Politico: “Donald Trump sounds like he’s ready for a GOP civil war. But he’s also eager to play a leading role in Senate Republicans’ battle for the majority. The former president is dialing up GOP senators to back their campaigns and talk strategy, weighing how to approach primaries in critical open seats and making sure he leaves an imprint on the midterm elections. Trump’s involvement, revealed in interviews with a dozen GOP senators, shows how far the 50-member conference has come two months after they weighed a clean break with the former president following the insurrection at the Capitol by his supporters.”

“These days there’s a growing recognition that the Senate GOP and Trump need each other as Republicans fight to win back the majority and Trump mulls another run for the White House. His behind-the-scenes engagement also contrasts starkly with his public break from Republican campaign committees, including the Senate GOP’s, which received cease-and-desist letters from attorneys asking them to stop using Trump’s name. In reality, the GOP’s worst-case scenario would be running campaign operations at odds with Trump in must-win states across the country next year. With that in mind, Republican senators are making a fresh effort to ensure they and Trump are aligned as much as possible – especially given lingering tensions between the ex-president, their leadership and the seven GOP colleagues who recently voted to convict him at his impeachment trial.”

Postmaster General Louis DeJoy, likely with little remaining time in his job, testified to a House Appropriations subcommittee that he needed more money to implement his plan to systemically slow the delivery of mail by the US Postal Service, the Washington Post reports.

Saying that the USPS needed to “recast that expectation of what it is that we’re able to do” to stem financial losses, DeJoy said that the new expectations should involve slower service and higher costs.  DeJoy was questioned about his stated plan to stop using air transportation to ship first-class letters across the country.

“It does involve a service standard change,” DeJoy said of his plan. “We cannot go to California from New York in three days without going on planes, and we don’t own planes.”

“A phone call that appeared to be coming from Johnson and Johnson has riled some county residents who answered and instead got a GOP petition drive recording this weekend. Several people posted on social media warning others that the calls weren’t actually from the company with a recently approved coronavirus vaccine. The calls were from the Bucks County Republican Party.”

“One Perkasie poster said their elderly parents picked up the phone expecting to hear some announcement about the vaccine, but were instead asked to attend two petition signing events for the May 18 municipal primary. One of several Twitter posts showing how a robocall from the Bucks County Republican Committee came in Friday for some area residents. The GOP has apologized for the confusion and said it was a technical error. Bucks County Republican Committee Chairwoman Pat Poprik apologized for the confusion Monday morning, calling the problem an ‘unintended technological error'” – Bucks County Courier Times.

https://youtu.be/1e7OyTW_NLw

Newsmax host and Bela Lugosi cosplayer Sebastian Gorka, who developed some type of High British/Hungarian/pre-Soviet Russian accent, asked without an iota of self-awareness how in Wednesday’s national address, Biden “out of nowhere injected race crimes, hate crimes, and then the threat of first responders who can’t walk down the street without risking their lives. Can you explain to me … what the relevance is to the China virus?”  (Thanks to Media Matters.)

After his swearing in as the 86th Attorney General of the United State, Merrick Garland called a meeting with the head of the FBI, Christopher Wray, and other national security officials to get briefed on the January 6th domestic terrorist attack on the Capitol, the Wall Street Journal reports.

More than 300 people who participated in the insurrection are facing federal charges, with additional charges expected for many of them and other people expected to be charged in the investigation.  “I have to tell you that when I walked in the door of Main Justice this morning, it really did feel like I was coming home,” Garland, a former federal judge, said in his first address to the workforce.

Garland faces two major challenges as he takes office:  first, investigating the 1/6 attack and determining the future threat of domestic terrorists; and second, repairing the public image of the Justice Department, whose reputation for political neutrality was compromised during the previous administration.

Daily Beast: “Former President Trump has chosen Jesse Binnall, a Republican lawyer who filed a lawsuit attempting to overturn the 2020 election results in Nevada, to represent him in a lawsuit that alleges he violated the 1871 KKK act by inciting the Jan. 6 riot at the Capitol. Mississippi Democratic Rep. Bennie Thompson and the NAACP filed the suit in February against Trump, Rudy Giuliani, and the Oath Keepers militia, alleging that they ‘conspired to incite an assembled crowd’ in Washington, D.C. to attack the Capitol and disrupt the counting of electoral votes.”

