Politico: “Former President Donald Trump falsely claimed Thursday that his supporters who stormed the Capitol on Jan. 6 posed ‘zero threat’ – despite the fact that five people died as a result of the violent insurrection, including a Capitol Police officer. ‘It was zero threat. Right from the start, it was zero threat,’ Trump told Fox News host Laura Ingraham. ‘Look, they went in – they shouldn’t have done it – some of them went in, and they’re hugging and kissing the police and the guards, you know? They had great relationships. A lot of the people were waved in, and then they walked in, and they walked out.’ The former president’s remarks represent perhaps his most serious distortion yet of the events of Jan. 6, when a mob of pro-Trump rioters stormed the Capitol in an effort to halt the congressional certification of President Joe Biden’s victory in the 2020 election.”

“Trump himself urged his supporters to march on the Capitol in a fiery speech outside the White House prior to the siege. ‘If you don’t fight like hell, you’re not going to have a country anymore,’ Trump said, among other incendiary statements. One week later, the House impeached him for a second time for inciting the insurrection. Trump was acquitted by the Senate, but his trial in the chamber presented previously unseen video showing just how close the rioters came to lawmakers and then-Vice President Mike Pence. House impeachment managers also showed footage of violence by the rioters against responding law enforcement officers.”

“Businessman Mike Lindell appeared on the cable network Newsmax last month and launched into a baseless conspiracy theory blaming a voting machine company for fraud in the 2020 presidential election. After muting Lindell’s microphone, a Newsmax anchor told viewers that the My Pillow Inc founder’s claims were unsubstantiated and unverified. The anchor then read a prepared statement that included: ‘Newsmax accepts the (election) results as legal and final.’ Lindell, an ardent ally of losing presidential candidate Donald Trump, refused to drop the subject, and the anchor stormed off mid-interview. The on-air reality check highlights a new trend in conservative media: In an apparent effort to minimize liability for defamation, Newsmax and some other outlets are relying on prepared disclaimers or additional pre-recorded programming to repudiate pro-Trump conspiracy theories spouted by guests and hosts.”

“Legal experts say this practice, also used in some form by One America News Network (OANN) and other conservative TV and radio networks, is a response to lawsuits recently filed or threatened by Dominion Voting Systems Inc and Smartmatic Inc, two election technology companies targeted by pro-Trump conspiracy theorists. A Newsmax spokesman declined to comment. OANN did not respond to a request for comment. The suits could test the effectiveness of disclaimers on news coverage more broadly, as well as the conservative media’s appetite for guests and hosts who make unsubstantiated claims about hot-button issues, legal experts say. The suits also pose an ‘existential threat’ to the smaller networks, which can ill afford a big verdict or settlement, said Columbia historian Nicole Hemmer, author of a book on conservative media. Floyd Abrams, a prominent media lawyer and First Amendment advocate, said disclaimers could be modestly useful in bolstering the argument that the networks were ‘simply carrying the views’ of Trump surrogates, rather than acting with malice toward Dominion and Smartmatic” – Reuters.

American Prospect details what’s wrong with a recent New York Times article using euphemisms to describe Marjorie Taylor Greene’s batshittery and expulsion from House committees: “This lack of concern for the substance behind the made-for-media shenanigans invites what comes next. You guessed it: an intellectually indefensible feint toward bothsidesism. You come across ‘conservatives who say they want to be their party’s answer to Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Democrat of New York, a second-term progressive who has excelled at using social media to raise money and hurl barbs at political opponents.’ Never mind that AOC has come up with detailed policy plans that actually address the concerns she so effectively articulates. That would upend the false equivalence that the Republicans set up and the Times plays along with, even when it is covering the very phenomenon that demonstrates its falseness.'”

