Fox News: “Republican Rep. Jim Jordan is ‘considering’ running for GOP Sen. Rob Portman’s seat, after the two-term senator from Ohio announced he would not seek reelection in 2022, Fox News has learned. A source familiar told Fox News that Jordan, R-Ohio, is ‘considering it.’ But Jordan has yet to commit, saying he has not yet decided. ‘We haven’t decided anything,’ Jordan said on ‘The Ingraham Angle’ Wednesday night, adding that he is focused on his work in the House.”

Former Fox News political editor Chris Stirewalt writes in the LA Times of the shitshow he helped cause on Fox News with and how his infamous election night Arizona call led to his firing:

“When I defended the call for Biden in the Arizona election, I became a target of murderous rage from consumers who were furious at not having their views confirmed. Having been cosseted by self-validating coverage for so long, many Americans now consider any news that might suggest that they are in error or that their side has been defeated as an attack on them personally. The lie that Trump won the 2020 election wasn’t nearly as much aimed at the opposing party as it was at the news outlets that stated the obvious, incontrovertible fact.”

“While there is still a lucrative market for a balanced offering of news and opinion at high-end outlets, much of the mainstream is increasingly bent toward flattery and fluff. Most stories are morally complicated and don’t have white hats and black hats. Defeats have many causes and victories are never complete. Reporting these stories requires skill and dispassion. But hearing them requires something of consumers, too: Enough humility to be open to learning something new. I remain confident that the current depredations of the digital revolution will pass, just as those of the telegraph, radio and broadcast television did. Americans grew into those media and providers learned to meet the demands of a more sophisticated marketplace. That’s the work that I’ve always aimed to do and hope to be part of for many years to come. What tugs at my mind after seeing a mob of enthusiastic ignoramuses sack the Capitol, though, is whether that sophistication will come quickly enough when outlets have the means to cater to every unhealthy craving of their consumers.”

“71 year old man arrested with gun and 20 rounds of 9mm ammo… while parked in intersection near Rayburn US House Office Building” reports NBC’s Scott MacFarlane.

Satan has blessed us with such a wonderful Pres. @joebiden. Thank you Joe, my nephew can now try out for the women’s track team! The applicant pool for my company just got bigger! & I know my fiancée can’t wait to share a restroom with some dude in a dress. Thanks again Joe!

— Grant Stinchfield (@stinchfield1776) January 28, 2021

“Police escorted a reporter from a town hall event in Dalton, Georgia after she attempted to ask Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) a question on Wednesday night. Meredith Aldis, a reporter for Tennessee NBC affiliate WRCB, was removed from the event immediately after questioning the congresswoman, according to the outlet. A video of the event posted to Greene’s official Facebook page shows her being asked to comment on a recent controversy, with the congresswoman refusing to answer. ‘I’m talking to my constituents… this isn’t a press conference.'”

“During Wednesday’s town hall, Greene portrayed herself as a victim of unfair media coverage. She complained that her “really nice” posts about Bible verses were not making headlines instead. ‘The media controls the microphone,’ Greene said during the event. ‘They’re going to dig up anything they can to make me sound like a monster and a horrible person and they’re gonna report about that nonstop. But they’re never gonna post about the thousand and thousands of really nice Facebook or Twitter posts that I’ve made.’ ‘Bible verses, praising someone, doing something good or anything nice,’ she continued. ‘They’ll never tell you about any of those, they’re just gonna always make sure that someone like me looks like a monster. And that’s wrong'” – Newsweek.

Washington Post: “Ten days after opposition leader Alexei Navalny last appeared in a makeshift courtroom at a Moscow police station, Navalny is set to have an appeals hearing on Thursday over the decision to jail him ahead of his trial next week. It’s unlikely the Moscow Regional Court will free Navalny, who was sentenced to 30 days at a pretrial detention center pending his Feb. 2 trial for allegedly violating probation terms. But Thursday’s hearing could give Navalny and his allies another opportunity to call for street protests.”

