New York Times: “Like many Republicans, [John] Thune, [Tim] Scott and [Nimrata] Haley were navigating the impulses of a former president who talks privately about running again in 2024, and who is trying to bend the rest of the party to his will, even after the deadly riot by his supporters at the Capitol on Jan. 6. He retains a firm hold on a devoted group of Republican voters, and party leaders have discussed the need to continue appealing to the new voters Mr. Trump attracted over the past five years. To some extent, their posture recalls the waning days of Mr. Trump’s first primary candidacy, in 2015 and 2016. While Mr. McConnell and a few other Republicans have been directly critical of Mr. Trump’s conduct following the Capitol riot, most are trying to avoid alienating the former president, knowing he will set his sights on them for withering attacks, and hoping that someone or something else intervenes to hobble him. Even as Mr. Trump makes clear he will not leave the public stage, many Republicans have privately said they hope he will fade away, after a tenure in which the party lost both houses of Congress and the White House.”

“Throughout that campaign, one candidate after another in the crowded field tried to position themselves to be the last man standing on the assumption that Mr. Trump would self-destruct before making it to the finish line. It was wishful thinking. Mr. Trump attacked not only Mr. Bush but several other candidates in deeply personal terms, including Senator Marco Rubio of Florida, Senator Ted Cruz of Texas and the businesswoman Carly Fiorina. Only Mr. Bush sustained a response, though he eventually left the race after failing to gain traction; Mr. Cruz, in particular, told donors during a private meeting in late 2015 that he was going to give Mr. Trump a ‘big bear hug’ in order to hold onto his voters. They all tried to avoid being the target of his insults, while hoping that external events and news media coverage would ultimately lead to his downfall. Instead, Mr. Trump solidified his position as primary voting began.”

https://youtu.be/RfvdfDqTG6w

In a speech on the floor of the Senate in opposition to the For The People voting protection legislation, Republican Tennessee Senator (and substitute middle school teacher speaking earnestly to gain the students’ respect) Marsha Blackburn notes that the bill requires disclosure of political contributions, which she claims, would do away with the traditionally “anonymous” nature of such donations and therefore crushes First Amendment free speech protections.

“And speaking of those donors,” Blackburn brays ominously, “if you’ve ever wondered who was behind a particular campaign, this bill has you covered.  It includes restrictions on political speech in the form of a donor disclosure mandate.”

https://twitter.com/marceelias/status/1382400979929300994

DOJ Press Release: “The U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Columbia and the Civil Rights Division of the U.S. Department of Justice will not pursue criminal charges against the U.S. Capitol Police officer involved in the fatal shooting of 35-year-old Ashli Babbitt, the Office announced today. The U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Columbia’s Public Corruption and Civil Rights Section and the Civil Rights Division, with the Metropolitan Police Department’s Internal Affairs Division (IAD), conducted a thorough investigation of Ms. Babbitt’s shooting.”

“Officials examined video footage posted on social media, statements from the officer involved and other officers and witnesses to the events, physical evidence from the scene of the shooting, and the results of an autopsy. Based on that investigation, officials determined that there is insufficient evidence to support a criminal prosecution. Officials from IAD informed a representative of Ms. Babbitt’s family today of this determination.”

“Gov. Brian Kemp’s footing might be firmer among fellow Republicans, but he still has plenty of work to do to shore up the grassroots GOP base. That’s the takeaway from a round of GOP meetings in recent days that saw Kemp get a standing ovation at a Cobb County GOP breakfast, but also receive overwhelming votes by GOP activists in Murray and Whitfield counties to censure the first-term Republican. The North Georgia Republicans say Kemp ‘stood by and did nothing’ to help then-President Donald Trump overturn his election defeat. ‘Governor Kemp’s inaction angered Republican voters, many of whom refused to vote in the January 5th runoff and Kemp helped cost the Republicans two Senate seats,’ read the Whitfield resolution. There were also votes to censure Lt. Gov. Geoff Duncan for his refusal to preside over the state Senate during a vote on sweeping voting restrictions, and another calling for Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger to resign.”

“‘Raffensperger and his subordinates frequently gave media interviews that criticized and undermined the efforts of President Trump and the Georgia Republican Party fighting election fraud,’ read the Whitfield resolution. (Your daily reminder that there was no evidence of widespread election fraud and that Georgia’s election results were upheld by three separate tallies.) These are the first of what are likely to be many resolutions adopted by local GOP activists expressing their displeasure with Kemp and other state officials. The governor’s critics have distributed sample language to local officials across the state” – Atlanta Journal-Constitution.

