The leaders at the US Strategic Command learned Wednesday while watching the Senate impeachment trial that the domestic terrorists who attacked the Capitol were seconds away from Vice President Mike Pence’s military aide who was carrying the “nuclear football,” CNN reports.

A briefcase with nuclear launch codes, “The Football” for the Vice President is identical to one that accompanies the President wherever he goes; the VP has one in case something happens to the President.

For the first time, commanders at USSC saw the security video shown by House impeachment managers on Wednesday in which Pence and his family were rushed out of the Senate chamber.  One of the people in the group of people was the aide carrying The Football.

David Kyle Reeves, a 27-year-old man from Gastonia, North Carolina, has been charged by federal officials with threatening to kill President Joe Biden and other Administration officials, the Charlotte Observer reports.

Reeves called the White House switchboard multiple times from January 28th through February 1st making his threats.  When he was contacted by the Secret Service who was investigating the threats, Reeves repeated the threats and dared the Secret Service to come and get him.

“I’m going to come kill the president, I’m going to kill the Secret Service because I own this whole planet,” Reeves said in a phone call to a Secret Service special agent, according to an affidavit.

Florida Governor Ron DeSantis called a press conference Thursday to declare that he was going to fight a travel restriction the Biden Administration said a day before it was not considering, Politico reports.

The indignant DeSantis declared that he would fight the non-existent policy declaring it “absurd” and “unconstitutional.”

On Wednesday, White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki responded to a question about the non-existent restriction by saying, “We are always considering what steps are necessary to keep the American people safe, but we are not currently in the process of, no decisions have been made around additional public health measures that would delay or would change, I should say, domestic travel considerations.”

An Erie County (New York) grand jury declined to indict two Buffalo police officers who shoved an elderly man to the ground, causing him to bleed from the ear and head, during last summer’s Black Lives Matter protests in the city, the New York Post reports.

In June, 75-year-old Martin Gugino attended a protest after the police killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis.  A Buffalo special response unit, trying to break up the crowd, march toward the group of protestors.  Holding a sign, Gugino was standing between the police and the crowd, and officers Robert McCabe and Aaron Torgalski were caught on video shoving Gugino, who fell backwards on the sidewalk, hitting his head.

Gugino suffered a fractured skull in the fall and spent a month in the hospital recovering from the injury and other brain trauma.

The Erie County District Attorney John Flynn originally charged the two officers with felonies, prompting the other officers in the special squad to resign from the squad in protest.  The grand jury opted to not support the charges, and the DA dropped the case.

Texas Tribune: “Late last year, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton fired multiple senior aides who accused him of accepting a bribe. A court filing obtained by The Texas Tribune reveals for the first time what four of those aides believe Paxton received in exchange for helping a donor with his business affairs. An updated version of a lawsuit filed by the four whistleblowers claims that Austin real estate developer Nate Paul helped Paxton remodel his house and gave a job to a woman with whom Paxton allegedly had an affair. In return, the aides allege, Paxton used his office to help Paul’s business interests, investigate Paul’s adversaries and help settle a lawsuit. The claims in the filing provide even more details about what the former aides believe Paxton’s motivations were in what they describe as a ‘bizarre, obsessive use of power.'”

“‘Some of Paxton’s actions directing the [Office of the Attorney General] to benefit Paul were criminal without regard to motive,’ the amended petition reads. ‘Others were so egregious and so contrary to appropriate use of his office, that they could only have been prompted by illicit motives such as a desire to repay debts, pay hush money, or reciprocate favors extended by Paul.’ Four of the aides sued Paxton in November after being fired. James Brickman, David Maxwell, J. Mark Penley and Ryan Vassar, who filed the lawsuit, claim the firings were retaliation for reporting Paxton’s behavior to federal and state law enforcement agencies. They told those authorities that they believed Paxton was abusing his power to help Paul, his friend and political donor, who gave $25,000 to Paxton’s 2018 reelection campaign. The allegations have reportedly sparked an FBI investigation.”

“A meeting between Trump’s lawyers and GOP senators — including Graham and Cruz — just ended. Trump lawyer David Schoen said the meeting was about ‘procedure.’ Cruz said senators were talking about the legal ‘strategy for tomorrow’ and where arguments are and where to go.” —Yamiche Alcindor of PBS

From the early days of my campaign I said the Department of Education should be abolished.

