The man arrested earlier today with a gun and more than 500 rounds of ammunition in his truck has been released after it was determined that he had no nefarious intentions and that he had gone to the secure inauguration area because he was lost, the Washington Post reports.

Wesley Allen Beeler, a 31-year-old from Front Royal, Virginia, will still face charges related to possessing an unregistered handgun in DC.

A security contractor, Beeler claimed that he forgot he had his handgun in the car as he drove to DC, more than an hour’s drive.  He only remember when he was more than halfway to Washington, and because he was running late, he decided to continue on. 

Donald Trump intends to exit the White House to reside at Mar-a-Lago (which he may not be able to do because of zoning issues), and his goals after his presidency will test how influential he will be in civilian life, according to the Washington Post.

Still fuming from his second impeachment, Trump intends to try to exercise his political muscle by seeking revenge on the Republicans who voted to impeach him, as well as those who refused to block the certification of President-elect Joe Biden’s victory.

The ability of Trump to exact revenge, however, might be limited.  He’s historically unpopular, and with his children rumored to be considering political runs, he may need to back off to help their campaigns, particularly among donors.

Facebook has temporarily banned ads for gun accessories and paramilitary gear in the run-up to the Biden-Harris inauguration, saying they’re exercising “an abundance of caution” to prevent potential violence from right-wing extremists, USA Today reports.

“We already prohibit ads for weapons, ammunition and weapon enhancements like silencers. But we will now also prohibit ads for accessories such as gun safes, vests and gun holsters in the US,” Facebook announced in a blog post.

Facebook has been cracking down on incendiary content, particularly regarding the “Stop the Steal” conspiracy that led to a coup attempt at the Capitol January 6th, resulting in 5 deaths.

The former Florida data scientist who blew the whistle on attempts by the state government to undercount coronavirus cases in the state says she will surrender herself to law enforcement officials after learning of a warrant issued for her arrest, USA Today reports.

The charges against Rebekah Jones are apparently based on files found on her computer, one of a number of electronic devices seized in a raid by gun-wielding officers last month.  That raid was conducted on warrant claiming Jones had illegally used a government system to text message state employees; at a recent court hearing, state officials revealed they have no evidence to support the charges, and Jones says she expect those charges to be dropped.

The new charges apparently relate to files found on the electronic devices confiscated by officials in that raid.  Jones claims the files in question were from whistleblowers in the administration relating to COVID data. 

The historically-bad Trump presidency will end with historically-bad numbers.

The last poll of the Trump era shows Donald Trump will finish his first (and only) term as president with the lowest job approval rate of any president in the polling era, CNN reports.  He’ll also be the only president with a negative net disapproval rating and a disapproval rating over 50%.

The precipitous drop in Trump’s job approval comes after his second impeachment and his efforts to stoke a violent insurrection at the Capitol.  His normally solid base dropped out from under him, as evidenced by 10 House Republicans voting to impeach him.

During the Newt Gingrich-led “Contract with America” of the 1990s, the Republican-controlled Congress passed an often-overlooked law that will likely come back to bite the GOP in the backside.

Called the Congressional Review Act, the law allows Congress to overturn newly implemented federal regulations with a simple majority-passed resolution in both the House and the Senate.  The law, advocated by Gingrich and the “Republican Revolution” to keep in check the Clinton Administration, could be used by Democrats to undo many Trump policies for which he never sought Congressional approval.

“It’s the quickest way for rules to get off the books,” said Richard Revesz, a law professor at New York University and a regulatory expert told NBC News. “They can use it to clear the underbrush.”

Capitol Police arrested a man Friday night who tried to enter a restricted area in Washington, DC being set up for the Biden-Harris inauguration after he was caught with a fraudulent set of credentials, and found that he had an unregistered gun and 500 rounds of ammunition in his truck, the New York Times reports.

Wesley A. Beeler of Front Royal, Virginia attempted to drive into a secure area within a half mile of the Capitol and flashed “an unauthorized inauguration credential,” according to the arrest report by the Capitol Police.  Police checked the credential he presented against a list of personnel authorized to be in the restricted area, and his name wasn’t on the list.

Upon inspection of his vehicle, a pickup truck, officers from an loaded, unregistered Glockhandgun and 500 rounds of ammunition for the Glock and 21 shotgun cartridges.  Beeler was charged with five crimes, including possessing a weapon and ammunition in Washington without having it registered

“Biden Chief of Staff Ron Klain outlines initial executive actions in new staff memo. On Inauguration Day: extend pause on fed student loan payments/interest; rejoin the Paris Agreement; reverse the Muslim Ban; issue ‘mask mandate’; and extend eviction/foreclosure restrictions.” —Geoff Bennett of NBC News

[Note:  the President cannot issue a national mask mandate.  Biden has said he will mandate masks be worn on federal grounds and in federal office buildings and he will urge governors to issue mask mandates for their states.]