“As if to demonstrate what it can do when its reporters and editors are apparently in the mood, the Times ran another piece headlined ‘Assaulting the Truth, Ron Johnson Helps Erode Confidence in Government’ that not only provided the evidence to support its thesis, it contextualized the argument it sought to make as more than just a media strategy. For instance: Johnson’s ‘continuing assault on the truth, often under the guise of simply ‘asking questions’ about established facts, is helping to diminish confidence in American institutions at a perilous moment, when the health and economic well-being of the nation relies heavily on mass vaccinations, and when faith in democracy is shaken by right-wing falsehoods about voting.’ This is the kind of reporting we desperately need if we are to defeat the neofascist forces seeking to destroy our democracy. We see precious little of it owing to a number of reasons, but most prominent among them are the mainstream media’s addiction to the sort of bothsidesism cited above, and its members’ belief that politics is just theater in which ‘the play is the (only) thing.'”

“Dominion Voting Systems on Friday filed a $1.6 billion defamation lawsuit against Fox News, arguing the cable news giant falsely claimed in an effort to boost faltering ratings that the voting company had rigged the 2020 election. It’s the first defamation suit filed against a media outlet by the voting company, which was a target of misleading, false and bizarre claims spread by President Donald Trump and his allies in the aftermath of Trump’s election loss to Joe Biden. Those claims helped spur on rioters who stormed the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6 in a violent siege that left five people dead, including a police officer. The siege led to Trump’s historic second impeachment” – AP.

The Atlantic: “Joe Biden has a reputation as a softie – grandfatherly if you’re inclined toward him, somewhat windy and elderly if you aren’t. But when he reached for a phrase to define his approach to office during his first press conference, held today, he didn’t pick an Irish poet or an American statesman. Instead, he quoted the hardheaded Teutonic conservative known as the ‘Iron Chancellor’: ‘Politics is the art of the possible,’ Biden said. The president invoked Otto von Bismarck in response to a question on filibuster reform. Biden went further than he has in the past, coming close to an out-and-out condemnation of the 60-vote requirement, even as he said he’d be open to tweaks such as a ‘talking filibuster’ or a civil-rights exemption, rather than an outright abolition of the process. Bismarck’s axiom is a cliché, and it might have gone unnoticed in another context. But the pursuit of the possible, in particular with regard to the filibuster, is a useful frame for thinking about how Biden’s presidency has thus far confounded two leading concerns about him.”

“On the left, critics worried that Biden was a bipartisanship fetishist, more interested in paying homage to the old ways of doing things (or not doing them, as the case might be) than actually achieving progressive goals. On the right, critics painted him as a puppet of the ‘woke’ wing of the Democratic Party, putting a friendly face on a radical agenda. Obviously, both of these views couldn’t be right. But so far, neither one has proved correct. As I wrote earlier this week, Biden has been more comfortable forging ahead with only Democratic votes than he usually suggested he would be during the presidential campaign. The White House muscled through the $1.9 trillion COVID-relief package with just Democratic support, though doing so required relying on a procedural maneuver called reconciliation, which allows the Senate to pass budget-related bills with a bare majority. Many of his remaining goals can’t pass that way, though. ‘I’m a fairly practical guy,’ he said. ‘I want to get things done. I want to get them done consistent with what we promised the American people. And in order to do that, in a 50–50 Senate, we’ve got to get to the place where I get 50 votes.’ But Biden’s slow turn against the filibuster is about results, not signaling.”

“Blaring tornado sirens and howling winds roared across parts of western Georgia early Friday as severe storms pounded southern states, including in Alabama where at least five people died in twisters that wrecked homes, splintered trees and crumpled businesses. Meteorologists said a large, dangerous tornado swept through metro Atlanta’s Coweta County around midnight Friday, sparking a tornado emergency for the city of Newnan and surrounding communities. There were several reports downed trees and power lines. Newnan police asked residents to ‘get off the roads’ in a Facebook post, explaining that emergency officials were surveying the area.”

“Newnan Mayor Keith Brady said no fatalities were immediately reported. The strong storm followed a series of tornadoes that ripped through Alabama on Thursday, including one that authorities said traveled roughly 100 miles (160 kilometers) across the state. In east Alabama, Calhoun County Sheriff Matthew Wade said five people died in a twister that cut a diagonal path across the county, striking mostly rural areas – something that likely kept the death toll from being higher. ‘Our hearts, our thoughts and our prayers go to the families, and we are going to do our best to let them know we love them,’ Wade said at an evening briefing. Multiple twisters sprang from a ‘super cell’ of storms that later moved into Georgia, said John De Block, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service in Birmingham. Several school districts were closed or delayed Friday due to the damage. Vast areas of Shelby County near Birmingham – the state’s biggest city – were badly damaged” – AP.