“Court documents filed in the lawsuit on Thursday show that Jesse Binnall will represent Trump in the suit. Binnall represented former Trump national security adviser Mike Flynn alongside Sidney Powell in his criminal trial for lying to the FBI about his contacts with Russia’s ambassador to the U.S. Flynn was subsequently pardoned. More recently, Binnall was involved in attempting to overturn the results of the 2020 election with a lawsuit against election officials in Nevada. He testified before the Senate Homeland Security Committee in December and claimed that 42,000 people voted more than once during Nevada’s 2020 election – a claim since debunked by fact-checkers. Binnall is also representing Defending the Republic, a legal organization founded by Sidney Powell to pursue lawsuits that sought to overturn election results from the election, in a $1.3 billion lawsuit filed by Dominion Voting Systems against Powell and the legal group.”

Throughout the four years of the previous administration, conservatives complained about, what it claimed, was a massive “unmasking” of US citizens swept up in intelligence collection of foreign communications.  They cried it was a violation of privacy and civil rights.  It was a sign of a tyrannical government overreach, they claimed.

Trump Secretary of State Mike Pompeo requested the unmasking of individuals’ identities more than 285 times from Spring 2019 through May 2020, according to documents obtained by Politico.  This coincides with the time after the midterm elections and prior to the onset of the coronavirus pandemic, when Trump’s reelection campaign was gearing up.  By comparison, there were just 95 requests for unmasking during the final year of the Obama Administration; none came from the office of the Secretary of State, who was then John Kerry.

Director of National Intelligence Richard Grenell, a Trump ally and a potential candidate for California governor, started sending requests for unmasking eight days before Trump took office in January 2017.  He was specifically looking for information on those who spoke about disgraced former Trump advisor Michael Flynn.  Grennell also specifically sought information about calls from now-President Joe Biden.

We heard what happened. That is some shit. First they make it a pain in the ass to read the site with all the ads and bloatware, now they want you to fucking pay for it? Sounds like a raw deal.

In his prime time speech tonight, President Joe Biden will direct states to make vaccinations available to all adults by May 1st, eliminating the need to prioritize specific segments of the population, USA Today reports.

The move comes as Biden’s promise to have a sufficient supply of vaccinations available for all adults by mid-May becomes closer to reality as manufacturers ramp up production. The Biden Administration oversaw a deal to have Merck manufacturer the single-shot vaccine developed by its competitor, Johnson & Johnson. “The next phase of our wartime effort will help get us closer to normal by July 4, Independence Day,” an official with the Administration said. Biden will address the nation from the Oval Office starting at 8 p.m. ET tonight. You’ll be able to watch the live stream right here on National Zero.

https://youtu.be/ChRhufnChwQ

“Recent statements by Donald Trump and his enablers prove that he and his Big Lie that the 2020 election was stolen aren’t departing from American politics anytime soon. But neither is the push to hold him legally accountable, as shown by a new lawsuit – the second against Trump by a member of Congress arising out of the failed Jan. 6 insurrection. As attorneys who have overseen prosecutions or other accountability efforts in Republican and Democratic administrations alike, we believe the combination of civil cases and a pair of rapidly accelerating state criminal investigations make for a potent force to combat the ex-president’s ongoing wrongdoing.”

“But as important as civil accountability is, Trump faces an even more immediate set of legal troubles that threaten to complicate his attempted reemergence into public life. Recent days also saw the delivery of long-sought tax and financial information to Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus Vance Jr. as part of an investigation into Trump’s many alleged misdeeds in New York City’s jurisdiction, including bank and tax fraud. That should greatly accelerate the long-running investigation. So too should Vance’s recent hiring of a top deputy with extensive experience trying complex criminal matters, Mark Pomerantz. He and Vance are reportedly sharpening their focus on the Trump Organization’s chief financial officer, Allen Weisselberg, whose cooperation could also speed up the case. And Vance is not alone in investigating criminal liability – there’s a matching criminal threat from Fulton County, Ga., District Attorney Fani Willis over Trump’s call to ask that the secretary of state in Georgia ‘just … find 11,780 votes’ to help Trump beat Biden. This is a more recent investigation, but it’s also potentially much less complex than the case in Manhattan, now in its third year. As a result, the Fulton County investigation may move even faster. Indeed, a grand jury met in the Georgia investigation last week, and Willis recently added a nationally recognized racketeering expert to her investigative team. Look for the New York and Georgia probes into criminal liability to close in on Trump” – Washington Post.

