CBS News: “In case you needed another reason to get your COVID-19 vaccination, Krispy Kreme is sweetening the deal – it’s giving free doughnuts to anyone with proof of vaccination, all year long. Starting Monday, any customer with a valid COVID-19 vaccination card will receive a free Original Glazed doughnut at participating locations nationwide.”

“The iconic doughnut shop specifies that any guests who have received at least one of the two shots of the Moderna or Pfizer vaccine, or one shot of the Johnson & Johnson vaccine qualify for the promotion. All you need to show is your vaccination card to redeem your doughnut – a vaccine sticker is not valid. And it’s not just a one-time offer. Vaccinated individuals can go back every single day and continue getting free doughnuts through all of 2021.”

“The Supreme Court on Monday agreed to review a lower court opinion that wiped away the death sentence of Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, one of the brothers convicted in the 2013 Boston Marathon bombing that killed three spectators and injured hundreds” – CNN.

Politico: “Mike Pompeo and Rick Scott are headed to Iowa this week and next, followed by Tim Scott in mid-April. Mike Pence plans to visit the early primary state of South Carolina, while Ron DeSantis appears to be conducting a soft launch in his home state of Florida. Jeff Kaufmann, chair of the Iowa Republican Party, said he’s never seen so much interest so early in a presidential election cycle. ‘Iowa’s going to be hopping,’ Kaufmann said. But what’s truly unique about the Republicans’ pre-presidential primary is the contingent framework that is unfolding around it.”

“It’s a primary – but a wholly conditional one. Prospective 2024 candidates, donors and conservative media outlets – the entire Republican ecosystem – are building strategies and structuring the race around the single question of whether former President Donald Trump runs again. It’s been nearly a half-century since either party had to navigate a primary in which a losing president loomed as a potential contestant. ‘He’s got them in a box,’ said Matt Moore, former chair of the South Carolina Republican Party. Or as one prominent Republican operative in New Hampshire put it, ‘I would almost call it a shadow campaign… It’s kind of operating in this silo as if he doesn’t run again.'”

“In the jungles of southeast Myanmar, the army was shooting and otherwise oppressing civilians long before last month’s military coup. This largely unseen repression continues even now. In the country’s remote southeast, an army offensive has driven as many as 8,000 ethnic Karen people to flee their homes in what aid groups say is the worst upheaval there for nearly 10 years. They’re now living in the jungle, with fears growing for their health and security, and no prospect of an early return. This crisis in the borderlands has been overshadowed by the deadly crackdown on the mass movement protesting the military’s takeover of power from the elected government of Aung San Suu Kyi. But it also is a reminder of the brutal force Myanmar’s army has long used against civilians, and in particular the country’s ethnic minorities” the AP reports.

“The Karen National Union, the leading political body for the Karen, for now is shouldering all of the displaced people’s basic needs for food, shelter and security. But in the long run, that will be a challenge for the group, said Padoh Saw Taw Nee, head of the KNU’s foreign affairs department, in an email interview. ‘Therefore the international community should reach out with humanitarian assistance to these people who are in need as soon as possible,’ he said. The Karen are among more than a dozen ethnic groups that have been seeking greater autonomy from the central government since Myanmar, then known as Burma, became independent from Britain in 1948.”

New York Post: “A forthcoming government report will reveal evidence of UFOs breaking the sound barrier without a sonic boom and other ‘difficult to explain’ phenomena, the former Director of National Intelligence said. John Ratcliffe, the top intelligence official under former President Donald Trump, was asked about about incidents involving unidentified flying objects on Fox News Friday. ‘There are a lot more sightings than have been made public,’ he told host Maria Bartiromo. ‘Some of those have been declassified.’ ‘And when we talk about sightings,’ Ratcliffe continued, ‘we are talking about objects that have been seen by Navy or Air Force pilots, or have been picked up by satellite imagery that frankly engage in actions that are difficult to explain.'”

“‘Movements that are hard to replicate that we don’t have the technology for. Or traveling at speeds that exceed the sound barrier without a sonic boom.’ A new Pentagon report will also detail any threats posed by the aerial phenomena and whether foreign adversaries are suspected of controlling them. ‘Weather can cause disturbances, visual disturbances,’ Ratcliffe said. ‘Sometimes we wonder whether or not our adversaries have technologies that are a bit further down the road than we thought or than we realized. But these are instances where we don’t have good explanations for some of the things that we have seen.’ Ratcliff’s remarks came several months after the Pentagon declassified three well-known UFO videos, acknowledging that the footage was shot by US Navy pilots. In the interview, Ratcliffe said the sightings, which have been reported across the globe, extend beyond ‘just a pilot or just a satellite, or some intelligence collection.’ ‘Usually we have multiple sensors that are picking up these things… some of these are unexplained phenomenon, and there is actually quite a few more than have been made public,’ he said. The Pentagon report is expected to be released by June 1, Bartiromo said during the interview.”