AP: “George Floyd died of a sudden heart rhythm problem due to his heart disease while being restrained by police, a retired forensic pathologist testified for the defense Wednesday at former Officer Derek Chauvin’s murder trial, contradicting several experts who said Floyd succumbed to a lack of oxygen. Dr. David Fowler, a former chief medical examiner for the state of Maryland and now a member of a consulting firm, said the fentanyl and methamphetamine in Floyd’s system, and possible carbon monoxide poisoning from auto exhaust, were contributing factors. He said Floyd’s heart disease included high blood pressure and narrowing of the arteries.”

“‘All of those combined to cause Mr. Floyd’s death,’ he said on the second day of the defense case. Chauvin attorney Eric Nelson is trying to prove that the 19-year Minneapolis police veteran did what he was trained to do and that Floyd died because of his illegal drug use and underlying health problems. Prosecutors say Floyd died because Chauvin’s knee was pressed against Floyd’s neck or neck area for 9 1/2 minutes as the 46-year-old Black man lay pinned to the pavement on his stomach last May, his hands cuffed behind his back.”

National Zero’s twitter feed revealed that two pathologically unhappy people – notorious whiner who channels his misanthropy into what he calls “media criticism” Joe Concha and frigid virago Harris Faulkner – were bemoaning some perceived semantic transgression by the Associated Press on Wednesday. The still image was otherwise devoid of context, however the expressions on each of their faces betrayed nothing less than a deep and immutable dissatisfaction with literally all of creation. There is nothing to indicate that either’s condition would improve until their inevitable deaths – likely some time in the 2060s or 2070s or sooner.

Minneapolis Star-Tribune: “The Washington County Attorney’s Office will charge former Brooklyn Center police officer Kimberly A. Potter with second-degree manslaughter in the shooting death on Sunday of Daunte Wright, according to Washington County Attorney Pete Orput. The charge carries a maximum penalty of 10 years in prison and a $20,000 fine.”

“Hennepin County Attorney Mike Freeman referred the case to Orput under a practice adopted last year among metro area county attorney’s offices for deadly police shootings. It calls for the county attorney in the jurisdiction where the shooting took place to refer the case to one of the other counties, or the state Attorney General’s Office, to avoid the appearance of a conflict of interest. The state Bureau of Criminal Apprehension investigated the shooting. Potter, 48, joined the Brooklyn Center police force in 1995 at the age of 22. She was placed on administrative leave following the shooting. She resigned Tuesday. She is being represented by attorney Earl Gray.”

“Rep. Madison Cawthorn has proposed a fresh alternative for the unfinished U.S.-Mexico border wall championed by former President Donald Trump: turn it into a national monument. The wall was a key piece in Trump’s election campaign in 2016. Cawthorn, a first-term Republican from North Carolina, is honoring Trump with the proposed bill, the ‘Donument’ Act” USA Today reports.

“‘For four years President Trump worked to secure the southern border of the United States by constructing a wall in places where there was little to no fencing,’ Cawthorn said in an April 13 statement on the proposed legislation, H.R. 2390. ‘The Donument Act establishes the southern border wall as the ‘Southern Border Wall National Monument,’ and gives the monument permanent protection from alteration.’ During Trump’s four years in office, over 400 miles of border wall were built along the 1,933-mile-long border. Only 80 miles of it was built where there was no wall before, according to BBC News in January. There were roughly 654 miles of fencing present before Trump was president. President Joe Biden paused border construction with an executive order on his first day in office, saying that the wall was ‘not a serious policy solution’ and a ‘waste of money.'”

Texas Tribune: “U.S. Rep. Kevin Brady, R-The Woodlands, announced Wednesday morning that this will be his last term serving in the U.S. House. First elected in 1996, Brady is one of the most senior members of the Texas delegation and a powerful player within the House Republican conference. The announcement was widely expected as he was facing a term limit in his role as the top Republican at the House Ways and Means Committee, which legislates tax law. He made the announcement in a meeting of the Woodlands Area Chamber of Commerce Economic Outlook Conference. Brady is the second Texas member of Congress to announce that this would be his final term. Last month, Dem U.S. Rep. Filemon Vela of Brownsville announced his own retirement.”

.@AOC I’d like to challenge you to a debate on the Green New Deal economic policy.

Since you sponsored the Green New Deal and have a degree in Economics, I’m sure you are more than qualified.

Cont’d..