“Navalny has requested to participate directly in the appeals hearing, his lawyer, Olga Mikhailova, told the Meduza news outlet, but it’s unclear if he will be allowed to appear in person due to coronavirus restrictions. At Navalny’s last court appearance on Jan. 18 – he returned to Russia the night before after recovering in Germany from a near-fatal poisoning – Navalny was able to record a video message for his supporters. Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny calls for protests after court orders him to be held for 30 days upon his return ‘They are afraid of you,’ he said, calling Russian President Vladimir Putin’s regime a gang of monstrous crooks. ‘They are afraid, and that is why they do things urgently and secretly.'”

“We all know President Trump got at least 80 million completely legitimate votes. I’d say Xiden got less than half of that” – The current top comment on the Gateway Pundit article “‘[President Trump] Had About 80 Million Votes and Biden Had Much Less Than That’ – Sidney Powell on Biden’s Inauguration Day“, posted Wednesday night.

Politico: “As he entered his first week in office, President Joe Biden was handed a priceless gift: the blissful sound of former President Donald Trump’s Twitter silence. Gone are the pre-dawn tirades, the all-caps declarations, the ‘Sleepy Joe’ mocking, the Fox News-driven agitations and the general incitements. Instead, Biden debuted a flurry of executive orders without ever having to deal with what surely would have been rapid-fire antagonism from the man whose legacy he was dismantling. Inside the White House, officials insist that their communications strategy hasn’t changed simply because Trump is both gone and silent.”

“‘The President spent two years ignoring Trump’s distractions and staying focused on the message he wanted to deliver, and it paid off with a commanding win,’ a White House official said in a statement to POLITICO on Wednesday. ‘Whether or not Trump slinks back into public view or opens up a Parler account isn’t going to make a difference in how we communicate with the American people.’ But even if the strategy would have remained the same, Biden’s team also concedes that the absence of Trump and his Twitter feed has been a pleasant addition to the job it’s doing. ‘Not having to deal with a deranged new tweet every hour? They feel blessed,’ an outside adviser said. Indeed, Twitter’s suspension of Trump’s account has seemed to realign the political universe, minimizing diversions and interruptions as the broader conversation over Biden’s agenda played out. Trump wasn’t there to demand a popular uprising against Biden’s federal mask-wearing mandate. His Twitter megaphone wasn’t hyping the construction job losses that could come when Biden ended the Keystone XL pipeline project. Trump wasn’t calling Biden a ‘loser’ for his Covid-19 vaccination plans, or attacking Anthony Fauci as a failure he should have fired when the nation’s leading infectious disease expert spoke out about how difficult it was for scientists to operate in the Trump administration.”

In yet another example of Donald Trump’s business acumen, the value of his buildings has dropped by half since he started his run for the presidency, New York real estate magazine Curbed reports.

According to Curbed, “The average price per square foot of a Trump property in 2016 was $3,346. After his election and inauguration, it immediately dropped in 2017 to $1,903, and in 2020 it sunk again, to $1,619.”

That’s a loss of more than 50% drop, whereas the rest of the Manhattan real estate market has dropped just 9%.

Combined with his other business losses, a real estate loss would continue to handcuff Trump’s retirement.

The United States recorded 4,077 fatalities on Wednesday, the third highest number of daily fatalities since the pandemic hit American shores just over a year ago, according to the COVID Tracking Project.

Nearly 83,000 people in the United States have died of the coronavirus so far in January, making it the deadliest month of the pandemic in the nation with four days to go.

The number of Americans hospitalized, 107,444, hit its lowest level since December 10, 2020, as that statistic saw a steady drop over the past two weeks.

Donald Trump is considering submitting a letter defending his actions as part of the defense strategy in his Senate impeachment trial, NBC News reports.

While Republicans have falsely claimed that trying an impeached president who is no longer in office is unconstitutional, Trump appears to be preparing for the trial, which is set to start in eleven days.  He’s hired two lawyers as part of his defense team, both of whom are in private practice in South Carolina.

Trump has also added Joshua Howard, a North Carolina attorney who worked on Justice Department investigations into the Clintons in the 1990s, to his defense team.  The 46-year-old Howard specializes in defending white collar crime defendants, working at a three-person practice in Raleigh.  His father, Malcolm Howard, represented Richard Nixon during his 1974 impeachment process.