Citing last week’s insurrectionist attack on the Capitol spurred on by rhetoric from Donald Trump and his boss, the communications director for conspiracy-susceptible Republican Congresswoman Lauren Boebert of Colorado has quit, Axios reports.

In a statement to Axios, Ben Goldey said, “Following the events of January 6th, I’ve decided to part ways with the office. I wish her and the people of Colorado’s Third District the best.”

Trump and the cabal of Republican members of Congress who supported the attempt to block the Electoral College vote certifying the November victory of President-elect Joe Biden have felt a backlash from people who see that obstructionism as fueling the insurrectionist attack on the Capitol that left five dead.

Thanks to wettermann31 for the tip.

On Friday, Nestlé has recalled more than 760,000 pounds of the popular savory pasties Hot Pockets for possibly containing glass and plastics, CNN reports.

The recall covers twelve-packs of pepperoni Hot Pockets with a best by date of February 2022 and lot codes 0318544624, 0319544614, 0320544614, and 0321544614. The establishment number “EST. 7721A” appears inside the USDA mark of inspection on the packaging.

The US Department of Agriculture’s Food Safety and Inspection Service announced that it received four complaints of foreign material in the food-type Hot Pockets, likely from the manufacturing process.

The recall did not address other health issues associated with consuming a 12-pack of pepperoni Hot Pockets.

Disinformation about the November 2020 elections saw a 73% reduction in the week after multiple social media companies deplatformed Donald Trump, who had been a leading source of false information, the Washington Post reports.

The number of conversations or threads spreading disinformation fell from 2.5 million to 688,000 in the week before Trump’s expulsion from Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and other platforms, a study from a San Francisco-based analytics firm Zignal showed.

Twitter also took further steps to ban more than 70,000 accounts connected to the January 6th insurrectionist attack on the Capitol, particularly those spreading disinformation associated with the QAnon conspiracy theory. 

Yes, the rumors are true. National Zero will be shutting down permanently for the next 15 hours or so, or until I wake up. Maybe longer if I’m especially hungover. Or maybe shorter if something catches my eye on Twitter and I hastily post it from my phone. You never know.

But probably not since Jack’s busy and I’ll be on the road. Have a great last Saturday of the Trump Administration, everyone. Don’t go golfing at a Trump-branded course.

We are horrified and opposed to the events at the Capitol and all who supported and incited the actions. In light of those events and for the safety of our guests and team members, we have informed the host of the Feb. fundraiser that it will no longer be held at Loews Hotels.

— Loews Hotels (@Loews_Hotels) January 16, 2021

For context, check out Orlando family fun trip flyer for Josh Hawley PAC uses comic sans, which apparently is/was a planned event where donors could bring their kids to Universal Studios Orlando and hang out with Senator Bro from MO, and now Loews is throwing that it doubt.

The Independent: “Far-right personality and neo-Nazi conspiracist Tim Gionet, known as Baked Alaska, has been arrested by federal authorities after filming himself and a mob mounting an insurrection inside the US Capitol on 6 January.”

“Republicans are worried that a corporate backlash stirred by the deadly Capitol insurrection could crimp a vital stream of campaign cash, complicating the party’s prospects of retaking the Senate in the next election. The GOP already faces a difficult Senate map in 2022, when 14 Democratic-held seats and 20 Republican ones will be on the ballot. That includes at least two open seats that Republicans will be defending because of the retirements of GOP Sens. Pat Toomey of Pennsylvania and Richard Burr of North Carolina.”

But some in the party say the problem may be bigger than the map. Eight Republican senators voted to reject Electoral College votes for President-elect Joe Biden, even after the ransacking of the Capitol by a mob of Donald Trump supporters who were exhorted by the president to stop Congress from certifying Biden’s victory. Five people died in the mayhem, including a Capitol Police officer. Recriminations were swift, with more than a dozen corporate giants – including AT&T, Nike, Comcast, Dow, Marriott, Walmart and Verizon – pledging to withhold donations to Republican lawmakers who voted to reject the outcome of the election in Arizona or Pennsylvania. One of those lawmakers, Florida Sen. Rick Scott, is the new chair of the National Republican Senatorial Committee, a post that makes him the public face of the Senate Republican fundraising efforts. ‘That’s the crux of the issue: Is this a storm that will blow over, or is … challenging (Biden’s) Electoral College certification a scarlet ‘A’?’ said Republican donor Dan Eberhart, who has contributed at least $115,000 to Senate Republican efforts in recent years” – AP.