— Marjorie Taylor Greene 🇺🇸 (@mtgreenee) April 14, 2021

Full thread: “I just have a degree in Business Admin and have owned a construction company for 20 years. A debate between AOC and I on the Green New Deal economic policy would be informative for the American People. They deserve to hear the two sides with pro’s and cons. @AOC you can choose one moderator and I choose a moderator. Then we can negotiate a major news network to host the debate. Let’s do this for The People. What do you say?”

Bernie Madoff, the pyramid scammer who bilked people out of $65 billion, died Wednesday at the federal prison care center in Butner, North Carolina, of kidney cancer, CNBC reports.  He was 82.

Madoff defrauded tens of thousands of people using a complex pyramid scheme that fell apart in 2008.  He started the scheme in the late 1970s, living a luxurious lifestyle as he bankrupted thousands of people, sapping their life savings.

Madoff was arrested in 2008 after his two sons alerted authorities to his scam.  He was sentenced to 150 years in prison for fraud and other crimes at his 2009 trial.

“A former resident of Santa Barbara County was sentenced today to three months in federal prison for fatally shooting a northern elephant seal on a beach near San Simeon. Jordan Gerbich, 30, who at the time of the offense resided in Santa Maria and who now lives in Coalville, Utah, was sentenced by United States District Judge Dale S. Fischer. Judge Fischer also ordered Gerbich to be placed on one year of supervised release following his release from prison, serve a three-month term of home detention, perform 120 hours of community service, and pay a $1,000 fine. Gerbich pleaded guilty in December 2020 to one misdemeanor count of illegally taking a marine mammal.”

“On September 28, 2019, Gerbich drove to an elephant seal viewing area adjacent to the Piedras Blancas Marine Reserve and Monterey Bay National Marine Sanctuary. Gerbich brought a .45-caliber pistol and, aided with a flashlight, used the firearm to shoot and kill a northern elephant seal as the animal was resting on the beach in the Piedras Blancas rookery. The next day, the elephant seal was discovered on the beach with a bullet hole in its head. ‘It remains unclear what motivated [Gerbich] to commit such an act; nevertheless, [Gerbich] knew it was wrong,’ prosecutors wrote in their sentencing memorandum. Northern elephant seals are a protected species under the Marine Mammal Protection Act. They live up and down North America’s Pacific coast and haul out on land in areas called rookeries. These rookeries are typically populated with elephant seals year-round, but populations vary throughout the year based on breeding and molting cycles. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Office of Law Enforcement investigated this matter. The California Department of Fish and Wildlife provided substantial assistance” – DOJ Press Release.

USA Today: “Some folks accuse these conservative thought leaders of being hypocrites, authoritarians and racists, whose real intent is to discourage voting by groups who generally vote for Democrats – for instance, Black people and other traditionally marginalized communities. I say, such accusations are unfair! These edgy conservative thought leaders would (no doubt) agree that ignorant and civically illiterate Republican supporters shouldn’t be allowed to vote.”

“For example: According to a Reuters poll, 6 in 10 Republicans believe former President Donald Trump won the 2020 presidential election (although he lost by over 7 million votes); and about half of GOP voters believe the Jan. 6 Capitol attack was a left-wing ‘false flag’ operation and/or a ‘peaceful protest’ (although about 140 law enforcement officers were injured, one was killed and two died by suicide). Even more shocking, a poll conducted by the Survey Center on American Life showed that nearly 3 in 10 Republicans believe the QAnon fantasy (for instance, ‘Donald Trump has been secretly fighting a group of child sex traffickers that include prominent Democrats and Hollywood elites’). As recently as December 2017, 51% of Republicans in a YouGov survey said they thought former President Barack Obama was born in Kenya – despite ample evidence that he was born in the United States and exactly zero evidence that he was born anywhere else. The level of civic illiteracy and ignorance among Republican voters regarding COVID-19 is also disturbing. For example, in a poll analysis from Brookings in early September, 41% of Republicans believed the flu (about 22,000 deaths each year) or automobile accidents (more than 32,000 deaths per year) caused more deaths than COVID-19 (which killed about 375,000 Americans in 2020). That is impressively out of touch with reality.”

“If citizens take so little interest in America’s civic affairs that they believe this sort of nonsense, I’m sure Andrew McCarthy and company would agree they qualify as nonvirtuous, low-quality, ‘ignorant, civics-illiterate people’ – and we’d all be better off if they didn’t vote.”