Politico: “For former President Donald Trump’s GOP allies, President Joe Biden’s recent stumble on the Air Force One stairs was a sign of bigger problems. But Republican senators who’ve met with Biden say the 78-year-old president is just fine, with one describing him as ‘sharp as a tack.’ Biden’s fitness for office, a longtime fixation among conservatives, is dominating conversations on the right as Trump openly sows doubts about the health of the man who defeated him. One Republican senator recently texted an acquaintance his private suspicions that Biden, the oldest president in history, is mentally unwell. In on-the-record interviews, however, seven GOP senators who’ve met with Biden lately described him as cogent and well-versed on the issues they discussed. And none echoed the warnings many pro-Trump Republicans have issued about Biden amid the chatter about his stair-stepping acumen. ‘In the two meetings I was in with the president, he was as sharp as a tack,’ Sen. Shelley Moore Capito (R-W.Va.) said in an interview.”

“Sen. Todd Young (R-Ind.), who joined Capito at a February meeting with Biden on Covid relief, said he didn’t see anything amiss: ‘I visited with him in the Oval Office, and he seemed well-prepared and well-briefed for the meeting.’ During the 2020 campaign, Biden – who stuttered as a child – weathered Trump’s attacks on his faculties, dismissing clips of his verbal tics and minor memory lapses. Trump’s allies are still trying to paint Biden as deteriorating in office, even after he stayed largely on-message fielding questions at a 62-minute Thursday press conference. While the more centrist GOP senators interviewed this week wouldn’t criticize colleagues for floating unsubstantiated theories about Biden’s health, their varying reactions show an enduring gulf between those Republicans who publicly emulate Trump’s go-for-the-jugular politics – and those who shy away from it.”

https://youtu.be/D4TzOIFETuE

Cowardly Sean Hannity, a Lego man who magically came to life but still has no heart or brain, called Seth Meyers, host of NBC’s “Late Night with Seth Meyers,” “another limousine liberal socialist hypocritical asshole” during a segment which featured Meghan McCain-transfixed The Hill contributor (not a columnist or reporter) Li’l Joey Concha talking about how political late night talk shows have become too politically charged and unhumorous.

“Georgia Republicans’ shameful efforts to suppress the vote and seize electoral power through SB 202 demonstrate how critical the fight for voting rights remains. Every business, political, and civic leader must stand up and make their opposition to these desperate anti-democratic laws clear. At a time when Georgia ranks as the worst state for COVID vaccination rates, Georgia Republicans instead are singularly focused on reviving Georgia’s dark past of racist voting laws. And as the FBI continue to round up seditionists who spilled blood to defend a lie about our elections, Republican state leaders willfully undermine democracy by giving themselves authority to overturn results they do not like. Now, more than ever, Americans must demand federal action to protect voting rights as we continue to fight against these blatantly unconstitutional efforts that are nothing less than Jim Crow 2.0.” —Statement by Stacey Abrams via CNN

“Oath Keepers founder Stewart Rhodes exchanged a 97-second call with someone helping to lead a helmeted formation of Oath Keepers members and associates nine minutes before the group pushed past police and broken doors to force its way into the Capitol on Jan. 6, U.S. prosecutors alleged for the first time. In an overnight court filing, prosecutors said the call and other direct communications by Rhodes that day indicate ‘substantial evidence’ of a conspiracy to stop Congress’s confirmation of the 2020 presidential election by Oath Keepers members and others.”