“Former President Donald Trump is expected to endorse Rep. Jody Hice in a campaign to unseat Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger in next year’s Republican primary, according to three people familiar with Trump’s decision. Trump publicly seethed about Raffensperger after the November election, when the secretary of state refused to support Trump’s false claims that Georgia was stolen from him. Top Raffensperger aides had publicly rebuked the president’s conspiracy theories, warning in early December that it would lead to potential violence” – Politico.

With streets flooded with Spring Breakers and other visitors who were violating the curfews set by the city leaders earlier in the weekend, Miami Beach police officers fired pepper balls into the crowds to break them up, CNN reports.

On Sunday, local officials said they arrested a couple dozen people Sunday who were violating the curfews and service rules.  Road closures in the city’s entertainment district were being shut down until Tuesday.

The goal here is to really contain the overwhelming crowd of visitors, and the potential for violence disruption and damage to and damage to property, whether intentional or not,” city manager Raul Aguila said.  “Unfortunately, this is the last thing that I had wanted to do. But this is a spring break like no other.  Not all people that visit Miami Beach are bad, come to Miami Beach with the intent of breaking the law, and disrupting our quality of life. But this is a different situation, and it calls for drastic measures.”

https://youtu.be/adog1hTNVLA

MSNBC host Medhir Hassan opened Republican Texas Congressman Dan Crenshaw’s eyes to the truth when he called out a lie Crenshaw told on Fox News earlier in the week, when Crenshaw claimed the Biden Administration said they wouldn’t deport anyone coming across the southern border illegally.

Tom Reed, Republican Congressman from New York’s 23rd Congressional District covering most of the state’s border with Pennsylvania, said Sunday he will not seek reelection after acknowledging that he sexually accosted a woman in a bar, the Associated Press reports.

At a Minneapolis bar in 2017, Reed sat next to an AFLAC lobbyist, then-25-year-old Nicolette Davis and rubbed her back and unhooked her bra through her blouse without her consent.  He also tried groping her thigh.

“A drunk congressman is rubbing my back,” she texted a co-worker at Aflac that evening, adding later, “HELP HELP.”

Reed claimed that he was drunk when he groped Davis and that he sought treatment after the incident.  He said that he was “powerless over alcohol” and he sought forgiveness from his wife and Davis.  He announced that he would not seek elected office in 2022, apparently also ruling out a run for New York governor, for which he was touted by GOP sources.

The actions of the domestic terrorists who attacked the Capitol on January 6th in an attempt to stop the Congress from undertaking its Constitutional duty to certify the states’ Electoral College votes merit sedition charges, the lead federal prosecutor in the Justice Department inquiry said on “60 Minutes.”  And Donald Trump is still being investigated for his role in the insurrection.

According to the New York Times, Michael R. Sherwin, the interim US Attorney for the District of Columbia, said on the program the violence by the group complies with the statute for sedition with outlines the crime as the use of force “to prevent, hinder or delay the execution of any law of the United States.”

“I personally believe the evidence is trending toward that, and probably meets those elements,”  Sherwin said. “I believe the facts do support those charges. And I think that, as we go forward, more facts will support that.”

Democrats and Republicans will each gain one additional seat in the House due to the outcomes of two Louisiana special elections held Sunday, CNN reports.

Republican Julia Letlow will take the Louisiana’s 5th Congressional District seat which was originally won by her husband in the November 2020 election.  Her husband, Luke, died of COVID-19 on December 29th, before he could take the seat.

In the other race, for the state’s 2nd Congressional District, two Democrats advanced to the runoff, ensuring that the Democrats will keep the seat.  Troy Carter and Karen Carter Peterson (no relation to one another) will go to an April 24th runoff to fill the seat vacated by Cedric Richmond, who became an advisor in the Biden Administration.

“Senator Ron Johnson incited widespread outrage when he said recently that he would have been more afraid of the rioters who rampaged the Capitol on Jan. 6 had they been members of Black Lives Matter and Antifa. But his revealing and incendiary comment, which quickly prompted accusations of racism, came as no surprise to those who have followed Mr. Johnson’s career in Washington or back home in Wisconsin. He has become the Republican Party’s foremost amplifier of conspiracy theories and disinformation now that Donald Trump himself is banned from social media and largely avoiding appearances on cable television. Mr. Johnson is an all-access purveyor of misinformation on serious issues such as the pandemic and the legitimacy of American democracy. In recent months, Mr. Johnson has sown doubts about President Biden’s victory, argued that the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol was not an armed insurrection, promoted discredited Covid-19 treatments, said he saw no need to get the coronavirus vaccine himself and claimed that the United States could have ended the pandemic a year ago with the development of a generic drug if the government had wanted that to happen.”

