less likely to be vaccinated.

“Six months from now, Trump will be our real president and our country will be heading toward its greatest rebirth in history” – Mike Lindell in Rolling Stone’s piece on his Saturday FrankSpeech rally. This tacks another four months onto Lindell’s fictional future timeline that less than two weeks ago put Trump back in office by August 2021 – at the latest. At this rate, if four months are added to the Trump reinstatement target date on a recurring basis every twelve days, we estimate that on September 29th, 2021 Lindell will say Trump will be back in office on or about January 20th, 2025.

We do not know whether or not this means Trump will have won reelection or have been reinstalled by QAnon military coup something something without the need to run again in 2024. Probably the latter, but we can’t be certain since we’re not exactly experts on MyPillow-verse trivia.

A grocery store clerk in Decatur, Georgia was shot and killed, and three other people were wounded, after the store employee got into an argument with a customer about wearing facemasks, the Associated Press reports.

The customer, 30-year-old Victor Lee Tucker, Jr. got into an argument about wearing a mask in the Big Bear Supermarket.  Tucker left the store without buying anything, but immediately returned with a gun and shot the female clerk.  He also shot and wounded another female clerk at the store, who was treated on the scene.

A store security guard who is also a reserve deputy with the county returned fire, wounding Tucker.  The guard was hit twice in the chest, but was wearing a bullet-resistant vest and suffered no serious injuries. 

https://youtu.be/CDlTJQQ2nec

Local Fox reporter Ivory Hecker, a reporter for Fox 26 in Houston started a live report about the heat wave taking its toll on air conditioning units–really–by declaring, “Before we get to that story, I want to let you the viewers know that Fox Corp. has been muzzling me to keep certain information from you, the viewers, and from I’ve been gathering, I’m not the only reporter being subjected to this.

“I am going to be releasing some recording about what goes on behind the scenes at Fox because it applies to you the viewers.  I found a non-profit journalism group, called Project Veritas, that’s going to put that out tomorrow, so tune in to them.”  Hecker then, like a pro, segues into the air conditioning report.

Now granted, there’s a lot to unpack here, particularly given the reputation of Project Veritas, so I wouldn’t bet the bank on anything real or earth-shattering about Fox News to be disclosed–nor anything reputable.  But Fox News has been the platform that has given James O’Keefe and Project Veritas the most airtime–including multiple segments on Hannity just weeks ago–so we’ll find out how vindictive Fox is.

Asked if she would continue comparisons of the National Social Workers Party–also known as Nazis–to Democrats following her tour of the Holocaust Museum, Marjorie Taylor Greene demonstrated once again that you cannot penetrate concrete with information.

Ben Jacobs of the Guardian asked Greene, “After your visit to the Holocaust museum today, earlier during recess you compared Democrats to the National Socialist [Workers’] Party.  Is that something you still stand by after you reflected on everything that the Nazi Party did?”  Greene’s response was less than informed:

You know, socialism is extreme dangerous and so is communism.  And anytime a government moves into policies where there is more control and there is [sic] freedoms taken away, yes, that is a danger for everyone.  And I think it is something that we should all be wary of.  Anytime you have things like censorship and social media.  Anytime where we have things being taught where one race is being told it is racist like critical race theory, those are problems.  There are things we are seeing and policies coming out of the Democratic Party that I think are dangerous for everyone and that’s why I’m against them and I’ll never stop saying I’m very much on track and never stop saying that we have to save America and stop socialism.  There is no veteran that signed up to serve in the military and there’s nobody that fought for our country because they wanted America to be a socialist country.  They all did it because they wanted America to be a free country.  

Jacobs again asked if she stood by her analogy, to which Greene replied, “That’s the important thing to remember.  Thank you guys so much.  We got to head out to vote.”

As most educated people know, Nazis were not socialists in practice.  They were fascists.  They put the term “socialist” in their Party name to dupe undereducated workers in Germany into thinking they were socialists so they would get into power.  The Nazis, in fact, would execute socialists and communists.

Daily Beast: “Rep. Louie Gohmert celebrated New Year’s Eve 2020 by dropping several thousand dollars into the coffers of a vitriolically homophobic and anti-Semitic pastor, federal records indicate. But his office insists the whole thing was just a giant mistake. Team Gohmert claims it hired a Christian singer named Steve Amerson from Granada HIlls, California, but accidentally reported to the Federal Election Commission that the cash went to the Tempe, Arizona address of the Faithful Word Baptist Church, led by the infamous Pastor Steve Anderson.”

The participant in the January 6th domestic terrorist attack on the US Capitol famous for having his feet up on Nancy Pelosi’s desk made a guest appearance on Russian state television channel VGTRK this past weekend as the Kremlin continues to characterize the insurrectionists who attempted an insurrection as American heroes who were fighting for the rightful victor of the election, Donald Trump.

As reported in the Daily Beast, Richard Barnett and his attorney made a guest appearance on Russian nightly news explaining to the correspondent that Bennett and other January 6th insurrectionists are being persecuted for their political views.

The tact being taken by Barnett echoes the characterization of the domestic terrorists involved in the attack that is being broadcast on Fox News and by politicians like Wisconsin Republican Senator Ron Johnson, Georgia QAnon Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene and alleged Florida sex trafficker Matt Gaetz.