“A timeline submitted by the government in a court filing just before midnight Thursday opposing the release of Ohio Oath Keepers member Jessica Watkins disputes her assertions that the actions of a charged 10-member group at the Capitol were nonviolent. The filing also appears to dispute some of Rhodes’s previous explanations of his communications. Rhodes, referred to not by name but as ‘Person One’ in court documents, has not been charged and is not accused of wrongdoing. U.S. prosecutors have charged at least 14 members or associates of the Oath Keepers, a loosely organized network of right-wing groups including self-styled militias that recruits military, law enforcement and first-responder personnel with a disinformation-fueled ideology that predicts the collapse of an increasingly tyrannical federal government” – Washington Post.

https://youtu.be/QWMyFFDwo2A

Kayleigh “Don’t Call Me Kelly” McEnany took to her new paid gig as a commentator on Fox News to claim that she just randomly looked up a Trump press briefing when the first question asked was “Why did you lie to the American people?” and said that she couldn’t imagine the media asking President Biden the same question.

Let’s set aside for a moment that Biden hasn’t propagated bald-faced lies, which were caught on tape, as Trump did.  McEnany, for once, is telling the truth:  on September 20, 2020, Jon Karl of ABC News did open a press briefing Trump attended by asking Trump why he lied to the American people.  The context, however, is key:  audio tapes of Trump conversation with Bob Woodward, which became public the day before, showed that Trump knew as early as February that the coronavirus was far more contagious and deadly than he told the public.  In fact, Trump told the public exactly the opposite:  that the coronavirus was no worse than the flu and that it would be “close to zero” cases by early March.  The briefing Trump attended was a coronavirus briefing, and Karl was rightfully questioning the reliability of Trump, given his lies were publicly exposed.

A state that was lost by two incumbent Republican Senators and the Republican presidential candidate in one election cycle, Georgia’s Republican legislators passed and the Republican governor signed a sweeping law that drastically limits voting opportunities and punishes those that help voters, ABC News reports.

The law, which Republicans passed purely along Party lines, limits the people who can get absentee or mail-in ballots, when election sites can be open, and who gets to decide who wins elections.  It implements broad bans on helping people cast ballots, from making providing water to people in voting lines to charging people who help disabled citizens vote.

The new law also provides the state legislature with the ability to strip the power to oversee elections from the Secretary of State and local elections officials based on nothing but the whim of the legislators, essentially removing any accountability for making sure the votes are tallied correctly.

“One of the big MAGA heroes of the COVID-19 era was South Dakota governor Kristi Noem, who for many months more or less ignored the pandemic. Then, when her state’s caseload rose catastrophically after the Sturgis biker rally she avidly promoted, Noem kept arguing that COVID-19 didn’t justify business closures or mandatory public-health steps like mask-wearing and social distancing. More generally, Noem was very Trump-y, welcoming the 45th president to South Dakota for the July 4th fireworks commemoration he had chosen and presenting him with a bust of Mount Rushmore with his face added to the presidential edifice. It’s precisely the sort of sycophancy Trump loves, and soon in MAGA circles talk emerged of Noem succeeding him as the next Republican presidential nominee or replacing Mike Pence if he attempts a comeback.”

“But then Noem suddenly stumbled in her path along the far-right side of the political highway. After saying she was ‘excited’ to sign a bill banning the participation of transgender girls and women in female sports leagues – a favorite right-wing cause this year – she changed her mind, issuing a ‘style and form’ veto that allowed her to rewrite the legislation to exclude college sports and change some of the enforcement provisions. She was immediately accused of caving to pressure from the NCAA, which opposes such bans under its inclusion policies, and Amazon, which has its own LGBTQ policies and had a major new facility planned for South Dakota. As Washington Post columnist Henry Olsen noted, it then got worse for Noem: Her attempts at damage control have thus far not worked. Noem announced her own effort to defend women’s sports at a news conference on Monday. She also appeared on Tucker Carlson’s Fox News program Monday night and faced withering questioning from the populist host. Neither effort seems to have turned her image around” – New York Magazine.

