“The harassment began soon after a report by a 19-year-old intern, who alleged an Idaho lawmaker raped her, became public. One state representative sought a copy of the police report and made inquiries into how the young woman herself could be referred for criminal charges for reporting the alleged rape. Another shared links to a far-right blog post that included the intern’s name, photo and personal details about her life with thousands of people in a newsletter and on social media.”

“And members of a far-right, anti-government activist group tried to follow and harass the young woman after she was called to testify in a legislative public ethics hearing. ‘I can take criticism. I can take people laying out their opinion on me,’ the intern told The Associated Press in a phone interview Sunday evening. ‘But this, it’s just overwhelming.’ The AP doesn’t name people who report sexual assault unless they agree to be publicly named. The intern asked to use the name ‘Jane Doe,’ which is the name she testified under during a legislative ethics committee hearing last week. The investigation into then-Rep. Aaron von Ehlinger, a Republican from Lewiston, underscores why many alleged sex crimes go unreported” – AP.

A 22-ton Chinese rocket that was used to launch part of a new Chinese space station last week is tumbling down to Earth and is expected to hit the surface sometime in the coming week, but no one can say when or where the rocket will hit, CNN reports.

The Chinese Long March 5B rocket is expected to hit Earth’s atmosphere Saturday, May 8th, but its plummet to the surface will happen sometime between Saturday and Monday.  There’s no way to tell where it will hit.

While it’s highly unlikely parts of the rocket will hit a person, it is possible that it could or that it could damage property depending on its entry point.  Most space junk burns up in the Earth’s atmosphere as it reenters, but the size of this rocket makes some experts believe large chucks could hit the surface.

Politico: “Federal prosecutors are seeking to submit the vast trove of information the FBI seized from former President Donald Trump’s lawyer Rudy Giuliani to a court-appointed special master for review before any records are turned over to investigators, according to a person familiar with the matter and a letter made public Tuesday. The move would be a departure from the Justice Department’s usual practice of resisting outside review of materials seized in sensitive investigations, like searches of attorney’s offices or lawyers’ electronic devices.”

“However, citing ‘unusually sensitive privilege issues’ at stake in the investigation and the ‘overt and public nature’ of the searches, prosecutors said they were embracing such a review in this instance. ‘The Government considers it appropriate for the court to appoint a special master to make the privilege determinations as to materials seized pursuant to the warrants,’ lawyers from the office of U.S. Attorney Audrey Strauss wrote in a letter sent last week to U.S. District Court Judge Paul Oetken. The letter was unsealed by the court Tuesday. Prosecutors appear to have written to Oetken because he is overseeing a criminal case in which two associates of Giuliani face campaign finance and fraud charges. Giuliani has not been charged.”

https://youtu.be/qFJSrmahA1I

Ivy League elitist (and thrice-married father of seven children with three different women–including one from an extramarital affair) Pete Hegseth demonstrates his very “christian” upbringing by targeting Minnesota Democratic Congresswoman Ilhan Omar, a former Somali refugee who came to the United States, graduated high school, became a US citizen, graduated college and went on to be elected to Congress, twice. 

The lawyers for convicted murderer Derek Chauvin have filed an appeal alleging jury misconduct and the inability of Chauvin to have a fair trial in Minneapolis because of pretrial publicity, NBC News reports.

The jury found Chauvin guilty of second- and third-degree murder as well as second-degree manslaughter after he was filmed kneeling on the back and neck of George Floyd for more than eight minutes.

Chauvin’s attorneys claim that he could not receive a fair trial in Minneapolis, and the judge unfairly denied their motion for a change of venue.  The defense had 30 days after the verdict to file its notice to appeal.

The appeal happens on the same day it was revealed that one of the jurors in the case had attended a Black Live Matter rally in Washington, DC on August 28th in commemoration of Martin Luther King’s “I Have A Dream” speech.  Photos of the juror, Brandon Mitchell, reportedly wore a t-shirt with the words “Get Your Knee Off Our Necks” and a BLM symbol.