“Last year, he spent months as chairman of the Senate Homeland Security Committee seeking evidence that Mr. Biden had tried to pressure Ukrainian officials to aid his son Hunter, which an Intelligence Community report released on Monday said was misinformation that was spread by Russia to help Mr. Trump’s re-election. Mr. Johnson has also become the leading Republican proponent of a revisionist effort to deny the motives and violence of the mob that breached the Capitol. At a Senate hearing to examine the events of that day, Mr. Johnson read into the record an account from a far-right website attributing the violence to ‘agents-provocateurs’ and ‘fake Trump protesters.’ On Saturday, he told a conference of conservative political organizers in Wisconsin that ‘there was no violence on the Senate side, in terms of the chamber.’ In fact, Trump supporters stormed the chamber shortly after senators were evacuated. His 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” – New York Times.

The Guardian: “Donald Trump will soon use ‘his own platform’ to return to social media, an adviser said on Sunday, months after the former president was banned from Twitter for inciting the US Capitol riot. Trump has chafed in relative silence at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida since losing his Twitter account and the protections and powers of office. Recently he has released short statements which many have likened to his tweets of old. Speculation has been rife that Trump might seek to create his own TV network in an attempt to pry viewers from Fox News, which was first to call the crucial state of Arizona for Biden on election night, to Trump’s considerable anger.”

“But on Sunday adviser Jason Miller said social media was the immediate target. ‘The president’s been off of social media for a while,’ he told Fox News Media Buzz host Howard Kurtz, ‘[but] his press releases, his statements have actually been getting almost more play than he ever did on Twitter before.’ Miller said he had been told by a reporter the statements were ‘much more elegant’ and ‘more presidential’ than Trump’s tweets, but added: ‘I do think that we’re going to see President Trump returning to social media in probably about two or three months here with his own platform. ‘And this is something that I think will be the hottest ticket in social media, it’s going to completely redefine the game, and everybody is going to be waiting and watching to see what exactly President Trump does. But it will be his own platform.’ Asked if Trump was going to create the platform himself or with a company, Miller said: ‘I can’t go much further than what I was able to just share, but I can say that it will be big once he starts.”

“Trump curse reaches far and wide”

– The current top comment on The Gateway Pundit article “LeBron James Out Indefinitely After Suffering High-Ankle Sprain During Saturday Playoff Game” posted Sunday morning.

“As thousands of our voters continue to call for a thorough audit of the 2020 election in Maricopa County, I am pleased to report we have narrowed it down to a forensic audit team. We are negotiating final details on the execution of the audit and hope to have an announcement soon. Our desire is to work closely with the County Board of Supervisors, and the Senate continues to believe the proper location of the audit is at the County, to preserve the chain of custody and maintain security of the ballots and equipment. Our goal is to make this a bipartisan effort with full transparency and in joint cooperation with Maricopa County officials. We’ve been reaching out to experts on election processes in Arizona and around the nation and hope to have the best and brightest involved in the audit” writes Arizona State Senate President Karen Fann.

“This audit will be broad and detailed: the team will include, but is not limited to, testing the machines, scanning the ballots, performing a full hand count and checking for any IT breaches. When all the work is done, there will be a full report for the Senate and County to review. Our voters expect this audit, and it can be a big step in returning trust and confidence in our election process”

Politico: “In a world where polarization driven by social media has equipped every smartphone-wielding American with a hammer, every political dispute looks like a nail. A year into the Covid-19 pandemic, viral videos of mask burnings and other forms of lockdown protest proliferate. The arch-conservative, troll-friendly webmagazine The Federalist more than doubles its traffic each year. Pro-Trump students are bending reformicon-minded College Republican groups to their will. In certain parts of the country, modified pickup trucks ‘roll coal,’ spewing jet-black exhaust fumes into the air as a middle finger to environmentalists. Popular bootleg Trump campaign merchandise read simply: ‘Fuck your feelings.'”

“‘It’s a spirit of rebellion against what people see as liberals who are overly sensitive, or are capable of being triggered, or hypocritical,’ says Marshall Kosloff, co-host of the podcast ‘The Realignment,’ which analyzes the shifting allegiances of and rise of populist politics. ‘It basically offers the party a way of resolving the contradictions within a realigning party, that increasingly is appealing to down-market white voters and certain working-class Black and Hispanic voters, but that also has a pretty plutocratic agenda at the policy level.’ In other words: Owning the libs offers bread and circuses for the pro-Trump right while Republicans quietly pursue a traditional program of deregulation and tax cuts at the policy level. To supercharge those distractions, however, was the great innovation of Donald Trump’s presidency: He used the highest platform in the land to play shock jock 24/7, trading the radio booth for his Twitter account – thrilling his supporters by dismaying his foes. And despite Trump’s defeat in the 2020 presidential election – and the Republican Party’s loss of control of both the House and the Senate under Trump’s leadership – the GOP has largely chosen to take his strategy and run with it, betting on a hard-charging, antagonistic rhetorical approach to deliver it back into power in Washington.”