“The first thing some of the women were asked to do when they got to the house parties in the gated community in suburban Orlando was to put away their cellphones, according to two women in attendance who spoke to CNN in recent days. The men inside, a who’s who of local Republican officials that often included Rep. Matt Gaetz, did not want the night’s activities documented. The partygoers, at times dressed in formal wear from a political event they’d just left, mingled and shared drugs like cocaine and ecstasy. Some had sex. Gaetz, the brash Republican, liked to discuss politics, said one of the women. He behaved like a ‘frat type of party boy,’ she said, sometimes taking pills she believed were recreational drugs. Details of the parties, which have not been previously reported, were described to CNN by two women who attended several of them over the past few years. Both spoke on condition of anonymity.”

“The behavior of Gaetz and the other high-powered men at the events, and a pattern of digital payments that followed, will likely be items of interest to the Justice Department as part of its probe of Gaetz that includes allegations of sex trafficking and prostitution. Federal investigators are examining whether Gaetz engaged in a relationship with a woman that began when she was 17, according to people familiar with the investigation. The investigators have also pursued allegations from witnesses and other evidence that Gaetz may have used cash and drugs in his dealings with the young women. After some parties, money would change hands. According to receipts reviewed by CNN, Gaetz and his associate Joel Greenberg, a former county tax commissioner indicted last year on multiple federal charges, used digital payment applications to send hundreds of dollars to at least one woman who attended the parties. The receipts viewed by CNN record payments that took place between 2018 and 2019 and include at least one that indicated in a label that it was to compensate for travel” – CNN.

New York Times: “Amazon, BlackRock, Google, Warren Buffett and hundreds of other companies and executives signed on to a new statement released on Wednesday opposing ‘any discriminatory legislation’ that would make it harder for people to vote. It was the biggest show of solidarity so far by the business community as companies around the country try to navigate the partisan uproar over Republican efforts to enact new election rules in almost every state. Senior Republicans, including former President Donald J. Trump and Senator Mitch McConnell, have called for companies to stay out of politics. The statement was organized in recent days by Kenneth Chenault, a former chief executive of American Express, and Kenneth Frazier, the chief executive of Merck. A copy appeared on Wednesday in advertisements in The New York Times and The Washington Post. Last month, with only a few big companies voicing opposition to a restrictive new voting law in Georgia, Mr. Chenault and Mr. Frazier led a group of Black executives in calling on companies to get more involved in opposing similar legislation around the country.”

“Since then, many other companies have voiced support for voting rights. But the new statement, which was also signed by General Motors, Netflix and Starbucks, represented the broadest coalition yet to weigh in on the issue. ‘It should be clear that there is overwhelming support in corporate America for the principle of voting rights,’ Mr. Chenault said. The statement does not address specific election legislation in states, among them Texas, Arizona and Michigan, and Mr. Chenault said there was no expectation for companies to oppose individual bills. ‘We are not being prescriptive,’ he said. ‘There is no one answer.’ Mr. Frazier emphasized that the statement was intended to be nonpartisan, arguing that protecting voting rights should garner support from Republicans and Democrats alike. ‘These are not political issues,’ he said. ‘These are the issues that we were taught in civics.’ Yet in this hyperpartisan moment, the issue has become an all-out political battle, with big business caught in the middle. In just the last month, since companies started speaking out against the law in Georgia and legislation in other states, top Republicans have accused the corporate world of siding with the Democratic Party.”

“The group took off for their Bahamas weekend getaway on three separate flights. Most of the passengers, which included at least five young women, flew out of Orlando on two separate private planes. Matt Gaetz flew commercial. The details of that September 2018 trip are sparse, but they are critical to the allegations against Gaetz, the Florida congressman currently the subject of a federal sex-crimes investigation that is threatening his career. Gaetz, who has not been charged, has consistently denied the two anonymous claims against him: that he had sex with a 17-year-old girl and paid for sex. Gaetz’s predicament as the subject of a serious investigation became clearer this winter when federal agents executed a search warrant and seized his iPhone, according to interviews with three people who were told of the matter by Gaetz, who changed his phone number in late December. Around that time, the sources said, federal agents also seized his former girlfriend’s phone before she went into work in the morning. She declined comment. At the time of the 2018 trip, Gaetz was a top adviser to Republican Ron DeSantis, who was running for governor, and went on to manage his transition team months later. DeSantis has long been a top Gaetz ally but declined to comment on his legal woes Monday when asked by reporters” – Politico.

On Tuesday publisher Simon and Schuster unveiled the cover to “State of Terror” a novel about a “novice Secretary of State embroiled in” something something, hitting bookstores on October 21st, 2021, just in time for the holiday season when it can be gifted to some relative who you vaguely know likes books but not much else about them. It’ll probably cost about $29 – give or take – for a hardcover copy and roughly half that price on Amazon Kindle and other e-book platforms. Some woman named Louise Penny helped write it. Pre-order today!