“Florida’s Disney World theme parks are evaluating their current COVID-19 safety guidelines in place following new legislation signed by Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis that suspended all remaining local government COVID-19 mandates and restrictions, including mask requirements. DeSantis issued two new executive orders ‘suspending all local emergency orders until July 1, 2021, at which point local orders will be permanently invalidated,’ the governor’s office said in a statement Monday. Private businesses, such as theme parks and hospitals, are still able to impose their restrictions.”

“According to a pop-up message on the My Disney Experience mobile app, Disney World said: ‘We are aware of the state of Florida’s plans announced today to modify COVID-19 guidelines. We will evaluate this latest guidance and maintain our current health and safety measures at this time, including face covering requirements.’ A screenshot of the message was shared Monday by Jason Cochran, the author of the Frommer’s Disney travel guide. The pop-up message read: ‘We will continue to make thoughtful adjustments to our policy. As COVID-19 vaccines become available, we encourage people to become vaccinated'” – Newsweek.

A months-old baby boy was killed when police attempted to arrest his father, the suspected murderer of his mother and uncle, after police in Mississippi approached his car that was stuck in a median, NBC News reports.

Eric Derell Smith, 30, had been sought in the double murder of his wife and her brother in Louisiana.  Police in Mississippi learned Smith had crossed into their state and responded to the report of the car on I-10.  Somehow, the car became stuck in the median–it is unclear if this was a result of a chase or if Smith had tried to turn around across the median–and police approached the car.  As they came near the car, Smith jumped out and was shot by police.

Police have not said specifically if the child was shot or injured in another way, commenting that the child “did receive injuries” according to Biloxi Police Major Christopher De Back.  It is also unclear if Smith was armed when he was shot.

“As the suspect exited the vehicle, shots were fired. Medical attention was given to the suspect but he died as a result of injuries sustained,” De Back stated. “The juvenile did receive injuries and was taken to a local medical facility for treatment.”

Wall Street Journal: “A group of major companies and business organizations came out Tuesday against a Texas voting bill, after debating how aggressively they should be involved in state legislation. Nearly 50 companies, including Microsoft, Unilever, and American Airlines, signed a letter opposing ‘any changes that would restrict eligible voters’ access to the ballot’ in Texas, days ahead of an expected vote in the state legislature on a voting bill. As state legislatures consider new voting access bills, companies in Texas and elsewhere have grappled with how much to weigh in, amid pressure from employees and civil-rights organizations and pushback from Republicans lawmakers. After Georgia legislators added vote-by-mail identification requirements and limited drop boxes, companies including Delta Air Lines, and Coca-Cola lodged public opposition.”

“The business community in Texas has been divided in recent weeks over how strongly to come out against the imminent legislation. Signatories of Tuesday’s letter preferred not to name any specific bills because there are several and because they wanted to avoid direct lobbying, said people familiar with the matter. A fight over how strongly to oppose the bills, meanwhile, broke out among members of the Greater Houston Partnership, the state’s major business association, according to internal documents reviewed by The Wall Street Journal. The group splintered, and some of its members joined more than 175 business executives, lawyers and other prominent Houstonians in signing a letter Tuesday opposing the bills. The statement, signed by leaders of major companies, regional businesses and chambers of commerce, doesn’t address specifics of the several voting bills that are advancing in the Texas Legislature. People involved in drafting the statement said it was intended to oppose them. The companies signed under the banner of a new group called Fair Elections Texas. Other signatories include Levi Strauss, Etsy, Patagonia, and Warby Parker.”

“As a federal investigation into Rudolph W. Giuliani escalates, his advisers have been pressing aides to former President Donald J. Trump to reach into a $250 million war chest to pay Mr. Giuliani for his efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 election on Mr. Trump’s behalf. The pressure from Mr. Giuliani’s camp has intensified since F.B.I. agents executed search warrants at Mr. Giuliani’s home and office last week, according to people familiar with the discussions, and comes as Mr. Giuliani has hired new lawyers and is facing his own protracted – and costly – legal battles.”

