Because of delays in the 2020 US Census caused by meddling by the Trump Administration, the scheduled redistricting and reapportionment of House representatives could be held up so long that it impacts the 2022 midterm elections, the New York Times reports.

Donald Trump wanted to manipulate Census information to make a calculation on the number of undocumented residents in each state, an effort to reduce representation in states with large cities that typically vote Democratic.  The Trump Administration also delayed “door knocking” efforts, shortening the time available to complete the canvas and subsequently cutting the time to process the data.

Because of the delays and interference, the Census Bureau announced that the data would not be available until September, six months after the typical March delivery date.  That’s fourteen months prior to the 2022 midterm election. 

Washington Post: “An Atlanta-area prosecutor plans to scrutinize a post-Election Day phone call between Sen. Lindsey O. Graham (R-S.C.) and Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger as part of a criminal investigation into whether former president Donald Trump or his allies broke Georgia laws while trying to reverse his defeat in the state, according to a person familiar with the probe. The individual, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the ongoing probe, said the inquiry by Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis will include an examination of the call Graham, a staunch Trump ally, made to Raffensperger 10 days after the Nov. 3 election.”

“During their conversation, Graham asked the Georgia secretary of state whether he had the power to toss out all mail ballots in certain counties, Raffensperger told The Washington Post in an interview days later. He said Graham appeared to be asking him to improperly find a way to set aside legally cast ballots. Graham denied that, saying he was seeking information to better understand how the state verified mail ballots. At the time, Trump was trailing Joe Biden by about 14,000 votes in Georgia, which was recounting by hand all 5 million ballots cast in the election.”

“A source close to former VP Mike Pence [says] Trump’s legal team was not telling the truth when attorney Michael van der Veen said ‘at no point’ did the then president know Pence was in danger on January 6th. Asked whether van der Veen was lying, the source said ‘yes'” – Ana Cabrera, CNN

If the Senate sets a precedent that a former official can be convicted & disqualified it will be just a matter of time before a future House,under partisan pressure to “Lock Her Up”,will impeach & the Senate forced to try other former officials

A destructive slipper slope

— Marco Rubio (@marcorubio) February 13, 2021

CNN: “In an expletive-laced phone call with House Republican leader Kevin McCarthy while the Capitol was under attack, then-President Donald Trump said the rioters cared more about the election results than McCarthy did. ‘Well, Kevin, I guess these people are more upset about the election than you are,’ Trump said, according to lawmakers who were briefed on the call afterward by McCarthy. McCarthy insisted that the rioters were Trump’s supporters and begged Trump to call them off. Trump’s comment set off what Republican lawmakers familiar with the call described as a shouting match between the two men. A furious McCarthy told the President the rioters were breaking into his office through the windows, and asked Trump, ‘Who the fuck do you think you are talking to?’ according to a Republican lawmaker familiar with the call.”

“The newly revealed details of the call, described to CNN by multiple Republicans briefed on it, provide critical insight into the President’s state of mind as rioters were overrunning the Capitol. The existence of the call and some of its details have been previously reported and discussed publicly by McCarthy. The Republican members of Congress said the exchange showed Trump had no intention of calling off the rioters even as lawmakers were pleading with him to intervene. Several said it amounted to a dereliction of his presidential duty. ‘He is not a blameless observer, he was rooting for them,’ a Republican member of Congress said. ‘On January 13, Kevin McCarthy said on the floor of the House that the President bears responsibility and he does.'”

“Lincoln Project co-founder Steve Schmidt is resigning from the group’s board amid a series of scandals that has rocked the high-dollar anti-Trump super PAC, Axios has learned. Schmidt, a veteran Republican operative, is the latest and most high-profile departure from the group, which is reeling from revelations that another co-founder, John Weaver, used offers of professional advancement in a series of attempts to solicit sex from young men” – Axios.

“Former U.S. solicitor general and conservative stalwart Theodore Olson said the U.S. Senate has overwhelming evidence to convict former President Donald Trump at his impeachment trial on the charge of inciting a deadly insurrection at the U.S. Capitol last month.” –The National Law Review

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention release five key mitigation practices to safely reopen schools and stem the spread of the coronavirus, giving guidance to school systems around the country, CNN reports.

Notably, the CDC guidelines state that vaccines for students, teachers, administrators and school staff are not a prerequisite for reopening schools, a point of contention with teachers unions.

The report notes that the five key components to safely opening schools are the universal and correct wearing of masks; physical distancing; washing hands; cleaning facilities and improving ventilation; and doing contact tracing, isolation, and quarantining.

While Donald Trump’s current legal team asserted Trump’s innocence in his impeachment trial for undermining the election, the Michigan Secretary of State released its findings from an audit of November election results, confirming President Joe Biden’s win in the state.