“Monica Levinson, producer of Borat: Subsequent Moviefilm, said the film’s infamous Rudy Giuliani scene was even more harrowing for the filmmakers after the former mayor left the hotel room. The film features a scene in which Giuliani goes to the hotel bedroom with Maria Bakalova after an interview, appearing to expect sexual relations. Giuliani has denied that’s what he was doing. ‘He claimed we were trying to extort him at the time, which we didn’t ask for anything,’ Levinson said at a Producers Guild of America panel on Saturday. ‘He called all of his New York City cops and said extortion, which was a federal crime. Very smart to bring that up.'”

“Levinson said the hotel locked the Borat crew out of the suite where they had filmed the Giuliani scene. Fortunately, they had already transferred the footage out of the room. ‘That’s always out first,’ Levinson said. ‘We would hide tapes in our pants. There’s always ways to make sure we got out the data.’ However, the crew were unable to move the equipment out of the hotel room. They had more scenes to shoot the day after Giuliani. ‘We actually had to rent new equipment,’ Levinson said. ‘It was a really stressful time that evening because the hotel wouldn’t let us take anything out of the rooms'” – Deadline.

Politico: “Lynda Blanchard’s fledgling campaign to succeed retiring Alabama GOP Sen. Richard Shelby seemed to be progressing smoothly as she mingled with donors inside Mar-a-Lago’s gilded ballroom last Saturday. She had the bio, having served as ambassador to Slovenia – the native home of former First Lady Melania Trump. She had the connections, having received a surprise visit from former President Donald Trump at one point in the evening. She even had the public shout out to tout on the trail. ‘I can say you did a great job as ambassador,’ Trump had told the crowd.”

“But within days, Blanchard’s effort to position herself as the Trump-approved candidate in the race was thrown into jeopardy as it became clear that the 45th president was leaning toward supporting Rep. Mo Brooks (R-Ala.) in the GOP primary for Shelby’s seat. Four people familiar with Trump’s thinking said Brooks was his preferred candidate and would most likely receive an endorsement in the foreseeable future. Few in Trump’s inner circle expected that the former president would ever endorse Blanchard over Brooks, who was among the first Republican lawmakers to announce a challenge against the 2020 election results last December and had the ‘inside track’ for the 45th president’s nod, according to one Trump aide. But what likely sealed Blanchard’s fate, according to four people familiar with the matter, was the moment they said her team broke a cardinal rule in Trump World: they exaggerated just how much of a Trump insider she truly is. ‘The president doesn’t know Lynda all that well and it had gotten back to him and his team that people on her team had been overstating how close they supposedly are,’ said a person close to Trump. ‘One of her aides was telling any donor who would listen that Trump was going to endorse her and that left him annoyed.'”

“The filibuster is in trouble. President Joe Biden has come out in favor of reforming it, and Democrats in the Senate are weighing alternatives. But the strongest sign its days are numbered is that the Republican leader Mitch McConnell is threatening Armageddon if the other party touches it. No one presently – or perhaps ever – in the Senate has practiced the dark art of obstruction as relentlessly as the current minority leader. And the Kentucky senator’s most effective weapon, requiring 60 votes for virtually everything the opposing party wants to do, has been the filibuster. Democrats can propose legislation that voters strongly support – a higher minimum wage, a path to citizenship for Dreamers, background checks for gun purchasers, safeguards for Americans’ ability to cast ballots – and McConnell can strangle it off camera with a minimum of notice or fuss.”

“Like Lyndon B. Johnson, McConnell is a master of the Senate. But although Johnson often used his mastery to pass important bills, McConnell uses his to kill them – while simultaneously generating outrage that yields considerable benefits for his party. McConnell possesses a rare understanding of mass psychology and knows that the American political system is unusually opaque to voters. Not only does the United States have multiple branches and levels of government, but voters elect their representatives in Congress separately from the president (as opposed to parliamentary systems, such as Britain’s and Canada’s, in which the executive is the leader of the majority party or coalition). In this complex system, determining who has done what can be like figuring out a mystery novel. The filibuster, an arcane procedure that prevents those who seem to be in charge from actually passing the legislation they want, only deepens the mystery. The upshot is that party accountability in the American system mostly centers on the president” – The Atlantic.