“His supporters now want the Trump campaign to tap into the $250 million it raised in the weeks after the election to pay Mr. Giuliani and absorb costs he has incurred in the defamation suits. ‘I want to know what the GOP did with the quarter of $1 billion that they collected for the election legal fight,’ Bernard Kerik, the former New York City police commissioner, wrote on Twitter on Sunday. Mr. Giuliani appointed Mr. Kerik when he was mayor of New York. Using expletives, Mr. Kerik added that ‘lawyers and law firms that didn’t do’ much work were paid handsomely, while those who worked hard ‘got nothing'” – New York Times.

Read more at Fox News’s “exclusive” article on the launch of this stupid bullshit. Considering the content is going to be complete garbage, the UI design isn’t bad at all though. Right-wing sites are usually ugly as shit, but this interface is objectively the kind of crisp, clean presentation that I favor.

Frazier Glenn Miller Jr., an 80-year-old anti-semite who said he wanted to kill some Jews before he died and then went on a killing spree that left three non-Jewish people dead, died in a Kansas prison Monday, seven years after the murders, the Associated Press reports.

Miller drove from his home in Aurora, Missouri, determined to kill Jews. On April 13, 2014, he ambushed William Corporon, 69; and his 14-year-old grandson, Reat Underwood, at the Jewish Community Center in Overland Park, Kansas. He then drove to the nearby Village Shalom care center and killed Terri LaManno. None of the victims were Jewish.

Miller, also known as Frazier Glenn Cross Jr., was sentenced to death in a trial where he represented himself.  His case has been in appeal since the verdict, mainly for claims that the court should not have let him serve as his own counsel.

The Department of Justice must release the memo used by former attorney general Bill Barr as the legal justification for not prosecuting Donald Trump over the alleged obstruction of justice he undertook during the Mueller investigation, a federal judge has determined, Politico reports.

US District Court judge Amy Berman Jackson ordered the DoJ to release the memo in a scathing opinion on Barr’s conduct, starting with Barr’s delay in releasing the Mueller report and instead issuing a claimed summary of the report, which did not match the actually findings of Special Counsel Robert Mueller.

Barr’s summary stated that the Mueller investigation “did not draw a conclusion – one way or the other – as to whether the examined conduct constituted obstruction,” and that “the evidence developed during the Special Counsel’s investigation is not sufficient to establish that the President committed an obstruction-of-justice offense.”  Both of those statements are contradicted by the actual findings of the Mueller report, which listed ten separate counts of obstruction Trump could have been prosecuted for.

https://youtu.be/JbXZTTXzDAU

… ’cause, yeah, you invite someone to do a *live* unedited interview because that’s an example of canceling someone.  Missouri Republican Senator Josh Hawley needs to find a less idiotic way to whine.

Hawley:  “Don’t try to censor, cancel or silence me here.”

Cat Zakrzewski of the Washington Post  “Senator, we’re hosting you here.”

https://twitter.com/arizonaaudit/status/1389654899277799424?s=21

AP: “A Florida teen accused of rigging a homecoming queen election with her mother is being charged as an adult, prosecutors said. Emily Rose Grover was still 17 when she was arrested in March. She turned 18 in April, and the State Attorney in Escambia County confirmed Tuesday that Grover will be tried as an adult. Grover and her mother, Laura Rose Carroll, 50, face multiple felony charges stemming from the October homecoming vote at Tate High School in Pensacola.”