After a 36-hour pondering whirlwind I’ve decided not to seek public office. Erica and I deeply appreciate the good wishes of those cheering the idea.

— Geraldo Rivera (@GeraldoRivera) March 11, 2021

“There is rising unease among some conservatives about the increasing aggressiveness of Republicans in state legislatures to tighten election laws and erect obstacles to voting. Many GOP lawmakers have doubled down on the lie that the 2020 election was stolen and are using that false narrative as a pretext for restricting or eliminating early voting and vote-by-mail in the name of preventing future cheating. In Georgia, for example, the Republican-controlled Legislature is looking to eliminate early voting on Sundays, which critics say is a clear effort to stymie the ability of Black churches to get congregants to the polls after services.”

“But some Republicans believe making it harder to vote will actually backfire at a time when the GOP base is becoming more diverse and dependent on working-class voters. Although Donald Trump lost the presidential election by some 7 million votes, Republicans note that he overperformed among people of color – including immigrants and their immediate descendants. He also did surprisingly well among Black men, in addition to the working-class white voters who powered him to victory in 2016. ‘The joke is that the GOP is really assembling the multiracial working-class coalition that the left has always dreamed of,’ the progressive voting analyst David Shor told Politico after the election. But people of color and working-class Americans are the demographic groups most likely to feel the sting of onerous voting restrictions. And that fact is convincing some conservatives that new restrictions won’t be the boon to the GOP’s electoral fortunes that they have been in the past. ‘Restricting who can vote by absentee ballot will actually detrimentally impact Republicans,’ Erick Erickson, a conservative talk radio host in Georgia, told Yahoo News. ‘Take, for example, north Georgia. Republicans there love to vote by absentee, which is why the Georgia GOP pushed to get rid of excuses back in the mid-2000s'” – Yahoo News.

Vice: “One of the most senior Cabinet officials in the Trump administration, Acting Secretary of Defense Chris Miller, has told VICE on Showtime that he believes the speech made by former President Donald Trump on the morning of January 6 was responsible for causing the mob to violently attack the Capitol later that day. Trump installed Miller after firing his predecessor Mark Esper in the days after the election. Speaking exclusively to VICE on Showtime, Miller said, ‘Would anybody have marched on the Capitol, and tried to overrun the Capitol, without the president’s speech? I think it’s pretty much definitive that wouldn’t have happened.'”

“‘This is a criminal enterprise,’ Trump told the crowd in a 70-minute speech on January 6, referring to the election. ‘And we fight. We fight like hell. If you don’t fight like hell, you’re not going to have a country anymore.’ Hours later, members of the same crowd were rampaging through Congress to stop lawmakers from certifying the results. Recalling the events of that day, Miller said he wasn’t sure whether Trump was aware that his speech might have such extreme consequences, but he was certain the attack wouldn’t have happened without them. Listening to the remarks that morning, he said he found some of the comments ‘concerning’ and that they set off alarm bells. ‘It seems cause-and-effect,’ Miller said, referring to Trump’s speech and the violent riot that left five people dead. ‘The question is, did he know he was enraging people to do that? I don’t know.'”

https://twitter.com/MollyJongFast/status/1370035523297935363

Axios: “The full Senate voted 51-48 on Thursday to advance Xavier Becerra’s nomination to head the Department of Health and Human Services, after it stalled in the deadlocked Senate Finance Committee due to Republican opposition. Becerra, who as attorney general of California sued the Trump administration over 100 times, is one of President Biden’s most controversial nominees. This was the first time Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) used his powers to force a nomination out of a tied committee.”

“Becerra has come under fire from Senate Republicans over his lack of health care experience, support for Medicare for All and abortion, and his handling of California’s coronavirus response while serving as the state’s attorney general. The moderate Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.V.) said on Thursday that he would support Becerra for HHS secretary, signaling that the nomination will have support from all 50 Democrats in the chamber. Sen. Susan Collins also said she would support Becerra, meaning that Vice President Kamala Harris likely will not have to serve as the tiebreaker.”

Thank you @POTUS.

Help is here. pic.twitter.com/UymZxa6vnS

— The Democrats (@TheDemocrats) March 11, 2021