Kansas City Star: “Republican lawmakers blocked Medicaid expansion funding from reaching the Missouri House floor on Thursday, posing a setback for the voter-approved plan to increase eligibility for the state health care program. The House Budget Committee voted along party lines not to pass a bill allowing Missouri to spend $130 million in state funds and $1.6 billion in federal money to pay for the program’s expansion. Under the Affordable Care Act, the federal government picks up 90% of the tab on expanding Medicaid. The increased eligibility would allow an estimated 230,000 additional low-income Missourians to be covered. It is set to go into effect in July, after voters approved a ballot question last August with a 53% majority. Democrats slammed the vote as an attempt to subvert Missourians’ wishes to implement the expansion, which several Republicans said was unpopular in their own districts.”

“Democrats plan to re-introduce the funds into the rest of the state budget on the House floor. Budget Chair Cody Smith, a Carthage Republican, said he will introduce another bill to spend the money elsewhere. Ranking member Rep. Peter Merideth, a University City Democrat, has warned that the move to reject expansion would leave the entire Missouri Medicaid program, known as MO HealthNet, underfunded when thousands more become eligible. Not going forward with the expansion, which is now part of the state constitution, could land the state in court. Republicans, citing the cost, have long resisted expanding Medicaid in Missouri, one of about a dozen states that haven’t extended eligibility for the health plan.”

A man who entered the University of Kentucky’s Chandler Hospital was arrested by campus police after they received information from a neighboring police department that the man went to the campus armed, ABC News reports.

Bryan Carroll of Versailles, Kentucky was arrested after he left the hospital.  When police searched him, they found he was carrying an unspecified number of weapons.  In his car, they found additional guns, body armor and a possible explosive device.

Carroll will face federal, state and local charges.

President Biden begins his first press conference by touting the rate of vaccines being administered, a feet solely made possible by President Trump's Operation Warp Speed.

— Kayleigh McEnany (@kayleighmcenany) March 25, 2021

Are you kidding me? Biden is flipping through a typed, multi-page document, which i bet are Qs & As. I've never seen a POTUS bring one of those to a news conference. Is he really that week that he needs a study guide?

— Ari Fleischer (@AriFleischer) March 25, 2021

Politico:  “It was a scene right out of ‘The Apprentice.’

“Donald Trump was headlining a fundraiser on Wednesday night at his golf club in West Palm Beach, Fla. But before the dinner began, the former president had some business to take care of: He summoned four Republican Senate candidates vying for Ohio’s open Senate seat for a backroom meeting.  The contenders — former state Treasurer Josh Mandel, former state GOP Chair Jane Timken, technology company executive Bernie Moreno and investment banker Mike Gibbons — had flown down to attend the fundraiser to benefit a Trump-endorsed Ohio candidate looking to oust one of the 10 House Republicans who backed his impeachment. As the candidates mingled during a pre-dinner cocktail reception, one of the president’s aides signaled to them that Trump wanted to huddle with them in a room just off the lobby.

All Andreas Flaten of Georgia wanted was his final paycheck from A OK Walker Autoworks in Peachtree City, where he worked until last November:  about $915.  But his former boss wouldn’t give it to him, so Flaten had to take the case to the Georgia Department of Labor for help.

Well, according to the Associated Press, Flaten got the amount due.  In cash.  Specifically, in pennies covered in oil or some other lubricant that were dumped on his driveway last week… along with the pay stub on top of them.

Miles Walker, the owner of the shop, told a local news crew that he didn’t remember if he was the one who dumped the pennies in Flaten’s driveway or not.  “I don’t really remember,” Walker told the TV station. “It doesn’t matter he got paid, that’s all that matters,” before calling Flaten a “weenie.”

Quietly, the Texas state government revised the number of people it says were killed as a result of a February winter storm that left much of the state without power due to problems with the state’s power grid, nearly doubling the number of dead, the Associated Press reports.

Texas now claims 111 people died as a result of the storm, up from the 57 people state officials previously claimed.  The majority of deaths were from hypothermia caused by more than four million people going without power when the state’s isolated power grid failed.

The number may still be an undercount, as officials try to reconcile deaths that happened at that time with the power situations and weather conditions in the region.  For example, people who died of heart attacks from shoveling snow or who died of problems related to not being able to get medications are not necessary in this count.