“While employed as an assistant principal at Bellview Elementary School in the same county, Carroll accessed the school district’s internal system to cast fraudulent votes for her daughter so that she would win, officials said. The investigation began in November when the Escambia County School District reported unauthorized access into hundreds of student accounts, according to the Florida Department of Law Enforcement. Investigators found that in October, hundreds of votes for the school’s homecoming court were flagged as fraudulent, the news release said. There were 117 votes from the same IP address within a short period of time, the investigation found. That’s when investigators found evidence of unauthorized access to the system linked to Carroll’s cellphone and computers at her home. The were 246 votes cast for homecoming court from those devices.”

Having crushed his campaign goal of having 100 million doses of coronavirus vaccines administered within his first 100 days in office–and in fact, doubling that quantity–President Joe Biden has announced a new goal for vaccines:  70% of American adults getting at least one dose of a coronavirus vaccine by July 4th.

As reported by the Associated Press, the goal would be to have 180 million American adults with at least one vaccine and 160 million adults fully vaccinated, with either the single dose Johnson & Johnson vaccine or one of the two two-dose vaccines from Pfizer and Moderna.  Currently, 56% of American adults have received at least one dose.

The set of goals laid out by Biden means administering the first dose to 965,000 people per day, roughly half the number that were getting initial doses last month, but still a challenge given the dropping vaccination rate.

https://youtu.be/wedkMpC-xGU

Besides the disturbing disclosure that Donald Trump called his son “honey,” Trump Organization Senior Vice President (and boy striving for any feeling of love from his father) Ewic Twump claimed during a Newsmax interview attempting to trash 2020 presidential election winner President Joe Biden that “You’re the President of the United States; you should set an example.”

Ewic wasn’t commenting on lying.  He wasn’t commenting on tweeting.  He wasn’t even commenting on marital fidelity.  He was commenting on work ethic.

“One thing that no one can ever say about my father, as, as, as crazy as the media was, right?, there was no person in the media, as much hatred as there often was for my father, who wouldn’t say he was the hardest working president this country has ever had.”

Yes, that’s right, boys and girls, Ewic Twump claims the man who tweeted for hours from a toilet seat every morning; who was known to have hours of unscheduled “executive time” daily; who rarely attended presidential daily briefings; and who spent more than 300 days of his single term at his vacation resorts; was the hardest working president in US history.

“The suspect who was shot and wounded by law enforcement in a standoff just outside CIA headquarters in McLean, Virginia, on Monday has died, the FBI said. The suspect, whose name has not been released, died after being transported to a hospital, the FBI said in a statement Tuesday. Additional details were not provided. The suspect initially drove up to the CIA’s gates late Monday morning and made statements suggesting there was a bomb in their vehicle, according to a law enforcement official and another source familiar with the incident, touching off an hours-long standoff” – CNN.

“House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) said Tuesday he’s ‘lost confidence’ in Rep. Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.) during a moment of candor caught on a hot mic, a tape reviewed by Axios shows.  ‘I think she’s got real problems,’ McCarthy told Steve Doocy off-air ahead of a live ‘Fox and Friends’ interview.  ‘I’ve had it with … I’ve had it with her. You know, I’ve lost confidence. … Well, someone just has to bring a motion, but I assume that will probably take place.’ –Axios

In a major shift of national policy, the Biden Administration advised states Tuesday that those states that are receiving an excess supply of coronavirus vaccines because demand has ebbed will now have their pre-ordered doses kept in a federal reserve to be distributed to states in need of vaccines.

According to the Washington Post, the Administration will allot supplies on a weekly basis depending on demand trends, a shift in the way vaccines were previously allocated, in which the federal depository was distributed based on population.

Recently, however, demand in some states, primarily those governed by Republicans, have seen demand for vaccines drop; Arkansas, for example, declined its entire allocation of vaccines last week.  Other states, such as California, are seeing demand outstrip supply.

The new system will allow vaccine distribution to be more agile to respond to increasing demand.  It provides input from pharmacies and other retail locations that are administering the shots, so that the pharmacies like Walgreens and CVS can direct supplies to stores where there is high demand.  Pharmacies are currently administering about 50% of the vaccinations.