I’ve signed on to Rep. Massie’s Bill to do just that!

— Lauren Boebert (@laurenboebert) February 11, 2021

Politico: “The Biden administration on Friday will notify states it plans to revoke Medicaid work requirements, starting the process of dismantling one of the Trump administration’s signature health policies. The move is one of several steps that Biden’s health department is expected to take this week to unravel the contentious work rules long criticized by Democrats, according to internal documents obtained by Politico”

“The documents – which were labeled ‘close hold’ – do not make clear how quickly Biden will cut off work rules the previous administration approved in a number of states, which for the first time were allowed to mandate that some people work or volunteer as a condition of enrollment in the low-income health care program. Health officials are also preparing to withdraw the Trump administration’s 2018 letter that first announced the work requirements policy, and rescind a separate letter from earlier this year aimed at making it more difficult for the incoming Biden administration to quickly overturn the policy.”

The Biden Administration announced that it has arranged to purchase 200 million additional coronavirus vaccine doses, setting up what Dr. Anthony Fauci called “open season” for vaccines in April, USA Today reports.

“By the time we get to April it will be … open season, namely virtually everybody and anybody in any category could start to get vaccinated,” Fauci said during an interview on NBC’s Today Show.

According to the administration, more than 1.5 million people per day on average were inoculated last week, above the goal of one million per day President Joe Biden set during the campaign.

A Wisconsin judge ruled that Kenosha killer Kyle Rittenhouse will not be required to submit a higher bail and will not be arrested for failing to tell the Court that he changed residences, the Chicago Tribune reports.

An Illinois resident, Rittenhouse is required to stay in Wisconsin as part of his bail.  He was photographed in a Wisconsin bar in January, drinking beer, flashing White Power handsigns, and mingling with members of the Proud Boys.  Although Rittenhouse is only 18-years-old, he was allowed to drink in the bar because, adhering to Wisconsin law, he was with his mother.

Police attempted to confirm Rittenhouse’s location by going to the address listed on his bail form, but found someone else had been living at the location, reportedly for more than a month. 

“President Donald J. Trump was sicker with Covid-19 in October than publicly acknowledged at the time, with extremely depressed blood oxygen levels at one point and a lung problem associated with pneumonia caused by the coronavirus, according to four people familiar with his condition. His prognosis became so worrisome before he was taken to Walter Reed National Military Medical Center that officials believed he would need to be put on a ventilator, two of the people familiar with his condition said.”

“The people familiar with Mr. Trump’s health said he was found to have lung infiltrates, which occur when the lungs are inflamed and contain substances such as fluid or bacteria. Their presence, especially when a patient is exhibiting other symptoms, can be a sign of an acute case of the disease. They can be easily spotted on an X-ray or scan, when parts of the lungs appear opaque, or white. Mr. Trump’s blood oxygen level alone was cause for extreme concern, dipping into the 80s, according to the people familiar with his evaluation. The disease is considered severe when the blood oxygen level falls to the low 90s” – NYT.

Daily Mail: “Controversial conspiracy congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene cheated on her husband with a polyamorous tantric sex guru, DailyMail.com has learned. Then after ending her affair with him, the mom-of-three moved on to a gym manager behind her husband’s back. But despite the tawdry flings, Taylor Greene stuck with her husband Perry as she made her unlikely rise that has turned her into the most talked-about Republican in Washington, D.C. Neither man denied the affairs when approached by DailyMail.com.”

“Craig Ivey, the tantric sex practitioner, said: ‘I will not respond to anything about this,’ while the other man, Justin Tway, said: ‘I have no interest in talking about anything to do with that woman. Everything with her comes to no good.’ But others say the new representative from Georgia’s 14th Congressional District was brazen about her affairs which she carried on a decade ago while working in gyms in Alpharetta, Georgia, some 35 miles north of Atlanta.”

Then Attorney General Bill Barr rejected a plea bargain agreed to by local and federal prosecutors and the attorneys for Derek Chauvin, the Minneapolis police officer who knelt on the neck of George Floyd, causing his death, NBC News reports.

Chauvin had agreed to plead guilty to third-degree murder charges for his role in the death of Floyd, which happened May 25, 2020.  Chauvin and three other officers were fired by the Minneapolis Police Force in the days after the homicide.