WJRT ABC-12 reports that officials audited 18,000 ballots from more than 1,300 jurisdictions in the state and found that only fractions of a percentage point of votes were incorrectly tabulated, far less than enough to overturn the statewide election.

“This statewide audit process affirms what election officials on both sides of the aisle have said since November – that Michigan’s election was conducted securely and fairly, and the results accurately reflect the will of the voters,” Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson said.

“The Biden administration has signaled that for now it is continuing its predecessor’s attempt to prosecute Julian Assange, the WikiLeaks founder, as the Justice Department filed a brief this week appealing to a British court to overturn a ruling that blocked his extradition to the United States. This week, human rights and civil liberties groups had asked the acting attorney general, Monty Wilkinson, to abandon the effort to prosecute Mr. Assange, arguing that the case the Trump administration developed against him could establish a precedent posing a grave threat to press freedoms” – New York Times reports.

“The Justice Department had been due to file a brief in support of its appeal of a judge’s ruling last month blocking the extradition of Mr. Assange on the grounds that American prison conditions are inhumane. The appeal was lodged on Jan. 19 – the last full day of the Trump administration – so the decision to proceed with filing the brief was the first opportunity for the Biden administration to reconsider the disputed prosecution effort. A spokeswoman from the Crown Prosecution Office said on Friday that the American government filed the brief on Thursday.”

“Last night, I was honored when Sidney Powell called me and asked me to serve as lead counsel for her in defending the frivolous defamation lawsuit filed against her by Dominion. I quickly accepted.”

“Get ready to rumble, Dominion. You made a mistake suing Sidney. You are going to pay a heavy price. Sidney and I will not be intimidated. We will not go quietly in the night. Hey Dominion, I will see you and your employees and officers soon as truth is pursued and established. I will see you across the table where you will be subjected to a thorough and sifting cross-examination under oath. I know how to deal with legal bullies like you. Check my record” – Lin Wood via ABC News Political Correspondent Will Steakin.

Vanity Fair: “A White House official tried to quash a story about his relationship with a reporter by issuing threats and using derogatory language to another reporter pursuing it, according to two sources familiar with the incident. The confrontation began on Inauguration Day, January 20, after Palmeri, a coauthor of Politico’s Playbook, contacted McCammond for comment while one of her male colleagues left a message for Ducklo, according to sources. Ducklo subsequently called a Playbook editor to object to the story, but was told to call the Playbook reporters with his concerns. But instead of calling the male reporter who initially contacted him, Ducklo tried to intimidate Palmeri by phone in an effort to kill the story. ‘I will destroy you,’ Ducklo told her, according to sources, adding that he would ruin her reputation if she published it.”

“During the off-the-record call, Ducklo made derogatory and misogynistic comments, accusing Palmeri of only reporting on his relationship – which, due to the ethics questions that factor into the relationship between a journalist and White House official, falls under the purview of her reporting beat – because she was ‘jealous’ that an unidentified man in the past had ‘wanted to fuck’ McCammond ‘and not you.’ Ducklo also accused Palmeri of being ‘jealous’ of his relationship with McCammond. The following day, an editor at Politico reached out to the White House about Ducklo’s threats, spurring multiple conversations between the news outlet and senior-level officials. In one of those calls, senior White House officials acknowledged that Ducklo’s handling of the call with Palmeri was inappropriate and said he would send a note to her apologizing for the comments. In another conversation, the same White House officials took aim at Palmeri by accusing her of breaking an off the record agreement with Ducklo and pressing Politico as to why the contents of the call had been revealed. Palmeri had only informed her editors of the contents of the call, which she had transcribed into her notes as it was happening, after they asked her about it.”

“While former President Donald Trump watches his second impeachment trial unfold, Melania Trump spends most of her time post-White House relaxing at the spa and staying out of the fray. Though she is now a former first lady of the United States, her daily routine has not seen a significant change. Trump is in the midst of setting up an official office and has hired three former employees from her East Wing staff in the hopes of resurrecting her Be Best campaign of helping children, continuing her ‘work,’ as she calls it to friends” CNN reports.

“When Trump left Washington, she had the worst favorability ratings of any modern first lady upon departure from the White House, according to polling conducted by SSRS for CNN. After the January 6 attack on the Capitol, Melania Trump did not make a statement denouncing the violence for five days. ‘She could see how it was going to go for her,’ said one former White House official who spoke to CNN, noting that Trump felt she was in a lose-lose predicament whether she spoke publicly or not. If she condemned the violence, her husband and his base would be angered and it would create a stir about her breaking with the President. And by staying silent, she was implying support for what happened. ‘Once (the insurrection) happened, she knew there was nothing to gain for her by speaking out or doing something – so she didn’t do anything,’ the former White House official said. Disappointed by the way she left Washington, she has been ‘bitter and chilly’ at times toward her husband, upset that her image became collateral damage in his quest to denounce the election and procure a peaceful transfer of power. But Trump’s most fervent ire has come from watching Jill Biden kick off her East Wing tenure on nearly the antithesis of the path Trump took. Biden moved into the White House right away, for starters, and had a staff hired and fleshed out within two weeks of the inauguration.”