Arizona Republic: “After months of sounding the alarm on what she claimed was a stolen presidential election, Kelli Ward is facing questions about her own reelection Saturday as Arizona Republican Party chair. Sergio Arellano, the southern Arizona businessman who narrowly lost to Ward in a run-off, has asked state party officials for an audit of the election results, said Kim Owens, a Republican consultant who is serving as his spokeswoman. So far, that hasn’t happened, adding to a growing sense of angst among GOP activists that the election had problems.”

“‘This isn’t about the chairman’s race, this is about election integrity,’ Arellano said in a written statement provided by Owens to The Arizona Republic. Neither Ward nor other state party officials could be immediately reached for comment. Doubts about the results of the chair’s race started to swirl after the announced winner in another race, for the at-large committee member from the 8th Congressional District, was informed she had lost. The elections played out Saturday at the party’s annual meeting, an event that was closed to most of the media and drew rare national attention because of the deep division over whether Ward should guide the party for another two years after Arizona voters backed President Joe Biden and Democratic Sen. Mark Kelly.”

Republican Georgia Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene (Q-8chan) hosted a sparsely attended town hall meeting in Dalton, Georgia today, throwing out members of the media who dared to ask her questions during a town hall, Raw Story reports.

Photos of the event posted on Twitter by WRCB Reporter Meredith Aldis showed a crowd of around 30, largely unmasked, people in the audience.  During her address, Taylor Greene called the House of Representatives, in which she sits, the “House of Hypocrites.”

She also defended her claimed attempt to impeach President Joe Biden on his first full day in office, even though she presented no evidence as to the charges she accused Biden of commiting. Taylor Greene also stated she would like to see Vice President Kamala Harris and Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi impeached for unspecified actions, and apparently unaware that members of Congress cannot be impeached, but they can be expelled.

A Florida man pleaded guilty Wednesday to fraudulently obtaining more than $1.9 million in coronavirus relief funds available through the Paycheck Protection Program which he used to buy a Mercedes-Benz, a Ford pick-up truck and jewelry for his wife, ABC News reports.

Keith William Nicoletta, 48, of Dade City pleaded guilty today to laundering the funds for personal use.  He applied for the loans by falsely claiming he owned a scrap metal business that employed 69 people and had monthly payroll of $769,000, or more than $11,000 per month per employee for a scrap metal business.

Nicoletta then attempted to launder the money by transferring it between multiple accounts.  He withdrew $100,000 in cash and used part of the rest to buy vehicles and gifts, as well as having an inground pool built at his house.  He used none of it on payroll.

While children are typically not severely impacted by a coronavirus infection, an aftereffect of the virus might become more prolific with new, highly contagious strains of the virus circulating around the world, CNN reports.

Multisystem inflammatory syndrome (MIS-C) has been discovered in hundreds of children who were otherwise no impacted by coronavirus infections.  Presented as damage to heart tissue, MIS-C has been found in 1,659 confirmed cases of children with coronavirus, out of about 2.7 million infected.

Children get infected with the coronavirus at the same rate as adults, but rarely show any of the symptoms or progression of COVID-19.  However, if the more contagious variants of the coronavirus cause MIS-C at the same rate as the original strain, the explosion of the condition could increase proportionately.

“Rep. Jimmy Gomez announced today he will introduce a resolution to expel Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene from the U.S. House of Representatives” reports MSNBC’s Kyle Griffin.

“French skipper Charlie Dalin was the first competitor to cross the finish line in the gruelling Vendee Globe round-the-world race on Wednesday and then saw one of his chief rivals for overall victory suffer a heartbreaking collision with a fishing boat. Dalin, on board Apivia, completed the epic race in 80 days, six hours, 15 minutes and 47 seconds, arriving at the French port of Les Sables-d’Olonne shortly after 1935GMT. However, Boris Herrmann (SeaExplorer-Yacht Club de Monaco), who was running in third place but with the advantage of a six-hour time bonus, saw his chances potentially shattered. The German skipper was just 90 miles from home when he was involved in a collision with a fishing boat at around 1950GMT.”