The New York Times reported that Chauvin had agreed to at least a ten-year prison sentence, but Barr rejected the deal claiming that he believed protesters would believe the sentence was too lenient.  Local authorities had scheduled a press conference to announce the deal, but the Attorney General would not sign off on it. 

Right wing troll and fraudster James O’Keefe’s Project Veritas organization has been permanently suspended by Twitter. Not clear at this point what might have precipitated the move, though it seems in line with an overall purge of MAGA bullshit from Twitter and other platforms since the Capitol riot in January as Trump, Mike Lindell, Gateway Pundit, and others have seen themselves permanently exiled from social media and the “free speech” network Parler was booted from AWS.

Democratic Congresswoman Jackie Speier of California, who survived an attack by gunman who were members of the People’s Temple cult led by Jim Jones, said in an interview with The Guardian that Donald Trump uses rhetoric reminiscent of a cult leader.

“Jim Jones was a religious cult leader, Donald Trump is a political cult leader,” Speier told the Guardian. “As a victim of violence and of a cult leader, I am sensitive to conduct that smacks of that. We have got to be wary of anyone who can have such control over people that they lose their ability to think independently.”

Shot five times and left for dead on a dirt runway in Guyana, Speier draws parallels between Jones and Trump in that they have fervent followers who would do anything their leaders told them to do.  In Trump’s case, this includes white nationalists and white supremacists, many of whom are veterans of the US armed forces.

“I thought it was urgent a year ago when I held a hearing on violent extremism in the military and was astonished at the number of service members who are recruited in part because of their training to these extremist groups,” Speier said.

Radio pitchman, financial seminar host and beneficiary of bankruptcy law Dave Ramsey stated on Fox News Thursday morning that the stimulus package proposed by President Biden and Democrats will not provide any economic stability or growth, claiming that if someone is reliant on a $600 or $1,400 stimulus check, they’re “screwed already.”

https://youtu.be/XBVJM7yo2Fk

Ramsey makes a number of dubious claims about how economic stimulus works, including saying that forgiving student loans would not stimulate the economy because “that assumes people were going to pay them off this year,” ignoring that loan forgiveness would give people hundreds of dollars more per month to spend.

“That’s economic hogwash,” Ramsey claims.  “It’s smoke and mirrors.  It’s simply not going to happen.”

Texan Gina Carano broke barriers in the Star Wars universe: not a princess, not a victim, not some emotionally tortured Jedi. She played a woman who kicked ass & who girls looked up to. She was instrumental in making Star Wars fun again. Of course Disney canceled her.

— Ted Cruz (@tedcruz) February 11, 2021

Daily Beast: “The end may be in sight. Dr. Anthony Fauci, the nation’s top infectious disease expert and a scientific adviser to President Biden, said Thursday that it would be ‘open season’ for adults to get the COVID-19 vaccine by April. ‘The number of available doses will allow for much more of a mass vaccination approach,’ Fauci told NBC’s Today Show, citing the White House’s plans to ramp up distribution, and the pending approval of a third vaccine, made by Johnson & Johnson. ‘Virtually anybody, and anyone, in any category, could start to get vaccinated’ by the end of April, Fauci said, though he added that it would likely take a few more months to achieve herd immunity.”

CNN: “The Justice Department is now making clear that a leader among the Oath Keepers paramilitary group – who planned and led others in the US Capitol siege to attempt to stop the Biden presidency – believed she was responding to the call from then-President Donald Trump himself. ‘As the inauguration grew nearer, [Jessica] Watkins indicated that she was awaiting direction from President Trump,’ prosecutors wrote in a filing Thursday morning.”

“This is the most direct language yet from federal prosecutors linking Trump’s requests for support in Washington, DC, to the most militant aspects of the insurrection. Previously, the Justice Department has somewhat held back on linking Trump’s words so closely to the extremist group’s actions during the riot. At least four defendants this week have argued in court they followed Trump’s direction to go to the Capitol building on January 6. The Justice Department filing continued: ‘Her concern about taking action without his backing was evident in a November 9, 2020, text in which she stated, ‘I am concerned this is an elaborate trap. Unless the POTUS himself activates us, it’s not legit. The POTUS has the right to activate units too. If Trump asks me to come, I will. Otherwise, I can’t trust it.’ Watkins had perceived her desired signal by the end of December.'”