New York Magazine: “Mark Zuckerberg and Jack Dorsey didn’t kick Trump off Facebook and Twitter, respectively; Stacey Abrams did. Within 72 hours of Democrats taking control of the Senate, Dorsey and Zuckerberg found their better angels and suspended Trump’s account. You think it’s because they finally came to the realization that this was bad for America? Or that Trump had crossed a new red line? No, it was because they recognized that Democrats were going to be the heads of the Senate committees regulating them. Zuckerberg and Dorsey got tough on Trump 1,447 days into his 1,461-day tenure.”

“Twitter and Facebook built businesses in which shareholder value was directly correlated with the president’s rage and disinformation. Twitter stock, which I bought for the first time in 2019, was in the teens when he became president; it was in the 50s last month; and now that Trump’s account is gone, it’s off by 10 percent. Hannah Arendt alluded to tyranny as an informal alliance between the elites and a mob. What we have in Twitter and Facebook is tyranny with stock options. During the most dire threat to democracy, we were left hoping our tech overlords would save us. Our outrageous current reality is that when we have an insurrection, we don’t turn to our laws, our enforcement agencies, or even the media. We turn to 30-something CEOs, some of them sociopaths, hoping that they’ll mete out justice. I’m happy that Parler is out of business. But I’m uncomfortable with a private entity putting another out of business on 24 hours’ notice. It should have been shut down by the FTC or by lawyers who sued them for libel and slander.”

On Saturday Axios published part one of a series called “Off The Rails”, an insider account of everything going to shit in the White House after the polls closed on November 3rd, beginning with an excellent opening chapter on the frantic, freaked out reaction to Fox News calling Arizona for Joe Biden. Definitely worth a read. Check it out here.

“For most of Mr. Trump’s 74 years, the relationship between his words and their consequences has been fairly straightforward: He says what he wants, and nothing particularly durable tends to happen to him. But in the final frames of his presidency, Mr. Trump is confronting an unfamiliar fate. He is being held to account as never before for things he has said, finding his typical defenses – denial, obfuscation, powerful friends, claiming it was all a big joke – insufficient in explaining away a violent mob acting in his name. Aides could not do it for him, anonymously offering more palatable accounts. Allies could not argue that he had been misunderstood. His own words were all anyone needed to hear on this one.”

“In almost certainly the most expansive series of penalties he has incurred in his life, Mr. Trump’s Twitter account has been banned, his business brand badly dented, his presidency doomed to the historical infamy of a second impeachment. His largest lender, Deutsche Bank, is moving to create distance from him. His New Jersey golf club was stripped of a major tournament. Some once-reliable Republican congressional loyalists are revisiting their commitment, threatening his grip on the party, even as the president’s popularity with much of his support base remains undimmed. Those who have known and watched Mr. Trump across the years cannot shake the irony of a president felled by the very formula that powered his rise: inflammatory speech and a self-regard that has congealed at times into functional self-delusion” – New York Times.

Barton Gellman, The Atlantic: “A healthy democracy does not need a division-size force to safeguard the incoming president in its capital. Generals and admirals in a thriving republic do not have to enjoin the troops against ‘violence, sedition and insurrection’ or reaffirm that ‘there’s no role for the U.S. military in determining the outcome of a U.S. election.’ This is a moment of historic fragility in America. We are a long way yet from a second civil war, but there is no precedent for our fractured consensus about who holds legitimate power. Donald Trump attempted democracide, and he had help. The victim survived but suffered grievous wounds. American democracy now faces a long convalescence in an environment of ongoing attacks. Trump has not exhausted his malignant powers, and co-conspirators remain at large.”

“The president of the United States lost an election and really did try with all his might to keep the winner from replacing him. He did his level best to overthrow our system of government, and tens of millions of Americans marched behind him. But a coup d’état in America had seemed so unlikely a thing, and it was so buffoonishly attempted, that the political establishment had trouble taking it seriously. That was a big mistake. It is still too soon to assess this moment in historic perspective, but we seem to be living through something like a next-to-worst-case scenario. Trump failed in the end – if we have reached the end – to maintain an illegal grip on power. But his attempted coup made too much headway for comfort, and his supporters are far from finished with their assault on majority rule. Even so, there is good news to be found in the manner of Trump’s defeat. The system held. Enough officials did the right thing, when it counted, to fend off the overthrow of our government. And in this we can see a path forward.”