“‘He reports damage to his starboard foil and some other damage but he is unharmed and has secured the boat and is proceeding towards the finish line at reduced speed,’ said race organisers. Herrmann, and France’s Yannick Bestaven (Maitre coq IV), who was in fifth, had been awarded time compensations for their roles in the dramatic rescue of stricken rival Kevin Escoffier off Cape Horn earlier in the race. Hermann has a six-hour bonus while Bestaven has a 10hr 15min compensation. Louis Burton (Bureau Vallee 2), and running second, is expected to finish between 2330-0000GMT. Before news of his accident, Herrmann was scheduled to reach the end towards 0100GMT on Thursday. The winner will eventually be known once Bestaven crosses the line between 0230-0430GMT. Despite the drama of the finish, the homecoming will be a subdued affair with Covid-19 regulations restricting crowd numbers to 300. The 28,000-mile race got under way on November 8 with 33 competitors but only 25 were still running on Wednesday. Harsh weather conditions shattered any hopes that the race winning record time of 74 days and three hours set by Armel Le Cleac’h in 2017 would be broken” – Yahoo News.

Axios: “Sens. Tim Kaine (D-Va.) and Susan Collins (R-Maine) are forging ahead with a draft proposal to censure former President Trump, and are considering introducing the resolution on the Senate floor next week. Senators are looking for a way to condemn Trump on the record as it becomes increasingly unlikely Democrats will obtain the 17 Republican votes needed to gain a conviction, Axios Alayna Treene writes. ‘I think it’s important for the Senate’s leadership to understand that there are alternatives,’ Kaine told CNN on Wednesday.”

“If we can’t get to 67 votes for impeachment, there may be another way to hold President Trump accountable. The censure resolution will declare that the attack on the Jan. 6 Capitol was an insurrection against the Constitution – an effort to stop Congress from ‘undertaking its constitutional duty to count electoral votes,’ according to Kaine. It finds that Trump ‘gave aid and comfort’ to the insurrectionists by ‘repeatedly lying about the election, slandering election officials, pressuring others to come to Washington for a wild event and encouraging them to come up to Congress.’ The language is pulled from Section 3 of the 14th Amendment. If Trump is found to have violated the amendment, he would be barred from ever holding office again. ‘This is an alternative that would impose, in my view, a similar consequence but it does not require a trial and it does not require a two-thirds vote,’ Kaine added.”

Jeffrey Sabol, a 61-year-old geophysicist who was captured on video dragging a police officer down steps and then holding a police baton against another officer’s neck, claimed to federal investigators that he was just “patting him on the back,” the Daily Beast reports.

Preparing to flee to Zurich, Switzerland to avoid charges, Sabol was arrested at a New York hospital where he was taken for treatment after attempting to harm himself with a razor blade on January 11th.  Police pulled him over after his car was driving erratically.  While being treated, he admitted to assaulting officers during the insurrection.

Sabol had bought a ticket to fly to Switzerland after video emerged of him dragging a DC Metropolitan Police officer down the steps of the Capitol, with the officer subsequently being beaten by an American flag wielded an insurrectionist.

“For much of the American public and for the historical record, the second impeachment of former President Trump represented a blistering censure from a coequal branch of government whose members’ lives had been imperiled days earlier by a mob of his supporters attacking the Capitol. But many of his defenders saw the second impeachment, a first for an American president, as something else: the culmination of years of unfair treatment by a Washington establishment that was always hostile to Mr. Trump and is now trying to end his political career once and for all. Now, supporters of Mr. Trump whose blood boiled at the first impeachment are galvanized anew by the second, rising to his defense with the familiar refrains they have soaked up for years from conservative talking heads, from social media or from the president himself.”

“In the weeks since the election was called, Mr. Trump’s supporters have seen more unjustified slights to him. Even Macaulay Culkin seemed to pile on. [A Trump fan from Minnesota] was outraged when she saw that the actor had appeared to endorse the idea put forth by Mr. Trump’s detractors of editing a scene in ‘Home Alone 2’ where he plays a cameo role.” – New York Times.