New York Times: “Every day, we learn more about the concerted attack on American democracy perpetuated to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election. But the violent storming of the Capitol was only its most visible and ugly climax. What has become disturbingly and abundantly clear is that whether through former President Donald Trump’s relentless and meritless lawsuits, the plot in the Department of Justice to remove the acting attorney general, or a congressional plan in which members – including two former Supreme Court clerks – perpetuated false unsubstantiated claims of massive voter fraud, attorneys played a central role in enabling the most dangerous assault on American democracy in more than a century.”

“The appalling conduct of the lawyers at the highest levels of government who behaved so shamelessly in seeking to maintain Trump in office was not an aberration, but a continuation. Throughout Trump’s presidency, lawyers were centrally involved in perpetuating some of its most repugnant excesses. Attorney General Jeff Sessions helped develop the concept of family separation as a migration deterrent. His deputy, Rod Rosenstein, reportedly signed off on applying the policy no matter the age of the child. Sessions’s successor, Bill Barr, misrepresented the Mueller team’s findings and interfered with the sentencing of Trump advisers Paul Manafort and Roger Stone. Despite this, there was little condemnation from the leadership institutions of our profession. The American Law Institute invited Mr. Barr to speak just months after his hijacking of the Mueller report, and ensured that there was no opportunity for questions from the audience. And neither judicial nor prosecutors’ associations ever issued condemnatory statements when Mr. Trump and incited threats against the Black jury forewoman in Mr. Stone’s case.”

“After a prosecution case rooted in emotive, violent images from the Capitol siege, Donald Trump’s impeachment trial shifts on Friday to defense lawyers prepared to make a fundamental concession: The violence was every bit as traumatic, unacceptable and illegal as Democrats say. But, they will say, Trump had nothing to do with it. Stipulating to the horrors of the day is meant to blunt the visceral impact of the Democrats’ case and quickly pivot to what they see as the core – and more winnable – issue: whether Trump can be held responsible for inciting the deadly Jan. 6 riot.”

“The argument is likely to appeal to Republican senators who themselves want to be seen as condemning the violence without convicting the president. ‘They haven’t in any way tied it to Trump,’ David Schoen, one of the president’s lawyers, told reporters near the end of two full days of Democrats’ arguments aimed at doing just that. He previewed the essence of his argument Tuesday, telling the Senate jurors: ‘They don’t need to show you movies to show you that the riot happened here. We will stipulate that it happened, and you know all about it'” – AP.

CNN: “Former President Trump has been talking with advisers in recent weeks about moving on from his ‘stop the steal’ messaging, once the impeachment trial scrutinizing his inflammatory words ends, sources close to Trump say. One of the sources says he realizes continuing to push out that messaging would be politically damaging, because talking about the election will only conjure up images of the riots. The Trump adviser who has been in touch with the former President in recent days says, ‘He’s past the election – he understands he needs to be past it.'”

“But a separate source close to the Trump team, when asked whether Trump would stick to moving on said, ‘Good luck with that!’ CNN has previously reported that Trump is not showing any remorse for his words and actions leading up to the Jan. 6th riot – even as Democrats present damning new evidence this week. The source also said that the Trump defense team’s focus would be on how the former President told his supporters to go ‘peacefully and patriotically make your voices heard’ on Jan. 6. After Dems were criticized for not showing Trump using the ‘peacefully and patriotically’ line during their evidence on Tuesday, impeachment manager Madeleine Dean included video evidence of it in her portion of Wednesday’s session.”

A new poll by Ipsos shows a vast majority of Americans support President Joe Biden’s efforts to battle the coronavirus pandemic, civil rights efforts and his reinstatement of DACA protections.

But the most shocking disclosure, as pointed out by Press Run’s Eric Boehlert, is that Joe Biden enjoys a greater amount of support among Democrats than Donald Trump ever had with Republicans.  Biden current has a 98% job approval among Democrats; Trump’s max in the GOP was 90%.

Biden’s in-party approval rating is one of the highest since Ipsos started polling the question.  Only George W. Bush’s GOP approval in the wake of the September 11th attacks was higher, at 99%.

For Carlson’s hilarious advertiser list, read on.